Proof of Intent (28 page)

“It doesn't.”

“You're saying he misspoke?”

“Or he lied.”

Stash Olesky stood silently, letting that one soak in for a while. Finally, he said, “Thank you, Doctor. I believe that will be all.”

Judge Evola eyed my client, then me, with a look of naked disgust. “Mr. Sloan?”

“The good doctor has done his usual thorough job, for which I thank him. Just a couple quick questions.” I didn't stand, just leafed through a folder. “Ah, here we are. Time of death calculations. These are estimates, correct? Not accurate to the minute, right?”

“Not accurate to the minute, no.”

“And their calculation is based on a predictable rate of cooling based on ambient temperature, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So if it's zero degrees in the house, the body's going to cool faster than if it's, oh, sixty-eight degrees, correct?”

“Right.”

“The colder it is, the quicker the body cools.”

“Exactly.”

“So if thirty-degree air pouring into the house from the broken window just down the hall had lowered the temperature in the room, that would throw off the calculations.”

“Slightly. But I gather that—”

“One other question.” I cut off his answer. “In the movies we're always seeing medical examiners take out this little saw, you know with the rotating blade? Looks like something out of wood shop? And they use it to cut the top of the person's skull off, and everybody winces? You ever see that in the movies?”

“Sure.”

“Did you do that? Did you cut open Diana Dane's head?”

“No.”

“So you didn't remove and examine her brain?”

“No.”

I raised my eyebrows, looking slightly puzzled. “Isn't that pretty standard?” I said. “Examining the brain?”

Rey shifted backward in his seat, and his voice dropped slightly. “It's a judgment call. It causes a rather gross disfigurement of the features and so out of respect for the survivors—”

“Into the microphone, please,” I said mildly.

“I'm sorry. So, yes, out of respect for the victim's family, if there's a fairly obvious call, we try not to open the cranium.”

I hefted a big book, dumped it on the table in front of him. “Recognize this book, Doctor?”

“Yes. It's
Krantz & Krantz
, the standard textbook on autopsy technique.”

“There's a paper clip there on page 276. Could you take a gander at the part that I've highlighted?”

Dr. Rey opened the book gingerly. “It says that opening of the cranium is a standard part of an autopsy, particularly in cases involving head trauma. But then it lists a number of exceptions which—”

“Opening the cranium is a standard part of the autopsy, particularly in the case of head trauma. But you didn't do it.”

“As I said before, no.”

“Dr. Rey, can you tell us what the temporal artery is?”

The medical examiner tapped his laser pointer on the side of his head. “It's a major vessel here under the temple.”

“And if that vessel ruptures, how quickly will it result in death?”

Rey swallowed. “Well, that really is quite a rare thing when . . .”

“Please. Simple question. How quickly will the rupture of the temporal artery cause death?”

“I couldn't say exactly. But fairly quickly.”

“Meaning what? Five seconds? Ten? Thirty?”

“More likely it would be slower than that.”

“But it's
possible
that a blow to the temporal area could cause someone's heart to stop in well under a minute.”

Rey's eyes cut from one side to the other. “Distantly. But as I say, it's a very rare thing that the artery would rupture that way in the first place.”

“You yourself testified that the first blow was to her temple.”

“Yes.”

“Shattered the cranium, releasing needle-sharp fragments into the brain?”

“Yes.”

“But since you didn't bother to examine her wound except in a purely superficial way, you can't say for certain how long it took for her to die, can you?”

“My judgment is that . . .”

I wasn't interested in his judgment, so I cut him off. “Dr. Rey, you just admitted you have no basis for that judgment, didn't you? You didn't bother to check. She could very well have died in seconds as a result of a ruptured temporal artery, couldn't she?”

Rey sighed. “Possible. Distantly.”

“Could have died in seconds. Thank you.”

“You alright, Miles?” I said, after the jury had filed out. His face was bloodless, his lips almost blue.

