The Privilege, page 16
It was so engrossing that it took a moment before I realized he was finished. The strange part was that I was not sure that he knew he had stopped staying out loud the words that - and this I was sure of - were still running through his mind. His eyes were eager with anticipation, because whatever you said in reply, no matter how dull and commonplace, would give him the chance to find something remarkable about it, something he could use to show you how much intelligence those otherwise unremarkable words of yours contained.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Antonelli? I hope what I did today didn’t embarrass you.” He said this in a way that left no doubt that his refusal to abide by the normal rules of courtroom behavior had been no mistake; it had been a deliberate challenge. “Rules are important, but they lose their meaning if you don’t know the reason for them. Is there a rule against a defendant asking questions?”
“You’re represented by an attorney; it is assumed that….”
“Yes, precisely - assumed! But is there a rule that prohibits a defendant, whether or not represented by counsel, from asking questions? If I were representing myself, I certainly could do so. One of the determinations whether someone has the mental capacity to stand trial is whether he can assist in his own defense. That is what I was doing - was it not? - assisting in my defense. But, don’t worry: I won’t do it, at least not very often, and I certainly won’t do it, if you ask me not to.”
He had done something no one I had represented had ever done. He had made me forget that I was his lawyer, and made me remember the boundless curiosity of my long vanished youth. I was a spectator entranced by a performance, interested only in what was going to happen next. But then, in the silence that followed, staring into eyes that seemed a double mirror of endless depth, the habit of my profession, what had after years of experience become second nature, brought me back to the prosaic details of the case that could not be ignored. But even then, the question I asked was not one I would normally have asked someone on trial for his life.
“Why do you think you’re on trial? Why do you think someone wants you to be on trial for the murder of Lucas Fairweather?”
He thought about it. He did not shrug his shoulders or shake his head or do any of the other things by which we ordinarily show our confusion, or our ignorance. He explored, as he might have put it, the known possibilities.
“I walk there every night, and always at the same time. It is a settled routine. I have been teaching at Berkeley for so many years that my habits are fairly well-known. If someone wanted to murder the chancellor, they would know that if it were done close to midnight, I would be in close proximity. That, I think, is what they call opportunity. As for motive, I had none: I never would have considered the possibility. But someone else, looking at what my history has been at the university, the arguments, the disputes, the organized attempt I was part of to get rid of Fairweather before he did any more damage - what he, for his part, was planning to do: the budget cuts, the reorganization, all of it designed to further diminish the already laughably reduced course offers in philosophy - might be thought sufficient motive by some.”
“That isn’t exactly what I meant,” I said, tentatively. He was my client, on trial for murder, but there was only so far I could go. “Let me ask the question this way: never mind that someone could try try to put the blame on you. Other than the fact that you walked past the chancellor’s office every night, other than the fact that you might seem to have a motive, is there any reason you can think of why someone would want you - Alan Boe - to stand trial for the chancellor’s murder? Is there any reason,” I went on, peering into his light filled eyes, “why someone would want, not just Lucas Fairweather dead, but to have you put on trial for his death?”
His eyes flashed with instant recognition.
‘Who would have a motive to put me on trial for murder? That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Why do you think that? You have a reason. I’ve learned that much about you, Mr. Antonelli - There is something you know, and you’re not ready - or perhaps able - to tell me. It’s all right,” he remarked, before I could start to explain. “I don’t need to know. There is nothing you need to tell me.”
This self-imposed restriction lasted perhaps half a second.
“But someone doesn’t just want me to be blamed for a murder - they want a trial.” A smile rippled across the uneven contours of his large, ungainly mouth. “Perhaps one of my former students wants to see if I really meant it when I used to say that the noblest death in history is what happened to Socrates, and that I could only envy the way he conducted himself in his trial. But, no, that would not be possible. I’m afraid I’m not much help.” His eyes flashed a second time. “That means the woman, the one who ran into me, the one who got blood on me, the one who must have murdered the chancellor, did not do it on her own. You’re saying she was hired by someone to do this, murder him and frame me?”
“Hired, or persuaded; I’m not sure how she was convinced to do it, but yes. She knew she could get Fairweather to meet her alone in his office. She probably waited after she killed him until she could see you from the window on the second floor and then start screaming to bring you running.”
“But she made a mistake - correct. Mr. Hoskins, the security guard.”
“Yes. She couldn’t have known that Hoskins would open the door and see her with Fairweather. This helps. It confirms you story about a woman being there.”
“But that is all it confirms, isn’t it? It’s still just my word that she was running down the stairs and that was how the chancellor’s blood got on my hands and clothing.”
I was thinking about something else, the other trial, the first one that James Michael Redfield had arranged.
