The Kills (15 page)

"She
didn't, Your Honor. There was an intruder-he's the one who had a knife. He held
it to her throat and they struggled over it, and when they fell to the floor,
he landed on the knife."

"Okay.
So I'll allow you to ask that much. Skip over 'This is your life, Ms. Vallis.'
You," Moffett said, addressing Peter Robelon. "I'm gonna limit you,
too. Nothing beyond the scope of Cooper's direct, then short and sweet in
summation."

That
meant Moffett was reading the jury as already being in Robelon's favor. He was
trying not to prolong my agony.

Paige
recounted the short version of the event. I took her back to the night of the
crime, letting her tell the panel that Tripping allowed her to walk out with
his son after hearing that statement. I would later argue that the reason the
defendant stayed in the apartment, the reason he didn't flee before the police
arrived, is that he believed what Paige Vallis told him and thought she would
not go to the police.

"What
did you do when you left the apartment?"

"I
got out on the sidewalk with Dulles. I needed to explain to him what I was
going to do. I wanted him to understand that he wouldn't get hurt any more if I
told the police, to know that he was entitled to be safe in his home. The first
thing I did was take him to a coffee shop. I bought him breakfast-I don't
think-excuse me, sir. He didn't look as though he'd had a real meal in
months-and talked to him for almost an hour. Then, on our way out, I found the
first uniformed policeman around, and asked him to drive us to the station
house."

I could
anticipate Robelon's cross now. So, Ms. Vallis, I expected him to say to her,
after you were raped-
before
you
went to the police,
before
you
talked to a doctor-you had two eggs over easy with a side order of bacon? Or
were they scrambled? Did you back up your coffee with a mimosa or a Bloody
Mary?

"And
when you finished making your statement at the police station, where did you
go?" I asked.

"To
the hospital. They took me to Bellevue Hospital."

"Were
you examined there?"

"Yes,
by a nurse. I think they call them forensic nurse examiners. She did a very
thorough physical exam."

I started
to take Paige through the many steps of the painstaking procedure necessary to
complete a rape evidence collection kit, everything from swabs for DNA to pubic
hair combings to finger-nail scrapings.

"We'll
stipulate to the medical findings," Robelon said.

Of course
he would. None of them was harmful to his client.

"Did
you sustain any injuries, Ms. Vallis?"

"No,
no, I did not."

Physical
injury was not an element of the crime of rape. In fact, fewer than a third of
women reporting sexual assault have any external signs of injury or abuse. I
couldn't go into that with Paige, but the nurse examiner would be qualified as
an expert next week and take us through those facts.

"Did
you ever see or speak with Dulles Tripping again?"

"No,
I did not."

"Until
you walked into this courtroom this morning, did you ever see or speak with the
defendant again?"

"Never."

I
finished all the steps of my direct examination, cleaned up the loose ends, and
told the court that I had no further questions of this witness. It was shortly
before four o'clock in the afternoon, and a quick look over my shoulder
confirmed that the spectator seats were still completely empty.

Robelon
stood to begin his cross, but the judge wiggled the pinky ring in his direction
and we both approached the bench. "That woman ought to be here with the
kid any minute. Why don't we hold this until Monday morning?"

"I'm
ready to go, Your Honor."

I knew
that Robelon wanted to ask his first few questions. If he started with Paige
Vallis, she would then be directed to have no conversation with me about the
case throughout the weekend. The strategy was obvious, and though I objected, I
really had no grounds, nor any reason to discuss the evidence with her. My
curiosity about Harry Strait, who had not reappeared, would have to wait until
she was off the stand.

It was
also clear that Robelon didn't want the jurors to linger over her previous
testimony with any sympathetic thoughts during the two-day hiatus. He wanted to
score a few points about Paige's lack of injury that would sink in their minds
over the weekend, so that they would be receptive to his consent defense.

"Good
afternoon, Ms. Vallis, I'm Peter Robelon," he said, communicating the fact
that in contrast to my easy familiarity with the witness, he had never met her
before. "I see from your hospital records that there were no signs of
trauma in your physical exam, is that correct?"

"It
is."

"Any
bleeding?"

"No."

"Redness
or swelling, internally?"

"I-uh,
I wouldn't know."

"Well,
no discomfort that you complained of, was there?"

"Not
once I left your client's bedroom."

"No
lacerations that needed stitching or sutures?"

"No."

"No
follow-up treatment necessary, was there?"

"Yes,
actually, there was. I had to be tested for sexually transmitted disease,"
Paige told defense counsel, now looking at him instead of the jury. "I was
quite worried about being forced to have unprotected sex." Robelon had
made the same slip that many lawyers did, failing to get someone to interpret
the seemingly illegible notes in the body of the medical record.

