Defense, page 30
“She’s right, it doesn’t,” I shrugged. “I gave her the list of names we intended to call as of the time the list was prepared. That list contains names of people who in fact are not going to be called. The investigator who talked to the gun store owner, for instance. Because after the gun store owner’s testimony, we don’t need her.”
“But that’s not the point, your honor,” she complained. “He doesn’t have to call everyone on his list of witnesses, but he can’t call someone who isn’t on it.”
“Of course I can,” I replied. “I can call anyone who has relevant evidence, and Mr. Mara certainly has that. And if his name is not on your list,” I explained, turning toward her for the first time, “it’s because we only just found him.”
She laughed, a forced, nervous laugh. “Relevant evidence. And you only just found him. And just how relevant is his evidence?”
“I think you’ll find it interesting.”
Her eyes flashed. She controlled it. She turned to Sloper. “Your honor?”
“Based on Mr. Antonelli’s representations that the defense has only just now located this witness I’ll allow the testimony.”
It had been five years since the trial of Denise Morel for the murder of her husband; five years since Horace Woolner had used the testimony of my old client and self-appointed moral tutor, Carmen Mara, to convict her; five years since Gwendolyn Gilliland-O’Rourke had presided over a circuit court case where she would have been more concerned with what she was doing than with what was going on around her. She did not remember his name, and when he stood there, being sworn in as the second and last witness for the defense, I was certain she did not recognize him. I began to think I might actually get away with it.
Horace Woolner had found him, and in that mysterious way in which he often managed things, he had made all the arrangements to get Mara out of jail and into Portland. Horace never asked why, and I never offered to tell him. Mara asked why and I reminded him of what he had told me, years before, about the differences between good and evil. He said he remembered it, but, then, Carmen always knew how to lie.
He had not changed. Somewhere on his body there must have been a new tattoo, added during one of his temporary exemptions from confinement, but everything else had been frozen in time. He was one of those people who had aged rapidly and then did not age at all. Carmen Mara had probably looked old before he was thirty, and he was going to look that way until the day he died.
There was still time to stop. Mara was being sworn, but I did not have to go through with it. I could ask him a few questions about Denise Morel and use his testimony to bolster my otherwise unsupported theory that, with the possible exception of Myrna Albright, no one had a more powerful motive to murder than the daughter Denise had not only failed to protect but helped to destroy. From the moment I decided to call Carmen Mara as a witness for the defense, I had told myself I would finally end up doing just that.
I asked Mara to state his name for the record, and then I asked him what he did for a living.
“Currently unemployed,” he replied. It sounded like the voice of the town drunk who could drink all night long and still be dying of thirst.
“And what do you do when you are working?”
He looked at me with bewildered eyes and shook his head. “I don’t remember.” A barely audible wave of smothered laughter rippled through the courtroom.
“You don’t remember?”
“Hell, must be thirty, forty years since I worked,” he growled.
“Then how do you support yourself?”
“Don’t. Spend most of my time in jail. Spend a little time on the streets. When I need money, I steal a little. Nothing much. Just enough to get by.”
Nothing had changed. Mara’s life, like everyone else’s, moved in its own cycle of repetition. I wasted no more time. I went right to the night of the murder.
“And do you know anything about what happened on the night of April seventeenth? Anything about the murder of Denise Morel?”
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and began to rub his gnarled hands together. He narrowed his eyes, squinting as if he were taking aim or shielding them from the sun.
“Yeah, I know about it. I saw it happen. I saw her get shot.”
“Would you tell the jury exactly what you saw?”
“Sure.” He straightened up and turned halfway toward the jury. “I saw the bitch get what she deserved. I saw her get shot. Then I saw him,” he said, turning back toward me and pointing at Rifkin, “come running back into the room.”
“Then the defendant, Leopold Rifkin, was not the one you saw shoot Denise Morel?”
“No, I just told you. I saw that bitch…”
“That’s not the kind of language we use in a court of law,” I said before Gilliland-O’Rourke could object.
“I saw her—Denise Morel—I saw her get shot. He wasn’t even in the room when it happened,” he said, pointing again at Rifkin. “I saw him come in, and I saw him get down next to the body, like he wanted to see if she was still alive or not. Good luck. Shit, man, she damn near had her fuckin’ head blowed off!” he exclaimed without a trace of regret.
“Mr. Mara,” Sloper said, banging down his gavel. “That is enough. There will be no more language like that!”
Mara twisted his neck around and looked up. He and Sloper were about the same age. “I’m sorry. I’m not educated. I’ll try.”
“Did you see who did kill Denise Morel?”
Mara shook his grizzled head. “I was watching the whole thing. You see, I was there when they drove up, Denise and someone else. I didn’t know it was her, not at first. I just heard a car drive up. When she got out and I saw who it was I was surprised. I mean, what the hell is someone like her doing in a place like that? So I watched.”
There was an obvious question. “What were you doing there?”
