James Patterson - 10th Anniversary

“Your Honor, do I really have to answer that?”

“Yes, you certainly do, Ms. Lafferty.”

Lafferty sighed, clasped the cross at her neckline, and finally spoke, her words sounding loud in the hushed courtroom. “I wished that I had her life. But I would not have done anything to hurt her.”

“How about Mr. Martin? He wasn’t leaving his wife, was he? Would you have done something to hurt Mr. Martin?”

“No, no. Never. I loved him.”

“And how did Mr. Martin feel about you? Had he promised to divorce his wife and marry you?”

“Why are you doing this to me? You see what he’s trying to do, Judge?” Lafferty said. “He’s trying to make it look like I’m the murderer, when it’s her who did it.”

“Ms. Lafferty, please answer the question.”

Lafferty choked and began openly sobbing. It was as if she’d been saving up these tears for so long, the crack in the dam became a fissure and the lake just came barreling through.

PHIL HOFFMAN jingled the keys and coins in his pants pockets. “Do you need a moment?” he asked Ellen Lafferty.

She nodded. Hoffman gave her a box of tissues and when his witness was more composed, he said, “Let me repeat my question. Did Mr. Martin tell you that he wanted to leave his wife and marry you?”

“Yes. He told me that a few times. Often, I would say.”

“Did he firm up those plans, Ms. Lafferty?”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“It’s pretty simple, really. Did Dennis Martin start a divorce action against his wife?”

“No.”

“Did he take you out with his friends?”

“No. I wouldn’t have expected that.”

“Did you and he set a wedding date, for instance?”

“Dammit, no. He didn’t give me a time or a place. I was taking care of his children. I saw him every day. He told me that he loved me and that he despised her . I thought he was going to leave her because he said he would. And I believed that until the day he died.”

“Or — did he break off his relationship with you, Ms. Lafferty? Did he tell you to bug off? Did he treat you like just another one of his used-up girlfriends and tell you that he was staying with his wife? Is that why you were angry with him?”

“No. We were together and in love.”

“The bastard lied to you, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“Were you mad enough at him to shoot him, Ms. Lafferty? Was this a crime of passion?”

Yuki said, “Your Honor, counsel is badgering the witness to death.”

“Sustained. The jury will disregard the defense’s last run-on question. Mr. Hoffman, that’s twice. Do you have anything further for this witness? Or do you want to be sworn in so you can testify yourself?”

Ellen Lafferty gripped the edge of the witness box and said fervently, “I didn’t kill him, I didn’t . I am telling the truth. I would never have hurt Dennis. Never, never, never .”

“Just like you would never, never, never lie? Right, Ms. Lafferty?”

“That’s right. I would never lie.”

“Did Candace Martin have a gun in her hand when you left the house on the night of the murder?”

“I think so. I thought so. I don’t know anymore.”

“Right. But you would never, never, never lie. Thank you. I have no further questions.”

A SHOCK OF ANGER blew all the dread and fear right out of Yuki. The defense had annihilated her damned witness, annihilated her and planted the seeds of reasonable doubt.

Yuki didn’t know if she could rehabilitate a would-be home wrecker and probable liar, but she knew that her entire case might depend on it.

Yuki barely saw Nicky’s note: “You go, girl.”

She got to her feet and walked to the witness box that wrapped around the witness. She put her hand on the arm of the box as if to communicate to Ellen that she was placing a comforting hand on her arm.

“Ms. Lafferty, did you kill Mr. Martin?”

“ No . I did not .”

“Did the Martins fight?”

“All the time.”

“Did you see a gun in Candace Martin’s hand on the night of the murder?”

“I thought so. It was so long ago. And it happened so fast. I don’t know for sure anymore.”

“Okay. Were you telling the truth to this jury when you said you thought Candace Martin shot and killed her husband?”

“Yes, that is God’s honest truth.”

“The prosecution has no more questions for Ms. Lafferty.”

Phil Hoffman watched the witness step down, wipe her eyes with a tissue, and head out to the rear of the courtroom. She was still crying as she went through the doors.

It was only eleven-fifteen.

Before the jury had a chance to even think of feeling sorry for Ellen Lafferty, Phil Hoffman would launch the next bomb.

PHIL HOFFMAN SAID, “The defense calls Dr. Candace Martin.”

For a moment, Yuki thought she’d heard him wrong. But when Candace Martin edged out from behind the defense table, wearing her game face, a two-thousand-dollar Anne Klein suit, and eight-hundred-dollar Ferragamos, Yuki knew that Hoffman was running the table.

Candace wasn’t required to testify.

Judge LaVan had told the jury that the defendant was not obliged to take the stand and that the jury could not hold that against her.

So for Phil to call his client as a witness in her own defense was an act of either desperation or supreme confidence.

Hoffman didn’t seem desperate at all.

Candace Martin put her hand on the Bible, and when asked if she swore to tell the whole truth, she said, “I do.” Then she sat down in the chair facing the gallery and gave her attention to her attorney.

“Dr. Martin,” Hoffman said, “some of this has been established, but for the benefit of continuity, were you at home when your husband was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Where were Caitlin and Duncan?”

“They were each in their own rooms.”

“And so that the jury can place everyone in the house, where was Cyndi Parrish, your cook?”

“She was upstairs in her room.”

“And where was Ellen Lafferty?” Hoffman asked.

“I don’t know where she was. She said good night to me about fifteen minutes before Dennis was shot.”

“And where was Dennis just before the incident?”

“I don’t know that either. I didn’t see him. I went to the bedroom wing, passed the kids’ rooms and said hello to each of them. Then I went down that hallway to my office. That’s where I was when Ellen said that she was leaving.”

“What were you doing in your office that evening?”

“I was returning calls.”

“And were you still in your office when you heard shots?”

“Yes. I was about to call a patient’s wife. It wasn’t going to be good news. I had taken off my glasses and was massaging my temples, like this.”

Dr. Martin took off her glasses and put them down on the armrest. She rubbed her temples with her thumb and third finger of her left hand.

“I had the phone in my other hand,” she said, making a claw of her right hand as if she were clutching a receiver.

Yuki thought that this demo was a pretty ingenious way to visually put a cell phone in Candace Martin’s hand instead of a gun, and she had to admire Hoffman for coming up with it.

“Please tell the jury what happened when you heard the shots,” Hoffman said. He stepped aside so that he wouldn’t obstruct the sight line between his client and the jurors.

Candace Martin listed the timeline just as Hoffman had done in his opening statement. She said that she ran to the foyer, found her husband on the floor, blood pooling near his chest, and checked his pulse.