The Kills (13 page)

"I'm
going to direct your attention, Ms. Vallis, to the evening of February
twentieth. Would you tell us where you were and how you met the
defendant?"

"Certainly.
I attended a lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations, at their building on Park
Avenue. I'm a member of that organization, and I had arranged to meet a
girlfriend at the event, which started at seven o'clock. Then we were going to
go to dinner together."

"Did
you keep that plan?" I asked.

"No.
I mean, I did go to the lecture, but my friend's plane was held on the runway
in Boston because of snow. She called on my cell phone to tell me she wouldn't
be able to make it."

Paige
Vallis paused. "There was a cocktail reception after the lecture. I knew a
number of the people there, so I decided to stay and chat for a while."

"Did
you have anything to drink or eat at the reception?" Bring it out on the
direct case, so that it didn't look like I was trying to hide any alcohol that
was involved.

"Wine.
I had a couple of glasses of white wine. Two. Nothing to eat."

"Did
Mr. Tripping approach you that evening?"

"Objection.
Leading."

"Overruled.
Ms. Cooper's just trying to set some background up here."

Paige
waited for the judge to tell her to proceed. "Three of us were standing
together, talking about the situation in the Middle East, and what our own
personal experiences had been there. Andrew must have heard me-"

"Objection
as to what he might have heard."

"Sustained.
Just tell us what he said or did."

The
objections had their desired effect. Paige Vallis was shaken each time Robelon
called out the word, as though she had done something wrong.

"Andrew
Tripping asked me about Cairo," she said. "He wanted to know when I
had lived there and for what reason."

Tripping
started fidgeting as she spoke, trying to get his lawyer's attention. Robelon
brushed him off, continuing to take notes on the details in Vallis's testimony
that he had not heard before. The defendant put his head together with Emily
Frith, whispering to her, distracting several jurors from the flow of the
testimony.

"What
did you tell him, exactly?"

"I
talked about my father's career and told him what I remembered of his tour of
duty in Egypt. I hadn't been back there since finishing high school."

"For
how long did you talk?" I asked.

"Probably
half an hour."

"Did
you leave the council alone?"

Paige
Vallis blushed and picked up her water cup again. "No, no, I didn't.
Andrew told me he knew a nice restaurant in the neighborhood and invited me to
go to dinner."

"Did
anyone else-"

I started
to ask the next question but Paige Vallis wanted to explain her decision to the
jury. "I don't normally do that. I mean, go off somewhere with a man I
don't know. But I can't imagine a safer place to meet a guy than a political
policy discussion with the members of the council," she said, giggling a
bit.

Laughter
didn't work in the middle of a rape trial. I knew it was just a nervous
reaction, but she would need to get beyond it. Don't apologize for anything you
did, I had told Paige for weeks. Just tell the jury the facts. In my summation
I would have lots of opportunity to talk about her judgment calls.

"Did
anyone else go with you to dinner?"

"No.
I said good night to the people I knew, got my coat from the checkroom, and we
walked three or four blocks to a small bistro on a side street."

She took
us through the dinner and conversation. Yes, there was another glass of wine
for each of them. Yes, they both discussed their personal lives. Andrew told
her that he was widowed, and that his mother had raised his son until her
recent death. No, she certainly could not remember everything that they had
talked about.

I would
argue that was because there was no significance to most of the conversation at
this first meeting. Robelon would attribute her lack of specifics to the third
glass of wine.

"What
time did you leave the restaurant, and where did you go?"

"I
saw that it was getting late-after ten o'clock. I told Andrew that I had to be
in my office before eight the next morning. He put me in a cab outside the restaurant
and we said good night."

"Who
paid for the meal?"

She
looked at me and reddened again. "We split the check. I paid for my dinner
and he paid for his."

"Did
you kiss each other?"

"No."

"Was
there any kind of physical contact-touching each other or holding hands as you
walked on the street?"

"None."

"Did
he ask for your phone number?"

"No."

"Did
he say-"

"Hey,
Ms. Cooper," Judge Moffett said, "whatever happened to woman's lib?
Ms. Vallis, did you ask him for his number?"

"No,
sir."

"Was
there any discussion about seeing each other again?" I asked.

"No,
there wasn't. I got in the cab, closed the door, and went on my way home. I
thought it was a pleasant evening, but that was the end of it."

"When
was the next time you had any contact with Andrew Tripping?"

"About
three or four days later, when he called me."

"Where
were you when he called?"

"At
my office. Dibingham Partners," Vallis said, looking over at the jurors.
"My personal phone isn't listed. I had told Andrew where I worked, and I
guess-"

"Objection."