“I can’t tell you everything, but I can tell you that this is the second trial in a sequence. The first one happened a few months ago. Justin Friedrich was put on trial for the murder of his wife. Perhaps you read about it. He was saved at the last minute, just as the trial was ending, when someone left at my office the murder weapon, a gun with the sales receipt marked with the time and place of purchase. It proved that Justin Friedrich could not have murdered his wife. The murder, the trial of an innocent man, were the work of the same person who, I have every reason to believe, arranged the murder of Lucas Fairweather and made certain that you would be put on trial for it.”
“What is the connection between the two? What did whoever did this want to achieve in the first trial? I’m assuming the same person gave you the evidence you needed at the end of the trial. If he did not want the defendant convicted, what was he after?”
“To reveal the corruption in the lives of the useless rich. Or so he suggested.”
“Then the connection may be obvious.”
“Obvious?”
“I am perhaps uniquely qualified to reveal the utter, and almost complete, corruption of higher education in America. You see,” he said, his bulb like eyes shining with an uncanny brightness, “I knew this trial would be something to look forward to.”
Chapter Eleven
Eleanor McFarland sat hunched over a thin black binder, reviewing the notes she had made for her next witness. There was another, vacant, chair next to her, the place for another, junior, member of the district attorney’s office, but McFarland preferred to try her cases alone. A lawyer who knew what she was doing had to work that way. There was no time, and no need, to consult with someone sitting second chair, if at the end of a trial that might last for weeks, or even longer, you were going to be able to stand in front of a jury and without so much as a note to rely on convince them that the evidence left no choice but to convict, or, if you were on the other side, acquit, the defendant.
There were not many lawyers who did this anymore. Eleanor McFarland was one of the last who still understood that if you read from notes there is something missing. It suggests that you are not yourself sufficiently convinced, that you lack the passion of real conviction, if you have to stand there, written notes in hand, or worse yet, with a chalkboard outline, to give your closing argument. Others in the electronic age might have an attention span measured in seconds; Eleanor McFarland could still recite from memory whole passages from Shakespeare’s histories.
“Is the prosecution ready to call its next witness?” asked Michelle Longstreet. Trying to accomplish two things at once, she smiled at the jury as she slid onto her chair at the bench.
McFarland did not look up from what she was doing.
“Is the prosecution ready to call its next witness?” again asked Longstreet.
She began to arrange the books and papers she had brought in with her. She stopped, and looked down at McFarland, who had not moved.
“Is the -”
McFarland lumbered to her feet and without so much as a glance at Longstreet, faced the jury.
“The prosecution calls Detective Oliver Grayson.”
Longstreet glared at her. McFarland did not notice, or rather, made a point not to appear to notice. There is no advantage in antagonizing the judge presiding over a trial you are trying to win. This was not tactical, it was personal; personal, but perhaps not deliberate. It seemed inadvertent, a slight born of indifference. Eleanor McFarland did not respect Michelle Longstreet. She showed the deference due a trial court judge, but only when she remembered that it was something she owed the position.
Oliver Grayson took the stand, looked out at the crowed courtroom, and then looked at the jury. It was what he would have done in any trial to get a sense of things, a feeling for the people in the room. Having testified in more trials than he could count, his expression was serious, professional. Then he looked at the counsel table where I was sitting next to Alan Boe and for a brief instant came alive. Too late to stop himself, he smiled, and then immediately looked away.
“Detective Grayson,” began McFarland, “you were the lead investigator in the murder of Lucas Fairweather?”
“Yes, that’s correct: I was,” he replied. His voice, a sharp staccato, seemed to match the quick, precise movements with which he punctuated his speech.
“Would you describe to the jury what you observed when you arrived at the scene?”
“My partner, Detective Huddleston, and I got to the chancellor’s office at half past midnight. The security guard, Melvin Hoskins, had discovered the body of Chancellor Fairweather. He called 911 and two uniformed officers were there in a matter of minutes. They called us. Nothing had been touched. The chancellor was laying face down - actually face to the side - on his desk. There was a deep gash in the back of his head, and a lot of blood. A statue, about two feet in length….”
Holding up her hand to stop him, McFarland signaled to the clerk to bring the statue, now encased in a cellophane wrapper, to the witness.
“Is this the statue you were describing?”
“Yes, this is the statue; the murder weapon, if you will.”
Holding it in both hands, he lifted it up so the jury could see it better.
“It seems to have a rather sharp edge, especially where it comes to a point. Is it heavy?”
Grayson balanced it in his hands as if he were trying to guess its weight. McFarland motioned for the clerk to again approach the witness.
“Would you please hand it to the jury. And would the members of the jury,” she went on, looking over to them, “pass it around so each of you can see for yourself how lethal a weapon it could be.”
I was on my feet, but instead of shouting an objection, I just stood there, my hand on my hip, an eyebrow raised in amusement.
“Mr. Antonelli,” asked Judge Longstreet, “do you have an objection? Is there -?”
I ignored her. I did worse than that: I held up my hand to stop her, the same way McFarland had done with her witness. I waited until, a moment later, McFarland turned to see what I was doing.
“You have the murder weapon,” I congratulated her. “Now if you only had the murderer!”
