The Perfect Game (18 page)

Chapter Forty-six

(Friday, September 22)

After Lauren was sworn in, Pratt approached like a cat about to pounce. Lauren's heart was thumping so loudly, she worried the jurors might hear it.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rose,” Pratt said chummily. The Defense team never addressed Lauren by her medical title.

“Good afternoon.”

“You are the younger sister of Elizabeth Wakefield, correct?”

Lauren would soon be older than Liz had ever been. Because of the murder, she would reach ages Liz had never reached. “Yes.”

“Liz enjoyed more financial success than you did?”

“Liz had more money than most people, including me.”

“Do you think it's fair to say Liz was prettier than you?”

Candace objected, but Judge Robles overruled it, forcing Lauren to answer the offensive question. “Absolutely. Liz was very beautiful.”

“And Liz enjoyed more romantic success than you, didn't she?” Pratt was warming up now.

“Everybody used to think that before they found out what a monster Jake is,” Lauren responded.

“Did you think Jake Wakefield was a monster when you began spending time with him last September, two months after your sister's death?”

Candace had believed the Defense would not want to introduce this evidence. Candace had been wrong.

Lauren resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. “No. I believed we were both grieving for Liz. That was before I knew he killed my sister and then tried to frame me for her murder.” She looked directly at Jake, who refused to meet her gaze. She hoped the jury noticed.

“You admit you became friendly with your sister's husband very shortly after her death? It sounds to me like you were hoping to step into your sister's expensive shoes.”

“I was grieving and Jake made me feel like he genuinely cared about me. He created that illusion for many people, including my sister.”

“Isn't it true you entered the words ‘deaths from traumatic injuries' into the search engine of your home computer on the twenty-second of July?”

“I don't remember the exact date, but I did enter those search terms. I'm an emergency medicine resident and I was conducting research for…”

Pratt interrupted. “And you did another Google search on July twenty-second with the search term 'causes of death'?”

“I needed the information for my job because…”

Pratt interrupted again. “Miss Rose, isn't it true you were having some financial strain at the time of your sister's death?”

“No. That is not true.”

Pratt moved to enter documents into evidence. After doing so, he handed one to Lauren. “Can you identify this for the jury?”

“That's my student loan statement.”

“And how much money does it say you owe?”

“This one is a few months old so I owe less now, but this statement reflects a balance of one hundred sixteen thousand, eight hundred twelve dollars.”

“One hundred sixteen thousand, eight hundred twelve dollars?” Pratt asked with exaggerated shock. “Isn't that a small fortune in student loan debt?”

“It's not uncommon for medical students to owe such amounts.”

“So you don't feel like this is a large debt?”

“It is a large debt, but not one I can't reasonably pay off over time.”

There was a commotion at the Defense table. A heavyset man in khaki pants and a polo shirt was whispering animatedly to Fisher. Pratt became aware of the disruption and returned to the Defense table where both Fisher and the stranger murmured to him excitedly, Jake listening in with a smile.

Pratt turned back to Lauren with a gleam in his eye.

“Miss Rose, will you please tell the court where you were between the hours of seven and eleven p.m. on the evening of July twenty-third last year?”

“I was at work at Good Samaritan Hospital.”

“For that entire period of time?”

“Yes.”

“What hours were you there that evening?”

“My shift started at noon so I got there around 11:45 in the morning. And my shift ended at midnight, but I was busy with an important case so I didn't leave until about six-thirty in the morning.”

“Don't you get a dinner break?”

“We eat if and when we can find the time in between patients. There's a cafeteria in the hospital and vending machines. The nurses almost always have baked goods lying around. We don't practice the healthiest eating habits.”

Several people in the courtroom chuckled.

“Do you remember if you ate on the evening of July twenty-third?”

“I snacked here and there, but I never sat down and ate a real meal. We were too busy that night.”

“So you didn't leave the hospital at all that night, is that correct?”

“That's correct.”

“The Defense would like to introduce into evidence a videotape from the hospital filmed that evening.”

Candace shot to her feet. “Your Honor, may we approach the bench?”

The judge called a sidebar. Lauren could hear only bits and pieces of the conversation. She heard Candace fume, “This is an outrage!” Pratt was clearly impassioned as he gesticulated wildly with his hands.

