Unlucky in Law (29 page)

“Why did I . . .”

“You never told the jury that you were married to the man whose bones were in that grave, did you?”

“Nobody asked.”

Nina looked over at Jaime, who scratched his nose and tapped his pen against his file.

“So it is true? You married Zhukovsky in 1973, after the death of his first wife, Davida. You became his second wife?”

“Yes.” The word forced itself out of her.

“That is better,” Klaus said. “Now, then, tell the jury why you kept your marriage a secret even from your children.” Jaime could have objected on foundational grounds or because Klaus was badgering Wanda, but the other counsel table held to a conspicuous silence. Apparently, Jaime thought Klaus had swerved off on some pointless tangent. He didn't mind letting Klaus waste his energy in idle pursuits.

Wanda's eyes flashed.

“Answer!” Klaus said.

“There's no simple answer.”

“Then we will hear the complicated version.”

“Okay.” She thought. “I worked in his house starting right after his first wife died. He was lonely, and I was . . .”

“You were lonely, too?”

“Not exactly. I was in my mid-thirties. I had spent all my twenties into my early thirties sleeping around, having fun, using birth control, you know? It was those times. I was a free spirit, no ties, just a party girl. And what happened was, I saw him, and how much he loved his kids. I wanted children.” She shrugged. “I was worried I would get too old, and there he was, needing affection. We got close. I loved him.”

“By his kids you mean Christina and Alex?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“I got pregnant. When he found out, he insisted on marrying me. I told him no, but he wouldn't listen. He wanted our child to be legitimate. But we never planned on a conventional family scene. That was okay. I just wanted kids so much.”

“So your first child, Gabriel, was born in 1974.”

“And my second,” she turned her head toward Stefan, “came in 1975.”

“How did Constantin take the births?”

“He understood I wanted them. He accepted it.”

“Yet he never lived with you?”

“His daughter, Christina, was very attached to her parents, more than normal, I would say. When her mother died, she broke down, needed counseling, the whole nine yards. The son—Alex—hardly talked to anyone for the first year after his mother's death. They all missed her. Constantin's first wife was very cultured. Her children knew me as just this low-life hippie housekeeper.”

“This Constantin was a snob, eh?”

She clearly hated this question. “Kind of.”

“What about your children? Gabriel and Stefan? Did Constantin come to visit, bring little toys? Bring hugs and kisses on his visits?”

“When they were babies, he did. But he got sick and aged fast—he let go.”

“He treated them like unwanted illegitimates, it seems.”

Her face gave them an answer.

“He left money for you in a trust?”

“When he was failing, there at the end of his life, he told me he wanted to give some to us. I thought that was great, really generous.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

The jurors appeared shocked.

“Sounded like a lot to me then, too,” Wanda said, “but it amounts to only about four hundred a month. A lot of it goes to pay for health insurance. I still clean houses, and sometimes the companies I work for have bad coverage or none. The rest bought our groceries. We ate a lot of noodles.”

“His other children inherited much more, didn't they?”

“I didn't know about that. I thought he was a baker. I didn't know he had much money. He didn't act like it.”

“Why keep your marriage secret?”

“He wanted it that way, and so he put it in the agreement. I didn't care then. Now I see some of my decisions weren't so smart. I dropped out of high school to get a job so I could leave home, and later I got arrested at peace marches from here to Washington, D.C.” She frowned. “I posed nude for a girly magazine for a few bucks back in my twenties, too. I can't justify my life, except to say I did what I wanted mostly.” She pulled on her gray ponytail. “One thing right was having those boys.”

Stefan wiped at his eyes with his hand until Klaus handed him an immaculate handkerchief.

“I only wish for their sakes I had never agreed to keep my marriage secret, but I did, so I stuck by the terms for a long, long time. Does my telling everything here in court today mean I'm giving up that money?”

“Maybe not,” Klaus said. “What you testify to as a subpoenaed witness can be protected.”

Jaime was taking fast notes. Nina assumed he was beginning to realize the testimony could be used to hurt Stefan. Klaus rocked back on his feet a moment. Oh, no, she thought, he's forgotten what he was talking about.

A pall fell over the courtroom. “Klaus,” Nina whispered.

