The Guilty Plea (29 page)

“Engineering,” Brown said. “I want to be a dirt engineer. Build highways up north.”

“Content.” DiPaulo flashed the last juror his best smile. She didn’t respond in any way.

Raglan raised an eyebrow at him. She turned her pencil around and erased something in her trial binder.

“Excellent.” Norville sat straight up. “We have our jury on the first day. Good.”

Brown was sworn in, and Norville adjourned court. A few minutes later DiPaulo was back in the emptied-out lawyers’ lounge, sipping another coffee and shaking his head.

Why did I pick her? he wondered, doodling with a pencil on a piece of paper. Pure instinct. In the end, that’s what so much of trial work came down to. If I lose this case, he thought, I’ll rue the day.

Detective Ari Greene was usually the first person in court in the morning. He liked to have time to settle in. Get everything in order. Do a few crossword clues with the registrar, joke with the court reporter, chat with the older court officers. He sat at the Crown counsel table, took out a fresh pad of legal-size paper and a new pen. Nothing too fancy, but one with a spongy band around the bottom to make it easier to grip. He numbered the first page and wrote in capital letters R. V. samantha wyler—day two, tuesday, february 1.

In Canada, every criminal case was titled “R. v.” The
R
stood for Regina. The Queen. He’d explained this to Margaret Kwon when she started covering the trial.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” she’d said. “You guys have Crowns and queens, where’s Prince Charles?”

“Still at large,” he said.

Kwon was back in town and they were going to have dinner later in the week. There was still no news about April Goodling.

Right now his focus was the case. He’d been at the courthouse since seven this morning, going through all the boxes of evidence, reviewing the witness list for the week, following up on some last-minute requests by Ted DiPaulo for bits of disclosure that were missing.

Jennifer Raglan slipped into the wood chair beside him. She looked good in her pressed white shirt under the black robes. Nothing like a woman in uniform, he thought. This morning was her opening address to the jury, a big moment. He’d made a point of staying out of her way.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You ready?”

“Little nervous,” she said. “That’s always good.”

“Morning, Counsel.” The judge came in and settled into her chair high up on her dais. She turned to the court officer. It was exactly ten o’clock. “My jury, please,” Norville said.

Sounds like she’s ordering her butler to get her car, Greene thought as he watched the jurors shuffle in, all wearing more casual clothes than yesterday when they were here for jury selection. Over the weeks of the trial, he knew their dress would grow even more relaxed.

The jurors settled into their chairs, the same ones they’d sit in every day. The Crowns always had the counsel table closest to the jury. Raglan took a few steps over to the wood podium, which was at the corner of the jury box farthest from the front of the court.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.”

As she spoke, Greene took careful notes. He tried to listen to the Crown’s opening and pretend he’d never heard the evidence before, like a juror. Listen for where it was solid, where it was weak.

Raglan started with the background. Terrance and Samantha Wyler. Married five years ago. She was a banker who had begun working at the family business, Wyler Foods, the year before they met. Their son, Simon, born a year later. Samantha and Terrance leaving Wyler Foods to start their own business, how that caused a rift between Terrance and his family. How that venture failed and the marriage unraveled. The eventual split-up and Terrance seeing the actress April Goodling. Greene and Raglan had decided it was best to meet this issue head-on, so it didn’t look as if they were hiding anything.

Greene glanced at the jurors. A few of them were sneaking looks at Wyler, who, dressed conservatively, looked straight ahead.

Raglan was gaining momentum. She talked about how Terrance reconciled with his family after Samantha charged him with threatening her, and how he was found not guilty of the charges. Raglan moved on to Samantha’s angry e-mails and voice mails and the contentious divorce proceedings. About the last few days before Terrance’s murder. The family court trial set to start on Monday. Terrance’s e-mail to Samantha on the Sunday night saying he’d accepted her offer and inviting her to come to his house.

“And you will hear, ladies and gentlemen of the jury”—Raglan cranked her voice up a notch—“that Ms. Samantha Wyler, the accused,
was right next door, with her eighteen-year-old neighbor, a boy named Brandon Legacy, left home alone by his parents on the hot summer weekend. The last person to see Samantha before the murder.”