“I'm okay,” Miles said. “I think maybe I need to walk around a little.”

I signaled to the bailiff. Walking around, for its own sake, was a luxury not afforded to criminal defendants who weren't free on bond. “Could you take Mr. Dane to the rest room?”

The bailiff nodded. Miles stood slowly, walked three or four steps, paused as though considering something weighty and important, and collapsed.

The bailiff caught him on the way down, and we laid him out on the hard floor. Miles came to in a few seconds, but seemed content to lie there, looking up at the ceiling and saying, “I'm fine, I'm great, I'm okay,” until a doctor arrived five minutes later.

After the doctor had pronounced that his heart was fine and that he had probably fainted because of anxiety, I accompanied Miles to the secure bathroom in the basement of the courthouse.

He stood in front of the stainless-steel sink, shaking his head and looking at the fun house image of his face reflected in the warped steel mirror. “How is it possible?” he said finally. “A thing like that? What unleashes it?”

“I don't know, Miles,” I said.

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I envy you,” he said finally.

“Oh?”

“I wish I had somebody like you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and Lisa. I know you've been through some things, you have a tough history, whatever. But it's obvious that you two have really hit it off, that you lean on each other.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I smiled sadly. “That's nice to hear.” I wanted to say something reassuring, but what could you say in a situation like that? He had lost his wife, and his only son was a thug—a thug who might well have killed Diana—and there was nobody else at all. Nobody but me anyway. And however nice a guy I may be, a lawyer is a damn poor substitute for a friend.

Miles leaned over the steel sink, splashed some water on his face, then looked around for a towel. There were none, towels being another of those luxuries of which the accused are undeserving.

“Here,” I said. I blotted his face with the lining of my jacket.

“Hell, man, you didn't have to do that.” Miles suddenly looked like he was going to cry.

“Part of the job.” I slapped him on the back. “Can't have my client go back in there looking like he sat too close to the pool at SeaWorld.”

He seemed as though he was about to turn toward the door, but then stopped and looked me in the eye. “Don't screw things up with your girl, Charley. Promise me that.”

“Does it seem like I might?”

He shrugged. “I'm just saying. Human relationships are fragile,” he said. “Don't let them get away from you.”

I cleared my throat. “You ready to go back?”

He straightened, and his face changed. “Hell, no,” he said in the gruff combative voice he usually reserved for talk-show hosts. “Change of plan. It's jailbreak time. I'll be the first accused felon in history to escape by flushing his own ass down the crapper.”

It wasn't a funny joke, but we both laughed anyway, with the mildly frantic laughter you drag out when things are looking really grim.

“The state calls Robert Gough.”

Robert Gough was a slight, vigorous-looking blond man, probably in his late twenties. He wore a beige, four-button suit that looked like something a pro basketball player would wear to a nightclub, and a long goatee sprouted from his lip. His hair had been tinted or highlighted to look slightly more blond than it was naturally, and it stuck up in a way that made him appear as though he'd just gotten out of bed . . . though I suspected the look had actually required a great deal of effort and hair gel. His shoes were two-tone, beige on cream.

He sat in the witness box as though he owned it, unintimidated at the prospect of appearing live on national television.

Stash Olesky said, “Mr. Gough, welcome to Michigan.”

“I'm sorry I have to be here under these circumstances.” He didn't look especially sorry.

“I wonder if you could tell us your occupation.”

“My title is senior editor with Elgin Press in New York City.”

“What is your educational background?”

“I have a B.A. in English Literature from Harvard College, and I worked for several years toward my Ph.D. in English at Columbia University—though I never completed my degree. I've been in the publishing industry for seven years, first as an assistant, then as an editor. My current job title is senior editor.”

“So it's fair to say you're well versed in the interpretation of literature.”

“I think that's fair, yes.” He smiled, aw shucks—but there was something just a shade condescending about his manner.

“What sort of publisher is Elgin?”

