Falls the Shadow (34 page)

“I won’t let this happen, Mr. Carl,” said Judge Armstrong. “You will not turn my courtroom into a pornographic emporium.”

“Without the magazines or the twenty-five-cent peep-show booths,” I said, “it would hardly qualify as an emporium, Judge.”

“What possible purpose could be served by playing those tapes?”

“That’s a good question, Your Honor,” said Beth. “I’m curious myself.”

“Those videos,” I said, “not just their existence but the images captured on the magnetic tapes, are central to our defense. They are the reason that Leesa Dubé is dead, they are the reason my client is on trial for her killing.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Carl,” said the judge. “Explain how playing those tapes is crucial to proving your theory of the case, and you better dazzle.”

“It’s not enough for the jury simply to know that these tapes exist. They have to see them, Judge, they have to feel the revulsion that I felt when I first saw them and that the killer felt, too. The person who killed Leesa Dubé was trying to help her in her divorce case. Mr. Gullicksen had told Leesa she was in danger of losing her child. He testified that evidence such as these tapes would have helped her cause. She told someone of her problem, and this someone simply tried to help. First he broke into the defendant’s storage locker to find the tapes and then broke into Leesa’s apartment to give them to her. He thought he was giving her back her daughter. But something went wrong. Leesa must have awoken, must have been frightened by the stranger in her apartment. She grabbed her gun, confronted the burglar. A struggle in the darkness ensued, ending with the gun firing and a bullet piercing Leesa Dubé’s neck from close range. It was an accident, it was against all the intruder’s intentions, but accidents happen, and Leesa Dubé still was dead. After it was over, while she lay dead on the floor, blood all over the room, the killer took a photograph of the defendant and put it into her hand to frame my client. And then broke into my client’s apartment to plant the blood and the gun.”

“That’s your theory?” said the judge.

“That’s it.”

“That’s about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“But it’s more than just a theory,” I said. “It’s what actually happened.”

“And why would the killer frame your client?”

“To protect himself,” I said, “and also to protect the daughter. When you see the tapes, you’ll understand. Some of the actors are quite possibly underage. They provide not only the motive for the killer’s being in the apartment but also for the frame-up after the killing.”

“It all seems far-fetched, Mr. Carl. I don’t know how you’re going to prove it up or get a jury to buy it.”

“We have a plan,” I said.

“I suppose you do. I’ll have to preview these tapes before I decide, of course, but my inclination is that they have no business being played in my courtroom. Ms. Dalton, you have been unusually quiet in this debate. What is your position?”

“I have no objection, Judge.”

“Excuse me?”

“If these tapes are as Mr. Carl describes, and I’m willing to believe they are, pending my own review, then I have no objection to their being played. As a matter of fact, they only serve to strengthen the Commonwealth’s case.”

“How so, Ms. Dalton?” said the judge.

“Dr. Grammatikos testified that the tapes were in the victim’s apartment at the time of her death. We’ll accept that opinion. These tapes were surely something the victim intended to use in the divorce proceedings. If the defendant was aware that his wife had found the tapes, he would have immediately gone to retrieve them. He would never let his wife use them against him in the custody fight. So he went to find the tapes, fought with his wife, killed her, took the tapes, and put them in his private storage locker, still covered with blood. The tapes strengthen our case immeasurably.”

Just then I felt a sharp pain in my shin. I looked down. Beth had kicked me, she had kicked me hard, but she needn’t have bothered. I understood exactly what was happening, and all of it was bad. The judge was exactly right. As I explained my new theory of the case, it sounded far-fetched, even to me. And I knew Dr. Bob. How would it sound to the jury? Not so good, I realized. And Dalton was exactly right, too. The tapes did help her case, they provided a specific motive driving François Dubé to have killed his wife. I thought I was being clever, but as always when I thought I was being clever, I was too clever by half.

“If Mr. Carl doesn’t put the tapes into evidence and play them for the jury,” said Mia Dalton, “I will.”

“All right,” said the judge, shaking his head, not just at the argument but also at the state of the modern world. “Let me review the tapes in camera, and I’ll decide. I’m not happy, but if both sides want these tapes played, then I suppose I’ll go along.”