Nothing bothered Eleanor McFarland. She had too much the sense of her own ability to let anything get to her. More than that, she had a rare appreciation of how things should be done in a courtroom: not the arid rules of procedure that dull-witted judges like to enforce and dim-witted lawyers do not know how to break, but the way that, with a little daring, a trial can be made into a drama full of unexpected twists and turns. She kept looking at me, a faint, though definite, glimmer of acknowledgement in her eyes, as she insisted in a clear, forceful voice that, “Perhaps your Honor might want to remind Mr. Antonelli that only a sworn witness can testify in a trial.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I replied, before Longstreet could decide whether she wanted to follow the prosecution’s advice.
McFarland had already turned back to her witness.
“The chancellor was dead; the statue which had been used to smash his skull was there, on the floor. What else did you observe?”
Grayson proceeded to describe in detail everything about the room, including the fact that there was only one way in or out.
“So the murderer must have come in that way and then left that way. Was anyone seen leaving the chancellor’s office that night?”
“Not leaving his office, but someone - the defendant - was seen inside the building; or rather, leaving the building, at the same time the security guard discovered the chancellor’s body.”
“The security guard,” repeated McFarland, with a pensive expression on her large, square face. She had her hand on the railing of the jury box, her gaze steady and unrelenting, the look of someone who only wanted the truth. “The security guard, Melvin Hoskins - you talked to him?”
“Yes, of course; that night, at the scene, and then, a few days later, he came to our office.”
“Did he - either time you talked with him - say anything about a woman being there that night with the chancellor, anything to make you think Lucas Fairweather had not been there alone in his office?”
“He told us that he checked that office every hour, that Fairweather had been there when he checked at eleven, and that when he went back, a little before midnight, Fairweather was dead.”
“As you know, he testified under oath that a woman was there when he checked the office at eleven, and that when he went back, an hour later, it was because he heard someone screaming. Can you account for why Mr. Hoskins did not tell you that?”
“No, I can’t. We didn’t ask him if anyone had been with Fairweather. In that sense, he did not lie. Maybe we should have asked. He’s worked there a long time. Maybe he thought he shouldn’t say anything bad about the dead. He’s quite religious. He always has his Bible with him. But do I know for sure why he didn’t say anything? - No.”
“Did he tell you he heard screaming?”
“He said he thought he heard noise.”
“Have you - have the police - attempted to find this woman, the one who was seen having sex with Lucas Fairweather?”
“We’ve tried; but no one saw her. There isn’t any record of phone calls, emails, anything that would give us a clue who she might have been.”
“There is a record - there is a witness - to the defendant being there, though, isn’t there?”
“Yes. He was seen leaving the building at the time of the murder.”
“With blood on his hands and shirt?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Tell us, Detective Grayson, in all your years of experience, have you ever heard of someone who has just committed murder screaming for help?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“A woman screams for help, and scared to death that the murderer is going to kill her next, runs away. Isn’t that what all the evidence seems to suggest?”
I objected, but McFarland had made her point, and no ruling from the bench was going to make the jury forget what they had just heard.
There were more questions, and more answers, until, finally, McFarland got to what had happened when the defendant, Alan Boe, was first interviewed by the police.
“What did he tell you? Did he confess that he had thought about murdering the chancellor?”
I wondered how much she knew, how much Grayson had told her about the extraordinary conversation he and the other detective had had with Alan Boe, that conversation in which they had been forced to answer as many questions as they had asked. The police report had described only what Boe had said in response to what he had been asked. If all she knew was what she had read in the standard deathlike prose in which police reports were invariably written, she was in for the surprise of her life.
“Yes,” replied Grayson; “he said he had often had that thought.”
“Did he also tell you that there were at least some occasions on which, in his judgement, murder would be justified?”
“Yes, he said that too.”
Finished with the witness. McFarland returned to her chair. I did not move from mine.
“Mr. Antonelli, do you wish to cross-examine the witness?” asked Longstreet.
My elbow on the table, my left hand pressed against the side of my head, I held my fountain pen point up in the fingers of my right. Tapping the bottom of the barrel against the hard surface, I stared at Grayson with a smile of disbelief.
“What you just said: that Alan Boe admitted he had sometimes thought about murdering Lucas Fairweather, that he said there were times when murder would be justifiable - that’s true: he said that. But what you did not tell us,” I said, as I put down my pen and slowly got up from my chair, “ is that you - and your partner, Detective Huddleston, as well - have had the same kind of thoughts yourselves. Isn’t it true, Detective Grayson, that the defendant asked you if you had ever thought about murdering the police chief, the man you work for?”
Ever so slightly, Grayson raised his eyebrows; ever so slightly the corners of his mouth broke in the direction of a grin. He remembered what had happened, and he was not disappointed to discover that I knew it as well. He was there to do his job, a witness for the prosecution, but if I could turn him into a better witness for the defense, a witness for Alan Boe, he would not mind at all.
