The Guilty Plea (18 page)

The registrar handed the papers to the judge. “Sounds like a good idea,” Norville said to Raglan.

“Your Honor, I submit that the court should listen to the actual voice mails,” Raglan said. “The accused’s tone of voice, which isn’t conveyed by the written word, is evidence as well.”

Greene was impressed with Raglan in court. She always used the term “I submit,” never “I think.” The last thing in the world judges wanted was to be told what to do or, even worse, what a lawyer thought they should do. Instead, she used body language to get her message across. Back straight, confident, smart.

“The tapes are short,” Raglan said, as if the judge had already decided to let her go ahead.

“Play them,” Norville said, not even asking DiPaulo to respond.

Greene peeked over at Samantha Wyler. Dressed in simple clothes, she’d sat beside DiPaulo all morning, projecting an image of silent submission. She flinched when the static of the recording started and her voice carried out across the courtroom.

“
Terry, you scumbag. I can’t believe what you are doing to me. And that lawyer of yours. She’s a piece of work
.”

“
Terry, fuck you. I read your affidavit. Thanks a lot for making me out to be the bitch queen of the universe. You may not believe it, but I tried to be a good mother. Did it ever occur to you that Simon will see this garbage one day?
”

The only perceptible movement Wyler made was the way she tightened her jaw as her voice on tape shattered the controlled image she’d tried to portray. This was why Raglan had insisted on playing them.

Greene and Raglan had spent the last week preparing for this hearing. Since Wyler hadn’t come forward with an alibi, they hadn’t told DiPaulo about Simon’s evidence that his mother had come into his room that night. They hoped Wyler would testify at the bail hearing and say she hadn’t been in the house. If that happened, she’d be caught under oath in a barefaced lie, and the case would be as good as over. The fact that she’d never get bail would be a bonus.

That was the other reason Raglan insisted on playing the tapes in open court. They were hoping to scare her into the witness-box.

“
You’re a king-size asshole, you know that, Terry. You make me so angry sometimes I think I could … I could … fuck you, go running home to your mommy
.”

Greene watched Wyler. It looked as if she was trying to swallow without any saliva. DiPaulo must have sensed this. He made a show of pouring her a glass of water from an ice-filled pitcher, hoping to create a minor distraction. Then he stood up.

Raglan hit the Pause button.

“Your Honor, really,” DiPaulo said. “The Crown’s had its fun humiliating my client. The tapes are all very colorful. Must we hear ten more? The defense concedes that Ms. Wyler was angry. Not shocking, given that her husband was seeing another woman. Here’s the key point that I fear will get lost in all this melodrama. Nowhere in these tapes, or in the e-mails, did my client make an actual threat. Commit a criminal act. It’s perfectly legal to be mad at a philandering husband.”
DiPaulo had worked himself into an indignant anger. He’d taken the negative of the tapes and tried to turn it around on the Crown.

“Madam Crown. Do we really need to hear any more?” Norville went through the binder DiPaulo had given her. “I’ve got the flavor of what was going on here.”

Greene watched Raglan rock on her heels.

“I’m not here today to judge guilt or innocence.” Norville was staring at Raglan. “But I’m mindful of the fact that if Ms. Wyler is not guilty, then she’s in a nightmare scenario, looking at a prison sentence of twenty-five years and probably never seeing her son again.”

Norville turned to DiPaulo. “I’m also aware that, to date, the defense has not produced any alibi evidence.”

Back to Raglan. “I’ve heard enough.” Norville sat taller in her chair. “Let’s move on.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Raglan said. “May I have a moment to confer with my officer in charge?”

“Take your time.”

Raglan’s robes dangled down by her side. “I’m glad Ted objected,” she whispered, her lips near Greene’s ear. “We have Samantha’s skin crawling, but I was starting to feel like a real asshole playing those tapes.”

Greene could feel Raglan’s breath. The heat of her body so close. “Mission accomplished. Let’s see if DiPaulo puts her on the stand.”

“I like working with you, Ari,” Raglan said before she straightened her back. She swished her robes back over her arm.

“Your Honor, that’s the case for the Crown.”

Norville looked at the courtroom clock. “We’ll take a longer lunch than usual. Back at two-fifteen.” She rose from the bench and took her time striding out.

