Key Witness (75 page)

“Don’t be. Go out and do something. Have fun, put your brain on hold. It needs the rest. We all do.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“I’m going to do some running, play my trombone, read magazines, watch television, talk to my family, and sleep. I’m not going to worry this case to death. I’m as prepared as I can be, so that’s it. The rest is in the hands of the gods.”

A
BRAMOWITZ AND WINDSOR HAD
grilled Dwayne intensely after he left the stand, going over what had transpired, Abramowitz asking him over and over again if he’d had access to a computer. As many times as she asked him he swore up and down to her that he didn’t, and she finally quit beating him up about it. But he could see the suspicion in her eyes.

“I don’t want a bomb dropped on me,” she warned him strongly. “If there’s something I don’t know about, you’d better tell me. I can protect you if I know everything, but not if I’m caught unawares.”

Dwayne Thompson made her skin crawl, almost literally. Every time she had to come down to see him it would take her an hour to psychologically gird herself for the encounter. She never wore a dress cut above the knees when she came to see him, preferring slacks whenever possible. She would strip her face of almost all makeup, and would wear her hair pinned back as severely and matronly as she could. She knew he regarded her with pure lasciviousness, mentally fucking her every single moment they were together. She refused to look at him anywhere below the belt, although he tried various guises to pull her look downward, to his scrotum.

Despite these defensive measures, she could feel his sexual agitation building over the course of each interview, to the point that by the time she left—as soon as possible—his pale skin would be flushed. Sometimes he would brazenly rub his hand against his crotch as he stared at her with fierce intent.

Fleetingly she would regret that she’d campaigned so hard for this assignment. Helena knew of women who had succumbed to the dark charms of inmates. Some had even gone so far as to have sex with them, smuggled in drugs, money, tried to help them escape. She knew of women who gave up their lives for men who were worthless and were only using them.

She had to keep the prize in focus. The end would justify the means. When this trial was over, and Marvin White was on his way to death row, she would be set up professionally for the rest of her life.

But she felt sick to her stomach when the persistent memory of her last private session with this snake insinuated itself into her consciousness, despite her struggles to forget it. It was a nightmare that loomed when she least expected it, and was emotionally and psychologically vulnerable.

He had asked for some expensive clothes to wear while he was on the stand, so he’d look good for the cameras. She had refused him—it wasn’t in the budget, and wearing an expensive suit would look suspicious. He had stared at her with hooded eyes, his tongue a sliver out the side of his thin lips, for all the world looking like a cunning cobra. “In case you’ve forgotten,” he reminded her, “I am your case.”

“And without me,” she countered, “you’re going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.” She wanted to add “so screw you,” but she couldn’t. He was their witness, their linchpin, and no matter how much she hated him personally, she had to maintain their relationship.

At his request they moved him before he testified. To prevent contamination, and to protect him. Now that he was actually going to testify, he could be the target of any number of crazy cons who didn’t like snitches. He was being held in a single cell on a high-intensity floor, similar to the one they had Marvin on. Him, a few other prisoners, and beaucoup guards. Here were housed men who, for one reason or another, couldn’t be placed in the general population—men with threats on their lives, psychotics, men who were unpredictably violent. There were two hermaphrodites who had no other place to be. And then there were men like Dwayne.

In addition, Dwayne’s work detail in the infirmary had been curtailed. The political fallout was too risky. Letting an inmate, particularly one with his background, have that kind of free run was no longer an acceptable risk, regardless of his desires or demands.

Dwayne told Abramowitz why he wanted to move. “There’s a guy they brought in recently. An old-timer like myself, I knew him up at Durban. We were in some group-therapy sessions together. It can get pretty heavy in those sessions. He knows some of my dark side,” he added cryptically.

“What does he know about you?” she asked suspiciously.

“How I get men to confess their sins to me.”

“And how is that?” she parried.

“With a little help from my friends,” he sang-sung.