“We're the second largest publisher in the United States, a subsidiary of the German publisher Hauer-Stern Verlag. We publish everything from children's books to mass-market fiction to biography to religious books.”

“Are you familiar with the defendant in this case?”

“Yes I am. Mr. Dane published six novels at Elgin Press. The first was published in 1968, the last in 1973. I believe all of his subsequent books were published by Padgett Books. At any rate, over the years we have retained the United States paperback publishing rights to all six of those novels.”

I stood slowly and said in my most weighty and wounded tones, “Your Honor, I'm sure Mr. Gough is an interesting fellow, and I'm sure the jury is just as fascinated by the subject of how the publishing industry works as I am. But I'm really going to have to object. I think everybody is well aware of where this testimony is heading. We are about to head into deeply irrelevant and obscure—not to mention fictional—territory, which, if allowed, would be terribly prejudicial to my client's case.” Again, I was preaching to the jury, with not a prayer of getting anywhere with the judge.

Mark Evola favored me with a bright smile. “Mr. Sloan. Next time feel free to say, ‘Objection, relevance. Or objection, prejudicial,' before launching into another lengthy oration. Particularly regarding a matter on which I've already made a very clear ruling. Your objection, if that's what that speech was, is denied.”

“Your Honor! Surely you won't deny me the opportunity to argue my client's case?” Again, this was strictly a show for the jury.

“Surely I will. You've had that opportunity, and I have ruled. Mr. Olesky, please continue your examination of this young man.”

Stash smiled. “Mr. Gough, you said earlier that Elgin Press owned the rights to publish six books written by Mr. Dane. Have they remained in print all these years?”

“No, they haven't. There's a legal process by which Mr. Dane could have regained his rights to these books, but he never exercised that option, and so we continued to own the rights through a great many years.”

“So did you bring any of those six books back into print?”

“Yes, we did. We brought one of them back in a fresh new edition. New cover art and so on.”

“Why the sudden interest in a new edition?”

Bob Gough smiled a little. “When Mr. Dane was charged with the crime that is at issue in this trial, I perceived that there would be an increase in demand for Mr. Dane's work. It came to my attention that we still owned the rights to these six titles, so I moved ahead forcefully to meet that demand.”

“So you're basically in it for the money.”

Bob Gough didn't appear at all nonplussed by the question. “Of course. Elgin Press is a business. We published three books on the O.J. Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky's unauthorized biography, a book about the tragic deaths on Mount Everest. It's just a reality that tragedy and titillation sell. In this case we felt that there would be significant demand for some of his old titles.”

“Any book that's been particularly successful in this regard?”

“Yes. I don't think it would surprise anyone in this room that Mr. Dane's third novel has sold quite a few copies recently.”

Stash took a new paperback book with a bright red cover off his table. “Let me get this marked as Exhibit 59. Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.” He handed the book to Bob Gough. “Is this the novel you're talking about, Mr. Gough?”

Bob Gough ran his fingers through his long goatee, studied the book, then said, “Yes it is.”

“Can you read me the title?”

“It's called
How I Killed My Wife and Got Away with It
.”

The courtroom had been silent all morning, but suddenly there was a rustling in the back of the room. Somebody yelled, “You murdering bastard!”

Judge Evola leveled his gavel at the back of the room. “Bailiff, remove that woman. Any more of that, and I clear this courtroom.”

The rustling and hubbub slowly subsided.

Judge Evola turned to the jury, and said, “At a later time, ladies and gentlemen, this court will give you some very clear, written, formal instructions with regard to how and why you are to consider the contents of this book as regards Mr. Dane's guilt or innocence on the charges at issue in this case. But I think it's imperative that I point out to you right from the get-go that the testimony you are about to hear is going to involve a work of fiction. That means that what happened in this book is just a story dreamed up to entertain people. Just because the character in this book says, ‘I did so-and-so,' doesn't mean that Mr. Dane did so-and-so. Continue, Mr. Olesky.”