Redemption (18 page)

“Yes, but it would have cost you a lot more,” Greene replied, and while the court and the jury broke into laughter, Rudge objected strenuously and the judge sustained him.

I could see that Kilpatrick was struck by Sarah. Like many intelligent women, Sarah grew on people. There is a mind-set among many people, whether they admit it or not, that women are inferior in intelligence. Sarah was not only tall, lissome, and good-looking but she managed Mr. Rudge with ease, knowing exactly how to use him and cause him to explode with objections. Bit by bit, she was tearing his case to shreds.

“Now suppose,” she said to Greene, “that the message on the fax paper had been written by any one of these four lipsticks, to include Autumn. Is there any way it could have been proven that Autumn was the writing instrument?”

Kilpatrick called Sarah up to the bench after Rudge exploded with an objection. “You are trying my patience,” he whispered to her—as she told me later. “You know better.”

She walked over to the jury box, sighed while not facing the judge, and said to Greene, “The three lipsticks are identical to Autumn in color and composition, are they not?”

“They are.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Only to the extent of my company's reputation for truth and integrity. Here are three bonded statements—” He took three folded sheets out of his pocket. “By bonded, Ms. Morton, I mean that we stand behind every analysis with a cash payment double our retainer.”

“May I offer them as evidence?”

“Certainly,” Greene said, handing them to Rudge, who looked through them and then passed them to the judge.

“How many substances does each contain?”

“Seventeen and the coloring.”

“Are the amounts equal to Autumn—I mean the seventeen substances used in the lipstick—that is, each amount?”

“No, they vary slightly. But in the lipstick on the paper, there was no way for us to make such a precise determination.”

“Did you make the attempt?”

“Of course. We have state-of-the-art instruments.”

“Thank you, Dr. Greene.” And to the judge, she said, “I have no more questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

“Will you cross-examine, Mr. Rudge?” Kilpatrick asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.” Rudge approached Greene, and both men regarded each other without pleasure. “Dr. Greene,” Rudge said, “have you ever visited the forensic laboratory of the police precinct we call Manhattan South?”

“No.”

“Then you can have no opinion of the quality of their work or what instruments they use—is that not so?”

“Yes. All I know is that in this case—”

“You have answered the question. Now tell me, could the sample on fax paper that was given to you be Autumn by Devlon?”

“Well, sir—”

“Either yes or no!” Rudge snapped.

“Yes. It is possible.”

“I have no other questions of this witness,” Rudge said. All through this, as all through the trial so far, his fellow prosecutor, Helen Slater, had sat in silence, making copious notes on her pad.

Judge Kilpatrick now announced a break for lunch and said that court would convene again at one forty-five.

Liz threw her arms around me and kissed me and whispered Sarah was wonderful, wasn't she? and that now there was some hope. Then the media swooped down on us, and we had to push our way through to get out of the courthouse and keep our lips locked, as we had all agreed. But Sarah answered a single question: “What do you think your chances are?”

“We will win because our client is innocent.”

She still used
we
but shook her head and refused to say a word when asked whether I was still her associate and why I was sitting on a back bench. Rudge was willing to talk, and that gave us a chance to escape. We walked to a small restaurant on the edge of Chinatown and ate heartily of roast pork, dumplings, Chinese vegetables, and fried rice. Sarah shook off our congratulations, reminding us that we still had the gun. “Oh, Ike,” she said, “what possessed you to buy a gun twenty years ago, I'll never know. It's a white man's shtick. A couple of blacks move into the neighborhood, and, lo and behold, everybody owns a gun.”

“Sarah, Sarah,” Liz said, “you were wonderful, and how did Ike know twenty years ago that I would come into his life? If it weren't me, it would be Ike as the accused.”

“I wasn't wonderful, and the whole thing's on a string—and a very thin string, at that. I feel that I'm throwing dice with Liz's life.” When Liz's face fell, Sarah said quickly, “Damn it, no. We're going to win. We have to.”