"Sustained.
You can't guess in my courtroom, Ms. Vallis," the judge barked at the
young woman from his elevated position over her head, and she recoiled, shaken
again. "I'm sorry, Your Honor."

"Would
you please tell us what the defendant said in that conversation?"

"It
was a very short discussion. I told him I was about to go into a meeting. He
asked if I wanted to have dinner with him the following night, and I said,
'Sure.' We arranged to meet at the Odeon. That's a restaurant near my
apartment. That's all."

"Did
you keep that date?"

"Yes,
we did. I got there first. When Andrew arrived, we each ordered a glass of wine
and chatted for a while before we ate dinner."

"What
did this conversation concern?"

Paige
Vallis described a coolly impersonal meeting, in which her companion spent most
of the time talking about himself or questioning her about her political views.
She only had one drink and again she paid her own way. There were no sexual
overtures when he walked her back to her building at ten o'clock.

"Did
you invite the defendant up to your apartment?" I asked.

"There
was no reason to. I thought-"

"Objection
as to what she thought, Your Honor," Robelon said.

"Sustained."

The heavy
oak door creaked open behind me. I kept my attention on Paige Vallis, but she
picked her head up at the sound and stared off in the distance.

"Ms.
Vallis, what did you say or do when you reached your building?"

Her mouth
twitched and she answered softly, "Andrew asked if he could come in for a
cup of coffee. I told him that would be impossible. I-uh-I had a friend in from
out of town who was staying in the apartment. Actually, I'm just remembering
that now, as I try to recall the details of our dinner," she said, looking
back at me.

I
squeezed the pen I was holding so tightly I thought it would break in half and
spurt ink all over the jurors. I had never heard that explanation in all the
weeks of preparing Paige to testify. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. Better late than never. What friend, I wondered to myself, and
what relevance did this have to her story?

Paige
Vallis was trembling visibly now, as I tried to direct her attention to the
night of the crime. "I'm going to ask you some questions about the day and
evening of March sixth of this year."

She
licked her lips to moisten them and reached for the water. Her hand missed and
knocked the cup off the railing in front of her; water began dripping onto the
court stenographer, who shoved her machine out of the way and reached for
tissues to wipe up the mess. Paige stood and leaned over as though to reach for
the fallen cup, bursting into tears as she tried to apologize to the judge for
the disturbance.

Moffett
banged his gavel on the bench. "Brief recess. We'll take ten
minutes."

Paige
spoke to him before the jurors could be led out of the box. "I'm so sorry,
Judge. I can't testify about this in front of him. Does he have to be
here?"

She was
pointing a finger, while Moffett answered her, and I moved forward to calm her
and bring tissues to wipe her face. "Of course he has to be here. The
Constitution gives him that right, young-"

"Not
Andrew, Your Honor. Him." Paige lifted her head and I turned around to
look.

The older
of the two men whom Chapman had tried to identify in the courtroom the day
before was seated alone now in the back row. He must have been the person who
came in just as Paige had fallen apart a few questions back. He rose as my
witness waved her hand in his direction, and he pushed the swinging door to
exit.

"That's
Harry Strait, Alexandra," Paige said, grabbing my hand as I extended the
tissue to her. "That's the man I told you about."

Andrew
Tripping smiled broadly, put his arm on his lawyer's shoulder, and broke away
to follow Harry Strait out into the corridor.

I had
less than six minutes to corner Paige Vallis in the witness room and read her
the riot act. "I can pull the plug on this entire proceeding right this
minute. Do you want to explain to me what just happened on the witness stand? I
told you from the moment we first met that there was only one thing you could
do wrong and that was to lie to me about even the most seemingly insignificant
question I've asked you. I don't give a damn about your judgment or your
lifestyle or your morals. I need to know the truth."

"I've
never lied to you, Alex."

"I'll
walk into that courtroom and ask the judge to dismiss the charges if a single
thing you have told me is not true. Now's the time-"

"I
swear to you, every word I've told you is the truth."

"But
you've left things out, is that what you mean? An omission is the same as a
lie, if it has something to do with your case. What haven't you told me?"

"Nothing
important that involves Andrew Tripping or these charges."

"Whether
a fact is important or not isn't your decision, Paige. I need to know every
single detail. Everything. I'll be the judge of what's important. Get it? Who
was the 'friend' in the apartment that night?"

She
returned my stare with a pitiful expression on her face.

"Don't
give me that helpless, pathetic look. It was this-this Harry Strait guy,
right?" I asked.

"What
difference does that make? Andrew didn't know that at the time."