The Last Good Day (45 page)

“Certainly, Your Honor.” She nodded sympathetically at Tony, the court officer, acknowledging his pain, before turning back to Lynn again. “Now, Mrs. Schulman, can you tell us what happened to your relationship with the lieutenant after you had this procedure.”

“I believe we broke up shortly after that.”

“Can you tell us why?”

Lynn rubbed her eyes, seeing Barry turn slate gray, thinking he’d already heard the worst of it. “Michael became very possessive and controlling of me. He started wanting to know where I was all the time. Who I was with. He started following me around, telling me how I should dress, and what I should be taking pictures of …”

“But isn’t it also true that you’d started seeing somebody else?”

“Oh my God.” Lynn sank in her chair.

She felt herself become physically ill. She looked down at Michael, as if to say,
Is this
helping
you?

But he kept his head down, scribbling notes on a Post-it pad that seemed to throb and turn a sickening shade of bright yellow before her eyes.

“Do I really have to answer this?” Lynn looked up at the mayor.

“I’m afraid so,” Tom Flynn said. “She can ask anything she likes, within reason.”

“Mrs. Schulman?” Gwen Florio prompted her.

Lynn’s chin drooped, and her chest became a groaning concave space bowing back against her spine. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, there were others.”

The gorge started to rise in her throat, knowing there was still even more to come.

“Can you tell us who they were?”

“Objection.” Jack Davis clambered to his feet. “Have we really degenerated to the point where all we’re doing is retailing lukewarm gossip?”

“Just a little more leeway, Your Honor.” Florio looked up at the dais, her navy jacket opened enough to reveal the stark womanly drama of her hips.

“I’ll give you about three more questions to establish some relevance, and then we’re done with this line of questioning,” the mayor rebuked her.

“Thank you.” She nodded. “Mrs. Schulman? We’re still waiting.”

Lynn sucked her lips, slightly dazed and dehydrated. “This was all so long ago.”

She looked over at Barry again, hoping for some sign of understanding, but he was a black hole to her, gathering light in and giving none out.

“You were seeing other men,” Florio prodded her.

“I had Michael stalking me.” Lynn tried to sit up and defend herself. “He wouldn’t leave me alone …”

“Who were these other men?”

Florio honed in on her, moving close enough so that Lynn could smell her perfume.

“He was just trying to protect me,” Lynn said. “We didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Mrs. Schulman.” The lawyer’s lip cocked back. “Isn’t it true that one of those men was my client’s brother, John Fallon?”

Lynn heard the first sharp intake of breath.

“It’s not the way you’re making it sound.” The tightrope walker flailing her arms, trying to keep her balance.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, one of them was John Fallon.”

She was falling now, bracing for impact.

“What’d she say?” one of the Town Board members asked from the dais, hearing aid squealing with feedback from being turned up too loud.

People in the gallery began to whisper to one another, their voices light and sulfurous, like a hundred little match heads igniting at the same time.

“So you slept with my client’s older brother while you were still going out with my client?” Gwen Florio plumped her lips, as if she was impressed with this as a feat of athleticism.

“I didn’t sleep with him,” Lynn protested weakly, already lying facedown in the sawdust. “We were friends and then …”

“Isn’t it true that the two brothers physically fought over you?”

“Johnny was just trying to get Mike to leave me alone …”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Jack Davis threw down a paper clip in disgust. “Are we reliving
High School Confidential
here? Is this a disciplinary hearing for Lieutenant Fallon or an attempt to pull the witness’s pants down in public? Frankly, I’m embarrassed and I suspect the witness is as well.”

Lynn tried to offer him a grateful smile, as if he were an anesthesiologist arriving halfway through her open-heart surgery.

“What I’m trying to establish is that this witness caused the breakup of a previously close-knit family that’s been an important part of this community for generations.” Florio turned to address the board. “She isn’t just this innocent victim being stalked by my client. There was a complicated history here. It’s no surprise that she was tense and ready to misinterpret anything he said when he showed up to investigate Mrs. Lanier’s homicide. She was feeling guilty.”

Lynn opened her mouth to argue, but Jack Davis cut in.

