Glitsky 02 - Guilt (39 page)

Suddenly the world seemed to understand that Wes Farrell was in fact the champion of the underdog and a tiger of a defense lawyer. After five months of tedious trial preparation, hours upon days spent studying transcripts and analyzing evidence in his dingy office or his dirty apartment, after the breakup with Sam and the doubts about his friend, now at last he was getting some recognition for who he was, for what he did – the sweet, sweet, sweet nectar of success that had eluded him for so long.

It was nearly one o'clock and the party was basically over. The staff was folding up tables behind him. The band was breaking down. Wes was alone at the bar just enjoying the living hell out of his sixth or seventh drink, thinking that maybe it had all been worth it, after all.

Christina and Mark had taken the limo home, and he'd need to get a cab later, but that was all right. He wasn't quite ready to call it quits yet.

Mark – his old pal – had been right about coming down for this party. Mark and Christina might have opened a few eyes when they walked in, but it was he, Wes Farrell, who'd been the sensation. Everybody had read the paper today, watched the news over the past nights. Front page, thank you. Yes, it appeared he was winning, winning, winning. Kicking ass, taking names.

Jocko, behind the bar, had become his close personal friend. Imagine, Wes Farrell the working-class guy here all buddy buddy with the bartender at the St Francis Yacht Club. In his wallet, Farrell had at least half a dozen business cards of people he should call, who might know some people who'd need his services. Where had he been hiding, they all wanted to know.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and the Archbishop of San Francisco was asking Wes if they could have a nightcap together. Wes was finally, after a lifetime of mediocrity, moving into Dooher's circle. God, it was intoxicating!

And certainly one more drink, with Jim Flaherty, wouldn't hurt – a little more of that Oban single malt. They touched their glasses together. 'Great party, Your Excellency. I hope you raised a million dollars.'

'Three hundred and ten thousand in pledges,' he said. 'A new record. This is such a generous city.' Flaherty savored his drink. 'It looks like you had a pretty fair night yourself. I saw you holding court in here most of the evening. You're going to get Mark off, aren't you?'

'It looks like it. I don't want to jinx it, but we've certainly got them on the run.'

The Archbishop sighed. 'How did it even get to this?'

Farrell looked sideways at him. 'It's bad luck to make enemies in the police department. Glitsky's a bad cop.'

'Who just got promoted.'

Again, a sidelong glance. What was Flaherty getting at? He couldn't figure it exactly, so he shrugged. 'He's black. It's his turn.' Then, on a hunch, the new Farrell blurted it right out. 'You having doubts?'

'About Mark? Never. It's just the accusations. You can't help but have them affect your view a little, can you?'

'No, I don't think so. I've had a few myself – doubts – tell the truth. You wonder how many other cases, witnesses show up out of the woodwork who say they saw something, or heard it, or smelled it. What is it, power of suggestion?'

'I think it must be.' The Archbishop sipped his drink.

'Your Excellency,' Farrell said quietly. 'You're not getting cold feet about testifying for us, are you?'

'No, of course not.'

'Good, because I don't know if we're going to need you, but if we do, I wouldn't like to open the door and then have it close on us.'

'No, I understand.'

They both stared out through the rain-pocked glass. Faintly, they heard the wind as it pushed the cypresses nearly to the ground.

'Lousy night out there, isn't it?' Flaherty said. Then, 'You know, when this is over and Mark is found Not Guilty, we ought to try to make this up to him somehow. First he loses his wife, which is horrible enough, then the burden of this trial. He's been through the wringer. I don't know how he's surviving.'

'Well, Mark's a survivor.'

'Plus, he's in love again, I think.'

Farrell sipped his drink and nodded. 'You noticed,' he said laconically. 'Though I suppose if you've got to be in love with somebody, she'd do.'

'Although the timing could be better, couldn't it?'

Farrell agreed that it could. Sitting together at the bar, each harboring his thoughts, the two men sipped at their drinks. The ship's bell behind the bar chimed once, and Jocko said it was last call.

'No, I'm good,' Farrell said, and asked the bartender to call him a taxi.

Bill Carrera wasn't sleeping. His daughter's visit the previous weekend had brought to a head the fear that he had been living with since finding out she'd joined up with Dooher's defense team.

So now, downstairs, looking out over the few remaining lights that remained on at this hour in Ojai, he sat in his deep wingchair, the one he called his Thinking Chair. In spite of the fact that Bill was the kind of man who named things – his Bronco was Trigger, for example; his tennis racket was Slam – he was not without intelligence or insight.

And he was worried sick about Christina.

The light came on in the hallway and after a minute he felt a hand on his shoulder, Irene saying, 'You should have just got me up. How long have you been down here?' She came around and sat on the arm of the chair.

