Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (18 page)

"Imagine how eager they all were," he said, shoving
his shoulders forward as he began to pace, "the local police, the
state police, all of them—to get this thing behind them. You think
for a minute they doubted what this confessed killer told them?
They were too busy writing it all down to wonder whether they maybe
should listen with just a little doubt, just a little suspicion, to
the accusations of someone trying to save himself from the gas
chamber."

Suddenly, he stopped and looked at me over his
shoulder. "Mr. Antonelli failed to mention that, didn't he?" he
asked, turning back to the jury. "He merely said something about a
plea bargain. Some plea bargain! Their chief witness—their only
witness—confessed to killing Nancy Goodwin only after he'd been
arrested for killing a couple more people down in California. The
deal he made was that if they gave him life instead of death—and
isn't that a deal anyone would be pretty desperate to make?—he'd
tell them not only about the murder but about who paid him to do
it. And he promised them—you can bet on it—someone big, someone
really big, someone prominent, someone the rest of us read about in
the newspapers."

Pausing, he studied them with a shrewd eye "We all do
that, don't we? I do it myself. We see somebody getting ahead,
getting somewhere we never got and know we never will, and we
believe the first bad thing we hear about them. And then when
someone like that is brought down, someone famous, someone we may
think is just a little too self-important, whatever we say in
public and whatever we say out loud, inside ourselves, where no one
else will ever know, we cheer a little, don't we?"

He had them, every last one of those twelve jurors.
They followed him with their eyes, bound to him by a shared
confession of human weakness."That's what this case is all about,"
he assured them. "Travis Quentin wants to save his life, so he
makes up a story. The police want to save their reputation, so they
choose to believe that story. Everyone wants to be in on the kill,
the chance to bring someone down, so they line up for the
chance."

He was standing at the far end of the jury box, his
hand on the railing as he stared down at the floor. Then he slowly
looked up, until across the distance his eyes met mine."This case
is poisoned with politics," he warned. "Everybody knows that
Marshall Goodwin was about to become district attorney. And now
they have the chance to stop him."

I was on my feet, ready to object, but Judge Holloway
was ahead of me. "You make one more unsupported accusation like
that, Mr. Jones, and you'll be held in contempt!"

Without a word, Jones turned his back on her and
faced the jury box. She never saw the caustic look that told
everyone that, as far as he was concerned, the force of her
reaction had only proved him right. "Marshall Goodwin has not only
had to endure the agony of losing the woman he loved in a vicious
murder. Now he's had to undergo the humiliation of being accused of
her death. No one can bring Nancy Goodwin back, but at the end of
this trial he can at least walk out of this courtroom with the
knowledge that no one could honestly believe he had anything to do
with it."

Still angry, Judge Holloway watched with the rest of
us while Richard Lee Jones swaggered back to his place at the
counsel table.

Everything had to be proven, even the fact that Nancy
Goodwin was dead. A long list of witnesses took the stand to tell
their part of the story: the maid who found her, the police
officers who investigated the scene, the coroner who performed the
autopsy. Photographs taken from every angle of the hotel room and
the gruesome pictures taken later of Nancy Goodwin's body were
passed through the reluctant hands of the jurors and made permanent
exhibits in the record. This necessary prelude to the heart of the
case lasted the better part of a week. Then it was time to hear the
testimony of the man who had raped and killed her.

On more than one occasion I had defended an inmate
charged with an act of violence, and I knew first-hand there were
few things more likely to prejudice a jury than a prisoner brought
into court bound and chained. It didn't occur to me to have Quentin
appear any other way. I wanted the jury to see for themselves how
dangerous he was and how utterly depraved a man had to be to hire
someone like Travis Quentin to kill his wife.

When I called his name as the State's next witness,
the door at the back opened and two burly uniformed guards escorted
Quentin into court. Locking his knees together was a heavy iron
chain, wrapped several times around his legs, looped over his neck,
crossed back over his chest, and fastened with a padlock at his
waist. Stretching the chain as far as it would go, he could barely
raise his right hand to his shoulder as he stood in front of the
witness stand and listened to the clerk administer the oath. With
the help of the two guards, he sat down, two strands of the chain
sagging heavily in his lap.

Though he was my witness, I attacked him. "How many
people have you murdered, Mr. Quentin?" He pulled his head slightly
to the side, lining me up with his eyes. He did not answer.

Moving behind the counsel table, I walked over to the
side of the jury box. With my hand on the end of the railing, I
rephrased the question. "Let's make it simpler. In the last two
years?"

He sneered. "Three, I guess. The two in California,
the one up here."

"You guess three. By the one up here, you mean Nancy
Goodwin, correct?"

"Yeah, I guess that was her name."

"You killed her in a motel room in Corvallis,
correct?"

His eyes stayed focused on mine. "Yeah, that's
right."

"You cut her throat?"

Jones was out of his chair. "Your Honor, for some
reason Mr. Antonelli here keeps leading his own witness." He turned
toward the jury and added, "Maybe he's forgotten he's the
prosecutor in this case."

There was a ripple of laughter from the benches,
silenced by a single crack of Irma Holloway's gavel.

In no hurry, Jones turned back to the bench. Judge
Holloway was waiting for him. "The questions put by Mr. Antonelli
to the witness, while a little unorthodox, are, in light of the
circumstances surrounding the witness's appearance, an acceptable
departure from the usual form of direct examination. On the other
hand, Mr. Jones, there is no equally compelling reason to allow an
exception to the required form for raising an objection. If you
don't know what that form is, the court clerk will be glad to show
you the way to the law library during the next recess. Are we clear
now, counselor?"