Raglan emphasized the word “boy.” Some of the jurors were nodding, now not feeling so shy about looking at Wyler.

“And this boy, Brandon, will tell you that the accused was angry when she left, saying she was going to the victim’s house to ‘settle this once and for all.’”

Raglan stepped out from behind the podium and walked to the center of the jury box, no notes in hand. Taking her time.

“And you’ll meet the Wylers’ son, Simon. Only four years old. He won’t be here in person, thank goodness. But on videotape, talking to that gentleman, Detective Ari Greene.” She gestured toward Greene. “The officer in charge of this case, who’s worked on it nonstop since early in the morning of August the seventeenth.”

Greene looked up from his note taking and nodded to the jury. Short and sweet. As they’d rehearsed it.

“On that tape you’ll hear Simon talk about the night his father was murdered. Fortunately, he never saw what happened. But you’ll see the pictures. And let me tell you, they’re not easy to look at. Seven stab wounds. The victim, Mr. Wyler, his body left lying on the kitchen floor while his son was upstairs in his bedroom.”

Raglan scanned back and forth across the jurors, like a slowly rotating spotlight.

“Simon tells Detective Greene that his mother came into his room that night. That she was crying. That she told her son she wouldn’t see him for a long time.”

Raglan went back to Greene, who handed her a slim folder. Inside was a photo of Terrance Wyler on the kitchen floor, his body slashed. Back at the end of the jury box, she looked at the picture as if she’d never seen it before. The jurors were watching her.

“I’m only going to show you one photo,” she said, still holding it back from their view. “And I’m going to read the e-mail the accused sent to the victim on August twelfth, five days before the murder.”

Greene glanced up at Norville. The judge was leaning forward.

Raglan turned the picture and held it low for the jurors on the bottom row, higher for those on the top. Jaws dropped, as if on cue.

At the far end of the jury box she put the picture down and reopened the file.

“Here’s what she said in the e-mail.” Raglan spoke softly. Letting the power of the written words speak for themselves: “‘August 12. One week from the trial and now your lawyer amends her pleadings and asks for full custody. Says it’s not safe for Simon to stay overnight with me???!!! Who the fuck do you think you are? Just like you to stab me in the back. You want to go to war. Watch out. You’re not the only one with a knife.’”

She finished reading and whirled toward Samantha Wyler, raised her arm, and pointed directly at her. “The Crown will prove that the accused used the victim’s own kitchen knife.” Raglan’s voice was loud. “Stabbed him seven times. Committed first-degree murder.”

Pointing at someone in a public place is an extreme gesture. Combined with Raglan’s contained fury, the effect was powerful.

Greene had an eye on Wyler, who had managed to look straight ahead the whole time Raglan was speaking. But now, with the finger directed at her, under the glare of all twelve jurors, she rotated her head in a slow, mechanical way, like an owl in no hurry to spy a noisy woodpecker, and she didn’t even blink.

“What’s wrong, Ted?”

“Nothing.” Ted DiPaulo had tried to slip out of bed without waking Chiara. He’d checked the clock radio on his side table. It was three in the morning. “I’m not sleeping much. Happens whenever I’m in a trial.”

“I can go home if you want.” She sat up, a pillow at her back.

In the new year, Chiara, DiPaulo’s girlfriend—a word that sounded absurd given that he was turning fifty-one this year and she was fifty-three—had started spending the night at his house. Lauren had insisted that she was “cool with it,” but DiPaulo still felt awkward having breakfast together, the three of them in their pajamas. But that had nothing to do with his inability to sleep right now.

“Please stay,” he said. “The first week of a trial is always the worst for the defense. We’ve had three days of forensics, fingerprints, blood splatter, photos of the dead body, the bloody knife, the towel it was wrapped in. Then Samantha’s angry e-mails and voice mails. It keeps piling up. When they played the videotape of the boy talking to Detective Greene, saying that his mother had been in his room that night, the jury looked at me as if I were some beast defending a monster.”

DiPaulo was perspiring. Olive used to make fun of the flannel pajamas he always wore, and when Chiara finally spent the night, she’d laughed at them too. Poky, she called them, and Lauren agreed. It was nice to see his daughter and his “girlfriend” form an alliance. He was glad to be the butt of their gentle chiding.