While the minutes stretched long, Lauren wondered what could possibly be on the hospital videotape that would be of interest to the Defense. She was aware of only one video camera at the hospital. It had been placed in the waiting area to allow the triage nurses to keep an eye on waiting patients. Hospital security also monitored it as many ER patients were drunk, high, belligerent, or some combination of the three. Secretly, the interns also surveyed the video footage to divvy up patients, Ritesh angling to be the treating provider for any and all attractive female patients. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the Defense might have video of the interns dishing about patients or otherwise acting unprofessionally, but that was unlikely because the only camera was in the waiting room. The remainder of the ER was not taped in order to protect patient privacy.

Growing bored while the lawyers bickered, Lauren attempted to make eye contact with the jurors. The Defense was desperately trying to convince the jury that Lauren was capable of murder and she wanted them to see this wasn't true. She wanted them to know she wasn't afraid to look them in the eye. But most of the jurors were either staring at the spectacle at the sidebar or doodling in their notepads. One appeared to be asleep.

She scanned the courtroom for a comfortable place to rest her eyes. Jake was leaning back in his chair, laughing and joking with the front row of spectators behind him, which included his parents and several reporters. Most people in the gallery were browsing their cell phones. Even Ryan had been using the downtime to check his phone, but he suddenly seemed to sense Lauren's discomfort. He glanced up at her, feeling alone and small on the witness stand, and he smiled reassuringly.

After more than twenty minutes, the huddle at the judge's bench broke up. Candace looked grim and even irrepressible Kyle looked deflated. Meanwhile, Pratt and Fisher exuded victory.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Judge Robles instructed, “the Defense has filed a motion to introduce newly discovered evidence, which they have only uncovered today. We will recess early today to allow the Prosecution time to review the evidence. We will make some approved movies available for you to watch at the hotel over the weekend. See you back on Monday morning.”

Chapter Forty-seven

(Friday, September 22)

“Not here,” Candace snapped when Lauren returned to the Prosecution table. Candace was slamming documents into boxes, stacking the boxes roughly on a rolling rack.

They walked in silence through the long tunnel to the county attorney's office. Several passing people greeted Candace, but she barely acknowledged them. Lauren raised her eyebrows at Ryan in a questioning manner. He shrugged his shoulders in response.

No sooner had they entered the war room than Candace slammed the door shut, rounded on Lauren, and shouted “Did you forget to tell us something about the night of your sister's murder?”

“What? No. I've told you everything. Why? What did they say?”

“It's not what they said, it's what they found. They say they have video footage of you leaving the hospital at 6:42 p.m. on July twenty-third. Please tell me that isn't true.”

“It isn't true.”

“We're about to find out.” Candace pulled a labeled DVD out of one of the evidence boxes. “Fucking Pratt. I wonder how long he's been sitting on this little nugget. He claims their investigator only discovered it today. I told Robles the timing was suspiciously convenient. They just happened to find this footage right when they get you on the stand. I'll bet. Pratt's been hinting at a problem with your alibi throughout the entire trial. I thought he was just grandstanding for the jury. Until now.” Like a freight engine that had picked up steam, Candace continued her diatribe as she slammed the disc into a media system set up in one corner of the room. When it failed to load, she gave the unit a sharp kick. The familiar DVD logo popped onscreen and Candace hit play.

The video display was grainy. The image depicted the waiting room at Good Samaritan. The time and date stamp were on the bottom left of the image; 23 July, 18:40. There was no sound. The silence was deafening as they watched for the next ninety seconds. At 18:42, Lauren entered the waiting room and departed through the automatic front doors at the entrance to the ER. Candace eyeballed Lauren. “That's you, right?”

“Yeah, that's me. Are we sure this thing is date-stamped correctly?” Lauren felt a pit in her stomach.

“They swear up and down the tape has been authenticated by the hospital security staff.”

“That's weird because I don't even use that door. We have a staff entrance that leads out to the parking garage. Does it show me coming back in?”

They watched in stony silence for several more minutes, but the video Lauren did not return.

“I can't believe we didn't catch this ourselves,” Candace was saying now in an accusatory tone directed at Ryan.

“Hold up, Candace,” he responded calmly. “Lauren's telling us this is inaccurate and I believe her. We can call Dr. Stone to the stand to verify she was at the hospital all night if we have to. We have his statement to that effect on file.”

“Yeah, but he wasn't with her every second of the night. The Defense is claiming that Lauren snuck out to kill Liz, and the ER is such a busy place nobody missed her.”

“Anybody that's ever worked in an ER is going to know that's ludicrous,” Lauren protested. “You can't go missing from your shift undetected. I have a pager. I have patients asking for me.”

