“Then I’m going to rule that the statements are hearsay and inadmissible.”
Tess diAngeli lost none of her self-possession. “Mr. Briar, when did you last see your father and stepmother alive?”
“Amalia invited me to the apartment two years ago last May.”
“Was anyone else present?”
“Two other people: her part-time maid, who spoke no recognizable language I ever heard, and her lawyer, Felix Logan.”
“And did you learn the purpose of this gathering?”
“Indeed I did. Amalia asked me and the maid to witness her signature on her will. I made a little joke: ‘Well, I know two people who aren’t inheriting—your maid and me.’ I believe witnesses can’t inherit, am I right?”
“Was this the first you knew that Amalia Briar’s estate plans did not include you?”
“It was the first hint.”
“Was your father present at any time at this meeting?”
“No, my father was sleeping in his bedroom. I looked in on him—but he didn’t recognize me.”
“Did you discuss his condition with your stepmother?”
“I tried to, but she said Dad had started a regime of Belgian carrots, and he was a little disoriented and it was perfectly normal and there was nothing to worry about.”
“After witnessing your stepmother’s will, did you ever speak to your father again?”
“Never.”
“Did you speak to your stepmother again?”
“You’d better believe it. I made a point of phoning three times a week at a minimum. I kept begging to see her: ‘Amalia,’ I pleaded, ‘at least let me bring you a basket of fresh fruit. Corey isn’t going to excommunicate you over a
tangerine
!’ But she kept putting me off. Finally I pinned her down to lunch, Tuesday after Labor Day.”
“Would you describe the events of that day?”
“I arrived at the appointed time. The building staff was on strike. No one answered the intercom. The phone was busy and the operator said it was off the hook. I finally went to the precinct and persuaded a lady cop to let me into the apartment. Poor gal had to break down the door with a
crowbar
.”
“Would you describe what you found?”
“Dad was lying on his bedroom floor, dead. Amalia was in her own bedroom. She seemed to be asleep. ‘Amalia,’ I said, ‘something dreadful has happened to Dad!’ I shook her. But she was dead too.”
Tess diAngeli let a moment slide by. “And after that time, did you and Corey Lyle discuss your father’s and stepmother’s deaths?”
“Yes, we had a long talk.”
“When and where was this?”
“It was at Saint Bartholomew’s Church—at my father and stepmother’s funeral. At that time there was a lot of speculation in the press about the role Mickey Williams had played in their deaths. Well, Corey came straight up to me after the service and said Mickey Williams was innocent.”
“Do you recall Corey Lyle’s exact words to you?”
Jack Briar glanced toward heaven. “Corey said, ‘Mickey is no guiltier than a pistol. If anyone killed Amalia and Johnny, it was me—I loaded that pistol and pointed it and pulled the trigger.’”
As the jury filed out of court for the lunch break, Thelma del Rio turned to Anne. “If I didn’t hate carrots, I’d give that diet a try.”
“I wouldn’t try it for too long,” Anne said.
FIFTEEN
12:15 P.M.
B
RITTA BAILEY HAD BEEN
married to a cop, and they lived in a modest old wood-frame on a quiet street in Woodside. Obviously neither of them had been a grounds-keeper. Cardozo stepped around flowerpots and dead ferns and pushed the buzzer.
Roger Bailey answered the door in his bathrobe. His face was unshaved and pale, made even paler by the boyish splash of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Cardozo said.
“Vince.” Bailey looked at him with a puzzled frown. “I already heard about Britta.”
Which made it a little easier for Cardozo. “I just dropped by to say how sorry I am.”
“I know. Thanks.” Bailey stepped away from the door. He had the slow movements of a man feeling his way through a fog. “Come on in.”
Daylight slatted through the living room Levolors, dappling the sofa. A coffee cup sat on the TV like a robin that had strayed in through the window.
Bailey took the cup into the kitchen. Cardozo followed and glanced around at copper pots too gleaming ever to have been used. Spices and cooking staples were racked in bright lettered jars that he had a feeling no one had ever opened. A stale smell of lemon-scented something floated in the air.
Bailey fixed two cups of coffee. His actions were dazed and mechanical. Crockery rattled. Coffee spilled. He brought an open package of Oreos from the counter and pushed it across the table. “Have some breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever.”
