And the Sea Will Tell (61 page)

Jennifer went on to say she had tacked against both the wind and current before.

“You
did
think the trip to Fanning would be difficult. Is that correct?” I asked.

“I knew it was, yes, going to be difficult.”

“Jennifer, does your diary reflect your intent to go to Fanning, and your preparations for the trip?”

“Yes.”

I had Jennifer read portions of her entries for August 25—“Husked some coconuts for the trip”—August 26—“Mac brought by Fanning chart, which I copied”—and August 28—“Winds willing we shall be ready Saturday.”

“Jennifer, going back to your August 23rd entry, does it say: ‘Mac gave us fifty dollars for the generator’?”

“Yes.”

“However, if you look at your August 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th entries, there’s a reference to your
still
having the generator, and it was being used to charge the batteries for the trip to Fanning. Is there any explanation for this?”

Looking down at her diary, Jennifer brushed an independent lock of hair from her face. “Well, Mac had given us the money on the 23rd. But he knew we needed to use the generator to charge the batteries. And he didn’t have any objection to that. We were just going to give him the generator before we left.” She spoke easily about Mac, as if recalling a friend.

“Continuing on, Jennifer, with the issue of your ability to get to Fanning with the
Iola
, you’ve heard testimony at this trial questioning the seaworthiness of the
Iola
, have you not?”

“Yes.” Her eyes flared briefly.

“In your opinion was the
Iola
seaworthy?”

“Uh-huh. We—we wouldn’t have left Hawaii on her if she wasn’t seaworthy.”

“What does the word ‘seaworthy’ mean to you?” I asked.

“Well, I see ‘seaworthy’ as a relative term. I think that some boats are more seaworthy than others. Some are newer boats, they have better rigging and better sails, and they pick up less water. But ‘unseaworthy’ is an absolute. ‘Unseaworthy’ means the boat will sink. The
Iola
was definitely seaworthy.”

“Jennifer, you heard Mr. and Mrs. Leonard testify that you told them you would never leave Palmyra on the
Iola
. Did you say this?”

“No. Absolutely not. I—I don’t know where they got that. I always assumed I would leave Palmyra on the
Iola
. That was our boat.”

“At any time while you and Buck were on Palmyra, did you ask any of the people there—like the Wheelers, the Leonards, Tom Wolfe or the others—if you and Buck could hitch a ride with them? That is, leave Palmyra with them on their boat?”

“No, never.”

“Did that thought ever enter your mind?”

“No.”

“Either en route to Palmyra or when the
Iola
got hung up on the coral heads coming into the lagoon, did the
Iola
sustain any major damage?”

“She did not.”

“Did the
Iola
leak en route to Palmyra?” I asked. “Did it take on water?”

“Yeah, just about all wooden boats leak. And she did leak.”

“You heard Mr. Wheeler testify that even on Palmyra you were bilging the
Iola
every day while he was there?”

“Yes.”

“Is that true?”

“When we first came in, it probably is true. We had just completed a long sea voyage. And Buck wanted to get the bilge totally dry to see if we had sustained any damage when we had bonked ourselves on the coral heads. So, for the first several days, we probably were bilging.”

After that, they pumped out the bilge only a couple times a week, she said, “not because there was so much water, but any water that stood in the bilge threw off a musty odor.”

I elicited from Jennifer that when they bought the
Iola
, they were told it had eighty gallons of fiberglassing on it. “Many, many, layers,” she said.

“What’s the significance of many, many layers?”

“Well, the more layers you have it means that you could have a crack on the outside—without it necessarily going all the way through. Tom Wolfe testified that he saw a crack. He could have seen a crack on the outside. It may or may not have caused a leak.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Enoki was taking fewer notes than usual. Was this a good omen or dire augury? Had he discerned that I was covering all the bases, leaving him nothing meaningful for cross? Or was he so fully prepped to rake Jennifer over the coals that he didn’t need any more notes?

Jennifer, by the way, was handling herself extremely well. She’d not yet surprised me with a single unexpected answer—a testimonial to our wrackingly thorough preparation.
^*

“While on Palmyra, Jennifer, did Buck move off the
Iola
and into a tent on shore?”

“Yes.”

“Why did he do this?” I asked.

“Well, the
Iola
didn’t have adequate headroom for Buck. Buck was—over six feet tall. And we had about five feet five inches of headroom, which was perfect for me, but he had to slouch all the time in the boat’s cabin. He wanted a camp on shore, where he would have walking-around room.”

“Did Buck want you to move off the
Iola
and move into the tent with him?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Did you go along with that?”

“No. I decided to stay on the
Iola
. I was looking forward to having some privacy after those close quarters.”

“Were you still in love with Buck at that point, though?”

“Oh, yes. Very much so.”

We began to grapple with the thorny cake-truce issue.

“Going to the day of August 28th in your diary, Jennifer, you heard Mr. Shoemaker’s testimony that on the evening of the 28th Mac told him, during a radio communication they had that night, that you and Buck brought a cake to Mac and Muff, and Mac felt that it was to bring about a truce between the Grahams and you and Buck. You heard that testimony?”

“Yes.”

“Your August 28th entry makes no mention of bringing a cake to Mac and Muff. Does that mean that you disagree with Mr. Shoemaker’s testimony on this point?”

“I can’t remember exactly what happened on the 28th, eleven or twelve years ago. That’s a long time. But I can say that Mac had just brought us by the Fanning chart a day or so before. And certainly baking a cake as a thank-you for him doing that is consistent with the type of thing that I would do.”

I asked Jennifer at what time of day she normally wrote her diary entries. She answered it was usually late in the afternoon, but before dark. “After dark, it was very difficult to write with the lighting we had on the
Iola
.”

