“Why should I mind?”she replied, her eyes flaring open. “I am my father's daughter, and proud of it.”
“And that was the reason you were there?”I asked as I began to pace.
“Yes, that was the reason.”
I stopped abruptly and looked up.
“Not because you were there—let us say—as the senator's date?”
“No, of course not,”she replied, raising her chin ever so slightly. “I was there because I'm Lawrence Goldman's daughter.”
“Your father was there, but your mother was not?”
“She was at our ranch outside Santa Barbara, getting it ready. Unfortunately, she was not able to get back.”
“You took her place, didn't you? When the guests arrived, you were there with your father—and with the senator—to greet them, correct?”
“Yes, along with Mrs. Fullerton.”
“Until she had to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Because she wasn't feeling well?”
“Yes.”
Nodding thoughtfully, I wandered back along the jury box, away from the witness. I put my hand on the railing and looked back.
“Now, approximately how long did it take to drive the senator from your father's apartment to the Civic Center where he had left his car?”
Crossing her legs, Ariella Goldman let her hands dangle down over the ends of the arms of the witness chair. On one wrist she wore an understated watch of impeccable taste and extravagant expense; on the other she had a gold bracelet with a gold leaf cluster and a single gold heart. She considered her answer.
“I suppose, from the time we got into my car in the garage … ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I had to drive very slowly. The fog was as thick as I've ever seen it. At least twice I had to stop and lean my head out the window to see where I was going.”
“Other than that, did you stop anywhere after you left the garage?”I asked, sliding my hand along the railing as, step by step, I moved closer toward her.
“No,”she insisted. “As I just told you, it took ten or fifteen minutes to get to the Civic Center.”
I opened my eyes wider and smiled as pleasantly as I could. “So you didn't stop anywhere?”
“No,”she replied, unable to suppress a trace of annoyance.
I raised an eyebrow and studied her. “You didn't stop anywhere to have a drink with the senator?”
She clutched the arm of the chair as she bent forward. “I've already told you: We didn't stop anywhere. I took him directly to his car.”
I stared at her with amusement and said nothing. Clenching tightly the wooden arms of the chair, she stared back, waiting for the next question. Finally, I turned away and walked the few short steps to the counsel table. When I looked up, she had let go of the chair and was sitting back, confident and at ease, her hands held lightly in her lap.
I opened a file folder that lay next to the loose-leaf binder and ran my finger down a sheet of paper. When I found what I was searching for, I glanced up, my finger still on the spot.
“Are you acquainted with someone by the name of Paula Hawkins?”
Startled, she tried to hide her surprise behind an eager smile. “Yes. We're good friends. We went to college together.”
“Several months ago—early last spring—she picked you up at the airport. I believe you were returning from a trip to Europe?”
“Yes,”she said tentatively.
I lifted my finger off the page and let the file folder close. “She spent the night with you at your father's house in Wood-side—correct?”
Ariella Goldman moved her face slightly to the side and crossed her legs the other way. “Paula has often been a guest. So I'm not sure I particularly remember that she stayed that night, but she might have.”
I put my hands in my coat pockets and stared at her again. “I believe it was the same time that Christopher Borden was an overnight guest at your father's home. Does that help remind you?”I asked.
Her head snapped up; a look of distaste swept across her mouth. “I don't know what any of this has to do with—”
“Objection, your honor!”cried Haliburton before she could finish. “The question is irrelevant. What difference can it possibly make when the witness last had as a guest an old friend from college?”
Judge Thompson turned up the palms of his hands. “Mr. Antonelli, where is this going?”
“I'll withdraw the question, your honor,”I replied, my eyes still on Ariella Goldman.
Thompson sank back into his high leather chair and re sumed his habit of picking with the back of his thumb the rough edges of his fingernails.
“On that trip to Europe—the one at the end of which Paula Hawkins picked you up—you were traveling with Jeremy Fullerton, weren't you?”I asked with a stern glance.
“I was one of the staff people on that trip. So yes, in that sense, I was traveling with the senator.”
“How many other staff people were there?”