“No, thanks.” Cardozo patted his stomach. “Gotta watch the old waistline.”
Bailey hung a cigarette inside his lower lip and struck a kitchen match. He was watching Cardozo, waiting for him to get to the point.
“Roger … at a time like this, I hate to bother you with questions, and if you’d rather postpone it—”
Bailey blew out a perfect smoke ring. “You have a job to do.”
“Did Britta ever mention having a French friend or acquaintance? Someone she called Mademoiselle?”
“Mademoiselle? Not that I can recall.”
“It was the last thing she wrote in her notebook. Maybe it was someone she met in the line of duty? Or a friend’s nickname? Or someone who did her hair?”
“She went to the same haircutter I do. Unless Britta knew something I don’t, he’s a signore, not a mademoiselle.”
“Writing
Mademoiselle
and no name suggests it was someone she’d met before.”
“She never mentioned any mademoiselles to me.” Bailey pulled at the cord of his bathrobe. “You know how it is when you’re both cops, working different shifts. There’s not much time to talk.”
“She was carrying a newspaper photograph in her wallet.” Cardozo took out the clipping. “Know anything about it?”
Bailey nodded. “I saw her clip this out.”
“When?”
“Tuesday night. I came home after my shift, she had old magazines and articles spread out on the sofa. Said she was looking for a decent photograph of Mickey Williams. That was the last time I saw her alive.”
Silence caved in.
“Any idea why she wanted a photo of Williams?”
“Said she might have to identify him.” Bailey pushed a strand of dark hair back behind his ear. “You know Britta. She was like this kitchen. Always prepared.”
“Identify him where? In a lineup? In court?”
“She didn’t say. I didn’t ask. Britta and me, we didn’t talk a whole lot.” Bailey stared down at the table. “Look—you’re going to find out and I’d rather you found out from me. We hadn’t been getting along for almost a year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Cardozo’s tone was low and sympathetic. “What was the trouble?”
“Nothing spectacular, no fights, no scenes—just in our own quiet way disagreeing more and more. Which is why there are two television sets. We weren’t home together often, but when we were, she liked cop shows; I can’t stand them. Sounds petty, but so’s marriage.”
Shock makes some people quiet. Others it makes chatty. Roger Bailey was one of the chatty ones. He seemed to have forgotten, or didn’t care, that the spouse is always the first suspect in a homicide.
“Little things add up. In our case they were starting to add up to zero.” He ground out a half-smoked cigarette in his saucer. “In fact, as soon as we could think of a way to break the news to her parents, we were planning to divorce.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“She was the one who came out and said it.”
“Did she give you a reason—besides cop shows?”
“Said she needed space to find herself. To tell the truth, I think she met somebody.” He said it in the sort of voice a man uses to say it’s seventy-two degrees outside.
“What makes you think that?”
“Some of her phone calls. Some of her excuses.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“No idea. She’d developed a secretive side. And frankly it was a relief. Roommates don’t argue as much as lovers.”
“So you’d become roommates?”
Bailey nodded. “Long time. More coffee?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Roger, what shift were you working yesterday?”
“Four to midnight.”
“And what did you do after your shift?”
“Showered, changed, and came straight home. Vince, I hate to make your work harder, but I’m telling you up front, I didn’t kill her.”
“I know you didn’t. Any sign that she came home during the day?”
Bailey shook his head. “She didn’t come back yesterday. I can tell because I left a note on the refrigerator. It’s still there.”
In the windowless green-walled interview room, Corey Lyle watched as Dotson Elihu played the restored section of the police videotape.
“My father had great sympathy for Mickey Williams.” Jack Briar was a flickering green-edged shadow, his voice a tinny monotone. “Dad loaned Mickey his apartment during a cruise. When he returned unexpectedly, he discovered Mickey with an underage girl. He asked Mickey to return the key.”
Corey Lyle drew his shoulders back. His eyes narrowed, grim and green and weary. “How does any of this help us?”
