The Heavens May Fall (27 page)

“We found witnesses who saw her at the Guthrie Theater.”

“But you also found witnesses who placed Mr. Pruitt in Chicago at a conference when Jennavieve Pruitt was murdered.”

“Not the entire time,” Max said. “There were holes.”

“And so you drove all the way to Chicago, stayed overnight at the Marriott, obtained hotel surveillance footage, obtained key-card data, and viewed over . . . what would you say, forty hours of tollbooth footage?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“And you gave all this effort to try to undermine Mr. Pruitt’s alibi?”

“I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way.”

“No, I suspect you wouldn’t.”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

Boady continued. “All those resources, all those man hours to go after Ben Pruitt. And you barely lifted a finger to look at Mrs. Adler-King.”

“We focused on Mr. Pruitt because that’s where the evidence led.” Max spoke sharply. Arguing instead of answering—just what Boady wanted.

“And what about other possible suspects? Did you research any of those developers who lost money in Jennavieve Pruitt’s wetland lawsuits?”

“Mr. Sanden, we only have so many man hours to give; I’m not going to waste time and resources on a wild goose chase when the evidence all led back to your client.”

“And yet, Detective,” Boady paused to create an air of anticipation before he finished. He leaned over counsel table and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “And yet, Detective, instead of following leads that might have exonerated Mr. Pruitt, you chose to conduct an unauthorized investigation into your wife’s death. That—Detective Rupert—you had time for.”

Boady shook his head and sat down before Max could come up with an answer. He pretended to go through his notes as he let the weight of Max’s testimony settle onto the laps of the jurors. He allowed the silence to linger until the room bristled with Max’s discomfort. Boady put his notes down. He looked at the jury and then at the judge, “I have no further questions.”

Judge Ransom cleared his throat, remarked about the lateness of the hour, and called the trial to an end for the day. He told Max that he could step down from the witness stand. The courtroom remained silent.

Boady scribbled doodles in the margin of his legal pad and waited; he didn’t want to look at Max’s face. From the corner of his eye, Boady could see that Max hadn’t moved from the chair. The judge again told Max that he could step down. This time, Boady detected movement. He stared at the doodles as Max passed by him.

Chapter 45

A trial can be like a float trip down a river. There are witnesses that bring tumult and excitement to the trial, witnesses whose words deflect and ricochet like a river shooting through rocks. There are other witnesses who are necessary but add so little to the case that one might wonder whether the river is still moving forward. After Max Rupert testified, the State put on a slew of those slower-moving witnesses, including crime-scene technicians, hotel clerks from Chicago, and, of course, the medical examiner. After all, there can’t be a murder trial without someone swearing under oath that the dead body was in fact dead.

Things got a little more interesting when Everett Kagen took the stand. Kagen recounted conversations in which Jennavieve Pruitt confessed her plan to divorce her husband. During his testimony, Kagen would sometimes begin to tear up, or his breath would falter as if he were going to cry. But in those moments, Kagen would look out into the gallery, and the emotion would drain away.

The first time it happened, Boady took little notice of it. But the second time, Boady glanced to the gallery of spectators and saw Kagen’s wife. He recognized Mrs. Kagen from a Facebook picture that Lila had printed off the Internet. Boady couldn’t remember her first name because he and Lila had taken to calling her “the angry troll”—not because of her appearance, which somewhat resembled a female powerlifter gone to seed—but because of the way she had treated Lila when Lila went to the Kagen home. Mrs. Kagen answered the door, and once she figured out that Lila worked for the defense, Mrs. Kagen screamed at Lila and slammed the door in her face. From then on, Mrs. Kagen became known as the angry troll.

When Everett Kagen brought himself back from the brink of tears a third time by looking at his wife, something about that subtle exchange tapped at Boady’s curiosity. It wasn’t unusual for a family member to blur the line between moral support and control, but something about the look they passed seemed darker than it should have been, as though Everett were performing for her and not for the jury.

It may have been nothing more than a man who didn’t want to cry in front of his wife, but Boady doubted it. He tucked the thought into his pocket for later.

