I have learned from our first president that sometimes retreat is the most aggressive strategy. She was the grieving mother, she had taken on the burden of the young granddaughter, she could do my client no good up there on the stand. Get her off, as quickly as possible, and move on, that was my plan. And as a side benefit, there was a little message to the twelve and two alternates who mattered. I am not going to ask her any questions,I was telling the jury, because nothing that she said is of any import to the meat of the case. Nothing she can say makes it more likely that my client killed his wife.
As Mrs. Cullen climbed down from the stand and made her way out of the courtroom, Dalton stood and said, “Prosecution calls Darcy DeAngelo.”
Of course it does.
She looked quite tasty as she walked down the aisle, Darcy DeAngelo, one of the women who’d had an affair with François. She was a sturdy woman, with her hands tightly clasped and a thin, pretty face, and she was dressed for court, a modest skirt, low pumps, her hair pinned up. She made quite the tasteful impression, though probably not the one Dalton would have liked. If Mia Dalton had dressed her, she would have worn a black bustier and high-heeled shoes with straps that climbed her thigh, she would have had long, clawlike nails and makeup smeared bright, and she would have looked like she had just come in off a late-night shift on South Street. But no such luck for Dalton, although it might have been a nice sight to see.
As Darcy DeAngelo was sworn in, I took a quick look at the audience in the courtroom. A high-profile murder case always draws a nice crowd, and this was no exception: a few reporters, an artist trying to get my jawline right, the usual gang of time wasters finding their entertainment in the criminal courts. And then a more interested crew: the Cullens and their entourage; Detective Torricelli, sitting alongside Mia Dalton at the prosecution table; and my old friend Whitney Robinson III, keeping tabs on everything.
It wasn’t much of a story, Darcy DeAngelo’s story of the affair. She worked under François in the kitchen, that she would end up under François in the bedroom was only to be expected. Commercial kitchens are like the bathhouses of the culinary set, bubbling pots of stock, prep guys with big knives, Wellfleet oysters, duck confit, earthy black truffles, demiglace, oui, oui. Late nights, after the crowd had gone home and the doors had been locked, sitting at the zinc bar François had imported from France, drinking champagne at cost, feeling the exhausted exuberance of two comrades who had just survived another night of the gastronomic wars. And she didn’t say it on the stand, but I could bet it was atop that very same bar that their affair was consummated. I have it on good authority that champagne and zinc are the two primary ingredients of Viagra.
“Mr. Carl,” said the judge after Dalton had led Darcy DeAngelo through the recitation of her affair with my client. “Do you have any questions?”
I did, actually, and I must admit that during most of her direct, I had been playing them out in my mind. “Do you like Mexican food, Ms. DeAngelo?” “Yes, actually, I do, Mr. Carl.” “I know this place on Thirteenth Street, supposed to be excellent.” “I’ve heard that it is.” “Do you think, Ms. DeAngelo, you can join me for dinner there on Saturday night?” “Oh, I think I can, Mr. Carl.” “Call me Victor.” “Okay, Victor. And please, call me-”
“Mr. Carl,” said the judge impatiently. “Do you have any questions for this witness?”
I stood, buttoned my jacket, looked at the pleasing figure of Darcy DeAngelo on the stand. The affair was a problem, absolutely, but I couldn’t deny its existence, and the witness, in her direct, had made it seem almost banal. Banal adultery was good, banal adultery is not an incentive for murder, simply an incentive for more and better adultery. There was one moment that had caused a tremor, when she testified that François had told her, “I’ll never let Leesa take my daughter from me, never.” Not good, absolutely, but in it came, over my useless objection, and there wasn’t much I could do with it. I could ask her if she ever saw violence in François, I could ask her if he was a tender lover and a tender man, I could try to use François’s adulterous lover as a character witness, but that seemed a little unseemly, didn’t it?
“No questions for this witness, Your Honor.”
“All right, Ms. DeAngelo, you are excused,” said the judge. “And I assume, Mr. Carl, at some point in these proceedings you’re going to ask a question or two.”
“I haven’t needed to yet, Judge, but I’m guessing that eventually Ms. Dalton will come up with something in this trial that’s actually relevant to the murder.”
“I’m sure she will. Next witness, Ms. Dalton.”
“The prosecution calls Arthur Gullicksen to the stand.”
This was trouble, totally expected, but trouble still. Arthur Gullicksen was an out-and-out shark, with three rows of pointy teeth and a shiny gray suit. Normally these are traits I greatly admire and do my best to emulate, but Dalton wasn’t calling Gullicksen to the stand to show off his bite.
Beth stood up as soon as Dalton stated the name. “Can we approach, Judge?” she said.
“Will this take a while, Ms. Derringer?”
“I suspect it will,” she said.
“Let’s have a recess, then. Fifteen minutes. Lawyers in my chambers.”
“Mr. Gullicksen, the prosecution’s next intended witness,” said Beth when all the lawyers, along with the clerk and the court reporter, had been wedged uncomfortably into the judge’s chambers, “was Leesa Dubé’s divorce attorney.”
“And your point is?” said the judge.
“In light of that unique relationship,” said Beth, “we believe it necessary to limit the bounds of his testimony.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said the judge. “Mr. Gullicksen will not be able to testify about his privileged communications with the deceased. It would all be hearsay anyway. Is that satisfactory, Ms. Derringer?”
“As a start, yes, Judge. But we’d also like to limit any testimony that can be seen as the fruits of those privileged and hearsay communications.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, we would like the prosecution to be barred from asking Mr. Gullicksen about the pleadings in the divorce case, as they would necessarily be based on statements you have already barred.”
“Interesting. Ms. Dalton?”
“The pleadings are public records, Judge,” said Dalton calmly, “and we intend to introduce them not to show the truth of the allegations within but as proof of their very existence and of their effect on the defendant’s state of mind.”
“But, Your Honor,” said Beth, “some of these allegations are so inflammatory as to be unduly prejudicial to our client.”
“What exactly are we talking about here, Counselor?”
“There was an allegation of harassment, of infidelity, of failure to pay child support, all of which had not yet been litigated at the time of the murder, and so no legal determination had yet been made.”
“I see,” said the judge.
“And there was also a rather spurious allegation of physical abuse of both Mrs. Dubé and the couple’s daughter, lodged by Leesa Dubé against her husband, along with a request for a restraining order.”
“Yes, I do see.”
“Your Honor, there was never any evidence presented in the divorce proceedings to support these allegations. They are entirely unsubstantiated, unduly prejudicial, and based solely on the hearsay statements of the deceased. Their introduction would unfairly inflame the jury and irrevocably taint these proceedings against our client.” Beth reached into her briefcase, pulled out numerous copies of a thick memorandum. “There are cases that support our position, and I have briefed the issue.”