Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (31 page)

"My only regret," she said sternly, "is that Oregon
law does not provide a penalty for the death of an unborn fetus. As
far as I'm concerned, you're guilty of two murders, not just one."
And rising from the bench, she disappeared through the door behind
the bench.

Jones exchanged a few words with his client as the
jailer approached. "I didn't do it," Goodwin insisted, his eyes
burning into mine, as the guard helped him to his feet and led him
away.

When I turned to leave, I looked for Kristin. She was
already gone. In the corridor outside, Harper Bryce, notebook in
hand, started to ask me a question.

"Not now, Harper. Not today," I said, as I walked
away. Three steps later, I changed my mind. "I'm sorry," I said, as
I waited for him to catch up. "That was rude of me."

His shoulders hunched forward, Harper looked at me
with a sympathetic eye. "Doesn't matter how much someone deserves
it, I've never yet seen anybody come out of a death sentencing
feeling good about it."

Nodding, I put my hand on his shoulder as we started
to walk toward the elevator. "I never had anyone sentenced to
death."

"That's one of the benefits of winning all the time:
you don't have to worry that because you made a mistake, an
innocent man... " His voice trailed off. The elevator door opened
and we stepped inside.

"I don't know," I said, rubbing my eye with the heel
of my hand. I was tired to the bone, and all I wanted was to go
home and go to bed and try to forget everything that had happened.
"I never used to worry about that and now it seems to be all I
think about." The elevator doors opened on the ground floor.

"Did you believe him?" I asked abruptly.

"They all say that," he replied. "They're all
innocent. No one ever did anything."

"He could have gotten life," I said, not
convinced.

Outside, on the courthouse steps, we stood facing the
park. "Let it go," Harper counseled. "You did your job. That's all
anybody can do. That sort of thing can eat you alive if you dwell
on it. The system usually works."

I listened to him repeating all the well-worn words
of comfort and was grateful for the lie.

"Spend your time worrying about what's going to
happen in the Woolner trial."

"That reminds me," I said, as we moved down to the
sidewalk. "What do you know about Gilliland-O'Rourke's
husband?"

He stopped and looked at me, a quizzical expression
on his face. "Arthur O'Rourke?" he asked. "One of the wealthiest
men in town. Some say it was a marriage of convenience. More like a
merger of money and power, if you ask me."

"Yes, but what do you know about him?" I asked, as we
started to walk again.

"Not much. Why? What do you think you've got?"

"Just questions." I sighed.

"Questions have answers," he drawled. "I'll take a
look into this." I left him at the corner, wondering what I was
after, and went the rest of the way to my office alone. My client
was waiting for me.

Chapter Twenty One

Alma Woolner sat in the blue wingback chair on the
other side of the desk and told me the same story she had told me
at least half a dozen times before. She assured me she had told the
truth: there had been nothing between her and Russell Gray.

"The prosecution has your fingerprints on the murder
weapon. They have to show motive. If you were having an affair with
him and he tried to break it off and that made you angry," I tried
to explain. "Or if you tried to break it off "—this seemed to me a
more plausible alternative—"and he got angry, tried to force you,
and you shot him in self defense."

"There was nothing between us," she repeated. After
Alma left, I wondered if she had been telling me the truth. I had
no reason to doubt her, except for a rumor passed on by people who
did not know if it was anything more than that. There was only one
person I could think of who might know. I asked Helen to place a
call to Arthur O'Rourke. A few minutes later, she opened the door
to my office.

"I called Mr. O'Rourke's office," she informed me.
"He's on a business trip and won't be back until sometime next
week. Shall I make a note to call then?"

"Yes, you better," I replied. "I need to talk to
him." On Saturday morning, two days before the start of her trial,
I had one last session with Alma. I was surprised when she walked
in alone. Each time before, Horace had come with her and waited in
the outer office while we talked. A certain distance had opened
between us, and his manner had become formal and at times almost
abrupt. He said hello and good-bye and that was it. I stopped
joining him in his chambers, and I was not invited to their home.
As nearly as I could tell, they kept to themselves and did not go
out at all.

A dove-gray sweater was thrown around her shoulders.
She tilted her head to the side and watched me through small round
glasses as I sat behind my desk in my shirtsleeves. "Am I really
going to have to testify?"

I bent my head and rubbed the back of my neck. "I've
told you every time you've asked. You have to. You're the only one
who knows what really happened. You're the only one who can tell
the jury."

Alma seemed to shrink into the chair. Tucking her
legs beneath her, she pulled the sweater closer around her throat.
"Horace says I don't have to testify."

I sat straight up. "Technically, that's right. You
don't have to testify. No one can make a defendant in a criminal
case take the stand. You're the only one who can make that
decision." I paused, then added, with as much encouragement as I
could, "But you have to do it."

"Horace says I don't have to," she persisted.

"Horace is right," I agreed. "You don't have to if
you don't want to, but the jury needs to hear you explain why you
stayed behind after everyone else left." I hesitated, and then
asked, "Why are you worried about testifying? What are you afraid
of?"

"I'm afraid I'll make a mistake," she said
simply.

I changed the subject. "What can you tell me about
Arthur O'Rourke?" I was still not convinced she was telling me the
truth. If the question surprised her, or if she was worried about
anything he might know about her, she did not show it.

"He was a friend of Russell's."

"Did you see him very often?"

"Hardly at all. He wasn't involved with the ballet
company."

When she got ready to go, she slipped her arms
through the sleeves of the sweater and cast a sympathetic glance at
me. "Everything is going to be fine," she said. It was the kind of
thing a lawyer says to a client when things are not going well at
all.

