Key Witness (67 page)

Wyatt looked at her. She was cute—he could see boys, Marvin included, being attracted to her, despite his claim of nonattraction. She still had some baby fat on her. But her expression was closed-off and suspicious: the world was going to fuck her over, from the day she was born until the day she died; but once or twice in her lifetime she was going to have payback.

Today was going to be one of those times.

She was dressed almost in a parody of a parochial school uniform: starched white blouse, dark plain jumper over it, thin white socks, and Doc Martens. Her hair was pulled back into a twist. A small gold cross hung from her neck, small crosses were her earrings. Her makeup was minimal. She looked like a good student getting ready to go to college. The kind of girl Michaela, his daughter, would be friendly with.

She swore to tell the truth and sat down, legs primly crossed at the ankles. This girl had been coached, he knew that. The prosecutors had been working on her for days; not only her testimony, but how she handled herself. Spoke, sat, moved.

Abramowitz smiled at her from the lectern. “How are you this morning, Mavis?” she asked.

“Okay.” The girl’s voice was low. She reminded Wyatt a little of his witness, Leticia.

“Are you frightened?”

“A little.” She looked over at Marvin. Marvin was staring at the notepad in front of him.

Abramowitz looked at the defense table also. Then she turned back to her witness. “You don’t have to be,” she assured the girl. “No one is going to hurt you. No one in this courtroom,” she added pointedly, glancing in Marvin’s direction again.

The jury followed her look. Wyatt shifted his body in an attempt to block their view of his client, but it didn’t help.

“You know the defendant, don’t you, Mavis?” Abramowitz asked her.

“Yeah.” The girl nodded her head.

“How long have you known him?”

“ ’Bout three and a half years. Since my fam’ly moved into Sullivan Houses. We got thrown out of our apartment on account of my daddy got sick and couldn’t work no more so we had to move into the project.”

“This was a few months before the … incident?”

The girl nodded again. “Yeah.”

“And shortly after you moved there, you met Marvin White?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you friendly with Marvin?”

Mavis looked down. Even though she was dark complexioned, it was clear that she was blushing. “Kind of,” she said softly.

“Did you have a crush on him?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Many of the girls in your neighborhood had crushes on Marvin, didn’t they?”

The girl gave an “I don’t know” shrug.

“He’s big, handsome. I can understand a girl your age having a crush on a boy that looks like that,” Abramowitz said empathetically. “When I was a girl your age I had crushes on boys that didn’t know I existed.”

The girl looked up at her. A kindred spirit.

Wyatt wanted to puke, watching this bullshit. He wasn’t going to tolerate much of this crap; he was in a lousy mood to begin with, this faux-girlie-girlie sympathy shtick was annoying in the extreme.

“A lot of the girls liked him,” Mavis admitted.

“Including you,” Abramowitz prompted.

The girl looked down again. “Yeah. I liked him.”

“So when he finally paid you attention you were excited, weren’t you?”

Softly: “Yeah.”

“Would you tell the jury what happened the night … that night?” Abramowitz asked. “Take your time,” she said protectively.

The girl squirmed in her chair to get a comfortable position, then sat up straight. Her hands were folded in her lap. “He said he’d been checking me out,” she began. She looked in Marvin’s direction. Startled, he looked away.

Abramowitz watched the byplay between the two. “All right. Marvin White said he’d been checking you out.”

The girl nodded. “He told me he thought I was really bitchin’.”

“Bitchin’? Does that mean pretty?”

The girl tittered. “Yeah,” she said. “Kind of.”

“Go ahead.”

“So he said, ‘You want to go up on the roof?’ And I said, ‘Well, all right, but don’t be tellin’ no one, I don’t want my mama to know.’ ’Cause my mama, she’s real strict, she don’t want me truckin’ with no boys from the projects where we live at, she been wanting me to finish high school and stuff. To better myself. She thought the boys in Sullivan Houses was trash. Trash. She was hoping my daddy’d get better so he could get another job and we could move out of there.”

“So did you? Go up on the roof?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you expect was going to happen up there on the roof, Mavis?” Abramowitz asked. “Didn’t Marvin have a reputation in Sullivan Houses as being a ladies’ man?”

