Redemption (14 page)

“No, sir. I didn't even plug in the vacuum.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I took the elevator down to the lobby. Frank Goober was at the desk, filling in his charge book. I told him what I had seen, and he called 911, and then he said I should go up and see that nobody entered the office until the cops—I mean police—came, and he'd stay downstairs and let them in.”

“Did you go into the room, into Mr. Hopper's office, again?”

“No, sir. I stood by the door until the cops came.”

Goober, the next witness, merely confirmed what Prosky said. When the police came, Goober opened the front door for them. He took them up to the seventeenth floor in one of the elevators, and then he and Prosky were told to go back to the lobby and wait for the detectives.

Sitting next to me, Liz reached for my hand under the table. With her small, warm hand in mine, all my doubts vanished and I was suffused with a need to protect her. Aside from me, she had no one in the whole world to turn to. Her father had abandoned her mother and disappeared years ago. Her mother had raised her, and her mother was dead. She had some vague knowledge of an aunt in Los Angeles, whom she had never seen or communicated with; and she knew that her father had two brothers, but who they were and where they were, she didn't know. At first it had appeared impossible to me that a human being could be so alone, so unconnected. Though we had been together for months now, I asked myself how well did I know this woman? That she loved me, I had no doubt, and on my part, old man that I was, I cherished and adored her. Circumstances had placed her in my care, and I had already worked out in my mind a complicated confession of my own guilt if she should be found guilty. I was quite sure that I could prove to the satisfaction of a court that I had killed William Sedgwick Hopper out of rage for what he had done. If I had to spend what few years I might have left in prison, I would at least have the comfort of knowing that Liz's young life was not wasted. I now recognize how foolishly romantic this notion was—and I had spoken about it to no one—but it served to ease my days in the courthouse.

The next witness the State called was Officer Annabelle Schwartz. She was something—six feet tall, blond, and good-looking in her neat blue police uniform. She took the oath, nodded at the jury, and smiled slightly at Rudge. Sarah had waived any cross-examination of the first two witnesses, but I knew she would lock horns with Annabelle.

“Officer Schwartz,” Rudge said, “where were you on May twenty-fifth between twelve and two
A.M.
?”

“On patrol with my rabbi, Officer Kennedy.”

“Would you explain to the jury what you mean by your ‘rabbi'?”

“Oh, this is absolutely no disrespect for Jews or rabbis. It's a term the police use for an old hand who takes a freshman cop under his wing and teaches him the ins and outs of policing. When I was transferred to the first precinct, they assigned me to patrol with Officer Joe Kennedy, who is smart and experienced. We were on Broadway when the call came from the precinct, and we drove immediately to the Omnibus Building.”

“At what time, Officer?”

“Twelve-fifty.”

“Please tell the jury what happened then.”

“We parked. Goober opened the building door for us, and we went up to the seventeenth floor. Goober led us to Mr. Hopper's office, and then we told him to go down to the lobby and let in the detectives and the morgue wagon and the forensics people. Prosky opened the door, and we went into Mr. Hopper's office. We did not touch or move anything. A few minutes later, Detective Sergeant Hull and Detective Flannery arrived and began their examination of the crime scene. Mr. Hopper was dead at his desk, with a bullet hole in the back of his head. There was a long sheet of paper on the desk, torn from the fax machine, and on it, in red lipstick, words were printed in block letters. It read
SWEET JOURNEY, BILLY.
A Colt twenty-two caliber automatic pistol was sitting on the sheet of paper.”

“Is this the sheet of fax paper you refer to, Officer Schwartz?”

“Yes, except that a piece of it is missing.”

“The State offers this as evidence,” Rudge said to the judge, “with the explanation that the missing piece was given to the defense for their laboratory work.”

“So marked and entered,” the clerk said.

“Do you have anything else to add?” Rudge asked Annabelle.

She hesitated, and then said, “Yes, I offered the opinion that the murderer was a woman.”

“And what brought you to this notion, Officer?”

“A number of things. The lipstick, the intimacy of the killer and Hopper, the revenge implication—very feminine, I think—the nature of the message on the fax paper.”