“A moment, Your Honor.” Klaus walked unsteadily back to her.

Nina handed him a sheet of legal paper. He read it, nodded. “Thank you,” he said with great dignity, and asked Wanda Wyatt, “Which of the four children found out?”

Judge Salas looked sharply at Wanda. Nina heard murmurings in the audience.

“Tell us,” Klaus said, gathering steam again, like an aged locomotive that has just had a fresh load of coal dumped into its boiler.

“Gabe saw me looking at something Constantin gave me,” Wanda said. “Crying over it, if you must know.”

“Now we are getting somewhere. What was this something?”

“A copy of a photo from a book. Constantin as a boy, dressed in a sailor suit.”

“Acting as page to the last tsar, Nicholas the Second.”

“So he always said.”

“He must have come from a good family.”

“Yes. He told me they were nobility but they all died during the revolution.”

“Your son Gabriel caught you weeping over this picture, and so you told him the truth at last.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Several months ago.”

“Do you remember exactly when?”

“No.”

“You told him, although you risked losing your monthly stipend?”

“Gabriel missed having a father, more than Stefan ever did.”

Sitting beside Nina, Stefan winced. His mother had hurt him many, many times with her opacity, Nina suspected.

“Gabe is so like his father in his character and his appearance,” Wanda went on. “I used to look at him, seeing Kostya's nose, Kostya's eyes. He deserved to know. I didn't want to keep it from him anymore. The unfairness of it—it eats at your soul, Mr. Pohlmann. I started thinking, I should tell him. He would have an example, he would understand himself better if he knew.”

“So you told Gabe.”

“And it did help him,” Wanda said. “Now he knows that he comes from a good family.”

“And then Gabriel told Stefan? Or did you?” Klaus said. No, no, no. That wasn't what they wanted to elicit, that Stefan knew! In spite of her resolve to remain impassive, Nina flinched. Jaime loved it. He shuffled papers, cleared his throat, and practically did the rhumba to make sure the jury paid special attention to the answer.

But the answer didn't help him after all. “No one told Stefan,” Wanda said. “I swear it. Gabe promised he wouldn't tell.”

Stefan whispered to Nina, “And I swear my mom can tell the truth when she really wants to.”

One of the new school of lawyers who prefer to save their feet, or maybe don't think on them very well, Jaime didn't rise from his chair for the cross-examination. Bad sign, all that relaxation. Klaus drank water, smacking his lips, his job done, well done, as far as he was concerned.

“What astounding news that would be for a person to hear—that he had two siblings and an entirely different family history. How do you know Gabriel didn't rush off to share this information with his brother?”

“I asked him not to. I couldn't see the point in confusing Stefan with information that wasn't relevant to his life. And Stefan had a girlfriend. He's not the type to keep secrets. He would tell her.” His mother didn't even give Stefan a nod of recognition when she said these hurtful things, she just continued blithely on. “Gabe swore he wouldn't tell Stefan. He keeps his word.”

“You considered the information not relevant, eh? Well, it's certainly relevant today,” Jaime said.

“Objection! This is improper,” Nina said. “Not a question.” She sputtered on for a bit, hoping to soften a little of the harm he had done.

“Sustained.”

“Now, Mrs. Wyatt,” Jaime said. “Mr. Zhukovsky purchased a small annuity for the support of you and his children. Did he leave you anything else?”

“A small souvenir or two.”

“Nothing valuable?”

“No.”

“Was this all set up in his will?”

“No. The trust was set up outside the will. So Christina and Alex . . .”

“Right. Couldn't let the other kids know. What did he leave them?”

“I don't know. I never saw Kostya's will.”

Jaime stopped to think up some new questions for which he already knew answers. He didn't like fishing. Clearing his throat finally, he decided he had gone as far as he could safely go. “Nothing further.”

“We'll take the morning recess,” said the judge.

Salas gave the jury a few instructions and they filed out. Wanda went out into the hall. She had shifted the trial toward a new place where both sides wanted to go, but neither knew how to get there without crashing. Jaime gestured to a trial deputy in the audience and held a quick, whispered consult. Nina nodded to Paul, who came up immediately. “Out in the hall—keep an eye on Gabe Wyatt. Don't let him get away.”

