Maximum Security (13 page)

Judge Long isn’t a particularly tall man, but he reaches the bench with just five energetic strides. He nods a greeting into the gallery as he climbs the few steps and takes his seat. A handful of newcomers has arrived in the courtroom, and a flurry of activity is now audible behind us.

Among the new arrivals is Woody Timmons from the
Cape Cod Times
. He’s the reporter regularly assigned to the Barnstable County Complex and it’s no surprise that he’s here. He seems to be hardwired into these buildings. Rarely does any case of import escape his radar.

Woody has scores of cronies among the staff of the county complex—intake officers, victim advocates, and docket clerks—many of whom get the earliest glimpses of each new matter as it arrives. Along with most other county staffers, they congregate after work every Friday at the local watering hole, the Jailhouse. They spot one another drinks, shoot darts, and exchange well-informed opinions on the county’s latest crises. Woody takes good care of his courthouse contacts; he almost never misses the Friday festivities. Any number of his cohorts would have telephoned his office this afternoon to deliver this week’s hottest scoop.

But Woody’s not the only late-afternoon arrival. Three still photographers pace the length of the bar, their shutters clicking steadily. Judge Long is one of the only judges in the county who allows flash photographs in his courtroom. “It’s all part of the process,” he always says. “The citizens deserve accurate information from their courtrooms, and photographs provide part of it.” The press, of course, agrees.

The photographers’ partners—guys with notebooks open and pens poised—crowd into the front bench with Woody, prompting Woody to move back a few rows. Their press badges identify them as representatives from the
Providence Journal
, the
New Bedford Telegraph
, and
The Boston Globe
. Word is out, it seems. And it’s already over the bridge.

I’m taken aback by their appearance here so soon, but I realize, after a moment, that I shouldn’t be. Any woman charged with the murder of her husband ignites a media fire. She’s hot news. But adding wealth to the story is like pouring gasoline on the flames. If the accused is a socialite, she’s more than news. She’s a front-page photograph, a screaming, large-print headline.

Louisa appears oblivious to it all. She seems not to hear her name whispered repeatedly from the other side of the bar, not even to notice the flashbulbs that explode each time she turns her profile to the gallery. She’s leaning sideways, toward the Kydd, scanning the Commonwealth’s lengthy documents along with him, pointing to a particular entry now and then to ask him for an explanation. I’m glad she’s willing to participate; I want her to be proactive in her own defense. I just hope the Kydd remembers how to comprehend the written word while she’s breathing over his shoulder.

Judge Long repositions his half-glasses and signals for the rest of us to sit. With the solitary exception of Geraldine Schilling, we do. Few directives apply to our District Attorney. She wouldn’t take a seat at this stage of the proceedings unless a lit cigarette and a dry martini were waiting on the table in front of it.

“Attorney Nickerson,” the judge says, “I trust you and your client have had sufficient time to examine the Commonwealth’s evidence?”

“We have, Your Honor.” I stand and approach the bench. Geraldine follows, as if the judge and I need a chaperone, and I spin to fire a silent warning in her direction. I imagine Pedro Martinez might get a comparable feeling when he hurls an inside pitch and edges Derek Jeter away from the plate. She stops a few feet behind me and folds her arms, a reluctant concession to the fact that I’m up.

“At this time, Your Honor, we believe the Commonwealth’s exhibit is a plumbing fixture Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings purchased when they were renovating their home. It proved to be defective and the retailer replaced it. It was stored in the basement so eventually it could be shipped back to the vendor.”

Geraldine moves closer to the bench and turns to face me, her thin eyebrows arched. Her question couldn’t be any plainer if she flashed it on a neon billboard.
So what?
she telegraphs. Geraldine is a master of dramatic presentation; no attorney in the county spends more time painting each painful detail than she does. The rest of us, though, should just get on with it. Every word we utter is a waste of the court’s time.

“The point is, Your Honor, it’s no surprise that Mrs. Rawlings’s prints are on the fixture. Just as it would be no surprise to find my prints on the fixtures in my home, your prints on the fixtures in yours.”

“That’s not the point at all,” Geraldine interrupts. She moves past me, closer to the bench. “The
point
is that Mrs. Rawlings’s prints share space with skin fragments, hair, blood—all from her bludgeoned husband.
Those
aren’t things we’d expect to find on the fixtures in
your
home, Judge.” She turns and faces me again, her scowl saying she’s not about to comment on what she might find in mine.

