Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (33 page)

"You were vice-chair, and Russell Gray was chairman,
is that correct?" asked Gilliland-O'Rourke, keeping her
distance.

"Yes," she replied, sniffing the air as if there were
something not quite right about it.

"You attended the meeting of the executive committee
the night of his death?"

"I did." She planted herself on the walking stick and
waited for the next question.

"How many people attended the meeting?"

Raising her wispy eyebrows, she thought about it for
a moment. "Six, I think. No, seven. Counting Mrs. Woolner."

Gilliland-O'Rourke had carried with her from the
counsel table a pencil which, consciously or not, she kept tapping
against her finger.

"What time did the meeting end?" she asked
patiently.

"I suppose about ten or ten-thirty. I didn't check
the time."

Pensively, Gilliland-O'Rourke gazed down at the
floor. "And did everyone leave at the same time?"

"I stayed behind a few minutes. I had something I
wanted to say to Mr. Gray in private."

Her eyes still lowered, Gilliland-O'Rourke nodded and
then moved a few steps toward the jury. Pursing her lips, she
tapped the pencil on her finger, then stopped abruptly. "Did any of
the others," she asked, looking up, "including Alma Woolner, happen
to come back to the house during the few minutes you were still
there?"

"No," Mrs. Caldwell replied slowly.

"So when you left, Russell Gray was entirely
alone?"

"Yes."

I was certain she was mistaken and as soon as it was
my turn to examine the witness I tried to prove it. "Mr. Gray lived
in a very large house, didn't he?" I asked, as I approached
her.

She did not seem to think so. "No larger than my
own."

"But large enough that someone could be in one part
of the house and someone in another part wouldn't know it?" I asked
the question as if it were a matter of no great importance.

"Yes, of course."

"So then, as far as you know," I asked, turning up my
hands, "Alma Woolner could have been down a hallway somewhere—in a
bathroom, perhaps—and you only assumed she left with all the
others?"

Gripping the walking stick, she stared down at her
sensible oxfords. "That would be possible," she agreed, as she
lifted her gaze, "except for the fact that I said good-bye to her
myself outside and watched her drive away." It was the last answer
I expected, and I had to force myself to sound as if it was the
only answer I wanted.

"You saw Alma Woolner leave. Good. No further
questions, your Honor." I headed toward my chair.

Gilliland-O'Rourke was on her feet. "Mrs. Caldwell,
just one or two more questions. What was the reason you wanted to
have a private word with Russell Gray before you left?"

"I wanted to confront him with some rumors I had
heard."

"What rumors were those?"

For the first time, she seemed to lose a little of
herself assurance. Her eyes moved away from Gilliland-O'Rourke and
settled for a moment on Alma, who was now following every word.

"Rumors that he had started an improper relationship
with Mrs. Woolner," she replied finally. "Mr. Gray was rather well
known for that sort of thing," she added as she shifted her
attention back to Gilliland-O'Rourke. "Surely you knew."

Gilliland-O'Rourke passed it over. "What did you say
to Mr. Gray?" she asked, as she turned away and faced the jury.

"I told him that he was to leave Mrs. Woolner alone,
that she was a married woman, and that if he persisted, I would
have him removed," she said, raising her withered chin.

Gilliland-O'Rourke looked back. "Removed?"

"Yes. As chairman of the board. Everyone thought he
was so charming," she muttered. "Not a bit of it. He was a beastly
man, willing to take advantage of anyone."

It made no sense. Alma had told me she had stayed
behind, and Mrs. Caldwell had just sworn that she left. And she was
not the only one. Everyone who had been at Russell Gray's home that
evening came into court and testified to the same thing.

Alma denied it and argued semantics. She had not left
with the others, she insisted, not in the sense of going for good.
"I left with everyone else. Then I remembered I needed to talk with
Russell, so I went back," she explained.

We had gone to my office, late in the afternoon,
after the prosecution had finished with the last witness who saw
Alma leave. "That isn't what you told me," I reminded her. "You
told me you stayed. You never said anything about leaving."

Dark clouds closed out the sky, and the rain had
begun to fall, the way it would for months, sweeping in from the
sea, day after dismal day. Standing at the window, my hands in my
pants pockets, I took a deep breath and let it out in a slow,
despondent sigh. I turned my head, just far enough to see her. In
the shadows of the fading yellow light of the lamp, her smooth skin
glowed like burnished brass.

"What does it matter?" she asked softly. "Whether I
stayed, or whether I left and came back a little while later? I was
still there."

"They'll say you left, and when you were sure he was
alone you came back, and that you came back carrying a gun," I
replied, as I crossed the room and sat down next to her.

She looked at me without expression.

"They'll say you were having an affair with Russell
Gray, that you were in love with him but he wasn't in love with
you, and when you found out he didn't want anything more to do with
you, you couldn't stand it and you killed him."

"I didn't kill him," she insisted.

"But you were having an affair with him."

She denied it, as she had done so many times before.
I held up my hand and shook my head. "Don't," I warned her. "It's
too late for that now. You didn't suddenly remember there was
something you wanted to talk to him about. You left because you
didn't want anyone to know you were spending time alone with him.
If you weren't having an affair with him, you wouldn't have thought
anything about staying behind after everyone else was gone. Only a
guilty conscience produces that kind of concern with
appearances."

She stared at me and said nothing.

"That's the reason you didn't want to testify, isn't
it? You didn't want it to come out, because you don't want Horace
to know."

