Motion to Dismiss (35 page)

"You heard the man talking?" Madelaine asked.

Adrianna nodded.

"Could you make out what he was saying?"

"My mommy's name -- Deirdre." She dragged the name out into long syllables.

"Anything else?"

"Something like 'forget it.'" Adrianna shuffled her shoes against the hardwood floor. "And a very bad word."

"That's all?"

"I couldn't understand most of it."

Madelaine frowned. "Did you see the man?"

Grady still hadn't moved. I felt my own muscles freeze as Adrianna's eyes flickered again toward Grady.

She shook her head. "He was upstairs."

I could feel Grady relax.

Technically, I could have objected to the response. Adrianna didn't know where the man was if she couldn't see him. I was sure, though, that I'd gain nothing but the ire of the court by doing so.

"Did you see anything?" Madelaine asked.

"A car. In the driveway."

"What color was the car?"

"Silver."

"Was it a big car?" Here Madelaine stretched her hands, and her voice. "Or a little car?" She reversed the gesture and made her voice small.

"Medium," Adrianna said. "A convertible."

"Anything else about the car? Scratches, dents, decals..."

Adrianna twisted a finger in her hair and shook her head. "Except for the peace symbol."

Again Madelaine did a double take. "A peace symbol?"

I could see her thinking that no way would Grady Barrett drive around sporting a hippie bumper sticker, and that maybe an important part of her case had just collapsed.

But I had a sick feeling that I knew what Adrianna was talking about. So did Grady. I heard him groan under his breath.

"How do you know about the peace symbol?" Madelaine asked, trying to buy time while she figured out how to minimize the damage.

"They're on a lot of cars," Adrianna explained.

"I see."

"Tommy says it means the car cost lots of money. They put it up front, where the engine is."

"Up front?"

"And on the trunk too."

And then it dawned on Madelaine as well. She cast me a smug look and turned back to Adrianna. "A hood ornament, you mean. Like this?" She took out a sheet of paper and drew the Mercedes symbol.

Adrianna nodded, pleased to know that she'd done something right.

"I'd like the record to reflect that the witness has identified the car she saw the night her mother was killed as a silver
Mercedes
convertible." Madelaine turned to me, the shadow of a smile still on her lips. "Your witness."

Judge Atwood leaned toward Adrianna. "You doing okay, honey? We can take a short break if you'd like something to drink."

"I'm fine, thank you." The words were braver than the tone.

I swallowed, feeling the implications of Adrianna's testimony in the pit of my stomach. Unless I could show that she was confused, the prosecution had moved one step closer to placing Grady at the crime scene.

"Now it's my turn to ask questions," I explained, scooting my chair so that I could address Adrianna face on.

Questioning a child witness is always tricky. There's no guarantee that the child even knows the difference between truth and fantasy, let alone that her testimony is accurate.

I took out a sheet of paper myself and drew the actual peace symbol. "Is this what you saw on the car?"

Her finger traced the corner of her mouth.

"Or how about this?" I said, sketching out what I recalled as the Toyota symbol.

Madelaine was fidgeting behind me. "Your Honor -- "

Atwood sent her a silencing glance. "It seems like a perfectly reasonable line of inquiry to me." She nodded in my direction. "You may proceed."

By now Adrianna sensed that something was up. She wound a spiral of hair with her right hand and clutched her stuffed animal with the left.

"There's no right or wrong answer," I told her. "You just tell us what you saw. Do either of these look like the symbol you saw on the car in the driveway?"

Finally, Adrianna shook her head. "It was like the one the other lady showed me."

Score one for Adrianna.

I forced a smile, not wanting her to pick up on my disappointment, and moved on. "Okay, now we'll try a different question. Still about the car. It was dark outside, wasn't it?"

She nodded.

"So it must have been hard to see the color of the car."

"I could see because the front light was on."

"So you're sure it was silver, and not white or beige or gray?" I had no idea how I'd tell gray from silver myself.

