Harry sets his mug on the coffee table and flops on the couch. I take a seat at my desk, figuring I’ll sort through the week’s phone messages and mail, then tackle the pile of pleadings our dutiful associate has stacked neatly on my credenza. The intercom buzzes before I get started, though, and I’m surprised. I didn’t think the Kydd would come up for air for another few hours. “Marty,” he says, “there’s someone here to see you. Her name’s Helene Wilson. She says you’re not expecting her, but it’ll just take a few minutes.”
“Send her up,” I tell him. Harry arches his eyebrows at me; we didn’t anticipate company.
She appears at the top of the spiral staircase in a red cable-knit sweater and blue jeans; the Kydd must have already taken her coat. “I’m sorry to show up unannounced,” she says. “I was planning to make an appointment on Monday, but I was driving by and saw all the cars parked outside and I thought maybe you were here, even though it’s Saturday. And then I thought maybe I shouldn’t wait until Monday.”
She’s worked up, speaking quickly, her cheeks flushed. I rummage around on my desk to find a legal pad and pen, then write: It’s fine. I’m glad to see you. If Senator Kendrick’s next-door neighbor has something additional to say, I want to hear it now, not later.
Harry’s on his feet and I make the introductions, hers out loud, his on paper. They both sit, side by side on the couch, and I grab a chair from in front of my desk and face them, my eyes on Helene, my legal pad and pen at the ready.
“I saw Senator Kendrick’s arraignment,” she says. “I was there, in the courthouse, yesterday.”
Of course she was. I noticed her before we got started; I noticed her troubled eyes. But I didn’t see her—or anyone else, for that matter—in the frenzied blur that followed.
“I also watched it on the eleven o’clock news last night,” she says. “The reporter described it as nothing short of a circus. I have to admit I agreed with him.”
No argument here. I wait while Helene seems to search, struggle even, for her next words.
“Is he sticking to it?” she asks at last. “Is the Senator still claiming he killed the young woman?”
I nod again, though I’m aware that if Charles Kendrick had changed his mind during the last twelve hours, I’d probably be the last to know.
She presses one hand to her neck and shakes her head. Again her eyes are worried, her expression distressed. “Something is terribly wrong,” she says.
I lean forward, closer to her. Harry eyes her carefully too. Why do you say that? I scribble.
“Because Michelle Forrester was alive and well when she left the Senator’s home on Friday morning,” she says. “I saw her leave. It was her car. I saw it.” She points at her eyes, as if she thinks I might not trust that other sense of hers. She’s wrong, though; I do. I trust all of Helene Wilson’s senses.
Harry reaches for the pen and paper. He looks bothered, maybe even skeptical. The BMW roadster is a popular car, he writes. Maybe it’s a coincidence; maybe a different roadster happened down your lane that morning, then turned around when the driver realized it’s a dead end.
She shakes her head before he puts the pen down. “No,” she insists, “it wasn’t. They showed her BMW roadster on the news last night. And they reported for the first time that it has a silk rose attached to the antenna, a yellow one. That was the car I saw, fake flower and all.”
Harry and I are quiet as we absorb this information. Neither of us watched the news last night. By the time we were finished with dinner at Pete’s, we were both having trouble keeping our eyes open. Harry even considered passing on dessert, but the crème brûlée brought him to his senses.
The intercom buzzes yet again and it takes me a moment to react. It squawks three times before I answer, and I can hear the frustration in the Kydd’s breathing even before he speaks. He’s right; we do need a secretary. He’s doing way too many things at once, a well-known recipe for malpractice. “What is it?” I ask, still staring at Helene.
“Big Red called,” he says. “The jury’s done. You guys have a verdict.”
Chapter 28
Weekend verdicts tend to slip beneath the public’s radar screen—at least until the following Monday. Most journalists and courtroom aficionados are at home with their families on weekends, tending to household chores, watching their sons and daughters play the season’s sports, or, at this time of year, trimming a tree. So I expected the parking lot to be relatively empty when Harry and I pulled into the county complex in his Jeep on this snowy Saturday. I was wrong.
Like the lot, the main courtroom in the Superior Courthouse is packed. Big Red is the only bailiff on duty and he’s got his hands full. The county will cough up time-and-a-half for his services today, just as it will for our stenographer and Dottie Bearse. All three of them will earn every last penny of it, none more so than Big Red. The benches and aisles are already full, so he props open the rear double doors. The overflow crowd can watch from the hallway, though it’s unlikely they’ll hear anything at that distance. He can’t send them downstairs to the conference room on a Saturday. There’s no staff on duty to monitor the room, no technician to record the proceedings.
Geraldine and Clarence are seated at their table, their demeanors decidedly different than they were forty-eight hours ago. The defendant’s conviction looked like a slam dunk then. It doesn’t at the moment. And even if they pull it off—even if the jurors agree with Geraldine that her office’s failure to disclose the disappearance of the monstrance doesn’t amount to a hill of beans—the appeal will be a nightmare. Geraldine looks stressed. Clarence looks much worse.
The side door opens and two guards usher Derrick Holliston to our table. He’s neatly groomed, as he has been throughout trial, and he seems completely composed, at ease, as if whatever is about to happen in this room is of little consequence to him. He pauses when he reaches the table, staring at something behind me, and I turn to find out what’s caught his attention. It’s Bobby the Butcher—and Monsignor Davis—side by side in the front row behind our table.
“Sit down,” I tell Holliston. “Turn the hell around and sit down.”
He does, but he takes his time about it, sneering at the two before he complies. When I check on them again, their eyes say it all. The Monsignor would like to save Holliston’s soul. The Butcher would like to wring his neck.
The two jurors who were informed they were alternates at the close of the case yesterday are here too, chatting in the front row behind Geraldine’s table. One is a twenty-five-year-old landscaper who paid particularly keen attention throughout the trial. He seemed genuinely disappointed to learn he wouldn’t get to deliberate with the others. His companion is Maria Marzetti’s admirer from the back row. I suspect his presence here is only partially attributable to his interest in the case.
Harry plants his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. He looks far more worried than Holliston does. His isn’t the usual defense attorney’s concern, though. The jurors in this case have four choices, four potential verdicts, as is true in most first-degree-murder trials. And Harry’s not sure which one of them worries him most.
In all murder cases, the judge is obligated to instruct the jury on every lesser-included offense that might be supported by the evidence. Case law is clear that an instruction is required where any view of the evidence would support the lesser-included result. As a practical matter, this means most murder juries are asked to choose from among first-degree, second-degree, and manslaughter charges. The fourth option, of course—available only if the jurors believe Holliston acted to preserve his own life—is an outright acquittal.