Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller (41 page)

His body grew still. He shook his head, as if deeply perplexed. "Let's go through the evidence together."

He focused instantly on Johnnie Faye's statement to Sgt. Ruiz less than an hour after the murder. But here in court, Ruiz had testified and shown that statement to be an unlikely tale.

"So the defendant, under oath, changed her story! Told us that Dr. Ott had blocked the doorway
before
the two of them went upstairs,
before
he supposedly threatened her and picked up a poker. Well, folks, who do you believe? Sergeant Ruiz is a trained police officer. He told us the defendant wasn't agitated when he arrived at the house — she was waiting for him at the front door, smoking a cigarette. Why should she tell one story then and a different story now? Don't you know why? Because it suited her! She'd realized that if she didn't change the details of her story, she'd be in violation of her duty to retreat!"

Sighing, he shook his head again. "On the night of May 7 she told Sergeant Ruiz that Dr. Ott was coming at her 'like an old grizzly bear, waving that poker over his head.' Her own words.
Coming at her.
But then a few days ago the county medical examiner testified that Dr. Ott was shot
while he was standing still!
So what did Johnnie Faye Boudreau do after she heard that?
Changed her story!
Now she says Dr. Ott ran at her with the poker and then stopped, and that's when she shot him. Didn't you realize, folks, what she was doing? Didn't you realize what she was doing after Sergeant Kulik testified that Dr. Ott's palm prints should have been on the poker —
and weren't?
Until her testimony here, Johnnie Faye Boudreau never said a word to any authority about having picked up the poker after she'd killed Dr. Ott, and in the process possibly damaging his set of palm prints. She made that up!
This woman will say anything!"

Warren had to tense the muscles in his neck; he had been on the verge of nodding in agreement.

"Now," the prosecutor continued, "let's consider all these various threats that the witnesses have told us about. Some were not idle threats, as counsel for the defense would have you naively believe. At the Houston Racquet Club, after Johnnie Faye Boudreau had thrown a drink at him, Dr. Ott said to her, 'I could kill you for that.' But he
didn't
kill her, did he? On the other hand, Johnnie Faye Boudreau, in front of Mrs. Gerard, said of Dr. Ott, 'I could kill him.'
And she did.
There's a big difference, don't you agree?"

Altschuler pointed a thick finger at Warren. "The defense attorney makes light of the venom that spewed from Johnnie Faye Boudreau's mouth at the Hacienda restaurant just prior to the murder. I don't make light of it — I think it shows us a predisposition to violence. Please remember that Dr. Ott also said to his stepdaughter, speaking of the defendant,
'I'm frightened of her.'
In her testimony, Johnnie Faye Boudreau didn't refer to that, and her counsel didn't ask her about it. Think about that! Why was Dr. Ott frightened? Why didn't Johnnie Faye Boudreau care to explain that to us?

"The defense also makes light of the fact that no more than a few weeks prior to the actual murder, Johnnie Faye Boudreau practiced at a pistol range with the murder weapon. All sorts of fun-loving people do that. Even the judge does it. Surely you see past that double-talk! Other people may practice with their pistols, and even this judge may practice, but the judge and those other people do not murder someone immediately afterward! Johnnie Faye Boudreau used a false name, just in case any inquiry was made. And indeed an inquiry was made, but unfortunately for Johnnie Faye Boudreau, Mr. Morse remembered her. She is indeed memorable."

He raised a finger and said, with solemn import, "And she is a very good shot."

Altschuler grew angry again. Warren was fascinated. Go for it, Bob. Do her in.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you believe that she put a bullet into Dr. Ott just a few inches from his heart,
and didn't mean to kill him?
Do you believe she just meant to wound him, teach him a lesson?
'Naughty Clyde! I'll put a tiny little bullet in your lung, so you'll behave.'
And do you believe that she didn't know all along that the pistol was in her handbag? After she'd practiced with that illegal weapon twice on a pistol range, do you believe she didn't know to release her finger from the trigger if she didn't want to fire more than one shot? Do you believe Dr. Ott
'moved slightly,'
as Johnnie Faye Boudreau claims, and that's why the other bullet hit him
between the eyes?
Are we here to have the wool pulled over
our
eyes by a murderess?"

