Friday 9/26
“KLAUS,” NINA SAID BEFORE THEY ENTERED THE COURTROOM, “I’M concerned.”
“Are you?” he said serenely.
“We are losing this trial.”
“That kind of thinking will get us nowhere.”
“I’m concerned that too much is slipping by us. While I’m straining to get us through each day in court, you seem-hardly here.”
“That’s the young, untried Nina talking,” he said. “Not the skilled lawyer who can handle anything. Naturally, when you have a failure of nerve, you attack. In fact,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s good strategy. You see, you’re smarter than you think, and are certainly well able to assist in this case.”
“Don’t try to flatter me. You had months to prepare for this trial. I had two weeks. You sit there and you make little comments, and now and then you participate, but the whole thing has fallen on me.”
Klaus cupped his hand to his ear. “Do I hear a whining sound?”
“I don’t care that it’s hard, and I’m not properly prepared. I care that you aren’t giving it everything, and that our client will suffer for it.”
His thin shoulders raised up and lowered. Suddenly he was just a fragile old man, doing his best. “I’ll take over,” he said. “It’s no problem, if you don’t feel ready.”
“That’s not what I meant!” she said, exasperated. If anything, she had finally seen a definite need to take over herself. “I just want you to be…” Awake is what she was thinking, but before she could say more, Klaus had opened the door to the courtroom.
“Yes,” he said mildly, introspectively, “time for me to take over.”
“No!” she said, too late. She followed him into the courtroom.
Erin O’Toole took the stand, got sworn in, and sat down, tucking a loose end of her blouse into black slacks with fold marks. She obviously didn’t wear them often. Her long black hair was held back in an orange scrunchie, but wisps framed her pretty face. Beside Nina, Stefan’s glumness deepened. “This sucks. If only she didn’t have to go through this.”
“She can handle it, Stefan. She’s tougher than you think.”
“I wish…” he said, but Jaime Sandoval had begun his direct examination with innocuous questions, like the ones you gave to polygraph subjects before dinging them with the real deal.
“If she ever takes me back, I’m getting her that ring,” Stefan continued to whisper while Erin answered tedious questions patiently. “The one she always looks at in the window on Alvarado. I’ll sell my car. I’ll sell everything.”
“Maybe you should wait on the ring,” Nina said, finding her own in place on her finger, still feeling awkward, and thinking possibly he should think first about finding out if Erin loved him the right way, and enough.
“Don’t be so hangdog!” Klaus leaned toward them both, whispering. “We need absolute confidence.”
They all sat back and listened in astonishment to the story Erin was concocting.
“We were drinking tequila that night,” she said. “It wasn’t Stefan’s choice, but I like it. I got into it back in the old days at Northstar with the ski crowd. I used to waitress, and they always ordered tequila. To me, it’s a classy drink.” She laughed deprecatingly, and to Nina’s surprise, so did the audience behind her. “If potent.”
“He was drinking?” Sandoval asked, clearly flummoxed by this unexpected line.
“Yes,” she said. “Things got wild. I mean, we were in love, you know what I mean?”
Stefan spoke close to Nina’s ear. “She’s confusing that night with the night before, you know. When I didn’t go to the graveyard. She waylaid me,” he said, apparently unaware of the choice of words, “and I didn’t make it to the graveyard.”
Was she confused? Nina didn’t think so.
“Ms. O’Toole, are you claiming he drank a lot that night?” Sandoval asked.
“More than usual. And we went to bed early.”
“Are you claiming that Stefan Wyatt did not leave the house that night?”
“Absolutely.” She nodded. “He was busy with me.”
“And…” Jaime began.
“And-it was memorable!” She lowered her eyes. “Don’t tell me you want details.”
“Ms. O’Toole. Please tell me you are not claiming that he stayed home that night.”
Her head bobbed. “Oh, but he did. He was in bed with me the whole night.”
“You say you were drinking.”
“That’s right,” she said, wary. “But I can handle my liquor. I wasn’t flat out or anything. I noticed who was in my bed with me.”
“You say you loved each other.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true, you’d say anything to get Stefan out of trouble?”
“People who lie are weak. It’s cheap. I don’t like it.”
Stefan, sighing on Nina’s left, certainly knew that to be true.
Jaime knew the answer was unresponsive, but saw Erin had a lot of empathy going with the jury. Rather than alienate them by taking her to task, he said, “You wouldn’t lie even if someone’s life was at stake?”