“Thank you,” Rudge said, and turned to Sarah.

“Will you cross-examine?” the judge asked.

“If you please, Your Honor.” Sarah stood almost as tall as Annabelle, and said to her, “So you knew immediately that the perpetrator was a woman—is that not so, Officer Schwartz?”

“Well—yes. I felt it.”

“And why did you feel it?”

Again, Annabelle hesitated. “I guess because of the reasons I just gave.” Again she hesitated. “And the small gun, which would fit easily into a woman's purse.”

“Oh. Remarkable. Did the detectives have the same immediate reaction? Did they say it was a woman perpetrator?”

“No,” Annabelle admitted. “But when I explained to them about the lipstick, they sort of agreed.”

“Sort of. What does sort of mean?”

“Well, when I told them what the lipstick was—when they asked me whether I knew—they tended to agree.”

“And what lipstick was it?”

“Devlon Autumn.”

“How remarkable,” Sarah said, turning to the jury. “Now, I do not use Autumn—partly because I have black hair. Now I suppose”—turning back to Annabelle—“that if I asked my boyfriend to buy me Autumn, they wouldn't sell it to him. Do you agree, Officer Schwartz?”

For a long moment, Annabelle was confused. She shook her head. “Why shouldn't they sell it to him?”

“I'm asking the questions, Officer. Would they or would they not sell it to him? Yes or no?”

Rudge half rose to object, but Judge Kilpatrick waved him back, saying softly, “The door is wide open, Mr. Rudge.”

“Yes, they would sell it to him,” Annabelle admitted.

“Or to any other man who paid the price?”

“Yes.”

“How many Autumn lipsticks did the Devlon Company sell in 1995?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't? I'm surprised. Why don't you know?”

“Because I'm not a detective,” Annabelle replied with some indignation. “I'm a uniformed police officer, and I don't follow up on a case. That's the work of the detectives.”

“But I should have thought that Mr. Rudge, who argues here for the State, would have told you. My investigator, Jerry Brown, went to the Devlon Company and they were only too pleased to tell him.”

“Save your remarks,” Judge Kilpatrick said. “If you want to get into that, frame it as a question, Ms. Morton.”

“Yes, your honor. Now, Officer Schwartz, would it surprise you to know that the Devlon Company sold 3,090,000 sticks of Autumn in 1995?”

Annabelle shrugged.

“Please answer the question,” the judge said.

“No, it would not surprise me!” Annabelle snapped.

“And since you've already admitted that a man could buy a stick of Autumn, how do you come to the conclusion that a woman wrote those words on the fax paper?”

“It wasn't only the lipstick.”

“Ah—then there was other evidence? What was the other evidence, Officer Schwartz?”

Sarah had said that criminal trial is theater. There are probably thousands of decent, upright people with the name of Schwartz, but in every film and TV show about the Nazis, there is some evil character with the name of Schwartz—due, perhaps, to the lack of imagination among Hollywood writers. Now Sarah's constant repetition of the name and the magnificent blond largeness of Annabelle was reflecting on the jury's perception of the witness.

Annabelle replied, “The use of the name
Billy
, for one thing. It's a name a woman would use for a man she had been intimate with.”

“Oh, I see. And does that mean that a man who calls his friend Billy or his son Billy is—what should we say—a homosexual, a transvestite? Or what?”

“You're trying to confuse me!” Annabelle cried.

“Not at all,” Sarah said, smiling. “Please answer the question.”

“What was the question?”

“Would you read it?” Sarah asked the stenographer.

The stenographer read it, and Annabelle said, “No, it has nothing to do with homosexuals.”

“Thank goodness,” Sarah said. “They have enough problems.” The judge glanced at her, and she asked quickly, “Is that the sum of your decision that the murder was committed by a woman?”

“I mentioned the small gun.”

“So you did,” Sarah agreed. “But, Officer Schwartz, as a police officer, you carry a gun, don't you?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“And when you're not in uniform, where do you carry it?”

“In my purse.”

“Ah, so your gun is small enough to fit into your purse?”

“I have a large purse, and my gun is not a twenty-two.”