24

Monday 9/29

A
S SOON AS
S
ALAS
'
S GAVEL WENT DOWN,
N
INA FLEW OUT THE DOOR.
Sandy had left a message, so Nina called her at the Pohlmann office. “Ginger wants to talk to you. She's driving down with some stuff to show you.”

“Okay.”

“Her ETA is about noon.”

“Tell her to meet me at the courthouse in Salinas.”

Nina went back in and whispered her worst fear to Klaus, who hadn't budged from the counsel table. “Maybe Stef knew. He was upset at Christina, maybe because of her money from her father. Jaime can insinuate a lot when his turn comes.”

“But it doesn't explain the hunt for Constantin's bones,” Klaus said.

His preternatural calm struck her as discordant under the circumstances, which Nina considered dire. “I want to call Alex next. I want to handle that examination.”

“He is mine.”

“You don't like him, Klaus. He upsets you. That won't work.” But she saw that she had riled him again. His mood shifts were becoming a big problem. He veered so quickly into anger that she couldn't see it coming.

“You don't think I can control my temper? Your attitude tells me that you have as many doubts as that vexatious prosecutor. I wonder why I allowed Mr. Cunningham to hire you.”

“I thought it was you who hired me.” He had hurt her.

There was a pause, during which Klaus pursed his lips and turned his eyes upward. And just as suddenly as it had arrived, his anger departed. He laughed. “Let us join our prodigious forces to get this lying bastard. You may take the lead, but not because I cannot.”

“Thank you, Klaus. So—how do we stop the lies?”

“Don't try to intimidate him. That makes him stubborn. Ingratiate yourself, and then appeal to his pride,” Klaus said. He didn't offer any specifics on that topic, though, and by the time the session resumed Nina was reduced to scribbling more diagrams on her legal pad, not notes. Father Giorgi linked to the Zhukovskys; the Wyatt family now linked to Christina and Alex; Alex hiring Stefan; Sergey Krilov linked to Christina; and on top, hanging over them all like a confounding angel, Constantin Zhukovsky. What links did they still not know?

“Call Professor Alex Zhukovsky,” Nina said. The professor was brought in, puffing as though he had just arrived, told he was still under oath, and asked to state his name again.

“Alexis Constantinovich Zhukovsky.”

Klaus gave a great start in the seat next to her. He half rose, his chair falling over behind him, clutching at his chest, trying to speak, his eyes wide and staring.

“Klaus!” Nina cried, half supporting him. The bailiff rushed over and Salas said, “Call nine-one-one,” to his clerk.

“No!” Klaus cried in that silly high old man's voice that had so disconcerted her in the hall before court. “I am fine, no problem.” The bailiff picked up his chair and Klaus toppled into it. “No problem,” he repeated, waving the bailiff away. He noticed the people from the audience standing, craning their heads, and said, “No show today.” The jury sat back in their chairs and shook their heads.

“Are you sure you can continue, Mr. Pohlmann?”

“Quite sure, Your Honor.” Klaus began to smile, but it still looked like a toss-up as to whether a hearty laugh or unconsciousness would follow. He fanned himself vigorously with a file. “Miss Reilly will examine the next witness.” He leaned over to Nina and whispered, “Listen carefully: European boys are often given the name of their grandfather.”

Nina nodded. She had no idea what he was talking about. His breathing returned to normal and his color was restored, but an impish smile stayed pasted to his face.

She stood up, wet her lips, and said, “Good morning, Professor.”

“For you, perhaps.”

Now, that was not a good beginning, but it told her what she wanted to know, that Alex Zhukovsky knew what had been going on in the courtroom. “Have you engaged in a recent conversation with Wanda Wyatt this morning?”

“Yes.” A scowl.

Aha. “What, if anything, did she tell you about your family?”

“She told me she had married my father. She explained fully.”

Salas's face darkened. He told the bailiff, “Go see if you can find Ms. Wyatt. I want to speak to her in my chambers over the lunch break. Continue, Counsel.”

“Did this information surprise you?” Nina asked.

“I had no idea.”

“How did you feel about your father, Professor Zhukovsky?”

“I loved him. He was my father.”

“Did you think he was an honest man?”

“On the whole. My father loved telling stories. Anyone could tell you that. But at heart, he was good.”