"It was silver," she said emphatically.

I brought out the color brochures I'd picked up from car dealers over the last few days. "We're going to play kind of a game," I said. "I'll show you a color and you tell me what it is, okay?"

I showed her red, which she got, and then frost, which she called white, and then metallic blue.

She hesitated. "Pearly blue," she said at last.

A few questions later she picked out silver without a moment's uncertainty. And gray was gray. She was a girl who knew her colors.

Taken in conjunction with Berger's testimony about seeing Grady at the Safeway in Montclair, Adrianna's identification of the car was bound to carry weight. I felt anxiety coursing through my body.

"You said you'd woken from a dream."

She nodded.

I tried imagining that it was Emily I was talking to. Casual conversation. I didn't want Adrianna picking up on the apprehension I felt. "Can you remember what the dream was about?"

"Rabbits."

"Was it a scary dream?"

She smiled. "No. Rabbits aren't scary."

"So it was a comfortable dream?"

Adrianna nodded.

"Was there just that one dream?"

Her eyes scrunched tight in thought. "I had a different dream before. About chocolate syrup. Ema gave it to me."

"You dreamed she gave you chocolate syrup?"

Adrianna nodded. "Because she loves me."

"So that wasn't scary either?"

"No."

"So you had a couple of dreams, and then woke up when you heard a noise, is that right?"

Another nod.

"Do you think that maybe the noise and the man's voice were a dream too? They only seemed real because they were scary and your other dreams weren't?"

Her chin jutted out. "I wasn't scared. And it
was
real."

"But sometimes dreams can seem very real."

"It wasn't a dream." Adrianna was bouncing in her seat, growing agitated.

Judge Atwood leaned forward. "Are you nearly finished, Ms. O'Brien?"

I could tell by her tone that I was, whether I'd thought so or not. "Yes, Your Honor."

"You want to tell me what's going on here?" I asked Grady. Only I didn't ask it so much as bellow it.

We were alone finally, in one of the tiny interview rooms reserved for attorneys and their clients. It was fortunate that Judge Atwood, with a commitment that required her attention for the afternoon, had declared court in recess until the next morning. Otherwise, I might have been shouting at Grady in open court. I was that mad.

I crossed my arms and glared at him. "You want to tell me how Adrianna saw a silver
Mercedes
convertible in the driveway the night her mother was killed?"

Grady rubbed the flesh of his cheek. He looked pale and uncomfortable.

"Saw it not ten minutes after another witness saw
you
in a similar car only minutes from the house where Deirdre Nichols was murdered?"

He closed his eyes for a moment.

"What kind of game are you playing? I'm your attorney, goddammit. You're suppose to tell me the truth."

Grady shifted in his chair and swallowed. "I was there," he mumbled. "At Deirdre Nichols' house."

"No shit, Sherlock. I know that, the judge knows that, and if we'd had a jury present, they would know it as well. Your goose would be cooked." And it wasn't any too far from that now.

"I didn't kill her."

"That's comforting to hear."

"I mean it," he said, looking me in the eye. "I didn't."

I crossed my arms and said nothing.

"She must have been dead already -- that's why she never answered the door."

"Are you saying that you never saw her that night?"

Grady hunched forward. "I rang the bell, knocked on the door, even called her name a couple of times. That's probably what Adrianna heard. Deirdre never came to the door."

"So you just moseyed back to your car and left?" My voice dripped with sarcasm.

Grady nodded.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"It's the truth. I swear."

I snorted in disgust. "Truth is a concept that seems to elude you, Grady."

"Please, Kali. You've got to believe me." His voice cracked. There was a pleading quality to it that caught me by surprise.

"You were there at the house?" I asked skeptically. "There within the time frame of Deirdre's murder, but you didn't kill her?"

"Right."

"Or speak to her?"

"Right." He nodded eagerly and then his face folded. "It sounds ludicrous, doesn't it?"

"Right," I echoed.

"But it's the truth."

