Undue Influence (44 page)

Cassidy in her denials to the court has in her own inimitable way implied that if it was not the local authorities whose indiscretions led to the embarrassing news article, then there is only one other possibility it had to be Dana or some of her people. She does not take kindly to being played the stooge. “Fine. That’s the way they want it,” she says, “we’ll give it to them in spades. A little leveling of the playing field,” she tells me. “When do they swear Jack?” she asks. “This morning,” I tell her. “He’s first up.”

“Then he’s fair game anytime after that?”

I nod.

“You’ll have unsealed indictments and public records of conviction, certified copies by noon,” she says. “I’ll see to it that a courier delivers them.” I thank her for standing up for me, explaining to Woodruff.

“All in a day’s work,” she says. But now she tells me there is bad news.

Things are not going well in their search for the witness who saw Jack with the man they know as Lyle Simmons in the bar across the river. The guy has completely dropped from sight. “Your people haven’t stopped looking?” I say.

“No. But I don’t want to mislead you either. The man hasn’t been seen in more than two months. He has strong inducements to stay lost. The unrelated criminal charges,” she says. “If we do find him, it may not be in time.”

“The man’s a linchpin in my case,” I tell her.

“You can make a case on Jack without him. He’s dirty,” she says. “You know it wasn’t his child. The guy was burning with jealousy. He used the death of his wife to try and cut a deal on his sentence. There will be letters to that effect in the file,” she says. “You can draw and quarter him.”

“I wish you were on the jury,” I tell her.

“Their case is hemorrhaging faster than a peptic ulcer,” she says. “The compact which no longer ties your client to the scene, a silencer, all the signs of a hired job. And Mr. Vega with a motive. Sounds like that’s where it’s at,” she says. “It would be that much stronger with a triggerman.”

“You want it all,” she says. “We’ll try. But you shouldn’t count on it.”

The way she says this makes me think I am being told to make other arrangements, something short of the best evidence. I begin to wonder if this witness of theirs is not dead. “Are you free tonight?” she asks.

“Except for fatherhood,” I tell her. “Dinner my place?” She tells me she will bring the wine. “Say seven,” I say. She smiles. Then a warm and wet peck on the cheek in the dark corridor. As she turns on her heels and heads down the hall, I see Harry, sitting in a chair in the clerk’s station, taking this all in, his face an etching of paternal disapproval, like some patriarch whose eldest son has just run off with the village trollop. He is the centerpiece of the state’s case the grieving widower. Jack is at the front of the courtroom, some last-minute words with Cassidy. Vega as usual is up on his toes, prancing in place like some kid about to wet his pants. He’s been escorted to the stand by Jimmy and one of the minions, who act like two cruisers pushing reporters away. Vega wears a suit the price of which could support a family for a year, a silk tie and a matching kerchief in the breast pocket, maroon, Jack’s standard colors. As he talks he cannot keep his gaze off me, darting little slits, sallow cheeks and lips stretched white with tension. I am assembling papers at the counsel table, but I refuse to divert my eyes from him. Jack and I play a game of ocular chicken. Vega’s is a face not so much of determination as pure meanness. I have seen him turn this on witnesses in legislative committee before unleashing his wrath, usually in defense of some protected interest which has lavished its largess to sweeten Jack’s judgment. Vega is merciless on those without
INFLUENCE
, volunteers for consumer groups, or students with a brief for the environment. Under Jack’s rules those without money have no business living in a democracy.

This morning I go back to meet Laurel in the holding cells, a few words of caution before she is led out into the courtroom. When I see her inside the cell she is putting the final touches on her hair with a brush. It seems she has taken more interest in her personal appearance now that the kids are out of the way, to her view, safe and out of the clutches of Jack. I tell her that he is outside ready to take the stand, that the jury will be watching her for each telltale sign of a response to everything he says. “Anything, a twitch of the nose, a pained expression, and they can read into it. It’s vital that you hold your emotions. There is no telling what he will say.” This is shorthand for the obvious, that of all the witnesses Jack is the one most likely to embellish on the evidence, to take liberty with the facts where he can.

“You don’t think he would lie?” She gives me a stark expression.