“I did not realize that along with being lovely and skillful as an attorney that Ms. Florio was also a talented mind reader,” he said. “Perhaps she could rent a turban and a booth at the upcoming county fair to supplement her practice.”

“All right, both of you, stop it,” Mayor Flynn spoke up, forced into the role of beleaguered parent. Clearly, this was not what he had in mind during all those years he’d spent trawling through the local Kiwanis clubs and senior centers, looking for votes. “I hate this kind of thing. Mr. Davis, holster that famous wit of yours. Ms. Florio, finish up quickly and please spare us the graphic details.”

“I appreciate your patience, Your Honor.” Gwen Florio nodded sweetly. “Mrs. Schulman, can you tell us what happened to the relationship between my client and his brother after your little episode involving the two of them?”

Lynn searched for her voice. “I believe they stopped speaking for some years afterward.”

“Would it surprise you to know that they never spoke again before John Fallon was killed?”

“I …”

This time, the gavel and Jack Davis’s objection arrived simultaneously.

The mayor told Gwen Florio: “I believe we’ve heard enough about this.”

But it was too late. Lynn had already been scraped off the ground, broken and bloodied. The book-club ladies were staring with a mixture of sympathy, embarrassment, and ill-concealed titillation.

Mike’s wife stood up and walked out. Barry was motionless. To anyone else, he looked like a man watching a game from the sidelines. After all these years, though, Lynn was attuned to the more subtle indices: the tiny narrowing of the eyebrows, the minute thrust of the jaw. He was homicidal.

“Mrs. Schulman, in your earlier testimony and your statement to the chief, you said that Lieutenant Fallon came to your house twice in connection with the Lanier murder. Is that correct?” Gwen Florio rested her hand on the witness stand’s railing, ready to finish her off.

“Yes, it is.”

“And did he, in fact, ask you questions about Mrs. Lanier?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Mrs. Schulman, I understand that your husband was a prosecutor and you yourself have some experience as a newspaper photographer taking pictures at crime scenes. Is it your understanding that sometimes investigators will try to engage a witness in conversation instead of just asking question after question?”

“I guess I’ve heard that.”

“And did Detective Lieutenant Fallon try to do that on the two occasions that he stopped by your house?”

“Yes, but …” She felt pitted, exhausted.

“Didn’t he try to talk to you about whether Mrs. Lanier had any enemies?”

“Sure, but …” She tried to rouse herself and put her guard up.

“And did he ask whether Mrs. Lanier and her husband were having any problems in their marriage?”

“Of course, but can I give a fuller answer?”

Having found a new rhythm, Florio lunged ahead. “And didn’t you say, ‘Who hasn’t that’s been married this many years?’”

Lynn flushed, hearing her own words being wielded against her. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Barry kept staring at a spot just over her head, his mouth slowly hardening.

“And hadn’t you recently talked to the lieutenant about ‘getting together’ outside work?”

“
Socially.
” Lynn turned to the board members, trying to make herself understood. “With the families.”

But any sympathy that she’d hope to get from these dry gray men was quickly ebbing away. It didn’t matter that she was a middle-aged woman with an SUV, two kids in the local school system, and a big house on Grace Hill. They knew an ungrateful little whore when they saw one.

“Over here, Mrs. Schulman. I’m the one asking the questions.”

Gwen Florio bared her lower teeth in disdain. “So isn’t it fair to say your relationship with the lieutenant wasn’t just the usual one between investigator and material witness?”

“Of course not.” Lynn drew herself up, deciding she’d had enough. “He hit me when I tried to break up with him,” she said.

Gwen Florio smiled thinly at the counterpunch. “Was that before or after he found out you were sleeping with his brother?”

Lynn heard a reedy whisper and then a cymbal-like hiss from the spectator gallery. She looked up just in time to see Barry half-closing his eyes.

“I wasn’t sleeping with him,” Lynn insisted.

“Before or after you’d had
sexual contact,
” Gwen said blandly. “We needn’t get overly technical.”

“Before,” Lynn conceded. “And it wasn’t …”

“So was it really entirely unexpected you wound up kissing the lieutenant when he came by your house?” Florio cut her off again.

