Fox is Framed (14 page)

“My concern's defending my father, not causing more problems for you.”

“That's what I thought. So far I've been keeping out of the way. But if I have to, I'll testify that your father was blackmailing me. He'd gotten hold of that photograph and was accusing me of murder. Maybe he and Russell were working together. You know these criminal partnerships often end badly, especially when one of the partners decides to testify against the other. And I'll also testify that your father threatened Russell, according to what he told me.”

“So it's Gary Coles all over again.”

Eric picked up the beer I'd left on the counter and poured it in the sink. “You want a shot at me, then take it in court. Or call the police tonight. We can even call them now, together. I've spent enough sleepless nights wondering whether there's really a body in George's freezer. I'm ready to bet that the whole thing was a lie, cooked up by Lucy and Russell to shake me down, then picked up on by your father. She wasn't Lucy anymore, you know, not when I met her. To her, that person had ceased to exist.” Again, he seemed on the verge of rationalizing her death. “You'll have egg on your face, and I'll be safe on the road to the state assembly or the governor's mansion, and I'll be done with people like you and your father forever.”

He stared me down, his uncertainty betrayed by a twitch of the eyelid.

“I'll see you in court tomorrow,” I told him. “Thanks for the beer.”

Chapter 18

My phone rang an hour or so later, as I was gazing at my reflection in my office window, trying to summon my mind back from the brink of exhaustion. In an effort to focus my thoughts, I was going over my notes and composing an e-mail to Nina with bullet points, as I'd done every evening during the trial.

I hadn't called the cops about Eric. I'd never intended to, and I could only hope that my visit to him tonight wouldn't backfire. If the DA learned of my visit, it might be portrayed as an improper attempt to influence his testimony, particularly if he called my bluff and there was no body.

I'd begun to question all my assumptions about the case. Despite all that I'd learned, I felt that we were no closer to pinning down Russell Bell's killer. Instead of answers, I'd only succeeded in broadening the field of questions. For a defense attorney, that typically was good enough, but I wasn't looking at the situation as a defense lawyer might. I needed to know who killed Bell. The ringing phone jarred me back to the moment.

“Hey,” Jeanie said when I answered. “I'm at your brother's.”

Because neither my father nor Teddy could be there, Jeanie had been playing the role of surrogate nanny during the trial, checking in on Tamara to see if she needed anything. Debra had planned to be there with her, but a chronic foot problem had flared up two days ago and she hadn't been able to leave home.

“I only meant to stop by for a few minutes. I'm sitting outside in my car.”

“What's going on?”

“Carly and Tamara are both sick, and Tam hasn't been keeping up her baby log. The baby's been having diarrhea. Tam says she nursed earlier, but it's not in the log. You know how she is, Leo. She'll never admit she can't remember. Your dad's here, and he's freaking out. He thinks Carly needs to be in the ER.”

“What do you think?”

“If your father hadn't been here, I'd have just thought she was sick. Do I think she needs to go to the ER tonight, as opposed to waiting until the pediatrician's office opens tomorrow? I don't know.”

“Great. How am I supposed to know if you don't?”

“Leo, I don't want to be in the middle of this. Teddy's no help. I know you're in trial, but you really need to be here.”

“Fine,” I told her, realizing there was no other choice. “I'm on my way.”

I sent an e-mail to Nina letting her know I'd be out of pocket for a while. Half an hour later I pulled up in front of Teddy's house. I heard the baby crying from outside. Jeanie and Tamara were in the front room. Tamara was trying to nurse the baby, but Carly wasn't having any of it. Her skin looked yellowish. As I entered, Tamara thrust Carly at Jeanie and hurried to the bathroom.

“Some intestinal thing,” Jeanie said. “Carly seems to have it worse than Tam does.”

In the kitchen Teddy sat propped on a stool. Our father was pacing. “Leo,” he said, turning to me as I came in. “God knows I'm not trying to step on Tam's toes. I'm just concerned about the child.”

Teddy wouldn't meet my eyes.

“She was having diarrhea earlier, judging by the state of the diaper pail, but now she's stopped,” Lawrence continued. “That's a very bad sign.”

I turned to Teddy. “Do you agree?”

He nodded. I could see how hard it was for him to admit that something had gone wrong. “Tam and the baby started feeling sick last night. Debra was supposed to be here but she couldn't come. We put a call into the doctor's after-hours line. They say take her in.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Teddy went out into the other room to talk to Tam. My father and I waited in the kitchen. After a moment Jeanie came in. “We're going. You and I just need to get the baby's car seat installed. We can put it in my car, I guess.” Teddy and Tamara didn't own a vehicle.