Maybe I should buy a lighter pair, he thought. The sweat layered on his shoulders and back. He walked to the window that faced his long backyard. His mind, as usual, was in overdrive. He always left the
blinds open, since there was nothing back there but trees and the deep ravine at the end of the yard. It was what he loved most about the house, the sense of being alone. He could never imagine how people lived in those boxlike condominiums downtown.

The sky was black, as if an enormous blanket had been thrown across it. Early February, the deepest part of the winter.

“How’s Samantha holding up?” Chiara was at his side. He hadn’t heard her get out of bed. She slid her hand under his pajama top, letting in cool air.

“She almost lost it yesterday,” DiPaulo said.

“What happened?”

DiPaulo peered out into the darkness for a long time before he spoke. “There’s a little cafeteria in the basement of the courthouse. It’s always overcrowded at lunchtime. This reporter, Zachery Stone, who works for the
Sun
, was in line and started pestering her.”

“You told me you never took your eyes off her in court.”

“I had to go the library to look up some cases. I rushed down and Sam was at the cash register, her face all red. Stone was right beside her. He’s a little guy, about half a foot shorter than she is.”

“Oh, no.” Chiara ran her fingers up and down his spine.

“She slammed her tray down and hissed at him, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Fuck off. Leave me alone.’” DiPaulo shuddered. “I got there just in time.”

“He can’t put this in the paper, can he?”

“No. That’s not what I’m worried about. Detective Greene was right behind them. He heard the whole thing.”

“What did he say?”

“Greene’s a quiet guy but I know what he was thinking: Looks like your client has an anger management problem.” DiPaulo’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he spotted a weak strand of light in the sky.

Chiara was using her fingernails now. Almost tickling his skin. Not saying a word.

“And you’re thinking, Ted—face it—he’s right. Samantha’s a very angry woman,” DiPaulo said.

Chiara intertwined their fingers.

“My first-year law school professor gave the best advice about being a trial lawyer: Forget the law. Make the judge or the jury like your client and they’ll always find a way to acquit.”

“How do you do that with someone like her?” Chiara asked.

“Sam’s her own worst enemy. A loner. Socially awkward. More comfortable teaching adults how to read than dealing with people who are her equal. She comes across as cold, uncaring. Her emotions are all bottled up, and they explode. Doing stupid things like sleeping with that teenage boy. Raglan’s going to make the jury despise her.”

Chiara unclasped their hands and rubbed the inside of his forearm.

He heard a tiny click noise. “I think Lauren’s awake.” He kissed Chiara on the cheek and slipped silently into the hall.

A sliver of light was under his daughter’s door. She must have heard him, because there was another small click and the gap under the door turned dark. DiPaulo and his daughter had been playing this little cat-and-mouse game since she was about four years old: Lauren reading all the time, DiPaulo trying to get her to sleep.

He paused for a moment. Not sure what to do.

“Lauren, you up?” He opened the door the tiniest crack. He heard her sniffle.

“Kind of,” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“Okay.”

The little light by her bed snapped back on. She’d been crying.

The worst part about being on a murder trial was the toll it took on your family. As if for weeks and weeks you were living on the other side of the moon. Even when he was home, DiPaulo’s mind was elsewhere. Over the years the kids had learned to compensate. They’d say “We can take care of breakfast, or dinner, or putting the recycling out for pickup on Wednesday.”

But with his son, Kyle, off at school, he’d had to leave Lauren alone so many nights. Despite her protestations that she was fine, that she had tons of homework and the revolving circuit of friends who passed through her Facebook page and their living room, he knew that for her as well, the big house felt lonely.

He sat on the edge of her bed. “I know it’s a drag. I’ve been so tied up with this case.”

She bit her lower lip.

“The trial will be over in a few—”

“Lenny and I split up.” She threw her hands over her eyes and wailed.

Lenny. DiPaulo searched in his mind for the name. He thought that part of her summer-school pack of friends included a Leonard. And he’d heard the name mentioned as part of the ever-long list of friends Lauren was “hanging with” most weekend nights. But he could never keep them straight. At some point it had occurred to him that Leonard’s name was popping up more than the others, but the thought had slipped away under the torrent of trial work.