“I think I would prefer to die rather than spend the rest of my life in prison,” Liz said, and that brought a voluminous outcry of protest from J. J., who had come to divide her worship between Sarah and Liz. J. J. was a smart young woman, with close-cropped curly hair and a round face, and two small children left behind by a vanished husband. Every day at four o'clock, until the trial had begun, Liz took off with J. J. to pick up the kids and deliver them to J. J.'s mother. Between them they were working out a plan to lure Sarah out of being a public defender. J. J. had enough assorted credits from Hunter College that, with the influence I could bring to bear, she could enter Columbia Law. Then Sarah would open a law office and J. J. would work with her. Liz was an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme. It was not until the trial began that I realized how much of an innocent Elizabeth truly was, innocent in a world that was not shaped to bear out anything she had been taught.

When we returned to court, fifteen minutes early, the clerk informed us that Judge Kilpatrick wished to see Sarah and Rudge in chambers. Kilpatrick began by noting that Liz was her last witness. “I told you,” he said, “that it troubles me for the accused to take the stand. I have been thinking about it. Do you intend to claim the ‘battered-woman syndrome'?”

“No, Your Honor,” Sarah replied. “That would mean an admission of guilt. She will testify to her innocence.”

“I am still troubled.”

“I trust, Your Honor, that you will give me some leeway.”

“I find such a question totally improper.”

Rudge angrily agreed with the judge.

Sarah shrugged. “I apologize. It was stupid of me.”

Kilpatrick's reaction was annoyance, but Sarah felt she had accomplished what she had intended. She came out of the judge's chambers and whispered to me, “God help me, Ike, I'm shooting craps with Liz's life.”

“I trust you.” What else could I say?

The courtroom was filling up, and a minute or two later, the clerk called out for everybody to rise. Judge Kilpatrick took his place on the bench, and now I looked at him as if I had never seen him before—looked at him newly. Liz was the last witness that Sarah would call, and possibly sometime this afternoon or tomorrow morning, the die would be cast. Much of how it might be cast would depend on that stern, lean-faced, bespectacled man on the bench.

But for now, Sarah called Jerry Brown. Wearing knife-edge taupe twill trousers and a blue jacket, white shirt with a thin blue stripe, and a hand-tied bow tie, he came off more as a fashion model out of
Gentleman's Quarterly
than as Hollywood's notion of a private investigator. He took his place on the witness stand, nodded ingratiatingly to the jury, and eased his trousers just a trifle. He took the oath and then gave his name as Jerome Brown and his profession as private investigator.

“How long have you been a private investigator?” Sarah asked him.

“Twelve years, ma'am.”

“Are you licensed by the police?”

“Yes, Ms. Morton.”

“And you were engaged by Professor Goldman to work on the defense of Elizabeth Hopper?”

“That is correct.”

“Briefly, what did that work consist of?”

“A trip to Boston, checking police and hospital records, and certain work here in New York City.”

“I am interested in your local work for Professor Goldman, here in the city. I understand that you have written a statement of your work, and have had it sworn and notarized.”

Rudge rose to object, and the judge asked Sarah, “Where is the statement, Ms. Morton? Do you intend to enter it as evidence?”

Sarah went to the table, took a folder, and gave it to Kilpatrick. Rudge asked to approach.

“I intend to cover the same material in my questioning of the witness,” Sarah explained.

“Then why this statement?” Rudge demanded.

Sarah shrugged. “It's part of his report. I felt I should enter it as evidence.”

“A bit odd, but why not?” Kilpatrick said. “However, we'll hold it until he testifies.”

Sarah went back to Jerry Brown, “Mr. Brown, would you describe the work you did for us in New York?”

“Yes. It was based on the police case. Professor Goldman stated that Mrs. Hopper had come to bed with him at nine-thirty. The police speculated that Hopper had been dead for some hours before his corpse was discovered at about midnight. Manhattan South forensics reduced the time to between one and two hours. By that kind of thinking, he was killed between ten and eleven.”