“If I knew that person was innocent,” she said carefully, “I would be tempted.”
“So, whatever you say here is subject to that higher purpose.”
“I didn’t say I would do it,” she countered. “I don’t have to lie when I tell you Stefan’s basically an honorable person. Whatever they say about him that’s bad, it isn’t true. Somebody needed to come up here and say that. Speak in his defense. He never gets a break.”
“You would do anything to save him?”
“Anything?” She sounded disgusted. “I don’t have to. He’s innocent. He didn’t kill that poor woman. It’s easy enough to prove. I mean, I couldn’t have drunk that entire bottle by myself or I’d be dead.”
“Do you drink often?” Jaime asked.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Say, three times a week.”
“Sure, if you include wine or beer in the equation.”
“She doesn’t give a damn how she comes off. What a woman,” Stefan said, voice brimming with admiration.
Yes, Nina thought, damn.
“I mean, with a meal, or at a barbecue. We like to socialize. Who doesn’t? Stefan’s a popular guy.”
“Erin’s the popular one,” Stefan murmured.
“How much would you say you drank that night?” Sandoval continued.
“Oh.” Wrinkles formed on her forehead. “Maybe four drinks?”
“Over what period of time?”
“Fast,” she said. “Maybe in an hour.”
“How much do you weigh, Ms. O’Toole?”
“I don’t have to say that here, in front of all these people, do I?”
“Answer the question,” Judge Salas insisted.
“I have to tell?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, I’m five feet three inches tall and I weigh, um, oh, this stinks. I weigh a hundred twenty. Okay, I weigh a hundred thirty-two. If you’re trying to establish that I ought to consider a diet, I admit it. I could stand to lose a few pounds, okay? You got me, copper.”
A few people on the jury tittered.
Jaime Sandoval brought a chart out. “I have here a chart put out by the DMV suggesting how many drinks a person of your height and weight can drink before being considered legally drunk. According to your own testimony, you were intoxicated.”
“But Mr. Sandoval,” Erin protested. “I never drove anywhere that night.”
“Please wait for a question,” the judge said, studying the chart.
“You were out of it that night, were you not, Ms. O’Toole?” Sandoval asked.
“I didn’t drive anywhere.”
“Does alcohol make you sleepy?”
“Yeah, a little.”
“Were you sleepy that night?”
“Yes!” she said, triumphant. “We headed off to bed, and after a little bit, we went to sleep. Slept through ’til morning. Nobody went anywhere.”
“How many drinks would you say Mr. Wyatt consumed that night?”
“I can’t really tell you.”
Nina could see she really didn’t know what to say anymore. Was there a right answer? Erin O’Toole did not know.
“You can’t say or you won’t say, Ms. O’Toole?”
“I can’t.”
“Ms. O’Toole, is it fair to say you were dead drunk that night, and not really capable of knowing whether Mr. Wyatt left?”
“Not fair at all.”
“Are you aware that when Stefan Wyatt was arrested the next morning, a few hours after midnight, he was tested for alcohol?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And that the test showed negligible amounts?”
For the first time, Erin looked toward Stefan. He looked guiltily back at her.
“He looked like he was downing beers. Several.”
“So you assumed he was drinking even though he wasn’t. And you thought he stayed home, that’s what you’ve said, isn’t it? In that case, how do you explain your signed statement to the police?” He waved it in her face. Then he marked it for identification and had her read from it (“I think maybe he went out for a while”), then he moved to have the statement admitted, and finally he started grilling her like a slab of fresh tuna at Trader Vic’s.
“I made a mistake signing that paper.”
“You were lying when you signed that paper? Or you’re lying now?”
She didn’t answer.
“Miss O’Toole?”
“I shouldn’t have signed it,” she said.
Jaime Sandoval smiled. “So you’ve said. Your witness,” he said to the defense.
“Let me handle this, please, Klaus,” Nina said, starting to stand, but the old man, suddenly spry, was on his feet and talking. “Ms. Wyatt,” he began.
“I’m not married,” Erin said in a soft voice. “My name is O’Toole.”
Stefan winced.
“Pardon me,” Klaus said, discomfited. “Hmm.”
Silence stopped everything cold until he remembered what he was doing. “You’ve described Stefan Wyatt as an ‘honorable’ man,” he said finally. “Will you tell the court why you would say that about him?”