If
the jury believed this visit had taken place, since it was in the evening, this testimony might help explain why there was no diary mention of it. But I wanted additional reinforcement. “Did your daily entries comprise everything that you did on each particular day?” I asked.

“No, it wasn’t a total recap of everything. I just more or less wanted to mark the day in some way to separate one day from the next.”

“So, it’s your testimony that this visit
could
have happened?”

“Yes. It could have happened.”

“You just don’t know one way or the other.”

“Right. I can’t remember.”

“What about Mr. Shoemaker’s testimony that Mac told him that he felt the purpose of this cake, assuming you brought a cake, was to bring about a truce between you and Buck and the Grahams? How do you feel about that?”

“Well—there couldn’t be a truce,” she answered. “There wasn’t any quarrel. We didn’t have any feud going on. Mac was helping us all along. There wasn’t a problem.”

“So that part of his testimony—”

“That part is absolutely incorrect.”

“Going now to the crucial date, August 30, 1974, was Buck still living by himself in a tent on shore then?”

“Yes.”

“And you were living alone on the
Iola
?”

“Yes, with Puffer.”

Some jurors smiled.

“Okay. You’ve reviewed that August 30th entry prior to your testimony today?”

“Yes.”

“Does the entry include everything that took place on August 30th?”

“No. Like most all of the other entries, it’s…just an overview of the events of that day.”

“Would you please read to the jury
that part
of your August 30th entry, that part which you wrote on August 30th.”

Jennifer cleared her throat and began reading.

“‘All-out effort day. R was up bright and early, scavenging butts at Mac’s workshop. R wangled a couple of games of chess, a stash of coffee and tobacco to go, plus an invitation to dinner. Not bad for before 9:00
A.M.
Next was coffee. Cleaning, swabbing, stowing—removed canopy, baking bread, all around cleanup effort both on boat and ashore. Was going to bake bread in outdoor oven to conserve fuel, but time and energy would not allow it. Undoubtedly, upon return, I’ll have no alternative—only hope the fuel lasts till then.’”

I asked when exactly that day she had written the entry. She said she thought it was sometime in the afternoon. “While I was baking bread, probably. Before going over to Mac and Muff’s boat for dinner. As I’ve said, I usually wrote the entries during the daylight hours. And I knew we would be getting back late from Mac and Muff’s.”

“Now, when you say in your August 30th entry, ‘
R was up
bright and early, scavenging butts at Mac’s workshop,’ do you mean Buck slept on the
Iola
the previous night, and was up bright and early?”

I was trying to anticipate and answer every question any juror might conceivably have about the entry for this all-important date.

“No,” Jennifer answered. “He slept at his tent. And he came by the
Iola
about 9:00
A.M.
, and told me that he’d been over to Mac’s.”

“Was approximately 9:00
A.M.
the first time you saw Buck that day?”

“Yes, that was the first time.”

“You’ve testified that your diary entries do not contain everything that happened on a particular day, Jennifer. Do you remember everything that took place on August 30th, 1974?”

It was critical that I elicit testimony from Jennifer about what happened—beyond her diary’s account—on that key day; particularly Buck’s whereabouts, how many times she saw him, and at what times and locations. But how could she look back, so many years afterward, and remember such details? When I first raised the issue with her, she had assumed she remembered as much as she did because Mac and Muff had disappeared that day. But I feared an argument could be made that what took place
prior to her learning of their disappearance that day
(i.e., prior to 6:30
P.M.
), wouldn’t have had much relevance to her. Therefore,
unless she had been involved in the murders
, I could see the jury thinking, she had no reason to remember these otherwise insignificant pre-6:30
P.M.
details. The one exception would be if she immediately suspected Buck had done away with the Grahams. Then she would have had a reason to go over in her mind, that very evening and the days thereafter, everything that had taken place. But she said she hadn’t suspected Buck at the time. How could she now, almost twelve years later, summon up the details of her interaction with Buck prior to 6:30
P.M.
on August 30, 1974? In answer to that question, Jennifer eventually came to the conclusion that it must have been all the preparation for the Fanning trip that enabled her to remember most of what took place that day, particularly between Buck and her. I was reasonably comfortable with this answer, which she would give at the trial.

Sensibly, Jennifer admitted that she didn’t remember everything about that day. “But it is more clear in my mind, I guess, than a number of other days because we were getting ready to go to Fanning the next day. That was a reason for all the activity, all the things to get ready to go.”

“However, because it was almost twelve years ago, your memory is not perfectly clear. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“You’ve already read your August 30th entry up to a certain point. Could you expand, if you can, on what Buck told you when he came over to the
Iola
at approximately 9:00
A.M.
”

“Well, he said Mac had said that he and Muff were going to go fishing, and they’d catch all the fish they could. Anything that we didn’t eat that night for dinner, he wanted to give us to take on our trip.”

“Was this going to be somewhat of a bon voyage dinner for you and Buck?”

“Yes.”

I asked if she felt that the dinner invitation was unusual at all.

Jennifer shook her head. “No. Not at all. Mac and Muff had had bon voyage dinners for others.”

“Did Mac and Muff frequently fish for their dinner?”

“Yes, they did. Fresh fish is much more of a tasty meal than things that come out of cans.”

“Getting back to the chronology of events, after Buck came by around 9:00
A.M.
and told you about the dinner invitation, what’s the next thing that happened, as far as you can recall?”

“Well, then I went over to Buck’s camp and…he made some coffee, we had a cup of coffee. And I…we made a couple of trips back and forth together carrying things from his camp area to the
Iola
. And then I stayed on the
Iola
getting those things stored.”

“These trips that you and Buck took between the
Iola
and the tent—approximately how long did that take?”