Dotson Elihu fixed his client with a lethally patient stare. “Mickey Williams is the Achilles’ heel of the People’s case. He’s already got three convictions for child molestation. They’ve been erased from the national crime stats, but the paperwork is on file in Austin, Texas. He can’t risk a fourth. With this tape, we create a reasonable suspicion that he was still molesting kids and John Briar saw him. Which gave Briar the power to put Mickey away for life. Which gave Mickey a motive to silence him. Which leaves you in the clear.”
Something had altered in Corey’s posture. He was sitting with his hands neatly clasped in his lap, chin down, eyelids lowered.
“Add to that Dan Hippolito’s autopsy on Amalia, which suggests she died a natural death, and at the very least we’ll get a hung jury—maybe even an acquittal.”
“No.” Corey shook his head. “We can’t use that tape.”
For an instant, shock took Elihu’s power to speak. “And why the hell not?”
“Because Mickey told me about those children, in confidence.”
“You
knew
about these kids and never mentioned it? Who are you trying to help, the prosecution?”
Corey’s eyes refused all argument. “I will not betray a sacred confidence to save my own sinful skin.”
“Core—this is me, Dot. You don’t have to playact here. You know and I know that Mickey doesn’t give a damn about you—he’s throwing you to the dogs to save himself!”
“I’m not playacting. And it so happens Mickey cares deeply about me and the Fellowship. And in his own quiet way, he’s helping me.”
There was a tiny vibration, a movement of understanding inside Elihu’s mind. “I shared my home with Mickey for two of the most horrible months of my life. I came to know his thinking and his proclivities. I don’t like the sound of his helping you, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
In the side room at Eugene’s Patio, Anne sat at the end of the jurors’ table, waiting for the waitress to bring her order.
“Excuse me.” Ben Esposito’s hand rested on the empty chair beside her. He was wearing a wedding ring. “Is this seat taken?” He drew the chair out and sat and stared at a battered plastic menu. Above their heads a wooden ceiling fan revolved slowly. “What’s good today?”
“I ordered health salad,” Anne said.
“You shouldn’t take nutritional crap from the food fascists. I’m going to have a cheeseburger. With bacon.”
“The Coreyites are deep into kiddy porn.” Thelma del Rio was loading spaghetti and breaded chicken cutlet onto her fork. “The government has photos.”
Anne looked up. “Where did you hear that?”
“During one of those sidebars.”
“I didn’t hear any of that. And I was sitting right next to you.”
“You should get your hearing checked.”
“Hey, Thelma, give it a break,” Ben Esposito said. “We could have a mistrial if you repeat those things.”
“Excuse me. I thought it was a free country.”
Turning toward Anne, Ben lowered his voice. “There’s one on every jury.” He said it as though they were confidants. What he wanted, Anne sensed, was to show that a jury foreman could be like Type-O blood—and get along with anyone.
“Corey was giving the kids drugs.” Now Thelma was talking to Shoshana. Poking at a plate of fruit salad, red Jell-O, and cottage cheese, Shoshana didn’t look the least bit interested or bothered.
“Can you believe it?” Thelma said. “Drugs. To break down their inhibitions.”
“Inhibitions?” Donna Scomoda said. “I’ve never met an inhibited kid in my life.”
Half the jurors had ordered big meals. By the time they had all eaten and paid, the better part of an hour was used up.
“Thelma’s inside poop gives me the jitters,” Shoshana muttered. “I wish she’d keep it to herself.”
Anne nodded. “Funny she’s the only one that overhears it.”
Two hours after lunch, Dotson Elihu was well into his cross-examination. “Is there any chance that we can look forward to your write-up of this trial in one of our national magazines?”
Jack Briar sat forward in the witness chair. His manner became confiding. “Yes, indeed. I’m writing this case up for
Savoir
magazine as a three-part series.”
“Then you’re being paid for your presence here?”
“By my publisher, naturally.”
“Tell us, Mr. Briar …” Elihu strolled a short distance from the witness box. “Did your magazine fee go up when your father and stepmother were murdered?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Did your magazine fee go up when your publisher learned you would testify at this trial?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Briar,” Elihu asked pleasantly, “you say your father told you he’d heard rumors of sexual activities involving cult members and children?”
“Objection.” DiAngeli sprang to her feet. “The witness made no such statement.”
“But he did indeed,” Elihu said. “On the police tape.”