Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

"It seems," said Burke, "that contrary to the defendant's earlier testimony that she left home because she didn't get any birthday presents, the facts are actually a little differ ent. The real reason seems to have been that she was molested by one of her mother's boyfriends, a man by the name of Roger McBride. The defendant appears to have gotten even with Mr. McBride by assaulting him and then fleeing the state immediately afterward. And incidentally, according to my atlas, at least, Vigo County includes Prai rie Creek."

"Assuming for the moment that this is all true," said the judge, "you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that it bears directly on her credibility. First, she was fourteen at the time. Second, it was a long time ago. Third, for all we know, her act may have been justified. And fourth, assault isn't one of those crimes, such as perjury or forgery, for example, that have much to do with truth-telling."

Jaywalker smiled. He couldn't have said it better himself.

"All true," said Burke. "Which is why The People con cede we'd have no right to go into it on the issue of the de fendant's credibility."

"And how else would you be entitled to bring it up?"

"As a prior similar act."

By that, Burke meant some previous act that could shed light not just on the defendant's credibility but on her having committed the crime itself. For example, proof that a defendant had robbed banks in the past with a unique modus operandi — say by presenting a demand note written in red crayon and illustrated with five happy faces-would be admissible to show that he'd robbed one more in pre cisely the same fashion.

"You've convinced me it was prior," said the judge. "But that it was an assault, and this case is, in effect, an assault causing death? That hardly meets the similar test."

"With all due respect," said Burke, "you're going to change your mind when you hear how she assaulted Mr. McBride. It seems she took a knife and plunged it into his chest, up to the hilt. It happened to miss his heart by an eighth of an inch. Apparently the blade wasn't quite long enough."

Jaywalker felt his knees go weak and almost buckle. All he could do was watch helplessly as Burke produced copies of four pages of material he said he'd received by fax that morning. There was an incident report, a follow-up report, a wanted notice and a copy of a photograph. Though it was grainy, black-and-white and of poor quality, there was no mistaking Samara's dark eyes peering out from the page, or her pouty lower lip.

Burke had been dead-on when he'd predicted that Judge Sobel would change his mind. And though Jaywalker argued long and hard, claiming remoteness, surprise, lack of adequate notice and denial of due process, he got nowhere. The one thing he couldn't argue was ambush, that Burke had known about the incident all along and had sat on it, waiting to spring it at the perfect moment. Jay walker knew prosecutors who pulled stunts like that, and he wouldn't have been the least bit shy about accusing them of doing so. But he knew Tom Burke too well to even suggest it. Besides which, there was a perfect rebuttal to any claim of ambush. Had she chosen to, Samara could have told her lawyer about the incident herself, instead of waiting for the prosecutor to discover it, or fail to. If anyone had ambushed Jaywalker, it hadn't been Burke, it had been Samara.

"Mr. Jaywalker," said the judge, "I'm prepared to let Mr. Burke question the defendant about this, both the incident itself and the flight, including the name change. At the ap propriate time, I'll instruct the jurors about how they may use the evidence and how they may not. That said, I suggest, as strongly as I possibly can, that you spend the next fifteen minutes talking to your client about taking a plea. We'll be in recess until ten-fifteen."

So first there'd been bottom, and now there was rock bottom.

He took Samara into one of the stairwells, where they wouldn't be in danger of being overheard by any of the jurors milling about.

"Is this where you ask me for a blow job?" she joked.

"You wish," he said. Then he looked her hard in the eye and asked her, "Does the name Samantha Musgrove mean anything to you?"

He expected her to say no, to deny it was her. In a way, he hoped she would. He had no idea how Burke had come up with the stuff, but it seemed unlikely it had been based upon fingerprint records. Samara-or Samantha, or who ever she was-had been fourteen at the time of the inci dent. That, plus the fact that it didn't appear she'd ever been arrested in connection with it, made it highly unlikely that she'd been fingerprinted. Had she been, it wouldn't have taken all this time to surface. Sure, the names were suspiciously similar and the locations virtually identical. And the photo certainly looked like a younger version of Samara. But suppose she were to insist that it wasn't her? What could Burke do about it, really, other than ask her the same questions over and over, only to hear her repeated denials?

"I'm Samantha Musgrove," Samara said instead. "Or at least I was, until I ran away from home."

So much for denial.

Jaywalker proceeded to tell Samara everything that had occurred in the robing room, right up to and including the judge's strong suggestion to work out a guilty plea. He even showed her copies of the documents Burke had supplied him with.

"Yeah, I stabbed that guy McGuire, or whatever his name was," she said. "I'm only sorry I didn't kill the bas tard. Want to know what he did to me?"

Jaywalker nodded.

"He came up behind me, put a knife to my throat, pulled down my jeans and raped me, but I mean hard. And not even where you're supposed to rape someone, if you know what I mean."

Jaywalker nodded again, by way of acknowledging that he had a pretty good idea of what she meant by that.

"Afterwards, he was so damn drunk he fell asleep and started snoring, right there on the floor. So yeah, I rolled him over, took his knife out of his hand and tried to kill him with it. And I'd do it again today, if I got the chance. But Barry? I never touched him. I swear on my life. So you tell me. Am I supposed to plead guilty to something I didn't do because of something I did do fourteen years ago?"

"Maybe," said Jaywalker. "If it saves you ten years of your life, or something like that."

"Well, fuck it, I'm not going to do it. They can give me a hundred years, for all I care. I don't give a fuck."

Her bravado was matched only by her tears. Yet in the face of all the facts and all the evidence, and now with this prior similar act piled on as the icing on top of the prose cution's case, Samara still wasn't budging. And so help him, Jaywalker couldn't quite bring himself to the point of calling her a liar to her face. Because some tiny part of him still wasn't fully convinced she was lying about Barry's stabbing. In spite of how damning everything looked, his own internal jury was still out on the question of whether history had in fact repeated itself.

"Okay," he said, once she'd calmed down enough to listen to him. "I need you to do me a favor."

"What's that?"

"You can admit what you did to McBride, and you can deny that you stabbed Barry, any way you like. But try to go easy on the language. I mean personally, I've got no problem with it. But you use the word fuck more often in one sentence than a lot of those jurors have heard over a lifetime. Think you can manage that?"

"I'll try," said Samara, breaking into something more or less resembling a smile.

"And answer me one other thing, if you don't mind."

"What?"

"Why didn't you tell me about it?"

Samara's only answer was a shrug.

"After all this time, didn't you think you could trust me?"

"No," she said, "it wasn't that."

"What, then?"

"I almost told you the night we…the night I found the Seconal in my spice cabinet. Don't you remember?"