Parnell Hall - The Baxter Trust

“He may be biased for her, Your Honor,” Steve said. “But he may also be biased against me. And since that bias might affect his testimony, I have a legal right to establish it.”

“Objection overruled,” Judge Crandell said. “Witness will answer the question.”

Max looked up at the judge. “You want me to answer?” he asked grimly.

“Yes,” Crandell said. “The court reporter will read the question.”

The court reporter flipped through the tape. “Question: ‘Mr. Baxter,’ he read, ‘do you like me?’”

Max looked around the courtroom, then straight at Steve Winslow. Steve smiled at him, a bright, broad smile.

Max’s face purpled. “I think you’re an incompetent jackass!” he said.

There was a huge reaction from the courtroom. Steve Winslow took no notice. He smiled, bowed and said politely, “Thank you. No further questions.”

Judge Crandell banged for silence, excused the witness and announced that it had reached the hour of adjournment.

District Attorney Dirkson hardly heard. Despite the victories he had scored all day long, he had a hollow feeling in his stomach, and he could not keep his eyes from wandering to the back of the courtroom, to the sight that was making him feel queasy, the sight of the newspaper reporters, scribbling gleefully.

Steve Winslow sat in the dingy coffee shop near the courthouse, moodily pushing the scrambled eggs around his plate.

Mark Taylor, a folded newspaper under his arm, came in the front door, looked around, spotted Steve and came over.

“Ham, eggs and coffee,” Taylor called to the waitress as he slid into the seat. “Well, good morning.”

“What’s good about it?” Steve said.

“I know what you mean,” Taylor said. He unfolded the paper and laid it on the table facing Steve. It was the New York Post. The headline read: “B AXTER: Y OU’RE A N I NCOMPETENT J ACKASS!”

Steve glanced at it. “Yeah. I saw it.”

“You also made the page-six cartoon.”

Taylor flipped the paper open. The cartoon was a drawing of a jury. A small taxicab sat in front of the jury box. Out of the window of the cab, on a rubber neck, came a large caricature of Steve’s face, framed

by shaggy long hair. The caption on the cartoon read: “YOUR HONOR, I OBJECT!”

“Great,” Steve said.

The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of Taylor. He dumped in cream and sugar, took a sip, sighed and said, “You’ll pardon me for saying so, but it seems to me you’ve been going out of your way to make yourself look like an asshole.”

Steve nodded. “I know. But I have to do something. The prosecution hit me with two body blows yesterday. The typewriter and the key. The key is the worst. Greely had the original to copy. The inference is that Sheila gave it to him.”

“What does she say about it?”

Steve shook his head. “The same thing she’s always said. She never met Robert Greely and she has no idea where he could have gotten that key.”

“But they can’t prove she gave it to him, can they?”

“They don’t have to. It’s bad enough in itself. The guy had the key to her apartment. And she claims she never met him.”

Taylor nodded. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s the worst.” Steve pointed to the paper. “This could read: “B ENTON K EY F OUND I N G REELY P OCKET.” As it is, the story about the key is buried on page twelve.”

Taylor thought that over. “Not bad for an asshole.”

Steve shook his head. “Something has to break. Shit, haven’t you got anything from California?”

“Nothing. The trail’s cold. I’m beginning to think there may be nothing to get. I mean, just because Alice Baxter said she had a baby in California doesn’t mean she did. Sheila could have been born in another state. She could have been born under another name. There’s a lot of possibilities. Now, I have to tell you, frankly, I got more men working out there on the coast than you can afford, and I still got nothing. Which may mean that there’s nothing to get.”

The waitress brought Taylor’s ham and eggs. He picked up a fork and dug in.

Steve looked dispiritedly at his own food. “The thing is, I need something fast. The prosecution’s gonna rest its case today or tomorrow, the way things are going. And what the hell am I gonna do then?”

“Your client’s gonna have to tell one hell of a convincing story.”

Steve sighed. “She can’t.”

Taylor looked at him. “What?”

“She can’t tell her story. I can’t even put her on the stand.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

Taylor looked at him sideways. “Why? ’Cause she’s guilty?”

Steve shook his head. “No. ’Cause she’s innocent.”

Taylor stared at him. “What?”

“She’s innocent. That’s the problem. She didn’t do it. She’s innocent, and she doesn’t know shit. A man she never saw before was murdered in her apartment with her knife and with her apartment key in his pocket. She knows nothing about it. So what the hell can she say?”

“Just that.”

“Great. And who’s gonna believe it? Do you believe it?”

Taylor’s eyes shifted.

“There you are,” Steve said. “And the other thing is, she lied to the police in her statement.” Taylor raised his eyebrows. “Oh, not about Greely, not about the murder. But about other things, unimportant things, really, like where she was and what she was doing before she found the body. But it doesn’t matter, because all they have to do is catch her in one lie, any lie, about any small insignificant thing, and with the way the rest of the facts are in this case, she’s dead meat. And look at her. She’s young, naive in a lot of ways. You think she could stand up to cross-examination? You think Dirkson wouldn’t rip her apart?” He shook his head. “No. There’s no way I can put her on the stand.”

“So what can you do?”

“That’s the thing. If I don’t have something by the time the prosecution rests its case, the only thing I can think of is, I’m gonna have to go after Zambelli.”

Taylor looked up in alarm. “You’re not serious?”

“I have to do something.”

“You do something like that you’re gonna wind up dead.”

“I can’t think about that. I have to think about my client. If you don’t want me to go after Zambelli, come up with something else. What about Dutton’s wife? You get anything there?”

“I got about two hundred and fifty dollars in operatives’ fees confirming the fact that she was in Reno the whole day.”

“Great.”

Taylor’s beeper went on. He switched it off.

“Gotta call the office. Maybe we got something.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Taylor got up and went to the pay phone at the front of the shop. Steve sat and made patterns on the plate with his eggs.

Taylor was animated when he came back from the phone. “They got it,” he said. “Actually they got it late last night, but there’s a three-hour time difference so they didn’t call because it was after midnight back here. They called first thing this morning. I mean, it’s not even seven o’clock out there now, and-”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Steve said impatiently. “What have they got?”

“We found the hospital where Sheila was born.”

“You’re kidding. Where?”

“A small town about a hundred miles north of L.A. Alice Baxter checked in under the name of Mary Brown. But it’s a positive I.D., right down to the little baby footprints.”

“And the father?”

“Listed as Sam Brown. We’re looking for him, of course.”

“All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Yeah finally,” Taylor said. “We would have had the location sooner but we had the date wrong.”