Proof of Intent (40 page)

I was satisfied. The tape didn't need to be entered. It had already done its work. And the longer we blathered, the more the clock ticked toward a break.

Stash sat down, the judge instructed the jury to disregard the tape, and I began my examination again. I still had a lot of time to kill before lunch, and Lisa still wasn't here with Blair. I asked a number of additional questions about Blair Dane—details regarding his adoption, his history in foster care, and so on—but it seemed clear that van Blaricum simply didn't know the answers. I was reduced to asking questions, slightly rephrased, that he'd already given the answers to. I could feel the sweat on my brow, on my lip, soaking through my shirt. Eleven-forty, eleven-forty-one, eleven-forty-two. Time seemed to be standing almost still.

“Asked and answered. Asked and answered!” Stash was looking exasperated. “If Mr. Sloan has no more questions for this witness, let's move on.”

“I'm inclined to agree,” Judge Evola said, smiling brightly.

“Could I have a very brief break to explore a couple of issues with my client?” I said. “Just ten minutes.”

“You should have explored them last night.”

“Your Honor, this witness has raised a couple of issues which I simply have to discuss with my client.”

Judge Evola kept flashing his broad smile at me. “Back when I played ball at Michigan State, Coach managed to break down a whole game plan during one commercial break. You have two minutes.”

“Thank you.” I walked over and sat next to Miles. “Thoughts?”

Miles shook his head. “It's just weird. Why would he have gotten back in contact with Diana? I don't get it.”

“Forget about that,” I said. “We need to keep the ball rolling with your son. How can we get him to cough up some more stuff about that?”

“Thirty seconds, Mr. Sloan,” Judge Evola called cheerily.

We sat in glum silence. My eye had swollen so much where Miles had elbowed me that I could barely see out of it, and it was beginning to throb. When I was a kid I'd fought Golden Gloves for a while, and it brought back memories of how it felt to be beaten up, to sit there in the corner of the ring right after getting pounded in the face by some better, faster, stronger fighter, knowing you were just going to have to go out and get pounded some more.

“Let's go, Mr. Sloan!”

I stood and walked toward the witness stand. My eye was really hurting. I just wanted to go home, take an ice bag and a bottle of scotch, lie down in the corner and get crying drunk. I touched the cut over my eye, took a deep breath. When I pulled my fingers away, the tips of my fingers were red with blood.

Blood.

The word, or at least the idea of it, ran around in my brain for a while, like a gunshot echoing in a cave.

“Blood,” I said.

The courtroom was very quiet.

“Excuse me?” van Blaricum said.

“Blood!”

“Is that a question, counselor?”

And suddenly, I realized, yes, it was.

“One moment,” I said. I walked back over and picked up a photograph taken by Agent Pierce of Miles Dane's living room. On the coffee table was something that jogged my memory. A book of Japanese erotic woodblock prints. And something else. When Miles had talked about the night of the murder, he said Blair had indicated that somebody else was supposed to be visiting the house that night.
I guess he's not coming
, was the phrase Miles had reported. The tumblers in my mind were beginning to fall into place. And then there was Leon Prouty's testimony about a second man, an
old guy
.

I raised my gaze to the witness. “Blood, Mr. van Blaricum. When did Blair Dane approach you asking for blood?”

Van Blaricum blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. When did Blair Dane approach you asking for blood?”

“That's absurd.”

“Blair Dane will testify that he approached everyone he could find who was related to him and asked for a blood sample. According to him, he had a genetic disorder and needed some kind of blood factor from a relative for therapeutic purposes. Are you testifying that he didn't approach you and ask for blood?”

Roger van Blaricum looked testy. “I know virtually nothing about this person. This must be the fiftieth question you've asked that I don't know anything about.”

“That's not my question. You're a blood relative, through Diana. Blair Dane knew that. If he asked them for blood, he would have asked you, too. He asked you for some blood, too. Didn't he?”

There was a long pause. Something seemed to be creeping into his eyes. It was that odd thing I'd noticed the first time I'd seen him, the way half of his face seemed to look one way, and half the other. Half-angry, half . . . what? Frightened? Why would he be frightened? “No,” he said finally.