It was in the corner of the kitchen. In the front room Teddy and Tamara sat on the couch, Teddy's arm around his wife, her head on his shoulder, the baby in Tam's arms, Teddy talking in a low voice while Carly snuffled and cried. I carried the car seat out to Jeanie's Prius.

“Sounds from the papers like Nina's doing okay,” Jeanie said as we worked to fit the car seat into the back.

“We had Shanahan on the stand today.” I summarized his testimony. “Nina sounds good when she's working on him, but we don't have any hard evidence. It all happened twenty-one years ago. So basically it's Nina trying to poke holes in Shanahan's investigation, and then you've got this snitch Russell Bell in the mix. It's going to come down to which side the jury believes.”

“Meaning your dad's testimony is crucial. He testifies when?”

“Likely tomorrow. Depends on whether the state plans to call more witnesses.”

“That would explain why he's so hot to stir up trouble tonight.”

Teddy and Tamara came out, Teddy carrying the baby. Our father took Tamara by the elbows and tried to speak to her, looking her in the face, making some apology for whatever tense exchange had passed between them before I arrived. Without seeming to hear him, she pressed her palm to his cheek, then turned and got in back beside the baby. Teddy sat in the passenger seat beside Jeanie. Lawrence and I followed in my truck.

At Children's, time slowed to a crawl. I tried to talk our father into letting me drive him home. “I'm staying until we know she's all right,” he said, though it was obvious to me, to Jeanie, to everyone that Carly was just dehydrated, that she was going to be fine. Or so we kept telling ourselves. Sitting in the waiting area, I found myself flashing back to those weeks when Teddy had lain between life and death.

It was nearly 1:00
am
before they had Carly hooked up to an IV in the triage area. Teddy and Tamara were back there with her, my father and Jeanie and I slumped in the waiting room chairs, surrounded by anxious families whose children were probably in far worse shape than Carly. Around 3:00
am
, the doctors made the decision to keep her overnight, having diagnosed her with severe dehydration due to an intestinal bug and diarrhea.

We'd done the right thing by bringing her in, they assured Teddy and Tamara. Another six hours and her kidneys might have been damaged. Hearing this secondhand from Teddy when he came out to tell us that Carly was fine and we should head home, my father seemed to draw himself up straighter. Teddy pumped his hand.

I told my father that he might as well stay at my place rather than make the drive back to San Rafael. He and I made it home around 4:00
am
.

~ ~ ~

In the morning, over Nina's objection, the state called a physician from the medical examiner's office to interpret the old medical examiner's report and testify to the cause of death, establishing beyond a doubt that a homicide had occurred. In her cross-examination, Nina sought to establish that Caroline had been raped, and that the unknown rapist was the source of the semen in Caroline's body, but the witness wouldn't go where Nina wanted to go, insisting repeatedly that the evidence of forced sex was nonconclusive.

“In other words, you can't rule out that the physical evidence withheld from the defense in the first trial was left by someone who raped Mrs. Maxwell and then murdered her, correct?” Nina said, settling for what she could get.

“Can't rule it out, and can't testify that it happened, either,” the doctor said. “I will say that if this were a rape prosecution, the fact of nonconsensual sex would have to be established in some way other than through the physical evidence.”

In the end, Nina had to sit down, clearly frustrated at getting nowhere with this witness. This was the first tactical error of the trial. In a classic defense lawyer's gamble, Nina had counted on being able to use the various injuries detailed in the autopsy report to develop evidence of rape through the DA's own witness, so we hadn't retained an expert of our own. This gamble had failed.

After the medical examiner, Crowder rested without calling Eric Gainer or any other witness. Sitting in the gallery, I felt little relief, knowing that the danger of Eric's testimony had only receded, not disappeared. Nina made a motion for a verdict of acquittal, a pro forma move at this point. Judge Liu denied it, as judges almost always did.

“The defense calls Lawrence Maxwell,” Nina said, and any suspense regarding whether my father would testify was dissolved.

Lawrence wore a gray suit over a white shirt and red tie. His mustache was trimmed, his hair wet combed. When he raised his hand to take the oath, the suit coat lifted like an awning across his shoulders. He'd never gone to bed last night. This morning I'd found him on the balcony of my condo with a full ashtray beside him, another cigarette going between his fingers.