“Oh, me? I go there a lot. I mean, I go out to that neighborhood a lot. I go through the trash. Those people throw out things that you wouldn’t believe. One time, I swear, I got a diamond ring. Not a big one, but big enough. Woman must have been really pissed to throw that away, you know.”
“So, you were there to go through the trash?”
“Yeah. And I saw Denise. So I watched. She goes right up to the door and he—the guy next to you—he opens the door. She stands there talking to him for a minute and then he steps aside and she walks in. It didn’t seem like he was expecting her, you know. It kind of looked like she just invited herself in. So I watched. Then, a few seconds later, I see the two of them go into a room. It was all lit up. Lots of books in the place. Lot of books. Anyway, they sit there for a few minutes, then he gets up and leaves. Goes out of the room. I didn’t see where he went. Then, next thing that happens, another door opens. You know, one of those doors with a lot of glass that goes outside.”
“A French door?”
“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, someone comes in. I figure it must be whoever was driving the car Denise came in. I look around and the car is still there, down at the bottom of the driveway, just outside the gate. The lights are off. I look back and I see the gun, and then I hear the shot, and then I see him,” he said, pointing, “coming back in and I take off.”
“What about the person who shot her?”
“What about him?”
“Was it a him?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get that good a look. Whoever it was had a cap on, a baseball cap. That’s all I know.”
“Did you see the person who killed Denise Morel after the shot was fired? Did you see where he or she went?”
“Hell, no. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I knew if anyone found me around there, they’d figure I did it. I jumped a wall and went through a couple of backyards until I got out to a street down near the river.”
“Your witness,” I said, turning to Gilliland-O’Rourke. For the first and only time in the trial the mask of calculated indifference slipped away. She smiled at me, but, as I realized immediately, it was a smile laced with condescension.
“Your honor,” she said as she got to her feet, “may we approach?”
Sloper leaned toward us as we stood together at the side of the bench. “Now that we’ve heard the testimony of Mr. Antonelli’s witness,” she explained, “I’d like to request a recess so I can prepare my cross.” With a sideways glance at me, she added, “I think I remember Mr. Mara from another case.”
Judges hate delay unless it is of their own devising. Sloper seemed hesitant. “I’m only asking for the rest of the day. I’ll be ready in the morning.”
“Well,” Sloper replied, looking at me, “I suppose since I let you call a witness the prosecution didn’t know anything about that the request is reasonable.”
* * *
By the time we reconvened the next morning, Gilliland-O’Rourke had remembered everything. “Mr. Mara, you previously testified in a case involving Denise Morel, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Mara said gruffly.
“You testified for the prosecution when Denise Morel was tried for the murder of her husband, didn’t you?”
“Damn right.”
“Isn’t it just a little odd, then, that you would suddenly show up as a witness for the defense when Denise Morel is murdered?”
I was on my feet. “Objection. That is not a question. It is an accusation.”
“Let me rephrase the question. Was it just a coincidence that, having been a witness against her, you then become the only witness to her murder?”
“I’m not the only witness.”
“You’re not?”
“No. Whoever killed her saw the whole thing. Right?”
“Thank you, Mr. Mara. Thank you for that brilliant insight. Shall I repeat my question? Was it just a coincidence?”
“You don’t think it was? What about the ‘coincidence’ that you were the judge and now you’re the prosecution? ’Course it was a coincidence. But it wasn’t any coincidence that I saw what I saw.”
“What? I don’t follow.”
“If someone else had gotten out of that car, I would have been out of there right away. I wouldn’t of stood around to see what was going on. Soon as I saw it was her, soon as I saw that, I hung around. Curiosity.”
She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. “I see. Curiosity. Coincidences. Let me ask you this. During all the time that has passed from that night until now, you never came forward, never contacted the authorities, did you?”
“You nuts?” Mara snorted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who was going to believe anything I said?”
“My point exactly.”
She made it seem like a victory, but her eyes gave her away. It did not matter if the jury really believed what Mara had told them and she knew it. He had given them a way out, an excuse, a convenient pretext by which to reach a verdict that, after the testimony of Leopold Rifkin, they wanted to reach. Mara had told them he had seen someone else murder Denise Morel. Gilliland-O’Rourke was left to argue that the jury had to consider the question of the credibility of witnesses; I was left to remind them that whatever they thought of Carmen Mara, his story supported in every essential detail the testimony of the defendant, and that they could judge for themselves the credibility of Leopold Rifkin.
It was a question the jury took less than an hour to decide. All twelve jurors agreed. Leopold Rifkin was not guilty.
Horace Woolner was standing at the back of the courtroom, barely visible through the crowd that began to surge toward Rifkin. A huge smile of relief stretched across his wide, ingenuous mouth. He waved at me. I tried to wave back, but someone grabbed me and started to pump my hand. I pulled away and with the help of a deputy sheriff tried to get Rifkin away, but he did not want to leave, not right away, not while there was someone who wanted to wish him well or a newspaper reporter who wanted to ask one last question. With the crowd swirling around him, we made our way to the doors at the back of the courtroom. As soon as they opened, another crowd surged forward from the hallway where dozens of television cameras were waiting to capture what would become the final thirty seconds of attention the public would pay Leopold Rifkin now that he was free of scandal.