Greene kept his eyes on Samantha. As soon as the judge’s door closed, she rolled both hands into fists and smacked the table in front of her. Damn hard.

The moment court adjourned and Samantha was taken out by the guards, Ted DiPaulo rushed down two flights of stairs to the lawyers’ lounge, grabbed a coffee, and hurried to the elevator that went to the cells. When the doors opened, the whole Wyler family was right in front of him.

This was always awkward for defense lawyers. Even in a large courthouse, inevitably you’d run into the family of the deceased. Innocent victims. People in mourning. And the lawyer who was standing up for the accused was often a lightning rod for their anger.

No one said a word. Mrs. Wyler stood beside Jason, who was holding himself up on two canes, his strong arms and shoulders a stark contrast to his shriveled legs. Nathan Wyler and the father were in back. Tall, imposing men. Something moved, and DiPaulo realized it was one of Jason’s canes. The rubber tip at the end came up and he efficiently pushed a button. In a moment the doors swung closed.

DiPaulo headed to the stairs and ran down to the prison cells. A guard had already brought Sam into the interview cubicle. DiPaulo sat across from her and they both had to bend down to speak through the airholes near the bottom of the glass. She looked awful.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m never going to get bail.”

“We have a chance. And some good case law.”

“The judge hates me.”

“You can’t tell.”

“I went to university with women like her. Believe me. I know.”

Wyler rubbed her hands together. They were rough. Scraped. She started picking at her nails.

“We have to stick to our plan,” DiPaulo said.

Wyler nodded with no enthusiasm. “I know. You’re going to put my mother on the stand. You don’t want me to testify.” Her voice was drained of all emotion. “But if I don’t testify, how do I get out?”

In the middle of a bail hearing clients often panicked, prepared to try anything to get out of jail. They had no vision beyond the moment. Worse than teenagers, he thought. His job was to protect them, even from themselves.

“We’ve gone over this. Raglan will tear you apart,” he said. “She’ll play every one of those tapes.”

Wyler rocked back and forth, like a mother with a child. Except her arms were empty.

“Doesn’t the judge want to hear from me?”

“Not necessary. This is about bail, not guilt or innocence. You’d be testifying under oath. One misstep, and they’ll throw it at you in front of the jury, and the whole case is blown.”

“I need to go home,” she said.

“We both want the same thing.” It wasn’t entirely true. In jail she was less likely to do something stupid, like leave more voice mails or talk to some guy in a bar who was an undercover cop. Sam would adjust to prison. Clients always did. She’d already read her way through most of the beat-up paperbacks on the nightly book cart and was talking about teaching some of the young mothers how to read.

Wyler stopped picking at her hands. “The food in here’s horrible,” she said. “A stale bun with one slice of cheese for lunch.”

DiPaulo smiled. With all control of their lives taken from them, clients would focus on the most irrelevant things. Small bargaining chips to make them feel better. It meant he’d prevailed.

“I’ll talk to the guards and see if I can get you some soup,” he said.

“I need to get back to Cobalt.”

“Cobalt?” He laughed. “I thought you hated your hometown.”

“You’re not hearing me.” She didn’t crack a smile. More intense than ever. “I’ll agree to any condition they want. Just get me back up there.”

Clients always have a hidden agenda, DiPaulo thought when court resumed after lunch. He stood the moment Judge Norville took her seat.

“The defense calls Mrs. Jacquelyn Frankland.” He motioned for
her to come forward. DiPaulo wanted to move things along fast, change the tone after those devastating tapes this morning.

He watched Samantha’s mother take the stand and be sworn in as a witness. There was something solid about Frankland. Dull dress. Sturdy shoes. Her maiden name, she’d told DiPaulo, was Cormier, and her English had a trace of a French-Canadian accent.

“Mrs. Frankland, you’re Sam’s mom, right?” DiPaulo’s choice of words was folksy as a small-town politician at a country fair.

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was nasal.

“And you live in Cobalt, Ontario. I believe that’s north of North Bay.”

“North of North Bay, north of Temagami, south of Liskeard,” she said. “Proper name is
New
Liskeard, but everyone calls it Liskeard. Know what I mean?”

“How long you lived there?” DiPaulo asked.

