Key Witness (70 page)

“So Marvin White walked into your store at ten-twenty-five at night. These tapes confirm that. Now let me ask you another question about these tapes, Mr. Kwon. You have a camera in your store that recorded these tapes, is that correct?”

The man stared at him. “Yes.”

“The camera is in operation whenever your store is open, is that also correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your store hours are six in the morning until midnight, seven days a week?”

“Yes,” again.

“So eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, this camera is operating and recording tapes, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is that in case a crime is committed? So you would have a record?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt walked back to the defense table, looked at whatever lay on top without reading it, then walked back to the defendant, standing between him and the television set. “If the point of having this camera and recording on these tapes is to document a crime in your store, why do you keep the tapes? You don’t recycle the same tape,” he said, “you store them. Two weeks at a time. Why do you keep those tapes, if there’s nothing on them?”

The shop owner stared at him without answering.

“And the camera,” Wyatt continued, not waiting for an answer. “It’s hidden from the public’s view, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t the point of having a camera recording the activities in the store to
deter
a crime? It’s standard procedure when you go into a store, or a bank, or whatever, to see signs posted saying ‘This store is under video surveillance.’ The point is to deter crime, not to have a record after the fact, isn’t it?”

Another reluctant “Yes.”

“But your camera is hidden, and there are no signs stating that your premises are under surveillance.” He turned to the jury. “That’s because you don’t want people to know there’s a camera there. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kwon?”

The shop owner sat motionless.

“Which brings me back to the question of why someone who had just raped and murdered a woman, who was already the subject of a massive manhunt because he had already raped, sodomized, and murdered six times, would risk robbing your store. If he had done what he is alleged to have done, wouldn’t he get away from there as quickly as possible?” He paused. “Unless there was a lot more cash in that store than your normal little corner grocery should have.”

“Objection!” Abramowitz yelled. “This is irrelevant and immaterial.”

“Isn’t the real reason Marvin tried to rob your store because it’s a numbers drop for the Thai Mafia?” Wyatt shot at the witness, his face inches from the Korean’s. “That he’d been scoping it out and knew that you were holding over twenty thousand dollars? Isn’t that the reason he tried to rob you?” he thundered.

The storekeeper seemed to be trying to shrink into the back of the chair.

“And isn’t that the real reason your store’s activities are recorded and the tapes kept? So that your bosses can make sure
you
aren’t skimming their profits? The tapes aren’t to catch criminals, are they! They’re an eye on
you,
to make sure you don’t rob them of their illegal gains. Why don’t we play the tapes of you handing off twenty thousand dollars to your bagman, to keep all this in proper perspective?”

“Objection!” Abramowitz was screaming, running around the front of her table and rushing up to the bench.

“Sustained!” Judge Grant’s gavel resounded in the vaulted chamber. “The jury will disregard that last line of questioning! Whatever business is transpiring in that store, legal or not, is not germane to our purpose.” He stared down at Wyatt. “You are crossing the line of propriety,” he admonished Wyatt. “If you don’t moderate your behavior you may not be trying your case much longer.”

Wyatt stared back at him. “Sorry,” he bit off. He pushed the power button on the tape player. The television set went blank. “No further questions.”

H
E WENT HOME FOR
the weekend, taking his files with him in five large boxes. They were spread out all over his dining-room table. It felt good to be home, in his own space. The lawn, front and back, was lush and green, and all the trees and bushes were in full summer bloom. He ran both Saturday and Sunday mornings, long, slow, cleansing runs. And he played his trombone. He brought it into the house and set it on its stand in the corner of the dining room. Whenever he felt like taking a break from reviewing the work in front of him he picked it up and blew a few tunes, or just notes.

The house felt empty. He missed his family life, Michaela especially. She was going to be out of their lives soon, away to college. Every minute he could have with her between now and then, he wanted.