Altschuler gripped his head with both hands as if it might explode, as if all he had said was so beyond comprehension that belief in it might render him insane.

Then he became terribly calm.

"The state does not have to prove motive. The state is only required to prove that she caused the death of Clyde Ott intentionally or knowingly. But still, let's think about motive. The defense makes light of the question of who wanted to get married and who shied away from it. I don't. I think — based on the testimony of the stepchildren, Mrs. Lorna Gerard and Mr. Kenneth Underhill — that Johnnie Faye Boudreau wanted to marry Clyde Ott and was in the process of bullying him into it. But then he backed down in front of his stepchildren, and as time passed his resolve hardened. That infuriated Johnnie Faye Boudreau. She may have given him an ultimatum that night at the Hacienda restaurant, and again he said no. So they went back to his house. She took him upstairs to bed, to see if a little sex would sway him. He was drunk. What exactly happened then, we'll never know. The only person who can tell us the truth is dead. What we do know is that they both went downstairs, where she shot him between the eyes while he was standing still."

Again Warren almost nodded. Despite the histrionics, Altschuler was a thinking man. He had figured it all out.

The prosecutor said, "You have to use your common sense, folks. You have to decide, based on the many self-serving contradictions in Johnnie Faye Boudreau's testimony, whether you can trust her word. Did Dr. Ott threaten to kill her with a poker? Of course not!" Altschuler trumpeted. "The whole poker story was fabricated! She put his fingerprints on it when he was dead! Only she didn't realize she had to put
palm
prints on it too!"

His forehead had begun to sparkle with sweat. "And now let's talk about the duty to retreat." He paused for a few moments, giving the jurors time to consolidate, anticipate. "Johnnie Faye Boudreau claims Dr. Ott had struck her several times before the night of May 7. When he was drunk, she says, he was capable of violence. Yet when she got to the house that night, she went inside. She could have left, but she didn't. She didn't have to go upstairs with him, but she did. He was drunk. Wasn't she frightened?" Altschuler threw his hands into the air. "No, of course she wasn't frightened! Why should she be frightened? She had a gun in her handbag!"

He smiled knowledgeably. He raised one finger.

"But wait. You're probably recalling, as I am, that Johnnie Faye Boudreau said she left her handbag on the sofa downstairs, which is what led to her later being placed in that position where, she claims, she couldn't retreat. Folks, you've seen the diagram of the Ott residence. You know where the living room sofa was in relation to the route from the front door to the staircase.
It was sixty-five feet out of the way.
Now I ask you — particularly the ladies — does a woman walk into a house that's not her own, and go upstairs with a man to his bedroom, and first march sixty-five feet out of her way to leave her handbag on the sofa in the downstairs living room? Think about what's in that handbag! Never mind her pistol — I'm talking about her makeup, her keys, her private and precious little things! No!
She takes the handbag with her!"

He waited a full five seconds.

"And if she does that, ladies and gentlemen, when she goes downstairs again, trying to flee a man who's yelling at her and threatening her,
why doesn't she just go out the front door and drive home?"

Altschuler went up to full throttle: "Even if you buy her fictitious story about the poker, she didn't retreat! She was egging him on!" With a harsh thrust of his hand, the prosecutor indicated Johnnie Faye, who sat immobile and without expression. "There sits a true monster! A woman without honor and without scruples! Deceitful! Cunning! Wicked! Manipulative! She's a cold-blooded killer, and I ask you, on behalf of the State of Texas and in the name of justice, to find her guilty of murder. Not murder by reason of self-defense —
willful
murder."

Warren wanted to applaud. Amen, he thought. Don't say any more, Bob. You've got her every way. Just sit down.

And Bob Altschuler did.

Judge Bingham nodded at the bailiff, and the bailiff nodded at the jury. Obediently the jurors rose and followed the bailiff through the back door of the courtroom to the jury room.

Shrugging his shoulders under his blue suit, Rick looked at Warren with bleak eyes. Warren turned toward Johnnie Faye, whose face was icy. She was staring at Bob Altschuler, thumping into his seat and sipping a glass of water a few feet away at the prosecution's table.