“Anybody that has any sort of job knows that,” Ryan agreed. “People are going to notice you're missing and come looking for you. And with technology today, you can always be found.”

Candace was still seething. “It doesn't matter. The Defense just created reasonable doubt. Lauren already testified under oath that she didn't leave the hospital at all that night so they're going to make her out to be a liar.”

“Wait,” Lauren exclaimed, pointing to the video screen. “There I am again.” Kyle had been fast-forwarding slowly through the tape. At 19:47, Lauren reappeared on the screen. She could be seen talking to a patient in the waiting room and handing her some forms on a clipboard.

Candace looked relieved. “What time does it show her coming back in the hospital?” But it didn't. Both times that Lauren appeared on screen, she entered the waiting room from the treatment area. She exited the hospital at 18:42 and was not seen again until 19:47 when she re-emerged from the treatment area. They forwarded through the rest of the footage, but saw no more images of Lauren for the remainder of the video, which ran through 09:00 on the morning of July twenty-fourth.

“Why doesn't it show you leaving after your shift?” Candace asked warily. “You got off at 6:30 that morning, correct?”

“Yes, but I left through the employee entrance. You can see reporters flooded the waiting room at around 6:15 that morning.”

Ryan nodded in support. He well-knew that Lauren used the side entrance to come and go.

“Do you ever use the front entrance?” Candace asked.

“Not really. The side entrance is close to the doctors' lounge where we change into our scrubs, put our stuff in our lockers.”

“But that's you on the tape, right?”

“Right.”

“Is there any chance that's somebody that just looks like you?” Candace asked.

Lauren watched the footage again. “No, that's definitely me.”

“Why did you leave the hospital through the front door that night still wearing your scrubs?” Candace demanded.

But Lauren only shook her head. “I don't think I did, but I can't remember that night clearly anymore. It was more than a year ago.”

“But you told the police you didn't leave the hospital that night for any reason.”

Ryan nodded again. “That's right, Candace. I remember asking her about it on July twenty-fourth. Do you remember what you said to me, Lauren?”

“I told you I didn't leave,” Lauren said defensively.

“Easy. I was agreeing with you. You said that with utter conviction. You laughed when I suggested you might have ducked out for some reason. Remember?”

Lauren thought back to the first day she had met Ryan, who had still been Detective Boyd to her back then. She nodded.

“There must be something fishy with this video.” Ryan said. “Let me get the forensics guys to look at it and see if it's been tampered with.”

Lauren breathed a huge sigh of relief. Of course, Ryan must be right. Something must be wrong with the video.

Chapter Forty-eight

(Saturday, September 23–Monday, September 25)

But the forensics team found nothing wrong with the tape. The hospital camera was consistently taping with the correct date stamp and there was no indication the tapes had been tampered with.

Lauren spent many hours over the weekend preparing for her ongoing testimony. Candace played the role of Pratt and Kyle acted as Candace. After several grueling hours, Kyle gave a spot-on send-up of Candace when he lodged an objection to the imaginary judge in a Southern accent. Candace was not amused. “Straighten up. This isn't high school lunch hour. This fucking tape could unravel our entire case.” She was barely speaking to Lauren except to try to cut her to pieces in her role as Pratt. It wasn't method acting.

Lauren held up well under Candace's relentless questioning. She plausibly denied being jealous of Liz. She responded to questions about her relationship with Jake in a calm and reasonable matter. She was tempted to try to lighten Candace's mood with a joke about Jake's penis size, but she didn't dare.

The only area in which Lauren's testimony fell apart was when it came to questions about the tape. In her role as Pratt, Candace asked repeatedly where Lauren was going when she left the front entrance of the ER. Lauren could only answer, “I honestly don't remember leaving that night at that time.”

Candace exploded. “That isn't going to fly, Lauren. Do you want to hand them this case on a silver platter? Answer the goddamned question!”

“But that's the truth, Candace. Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to make something up? I can say I was going out to look at the stars. I can say that I stepped outside for a nip of vodka. I can even say I was leaving to go kill my sister if you want me to. Anything I say other than I can't remember is going to be a lie. It was more than a year ago. Do you remember what you were doing a year ago?”

After this outburst, Candace relented a bit. They agreed Lauren would respond she didn't remember leaving, but must have quickly returned through the staff entrance. Candace was still displeased, but conceded it would have to do.

Even though she was exhausted, Lauren did not sleep well on Sunday night. She should have collapsed into a dreamless sleep. Instead she had fitful nightmares about going to prison.