“The exhibit proves the deceased was attacked with that fixture, Your Honor. Nothing more.”

“Nothing more?” Geraldine moves closer to me and her green eyes grow wide. “My Sister Counsel is mistaken,” she says to the judge. “The exhibit proves a good deal more than that.”

Geraldine “Sister Counsels” me every chance she gets. It’s one of those archaic traditions the Massachusetts Bar Association seems unable to part with—lawyers calling one another siblings. I find it utterly irritating. And Geraldine finds that irresistible.

She turns and points first at Louisa, then up at her captured swan on the bench. “The exhibit
does
prove the victim was attacked with it,” she says. “It also proves the defendant wielded the murder weapon. And it proves she’s the
only
person who did.”

“It proves no such thing,” I counter. “Anyone who watches
Law & Order
once in a while knows how to avoid leaving prints behind. The exhibit proves only that the murderer had access to the house, or at least to the fixture.”

Geraldine looks up at the ceiling and raises both hands, as if she just scored a touchdown. “Ah,” she says, her expression brightening, “my Sister Counsel brings us directly to my next point.”

Her Sister Counsel didn’t intend to do that, of course.

“Two people lived in that house,” she continues. “And now one of them is dead. The house has a security system, Judge.”

“But they didn’t use it, Your Honor.” I step closer to the bench. “It wasn’t activated.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Geraldine holds up one of the police reports. “There was no sign of forced entry.”

She’s right about that. The cops found no indication of surreptitious activity anywhere near the Easy Street estate. And Louisa noticed nothing out of the ordinary when she returned home from the club—and Lighthouse Beach—last Sunday.

“That’s true,” I tell the judge. “But like so many of us on the Cape, Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings weren’t big on locking their doors. And plenty of people had access, anyhow. Deliverymen, construction workers, landscapers…”

Geraldine lets out a small laugh and shakes her head. “We all know what happened here, Judge.” She stares up at the bench and points back at Louisa. “We may not know the details, but we’ve got the big picture. This woman knocked her husband out with a single blow. Maybe she was enraged, maybe not. Maybe she did it for the money, maybe not. Maybe she
intended
to render him unconscious, maybe not.”

Geraldine turns and locks eyes with Louisa. “But render him unconscious she did. And when she realized what she’d done, she decided to finish the job. She—”

“You have no business saying any of those things, Miss Geraldine.” Louisa’s voice isn’t trembling anymore; it’s steady and strong. She’s on her feet, leaning over our table, her dark eyes like lit coals. She’s mad. She stares up at the judge as everyone else’s eyes fix on her. “Surely this woman isn’t permitted to say such terrible things about me, Your Honor. There’s not a shred of truth in what she’s saying. I’m going to ask you to stop her.”

So much for my “let me do the talking” admonition.

Judge Long tucks his chin in and peers down over his half-glasses, the slightest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, but she is, Mrs. Rawlings. She is allowed to say such things about you. It’s part of her job. And frankly, it’d be easier to stop a freight train.”

“But the woman doesn’t even know me,” Louisa protests. “Her story is ridiculous.”

“Your Honor.” I glare at Louisa as I address the court, silently telling her to put a lid on it. “The bottom line is that the Commonwealth has nothing more than the accused’s fingerprints on an item where we’d
expect
to find them.” I pause and walk back toward our table, to stand beside Louisa. “Mrs. Rawlings is an attorney, Your Honor, a graduate of Yale Law School.”

Judge Long is obviously surprised by this revelation. He looks out at Louisa with heightened interest. Even Geraldine seems mildly intrigued. I pause a moment, to let them assess her demeanor, before I continue. “I guarantee you, Your Honor, if she’d used that fixture to attack her husband, her prints would not be on it.”

Geraldine throws her hands in the air and claims center stage again. “A defendant who’s smart enough to know better,” she says, “too smart to do something so stupid. Now there’s something we don’t see more than ten times a day.”

I stay focused on Judge Long, ignoring Geraldine’s sarcasm. “There’s not enough here, Your Honor. Her prints in her own home. It’s not enough to bind over.”

