Guilty Wives (11 page)

MONSIEUR LE PRÉSIDENT JUGE,
Alfred Reynold, was a man in his late fifties with a weathered face and flowing white hair. He placed a piece of paper before him and folded his hands, which were mostly obscured by the sleeves of his red robe.

“On the day of nineteen June, 2010, this nation was attacked,” he began, via the female translator in our ears. “No bomb was detonated. No building collapsed. No city burned. But we were attacked no less.

“It was a day that will never be forgotten. Each of us will recall forever where we sat or stood when we learned of the death of the president of the French. Each of us will recall forever the sadness, the anger, and the fear. And the resolve that justice be served on those responsible for President Devereux’s death.

“On that day, we did not belong to the Union for a Popular Movement or the Socialist Party or the National Front. We were not conservative or liberal or green. We were not white or black or brown. On that day we were only French. Together we suffered. Together we mourned. Together we moved on, changed forever but resolved to honor the legacy of President Devereux.

“And together we will find justice for the president and his bodyguard, Luc Cousineau. Together we will carry out these legal proceedings with careful deliberation, firm resolve, and heavy hearts, but never forgetting that the ultimate end is justice. Because to do any less would be to disrespect the legacy of fairness and compassion that marked the public service of President Devereux.”

The courtroom was utterly silent as the judge completed his statement. Henri Devereux had been something of a rock star in this country, a flashy soccer player in the eighties who dated movie stars and heiresses, later ascending quickly through the ranks of public service. In 1995, he married Geneviève Rousseau, Miss France 1993 and fifteen years his junior, in a spectacular countryside wedding in the Loire Valley at a home owned by the family of his mentor, François Mitterrand. That same year he lost his race for the presidency but won in his second effort in 2002. He was reelected in 2007 in a landslide. With his gorgeous wife at his side and three young children, he was flamboyant and charismatic and controversial. I’d recalled various accounts of affairs and sexual exploits, but this wasn’t exactly unexpected in a French president, and there had been no indication that the citizenry’s affection for the man had dimmed whatsoever.

We were accused of killing, by all accounts, the most popular president in the history of France. And now here was the presiding judicial officer at my trial, promising the country that there would be justice for his murder.

It couldn’t get much worse than that, could it?

Famous last words.

“The court will now hear from Major Rouen,” said the judge.

THE PRESIDING JUDGE
had before him the dossier, the voluminous file that constituted the totality of the evidence gathered by the investigating judge from witness interviews, expert and forensic reports, and the like. This was, on paper, their case against us. In theory, they could skip witnesses altogether and just read through the file, let the lawyers make arguments, and announce a verdict.

The dossier was divided into four parts. Two of the parts were largely technical—official documents explaining the gathering, retention, and transfer of evidence between the police and prosecutor and court, as well as the legal decision relating to our pretrial detention. A third part was devoted to the four defendants’
personnalités,
or character, if you prefer. Everything from birth certificates to interviews with friends and families.

The presiding judge, however, turned to the final section of the dossier, entitled
“Pièces de fond”
—On the Facts. This section contained more than two hundred documents, including witness interviews, forensic reports, photographs, and summaries of the evidence and investigation.

“Good morning, Major,” said the presiding judge.

“Good morning, Mr. President.” Major Rouen stood in the center of the courtroom, at a podium fitted with a microphone. In one corner of the room, the courtroom deputy—the
greffier
—angled a camera on a tripod so that it captured both the presiding judge and the major. This was not a media camera—they were barred under French law from courtrooms—but a camera ordered by the presiding judge to keep an audio and visual record of this trial, which would be held, with the official transcript, under seal.

“Major, do you have any personal or familial connection with the accused?”

“I do not,” said Rouen.

“Then please tell us what you can about the matter under examination.”

André Rouen, an eighteen-year veteran with the Paris police department, seemed like a good witness, at least judging by his appearance. He was on the tall side and fit, with sandy hair rimmed with gray at the temples, an unassuming middle-aged man who normally would blend into the background.

Major Rouen did not take an oath. In French courtrooms, cops were not sworn in because it was already their duty to testify truthfully. Rather, he proceeded directly into his narrative, including the account of his initial receipt of the phone call from the Monte Carlo police—“a call I shall never forget,” he said—and his flight down to the harbor.

“We coordinated our response with the RAID unit and Brigade General Favier of the GIGN,” he said. GIGN and RAID handled the paramilitary aspects of the operation, securing the dock and the surrounding area while Major Rouen and the National Police conducted its investigation.

Major Rouen took the presiding judge through several of the photographs contained in the dossier, discussing the positioning of the bodies of President Devereux and his bodyguard, Luc Cousineau, and the search of the Bentley convertible where they were found.

The presiding judge, leafing through the massive dossier stacked in front of him, detailed the procedures undertaken by French intelligence and the police in recovering and analyzing forensic evidence during the investigation. He then asked Rouen to summarize the ultimate findings.