“Whole life.”

“You have two children.”

“Sam came first. Jimmy two years after. Jimmy’s like me, knows how to fix things. Sam’s like her dad, always in the books.”

“Your husband passed away many years ago.”

“Karl died Sam’s first year in high school. She was crazy for her dad. He was at the gas station, changing the oil on his convertible, when the hoist broke. We had one of those old single-shaft ones. Karl was always bugging me to get a double-shaft, but where was the money? Sam’s the one who found him.”

Frankland spoke in the no-nonsense tone of a woman who knows herself. Great witness for the defense.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you a few personal questions, ma’am,” DiPaulo said.

Frankland turned to the judge. “I got no secrets,” she said.

Judges hated it when witnesses spoke directly to them. And normally DiPaulo lectured them to always watch him—never, ever look at the judge or the jury. But Frankland was so unpretentious, he’d intentionally not mentioned this to her.

Norville smiled back at Frankland and nodded a few times before she caught herself. Clearly she was charmed by Samantha’s mother.

“You’re fifty-five years old, you have no criminal record, and you
run the only gas station in town,” DiPaulo said without looking at a note. “Silver Shores Motors.”

“Been doing it for thirty-five years. Jimmy works in Liskeard at the foundry. He’s a grinder. Helps out on weekends. I do the tires. Lots of flat tires up our way. Ice in winter pops huge potholes every spring.”

DiPaulo put his hand on his client’s shoulder. “If Her Honor grants bail to your daughter, are you willing to have her home until this trial’s over?”

“Where else she going to live?”

There was a murmur of laughter in the court.

“And could you keep her busy?”

“Sure. Sam’s the smart one in the family. Straight-A student. Won that scholarship to the university here in Toronto. Did better than all those rich girls, but they’re the ones got those jobs at the big banks.”

“You understand, Sam won’t be allowed to leave town unless she’s with you or her brother.” This was the third time he’d referred to his client by her first name. Make her sound like a small-town girl who wanted to go home and live with her family, not a woman accused of murder.

“That could be a problem,” she said.

Norville jerked her head up and looked at Frankland.

“What kind of problem?” DiPaulo asked.

“The libraries,” Frankland said. “Sam lives in them. There’s one in our town, but her favorite’s the one in Liskeard.”

“I see,” DiPaulo said, as if this were news to him. Of course he’d spent hours going over this with Frankland before putting her on the stand. “Well, if she went to one of the local libraries, how could you guarantee she stayed there?”

“Stay? She never leaves. Books and librarians are her best friends. Always researching something, the way her dad taught her. I could get Lillian to call me.”

“Lillian?”

“The librarian in Liskeard. She’s here in the court.” Frankland pointed back behind DiPaulo. A tall woman in the audience, sitting beside Samantha’s brother, gave a little wave. Exactly as they’d planned it.

“She came down with you for the bail hearing?” DiPaulo moved out from behind the counsel table.

“On the train,” Frankland said.

DiPaulo approached the witness-box as if he had something difficult to confide in her.

“Do you have any travel plans?”

Frankland smiled. Her teeth were jagged. “I got nowhere to go. I sent Jimmy down for the funeral. I haven’t been south in ten years.”

“Is there room for Samantha at your house?”

She looked at DiPaulo as if he were a customer who’d asked a really stupid question. “Her bedroom.”

This brought more laughter.

Frankland looked confused. “Haven’t touched it since Sam left after high school.” She turned to Norville. “She won’t let me move a thing in there. Know what I mean?”

The judge couldn’t help but nod. DiPaulo saw she was scribbling away in her notebook. A good sign. Let’s hope she’s working out conditions for a release on bail. He waited until Norville finished writing. The evidence couldn’t have gone in better.

He smiled his best smile. “Those are my questions.” DiPaulo turned and headed back to his seat.

“Am I allowed to say one more thing?” Frankland said behind him on the witness stand.

Oh, no. She’d been perfect. What the hell did she want to add? Be calm, Ted, he told himself. No way you can shut up your own witness. Look happy. He pivoted to face the judge. Not quite Fred Astaire, but not bad. He plastered a smile on his face. “What do you want to say?”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you, sir. Or anyone else. And I guess I have to.”