“
I
didn’t kiss him. He tried to kiss me.”

“Uh-huh.” Florio gave the men on the board a knowing look. “Wasn’t it actually a magnanimous gesture that he hugged you back, a sign that he was trying to forgive you for what you’d done to him and his family?”

“No. It was something I didn’t want.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Gwen Florio strode over to a wall and leaned against it, striking a pose of coquettish impudence. “Isn’t it true that you’re a woman worried about getting older?”

“No. Not particularly.”

“
Sure
you aren’t.”

Lynn caught Mike staring at her and glared back at him, acknowledging his cleverness in hiring a woman lawyer. A man would have to think twice about going after her this aggressively in open court.

“And isn’t it true that there have been strains in your marriage lately?”

“No, not at all. I love my husband.”

“Right.” Gwen Florio nodded. “But isn’t it true that after you came on to the lieutenant and he spurned your advances, you told your husband that you’d had an encounter in order to make him jealous?”

“Do I seriously have to answer this?” Lynn looked at Jack Davis.

The old lawyer gripped the sides of his chair and tried to hoist himself up again.

“Never mind.” Gwen Florio turned her back to the witness stand and the dais. “I think I already know the answer.”

“Ms. Florio, do you have any other questions?” The mayor massaged his temples.

“I’m almost done, Your Honor.”

“Please be brief.”

She wheeled on Lynn with a refreshed smile. “Mrs. Schulman, isn’t it true that until recently your husband was vice president of legal affairs at a new company called Retrogenesis?”

Caught off-guard by the sudden change of pace, Lynn needed a second to answer. “Yes, he is. I mean, he was.”

“Isn’t it true that there was a short article in the
Wall Street Journal
yesterday about that company having to declare bankruptcy?”

“I guess so.”

Obviously, Gwen Florio had done her homework on the Internet. A corner of Barry’s mouth twitched.

“So wouldn’t it be fair to say that your family has been going through quite a few emotional stresses and financial strains lately?”

“We’re doing okay,” Lynn said stiffly, in a voice that sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

“But clearly you’re having a bit of a shortfall, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know anybody who isn’t …”

“But you have a substantial mortgage on your house and a child who’s going to college next year, don’t you?”

Lynn blanched as if the contents of her garbage cans had just been emptied onto her lap. “We’ll be fine.” She stared at Jack Davis, waiting for him to object.

“But until your husband finds another job you don’t have any money coming in. Isn’t that right? You’re surviving on your savings, aren’t you?”

Barry shook his head, knowing that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about this.

“Yes,” Lynn admitted. “Yes, we are.”

“So isn’t it true that this entire hearing is a pretext for you and your husband to set up a civil suit against the Riverside Police Department for harassment and drain the town coffers because his business failed?”

Florio cast a sly tongue-in-cheek look at the board members, making sure that they understood that their interests were at stake as well.

“No, that’s not true,” Lynn raised her voice. “That has nothing to do with why I’m here.”

The mayor banged the gavel wearily. “All right, Ms. Florio. That’s enough. Do you have any other relevant questions?”

“No, Your Honor,” the attorney said. “I do not.”

For a few seconds, there were no more muttered asides, no coughing, no whispers. Just the uncomfortable squeak of people fidgeting in wooden pews as air leaked out of this case.

“Then, thank you, Mrs. Schulman.” The mayor gave Lynn a terse nod without quite looking at her. “You may step down.”

49

“WELL, THAT WAS
fucking great.” Barry slammed the driver’s side door of the Saab and started the engine. “Is there anything else you might’ve forgotten to mention to me, like having syphilis or a half a million dollars in gambling debts?”

“Barry, I’m sorry. I tried to tell you before, but …”

They were in the parking lot behind Town Hall, watching the court buffs stream out the back of the building as the dusk fell over town and the sky turned the color of a raw bruise.

“Did you seriously think all of this wasn’t going to come out?” He shook his head, barely able to look at her. “Did you really believe that you could get up and lie in court, the way you lied to me in our home? Are you crazy?”