“And would it surprise you to hear that at least three hundred murders in New York City last year were committed with twenty-two caliber guns, and most of them by men?”

“I don't know the figures, but it wouldn't surprise me,” Annabelle said. She had recovered her composure.

“Have we exhausted all the deeply impressive and valid bits of evidence that brought you to the firm conclusion that the death of William Sedgwick Hopper was caused by a woman, or is there more? Fingerprints, for example?”

“There were no fingerprints—”

“How would you know?” Sarah interrupted sharply. “Are you intimate with the detectives, Officer Schwartz?”

“I talked about the case. I
do
work in the same precinct.”

“But the fingerprint work was done by Manhattan South. You don't work there. Surely there were hundreds of fingerprints in Hopper's office? Were there not?”

“I'm not familiar with the fingerprint matching. I hear there were none that implicated anyone.”

“Wonderful!”

“I'm a woman,” Annabelle snapped. “I have the right to see things as a woman.”

“So you are, so you are. I would not deny that for a moment, Officer Schwartz. Did you perhaps smell an odor of perfume?”

“No!” she snapped.

“Or a trace of face powder on the gun?”

“No!” Then she added, “I have the intuition of a woman.”

I knew this was what Sarah had been looking for, and I glanced at Rudge, who closed his eyes for a moment and compressed his lips.

Sarah was facing the jury. “A woman's intuition,” she repeated. “Well, why not? I suppose I relied on my intuition when I was briefly married, but I also looked at the clock when he came home with no explanation—”

“Ms. Morton,” Kilpatrick said sternly, “no more of that. Save it.”

“I'm sorry, Your Honor.” And to Annabelle, “Are you also psychic, Officer Schwartz?”

“No, I am not psychic.”

“I have no more questions for this witness,” Sarah said.

“Any redirect, Mr. Rudge?” Judge Kilpatrick asked.

“None, Your Honor.”

“Then we'll break for lunch. The court will reconvene at half past one.” At lunch, I said to Sarah, “That was awfully good. Why didn't Rudge prepare her more carefully?”

“How could he?” Liz wondered. “He couldn't have known what Sarah would ask.”

“He didn't anticipate that she would blurt out her woman's intuition,” Sarah said. “That's a wonderful peg for me to hang onto. I hate to do this to Annabelle. She wants desperately to be a good cop; I know her, and she's really a nice girl. And smart.”

I felt more than ever that I had been right in talking Sarah into this. Bit by bit, I was coming to know her better—a strange, complex woman who assumed an air of confidence and mastery in court that as yet Rudge appeared unable to cope with. Possibly Rudge's reputation had been inflated, but more likely the problem of facing a black woman defending a white woman had thrown him off his stride. Especially since Sarah had already done so successfully.

And Liz was changing as well. The change in Liz had been slow in coming; from the beaten, broken woman I had met on the bridge, a new personality was coming into being. The trial excited her, and she no longer wept at the possibility of fifteen years to life in prison. She had left her job of selling women's shoes two days after the arrest, although with her name making headlines in the
Post
and the
Daily News
, she could hardly have kept it, in any case. She had spent most of the time since then with Sarah, whom she had come almost to worship. When I first met her, she had been hollow cheeked and lean, almost anorexic. She had filled out now, not fat, but becoming increasingly lovely. She had cut her mop of blonde hair quite short, and she looked ten years younger than forty-seven. Never in all my life had I been the recipient of such gentle love and comfort. She seemed to anticipate my every wish. If I left my pipe in another room, it appeared in her hand before I could ask for it. If I felt any of the arthritic pain that comes with age, she knew it before I spoke and soothed me. The media was dying to interview her and write the story of her bitter marriage to Hopper, but Sarah forbade it absolutely. No one of us spoke to the media, so Rudge had the spotlight. There was talk that he had expectations of being a top District Attorney, if not for Manhattan then perhaps for Brooklyn.

Hopper's misdeeds at the investment bank moved from the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times
financial section to the tabloids and the media; and since some of my friends at Columbia had loose tongues—to put the best face on it—they also went into the romance between a seventy-eight-year-old and a forty-seven-year-old. Fortunately, my friends were decent enough not to mention the incident on the bridge.