After running and showering, Lauren selected her outfit carefully in anticipation of being grilled on the stand. She dressed in a black skirt suit and simple black heels. She wore an emerald green blouse, which was Liz's favorite color. She pulled her hair back in a French twist. Now she looked more like a doctor than she did at work where she wore scrubs and a ponytail.

Ryan arrived promptly to pick her up. Ever the gentleman, he always insisted on parking the car and coming to her apartment door. Lauren made a point of always being ready to go as soon as he arrived. When she opened the door, he took one look at her and issued a low long whistle. “You look amazing.”

“I figured I could at least try to look good.”

“You're going to do fine.”

“Candace doesn't seem to think so.”

“Candace?” he said. “What does she know about testifying? She's never even done it herself.”

He was trying to make Lauren laugh, but she could only manage a grimace. When she slipped into his dark car, she found a bear claw and an iced chai tea waiting for her.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to smile to show her appreciation.

“I thought bear claws were the accepted currency of consolation.” So he had understood her earlier clumsy attempt with the bear claws all along.

“There are some things even a bear claw can't fix.”

“All you can do today is tell the truth as you know it. You may even gain some credibility in the jury's eyes if you admit you can't remember why you stepped out that door. It was over a year ago now. They're going to understand that. The video shows you were already back to work when you reappear an hour later.”

“Maybe or maybe they're going to conclude I used that hour to speed to Liz's house, off her in a fit of jealousy, and rush back to the hospital to resume healing perfect strangers.”

“If you did that, then why wouldn't you make up something better about why you were exiting the hospital? Something better than you don't remember? All you can do is tell the truth.”

Lauren nodded feebly, saying nothing. They made the rest of the trip in suspended silence, Lauren steeling herself for what was about to come.

Court convened at nine o'clock.

“Ms. Keene, I assume the State had ample time to review the proposed evidence?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor, but I still object to the introduction of this video into evidence. I have reason to believe the Defense knew about these videotapes long before they turned them over to us.”

Judge Robles excused the jury from the courtroom so he could hear arguments about the Defense's motion to introduce the video recordings into evidence.

Pratt acknowledged they had been in possession of the tape for several weeks. “However, my team has been so inundated with tips that it has taken us an inordinate amount of time to sort through all of the evidence we have collected. We were unaware of the significance of these tapes until moments before we moved to introduce them into evidence.”

“And I call bullshit,” Candace retorted. “Isn't it convenient you just happened to discover these tapes right after Dr. Rose testified she hadn't left the hospital, with your investigator rushing in to do his Oscar-worthy acting job? You've been hinting for weeks that you planned to refute Dr. Rose's alibi. You knew about these tapes and you intentionally concealed them from the Prosecution. It's professional misconduct. You could be disbarred for such offenses.”

“I could, if your baseless accusations were true. I was as surprised as you were when my investigator told me what he found on those tapes on Friday afternoon.”

The battle raged for ten minutes before Judge Robles ruled the recordings would be introduced into evidence, reminding Candace she could appeal his ruling to a higher court for immediate review if she chose to do so. While the Prosecution might win the appeal, it would come at the cost of pissing off Robles for the remainder of the trial.

Candace stood up perfectly straight. “I elect not to appeal Your Honor's ruling, but I do intend to file a complaint of misconduct against Mr. Pratt with the Arizona Bar Association.”

“So noted for the record,” Robles answered.

The jury filed back into the courtroom and Lauren was recalled to the stand.

“Dr. Rose, you are still under oath,” Robles reminded her. Lauren's cheeks grew hot. He said this to all witnesses when they resumed the stand, but Lauren could not help but feel Judge Robles knew she had been contemplating lying during her testimony today.

“Good morning, Miss Rose,” Pratt said with unforced cheerfulness.

“Good morning.”

“Do you remember testifying under oath that you were at work during the hours of 11:45 a.m. on July twenty-third to 6:30 a.m. on July twenty-fourth?”

“Yes.”

“And do you remember testifying under oath that you did not leave the hospital during those hours for any reason?”

“Yes.”

“Your Honor, at this time, the Defense requests permission to play a portion of a video recording from Exhibit Seventy-Four A.”

“Permission granted.”

Pratt made an elaborate show of taking the disc from its evidence sleeve and putting it into the courtroom DVD player. It was cued to right where it had been yesterday.

“Miss Rose, can you tell the members of this court where this room is located, please?”

“That is the waiting room for the ER at Good Samaritan Hospital, where I work.”

