Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

He took a couple of suits and a handful of shirts to the cleaners. He shined two pairs of shoes and coordinated them with matching belts. He even uncharacteristically picked out three or four ties, enough to stretch out over what he guessed would be a two- or three-week trial.

Mostly, he spent time with Samara. Convinced that it would be a must for her to take the stand and deny any in volvement in Barry's death, he began preparing her for direct examination and running her through a series of mock cross-examinations. He would sit her on a straightbacked chair in his office-not in her home, where she might feel more at ease-and fire questions at her in his best Tom Burke impersonation, grilling her on her where abouts the evening of the murder, her initial lies to the de tectives, her extramarital affairs and her signature on the life insurance policy.

And she got good, if good can be defined as able to answer questions in such a way as to inflict as little damage to herself as possible. But good wasn't going to do the trick, Jaywalker knew. The evidence against her was so devastating that no matter what she said and how well she said it, it was going to take nothing short of a miracle to walk her out of court. But that was his job, Jaywalker knew. Doctors are expected to deliver babies, preachers to deliver sermons, newsboys to deliver papers. Criminal defense lawyers are expected to deliver miracles. Nothing more, nothing less. And Jaywalker had delivered so many of them over the past few years that even he had begun to wonder if he might not be able to walk on water. But walking on water could be a tricky proposition, he knew, and almost everyone who'd tried had sooner or later ended up soaking wet.

He also spent time with Samara because he'd grown to genuinely like her. She never hid from her checkered past, never denied having married for money, never apologized for having cheated on her husband. And there was some thing real about her, something honest in the way she re sponded to a question without first repeating the question aloud while she calculated the consequences of her answer. It was as though she had no agenda, no more interest in hiding the facts than she had in censoring her emotions. And despite Jaywalker's constant efforts to "clean up her mouth," as he put it, Samara continued to be every bit as quick with a bit of foul language as she was with a laugh. There seemed to be no guile to her. Her lower lip could curl into a pout in one moment, only to soften into a smile the next. For Jaywalker, that openness represented at once both a significant asset and a serious liability, depending upon how you chose to look at it. A juror could easily fall in love with Samara-as he himself realized he was doing, on some level-or just as easily come to loathe her, inter preting her unapologetic indifference as arrogance.

And never did she retreat one inch from her insistence on her innocence. Not when Jaywalker cornered her repeat edly during his mock cross-examinations, not when he confronted her with some new damning piece of evidence, not when he lied to her one day and told her that Tom Burke was willing to let her serve as little as four years if only she would plead guilty to manslaughter, not even when he proposed that she take a lie detector test. In fact, she readily agreed to the suggestion, and it was Jaywalker who vetoed the idea. Polygraph examinations, he'd learned long ago, were useful tools. But their value pretty much began and ended with finding out who was willing, or even eager, to take one and who was afraid to, a test Samara had passed. In terms of their actual scientific validity, well, he was fond of saying there was a reason polygraphs weren't ad missible in court.

There were times when Samara's denials moved him close to the point of believing her. But then he would refocus on the evidence and on the two questions for which he had absolutely no answers: If Samara hadn't murdered Barry, who had? And how had they managed to leave things in such a way that everything pointed at her?

Having begun with her arrest two Augusts ago, Sa mara's case was now about to enter its third calendar year, a considerable span for a criminal case but not all that unusual for a murder prosecution involving a defendant out on bail. Yet when they went back to court in the second week of December, it was clear that Judge Sobel was under pressure to move the case to trial. Whether that pressure was the result of the simple passage of time, came from the urging of Tom Burke, or was a response to a renewed interest on the part of the media was unclear. Jaywalker secretly suspected that the disciplinary committee judges, their patience tested over the length of his suspended sus pension, might have had a hand in it. But after sixteen months of delays, he was hardly in a position to complain.

"January fifth," said the judge, "for hearing and trial. And, counsel?"

"Yes?" said Jaywalker and Burke in unison.

"Clear your calendars, because that's a date certain."

It was how judges warned lawyers to set aside all other business and be ready to start without fail. If the admoni tion posed any sort of logistical problem for Burke, he offered no complaint. Assistant district attorneys are, in a very real sense, associates in a large law firm. When or dered to trial, they simply pass their other business on to other assistants, other associates in the firm. Jaywalker, all of whose other business had long ago been set aside or passed on, made a note of the date in his otherwise spotless pocket calendar and circled it.

"I can do that," he said.

With the trial less than a month away, Jaywalker really got down to business. He met half a dozen times with Nicky Legs, and together they interviewed several of the people on Barry Tannenbaum's enemies list. The co-op board presi dent, a beady-eyed retired navy SEAL, readily admitted that he'd feuded with Barry but laughed at the suggestion that he'd murdered him. The building's super, an earnestlooking Puerto Rican, was shocked at the thought. " Me? Kill Tannenbaum? I no killer. I change lightbulbs, wash windows, fix locks, clean ovens. I no kill Tannenbaum."

But the two individuals who interested Jaywalker the most, Barry's accountant and his former lawyer, refused to be interviewed. "You want me to testify," said the lawyer, "you serve me with a subpoena. Otherwise, don't bother me." The accountant said pretty much the same thing, albeit more politely. "Whatever I have to say," he told Jay walker, "I'd prefer to say in court," leading Jaywalker to suspect that the two might have talked the matter over together, and to wonder if Burke might be planning on calling one or both of them as witnesses.

He increased his sessions with Samara, both in fre quency and duration, gradually polishing the rough edges off her. Her locker-room language gave way to an accept able version of plain English. Her denials took on more plausibility. Her eye contact, never a problem, expanded to take in the imaginary jurors, as well as her questioner. But Jaywalker also knew when to quit. He didn't want her to come off as rehearsed. Memorizing a few key phrases was good, but not at the expense of spontaneity. By the end of the month, she was good enough that he called a halt to their sessions. It was a hard thing for him to do, but he knew it was time. Samara would be a good enough witness. Under different circumstances, she might even have been a great one. But the problem had never been her. From day one, the problem had always been the facts.

And two days before the year ended, when other New Yorkers were returning presents, recovering from over eating and readying themselves for yet another round of parties, Jaywalker convinced Tom Burke to take him on a tour of Barry Tannenbaum's penthouse apartment. Jay walker was surprised to see the yellow-and-black crime scene tape still in place. But Barry had lived alone and on the top floor, and evidently its presence hadn't bothered anyone enough to remove it. Now a detective who had ac companied them lifted the tape above their heads, broke the seal, unlocked the door and let them in.