There was no reaction, no visible sign of what she
felt, or that she felt anything at all. Nothing, just the look of
someone who has slipped away to a place where no one can find her.
I had known her for years. Now, I realized, I did not know her at
all.

"You're going to be convicted of murder, Alma, and
there isn't anything I can do about it, not unless you start
telling the truth. You had an affair with Russell Gray, and you
have to admit it, no matter how much it hurts. That's the reason
you came back to the house, and you're going to have to say so when
I put you on the stand. All right?"

She did not answer. Instead, she glanced at her
watch. "I have to go," she said, as she rose from her chair.
"Horace is meeting me outside."

She was not going to say anything more. Reluctantly,
I got to my feet and, taking her arm, walked her out. "I've tried
to call Horace three times this week. He doesn't take my
calls."

"He's been very busy," she explained.

"I want him in court. He has to be there, sitting
where the jury can see him. He has to show by his presence that he
believes you're innocent. He knows how important that is."

We rode the elevator down to the lobby and I walked
her out to the rain-slicked sidewalk. Horace was waiting in the
car. Holding an umbrella, I opened the door and helped her in. When
I said hello, Horace, looking straight ahead, nodded and said
nothing in return. As they drove off, I stood on the curb, watching
the taillights disappear into traffic, wondering what I had
done.

I had hours of work to do, and as I walked across the
lobby, my footsteps echoing off the dark red marble floor, I
debated whether to stay in the office or take it home with me. The
door to my office was open, just the way I had left it. Everything
else on the floor was locked up for the night. Closing the door
behind me, I stopped at Helen's desk and thumbed through the
telephone messages that had been accumulating over the last week.
Most of them I discarded, but a few looked important and I studied
them more closely as I walked back into my office.

"I hoped you were still here."

Startled, I looked up. In the shadows on the other
side of the desk, the same place where Alma Woolner had been
sitting just a few moments earlier, a woman in a long dress and a
black fur coat was staring at me. She laughed at my surprise.

"Have you forgotten me already?"

Settling into my chair, I looked at her, all dressed
up, taunting me with her eyes."What can I do for you, Kristin? Or
did you just happen to be in the neighborhood?"

"I thought maybe you'd like to take me to dinner,"
she said, her glossy black hair falling back over her shoulder as
she tilted her head to the side. "I have a date, but I can get out
of it."

"Your husband was just sentenced and you have a date.
You didn't waste much time, did you?"

"He was sentenced a month ago." She made it sound
like a lifetime. "And it really isn't a date. I'm just having
dinner with a friend. You remember him. Conrad Atkinson."

I could not hide my surprise.

"I know what he said at the trial. He was angry with
me. He deserved to be. But Conrad knows I could never have had
anything to do with what Marshall did."

She read the skepticism on my face. Reaching across,
she picked up the telephone and dialed.

"I'm not going to be able to make dinner tonight,"
she said into the receiver. Her eyes on me, she activated the
speaker. There was no mistake. The voice at the other end was
Conrad Atkinson.

"I'll call you later on," she promised, before she
hung up. She was still watching me. "Take me to dinner. I'll tell
you some things about Russell Gray you might find interesting."

We drove in her black Mercedes—the one she had taken
when she broke off her engagement to Conrad— to a small French
restaurant in the northwest section, five minutes from downtown. At
a quiet table in a corner, with her glistening fur coat draped over
the back of her chair, Kristin tried to convince me that she was
one of the few people I could trust.

"What would you like to know about Russell Gray?" she
asked as she sipped on a glass of red wine.

"You met him when you were engaged to Atkinson,
right?"

"Yes, but I had heard of him when I was still
handling misdemeanor cases in the district attorney's office." She
dragged the end of her middle finger across her lower lip. "A
teenage boy claimed Gray had given him a ride in his car and tried
to molest him. I interviewed the boy. I believed him.
Gilliland-O'Rourke told me to dismiss it. Insufficient evidence,
she said. I'd prosecuted dozens of cases just like it. But this was
different, because it was Russell Gray and Russell Gray was one of
them."

I thought I knew what she meant, but I wanted to hear
it from her.

"Them?"

Her mouth curled back at the corners and she looked
at me, derision in her eyes.

"You don't understand these people—Russell Gray,
Gilliland-O'Rourke, even Conrad—do you? They aren't like you or
me."

"Because they're rich?" I laughed.

"Because they can do whatever they want so long as
they don't embarrass each other. They protect their own—to a point.
After that, if they can't cover things up, they abandon them as if
they had never known them. Look at what Gwendolyn did to
Marshall."

I was not sure what she meant.

"If it hadn't been for you," she explained, tracing
her finger around the edge of the half-empty glass, "he would never
have been charged in the first place."

The waiter appeared. After we ordered, I reminded her
that Travis Quentin had confessed to the state police.

"Gwendolyn would have told them there was no case.
Quentin was a murderer trying to save his life, and all the other
so-called evidence was circumstantial. She wouldn't have done
anything that would embarrass herself. Why do you think she's
prosecuting the case against Alma Woolner? Because she thinks she
did it?"

She shook her head. "She couldn't trust anyone else.
She's afraid of what might come out. They're all afraid. Russell
Gray was involved in things they don't want anyone to know
about."

I barely touched my food, while Kristin was finishing
nearly everything on her plate.

"What's the connection with Arthur O'Rourke?"

She put down her fork and leaned across the table.
"Did you really have an affair with Gwendolyn?"

"No. Where did you hear that?" I replied with as much
indifference as I could summon.