'Forty-five minutes, an hour.'

He was suddenly aware of the ticking of the grandfather clock, and then his wife said, 'She wouldn't be with him if she thought he did it, Bill.'

'I'm not worried about whether
she thinks
he did it. I'm worried about if he did it.'

'I think we have to trust her judgment on this.'

'Like with Brian? With Joe Avery?'

'Come on, Bill, don't start that. They were different.'

'But not so very different, were they? I wonder if we've failed her somehow, that she can't-' He stopped.

'It's not her. She hasn't met the right man.'

'And Mark Dooher's the right man? God help us.'

'Bill! We haven't even met him…'

'But he's on trial for killing his wife, hon! I'm sorry, they don't usually get to there unless…'

'Usually.'

He took a breath and let it out. 'Jesus. So what are we supposed to do?'

Irene draped her arm over his head. 'Stand by her, I think, don't you? Hope she finally gets happy. Hope he's found Not Guilty.'

'But that's just the law. How do you ever really believe it after all this?'

'I don't know if you do. But if he's found Not Guilty, we've got to support them. Don't you think that?'

'I don't know. I don't understand why her life changed, how it got so complicated and sad. It just breaks my heart.'

'Mine, too.' She sighed. 'Which is why we've got to be with her, Bill. If it's right, if finally this Mark Dooher can make her happy.'

But he was shaking his head. 'People don't make other people happy. People make
themselves
happy. That's what I'm worried about.'

She tugged at his hair gently. 'You make me happy.'

'No, you were happy when I met you, and we get along. We're lucky. Christina's got to decide that it's up to her. She's still thinking it's all centered, one way or another, around some man. And it's not.'

'It is for me,' Irene said. 'It really is. Maybe I'm not a highly evolved life form, but I believe choice of mate is relatively important in the scheme of things. And that's why I'm going to embrace them if it all works out, and do everything I can to see that it does. And you should, too.'

On Wednesday afternoon, Amanda Jenkins rested for the prosecution, having never really recovered – or established – her momentum. She had called all of her witnesses.

The maintenance man at the San Francisco Golf Club had shown the jury the cyclone fence by the end of the parking lot. It had a large hole in it.

Jenkins had trotted out Paul Thieu and the Taraval cops and the next-door neighbor, Frances Matsun, who (it turned out) had never gotten along with Mark Dooher very well, and who hadn't actually seen him screw the lightbulb from on to off at all.

On cross-examination, Farrell clarified it – Dooher had reached up, fooled with it, done
something.
It looked like he might have unscrewed it.

Jenkins tried not to show it, but it was clear to Glitsky that she'd been beaten down by the relentless barrages that Farrell had launched against her witnesses. She was still trying to believe that the blood alone would be enough to convict and, further, that Emil Balian had convincingly put Dooher near the scene. It was a brave front: Jenkins pretending that the jury would come back with a Guilty verdict, especially if they got to call Diane Price on rebuttal, if they could get her to paint the picture of a very different Mark Dooher. Glitsky admired her for not crumbling in public, but she was getting killed and everybody knew it.

Certainly, the newspapers and television had reached their verdict. This morning, driving to work, Glitsky had heard his name on the radio while he'd been channel-surfing, and had forced himself to listen to his friendly local conservative radio talk jock who opined that the decision to bring Mark Dooher to trial at all on such shoddy evidence was an example of affirmative action's failure in the halls of the city. Glitsky, a black, and Jenkins, a woman, had been promoted beyond their levels of competency, and let's hear from you callers out there who think we ought to put an end to this nonsense and get back to hiring and promoting on merit alone.

The current had shifted.

Nevertheless, the morning began with a set-back for the defense. As soon as Jenkins had finished her case-in-chief, Wes Farrell had filed a motion for directed verdict of acquittal, which asked the Judge to find that no reasonable juror could convict on the evidence presented by the prosecution.

This motion was routinely filed by the defense when the prosecution rested, and was almost never granted. If the Judge did rule favorably on this motion, he would dismiss the case, and Mark Dooher would be free. Thomasino opened by denying the motion, and Jenkins whispered to Glitsky, 'The blood.' He nodded, non-committal.

Farrell, having elected to give an opening statement in rebuttal to Jenkins's at the outset of the trial, stood and told Thomasino that the defense was ready to present its case and would like to start by calling the defendant, Mark Dooher.

This was a calculated gamble, but it showed the level of Farrell's confidence. The defendant had the absolute right not to testify, but a sympathetic demeanor and good story could go a long way toward humanizing a defendant, and this was to the good.