But he couldn’t have that. Not now. Coming up were the prosecutor’s biggest guns. Violet Waleska, the woman who saw Marvin in the parking lot where the murder had been committed; and Dwayne Thompson, the state’s key witness, the master informant who had heard the confession of a mass murderer.

And there was that secret between Violet and Dwayne. It would have blown a hole in the state’s case an 18-wheeler could drive through, maybe even gotten the case thrown out. Violet and Dwayne, sister and brother. Only they knew, and they would never tell. The prosecution didn’t know; they would have had to disclose the information. How sweet it would have been to throw that one in Abramowitz’s and Pagano’s faces.

But he couldn’t; not now. He had compromised his professionalism and worse, much worse—he had compromised his ability to successfully defend his client.

He had tried to rationalize to himself that it didn’t matter—that they hadn’t collaborated, exchanged information. Violet had only seen him the one time, long after she and Dwayne both had told their stories. And he wanted to use her testimony to bolster his own case, to debunk the prosecution’s timetable.

All that was true, and it was all bullshit.

Anyway, that they had made love to each other was secondary. What mattered was that she had told him of the relationship voluntarily—a woman pouring her heart out to a man she didn’t even know and yet seemed to care about in some deep, unfathomable way. He could no more have exposed her after that confession than he could quit the case.

He prided himself on being a tough hombre, and he was—you don’t get to the position he was in without making hard choices and leaving some bodies in your wake. But everyone has to draw his line in the sand somewhere, and he drew his with Violet Waleska.

Dwayne was a different story, in its particular way even more complicated than his convoluted relationship with Violet. How was he going to break this bastard down and catch him up in a lie, something that would unravel the state’s entire case?

These thoughts recurred in his mind all weekend. He ran, he played the trombone, and he studied. He also talked to his wife and child. Michaela’s leg was steadily getting stronger, Moira informed him, and so was the bond between them. The shooting had been an accident. Moira didn’t secretly hate her, nor was she subconsciously acting out some dark revenge fantasy against him. Sometimes there aren’t ulterior motives—sometimes there are only accidents.

“I’ll call you whenever,” he said as they signed off with each other. “It’s hectic.”

“We’ll be here. We aren’t going anywhere.”

V
IOLET SAT UP STRAIGHT
in the witness chair, one leg demurely crossed over the other, hands folded in her lap. She was wearing a dark blue cotton dress that broke over her knees. Her stockings were sheer, her shoes low-heeled bone pumps. No jewelry, no makeup save for a slight touch of pale lip gloss. Her thick brown hair was pulled back into a loose bun.

He could sense from where he sat, twenty-five feet away, that she was tense. He had watched her walk up and take the stand, swear to tell the truth, arrange herself in the chair. She hadn’t wanted to look at him—he could feel that vibration humming across the distance between them. When she finally had, and their eyes locked for a split second, it was as if an electrical impulse passed between them. She had quickly looked away, and hadn’t looked in his direction since.

He was glad he wasn’t cross-examining her yet. He needed a few minutes after seeing her for the first time since that night to get his equilibrium rebalanced to a more even, manageable keel.

“The man you identified as being in the parking lot outside the nightclub on the night Paula Briggs was raped and murdered,” Abramowitz said. “Is that man in the courtroom today?”

“Yes,” Violet answered.

“Would you point him out for the jury, please?”

Violet looked to the defense table. “He is sitting at the defense table.”

Everyone was looking at Marvin.

“Deep breaths,” Wyatt counseled him. “Stay calm.”

Abramowitz milked the moment. Then she took up her questioning again. “Describe for the court, please, the circumstances under which you saw the defendant.”

Violet nodded. “I had to go out to my car,” she began. “My time of the month had started unexpectedly and I didn’t have any Tampax in my purse. There was a box in my trunk, so I went out to get it.”

She told the story as it had happened, simply, without embellishment or histrionics. That upon approaching the car she had seen a young black man looking in the rear window, as if trying to see whether the car was unlocked. Her first thought had been that he was preparing to rob her, so she had called out to him to move away from the car.

