39

CROSS-EXAMINATION IS a witch’s brew. It most famously can be a truth serum for the untruthful, though that wasn’t a problem yet in our trial. There were no liars here, no falsified testimonies being used to frame up our defendant. The case against Guy Forrest was powerfully circumstantial, and the circumstances, as presented by Troy Jefferson, were basically true. It was only the natural inferences flowing from those circumstances that we had quarrel with. But that just required a different recipe of cross, an al-chemist’s potion to turn the inconceivable conceivable, the unthinkable thinkable, the improbable into a stone-cold absolute possibility, to raise phantoms and conjure them into flesh and blood.

“NOW, MRS. Morgan,” I said, “you stated in your direct testimony that you saw Mr. Forrest sitting outside his house about eleven o’clock on the night of the killing, is that right?”

“That’s right,” said Evelyn Morgan, a well-dressed matron with hair shellacked in place. She was a neighbor of Hailey’s, across the street and a few numbers down.

“And Mr. Forrest wasn’t wearing much, isn’t that right?”

“Not from what I could see, though there were shadows, so I couldn’t tell to the last inch.”

“Good thing for the shadows, right, Mrs. Morgan? Were the upstairs lights on then, do you remember?”

“Yes, they were on. Or at least I think they were on. I noticed that because earlier I seemed to remember that the upstairs window was dark.”

“And that window is to the master bedroom?”

“I was never invited inside, but I think so.”

“Good enough. And then later, after you first spied Mr. Forrest, you saw a man in a raincoat go up the steps, talk with Mr. Forrest, take something off the cement step, and then go inside. And you said that man was me?”

“As best I could tell,” she said.

“You’ve got good eyes, Mrs. Morgan,” I said. “I notice you wear glasses. Were you wearing them that night?”

“Yes I was. I wear them until I go to sleep every night. And I don’t sleep as much as I used to.”

“Fine. Now, when you saw me go up those steps, was I holding an umbrella?”

“Not that I remember.”

“A bag of some sort, any object I could have laid down beside the doorway when I went inside?”

“No, sir.”

“And I wasn’t inside long, was I, before I came out again?”

“Not that I remember.”

“And the police came soon after.”

“Yes, they did.”

“It must have been quite a sight.”

“Well, it is normally a very quiet neighborhood.”

“You’re married, aren’t you, Mrs. Morgan?”

“Yes I am, for thirty-three years now.”

“Thirty-three years. My, oh, my. And you have how many children?”

“Four, and two grandchildren, with two more on the way.”

“That is something, yes. And with all that, and of course the volunteer work you testified about, you don’t have much free time, do you?”

“I’m kept busy.”

“I bet you are, Mrs. Morgan. I can see that you’re not one of those sad, pathetic ladies who spend all their days sticking their noses out the window spying on their neighbors.”

“I should say not.”

“You’ve got too much going on in your own life to be like that.”

“Yes I do, Mr. Carl.”

“Which is why you say you saw Mr. Forrest sitting on the steps but you didn’t see him actually leave the house, because you were busy living your life, not twitching curtains to see what the neighbors were up to.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So if somebody had walked right up those steps and into the house, somebody, let’s say, with an umbrella or a bag, you wouldn’t have noticed, would you?”

“Maybe not, I don’t know.”

“In fact, a whole army could have gone in and out and you wouldn’t have seen it, because you were living your life, not sitting by the window like a spy.”

“I suppose.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Morgan. That is all.”

NOW, IT wasn’t a sham defense I was presenting with my witch’s brew, no, not at all. I’m never above presenting a sham defense, of course, poking holes in an airtight case just to create some doubt where none should exist is a defense attorney’s job, but this wasn’t that. Hailey had been murdered and if Guy was innocent, as I now believed, then some other person had come into that house, climbed those stairs, shot her dead. The man I was blaming hadn’t done it, I knew that with perfect knowledge, since I was broadening the boundaries for the defense bar and, in effect, blaming myself, leaving my name out for propriety’s sake. But someone had indeed killed her, someone, surely, and my job, as I perceived it, was to take the simple testimony that Jefferson presented and create a hole big enough for that murderer to walk through and do his dark deed.

“NOW, OFFICER Pepper, in your report you say when you made a quick examination of the house after finding the corpse, you noticed a small patch of carpet by the side of the door that was wet.”

“That is correct.”

“And it was about a foot square, isn’t that right?”

“Approximately. I didn’t take out the tape measure.”

“Was the roof at that part of the house leaking?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“The wall?”

“No.”

“So this spot of carpet, it had been wetted by an umbrella, maybe, or a coat thrown to the ground, or a pair of boots.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Did you check it for fibers or debris?”

“It was checked, but I didn’t do it. From what I understand, nothing unusual was found, other than some small stones which could have been there previously.”

“Now, in that corner there was no umbrella stand or coatrack, was there?”

“No, sir.”

“So this wasn’t the place where Miss Prouix or Mr. Forrest usually dropped their wet things.”

“Objection,” said Troy Jefferson.

“Sustained,” said Judge Tifaro.

“You’re sustaining the objection just like that, Judge? No argument, no explanation given?”

“That’s right”

“I’m just trying to show it was highly unlikely that either Miss Prouix or Mr. Forrest would have left anything there, that’s all.”

“Not with this witness. Objection sustained, move on.”

“Wow, okay. I’ll try. Now, Officer Pepper, isn’t it possible, based on the size and location of that spot, that someone, anyone, came into that house that night and dropped something wet there, like a bag, or an umbrella, or their boots, on their way up the stairs?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“And if that possibility occurred, and that person left after whatever it was he did, then he would have taken the wet object, whether bag or umbrella or boots, with him, unlike Guy, who was still there and would have left it right in place.”

“Anything’s possible, like I said.”

“Yes it is, Officer. No further questions.”

I COULDN’T help thinking through the course of the trial about Roylynn Prouix and her little black book.

Troy Jefferson was laying out the smooth surface of his case, a simple explanation of time and space that made it impossible for anyone other than Guy Forrest to have killed Hailey Prouix. I, on the other hand, was trying to create a disruption in his continuum, attempting to distort time and space so that a gap appeared, a yawning hole big enough to allow someone other than Guy to step through and take the shot. It seemed a trick, what I was doing, a distortion, but as I worked, I realized it wasn’t a trick at all. It was there, the gap, absolutely, and I was simply making its presence felt.

I thought of that primordial black hole of which Roylynn had spoken, the thing that had distorted her life and her sister’s. She had said that Jesse Sterrett had been devoured by that same black hole. It had seemed at the time like the spinnings of a mind deranged by some great tragedy, but during the course of the trial I began to reassess. Each time in my cross-examinations that I bent the smooth surface of Troy Jefferson’s case and allowed the hole to grow ever larger, it was as if the force of some massive body was becoming more evident. It was still shadowy, this body, still unidentifiable, but it was there, twisting time and space, opening its murderous gap.