For an instant, the very fact that she could ask this with a straight face catches me off guard. Then little cracks in her demeanor, wrinkles around the mouth, and the dam breaks. We both laugh. “It is a possibility,” I tell her.

“No. Rain tomorrow is a possibility,” she says. “That Jack would lie when the truth will do just as well, that’s more like the law of gravity,” she says. “Just be natural. Be yourself,” I tell her.

“If I were being natural I would knee him in the nuts and scratch his eyes out,” she says. “I take it back. Don’t be yourself.”

“Sorry to be difficult,” she says.

I don’t want to place Laurel in an emotional straitjacket. If Jack tells a whopper, the jury will expect some normal reaction of denial. What I don’t want are histrionics at the table. “High emotion,” I tell her, “is the stuff of which murder is made. Show them a temper, a flash of anger, and it is easier for them to see you with a gun in your hand.”

“I understand,” she says. “I can call him a liar, just not a fucking liar.”

“Something like that,” I say.

We gather ourselves. She takes my hand and squeezes it, and together we head out, Laurel, I, the sheriff’s guard, and a female matron, toward the courtroom. There are extra rows of press here today, the overflow from Louis Cousins’ case, as well as some of the capital press corps, all with sharpened pencils. There is an electricity in the air. It is the smell of news when crime is injected under pressure into the political class and ignited by a spark. Like the stench of ozone after lightning. We take a seat at the counsel table. Some guy with a notepad comes up and starts to ask questions of me over the bar railing what I think Vega will say on the stand. I tell him to watch and see. Then he starts talking about the post office bombing and my fingerprints. As soon as this happens three more join him, and when I turn around there is a small crowd. I tell them I have no comment but they persist.

Woodruff’s bailiff wanders over.

“Either take your seats or we’ll be giving them to people waiting outside in the hallway.” Suddenly there are bodies racing in a dozen directions like the last land rush. As the jury is led in, I can tell that the bombing story has taken its toll. The usual drifting of gazes about the room is absent. This morning all eyes are riveted on me, murmurs between a few of them like perhaps they are surprised I am here and not in shackles. Woodruff takes the bench. Cassidy directs Vega to a chair inside the railing, where she holds him for the moment. “Before we start today,” says Woodruff, “there is some business I must get out of the way.” He immediately talks about the news article, the letter bomb, and my fingerprints at the scene. He polls the jury as to effect. Three of them say they have never seen the piece, nor heard any reports in the media. Some people live on Mars. The others concede that they have seen it, and to varying degrees were curious. One juror, a man in the second row, says if there is smoke there must be fire. According to this guy I should not be trying the case if there is even a hint of suspicion. He is immediately excused by Woodruff and replaced on the jury by one of the alternates. This brings a lot of sober expressions from the others.

Any further polling at this point would be an idle exercise. They will not be volunteering their private thoughts. Then, in wooden tones the judge reads them a carefully crafted instruction that they are not to consider any of this in judging the evidence of this case. He nibbles around the edges of exoneration, that I have cooperated fully with authorities, that I am not at this time and have not been a suspect in the bombing, that inferences to this end in the article are maccurate. I can hear the scratching of pencils in the press rows behind me. Then, as abruptly as he started, he brings it to a close. I can sense that there are a dozen hands that would go up like skyrockets if this were a press conference. Cassidy and Lama sense this too, there is a wicked grin on Jimmy’s face. Enough latitude for more speculation in tomorrow morning’s newspaper. “Call your next witness.” Woodruff looking at Cassidy. “Mr. Jack Vega.” Jack takes the stand and is sworn. When he identifies himself for the record it is with his legislative title as a member of the Assembly. He wears this like a badge of honor, oblivious to the fact that in opinion polls on the issue of integrity it places him well beneath those who go door-to-door peddling aluminum siding, and only a half-notch above the lawyers who are about to question him. “Do you know the defendant, Laurel Vega?” asks Cassidy.

“I do. We were married for some years, until divorced,” he says.

“And do you have children by the defendant?”

“Two,” he says. “A boy and a girl, thirteen and fifteen, though I haven’t seen them for nearly a month.”