He raises his hands, palms out, to silence me. “Brief it,” he says to both of us. “I’ll hear argument in the morning. First thing.”

I turn to catch the Kydd’s eye and he’s waiting for me. He leans back in his chair and sighs, nodding repeatedly. He gets it, he’s telling me. We have a long night ahead.

The poker-faced matron returns to our table with the cuffs and directs Louisa to put her hands behind her back. Flashbulbs begin popping again as Louisa complies. She looks up at me as the cuffs clang shut, her tears flowing freely now, her eyes panicked. She has a long night ahead too. And she knows it.

Nothing packs the Barnstable County Superior Courthouse like a case that gets top billing on the late-night news. The Kydd and I were in the office until well after midnight, but at eleven we flipped the conference room TV on to see if the coverage of Louisa Rawlings would be as inflammatory as we expected. It was worse.

The parking lot is full when I arrive. It takes ten minutes and more than a little creativity to find a spot. When I approach the back doors of the Superior Courthouse, a small circle of the nicotine-dependent moves aside without changing shape. Little white clouds rise up from the center of the ring. Smoke signals.

The courthouse hallway is jammed. I push my way through, doing my best to avoid reporters and photographers, but they’re everywhere. Their lights blind me and their boisterous, never-ending questions are indecipherable. Woody Timmons isn’t among them, though. I spot him as I climb the stairs to the second floor. He’s in an alcove talking with Officer Holt, their heads close together as if they might be keeping their voices low. They’re the only people in the building who’ve entertained that idea.

It’s a few minutes before eight when I reach the main court-room’s side door and I’m relieved to be here. This entry is reserved for attorneys, parties, and select witnesses. It’s protected from the press on this particular morning by a burly guard with a shaved head. He looks altogether forbidding even before the fluorescent light catches the shiny metal on his hip. He nods as I pass, never taking his eyes from the crowd.

Every seat in the gallery is already filled. Two court officers are stationed at the double doors in back, directing those spectators just arriving to line up single file against the side walls. They call out reminders to those forgetful souls who double up. The officers are trying to keep a small portion of the side aisles clear, but they’re losing the battle.

The space reserved for the press corps has tripled. Three front benches to the right of the center aisle are roped off now and most of the faces there are familiar: local guys from the small, town-based papers, even a reporter I recognize from the
Nantucket Mirror
. He looks a bit bedraggled; his suit coat is wrinkled and he could use a shave. He must have crossed the big pond on a Cape Air red-eye into Hyannis.

The city boys showed up too. All the major players from the off-Cape presses are here,
The Boston Herald
’s Lou McCabe front and center. He occupies far more than his share of space on the front bench, his physique not unlike Jabba the Hutt’s, his papers and supplies strewn around him in piles. I’m always a little uneasy when Lou shows up to cover a case I’m handling. He nurtures a flair for the melodramatic.

The first row on the left of the middle aisle is also filled with faces I recognize. Steven Collier is on the closest end. Anastasia Rawlings is next to him, dressed either in Sunday’s costume or a duplicate. The boyfriend Lance is just about sitting in her lap and I wonder if the beast Lucifer is underneath his coat. Taylor Peterson and one of his crewmen have ended up next to Lance somehow, and Glen Powers is on the far end of the bench, keeping his distance from the others.

Woody Timmons comes through the back doors, but he doesn’t take advantage of the press’s reserved seating. He goes off on his own, leaning against a side wall amid the general public. I’ve noticed this about Woody before. He keeps his distance when his out-of-town colleagues pay us a visit. This is his turf. He understands the rules of the local game better than any of them. And he plays his cards close to the vest.

The Kydd is already here. He’s on his feet in front of the prosecutors’ table, trading paperwork with Clarence Wexler, who’s standing behind it. The Kydd isn’t paying much attention to Clarence, though. He’s listening intently to Geraldine, his expression somber. Geraldine looks downright happy, comfortable and relaxed in her tall leather chair.

The Kydd turns toward me as I drop my briefcase on the defense table. He puts a hand up to stop Geraldine’s recitation and signals for me to join them. His worried blue eyes tell me to do it now, not later.

The Kydd’s mouth has been open since I walked in, his lower jaw slack. He loosens his tie, as if he’s desperate for air, as I approach. He looks dazed, peaked. I know that look; I’ve seen it on his face before, more than once. Something is wrong.