He
bluffed his way through a few more questions and must have decided to give them
a more careful review before going on. Within ten minutes, he told the court he
was ready to suspend the proceedings for the day.

Moffett
excused the jurors for the weekend, told the court officers to escort Paige
Vallis to the witness room until I made arrangements for her to leave, and
asked his clerk to call Ms. Taggart's office to see why she and Dulles were
delayed.

Mercer
Wallace had come up at three-thirty, as we had arranged earlier, so that he
could wait for Paige and drive her home. He was sitting with her when I went to
the witness room.

"Alex,"
she said, getting to her feet as I walked in, "I want to apologize again
for what happened this morning. For-for leaving out that stuff about Harry
Strait. I'd like to explain-"

"I'd
like it, too, Paige. But it's got to wait until next week. Months ago you told
me straightaway you had killed a man during a struggle for your life, but you
couldn't even own up about a former lover who's somehow entangled in this
mess?"

Mercer
shook his head from side to side, wanting me to back off, cut Paige some slack.

"I'm
trying to tell you I'm sorry. I had no idea it would be relevant."

"Okay,
okay. Look, I can only talk to you about administrative things while you're
Robelon's witness," I said, squaring away when Mercer would deliver her
back here on Monday.

Maxine
had followed me in and handed back Paige's pocketbook. Mercer picked up her
briefcase, which she had left in my office.

"I
don't know what to do with this, Alex, other than give it to you," Paige
said, opening the clasp and removing a brown paper bag. "The hospital
mailed this to me because they didn't have a home address for Dulles, once he
was put in foster care."

I reached
in and pulled out a blue baseball jacket. The word
YANKEES
was written across the back of the
windbreaker in white lettering, and the team logo was on the front breast. I
smiled. At least the boy and I had one thing in common.

"I
thought I'd see him here today, and be able to give it to him myself," she
went on. "That's why I hung on to it. I'd like to talk to him, to see
how-"

"Forget
that one, Paige," I said. "Maybe when this is all over. I couldn't
let you do that now, even if I wanted to. But this is going to be very useful
to me, when I actually get to meet Dulles. It'll be a great icebreaker. Maybe
I'll get him a cap to go with it."

"You'll
give it to him then, for me?"

"You
bet."

"We've
got tickets for the play-off games at the end of the month," Mercer told
her. "Maybe I'll just leave Alex home and take the kid."

"I
think it was like a security blanket for that child. The one constant in his
young life. His grandmother gave it to him before she died, and he wouldn't
leave the house without it, the morning I took him," she said, shaking her
head.

I folded
it over and replaced it in the bag, glad to have some connection to happier
days with which to begin my eventual conversation with Dulles.

"Anything
else you need before you go home?" I asked. "You'll call or beep
Mercer if Harry Strait shows up on your doorstep this weekend? Or if you get
any other calls connected to the case, right?"

"Of
course."

I thanked
her for her fortitude and patience with the process, and sent her off with
Mercer, walking down the corridor to the main hallway so that Maxine and I
could reenter the courtroom through the front door.

Mike
Chapman was leaning against a column close to the entrance to the trial part.
He was holding a red-and-white Marlboro box-odd, since he never smoked
cigarettes-and it looked like it had a thin metal strip extended for an inch
above its edge. He was speaking into the piece of wire as I approached, and
Andrew Tripping was pacing frenetically just three feet away from Mike.

"What's
going on?" I asked, as he waved at Mercer over my head.

"Agent
four-two to command central," Mike said, doing an obvious stage whisper
into the wire. "Subject is agitated. Blonde persecutor is approaching and
subject is twitching and tweaking-"

"Would
you please cut it out before I get called on the carpet for this?"

"Works
like a charm on a paranoid schizophrenic. Another few minutes of my talking
into this paper clip and your man Tripping will flip out big-time. I've been
telling command central that I thought the perp was ready for a secret
assignment inside Attica, like going undercover as the girlfriend of the
biggest, baddest inmate in the joint."

"Put
your toy away," I said, pushing in the double doors.

"Mercer
said you might need help carrying your files downstairs after he left."

I handed
him the paper bag with the Yankees jacket. "Hold on to this for me. I
don't have enough evidence in this case to overburden myself."

"I'm
also here to tell you that we might get lucky. Those lifts we got from
Queenie's apartment?"

"Yeah?"

Mike was
referring to the latent fingerprints for which the Crime Scene Unit had dusted.

"Well,
they got prints of value."

"Fresh?
I mean, it sounds like there were kids in and out all the time, doing errands
for her."

"These
should be good. You know those raised seats, the plastic ones, that have to be
on top of the toilet if you've got injuries or health problems and you can't
lower yourself down all the way?"

"Sure."
Queenie Ransome had suffered a stroke, and I thought again of how every aspect
of her privacy, every shred of dignity left to her, had been invaded and abused
by this investigation.