“Did you think that was dangerous?” Abramowitz asked. “Challenging someone at night, alone, who you thought might rob you?”

“No. I didn’t think of that. I wanted him to move away from my car.”

Abramowitz frowned—that wasn’t the answer she had wanted. “You didn’t feel any fear?” she asked.

“Not when I yelled at him. Not at first,” she added.

“What about when you approached him? Were you at all afraid then?”

Violet thought for a moment, recalling the event. “As I ran toward him I did for a brief moment, I guess,” she said. “But I was more concerned about him breaking in than I was afraid. It was a public parking lot,” she added, “there were people out there. I wasn’t alone.”

Wyatt made a note. That had been a mistake on Abramowitz’s part—he could see the chagrin in her body language. He could, and would, use that.

Violet went on, explaining how she had gone right up to the car, so that she and the defendant were close to each other, staring at each other.

“How close were you to each other?” Abramowitz asked.

“Ten to fifteen feet. No more.”

“And you looked at him? You got a good look at him?”

“He turned and looked right at me. He stared right at me for a good five seconds.”

“Were you at all afraid then?” Abramowitz asked.

“A little,” Violet admitted.

“But you stared back at him for at least five seconds.”

“Yes.”

“What were you thinking, looking at him?”

“His eyes looked like they were blank; devoid of feeling. So that scared me. He looked like he wasn’t feeling anything.”

“He had a frightening look?”

“Yes. Not like he was crazy, or out of control. More the opposite, that he operated without feeling.”

“Objection,” Wyatt had to speak up.

Involuntarily, she looked over at him. He turned away, looking at Judge Grant.

“Prosecutor is asking the witness to draw conclusions rather than state facts. Your Honor,” he said, explaining the objection.

“Sustained,” Grant agreed. “Let’s stick to verifiable and observed facts, please.”

Abramowitz nodded. “How much time elapsed between the time you went out to your car and saw the defendant, and the time that Paula Briggs went out to the parking lot?”

“Less than five minutes.”

“And how much more time passed before you and Peggy Knox realized Ms. Briggs hadn’t come back inside?”

“Between twenty and thirty minutes.”

“Where were you during that time?”

“On the dance floor. We both were. We dance with each other—the fast ones,” she added with some embarrassment. “We dance with men, too, of course, but we don’t go out looking to get picked up.”

“When you noticed she wasn’t there, what was your reaction?” Abramowitz asked her next.

“We were … I don’t know if worried is the right word. Concerned would be better.”

“Why were you concerned?”

“Because she wasn’t there, of course. I did flash on that kid … man … I had seen by my car.”

“The defendant.”

“Yes.”

“You thought he might have done something to her?”

“It wasn’t that rational. I just remembered him.”

“What did you do?”

“We went out to look for her.”

“Did you find her?”

“No.” Violet looked down. “We didn’t find her.”

The court recessed for fifteen minutes. When they came back, it was Wyatt’s turn. He wasn’t looking forward to it—he’d had butterflies in his stomach the entire break.

Violet looked pale. He wanted to protect her—but he had a client to defend.

He questioned her from the lectern—he wasn’t going to get any closer to her than he had to. “Ms. Waleska,” he started off. “You identified my client from a police lineup, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“They called you and told you they had a suspect and would you come down and see if you could identify him?”

She thought for a minute. “Not in so many words,” she answered, trying to recall the exact conversation she’d had with Detective Pulaski, “but that was the gist of it, yes.”

“Okay.” He glanced at his notes. “You had previously told the detective who interviewed you”—he looked at his notes again—“Detective Pulaski. You told him that the man you saw outside the club that night by your car was African American, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did the police present a lineup of black men?” he asked. “Only black men?”

“Yes,” she said, remembering. “There were three groups. He was in the third group.”

This was going nowhere. The lineup had been conducted legitimately. He changed tactics. “Let’s get back to the night you were at the club. You went out to your car right after the band took a break?”

“Yes. They were just leaving the stand.”