Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (27 page)

"There's nothing you can do," he said finally.

"Of course there is," I said impatiently. "Alma needs
a lawyer."

He nodded his head. "I'll find her a lawyer."

"You don't want me to help?"

"I can take care of Alma," he said, resolute.

"You can't defend her," I retorted, glaring back at
him. "And unless you want to find someone who can do it better, I
can."

He looked down at the wrinkled black skin on his
oversize knuckles. "I have to take care of this myself," he
muttered. "I can't ask you to get involved. You're too close."

"I can treat Alma the same way as someone who just
walked in the door." It was a serviceable lie, and we both knew it.
His shoulders hunched forward, Horace drew his eyebrows together
and studied me.

"I've always thought one of the reasons we became
friends is that you never ask me about myself unless it's something
I bring up myself," he said. "How much do you really know about
Alma and me? You may find out things aren't all what you thought
they were."

Horace was right. Neither one of us talked much about
the things we had done or the things we had felt. That was another
generation, a younger one, which wanted to share everything and did
not yet have any secrets they needed to hide. But nothing in any of
the contingent details of Horace's past history or his everyday
life could change the two most important things worth knowing about
anyone: I knew I could trust him, and I knew that neither he nor
Alma could do anything wrong. In that respect, I was more certain
of him than I was of myself.

"Unless you can look me in the eye and tell me you
believe Alma would be better off with another attorney," I said, as
I stood, "I'm taking the case." I looked at Horace, sitting on the
other side of the shaft of light given off by the reading lamp, and
the longer I looked at him, the farther away he seemed to be. I
wondered what was waiting for us, Horace and Alma and me, on the
other side of the nightmare that was already changing the way we
thought about one another.

From Horace Woolner's chambers, I went directly to
the DA's office. Advising the receptionist that I was representing
Alma Woolner, I asked to see whoever was in charge of the case. A
few minutes later, Gilliland-O'Rourke appeared. "I thought I'd be
hearing from you today," she said. Dressed in a black pinstripe
suit and a white blouse, every inch the professional woman, she
held open the door to her office and waited for me to go in.

"You're going to prosecute this yourself?"

"Don't look so surprised."

"I'm not surprised," I replied. "Just
disappointed."

She swept past me and settled into the cushioned high
backed chair behind her writing desk. "Who are you to be
disappointed in me?" she demanded.

"It's the second time, Gwendolyn. First Leopold, now
Horace."

"Horace isn't charged with anything. It's his wife."
She fixed me with a steady gaze. "You're out of line saying
something like that to me. I know you're friends, so I'm going to
let it go, but I'm warning you, I've just about had it."

I forced myself to be civil. "You know Alma. You've
met her. If there's anybody who isn't capable of murder, it's
Alma."

"I didn't think Marshall was capable of murder," she
interjected.

"No, you didn't think he'd run the risk," I reminded
her. "Alma couldn't hurt anyone."

"Would you like to know why she was arrested?" she
asked, with aggravating indifference. "Or would you rather just
assume that I made the whole thing up?" She dragged a polished nail
back and forth across the hard shiny surface of the table.

"You should never have agreed to prosecute the case
against Marshall."

"You don't think he was guilty?" I shot back.

"That's not the point. The point is, you didn't know.
I watched part of that trial. You haven't lost a thing. You're
still the best lawyer I've ever seen, the best at winning. But
that's also your weakness. You wouldn't last a day in politics. You
can only see one side of things."

"That's what I'm supposed to do."

"All you could see was the way the evidence proved
what you wanted it to," she went on, ignoring me. "Marshall was
supposed to be guilty, and everything followed from that, didn't
it?"

My hand on the arm of the chair, I sat straight
up.

" 'Supposed to be guilty?' "

Raising her chin, she studied me a moment, her hands
resting in her lap. "Did you ever consider the possibility that
Kristin knew what was inside that envelope she delivered to
Quentin?"

"Of course."

Her chin came up just a little higher. "Did you ever
consider the possibility that she knew what was inside it because
she put it there herself ?"

It hit me like the news of my own imminent death. I
could think of nothing to say. All the wretched soul searching I
had done at the beginning had counted for nothing once I walked
into court and started the trial. I had to win, and that meant
Marshall Goodwin had to be guilty. Even now, after it was over, I
did not want to admit that I might have been wrong.

"Are you suggesting that Goodwin didn't know anything
about it? That she acted alone?" I asked. "He was the one who had
the conversation with Quentin. He was the one who dropped the
charges," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

She laughed at me. "Maybe the search was bad. Maybe
Marshall decided to have a little fun with him before he dismissed
the charges. Marshall does things like that. Or maybe he really did
talk to him to see if he could use him as a witness in that drug
case. He talked to a lot of people about that."

She went on, waving her hand in front of her.
"Marshall loves to talk about himself, and Kristin, who was
practically his deputy, was always willing to listen." Her eyes
sparkled with malice. "He would have told her the whole thing,
especially the part about Quentin asking who he had to kill."

I felt like someone on trial listening to a witness
destroy the only alibi he had. "What about the money?" I asked,
forcing myself not to look away.

"Maybe it was just the way he said it was. Maybe he
took it out to invest it. Kristin wouldn't have had any trouble
coming up with the same amount."

The only thing I could do was turn it back on her.
"Do you think that's what happened?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. The point is, it
could have." For the first time in my life I was face-to-face with
the question that everyone liked to ask and no one really wanted to
answer: What was it like to convict an innocent man?

