Invasion of Privacy (35 page)

36

THE COURTROOM BECAME NINA’S WORLD AGAIN. The eyes of some of the woman jurors seemed permanently stuck on Kurt.

On Tuesday, Terry’s letter to Kurt, found in his Wiesbaden apartment and dated 1990, was introduced. As it circulated, Nina reread her own copy:

Dear Cowardly Lion, A little elf told me you were in London and I came to visit. But you had run away again, and I have to go home. So maybe you will get this, maybe you won’t.

I’m going to find you someday. It’s not right for you to be enjoying your life while I suffer. You made me this way. I think about you every day. I remember your lies about loving me, and what you made me do. You have to be punished, if there is any justice in this world.

Do you really think I can stop now? Or ever? I’m the kind of woman who only loves once.

Kurt—how long can you run? I am steadfast. I am stronger than you. I am your Wife, Kurt. I have my rights, do you understand?

The note was signed "Terry."

Collier followed that letter with Kurt’s response, which Terry had kept, in which he told Terry he would make her sorry if she kept up the harassment— and she knew exactly what he meant.

On Wednesday, Collier brought in Jason Joyce, the South Lake Tahoe patrolman who had pulled Kurt over at dawn. Officer Joyce wore his bristly brown hair very short. He sat at attention like an army recruit.

"He was weaving back and forth across the center line on Pioneer Trail," he said in answer to Collier’s question, consulting his notes. "This was at five-forty in the morning. I drove up alongside him. His head was hanging like he was very tired or sick. When he saw me, he looked scared. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, either.

"I pulled him over on the shoulder just past Jicarillo. I asked him to get out his driver’s license, and there was blood on his hand, running down from his sleeve. I held my flashlight on him and had him get out and lean against the car. There was a lot of what looked like dried blood on his clothes, down the left side. I said, ’What is that?’ He answered, ’Blood.’ I said, ’You hurt?’ He nodded, so I said, ’You been in a fight?’ And he answered, ’A shooting. She’s been shot.’ "

"He said those words? ’She’s been shot?’ " Collier said, raising his eyebrows at the jury to register the importance of this statement.

"Yes, that’s the note I made here."

"What happened at that point?"

"I called for backup and an ambulance, and he was checked into Boulder Hospital at six-twelve. He’d been shot in the left arm, a soft-tissue wound. He told me on the way in where this woman lived. He said he’d been driving around for the whole night, parked somewhere and went to sleep for a while, and had decided to go to the police station and report it and get some medical attention, when I pulled him over."

"What did you do next?" Collier said.

"Officer Booth and I went to the address and we went directly to the studio next to the main house."

"Why did you do that?

"Two reasons. There were dark-colored droplets on the path to the studio. And the door was wide open. The temperature was in the forties. If anyone was in there she was in trouble. So we announced ourselves at the doorway. It was dark inside but I could see a lot of equipment. Then I saw what looked like the butt of a rifle. We pulled our weapons and went in."

"What did you find inside?"

"Female lying on the floor about ten feet in from the entrance. She wasn’t breathing. The body was covered with blood that had partially dried and was stiff and cold. I called for another ambulance, but it was clear to me she was dead."

Joyce continued with the long story outlined in detail in the police reports: the Remington on the floor beside Terry, the signs of struggle, the video camera propped between her legs. A homicide investigation team, which consisted of a photographer, two criminalists, and a detective, Lieutenant Julian Oskel, had arrived within an hour and started their work.

"What did you do at that point?"

"I returned to the station and worked on my report."

"Thank you, Officer Joyce. Your witness."

Nina took the patrolman back over his conversation with Kurt.

"No tape was made of these statements?" she asked.

"No. I filmed the stop from the recorder in my vehicle. That’s standard procedure. The sound was out."

"Let’s see that film," Nina said. Once again the courtroom lights went down. They watched the film, Joyce pulling Kurt over, walking over to the car with his flashlight, Kurt opening the car door and leaning over the hood. On a crystal clear Tahoe morning, with the camera carefully set to capture anyone in the car in front, Kurt’s unmistakable face turned toward the camera, talking earnestly.

"Stop right there," Nina said. "What exactly did he say at that point?"

"Okay," Joyce said patiently. "This is according to my notes. I said, ’What is that?’ He answered, ’Blood.’ I said, ’You hurt?’ He nodded, so I said, ’You been in a fight?’ And he answered, ’A shooting. She’s been shot.’ "

"Do you have any independent recollection of what he said? Without your notes?"

"Vague. It was several months ago. I rely on my notes."

"And what is the precise time that these notes were made?"

"It says right here, at the top, 0730 hours. Seven-thirty A.M."

"And what time, again, did the defendant actually say these words?"

"That would have been—you can see the time on the film tape on the frame where you’ve stopped it. 0544 hours."

"Did you discuss the defendant’s exact words with anyone prior to making those notes?"

"The exact words? No."

"So between the time the statements were made and the time you made your notes one hour and forty-six minutes intervened?"

"Yes."

"And during this time you were involved in the grisly discovery of a body covered with blood, with all that entailed."

"Yes."

"Isn’t it possible you forgot the exact words the defendant said during that intervening period?"

"No. I’m trained to retain things like that."

"Your memory has been trained to recall the exact words of statements that have been made to you."

"Yes." The young patrolman looked at her with a self-satisfied smile. He knew all he had to do was hold the line. "She’s been shot." It was almost as good as a confession.

"Well, then, let’s just test your short-term memory, shall we?" Nina said. Officer Joyce’s smile faded fast. "Here’s the test: What is the question I asked you three questions ago?" Nina said.