On the way out of the judge’s chambers, Beth said to me, “Do you have any idea what you are doing?”

“I thought I did,” I said, “but now I’m not so sure.”

“Why doesn’t that statement inspire me with confidence?” she said.

The next morning the courtroom was closed to the public and the press, though I noticed that a number of court clerks had wiled their way into the viewing. A cart with a television monitor and VCR stood in front of the witness stand. The first tape was inserted, the play button was pushed. There might as well have been popcorn.

All it needed was some cheesy organ music to accompany the embarrassment of moaning and groaning that came from the television’s tinny speakers.

Having seen and heard it all before, I didn’t have to look carefully at the videos again, thank goodness, so I spent my time calculating their effect on the courtroom inhabitants. The jury watched the dark, murky images on the screen with the general arc of emotions elicited by pornography in the uninitiated: first horror, then transfixion, then boredom. And then, as the tapes ground forward, it was horror again. I caught them taking quick glances at François, all trying very hard to hide their disgust even as their pinched mouths betrayed them. The judge was also scanning the jurors’ faces, to gauge their reactions and determine if he had made a mistake in allowing the tapes to be played. Dalton and Torricelli sat at the prosecution table with arms crossed, putting on a little show of shock and dismay. So alike were their postures and expressions, they must have practiced the pose together the afternoon before.

But the more interesting show, at least to me, was happening at the defense table. François was leaning back in his chair, watching raptly as he debased himself on the video screen. At first he mimed embarrassment and dismay, but that didn’t last long. After the opening moments, when the courtroom had made it through the initial graphic images and settled into the viewing, François’s expression changed. The false appearance of humiliation turned into a sly smirk. He couldn’t help himself. Even though the afternoon before he had loudly castigated me in his smarmy Gallic accent, claiming that I was crucifying him on the cross of America’s Puritanism, now, as his sexual fantasies played across the video screen, he couldn’t help but gloat, and his expression betrayed his thoughts.
You’re all jealous
, he was thinking,
you would all take my place in an instant had you the guts and imagination
.

And this was interesting. Sometimes he subtly mouthed a moan along with the video. It was as if he couldn’t help himself, like a schoolgirl listening to her favorite song on the radio, singing to herself without even knowing she was moving her lips.

I’d had the son of a bitch pegged right from the first, didn’t I?

But even more interesting, for me, was watching Beth’s reaction. And even though I tried not to admit it to myself then, I can admit to myself now that, to me, she was the most crucial viewer in the courtroom. I might have been able to make my argument and relay my theory with just a basic description of the tapes by Anton Grammatikos, who would have relished describing their contents more fully to the jury. Yes, I thought that seeing it would make my theory more believable to the jury, and yes, the showing increased the impact of what I would tell them in my closing, and so yes, the showing of the tapes was more than justifiable as legal strategy. Still, I also knew that showing them in the courtroom could turn at least some of the jurors against my client. Yet I was willing to take that risk, because I hoped it would turn Beth against him at the same time.

But what I saw in her face was less than comforting. There was sadness in her eyes, and pity, too. There was embarrassment in her cheeks and tension in the way her fingers twisted as her hands lay folded together atop her yellow legal pad, all of which was as I had expected. And more than anything else, in the squint of her eye and the way her mouth curled down at the edges, there was disgust, which I had expected, too. But the disgust wasn’t aimed at the videos, no, nor at our client sitting just to her left. Instead I saw her disgust plain only when she turned her head to stare at me.

And I deserved every bit of it.

I worked late at the office that night. I had hoped Beth would come back after court so I could explain myself, but what was there to explain? She had told me her feelings toward François were not romantic, yet I hadn’t believed her. She had refused to see the tape when I had offered it, so I jammed it down her throat in court, even if it meant risking our client’s case. I was playing the paternal role, even though I wasn’t her father. I would damn well help her whether she liked it or not.

He was rubbing off on me, was Dr. Bob. And as I realized it, a chill rode up my spine. Next thing you knew, I’d have this strange desire to drill Beth’s molars.