“You admired him?”

“Yes. He had been through a lot in his life, and had managed to find peace in his later years.”

“You were proud that he was your father?”

“Of course.”

“Where is this going, Counsel?” Salas asked.

“Just one more question along this line, Your Honor,” Nina said, keeping her eyes on Zhukovsky's eyes, holding him there. “Are you proud of him today? After what you have just learned?”

He hesitated. “I'll always be proud of him. I don't know why he kept this from Christina and me, except that we were selfish brats who went kind of nuts when our mother died. But we were children. I feel sure he would have trusted us eventually, had he lived longer.”

“When you hired him to dig up your father's remains, you had no idea Stefan Wyatt was your half-brother?”

Jaime started to object. He had several grounds for objection, but he changed his mind and choked them off. He had calculated that the answer would only add to the idea in the jury's minds that Stefan had a definite and strong connection to Christina.

Nina turned back to Zhukovsky, who was ruffling the sides of his cheeks with the backs of his hands, making up his mind once and for all. He knew they could get legally obtained records of his call to Stefan entered into evidence, and he should be worried about perjuring himself further at this point. Salas waited. They all waited.

“You're right,” Zhukovsky said. “I need to change my testimony in that regard. I just—I was afraid that it could be thought that I had something to do with my sister's death. I didn't.”

“It's about time,” Nina said. A deep fatigue drifted along inside her, tempering the relief. They'd had to keep at Zhukovsky. She had feared he would never capitulate. Jaime could make use of the information, too, as he could with Wanda's testimony. But they could make no progress, discover no further truth, until this moment when Zhukovsky sat up straight in the box and pressed his eyes shut as if in a moment of prayer.

Nina said, “You hired Mr. Wyatt?”

“Yes.”

“You asked him to dig up a grave at El Encinal Cemetery and told him it was your father's grave?”

“Yes.”

“You offered to pay him five hundred dollars to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God,” Stefan said loudly enough for the jury to hear. He held his hands over his eyes. Klaus put an arm around his broad shoulders and whispered to him.

“When was this?”

“Two days before Christina was murdered.”

“Did you know what day this job was to take place?”

“I asked him to do it on Friday night, April eleventh.”

“The night your sister was murdered.”

“I didn't know she would die that night! The two events are unrelated, I promise you.”

“But we know he didn't dig up the bones on that Friday night, don't we?”

“When I went to pick up the bones and they weren't where they were supposed to be, I called him again. He said he hadn't gotten around to it. As if I had asked him to mail a letter or something! He promised to do it Saturday night instead. April twelfth.”

The jury, provoked out of lethargy at hearing lies exposed, leaned forward, looking eager. Even Nina felt eager. At last, a breakthrough with this obdurate, deceitful witness. How long they had waited for this information. “Now, you have claimed your sister, Christina, gave you Stefan's name, haven't you?”

“Yes.”

“You had no other personal knowledge of Mr. Wyatt?”

“No. I didn't recognize his name. I know that a woman named Wanda cleaned house for us occasionally a very long time ago.” Disquiet and amazement sneaked into his voice. “But I had no reason to connect things up.”

“All right. Now let's hear it, Mr. Zhukovsky. Why did you want to dig up your father's grave?”

He gave her a look he might give his surgeon on the morning of a root canal, like a man anticipating severe postoperative pain. “To persuade my sister not to do something incredibly foolish,” he said. “To protect her from public humiliation. To save my father's name and myself from ridicule. To protect her from crackpots. I wanted his bones dug up for the sake of my sister.”

The jury looked as puzzled as Stefan, but Nina felt again that aggressive joy as the case opened in front of her like a croc opening its jaws and showing her its big teeth. She couldn't wait to wrestle with it, clamp the massive jaw of it, get it under control now that she had finally identified what kind of animal it was. Klaus tugged at her sleeve and she bent down. “Ask him: who was he named for?”

She didn't know why he wanted this, and she didn't want to do it, but Klaus had that look, and she realized she would not be able to escape what amounted to an order. “By the way, Mr. Zhukovsky, who were you named for?”

“So,” Zhukovsky said. “You knew all the time? Christina made a lot of it. She considered it another good piece of evidence.” He said something in Russian.