After the State finished with the slow-moving witnesses, the trial came to its next set of rapids. Malena Gwin. Boady had spent more time preparing for her cross-examination than for any other witness’s. He expected Dovey to have less than an hour’s worth of direct examination. How many times could she repeat that she saw Ben Pruitt in the glow of a streetlight—a streetlight that Lila had confirmed was burned out—standing outside of his house in the hour that his wife was murdered?

Boady had enough ammunition that he expected to have her on the stand for the rest of the day, digging herself out of one hole after another. When he finished with her, Malena Gwin would be hard-pressed to swear to her own name.

Gwin took a seat on the witness chair, looking like a model from a
Town & Country
advertisement. She wore her mid-forties like a new suit tailor-made just for her. She walked with a confident stride, but short of cocky. She settled into the witness chair gracefully, as if she’d been rehearsing that part of her performance for weeks. Boady could already see that she was the kind of person that the jurors would want to believe.

Dovey plodded through the preliminary questions, setting up her credibility as a concerned neighbor and stalwart protector of the community before he launched into the heart of his examination. He took her step-by-step through her activities on the day that Jennavieve Pruitt died. He feigned concern as she told the jury about her insomnia that night and how it brought her out onto her front porch.

“Ms. Gwin, as you sat on your porch, did you see anything unusual?”

“Yes. I saw a red sedan pull up and park in the street. It parked in front of the Pruitts’ house, right across the street from me.”

“And what happened next?”

“A man got out—at least I think it was a man—and looked around. Then he walked up the walkway toward the Pruitts’ house.”

Boady sat up straight in his chair. Did he hear that right? She
thinks
it was a man?

Dovey continued, “Did you see whether that man entered the Pruitt house?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And do you see that man in the courtroom today?”

Malena Gwin looked at Ben Pruitt, and her face lost its hard, matter-of-fact edge. She looked at Dovey with an almost-fearful expression. She opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. She took a small breath, then said, “No, I don’t.”

“Ms. Gwin,” Dovey stammered only slightly in his follow-up. “You may have misunderstood my question. I’m asking if the man you saw step out of that car that night and walk into the Pruitts’ house is in this courtroom. Do you recognize him?”

Malena Gwin turned her attention back to Dovey. “I know what you’re asking, Mr. Dovey, and I’ve given this a great deal of thought. I know how important it is that I be absolutely accurate in what I say here. I saw someone get out of a red car and walk up to the Pruitts’ home. Now that I’ve have time to think about it, I believe that I simply assumed that it was Ben Pruitt. I didn’t get a good-enough look to say with certainty that it was Ben Pruitt. In fact, now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’m pretty certain it wasn’t him.”

Boady could barely contain the urge to jump out of his seat. He fought to suppress the bolt of lightning that ripped through every nerve and corpuscle in his body. He casually wrote “we won” on his legal pad. Then, with the nonchalance of a man finishing dinner, he leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and waited for Dovey’s next move.

Dovey turned to a box he kept on the seat behind him. He rummaged through it and pulled out a binder that Boady recognized as a transcript from the grand jury. Dovey started flipping through pages.

Boady saw what was coming and prepared his objection.

“Ms. Gwin, isn’t it true that you testified under oath at a grand-jury proceeding on—”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Boady stood and started for the bench.

“Counsel,” Judge Ransom said, raising his hand. “I’m going to excuse the jury for a few minutes. I’m also going to instruct the bailiff to have Ms. Gwin sit in a conference room outside while we address this objection.”

As the jury filed out of the jury box, Ben whispered into Boady’s ear. “It’s a
Dexter
issue. He’s going to try to get her grand-jury testimony in through impeachment.”

“I know,” said Boady. “And Ransom sees it too. That’s why he sent the jury out. He wants this on the record.”

Once the jury had departed, Boady stood. “Your Honor, Ms. Gwin testified that the man she saw entering the Pruitts’ house was probably not Ben Pruitt. That’s her testimony. Now Mr. Dovey’s going to impeach his own witness with her grand-jury testimony. But this has nothing to do with impeaching a witness. Mr. Dovey wants the jury to ignore her testimony here today. He wants the jury to believe her testimony from the grand-jury proceeding instead. According to
State v. Dexter
, that’s an improper use of impeachment.”