"Objection. Not a proper test, Your Honor."

Up to the sidebar they went. In the witness box, Officer Joyce’s face was screwed up in concentration, using the extra minutes Collier had gotten for him. "So what’s the problem with it?" Milne asked Collier. Collier repeated that it was unfair and made his argument, while Joyce thought. Milne noticed Collier looking at the witness, and, observing his expression, said brusquely, "Overruled."

Back at the counsel table, Nina said, "Your response, Officer?"

"I don’t know what you mean. Three questions ago, what does that mean?"

"I’ll even start out the question for you. ’And during this time ...’ "

"And during this time ... you were involved with discovering the body and all that ..." Officer Joyce said tentatively.

"That’s what you remember?"

"It’s hard to remember exactly. I mean, it’s very stressful, being here in court."

"And it’s not stressful pulling a man over who’s got blood all over his clothes and finding a shooting victim?"

Officer Joyce had no answer for that one.

"Request that the question beginning ’And during this time...’ be read back, Your Honor."

The court stenographer took a moment, then read: " ’And during this time you were involved in the grisly discovery of a body covered with blood, with all that entailed.’ "

"Right," Officer Joyce said. "I had most of it."

"I submit that you weren’t even close to the exact words, Officer. How much time elapsed between my asking that question and your attempt to repeat it?"

"Three or four minutes," the young patrolman said, slouching in his seat.

"That’s all. Thank you," Nina said. She looked over at the jury. They were sitting up as straight as Officer Joyce had, starting out. Good. Wake ’em up. Down with predictable endings.

"State your full name," Collier said from his counsel table. It was Thursday morning, and the case against Kurt was in full swing. It would be a hot day, and the air-conditioning had quit.

"Willie Gershwin Evans. Call me Willie, please."

The lip-reader who had made the transcript of the death video had taken the stand. In his seventies, an upright, healthy-looking man who obviously took his vitamins, he wore rimless glasses and a starched white shirt and striped tie.

"Where are you employed?"

"I’m retired now, but until then, I was a benefits worker for the health department out of Placerville." He spoke clearly, though his voice had a hollow tone, as though produced from an unusual place.

"Have you served as a lip-reading expert on behalf of the county on any other occasions?"

"Oh, many times, over forty years. I helped hearing-impaired people fill out applications for benefits. In court, I spoke for witnesses who use American Sign Language. I’m good at that, and lip-reading helps with sign language. I helped the police, too, when they were watching people through windows and needed to know what they were saying."

"Are you yourself hearing-impaired?"

"I used to be. Back in the days when they called people like me just plain ’deaf.’ Diphtheria when I was a child. I couldn’t hear again until I was thirty-eight. And then my wife got me tested at Stanford, and lo and behold, they thought they could operate and fix my hearing. They got me up to seventy-eight percent. My hearing aid fixed the rest. But they couldn’t help my wife, so I stayed up on American Sign Language and the lip-reading."

"And do you consider yourself an expert in the area of reading lips?"

"I do it better than anyone I’ve met," the old man said confidently.

Collier said, "Request that this witness be qualified as an expert in the area of lip-reading."

"Ms. Reilly?"

Nina thought. She could make a big deal out of Evans’s competence, or she could try to turn his testimony to her own ends. She decided not to quibble. "No objection, Your Honor," she said.

Collier said, "I’d like you to demonstrate for us how you read lips. I’m going to write down a sentence and read it without sound to you, and you tell me what I’ve said, if you will. I will represent to the court and counsel that I have not rehearsed any of this with the witness. That’s true, isn’t it?"

"All you said was, you might give me a little test," the witness said, nodding. Collier thought a moment, wrote something down, and handed the paper to Milne. Then he stepped up close to the witness and said, "Ready?"

"Go ahead."

Collier mouthed some words at the witness.

"Do it again," the witness said.

As soon as Collier’s mouth closed, the witness said, "Got it now. You said, ’The price of eggs has gone up to forty-nine cents a dozen.’ When’s the last time you shopped for eggs, sir?"

The spectators laughed, and Collier smiled and retrieved his paper from the judge. He gave it to Nina to read at her seat, then said, "May I show the jury?"

"No objection," Nina said. The paper went around. The witness had it word for word. Collier walked over to the clerk and picked up some exhibits.

"Now, on March thirty-first of this year were you asked to perform lip-reading services for the South Lake Tahoe Police Department in connection with an ongoing investigation into the death of Theresa London?"

"I was."

"Describe the services you were asked to perform."

"They had a videotape of the, uh, deceased lady. She’d been shot, and couldn’t speak, but she was moving her mouth like she was talking. So they wanted me to see if she was saying anything."

"And did you review the tape, which has been previously admitted as People’s Exhibit 45?" The witness looked at the tape offered by Collier and said, "Sure did. When I was done, I put my name on it, right here on the label. And the date."

"Where were you at the time you viewed the tape?"

"In the conference room at your office. An officer ran the tape and when we were done he rewound it and put it back in the box."

"Were you at any time left alone with it?"

"Nope."

"What happened then?"

"I wrote down what she said, leaving blanks where I wasn’t sure. Your secretary typed it up and I made sure the typed statement was exactly the same as mine. Then I signed it."

"And is this document, marked as People’s Exhibit 46, the original handwritten notes you made?"

The witness bent his head down, examined the paper closely. "That’s it."

"And is this typewritten document, marked as People’s Exhibit 47, the document the secretary typed up, which you signed?"

He made the same close examination. "That’s right."

"Request that People’s 46 and 47 be admitted into evidence," Collier said.