He had treated them all with kindness, and now they treated him with respect. You could tell by the way they asked their questions that they agreed with what the jury had done.
“How do you feel, now that it’s over?” asked a television reporter with a baritone voice and an expensive haircut.
Raising an eyebrow, Rifkin smiled and replied, “More convinced than ever that the jury system works.”
Another reporter wanted to know who he thought murdered Denise Morel. “Your lawyer suggested it might have been that woman—Myrna Albright—or even Denise Morel’s own daughter. What do you think?”
Turning up his palms, Rifkin shrugged his shoulders. “I’m afraid I can’t even speculate about that,” he said, as if he were as mystified as anyone else.
I felt a hand on my arm, and when I turned I found Alexandra standing right next to me. “Congratulations,” she whispered in my ear.
“Were you here for the verdict?” I asked, putting my arm around her waist.
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“As soon as this is over, I’m driving Leopold home. Why don’t you come?”
She let go of my arm. “I can’t,” she smiled as she began to move away. “I have to get back to the office. I’ll see you tonight.”
After the last question was asked, Rifkin thanked them for their patience and their fairness. The television lights were shut off and the camera crews began to break down their equipment. Onlookers who had crowded around to watch drifted away. We walked down the hallway and for the first time since the beginning of this ordeal felt something of the anonymity of everyday existence.
“That was an interesting trial,” he said, looking straight ahead, as we drove through the streets of Portland. “I thought you would probably rest after my testimony.”
He turned and looked at me. I kept my eyes on the road. “You knew from the beginning that you were going to call Mara as a witness, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed you had to call him to support my testimony, because otherwise all the jury would have was a choice between what I said and my signature on the gun registration?”
He did not say another word, not until we were in sight of the iron gate at the bottom of the long, spiral driveway that led to his house, the house where he had lived with his wife, where he had tried to help Denise Morel, where I had been involved in the most interesting conversations of my life.
He gestured toward the side of the house, the place from which Mara said he had seen the shooting. “You know, I think it is virtually impossible to see inside the study from that point of view.”
There was nothing to say.
He had me stop the car just in front of the gate. The light from the afternoon sun slanted down through the towering firs. He reached across and for just a moment laid his soft, gentle hand on mine. “Thank you, Joseph. Thank you for everything you did.” He hesitated, as if he was not quite sure of something. Then he opened the door and started to get out.
With the door still open, he stood next to the car, staring down at the ground. When he looked up there was a small, wistful smile on his mouth. “Life is a strange thing, isn’t it?” he said quietly. Then, before I could say anything, he closed the door and began to walk away.
I watched him pass through the gate then push it shut. He waved once, and then began to walk slowly up the drive.
I got out of the car and stood there watching him until he reached the house. He sat down on the steps and looked out, across the lawn, through the trees, out toward the rolling hills and the sun that was beginning its daily descent to the sea. The small, round head of Leopold Rifkin began to move back and forth, keeping time to the rhythm of some tune only he could hear.
xxv
Two days after he was acquitted of murder, Leopold Rifkin was found slumped over his desk, a few feet from where he had knelt down next to the breathless body of Denise Morel. A glass of wine stood half empty a few inches away from his hand. It had been laced with poison. A single handwritten sentence on a sheet of his stationery seemed to explain it all: “I am responsible for everything that has happened.”
Gilliland-O’Rourke claimed to find vindication where others might have found ambiguity. Leopold Rifkin, she announced in a press release issued the same day the body was discovered, had beaten the system; he had not been able to deceive his own conscience. This judgment was never really contested; no one was eager to enter a debate with the living on behalf of the dead, not when the living still had power and were more than willing to use it.
At the last minute, Alexandra decided she could not go to the funeral. Dressed in black, she stopped at the bottom of the stairs and held the railing as tight as she could. “I just can’t,” she cried, as she turned and ran upstairs.
I found her on the bed, sobbing into her pillow. “It’s all right,” I said, rubbing the back of her neck. “It’s all right,” I said quietly, over and over, trying to give us both what little comfort might still be found in words.
Her body shuddered in brief convulsions. When I covered her with the bedspread, she clutched it under her chin and curled up her knees. I bent over and kissed her on the top of her head. “It’s all right,” I said one last time before I lowered the blinds and left her in the darkness.
Only a few dozen people attended the funeral. I stood there, next to Horace Woolner and his wife, on a sloping hillside looking down on the city, watching in disbelief as the casket containing the remains of Leopold Rifkin was lowered into the earth. Gray clouds scudded across the morning sky. A light rain began to fall, then stopped, and then came again, mixing with the tears that ran down my cheeks.
At the end, when there was nothing more to be said, and everyone began to drift away, I stayed behind, staring down, trying to hear in the secret places of my own memory Leopold Rifkin’s clear, precise voice. There had been something intoxicating, something almost mystical about the way he spoke. I wanted to hear it just once more.