“He asked, but you didn't give him the blood, did you?”

I felt something rising inside me then, a lightness, like I was being buoyed on a current, hurtled down a torrent toward something that I sensed but couldn't yet see.

“How could I give him something he didn't ask for?” A triumphant glint in his eyes.

And then, there it was in front of me, the answer.

I smiled a little. “When did your hair turn white, Mr. Van Blaricum?”

Up went Stash again. “Objection. This is ridiculous.”

“Your Honor,” I said, “if I don't get somewhere with this line of questioning, I will gladly spend yet another week in jail. But please let me finish this line of questioning.” I was about to embark on a fishing expedition of major proportion. But sometimes you have no choice. And my guess was, if I could pull it off, there was one hell of a fish down there somewhere. If I could just get my hook close enough to it.

Evola looked ready to blow his stack. He glared at me for a long time. “Make it quick. Objection overruled, pending some payoff for this line of questioning.”

I continued the questioning. “You're a tall man, Mr. van Blaricum. How tall?”

“Six-three. And a half.”

“And your hair, it's white, correct?”

Van Blaricum snorted. “Obviously so.”

“When did it start going gray?”

Van Blaricum looked at the jury with obvious irritation. “When I was in my late twenties, I suppose.”

I turned to my client. “Mr. Dane, would you mind standing?” Miles stood slowly. “Mr. van Blaricum, how tall is my client?”

“How should I know?”

“Okay, but you'd concede that he's a short man, yes? Would it surprise you if I said he was five-six?”

“Nothing would surprise me at this point.”

“His hair, it's brown, isn't it? He's well into his fifties, and it's just got a fleck or two of gray in it, correct?”

“Yes. But don't ask me his shoe size because I don't know it.”

There was some laughter from the jury. I smiled obligingly, then handed him a picture. “Can you identify the man in this photograph?”

He pulled out a pair of reading glasses. “It's a criminal mug shot. I don't know, but I'm guessing that it would be Blair Dane.”

“You are correct, sir. What color is his hair?”

“It's gray.”

“And behind his head, there's a measure on the wall. How tall is Blair Dane?”

“It says seventy-six inches.”

And then, suddenly, I was there.

“Hair color and height, so far as you are aware, these are things that are all genetically determined, correct?”

“I suppose.”

“Passed on through your DNA, right? The genetic code?”

“Yes.”

“Which is found in your blood, right?”

Stash Olesky stood. “Please! Your Honor! These are obvious stall tactics.”

“I swear, Your Honor, I'm almost there,” I said.

“You'd better be,” Evola said.

“Blair Dane discovered something odd when he had Miles Dane's blood tested, didn't he?”

“I really wouldn't have the slightest idea.”

“Oh, yes you do. What he found out was that Miles Dane, in fact, is not his father at all.”

“How could I possibly have any knowledge of that?”

“Because, Mr. van Blaricum, you're Blair's real father. Aren't you?”

The room was dead silent.

The left side of van Blaricum's face worked furiously, while the right remained calm. After some struggle both sides went calm, and both sides of his face smiled. “No. That's ridiculous, that's scandalous. I am not Blair Dane's father.”

“Your son Blair figured out the truth, didn't he?”

“That's a lie!”

Stash stood up. “Objection. There's been no evidence introduced to support these outlandish and sick allegations.”

“Give me a moment, Your Honor,” I said. “I'm getting there.”

Judge Evola wanted to sustain the objection so badly he could taste it. But he was petrified of looking biased in front of that camera in the back of the room, or worse, of having the biggest trial of his career reversed on appeal in the middle of a future political campaign. “Pending some sort of proof,” he said through clenched teeth, “I'll let you take this one step further. But if you fail to offer hard evidence supporting these allegations, I am going to sanction you in the harshest kind of way, Mr. Sloan.”