“Your Honor,” Dovey said. “I have the right to impeach Ms. Gwin. She gave a statement under oath at the grand jury which contradicts her testimony here today. I have a right to present that impeachment evidence.”

Judge Ransom held up his hand to indicate that he wanted to speak. “Gentlemen, the
Dexter
case says that I have to weigh the State’s right to the impeachment against the potential for unfair harm to the defendant. But the more recent case of
State v. Moua
suggests that the jury should be allowed to decide for themselves which statements are true and which aren’t.”

“Your Honor,” Boady interjected. “The
Moua
decision is the anomaly. It is the poster child for the adage that bad facts make bad law.”

“Mr. Sanden,” the judge said, “I understand your concerns, and you will have every opportunity to either cross-examine Ms. Gwin or rehabilitate her testimony—depending on how she testifies—but I’m going to allow the impeachment. I’ll give a curative instruction, but I’m letting it in.”

Boady sat down.

“What the hell just happened?” Ben whispered.

“Don’t worry.” Boady fixed a mask of confidence on his face. “We have their main witness saying that it wasn’t you in that red sedan. If you’re not acquitted, we have a hell of a good appeal.”

“I don’t want an appeal.” Ben gripped Boady’s arm. “I need to get out of here. I need to see Emma. An appeal will take a year.”

“Ben, this is a good thing. Whatever Gwin may have said before, she’s on our side now. Dovey’s argument that you came back here from Chicago just blew up in his face. The wind’s in our favor.”

To all the world, Boady exuded the look of a man who had just knocked his opponent to the mat. But inside, Boady was cursing Judge Ransom’s ruling. It screwed up everything. Boady had been prepared to rip Malena Gwin to shreds. Now that she changed her testimony, he couldn’t do that. She had become a defense witness, and Boady needed the jury to believe her when she said that she didn’t think it was Ben Pruitt she saw that night.

But every zig has its zag. Dovey would get to show the jury that Gwin had sworn under oath that it was Ben Pruitt. Boady could do very little to attack that statement without calling into question Malena’s flip.

In the end, the jury would be given two statements: one, that Gwin saw Ben Pruitt that night, and the other, that Gwin did not see him. The judge would instruct the jury that only the statement she made at the trial—that she did not see him—could be used to determine what actually happened that night. The second statement, the grand-jury testimony, could only be used to suggest the witness lacked credibility. The jury could not use the grand-jury testimony to figure out what happened on the night Jennavieve Pruitt died. For Boady, this was the equivalent of handing two cookies to a child and telling him that only one cookie existed.

Boady looked at his friend, hoping to see some sign that Ben was buying the pep talk. What Boady saw was a man who understood the law as well as Boady, who understood that his freedom—maybe even his life—now depended upon whether the jury would believe that they really held only one cookie.

Chapter 46

Boady couldn’t help but hold his breath for the rest of Malena Gwin’s testimony. She had flipped once, and a flop back might come just as easily, especially with Frank Dovey hammering away at her. But she held her ground. Yes, she admitted, she had testified that she saw Ben Pruitt walking up to his house on the night Mrs. Pruitt was murdered, and, yes, a person’s memory does get worse as time passes. “But, Mr. Dovey,” she said, “none of that changes the fact that it wasn’t Ben Pruitt I saw that night. And now that I’ve had more time to reflect, I’m certain of that fact.”

After Dovey finished his direct examination, Boady let Malena Gwin leave the stand without a single follow-up question. He didn’t want anything to dilute the power of Gwin’s testimony. She was certain it was not Ben Pruitt that she saw that night. That’s all the jury needed to know.

Next, Anna Adler-King took the stand. He had been looking forward to her testimony—and, more important, her cross-examination—more than any other witness of the trial. She dressed much more demurely for her turn in the witness chair than she had the day she came to Boady’s house to take Emma. Gone were the power suit and runway-model makeup. Boady barely recognized her in her tweed skirt and her Sunday-school hairstyle. She’d taken significant measures to appear to the jury as one of them.