Also, after Dooher's outburst on the first day, he'd worn a mask, careful to show no emotion. Quietly paying attention to every word and nuance, he would occasionally confer with his two attorneys when some point struck him. He was interested and unbowed, though not yet a
person
to the jurors.

Dooher leaned over to Christina and whispered, 'Wish me luck,' then placed a fraternal hand on Farrell's shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and walked around his attorney. He approached the witness box in long strides. To all appearances, he was confident, even eager – finally – to tell his story.

Farrell came forward to the center of the courtroom and walked him through the familiar territory of the early afternoon, the hors d'oeuvre, the champagne, and so on.

'And after Sheila said she was going upstairs for a nap, what did you do then?'

Dooher looked toward the jury for a minute. He didn't want to include them too often – it would appear insincere, as though he was playing for them. But he knew it wouldn't hurt – for it was only natural to acknowledge their presence. 'I moped around the house for a while, then I decided to go to the driving range. So I went out to my car…'

'Just a minute, Mark. You went out to your car. But before that, at the back door, do you remember what you did?'

'I don't remember anything specific, no.'

'And yet we've heard Mrs Matsun testify that you stopped and did something with the electric light above the door. Do you remember doing that?'

'No. There may have been cobwebs up in the light. Sometimes they gather there. I might have cleared them away, but I don't specifically remember doing anything.' A quick look towards the jury, explaining, 'I may have.'

This, of course, had been rehearsed. Dooher wasn't denying anything that Frances Matsun had testified to. He was being reasonable, telling his own truth without attacking hers. It played, as they knew it would, very well.

'Mark, your house has an alarm system, doesn't it?'

A wry shake of the head. 'Yes, it does.'

'Did you turn it on when you left the house on this day?'

These carefully prepared questions would defuse Jenkins's contentions before she could even make them. 'No. I just walked out of the house.'

'Didn't you lock the door behind you, either?'

'No.'

'Was this unusual? Why didn't you do either of these things?'

Dooher sat back a minute, phrasing his response. 'I guess the real reason is that neither of them even occurred to me.'

'Why not?'

'Well, first, it was light out. I wasn't thinking about somebody breaking in. We'd never been broken into before.'

'But you didn't lock the door?'

'I go out to work every morning and don't lock the door behind me. It wasn't like I was leaving an empty house. Sheila was there. It never occurred to me she couldn't take care of herself. We live in a safe neighborhood, or I thought we did. When I do check the locks, it's usually before turning in at night, you know, like people do.'

'What about the house alarm?'

'Sheila doesn't – didn't – like the alarm.'

'Why not?'

'Because when we first got it installed, three or four times she opened a door to walk outside to take out the garbage or whatever, and it went off, and she had some trouble overriding the turn-off switch or something – anyway, it was a hassle for her. We didn't tend to use it unless we went on vacation, or away for the weekend, something like that. I wasn't about to turn it on when she was just taking a nap upstairs. If she woke up and went out for some reason and it went off, she'd have killed me.'

Then to the driving range, where Dooher bought two buckets of balls. Yes, he remembered specifically which mat he'd hit from. He wore his most self-deprecating expression. 'I'm afraid that before all this' – an inclusive gesture indicating the world they were in – 'I used to be vain about my… about how I looked. I didn't like to appear to flounder. And this included my golf game. I didn't want people – anybody – to see me when I was working on my swing, maybe over-correcting to find out what I was doing wrong.'

'Your honor.' Jenkins was showing her impatience. 'This is all very fascinating, but it doesn't answer the question of what mat he hit his golf balls from.'

Thomasino leaned over the bench. 'Just answer the question, Mr Dooher.'

'It was the last mat, at the very end, to the left as you go out the door of the clubhouse.'

Farrell kept up the rhythm. 'And you stayed, hitting golf balls off that mat, until when?'

'I think around nine-thirty, twenty to ten.'

'Did you leave the mat at any time?'

'I went to the bathroom after the first bucket, bought a Coke in the office. Then went back out and finished hitting.'

'All right.' Farrell led them all, again, through the gruesome discovery, the emergency call, waiting for the police. It all came out, compelling and believable as he told it.

Now Farrell shifted gears. 'Mark, Lieutenant Glitsky has testified that I was present at your house when he interrogated you on the night of the murder. Why was I there?'

'I called you and you came.'

'Did I come as your lawyer, because you wanted to protect yourself from police questions? Because you knew you'd be suspected of murdering your wife?'

'No. None of that. I called you as a friend.'

'Why did you call me, who happens to be your lawyer, out of all of your friends?'

'I have known you for thirty-five years. You are my best friend. That's why I called you.'

Farrell glanced at the jury, then back to his client. 'On another topic, during your last visit to Dr Peter Harris's office, did you remove a vial of blood and take it with you?'