“I guess,” the girl said. “I hadn’t been livin’ there all that long. I just knew he was real cute.”

Sitting next to Wyatt, Marvin put his head down and groaned. Wyatt poked him in the ribs, under the table. “Sit up,” he hissed. “Keep your eyes up. The jury’s watching you.”

Marvin sat up. “Keep yourself steady,” Wyatt whispered at him. “The jury’s watching how you react to this.”

Marvin nodded glumly, but sat up straight.

“See, the thing was,” Mavis continued, “I hadn’t never been with no boy before.”

Abramowitz folded her arms across her breast. “Are you telling us you were a virgin on the night you went up on the roof with Marvin White?”

The girl looked down. “Yeah,” she muttered.

Wyatt didn’t have to look at the jury to know they were taking notes.

Abramowitz handed the girl a cup of water. Mavis drank it in one gulp. She set it down.

“All right,” Abramowitz said. “Go ahead.”

“There was this beat-up old couch up there that people used when they went up there, and we sat down on it and started kissing and stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“He put his hand on my titty, that kind of thing. On top of my dress,” she added hastily, “and I had a bra on.”

They’d told her to say “titty” when they’d prepped her, Wyatt knew. Don’t say “breast.” You’re from the street, talk like it. People will believe you more.

“And then what?” Abramowitz asked.

“He said he was gonna …” She stopped.

“Gonna what? Going to what, Mavis?”

“He said he was gonna fuck me.”

Wyatt couldn’t help but look at the jury now. Most of the women were looking grim.

The women were going to decide this, he knew. The men were along for the ride.

“What did you do?”

“I told him no. That I didn’t go all the way. That I never had, and I wasn’t going to then, not the first time I’d been with him.”

“Then what happened?”

The girl looked over at Marvin. “He pulled out a knife,” she said. “He tol’ me if I didn’t let him fuck me he’d jam it down my throat.”

Abramowitz crossed to the prosecution table and removed a pair of latex gloves from a package. Windsor helped her slip them on. She then picked up a manila envelope and brought it forward with her, opening it and removing the contents.

A Swiss Army knife slid out of the envelope. With some difficulty Abramowitz tried to open the largest blade. Smiling up at Judge Grant, she said, “I have to apologize for my clumsiness, Your Honor. I don’t handle knives like this very often, and these gloves are slippery.”

“Take your time,” Grant allowed.

She got the blade open. Holding it up, she walked to within a few feet of Mavis sitting in the witness chair. “Did the knife he pulled out that night look like this knife?” she asked.

The girl looked at the knife for but a second before she answered, “Yes.”

“I’d like to introduce this into the record,” Abramowitz said. “This is the knife that was on Marvin White’s person on the night he was arrested.”

“Without objection, so ordered,” Grant said.

“Wait a minute, Your Honor,” Wyatt stood up. “I have an objection.”

“What is it?” Grant asked.

“The inference being made here is that this knife is the same knife that the witness claims was used. Aside from the fact that we haven’t established that any knife was used on her, there’s no way that this one could in any way be assumed to be a knife Marvin White might have carried on him three years ago.”

“We’re not saying this is the same knife,” Abramowitz retorted. “All we’re saying is that it is similar to the one this witness claims was used against her by the defendant.”

“But there is absolutely no proof that any kind of knife was ever used against this witness,” Wyatt answered hotly. “That’s my point. By coming in here and making an unproven allegation and then using evidence that has no connection to that allegation you’re casting improper aspersions on my client. The only ‘fact’ not in dispute here is that on the night my client was arrested—not on these charges, I should point out, but on a completely different case that was resolved prior to trial—he had a knife. Which was not the knife used in any of the murders that this case is supposed to be about. Dr. Ayala has already gone over that issue to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Grant pondered the question for a moment. “I’m going to allow this knife to be admitted as an exhibit,” he decided, “but only as a piece of evidence that the defendant was holding on the night he was admitted into custody in the jail.” He turned to the jury. “You are to draw no inference that this knife was used in any way against this witness,” he instructed them. “Please continue,” he told Abramowitz.