Arching her eyebrows, Gwendolyn fixed me with a
dismissive stare. "You won. Isn't that all you've ever wanted?" She
bent forward at the waist, her back still straight. "Now, about
Alma Woolner. Russell Gray was murdered, and her fingerprints are
all over the gun. With that kind of evidence, we have to prosecute,
and you know it."

I tried to appear indifferent. "So her fingerprints
are on the gun. It might help if she had a motive."

"She was having an affair with him," Gwendolyn
replied.

"That's a lie," I said automatically.

"Why?" she asked, her eyes flashing. "Because Alma
Woolner couldn't do a thing like that?" The question faded away,
unanswered, a silent reminder of the long afternoons Gwendolyn and
I had once spent, when we were both much younger, in lonely
out-of-the-way motels.

"Even if they were having an affair," I said finally,
"that's not a motive."

"It is if he wanted to break it off and she
didn't."

"She didn't do it," I insisted, as I rose from the
chair.

Instead of a reply, Gwendolyn picked up the
telephone. "What time is the arraignment?" She held her hand over
the receiver. "Can you be in court at one o'clock?"

"Of course."

"That will work," she said into the phone, and hung
up. "As a favor to Horace, I'll do what I can to keep this out of
the hands of the media." For Gwendolyn, a favor did not count
unless you got credit for it.

"I'll see you in court at one," I said.

The district attorney was as good as her word. Every
reporter and news organization that called to find out when Horace
Woolner's wife was going to be arraigned for the murder of Russell
Gray was told the same thing: arraignments were scheduled by the
court. No one bothered to ask whether, given that unremarkable fact
of criminal procedure, the arraignment had already been scheduled.
Instead, the caller would hang up and call the court, but there
were lots of courtrooms and lots of clerks, and, even if they were
sitting at their desks eating lunch, no one answered telephones
between the hours of twelve and one.

Harper Bryce did not bother to call anyone. Wearing a
different suit, but the same tie he had on the day before, he
waited outside the entrance to the courthouse and, when he saw me
coming, held open the door.

"What do you know about Russell Gray?" I asked, as we
walked together toward the elevator. I moved slowly, keeping to his
normal pace.

"You mean off the record?"

We stood waiting for the elevator to arrive. At a
quarter to one, the hallways were still largely deserted.
"Actually, I know quite a good deal about the unfortunate Russell
Gray," he said, once we were alone inside the elevator. "How much
do you know about Alma Woolner?"

I threw him a warning look. "Not even off the
record."

"Lawyer-client privilege. I understand. Fair enough."
He looked straight ahead, staring at the elevator door. "Russell
Gray liked women. A lot." Without moving his shoulders, he turned
his head until he was looking at me. "Don't be surprised if one of
the women he liked was your client."

"Do you know that?"

"Let's just say that Russell Gray wasn't the kind of
man I'd trust my wife with, if I had a wife," he added. "Or my
husband, either, if I was the sort of fellow who had one of
those."

"He was interested in men too?" I asked, not entirely
surprised. The elevator stopped and the door slid open.

Bryce shrugged. "Russell Gray was a man who believed
in pleasure. From what I've heard, he took his pleasure where he
found it. Sometimes he found it with women; sometimes he found it
with young men." Casting an ominous glance, he added, "Very
young."

"How young?" I asked, as we walked toward the
courtroom of Judge William West.

Bryce rolled his eyes. "As I say, wherever he could
find it."

We stopped outside the courtroom door. Bryce
inspected the empty corridor. "I wonder why I'm the only one
here."

"All the others must still be at lunch."

There was no one inside, and I sat alone at the small
blond table just inside the bar, thinking about what Harper had
told me and what it eventually might mean for the case. I sat back,
crossed my ankle over my knee, and pulled up my sock. I checked my
watch. Three minutes before the hour. If you listened hard you
could hear the only sound in the room, a dim distant whirring of
the air filtration system coming from somewhere in the ceiling.

My stomach made a slight noise, and I remembered I
had had nothing to eat since the night before. Nothing to eat and
hardly any sleep, staring out the bedroom window, worried whether I
would go mad trying to keep thoughts of what I might have done to
Marshall Goodwin separate from thoughts of what I had to do for
Alma Woolner. The words of Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke had played
in my head until I feared I might never be able to think about
anything else again.

At one o'clock the court clerk burst in from the side
of what was one of the largest courtrooms in the building.
Following a few feet behind her, William West, trim and fit, with a
quick athletic step, took his place on the bench. Gwendolyn
Gilliland-O'Rourke materialized at the counsel table a short
distance from where I had scrambled to my feet.

With his dark expressive eyes and angular face, West
had the brooding aspect of a poet. He looked directly at
Gilliland-O'Rourke."Are we ready?"

"Should be any minute," she said, and glanced down at
a thin file folder she had placed on the table in front of her.

"Nice to see you, Mr. Antonelli," he said, in a calm,
relaxed voice.

"Your Honor," I acknowledged.

Looking around, I saw Harper sitting quietly in the
last row, a reporter's notebook, the cover thrown open, balanced on
his knee.

Dressed in the dark-blue cotton jail uniform, Alma
looked like a little girl in her mother's clothes. The V-neck top
slipped sideways over one shoulder. Pulled as tight as they would
go, the bunched draw-string trousers dragged along the floor. The
jailer carried the handcuffs that should have been on her
wrists.

Brought to the counsel table, she waited until the
guard moved away. Then she took my arm in her hand and rose up on
her tiptoes until her mouth was next to my ear. "Where's
Horace?"