“He’s decent and kind. He helps people when they’re in trouble. You can depend on him,” she said, foolishly adding, for the belated sake of exact accuracy, “usually.”
“How long have you known Stefan Wyatt?”
“Two and a half years.”
“In that time, has he ever been violent with you?”
“No.”
“He hasn’t hit you?”
“No.”
“Put his hands around your throat, or even threatened you, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Would you describe him as hot-tempered?”
“On the whole, no. He’s easygoing, like me.”
“As far as you know, did he ever know, or have even casual contact with the victim in this case, Miss, um…” Again, Klaus seemed to lose his thread.
“He didn’t know Christina Zhukovsky,” she said. “He would have mentioned her to me.” But although Erin tried hard, she was tired and her exhaustion showed. She had already made a full-steam effort and lost the race, and she knew it.
Klaus dragged the cross out for quite a while, but his points were few and far between, and whatever strength they had lost potency under the weight of the irrelevancies preceding them. Erin continued to testify like a little kid with one hand in the cookie jar, chocolate on her cheeks, and a big fat juicy lie on her lips. The jury appeared sympathetic but unconvinced.
Klaus returned to his seat with a nod to Nina that said, All’s well that ends well.
Stefan put a hand on her arm. “You have to love Mr. Pohlmann. He really knows his business, doesn’t he?” he said, punctuating his hopeful words with a desperate look. Nina was far too busy kicking herself for her weakness in attacking Klaus to say anything.
This whole fiasco was her fault. She could have steered Erin back to the truth. She would have asked her to talk more about their relationship, and why she felt it was necessary to do something, anything, to save this man she obviously still loved-but what was the point, thinking these things? It was too late.
Jaime made short work of Klaus’s attempt to rehabilitate Erin, effectively blowing away any molecules of credibility that might hover in the courtroom air. Then, out of the jury’s hearing, he asked that Erin be arrested for perjury. Salas should have done it. To Nina’s amazement, he turned Jaime down. Maybe he had a daughter Erin’s age, or maybe he was just tired of filling up the jail.
Some people just catch the breaks. Maybe lucky Erin could keep Stefan’s bad luck at bay.
Wanda Wyatt appeared next as an adverse witness. After Erin’s high-pitched sweetness, she smoldered, low-voiced, deep lines sinking around her mouth. She wore a sober brown skirt with a few stray dog hairs attached, and sensible heels, her long gray hair defiantly free down her back.
“You are the defendant’s mother?” Jaime asked.
“That’s right.”
“Remember back, please, to the night of April twelfth of this year. That was a Saturday night, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You told the police you took a ride that night.”
“Yes.”
“You went out?”
She pulled the words out. “I did.”
“Where did you go?”
“I drove over to my son Stefan’s house in Monterey.”
“You drove to your son’s house at what time?”
“Late. I can’t say exactly what time.”
“Why did you go over there late at night?”
“I knew they were usually up that late on a weekend night. I had cooked a big dinner and had leftovers. I just thought I would drop some by.”
“When you arrived at your son’s house, what did you see?”
Wanda became silent.
“Mrs. Wyatt?”
“I saw my son loading things into the trunk of his car.”
“My own mother,” Stefan moaned to Nina.
“She doesn’t have any choice,” she whispered. “She can’t deny it, Stefan.”
“What kind of things?” Sandoval asked.
“It was dark! I’m not sure.”
“And yet the next morning, didn’t you tell your neighbor, Donna Lake, that you saw your son loading gardening implements…” He took up a piece of paper and read, “‘A shovel, a pick, that kind of thing’? And isn’t that what you admitted to the police?”
“I didn’t know what I saw,” she said stubbornly. “I couldn’t see what he was putting in there.”
“‘It was bizarre,’ you said. ‘I couldn’t imagine why he’d need a shovel at that time of night.’ You did say that to your neighbor before you heard your son had been arrested, didn’t you?”
Wanda glanced at the audience, at Nina, and finally, at Stefan, then shook her head, sighing. What could a mother do with such a beetle-headed son?
Klaus did a little better on the cross-examination this time. Nina couldn’t decide if he was aware of how badly he had done with Erin or not, but with Wanda, the old-gentleman game worked. He had her relieved and nearly smiling by the time she stepped down. She had told the jury what a basically good boy Stefan had been, and she had shown she loved her son in spite of any doubts she might harbor about his judgment. The defense, at this point in the prosecution’s case, with all the evidence in the world showing her son was guilty, could hope for no better.