“Mr. Maxwell, I'd like to bring you back to June twentieth, nineteen eighty-three.”

They walked through it, sticking closely to his testimony from the earlier trial, establishing Lawrence's explanation of his whereabouts that day and his claim of innocence. He spoke without emotion of his shock upon learning of the murder, and when prompted by Nina, he denied killing Caroline.

Under further questioning, Lawrence admitted that at the time of Caroline's death, their marriage hadn't been right for a long time, that she'd often seemed consumed by frustration, and that their arguments had occasionally turned physical. “At the time of her death, were you aware of your wife having an affair?”

“No. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I learned that.”

“How did you discover this?”

“My older son, Teddy, was acting as my lawyer, trying to get me a new trial. This one. He's the one who found the pictures that the man's wife had taken of them together. Good for her, I thought when he showed them to me. I'm glad she had someone. God knows I wasn't bringing any joy to her life.”

Again I had the sense of my mother as still present for him in a way she was for no one else. The way he spoke of her, it was as if they'd parted a few minutes before, as if he expected to see her again soon. Dot, beside me, looked as wan as if she hadn't slept at all last night. She'd barely spoken to Lawrence this morning, arriving in court rather than meeting us at Nina's office. I didn't know if he'd made any effort to explain his absence last night. Watching Lawrence, I had the sense that the ghost of Caroline, my mother, having grown stronger day by day throughout the trial, had finally stepped forward and pushed her replacement and rival aside.

He didn't love her, I realized—not the way he'd loved Caroline. Their marriage, coldly anatomized here, had been a burning thing, flaming out in murder. His engagement to Dot, by contrast, was tepid, provisional. He'd been avoiding her not because he was afraid of being convicted, but because with each passing day of the trial he was delving deeper into the past, which, for all its horrific consequences, he somehow preferred to the present. Now, when at last he'd taken the stand, the more powerful hold Caroline had on him must be obvious to Dot.

Nina moved on quickly. “Did you ever make any comment that any other person could interpret as a confession that you murdered your wife?”

“No,” Lawrence said. “From the day I was arrested, I've been telling anyone who'd listen that I didn't do this.”

“Did you ever tell Russell Bell or anyone else, ‘It's a terrible thing but it had to be done'?”

“No. I would never have said anything like that.”

“How about that your only regret was that your son was the one who found her?”

His eyes found me in the gallery. “I never said that to Russell Bell or to anyone.”

She next had him talk about Bell, recounting how he'd written the brief that had gotten Bell out of prison. Lawrence testified that at one point he'd considered him a friend, but that his feelings toward Bell had changed. “When I got out of prison, I called Russell,” Lawrence said. “I knew he'd done well since his release, and he owed his freedom to me. He was working for a San Francisco city supervisor, Eric Gainer. I thought he might give me a lead on a job, but the third or fourth time I talked to him, he told me something I wish to God I hadn't heard.”

Nina paused. This wasn't in their script. However, she had no choice but to go on. “What did he tell you?”

Lawrence spoke softly. “The girl he'd raped, the one who was fourteen when he grabbed her off the street, the one he went to prison for. He said that he'd had her again and that it was even better this time than it had been the first time.”

My surprise was followed by a surge that I recognized as an instinctive reaction to the truth. I hadn't shared with my father what I'd learned from Sherrie and Eric. The only question was why Lawrence hadn't told me this before.

Crowder was on her feet, crying, “Objection. Hearsay, the stipulation. Move to strike this testimony from the record and instruct the jurors to disregard.”

“We'll take a fifteen-minute recess,” Liu said, his thoughtful tone giving nothing away. He asked the deputy to clear the courtroom. As the jurors filed out, Nina shot me an urgent question of a look. I nodded to her, trying to convey confidence, but she just looked angry, like I'd conspired with Lawrence to sandbag her. I couldn't ask him about this now, as court rules forbade any communication with a witness while he was still on the stand. I couldn't meet the eyes of Teddy or Dot. Each of us sat staring straight ahead, trying not to betray fear or any other emotion. But if we got through this with Lawrence's credibility intact, then we'd have the missing piece of our defense, Bell's motivation to lie.

It was a mystery and a shame that we hadn't had this piece of the puzzle before.

“I don't need to linger over the hearsay objection,” Liu said when the jurors were out of the courtroom. “I presume that the defense doesn't necessarily intend the jurors to consider these statements for their truth. My bigger concern is where this line of questioning leaves the agreement we made before trial.”