"That son of a bitch," she murmured. "I'd like to put one between
his
eyes." She focused finally on Warren. "Well, counselor, good buddy, what do we do now?"

"We wait," he said coolly.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The charged hum of conversation gave the air-conditioned courtroom the feel of an airline terminal. The media and the spectators, the lawyers and the witnesses, had all paid for their tickets with one form of currency or another. They would all wait. At 1:30 P.M. the bailiff left the courtroom to buy sandwiches and soft drinks and coffee for the jurors.

"What about lunch for us?" Johnnie Faye asked Warren.

"I'm not hungry. You can go to the cafeteria in the basement if you like. Don't leave the courthouse."

"What does it mean if the jury takes a long time?"

"There's no rule for it."

"And when they come back in, if they look me in the eye, that's good, isn't it?"

"No rule for that either. They may look you in the eye and send you to prison for life. They may come in with their heads bowed because they're ashamed they reached a verdict of not guilty."

"And fuck you too," Johnnie Faye said. "What if they find me guilty? Do they let me go home and get my things in order?"

"You should have done that already," Warren said. "They'll cuff you and take you away."

Her lip trembled. "And what about an appeal?"

"You can hire a lawyer to do that for you."

"Will you do it? You know the facts."

Bizarre. She knows how I loathe her, but she depends on me. Somewhere inside this monster is a child. An evil, macabre child, but no less a child.

"Yes, I know the facts. And that's why I won't do it. But plenty of other lawyers will. There'll always be somebody hungry enough, or someone you can con."

He got up and walked through the back door of the courtroom to a telephone reserved for lawyers and reporters. The door to the jury room was about ten feet away. He could hear the jurors' voices raised in argument but he couldn't make out the words. Maria Hahn came up to him and squeezed his arm. "What do you think, honey?" she asked quietly.

"I can't tell. Can you?"

"I told you — you can never predict."

"Bob was good," Warren said.

"He always is. Want to come into my office for a quickie? My door double-locks."

"And then the jury would reach a verdict just about the same time as you and I were reaching something else. I'll take a rain check. Tonight."

"Tonight," Maria said, laughing.

He called his office to pick up the messages. Charm spoke briefly, asking him to call back. A lawyer had checked in with a referral for a case, and one man had called directly from the jail, begging to see him as soon as possible about a drug bust.

So he would be working again. I should feel a lot better about it than I do, Warren decided.

He went through the courtroom and outside into the corridor to use the public telephone, which was more private, and called Charm at Channel 26.

"Warren!" — almost breathlessly, as if he had surprised her by returning the call. "How did it go? Are you done?"

He told her the jury was out and it had gone as well as could be expected.

"I have to talk fast," she said. "Just listen to me a minute. I didn't say everything I had to say the other day at lunch. I felt so awful, I was so tongue-tied. Can we meet to talk again?"

He tried to think that through.

"Don't cut me out of your life, Warren. Please."

He saw some TV cameramen moving rapidly outside the door to the courtroom. "I have to go. The jury may be coming in. All right. When?"

"Whenever you can make it. Tonight?"

"Not tonight. Lunch tomorrow, if that suits you."

She would be in Bingham's courtroom at noon. Before he could make other arrangements, she hung up. Warren hurried back to the courtroom and pushed open the swinging door. The TV cameramen were taping Bob Altschuler.

When they were finished, Altschuler grasped Warren's elbow and moved him firmly to an empty back bench. Altschuler's snapping dark eyes were flecked with pink and the lines seemed more deeply engraved from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Close up, Warren could see that his striped shirt was damp with sweat.

"Your client is guilty as sin," Altschuler said. "She hired Dink to kill Sharon Underhill. She hired a guy named Ronzini to kill Dink. We think a corpse that washed up on Galveston Island last month is what's left of Ronzini. And she got Clyde Ott drunk and shot him in cold blood. You know that, for Christ's sake, don't you?"

Warren thought for a moment or two. "Off" the record?"

"Whatever you say. Whatever you like."

"I know it."

"Well, you didn't have any choice," Altschuler said, sighing. "I just wish you hadn't done such a fucking good job of defending her."