Geraldine’s ready smile is my second clue. Things for Louisa Rawlings almost certainly have taken a turn for the worse. She beams up at me as I reach her table, her green eyes aglow. “Oh, good,” she says, looking genuinely pleased. “The gang’s all here.”

“What’s up, Geraldine?” I had been hoping to sound nonchalant. I’m pretty sure it didn’t come off that way, but I pretend it did.

Her smile expands. “More lab results,” she says, pointing to the stack of new documents in the Kydd’s hands. She rolls her high-backed chair out from the table and crosses her lean legs. She continues smiling up at me, her hands steepled beneath her chin. Whatever she’s got is gloat-worthy.

“And?”

“And it seems the little missus has done quite a bit of housework,” she says.

I doubt Louisa Rawlings has done a day of housework in her half century of life, but I don’t say so. Instead, I fold my arms and wait. I know Geraldine. If she’s hell-bent on dragging this out, a five-alarm fire in the next room wouldn’t change her mind.

“The master bath,” she says, shaking her blond head, “it must have been a bloody mess.”

“The master bath?”

The Kydd hands me a new report from the crime lab. The
Received
stamp from Geraldine’s office says it came in an hour ago. The specimen is identified by number only. The Kydd offers me the inventory sheet, the same one we reviewed yesterday, so I can match the number with the typewritten list. The specimen came from the floor in the master bathroom, Louisa’s Queen’s Spa, a ten-by-ten cutout from the pale oak floorboards near the hot tub. The undersides of the boards contain blood. A lot of blood. Herb’s.

“She did a commendable job cleaning up,” Geraldine says. She stands, leans over the table toward me, and feigns a pout. “But it wasn’t quite good enough.”

I’m pretty sure the Kydd is no longer the only sickly looking person in the courtroom. I glance over at him, then back at Geraldine. Words fail me. And I don’t think I’ve taken a breath for a while, either.

If Herb Rawlings was attacked in the Queen’s Spa—and he was, blood evidence doesn’t lie—then Taylor Peterson’s theory is all wrong. Herb
wasn’t
at the helm when the
Carolina Girl
left the dock on Sunday. Someone else was. Someone who knew how to negotiate the cut. But someone who didn’t know a pop-up when he saw one.

“Oh, look,” Geraldine says, her downturned mouth doing a flip. “You can break the news to her now.”

The noise in the gallery escalates dramatically as the side door opens and Louisa Rawlings appears. The matron had the common decency to remove Louisa’s cuffs before she entered the camera-packed courtroom, a courtesy not often afforded to high-profile prisoners. It seems Louisa has added at least one member of the prison staff to the long list of mortals she’s charmed.

She holds her head high as she walks to our table, not looking directly at the cameras, but not shying away from them either. She’s wearing the standard prison-issue orange jumpsuit, a far cry from her usual sartorial elegance. Her auburn hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail and her face looks scrubbed; no makeup. When she reaches our table I realize her eyes are bloodshot; she probably didn’t sleep much last night. And still, Louisa Rawlings is stunning.

“You!”

The Kydd and I twist in our seats. Geraldine and Clarence do too. It’s a voice from the gallery, a deep one, and I recognize it from just that syllable.

“You
murdered
my father!” Anastasia is on her feet and all cameras in the room turn in her direction now.

“
Murdered
him!” She thrusts her fists at Louisa amid a hailstorm of flashbulbs.

The crowd’s moderate roar rises a few decibels. Still, Anastasia is louder. “
Murdered
him!”

Two court officers rush down the center aisle, direct Steven Collier out of his seat, and then yank Anastasia from hers. Each of them takes one of her arms and together they drag her toward the exit. She shouts nonstop but she’s sobbing now too. “Jesus,” the Kydd mutters, “if those are real tears, there’s going to be a hell of a huge black puddle on the floor.”

Steven Collier and Lance Phillips hustle down the center aisle behind Anastasia and her escorts. So does half the press corps. “
Murdered
him!” Anastasia shrieks again, the loudest one yet, just as the heavy double doors slam shut behind the entourage.

The Kydd and I face front again but Louisa’s gaze remains on the back doors a moment longer. “Some college students major in history,” she says calmly. “Anastasia chose histrionics.”