“We recovered various samples of DNA from the vehicle that were tested for a match,” he said. “This included hair follicles, mucus, blood, and cerumen.”

It included a lot more than that, but he was focusing on the relevant parts.

“We obtained a match for hair follicles on the dashboard belonging to the accused, Winnie Brookes,” said Rouen. “We obtained a match for hair follicles on the passenger seat and floorboard belonging to the accused, Serena Schofield. And we obtained a match for hair follicles on the dashboard and on the rear seat on the driver’s side belonging to the accused, Abbie Elliot.”

The courtroom broke into a collective stir, visibly and audibly evident even through my headphones. Technically, the investigation of the
juge d’instruction
was confidential. There had been leaks, bits of information and rumor coming in weekly drips, but none of it had been confirmed until now.

“A small sample of mucus was located on the interior of the driver’s side door that matched the DNA of the accused, Winnie Brookes,” said Rouen. “A blood smear on the front passenger seat was confirmed as the blood of the accused, Serena Schofield.

“And a sample of cerumen, a glandular substance commonly known as earwax,” he said, “was located near the gear shift between the two bodies. The sample was a DNA match for the accused, Abbie Elliot.”

“Please remind the court, Major,” said the presiding judge. “During questioning of these accused, you inquired as to whether any of them had been inside or around that vehicle?”

“Yes, Mr. President. We made that inquiry of each of the accused.”

“And how did they respond?”

Major Rouen turned his head ever so slightly in our direction, though from his position he couldn’t see us.

“Each of the accused denied ever being inside that vehicle,” he said.

THE SPECTATORS’ COLLECTIVE
reaction began to rise in volume, and the presiding judge called for order.

“And after being confronted with this evidence,” the presiding judge asked Rouen, “did the accused continue to deny having been in that Bentley vehicle?”

“They did,” said Rouen. “Each of them continued to deny it.”

My lawyer had prevailed on me to admit being in the automobile. He’d tried to shape my story so that I maintained my innocence but admitted to that one fact. “Why fight it?” he’d said to me over and over. “If you deny something so obvious, you lose your credibility and you lose any goodwill you have with the court.”

Serena shook her head, her jaw clenched and her eyes cast upward to the ceiling. She was a fighter, a competitor, but in this case she was flailing at shadows. My attorney was right: we had no credible explanation for this DNA evidence.

The presiding judge gestured in the direction of the glass case that was positioned to the right of Major Rouen, where the physical evidence was held. The courtroom deputy removed the murder weapon from the case and handed it to Rouen. It was a subcompact handgun with a black grip, a Beretta Px4 Storm.

“The weapon was recovered aboard the
Misty Blue
yacht owned by Mr. Ogletree,” Rouen explained.

“Please explain where, within the yacht, the weapon was found.”

“Mr. President, the weapon was recovered within this black purse.”

The presiding judge referenced another exhibit. The
greffier
removed my black purse from the glass evidence case and handed it to Rouen.

“The purse belonged to the accused, Abbie Elliot.”

“Did the accused Ms. Elliot admit
this
much at least?”

Someone in the gallery snickered at the judge’s sarcasm.

“She did, Mr. President. She admitted that the purse was hers.”

“And the weapon?”

“She denied the weapon belonged to her.”

“Did the accused Ms. Elliot offer an explanation as to why the weapon was in her purse?”

“No, Mr. President. She did not.”

Rouen continued to recount, consistent with the dossier, how the weapon was processed and analyzed for fingerprints, and how the four of us were fingerprinted.

“Please tell us the results of the fingerprint analysis.”

Major Rouen cleared his throat. If he was doing it for added drama, he needn’t have bothered; the courtroom was hanging on his every word.

“A fingerprint matched to the right index finger of the accused, Serena Schofield, was found on the barrel of the weapon,” said Rouen. “A fingerprint matching the left thumb of the accused, Abbie Elliot, was found on the grip.”

“And the third one, Major?”

“A fingerprint on the trigger of the weapon was a match for the right middle finger of the accused, Winnie Brookes,” the major said.

The presiding judge nodded solemnly, taking in this information with a sense of gravity. He already knew this information, of course, and there had been rumors in the media for weeks, but this was the first time it was publicly acknowledged: fingerprints belonging to Serena, Winnie, and me were found on the murder weapon.

Winnie, sitting next to me, stared forward into the bulletproof glass, numb from the whole ordeal, unable to muster any emotion, even upon hearing the most damning evidence against her. Serena was tearing up again, surprising me by her emotional vulnerability—she was in many ways the toughest of us all.

I wasn’t having a great time myself. Now, in addition to the DNA evidence placing me inside the vehicle where the dead bodies were found, it was revealed that the murder weapon had my fingerprints on it and was found in my purse.

And then there was Bryah, passive, staring forlornly up at the ceiling, listening to the evidence.

Evidence that, thus far, had miraculously avoided implicating her in any way.