“After he pulled the knife, did he rape you?”

“Objection. Leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

“After he pulled the knife, what did he do?”

In a whisper, the girl said, “He raped me.”

Abramowitz led her through the rest of her story. How he had raped her and forced her to give him a blow job. How her mother had discovered her bleeding, taken her to the hospital, wrung her confession from her.

“Just before Marvin White was set to go on trial for raping you and threatening to kill you, you withdrew from the case,” Abramowitz said, picking up the thread. “You wouldn’t testify, so the case had to be dropped. Why didn’t you testify, Mavis?”

“Because they tol’ me they’d kill me if I did.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Friends of Marvin,”

“Objection!” Wyatt couldn’t keep his cool. “This is absolutely improper, Your Honor. There is no foundation whatsoever for this testimony.”

“Sustained,” Grant said immediately. He looked sternly at Abramowitz. “You’re not going anywhere with this. Do we understand each other.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said. “I understand you.”

Grant turned to the jury. “You will disregard any references to why this defendant did not testify in that case,” he instructed them.

“No further questions,” Abramowitz said.

Josephine had been sleuthing. Wyatt looked over the information she’d discovered during the break.

“Good work,” he complimented her.

“I hope it’s strong enough,” she fretted.

“It’s what we have, so we’ll go with it.”

“So, Mavis.” Wyatt smiled at the girl. “Is Mavis all right, or would you prefer I call you Ms. Jones?”

“Mavis is fine,” the girl muttered.

“Mavis. Good.” He squared up his notes. “Let’s talk about this alleged rape you say happened three years ago, shall we?” He leaned on his elbows, affecting casualness. “You had been living in Sullivan Houses for only a few months when you went up on the roof with Marvin White. Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the girl said.

“You didn’t know anybody there very well, did you?”

The girl shook her head. “No.”

“You hadn’t been going to school with them, hanging out with them, anything like that.”

“No,” again.

“And you had never spent any time with Marvin, had you? Maybe saying hello in passing, but no time alone, just the two of you. Is that right?”

She nodded.

“You’ll have to answer for the record,” Judge Grant instructed her. “You can’t shake your head or use body language. Was the answer to that last question yes?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding again. “Tha’s right.”

“So you only knew him by sight.”

“Yeah.”

“And reputation.”

The girl looked at him quizzically.

“You heard things about him.”

“Yeah.”

“From other girls.”

“Yeah”

“What did the girls you talked to say about Marvin?”

“That he was …” She stopped.

“That he was what?”

“Stud.”

“A stud? What does that mean?”

“That he liked girls.”

“He liked girls.” He smiled. “That sounds like most fifteen-year-old boys I know. Did the girls like him back?”

“Most of ’em.” She was talking very quietly, almost in a whisper.

“You’ll have to speak up,” Grant admonished her gently. “Everyone has to be able to hear you.”

She looked at him with fright in her eyes.

“Did the other girls in Sullivan Houses like Marvin?” Wyatt asked again.

“Yeah. They liked him.”

“Had some of them gone up to the roof with him? That you knew of?”

“Yeah,” she answered.

“Did they tell you what they did up there?”

She looked over at Abramowitz, her eyes widening with apprehension.

A deer caught in the headlights, he thought. They’re using you, you poor thing. Don’t you know that?

“Answer the question, please,” Grant instructed her.

She licked her lips. “Yeah.”

“They told you,” Wyatt said. “What did they tell you?”

“They did stuff.”

“Stuff? Does that mean they had sex with him?”

She looked down at her shoes. “Yeah,” she answered.

“The girls that went up on the roof with Marvin had sex with him. They told you that.”

“Yeah.”

“So when he asked you to go up on the roof with him, what did you think was going to happen?”

She answered plaintively. “I didn’t know.”

“You knew that when the other girls, the girls you’d talked to about it, when they went up on the roof with Marvin it was to have sex. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.”

“If Marvin asked a girl to go up on the roof with him, and she said yes, he expected her to have sex with him. He knew that she knew that was the reason, and he expected it.”