“I couldn't get that down,” the court stenographer interrupted.

“Sorry,” Zhukovsky said. “It's a long story, and an incredible one. We've kept quiet about it for such a long time . . .” He stopped to fumble with a handkerchief, which he used to wipe his hands. “Should I go on?”

“Be my guest,” Nina said, hardly able to hear her own voice over the roar of her tension. She wanted to jump up there and squeeze the whole thing right out of him. She couldn't wait another minute. On the other hand, she was fully aware courtroom surprises were sometimes dangerous, even lethal to a case.

Everyone in the courtroom sensed the importance of this moment. The room got noisy momentarily as people repositioned their bodies for comfort, settling in for a good quiet listen. Klaus held Stefan by the arm, whether to steady himself or to steady Stefan, Nina couldn't tell. The judge's eyes narrowed to turtle slits. He would let things in a little at a time, and cogitate at his leisure. Jaime, as anxious as she was, sat back in his chair, arms behind his head, a picture of confused hope. He was holding himself in check, secretly praying for a narrative that would present him with an opportunity for ambush.

“This all started several years ago. Christina met a man . . .”

A phone rang in muted tones on the bailiff's desk. He spoke softly into it. Then he was out of his chair, whispering to the clerk, then the judge. Salas pounded his gavel. “Clear the courtroom immediately. Stay calm and proceed outside. We have a bomb threat.”

Like a deer smelling hunters on the wind, Salas took flight, leaping down from the dais to rush past Nina. The astonished audience rose with him and pushed for the doors. The bailiff ran over, weapon in hand. He pushed Stefan facedown on the table. Somehow he cuffed him, then pulled him up again by his shirt and joined the crowd pouring out the exit. Nina helped Klaus up, grabbing the crucial files. They were at the back of the crowd.

Paul pushed up until he was next to her. She took Klaus's hand. They spilled outside, herded along with hundreds of other people.

The entire courthouse was cleared. Bewildered clerks clustered along the street at a safe distance from both the parking lot and buildings. People who had gone in to pay tickets, lawyers, and the family involved in the custody hearing next door all poured out. Police cars skidded up and uniformed cops jumped out and started directing the crowd.

Nina, Paul, and Klaus took up positions across the street. “I left my purse!” she said. She felt through her briefcase and, relieved, found her wallet there. Klaus, crimson-faced and bleary-eyed, was breathing too hard. “Should I call a doctor?” Nina asked.

He waved her away. “No, no. I'll sit down.” Paul helped him to a spot under a tree.

Nina looked around. On the courthouse facade, the concrete faces looked stolidly down upon the chaos. Stefan had disappeared with the bailiff. Paul was scanning the street alertly. By now they were several hundred feet from the courthouse, watching, waiting for it to blow up. Their eyes strained as the fire trucks came down the street and bullhorns came out. “What's happening?”

Paul squeezed her arm in a familiar gesture. “We'll know soon.” He got on his cell phone.

Nina bent over Klaus. “Are you sure you're okay? How are you feeling?”

“He never answered the question,” the old man said, stroking his beard as though he was still sitting at the counsel table.

Paul snapped his phone closed. “They got a phone-in bomb threat. That's all anyone seems to know at this point. A bomb squad's on the way.”

“Miss Reilly. Mr. van Wagoner.”

“What is it, Klaus?” Nina said.

“There's no bomb. It's perfectly safe. We can walk right back in there. Sit in Salas's chair and render half-baked judgments on his behalf until the official all-clear comes and he skulks back.”

They stared at him.

“Don't you see, they're after Zhukovsky!”

“Who is after him?” Nina asked.

“The Russians? Possibly them. Possibly someone else.”

“I think I have some fresh water here somewhere,” Nina said, feeling around her briefcase for the bottle she thought she had put inside it that morning.

“Don't patronize me, girl! Call the police! Where are your brains! Think!”

She found the bottle and offered it to him. He pushed it away. “He was about to tell us!” Klaus screeched.

“It
is
a quick way to stop a trial, Nina,” Paul said, “calling in a bomb threat. And the timing was . . . opportune. He seemed on the verge of saying something really big, didn't he? Did you see Zhukovsky leave the stand or see him on the way out?”