Rudge rose to object, and Kilpatrick said, “All of this is connected. You can cross-examine, Mr. Rudge.” He turned to Brown. “Please go on, Mr. Brown.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Brown said. “My objective was to check the travel time from Professor Goldman's apartment and the Omnibus Building. Now, between nine and eleven
P.M.,
there are two hours. I left Professor Goldman's apartment building at nine
P.M.,
by the basement, and walked out to the Drive after wedging the basement door. I found a cab on Riverside Drive. I took the cab down to Wall Street and the Omnibus Building. There was little traffic at that hour, and we made it to the Omnibus Building in forty-one minutes. Eleven minutes had passed before I hailed the cab, and I allowed thirty minutes for the supposed murderer to do what was supposed to have been done, which includes getting up to Hopper's office and then back to the entranceway. This, of course, presupposes that the cleaning crew had left the door to the building open or that Hopper was there to open it. The cab was waiting, and I told the driver to get back to Professor Goldman's apartment as fast as he could. But the traffic was heavier, and it took him forty-three minutes. I have here a notarized statement from the cab driver with the time included. Total, one hundred and twenty-five minutes, or thirty-five minutes more than the police estimate.”

The people's case rested almost entirely on Liz having ample time to go down to Wall Street and back.

Rudge rose to object, claiming that Brown's whole performance was ridiculous, not only hearsay but based entirely on the evidence I had just given. Kilpatrick called the lawyers to the bench.

As Sarah told me afterwards, Kilpatrick said to Rudge, “You had the opportunity to cross-examine Professor Goldman.”

“Your Honor, the man's in love with the woman. His testimony is worthless.”

“Let the jury decide that, Mr. Rudge. If you wish to bring charges against him for perjury, you are free to do so, providing you have some proof of his perjury. Meanwhile, your objection is overruled.”

Then Sarah asked Brown if he had questioned the police about checking whether any cabs had taken a passenger from 115th Street to Wall Street and back.

“Manhattan South took care of that. They came up with nothing. I had that information from Captain Rudley, chief of detectives at Manhattan South.”

“I am sure that Mr. Rudge had the same information,” Sarah said.

“Ms. Morton!” Kilpatrick exploded.

“Please, Your Honor, forgive me.” She appeared the proper, chastised attorney. “Now, Mr. Brown,” she went on, “I instructed you to make the same journey to Wall Street with all speed, taking the subway. Did you do so?”

“I did.”

“And what was your time?”

“I started out at nine
P.M.
from Professor Goldman's apartment building. Using the same time interval at the Omnibus Building, the trip took two hours and ten minutes. Trains run less frequently at that hour.”

“Then, in your opinion, Mr. Brown, is there any possibility that Mrs. Hopper could have killed Mr. Hopper?”

Rudge was on his feet, enraged at this kind of call for a conclusion, but already Kilpatrick had instructed Brown not to answer the question.

“Now, Mr. Brown,” Sarah said, “did you call the Boston Financial Corporation where Mr. Hopper worked and ask what their familiar name for Mr. Hopper was?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And their answer, Mr. Brown?”

“Sedge. They all called him Sedge.”

“And did you go to the Cambridge Country Club, where Mr. Hopper was a member, and ask the golf pro the same question?”

“I did.”

“And the golf pro's answer, Mr. Brown?”

“Sedge—they all called him Sedge.”

At this point, Rudge rose and protested that this was all hearsay.

Judge Kilpatrick took a long moment, and then he said, “I am going to allow it, Mr. Rudge. It goes to a very important point on the part of the defense. They hired a private investigator and sent him to Boston. You can cover the same territory with a series of telephone calls. Mr. Brown is testifying under oath. If you can prove otherwise, you can bring in other witnesses to support you. This is a capital case, and I am inclined to allow Mr. Brown's testimony to go into the record.”

Grudgingly, Rudge nodded; then whispered to Ms. Slater, who left the court.

“For some months, when she lived in Boston, Mrs. Hopper employed a maid, Agatha Jones by name. I instructed you to track her down and speak to her. Did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And did you ask her whether she ever heard anyone call Mr. Hopper Billy?”

“I did. Her answer was no. Everyone she heard called him Sedge.”