MY LAWYER, JULES LAURENT,
stood and adjusted his microphone. Jules was tall and trim and clean-shaven, conveying a neat overall appearance save for his head of wild black curls that danced as he moved about. Jules was a good man. He’d spent hours listening patiently as I rambled incessantly about my innocence and my crazy theories about what had happened. And he’d taken some grief from some of his law partners for agreeing to defend me, though he was receiving a handsome sum for doing so—courtesy of Simon Schofield, who was bankrolling all the lawyers.

“Major Rouen,” Jules began, standing just in front of our enclosed cell. “You recovered DNA evidence relating to Winnie Brookes, Serena Schofield, and my client, Abbie Elliot, in the automobile where the bodies were discovered.”

“Yes,” said the major, turning to face my lawyer.

“Saliva, hair follicles, blood, and a tiny bit of earwax.”

“Yes.”

“But no fingerprints?” asked Jules.

Major Rouen took a moment. “No fingerprints in the vehicle. But recall that we found their fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

“Exactly,” Jules agreed. “All three of these women were careless enough to leave their fingerprints on a gun that would have been perfectly easy to wipe off.
Perfectly
easy. And yet, when they were in and around the car, they were exquisitely
careful,
so much so that not a single fingerprint was found among them. Odd, yes?”

Major Rouen inclined his head. “Presumably they didn’t expect the gun to be found. But the bodies—they knew those would be discovered.”

Pretty good answer. Rouen had given this plenty of thought, no doubt.

“Still,” Jules persisted. “Your position is that these women managed to leave all sorts of DNA throughout the automobile, and yet not a single fingerprint.”

“I would imagine they were unaware of leaving behind this evidence,” said Rouen.

Jules nodded. “But does this not leave room for the possibility that the DNA evidence was transferred from another site—not by these women but by someone else? That in fact these women were never in that car, as they have claimed, and instead someone else transferred that evidence into the car?”

“I don’t consider that likely,” Rouen answered. “I would suggest that these women shot the president and his bodyguard while the men were in the car, and that they checked on the men to be sure they were dead. They would not necessarily have touched the inside of the car or even climbed inside.”

“Really.” Jules delivered the word as an incredulous statement, not a question. “Well, take my client, Abbie Elliot. You found Abbie’s hair on the driver’s-side rear seat and on the dashboard. And her ear secretion on the gearshift between the president and Mr. Cousineau. How do you suggest Abbie managed to get her head between the two men, such that some of her earwax could have fallen onto the gearshift? And she was in both the front and back seat at different times, each time with her hair falling out? But not a single fingerprint?”

Major Rouen allowed a brief smile. “Mr. Laurent, we cannot reconstruct every movement. Nor should we assume that, simply because we did not recover a fingerprint inside the vehicle, that this somehow means that the women were not inside the vehicle. Sometimes you don’t leave a fingerprint.”

“But tell me, Major: can you eliminate the possibility that the DNA evidence was planted there by someone else?”

Rouen opened his hands, as if his patience were being tested. “Eliminate it? No.”

Jules nodded, having gained a concession.

“And perhaps I might be more skeptical,” Rouen added, “if two of the accused hadn’t confessed.”

I heard some laughter from the gallery before the female voice in my headset had finished translating Rouen’s answer. I had to admit, it was a nice zinger.

“We’ll get to that,” said Jules. “But Major, as you said, your theory is that President Devereux and Mr. Cousineau were shot while in the car, correct?”

“That is correct, Mr. Laurent. We believe they were already in the car.”

Jules informed the presiding judge that he would be referencing a photograph from the dossier. He produced a blowup of the photograph, which showed President Devereux and Luc Cousineau dead in the Bentley convertible. Luc was seated in an erect position, head back against the headrest. President Devereux, in the passenger seat, had fallen to his left side.

Jules placed the blowup on an easel. “Major Rouen, from the angle of the wounds, you concluded that President Devereux was shot while he was falling to his left, just as he was found. In other words, he didn’t fall to the side
after
being shot; he was already in that position when shot.”

“That was our conclusion, yes.”

“And likewise, Mr. Cousineau here, seated upright. You concluded that this was his position when he was shot. He wasn’t moved afterward.”

“Yes.”

“Now, I suppose you might say that the president was attempting to duck from the shots.”

“I would, yes.”

“But is it possible, as well, that the president was reaching for Mr. Cousineau? Trying to help his friend?”

“Possibly.”

“Mr. Cousineau, on the other hand…” Jules pointed to Luc, who was seated completely erect in the driver’s seat. “He appears to have made no movement whatsoever in the direction of his president—the man he was sworn to give his own life to protect.”

“Mr. Laurent,” said the presiding judge. “The deceased, Mr. Cousineau, is not on trial here for his bravery or professionalism. And you are not making a point that is helpful to your case, I must tell you.”

Jules nodded respectfully to the judge. “Mr. President, with all respect, that is not my point.”

Jules gestured toward the blowup photo. “My point is simply that it appears that the bodyguard, Mr. Cousineau, was shot before the president was. And I am wondering why.”