As I waited vainly for Beth, I prepared for the rest of the trial. First I called Mrs. Winterhurst, who had recommended Dr. Bob to Leesa. I remembered that during one of my emergency visits, the doctor had to run out and treat Mrs. Winterhurst in the other room, she was the woman with the complaining manner and the fancy clothes. Yes, she told me over the phone, of course she would testify. She said it would be so exciting, and she had just the outfit. I was sure she did.

Then I was on the phone to Chicago, speaking first to Franny Pepper, then checking the flights from O’Hare, and then trying to find the right nurse to take care of Virgil Pepper while she flew in to testify. I doubted whether Jim could even get out of the lounge chair, better yet climb the stairs to take care of the brutal old man. So I called a couple nursing homes, I asked the administrators if any of their nurses moonlighted, I requested someone with strong hands and a nasty temper. You’d be surprised how many candidates I found.

When all was put in place, I typed up a subpoena for Dr. Bob. Tomorrow court was in recess, the judge had a conference, so I’d have time enough to pay a visit on my dentist, though hell if I’d ever let him touch my teeth again, despite the gap that still remained unfilled.

So it was late by the time I shut off the office lights, locked the office door, stepped out into the warm, humid night. I was exhausted and hungry, and the Phillies were in San Francisco for a late-starting game, which meant I’d fall asleep on the couch by the third inning, which sounded just right. On the way home, I bought a six-pack of beer and a take-out cheese steak—yes, we actually do eat those things—grabbed my mail from the entranceway of my building, and headed up the stairs to my apartment.

I opened the door, stepped inside, and stopped cold.

There was something familiar and terrifying in the air. And something else, too.

I had left the place a mess, yes, I admit it, but not this big a mess. Clothes were strewn, the cushions of the couch were slashed, the dining table was overturned, chairs were scattered, framed posters were flung about, my cheap china was shattered, and, worst of all, the television was crumpled on the floor, its screen smashed. No baseball for me. My first thought was whether my homeowner’s insurance would cover it all, and my second thought was that I didn’t have any homeowner’s insurance. Before I could conjure a third thought, something grabbed me around the neck and killed my breath.

My back was pressed against a wall, wide and surprisingly soft. I was lifted into the air. My throat was constricted in on itself. I am using the passive tense here on purpose, because frankly, in the first few instants I was paralyzed into passivity by shock.

When I finally realized what was happening, I grappled helplessly at the thick arm around my throat. I slid my hands down the shaft of the arm, hoping I could find my attacker’s hand and maybe bend a finger back to force him to let go of me. I felt a thin layer of latex over an unmovable mass of gristle and bone. So much for that.

The finger gambit having failed miserably, I took my next-best option, and as my lungs started screaming for oxygen, I flailed about like a madman. I might have looked like some bad Elvis impersonator dancing to “Jailhouse Rock” on a bed of hot coals during an epileptic fit, but it wasn’t all about styling.

My heel hit a shin, my knuckle landed on something soft in the middle of a face, my elbow banged a rib. The monster holding me started hopping, loosened its grip, and let out a quick exhale along with a deep grunt.

Next thing I knew, I was facefirst on the floor. I started struggling to my feet, but something hard and heavy slammed into the small of my back and I was pancaked again onto the floor. The whole of my front was in pain, and it seemed to center on a sharp jut in my cheek.

I lifted my head away from the pain and something smacked it hard so that my nose smashed against the floor.

“This is your last chance, bucko,” came a sharp Germanic whisper.

Something grabbed my ear and twisted it so hard I screamed.

The weight on my back disappeared. I again jerked my head up to escape the pain in the cheek. I tried to turn around to see who was there, and something inside my face slipped. I stopped moving, reached a hand gingerly to my cheek. It came away slick, as if my cheek was covered with a viscous oil. But it wasn’t oil.

I lifted myself slowly to my hands and knees, sat down on the floor, reached again to my cheek. Something was sticking out, some shard. I took hold and pulled, and after an initial tug of resistance out it came, with little slurp. A wedge of glass, slightly curved. I wasn’t the first person skewered by television, but all in all I would have preferred it be on
60 Minutes.

I thought about climbing to my feet, staggering down the steps, seeing if I could spot my attacker, but as the nausea started blossoming like a beastly flower in my gut, I thought better of it. And I already knew, didn’t I?

Tilda. It rhymes with Brunhilda. The fat lady had sung.