I had, of course, no such evidence at all. Unless . . . I thought back to my one previous meeting with Roger van Blaricum. And suddenly something struck me. There are times—rarely, I admit—when it pays to be somewhat less than a neatnik. But this was one of those times. I reached into the pocket of my rumpled suit—the same suit I'd worn on my trip to New York, the same suit that hadn't been dry-cleaned since November—and there it was. I pulled out a wadded handkerchief, held it up in the air. “Do you know what this is, Mr. van Blaricum?”

He stared at it. “It's a handkerchief,” he said in a sarcastic tone.

“Let's get a little more specific. Could you read the initials embroidered there in the corner?”

He stared at the handkerchief for a long time.

“Mr. van Blaricum?”

“RVB,” he said quietly

“Big R. Little V. Big B. The initials on this handkerchief stand for Roger van Blaricum. Correct?”

Stash stood up, “Okay, okay, okay. Objection. This whole thing is going out of bounds. Here we go with more alleged evidence to which the state has not been privy. I'd ask that it be excluded.”

“Your Honor,” I said, “this evidence is being profferred solely for the purpose of impeachment. I had no obligation to disclose it to Mr. Olesky.”

“You're impeaching your own witness?”

I shook my head. “This man is the state's witness. They simply opted not to call him.”

Evola stared at me furiously. I was glad I wasn't in a dark alley with him. I probably wouldn't have walked out alive. Evola slowly brought himself under control. “Subject to your making a nice, crisp point, I'll allow it.”

“Thank you.” I turned back to van Blaricum. “We've established that you met with my daughter. I believe it was in the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.”

“So?”

“Do you recall dropping a glass of scotch that day? You made a grab for it as it shattered, and you cut your hand?”

He shrugged.

“Yes or no?”

“I suppose.”

“And you bled, didn't you?”

“When one is cut, one bleeds.”

“And you wiped the blood off on your handkerchief. Correct?”

“Maybe.”

“Mr. van Blaricum, there's no maybe about it. That's what happened. Look at the stain.” I waved the handkerchief in the air, showing off a large brown splotch. “You wiped the blood off on your handkerchief. This handkerchief.”

“I suppose that's possible.”

“And minutes later, when you found out who Lisa was, that she worked for me, you threw this handkerchief in her face, didn't you?”

Van Blaricum just glared at me.

“You might be interested in knowing, Mr. van Blaricum, that we tested that blood for DNA. We also tested Mr. Dane and his alleged son, Blair. Guess what we found, Mr. van Blaricum. The man who left his blood on this napkin is the father of Blair Dane.”

Van Blaricum's face went white as a sheet.

Stash Olesky stood. “Your Honor, counsel is testifying! None of this is in evidence. None of this was produced to the prosecutor's office prior to trial. Move to strike this entire line of testimony.”

I ignored Stash. I picked up a piece of paper off the table. “Mr. van Blaricum, I'd be happy to show you the test . . . unless you'd prefer to just skip straight to telling the truth.”

“Let me see this alleged DNA test,” Judge Evola demanded.

“Actually Your Honor, if Mr. van Blaricum would just tell the truth, I probably won't bother introducing it,” I said.

“Give me that DNA report!” he snapped. “Now!”

I handed him the paper I was holding.

He stared at the sheet of paper through narrowed eyes. It was just a blank sheet of paper. When Evola looked up at me, he was smiling. His smile was tight as a drumhead as he turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Sloan has testified—there's no other good word for it—that he has a DNA test proving Mr. van Blaricum is the father of someone named Blair Dane. Apparently he has lied. No such evidence exists. I'm asking you to do something fairly difficult. That is, to purge your minds entirely of these spurious and outrageous allegations made by Mr. Sloan in which he has implied that Mr. van Blaricum had some sort of incestuous affair with his sister.”

Then he turned toward me and his smile broadened in triumph. “And you? You know better. So congratulations, Mr. Sloan, I'm now going to file a recommendation to the state bar to have you disciplined and your license suspended. Please continue with your examination. But if you mention anything about incest or any other spurious irrelevancies, I'll declare a mistrial, and we'll do this whole dance over next week.”