She stared at him across the table. I didn’t hear you say that. “Are you insinuating …” Where was this going?

“My friends help me, I help my friends,” he answered. “I’m helping you, so you must be my friend. So if you’re my friend, then I must be your friend.” He smiled his snakeskin smile. “Are you my friend, Ms. Abramowitz?” He drawled out the “Ms.”

Her nostrils winged. “Our relationship is not about friendship. It’s about—”

“Mutual advantage?” he finished for her.

“If I get a conviction of a guilty man and in doing that you get a benefit, then we would both come out ahead, yes.” Her leg was vibrating under the table. She pushed down on her knee to still it.

He stared at her. “ ‘A guilty man’? You want the conviction, lady. The jury will do the guilty bit. Your job is to get a conviction.”

She stared at him. “I wouldn’t want to be a party to convicting an innocent man,” she said carefully. “If I knew for sure he was innocent.”

“You wouldn’t, huh? Who anointed you Diogenes?”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“If all of a sudden some angel came down from on high and whispered in your ear,” he persisted, “which happens to be very lovely and sexy, lady prosecutor …”

She felt herself flushing. A wave of hatred for him washed over her. Don’t let him get to you, she berated herself. That’s what he does.

“… that little ol’ Marvin White was being railroaded, that he was actually an innocent babe, you’d tell the world that and walk away from this case?”

Helena began to answer him; then she checked himself. He’s trying to suck you in. Don’t let him.

He shook his head. “No way in hell. You’ve got to have this conviction. Your boss has to have this conviction. A million people in this city have to have this conviction. And I want my freedom. And they’re all wrapped together in a tight, tight knot that can’t be cut, not with a sword, not with a pang of conscience.”

He leaned in close. His breath was sour gossamer. “I am Satan walking the earth,” he announced melodramatically. “And you, Helena—I’m going to call you by your first name from now on, because you and I are soulmates—you are Faust. And we both have to uphold our end of the bargain.” He paused, enjoying his hegemony over her. And then his hand was on hers and he was guiding it to his erect penis, which was protruding from the open fly of his pants.

She tried to scream, but she was paralyzed. Then she felt him shudder, the thick slime-wetness spurting onto her hand and up along the inside of her wrist.

She managed to pull away from him, her legs rubbery with fear and rage, her entire being aflame with humiliation and intense hatred toward Dwayne. She felt she might choke on the bile rising in her throat as he grabbed her hand again and rubbed his jism across her blouse. “Remember me when you go home tonight,” he whispered.

Before she managed to ring for the guard to release her from this hell, he taunted her one last time. “You don’t have to know how I know what I know. All you have to know is that it’s the truth. The truth, Helena, that will get your conviction.

“And the truth will set me free.”

She hadn’t told anyone about that incident, not even Alex Pagano. Particularly not Alex. He didn’t want to hear any excuses, doubts, or human anguish. He wanted a conviction.

W
YATT PRESENTED HIS FIRST
witness, Dr. Joseph Stroud, who was an old hand at expert-testifying. A specialist in intelligence testing and memory retention, he had spent eight hours with Marvin in the weeks before the trial, administering the standard IQ-type tests—Stanford-Binet and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), revised. Dr. Stroud told the jury that Marvin fell in the low-normal range of intelligence, but his skills were poorly developed—his reasoning and deductive abilities were far below average, and his reading level was terrible. He was functionally literate, but barely.

His memory retention was similarly weak. He had been given a WRAML: Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning, as well as the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitude. There, also, he did poorly, well below average.

“Is there a scientific or clinical definition for this condition?” Wyatt asked.

“It’s basic ADD,” Stroud answered. “Attention deficit disorder. The subject typically is unable to focus on any one topic for an extended period of time.”

“Given the results of these tests you had Marvin White take,” Wyatt continued, “could he have remembered the details of these murders as the state’s witness has described them?”