"Why didn't you tell me before this? I explained to you at the beginning that I didn't want any ugly surprises in court."

"I didn't think you'd believe me." His tone was apologetic. "I didn't think
anyone
would believe me."

"They're going to be a whole lot less inclined to believe you at this stage."

Grady looked miserable.

"I don't want a client who lies to me."

"Please. I need your help."

I sighed. "Why don't you tell me what happened that night. Only this time make it the truth and don't leave anything out."

Grady rubbed his knees. "I was at work, like I told you. I left about nine-thirty. Deirdre had said to come by about ten."

I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a hand.

"We had a deal. She was going to recant her story about the rape, and I was going to pay her."

"You bribed the witness?" No wonder he hadn't been forthcoming with the whole truth. "Jesus, Grady. That's a crime in itself."

He shook his head. "No, it wasn't a bribe."

"No?"

"It was a business arrangement."

"Give me a break."

Grady ignored me. "I didn't rape her, in case you're interested. So it wasn't like I was paying her to lie."

"Why'd she claim you did, then?"

He pressed his knuckles together, and then his thumbs. "I wasn't the most gracious person that night. I think she was hurt and angry, and wanted to pay me back."

"So she cried rape."

He addressed his hands. "She said I used her. She said I treated her like dirt. Like she was nobody."

That was pretty much what Deirdre had told me herself the afternoon she'd followed me into the women's room during the rape hearing. I could only surmise that she'd been thinking romance, or something close to it, while he'd seen nothing more than available body parts.

Grady took a breath and looked up. "She said that it was the moral equivalent of rape."

"So you tried to buy her off?"

Another shake of his head. "No. I apologized."

"That was it?" My words rang with cynicism.

"It was a sincere apology."

"Must have been twenty-four karat." I brushed the air with my hand, disgusted. "You offered an apology and Deirdre agreed not to testify against you?"

"Well, she wanted money too. But that was her idea, not mine. She said she wanted to start over -- move away, go back to school, try to make something of her life. I take it she'd been involved in a bad relationship, one she was eager to get away from. She needed money to do that."

"How much?"

"A hundred thousand."

"A
hundred
thousand?" That was more than money; it was a fortune.

"What could I do? I was worried about what the rape trial would do to the ComTech offering. I stood to make a lot more than that if it went through."

My head was spinning. I'd asked for the truth. But the trouble with the truth is that sometimes it's unpleasant.

"So that's what you were doing at Deirdre's place the night she was killed," I said. "You went to pay her off?"

"Half of it. She was going to get the other half as soon as the rape charges were dropped."

I leaned back in my chair, more overwhelmed than angry. "The shoe print on the side of the house?"

"When Deirdre didn't answer, I started around the side of the house to see if I couldn't tap on a window or something. I heard music coming from the back and I thought maybe she hadn't heard the doorbell. But then a dog started barking. For all I knew, he was in the yard, ready to attack me. I decided to let it be. I'd call her in the morning."

"And the handkerchief?"

"I told you, I'd left it there the week before. She was going to return it that night. I told her it was no big deal, but she insisted."

"What about the pants you were wearing that night? The ones you said were part of a Salvation Army pickup."

"That's the truth," he said. "They were old and getting worn through the seat. It was one of those ironic twists that the pickup was that Monday."

I thought through the other evidence the D.A. had gathered against Grady. All of it was consistent with what he'd just told me.

"I grant you it's not the most believable explanation," I told him. "But it beats the hell out of the story you told initially, on which three witnesses have now tripped you up. I don't see why you didn't tell the truth from the start."

Grady looked sheepish. "Well, there's one other small part."

"What's that?"

"The money."

"What about it?"

"I don't have that much sitting around. I kind of borrowed it from the company."

His words sank in slowly. "Embezzled it?"

"Well, it
is
my company, or mine and the investment bankers'. And I would have paid it back just as soon as the stock went public. It was more a securities violation than a crime."

A fine point. But any way you looked at it, it was certainly a lesser crime than murder.