Dooher, still obviously amazed at the ridiculousness of the question, shook his head, looked directly at the jury for the last time. 'No. No, I did not.'

'And finally, once and for all, and remembering that you are testifying under solemn oath, would you answer this question for the jury: did you kill your wife?'

This time there were no histrionics. He sat forward, took a breath, let it out, and answered in an even, clear voice that rang through the courtroom. 'As God is my judge, I did not.'

Farrell nodded, said, 'Thank you,' and turned on his heel.

'Your witness.'

Before Jenkins got to the blow-by-blow cross-examination of Dooher's movements throughout the afternoon and evening of June 7th, she wanted to clear up one specific point.

She moved to the exhibit table and pulled two poster-size exhibits that she'd introduced as evidence during the questioning of the driving range's maintenance man. The first was a blow-up photograph of the hitting area taken from out in the middle of the range, and the other was a schematic rendering of the placement of the mats. She put both of these next to one another on an easel next to the witness chair.

'As you can see,' she said, 'these exhibits represent the layout of the driving range. Just so we're clear on where you hit your balls from, would you please point out to the jury the mat that you stood on?'

Cooperative and relaxed, Dooher did so.

'The very last mat, you're sure of that?'

'I am, yes.'

'This is the mat nearest the hole in the fence leading to the parking lot, is it not?'

'I don't know about that. I'd never noticed the hole in the fence. Although if your witness says so, I guess it's there.'

Jenkins stood unmoving in the center of the courtroom. After twenty or thirty seconds, the Judge spoke to her. 'Ms Jenkins?'

She blinked and brought her attention back from where it had been.

Her cross-examination lasted three and a half hours.

She got nothing.

'What was that all about?' Christina sat at the table in their ante-room eating from a pile of carrot and celery sticks on a paper plate while the men busied themselves with salami on sourdough rolls. 'The exact mat you hit the balls from?'

Dooher shook his head. 'I don't have any idea.'

Farrell was chewing, staring out the window. 'I don't like it. She's got something else she's not showing us.'

'You mean new evidence?' Christina couldn't envision it. 'How could that be, Wes? We've seen her discovery. We know all her witnesses. She'd have had to tell us before this.'

'Well, that would be in the rules, that's true.'

But Dooher was looking carefully at his friend. 'Anyway, Wes, what could she have?'

'I don't know. But it worries me. It's my job to worry.'

'Don't worry,' Dooher said. 'I was there at the last mat hitting golf balls and that's all there is to it.'

Farrell nodded again. 'Let's hope so.'

Glitsky thought that Richie Browne believed Dooher's story in all its detail. He was the golf pro at the range and could have been sent from Central Casting – a well-formed man, mid-thirties, in slacks and a polo shirt. He had gotten to know Dooher in the three or four months prior to the murder when the defendant started frequenting his range instead of the Olympic's.

'Sure, he was there the whole time.'

'You're sure?'

'I'm positive.'

Farrell turned and faced the jury, including them in his certainty, asking back over his shoulder, 'Were you aware of him the whole night?'

Browne took his time. 'I remember him coming in. We talked about some new clubs he was considering – he'd been working with some new graphite shafts on his woods and thought he was going to go with them, buy a whole set, so you know I was interested. We're talking a thousand bucks here, so I was paying attention.'

'And was that when he came in?'

'Yeah.'

'And did he seem anxious, nervous, keyed-up?'

'Objection! Calls for a conclusion.'

Glitsky noticed that Jenkins was forward on the last three inches of her chair, elbows on the table, fingers templed at her lips. He didn't know what had galvanized her at this late date, when to him the conclusion was all but fore-ordained, but something clearly had.

Thomasino overruled her, though.

Farrell repeated the question, and Brown told him that Dooher had been relaxed and genial. 'He talked about golf clubs. He didn't act any way.'

'And then when he went out to hit some balls. When did you see him next?'

'I don't know exactly. Fifteen, twenty minutes later. I walked out to the door with a lady customer and saw him down at the end, head down, lost in it. Whack whack whack.'

'Now, Mr Browne, Mr Dooher has testified that he came in and got a Coke about halfway through-'

'Your honor, please!' Jenkins shot up from her seat. 'Leading the witness.'

Thomasino was paying close attention. To Glitsky's surprise, he didn't rule right away, spending a moment mulling. Then, simply: 'Overruled.'

Farrell couldn't lose. He kept right at it. 'When did you see Mr Dooher next?'

'Again, I didn't notice the exact time. He came in for a Coke.' Jenkins slapped her hand on her table in frustration. 'Maybe after his first bucket.'

'Your honor, my God!' Jenkins – up again.