She did not wait for an answer. "Mr. Antonelli," she
said, turning for the first time to me. "Please continue."

Slowly, deliberately, I repeated the question. "You
cut her throat with a knife, didn't you?"

Quentin had no mind for abstractions. The colloquy
between the defense attorney and the judge had nothing to do with
him, and with lowered eyes he had passed the time weaving his thumb
in and out of the chain around his wrists.

When he heard my voice, he lifted his dull
eyes."Yeah, that's what happened," he muttered.

"You've made a full confession to the police, haven't
you?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to be completely honest about this, Mr.
Quentin. The only reason you confessed to the murder of Nancy
Goodwin is because you were otherwise facing the possibility of the
gas chamber for the murders you committed in California,
correct?"

Putting one shoulder forward, he tried to move the
chain away from the side of his neck.

"It was part of a deal. I told them everything I knew
about the killing in Corvallis, and I was sentenced to life."

"Without possibility of parole, correct?"

"Yeah." His lips parted, exposing crooked yellow
teeth. "I'm not getting out."

"And you've also now entered a plea of guilty on the
charge of murder in the first degree here in Oregon for the murder
of Nancy Goodwin, haven't you?"

"Yeah. Couple months back."

"What about sentencing?"

"Doesn't really matter, does it? I'm spending the
rest of my life in prison in California."

"We both know it matters, Mr. Quentin. If you don't
testify truthfully in this case, you could get the death penalty,
couldn't you?"

His mouth barely moved when he replied in the
affirmative.

"In other words, Mr. Quentin, you're here to tell the
truth about what happened two years ago, because if you don't it
could cost you your life?"

He started to nod, then stopped, as if he had just
thought of something."Not quite as good as they say it is, though,"
he said, grinning stupidly. "It's not like the truth will set me
free."

I moved my hand from the jury box railing and
approached the witness stand. "Now let's go back to the beginning.
I want you to describe to the jury everything that happened from
the time you were first taken to the district attorney's office
until the time you murdered Nancy Goodwin."

Prodded by an occasional question, Travis Quentin
told his story with the detachment of a man who cared nothing about
what he had done. When he reached the end, I had only one question
left to ask. "Did anyone tell you that Nancy Goodwin was four
months pregnant when you killed her?"

He shook his head. "No."

I was standing at the far corner of the counsel
table, just across from the defendant and his lawyer. "Marshall
Goodwin never bothered to mention that?"

"I didn't know anything about it," he said, tugging
at the chain that was cutting into his shoulder. "Until she told
me."

"She told you?" I repeated helplessly.

"Yeah," he said. "But people say a lot of things when
they think they're going to die."

Richard Lee Jones began asking the first question of
his cross-examination before he had finished getting out of his
chair. "Now, if I understand all this, Mr. Quentin, everything you
said really comes down to some pretty simple arithmetic, doesn't
it?"

Quentin had no idea what he was talking about, and
neither did anyone else.

"What I mean, Mr. Quentin, is this," he said,
stalking along the railing of the jury box. "You murder this woman
Nancy Goodwin—in Corvallis." He stopped still and stared hard at
him. "Right?"

"Yeah."

Jones started pacing. "Then you murder two more
people down in Los Angeles." He stopped again. "Right?" He did not
wait for the answer but started walking again, long ungainly
strides, in front of the jury. "That makes three people you
killed." He held his foot in place, glancing quickly across at the
witness. "Right?"

Turning until he faced Quentin directly, he drew
himself up to his full height."But then you figure out," he said,
squinting at him, "that killing three people gets you the gas
chamber, but by killing just one more you save your own life. That
about it, Mr. Quentin? The truth is," Jones spat out, "you've made
this whole thing up, start to finish, haven't you?"

Quentin drew his head to the side and waited, an
ominous look in his eye.

"You killed three people—lately. I think that was the
way your lawyer put it."

"Your Honor," I protested, jumping to my feet.

"I'm warning you, Mr. Jones," Judge Holloway
said.

"The way the prosecutor put it," Jones went on, as if
he had not heard a word, "you kill two people in California, know
you're going to the gas chamber, and so you confess to another
murder, one here in Oregon, and because that isn't going to get you
anything by itself, you kill again—or, rather, you try to, don't
you? You tell the police you were paid to kill that woman—and the
man who paid you was her husband. That's what I mean by trying to
get away with three murders by committing a fourth. Because that's
what you're trying to do, isn't it— murder Marshall Goodwin here
just as surely as you murdered his wife?"

"Your Honor," I objected, "if there's a question
somewhere in that speech, I for one would be glad to hear it."

Jones was too quick. "I'm sorry, your Honor," he
said, with his best imitation of a bashful smile. "I got a little
carried away." He turned back to the witness. "You testified that
you were given an envelope that contained instructions,
correct?"

"Yeah." Quentin grunted.

"The name of the motel where Nancy Goodwin would be
staying?"

"Yeah."

"When she'd be there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, then, Mr. Quentin, where is it? Where is the
envelope, with these very precise instructions that told you where
to go and when to be there? Where is it?"

Quentin shrugged. "Burned it."

Placing his boot on the step below the witness stand,
Jones rested his hand on the corner of the bench in front of the
judge.

"Did you burn the money too?" he asked, pushing his
face forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with Quentin. It only
seemed like a mistake. As hard as he could, Quentin threw his head
forward, trying to hit him. Jones backed away, avoiding the
blow.