Stroud shook his head emphatically. “Not a chance. He had a hard time remembering numbers or words in sequence, let alone common phone numbers, street addresses, things that were part of his daily life. He couldn’t remember what he had eaten for dinner the night before one of our interviews. To remember the complex details of something that had happened a year or more after the event, particularly in the heat of passion and nervousness that would accompany such a violent episode, is not within his capability.”

“In other words, it was psychologically and physiologically impossible for Marvin to remember and recall what the state’s witness testified Marvin told him.”

“Yes.”

Wyatt glanced over at the jury box. A few jurors were noting this; most of them sat with their hands in their laps, listening impassively.

“What other tests did you give Marvin White?” he asked Stroud.

“I tested him to see how prone he would be to committing repeated acts of violence, of any kind. I also profiled him regarding how he fit the profile of a rapist.”

“And what conclusions did you draw, Dr. Stroud?”

“He’s capable of random acts of violence. His record as a juvenile offender clearly shows that. Because of his intellectual deficiencies he tends to solve problems by physical and emotional mechanisms, rather than working them out more logically and intellectually.”

“So he is violence-prone?” Wyatt asked, conceding the point.

“In an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment mode. Not in a preplanned, calculated way.”

“How would you relate his personality tendencies to these series of rape-murders?”

“They don’t. Those crimes are a series of similar events, thought out and executed in careful, deliberate, repetitive fashion. Which is not the way he thinks.”

“What else can you tell us?”

“The rapes would be the most incongruous part of this overall picture. Rapists have severe sexual-identity problems. Rape, as is commonly known, is not a sexual act. It is an act of physical violence and extreme hostility toward the opposite sex. Marvin White is not hostile toward women, in the sexual sense. If he’s hostile toward women at all, it’s as authority figures, which for him would apply equally to men. He’s comfortable with his sexuality, much more so than the typical male, particularly of his age—he’s had a substantially higher number than average of willing sexual partners, even given the sexually active milieu in which he lives. The profile of a rapist is usually the opposite—someone who is not fulfilled sexually or emotionally and carries out the act of rape to avenge and compensate for that, as well as for other arrested psychological and emotional needs.”

“In other words, Marvin White is not a rapist.”

“None of the psychological parameters that are commonly applied would classify him as one.”

Norman Windsor, Helena Abramowitz’s associate, conducted the cross-examination for the prosecution. “Isn’t it true,” he led off, “that these intelligence tests you gave the defendant are skewed against African Americans? Particularly the Stanford-Binet, which discriminates against young impoverished black men who come from the kind of background the defendant comes from?”

“There is some disagreement regarding the accuracy and objectivity of these tests as regards certain minorities,” Stroud conceded.

“So he could be smarter than he tested. He might be a bad test taker, and the tests might not reflect his true intelligence and reasoning capability, because of his race and other factors, isn’t that true?”

“It is within the realm of possibility, but it’s improbable. Highly improbable.”

“So the same could be true about his memory, couldn’t it? He could remember some things better than the tests say he could.”

“All tests are subjective,” Stroud said. “But the indicators are constant, and in Marvin White’s situation the indicators are clear. He has a bad memory,” he stated firmly.

“Do you know who Charles Murray is, Dr. Stroud?” Windsor asked, going off on a sudden tangent.

“Yes, of course,” Stroud answered. “Everyone in the field is aware of Charles Murray.”

“
The Bell Curve
is his most recent book that’s widely known, isn’t it?”

“It is a well-known book in its field.”

“One of the assertions of
The Bell Curve
is that blacks as a race—African Americans—are intellectually inferior to Caucasians, isn’t that true?” Windsor asked.

“That’s an oversimplification,” Stroud said cautiously.

“It’s a conclusion almost everyone who has read the book has drawn, isn’t it?”

Reluctantly, Stroud answered, “Many people have.”

Windsor held up a printed program. “Did you serve on a panel with Dr. Murray at Johns Hopkins University in 1994, Dr. Stroud?” he asked.