“And will you read the date and time stamp for the record please?”

“It says twenty-three July, 18:40.”

Using a remote control, Pratt pushed the play button. Lauren watched over a minute of footage before she saw the image of herself enter the waiting room on the screen.

Pratt paused the tape.

“Miss Rose, do you recognize this person?” Pratt flourished a red laser pointer at the screen, landing squarely on her own head in the image.

“Yes, that's me.”

Pratt pushed play again and Lauren saw her video self exit through the electronic ER doors.

“And what do you see yourself doing here?” Pratt asked as the video showed Lauren leaving the hospital building. A buzz of excited whispering filled the courtroom.

“I'm going through a set of doors.”

“And can you tell this court where those doors lead?” he asked with evident delight.

“To the ER entrance of the hospital,” Lauren responded.

“Outside, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“And for the record, can you read the date and time stamp aloud, please?”

“It says twenty-three July, 18:42.”

“So this video shows you leaving the hospital at 6:42 p.m. on July twenty-third, isn't that right?”

“No, it shows me leaving the ER, not the hospital grounds,” Lauren responded with an internal surge of defiance. “I stepped out to get my coat out of my car because I was cold.”

Pratt, who had been pacing as he questioned Lauren, stopped in his tracks and did an abrupt about-face to square off against Lauren.

“Because you were cold?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “On July twenty-third in Phoenix?”

“Yes. They keep the thermostat quite low in the ER because low environmental temperatures are beneficial for many traumatic injuries including crush injuries, near-drowning, and fevers. The temperature is…”

Pratt interrupted. “And you just happened to have a coat in your car?”

“I had left my lab coat in the car so I stepped out for a moment to retrieve it.”

“And you chose to leave through the main entrance?”

“It was the closest door and it was an outdoor route that would allow me to defrost a little bit.”

“And you just happened to have your car keys handy?”

“No. I didn't lock my car.”

“You didn't lock your car? In downtown Phoenix?”

“I never used to lock my car. I grew up in a small town where we never locked our cars or house.”

“Phoenix is hardly a small town, is it?”

“No, it's not.”

“And before you moved to Phoenix, I believe you lived in Los Angeles?”

“Yes, in Westwood.”

“And I suppose you didn't feel the need to lock your doors in Los Angeles either?”

“Not unless I left something valuable in my car.”

“Something like your lab coat, you mean?”

“My lab coat? No. Nobody other than a doctor would want a lab coat and most doctors already have one of their own.”

“So, if we were to go out to your brand new Acura in the courthouse parking lot, we would find your car doors unlocked?”

“My car isn't brand new anymore and it's not in the parking lot, but I do lock my doors now.”

“So last year, you were a trusting naïve small-town girl, but now at the ripe old age of twenty-six, you started locking your doors?”

Candace jumped to her feet to object, but Lauren was burning to respond so she blurted out her answer, “Yeah, I stopped trusting people when I found out my sister was murdered by her own husband.”

Candace grinned as she resumed her seat without voicing her objection.

As Pratt's direct examination continued throughout the morning, he challenged Lauren about the scratches to her arm to which she explained that she had been injured by a drunken patient. He pointed out that the videotape could not account for her whereabouts for more than an hour. Lauren responded she had been treating patients in the treatment area where cameras were prohibited. He questioned her about her purchase of an expensive new car shortly after Liz's death. Lauren responded her decade-old car had suffered a catastrophic engine failure. She testified to making the payments on her own, demonstrating she had not needed Liz's insurance money to afford the new car.

Pratt asked, “Why did you insist on identifying Elizabeth's body yourself?”

“What? I didn't insist on that. Jake asked me to do it. He said he couldn't handle it himself. Seeing my sister like that still haunts me. If I knew then what I know now, I never would have done it. Jake could have gone and identified her savaged body himself.”

Pratt did ask Lauren to do one thing that puzzled her. He handed her a hammer and a pillow and ask her to hit the pillow with the hammer several times. Candace objected, but was overruled.

Lauren tapped the hammer lightly against the pillow several times and stopped. Pratt seemed disappointed, but he simply took the props away and proceeded with a different line of questioning.

When court finally recessed for lunch, Pratt was red in the face.
He looks discouraged
, Lauren realized, feeling satisfied. With Jake's assistance, Pratt had attacked her with vicious allegations. But Lauren had held her own. Today's testimony had bolstered, rather than diminished, Lauren's sense of self-confidence. She had entered the coliseum as the bull and had, against all odds, defeated the matador.