“The senator's administrative assistant, Robert Zimmerman, was there.”
“So there were two staff people. Where exactly in Europe did you go?”
“London and Paris. The senator spent several days meeting with British officials, then several more with members of the French government.”
“Did Senator Fullerton make this trip alone, or was he part of a larger delegation?”
“No, there were four members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
“That's counting Senator Fullerton?”
“Yes.”
“After the delegation finished its official business in Paris, did you return directly to the United States, or did you spend a few more days in Europe?”
“I came home directly.”
“To Washington or to San Francisco?”
“San Francisco.”
“And Senator Fullerton—what did he do? Did he come back directly as well?”
“No, I believe he stayed behind a few days,”replied Ariella with a vague expression.
“You're not sure?”I asked, raising my eyebrow. “Isn't it true, Ms. Goldman, that you both stayed in Europe a few days?”
Haliburton was out of his chair, waving his hand in the air. “Asked and answered, your honor!”
Thompson scratched his chin as he thought about what he should do.
“Sustained,”said the judge finally.
I took my hands out of my suit coat pockets and shoved them deep into my pants pockets.
“So the senator stayed, and you came home. Why? Why didn't you just stay there with him?”
“I'm not sure I understand the question,”she replied.
I looked at her and then, after a moment or two, gazed at the ceiling.
“Mrs. Fullerton left the party because she wasn't feeling well,”I said, sighing with impatience. “Isn't that what you said?”
“Yes, that's what I said.”
My eye traced a horizontal line from the ceiling to the corner where the two walls met and then began a slow descent.
“And isn't the reason she wasn't feeling well because the two of you had just exchanged words?”I asked, my eyes resting once again on hers.
She began to fidget with her hands. She shifted around in her chair. There was a cold, scornful look in her eyes.
“Mrs. Fullerton said some things that—”
“She accused you of having an affair with her husband, didn't she?”
“Yes, she did, but—”
“And you didn't deny it, did you?”
She sat bolt upright, her eyes flashing with anger. “No, I didn't deny it, but—”
“And it was because of what you said to her that she walked out and that later on you left your father's apartment with Jeremy Fullerton and you drove him—not to the Civic Center—but to the St. Francis Hotel, where you had a drink together. Isn't that right, Ms. Goldman? Isn't that what you really did that night, and isn't everything you've said here today— under oath—a blatant, bald-faced lie?”
Haliburton was on his feet screaming an objection. Startled by the ferocity of my interrogation, Thompson had stopped what he was doing and raised his head. He started to say something, but I beat him to it.
“No more questions,”I announced, waving my hand toward the bench as I shot one last angry look at Ariella Goldman.
Peering over the bench, Thompson looked at Haliburton. “Redirect?”
Haliburton shook his head. There was something he wanted first.
“Could we have a short recess, your honor?”
Haliburton waited until the jury was out of the room and then moved right next to the witness stand and began an intense whispered conversation with Ariella Goldman. Ten minutes later, when Judge Thompson returned to the courtroom, they were still talking. With the jurors back in their places, the district attorney stood at the corner of the counsel table and said to the witness:
“Mr. Antonelli asked you a number of questions and then cut you off before you could finish your answers. Rather than go back through each one of those and give you the opportunity to say what defense counsel apparently didn't want the jury to hear, why don't you just tell us what was said that night between you and Mrs. Fullerton?”
Every eye was on her, and not just the jury; everyone in the crowd behind me was watching with that rapt attention reserved for the rumored misbehavior of the famous and the wellborn. And it was on them, not the district attorney or the jury, that Lawrence Goldman's daughter now lavished her attention.
“I don't remember the exact words,”said Ariella firmly, looking out over the crowd. “I just remember that it was very unpleasant.”
She started to say something more, stopped, and swallowed hard, as if she had to make a conscious effort to keep control of herself. A faint, apologetic smile flickered for a moment on her mouth. Determined to go on, she lifted her chin.