“Who has legal custody of these children at the present time?”

I am getting uneasy feelings about where this line is taking us.

“I do.”

“But you have no idea where they are?”

“No.”

“Your honor. I am going to object on grounds of relevance. Where is this taking us?” Without hesitation Cassidy says, “Into the issue of motive, your honor.”

“Overruled. Continue,” he says.

“When was the last time you saw your children?”

“It was twenty-eight days ago,” says Jack. “My daughter told me she was going to stay overnight with a friend.”

“And your son?”

“He’d left the house, though he hadn’t told me where he was going. I found out later that he went to see his mother at the county jail.”

“The defendant, Laurel Vega?” says Cassidy.

“Right,” he says.

“And that was the last time you saw either child?”

“Right.”

“Have you reported them missing to the police?”

“For what good it would do,” he says. “She knows where they are and won’t tell.”

“Objection.” I’m on my feet. “Move to strike.” Woodruff orders the comment stricken from the record and tells the jury to disregard it. But the seed is planted. “They’re treating it as a civil domestic matter,” says Jack.

“What does that mean?”

“Objection. Calls for speculation.”

“Sustained.”

“Mr. Vega, were you involved in a battle with the defendant over legal custody of your children?”

“I was. She made it very bitter,” he says.

“And then she blamed it all on my wife, Melanie.”

“Objection, your honor.”

Woodruff is getting angry with Vega. “Sir, do you know what a question is?”

“Sure,” says Jack.

“Then just answer the questions and keep the commentary to yourself. Do I make myself clear?” Jack forgets that he is not in the Legislature, the forum of political princes who float on an ether of arrogance without rules of conduct or evidence. He is not used to such treatment.

He doesn’t answer Woodruff, but instead gives him a curt nod. “Yes or no for the record,” says Woodruff. The road to contempt if Jack keeps it up. “I understand,” says Vega.

“Do you recall during this custody battle a physical assault made by the defendant, Laurel Vega, on the deceased Melanie Vega?” says Cassidy. “I remember it very well,” he says. “She.” He points to Laurel. “She hit her, Melanie, very hard with a heavy purse. My wife complained to me later about a bruise and a sore arm as a result.”

“And do you remember threats being uttered against Melanie Vega by the defendant at the time of this attack?”

“You bet,” he says. Jack can hardly contain himself in the box. Given a platform, he would be doing some hefty table dancing at this moment. “She said she wanted to kill Melanie.”

“Those were her words?”

“No. She said she wanted to kill the bitch.’ ” As Jack says this he looks at Laurel and me, fire in his eyes. He has been suppressing this venom for months. Now it spills like some oozing toxic gel over the witness box. They embellish this around the edges, a few more pithy quotes all attributed to Laurel, who by now, if you could defame the dead, would be standing trial for slander. Jack should be writing headlines for the tab loids. Then Cassidy has him identify the rug from the evidence cart. Jack is adamant that this scrap of carpet was located in the master bath of his home the night Melanie was murdered. The only way Laurel could have gotten it, according to Jack, is if she had been present in the home that night. Morgan then takes him on a blistering cruise of several conversations, most of which I suspect never took place. These are supposedly private encounters between him and Laurel during periods of visitation when she would come by the house to deliver or pick up the kids. To listen to Jack, these were angry tirades issued by Laurel, none of which were provoked by either him or Melanie. Through most of this, tight-lipped and tense, Laurel is restraining herself, protesting only quietly in my ear. Then at one point she says, “He’s a fucking liar.” Almost loud enough for Woodruff to hear. When I look over she is not smiling.

During one of these encounters, according to Jack, there was a particularly ugly conversation during which Laurel said she wished the two of them, he and Melanie, were dead. “I suppose half a loaf is better than none,” she whispers through a cupped hand in my ear. Cassidy, I think, hears it, though the jury does not.

When I look at Laurel there is a willful gleam in her eye. It is the reason I worry about putting her on the stand. “Laurel was always jealous and angry, particularly at Melanie,” says Jack. “She couldn’t deal with younger women,” he says. “Maybe if you’d screwed fewer of them during our marriage my outlook would have been different.” Several of the women on the jury giggle.