Late into the night and all the next day, I went over
everything, making certain that I had not missed something that
might make a difference in the trial. I was thinking like a defense
lawyer again. They would put on their usual line of witnesses; they
would make their case. Russell Gray was killed by a bullet fired
from a gun covered with the fingerprints of the defendant. But if
she shot him, what was her motive? That was the question the
prosecution would have to answer. I was left with a question too.
If she did not shoot him, who did?

I was in my office before dawn on Monday morning,
going over everything one last time. I made it to the courthouse
with barely a minute to spare. The court reporter bent forward,
holding his tie in place with one hand, and opened the four-legged
metal stand under the stenotype machine with the other. Alma sat in
a wooden chair at the counsel table, gazing at the empty jury
box.

"Are you all right?" I asked, as I put my briefcase
down on the floor between us.

"Fine," she replied softly, turning her gentle eyes
on me.

At the far left side, a door opened and the clerk
entered the courtroom, followed by the judge. Settling into the
narrow black leather chair, William West looked down from the bench
and invited the prosecution to open the proceedings.

Gilliland-O'Rourke, her red hair piled on top of her
head, stood next to a young man in his early thirties wearing
wire-rimmed glasses and a dark blue suit. "Your Honor," she
explained in a formal voice, "I wish to advise both the court and
defense counsel that Mr. Victor Jenkins of my office will he
serving as co-counsel."

The deputy DA had a piercing stare that conveyed an
attitude of conscious superiority. His voice was a high pitched
effeminate lisp; I looked again to confirm that the sound came from
him.

Within an hour we started voir dire and did nothing
else for the rest of the week. Watching Richard Lee Jones talk to
jurors about reasonable doubt, I had thought he was a fraud; now,
listening to myself, I did not question my own sincerity.

With ruthless affability, I engaged prospective
jurors, one after another, in a gentle wide-ranging interrogation
designed to test their neutrality and encourage their bias.
Gilliland-O'Rourke took less time and went right to the point. She
limited her questioning to the obvious issue of whether they were
willing to follow the law.

"No matter how much you may like or even admire the
defendant," she asked one juror, "would you be able to enter a
verdict of guilty if the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt
that she did it?"

I asked the same juror if he would return a verdict
of not guilty even if he thought the defendant did it, if the
prosecution had failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
His answer was yes to both questions.

Precise and orderly, with little of her old
flamboyance, Gilliland-O'Rourke asked her questions and listened
without expression to the answers. At times she seemed not exactly
bored or even indifferent, but preoccupied. When we were finished,
we had a jury evenly divided between men and women. Raising their
right hands, they stood in the box and swore to the oath
administered by the clerk. An all-white jury would now decide
whether a white man had been murdered by a black woman.

At the end of each day of voir dire, Alma would tug
on my sleeve and say good-bye, and I would not see her again until
the next morning. I never saw Horace at all. He went about his
business as if nothing had changed. Alma rode in with him in the
morning and left with him in the afternoon, but that was all I
knew. He stayed away from the trial, and he stayed away from
me.

On the morning both sides were to give opening
statements, I sat next to Alma in the courtroom a few minutes
before nine as the last juror, a heavyset woman, struggled past the
gate in the wooden railing and across to the jury room. At the
other end of the counsel table, farthest from the jury box, Victor
Jenkins concentrated on a stack of three-by-five cards covered with
handwritten notes. Gilliland-O'Rourke had not yet arrived.

The door at the side swung open and the court clerk
walked in. I looked back at the door, waiting for Judge West. He
never came. Halfway to her place at the side of the bench, the
clerk changed direction and headed toward the counsel table.

"Judge would like to see counsel in chambers," she
said, bending forward so no one else could hear.

Holding a cup of coffee in his hand, William West was
sitting sideways to his desk, listening to jazz on the radio.
Turning down the volume, he motioned for us to take chairs. "I
understand that the district attorney won't be here today," he
said, looking at Jenkins. "You're prepared to go forward?"

"Yes, your Honor," he replied. "I was called last
night."

"Illness," West explained, glancing at me. Pursing
his lips, he thought about what to do next. "I'm not going to give
the jury a reason for her absence. I'll just indicate that she
won't be with us today and that you will be making the opening
statement for the prosecution. Fair enough?"

It was not a question.

"Mr. Antonelli," he called out, as I followed Jenkins
out the door. "May I see you for a moment?"

I turned around and let the door close behind me.

"Gwendolyn's husband had a heart attack."

"When did it happen?" I asked. "Is he all right?"

"All I know is that it happened sometime yesterday
and that he survived it. He's in intensive care." West frowned. "At
his age, I suppose things like this are to be expected. Still, it
must be very difficult for Gwendolyn."

I barely listened while West informed the jury that
Victor Jenkins would give the opening statement for the
prosecution. We had been trying to reach Arthur O'Rourke for the
last two weeks. Helen had called again yesterday and had been told
he was still out of town and was not expected back before the end
of the week. But he had not been out of town at all, or, if he had,
he had returned. Why would Arthur O'Rourke go to so much trouble to
avoid my call?

Victor Jenkins was standing in front of the jury box,
and right from the beginning he had their undivided attention. It
was an oddly arresting combination, a look of masculine severity
and that effeminate lisp. What was strange about him became the
mark of his own authenticity as the opposite extremes canceled each
other out. The lisp became less noticeable because of the way he
looked, and his features softened because of the way he sounded.
The longer he talked, the more likable he seemed.