“Mrs. Fullerton accused me of ruining her marriage. I was so taken aback, so shocked—we were in a receiving line with dozens of people standing there—and then this sudden outburst! Well, I'm afraid I said something back; and again, I don't remember exactly what it was—I only know I should never have said it, not to anyone, but especially not to her. It was unforgivable of me, and I can't tell you how ashamed I am of having done it.”
The expression on Clarence Haliburton's face as he stood there, hands folded in front of him, had gone from compassion to something close to bereavement.
“Why do you say 'especially not to her'?”
Ariella Goldman lowered her eyes. The courtroom was enveloped in a profound silence. When she finally looked up, you could hear her breath escape.
“Because,”she replied in a voice heavy with regret, “Mrs. Fullerton is a very disturbed woman. Most of the time,”she added immediately, “she can function perfectly well. You wouldn't know there was anything wrong with her.”
Like a consulting physician, Haliburton pressed his lips together and asked judiciously, “Do you know the nature of this disorder?”
“No,”she said, sadly shaking her head. “Just that she suffers from bouts of depression and at times can become quite paranoid.”
It was not anything I would have thought about Meredith Fullerton. I did not believe it; but it was uncannily close to something that had happened to someone I loved, something I had told only Marissa, something that the man who had taken me captive and then left me in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge had told me. Ariella Goldman was lying about Jeremy Fullerton's widow, and she was doing it in a way that made me wonder how much she had found out about me.
“And was that the reason—her condition—that you were reluctant to discuss what happened that evening in your father's apartment?”
“Yes. After everything that's happened, after everything she's had to go through, I didn't want to do or say anything that might cause her any more pain.”
Nodding sympathetically, Haliburton proceeded to clarify the next point of inconsequence on which she had, for all the right reasons, said something not strictly speaking correct.
“Mr. Antonelli asked you whether you stopped to have a drink with Senator Fullerton before you dropped him at his car. You said you did not. Is that true?”
“No,”she replied with an earnest expression, “we did stop. We had a drink at the St. Francis. Jeremy—I mean, the senator—wanted to talk about Mrs. Fullerton.”
“And was the reason you didn't say so when Mr. Antonelli asked you the same question the same reason you just gave—you didn't want to cause Mrs. Fullerton any unnecessary distress?”
With a grateful smile, she agreed.
“Thank you, Ms. Goldman,”said the district attorney, the soul of understanding. “Nothing further, your honor,”he said with a cursory glance toward the bench.
I was standing at the corner of the counsel table, glaring at her, before Haliburton had taken his seat.
“So because of your concern for the well-being of the senator's wife, you came in here today and committed a criminal act—is that what you want us to believe, Ms. Goldman?”
“Criminal act?”
“You lied under oath. I asked you if you had stopped anywhere when you drove Senator Fullerton to his car. You said no. That's called perjury, Ms. Goldman; and perjury, if you didn't know it before, is a criminal act. People go to prison for that, Ms. Goldman.”
She smiled, the way a mother might smile at the understandable stupidity of a child. “I didn't mean to lie,”she explained in a soft voice trained to cover treachery with benevolence. “I didn't think it really mattered that we stopped for a drink. And as I tried to explain, Mrs. Fullerton has been through so much already that—”
“During the break—while the jury was out of the room— where did you go?”I asked sharply.
“Why, nowhere,”she replied, surprised. “I stayed right here.”
“In conversation with Mr. Haliburton, isn't that true?”
“Yes,”she responded, watching me closely.
“Did you talk about anything in particular?”
Halfway out of his chair, Haliburton thought better of it and sat down.
“Yes,”she said, her eyes flaring open. “He told me I should not hold anything back; that I should tell the whole truth—no matter whom it might hurt.”
I looked at her and smiled. “Did he really? Had he not told you that before?”
This time Haliburton did not change his mind.
“Objection!”he shouted as he sprang out of his chair.
“Withdraw the question,”I said, waving at Haliburton to sit down. “So,”I went on without a pause, “you and the district attorney have now decided to tell the truth—the whole truth—no matter whom it hurts—is that correct?”I demanded with an air of disbelief.