“We have a problem,” I whisper as she sits.

“Tell me about it,” she replies.

“A big one.”

She laughs a little and leans toward me. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed, darlin’?”

“A
new
big one,” I add.

She turns to face me. She’s not laughing anymore.

Joey Kelsey has been the bailiff in this courtroom for the better part of a year now. He races through his morning
Oyez! Oyez!
litany and the crowd quiets. We get to our feet along with everyone else in the room, Louisa’s worried eyes glued to mine. I can’t explain anything to her now, though. Judge Long is already halfway to the bench and I need to address him at once, before he signals for Wanda Morgan to call the case. And before Geraldine Schilling starts talking.

“Your Honor.” I’m on my feet before he has any chance to sit. “We need a sidebar.” I leave our table and head toward the bench before he says a word. I don’t intend to take no for an answer on this one.

A murmur swells in the gallery and Judge Long bangs his gavel. He’s still standing.

“That won’t be necessary, Judge.” Geraldine is on my heels. “Everything we have to say this morning can be said on the record.”

What she really means, of course, is that she’d like to begin trying this case today—to the public and the press. This crowd will devour what she has to say. And the reporters will distribute it to the masses in vivid detail. Such a pity to waste it all on a sidebar.

Judge Long apparently has abandoned all hope of taking his seat. He hesitates for a moment, gavel still in hand, his eyes darting from me to Geraldine and back again. He moves to the side of his bench and faces away from the spectators. “Counsel,” he says, “approach.”

We’re already there.

“More surprise evidence,” I tell him.

“For Christ’s sake,” Geraldine snaps, “we got it an
hour
ago.”

“I’m not disputing that, Your Honor. I’m just asking for a little time to deal with it—the morning. We’re entitled to that much.” I point back at the noisy gallery and the judge’s eyes follow. “Especially with the feeding frenzy going on out there,” I add.

And frenzy it is. Sidebars almost always escalate the noise in the courtroom and this one is no exception. The crowd doesn’t like being left out. The judge bangs his gavel yet again.

“Give us the morning, Your Honor,” I repeat. “We’ll be ready by noon.”

“Nothing’s going to change between now and noon,” Geraldine insists.

The gavel worked. The room falls quiet all at once; the onlookers still. The glass-encased pendulum clock behind the jury box says it’s eight thirty-five. It’s been a hell of a long day and it’s barely begun. The judge looks out at the spectators again, then back at me. “It’s important,” I whisper.

He removes his half-glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. Judge Leon Long is the ultimate reasonable man, but he likes to get things done. Delays, he always reminds us, are not what the citizens pay him for. “Counsel,” he says quietly to both of us, “in my chambers. Now.”

 

“What can the pampered princess possibly tell us?” As usual, Geraldine is on her feet, pacing around the room. “Is she going to say some homicidal maniac sauntered into the palace, undetected even by the security system, clobbered the prince, and then suddenly remembered Miss Marple’s Rules of Manners and cleaned up the mess?”

Judge Long swivels his chair around and stares at me across the expanse of his mahogany desk. He glances up at Geraldine and then raises his graying eyebrows. The basic question buried in her dark little fairy tale is valid, he’s telling me. And he’s right. It is.

“I don’t know, Your Honor. I don’t know what Mrs. Rawlings can tell us. But we deserve an opportunity to talk with her, to think it through, to try and make sense of it.”

“Make sense of it?” Geraldine stops pacing, tosses her head back, and lets out a half-laugh. “
I’ll
make sense of it for you.”

I ignore her. “Look, Your Honor, the brass swan didn’t add up at first either.”

Geraldine throws her hands in the air. She’s going to say something about apples and oranges, I think, but Judge Long speaks first.

“Ms. Schilling, I did read the Medical Examiner’s report, but refresh my aging memory, please. How large a man was the deceased?”

Geraldine resumes pacing. “Large,” she says. “Six-one, twoten.”

The judge rests his elbows on his orderly desk, cradles his chin in one hand. “Now I’ll grant you, the accused isn’t a frail little thing…”

So Judge Long has noticed Louisa’s physique. What a surprise.

“…but do you really think she’s capable of dragging two hundred and ten pounds of unconscious weight from her house, loading it onto a vessel, and then lifting it again to dump it overboard?”