Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

I have plenty to learn, she thought, looking at the concise notes, but is Klaus still a good teacher?

“What do we want to get from Banta?” Nina said. “Where’s a list of discrepancies among the reports? She’s a hugely important witness…”

“We do not know what she can give us until we hear her,” Klaus repeated. “Shall we go?”

“Klaus, I can’t work like this,” Nina said. “Fortifying in advance-it helps me cope with surprises and contributes to my being able to operate on a more intuitive level during trial. Yes, I go on guts at times, but I arrive in court with the facts well analyzed and memorized. I can be more creative on my feet when I’ve got my background in place. Plus it keeps the anxiety from turning me into a zombie.”

“How long have you been practicing law, Miss Reilly?” Klaus asked without waiting for an answer. “Several years, and in the last couple of years you have conducted major trials. How long do you think you are going to last as a trial lawyer, the way you work? I will tell you. I give you ten years, then you will have to retire into another line, because you are too tightly wound to last any longer. You will give yourself cancer or a heart problem. Look at me, eighty-one years old and I still smoke cigars and my wife and I are still an item.” He put his hands on the table and pushed up. “Listen to the witness,” he said. “She will invite attack. You will notice it in her voice and in that pinched place between her eyes. You will discern fissures in her testimony, and into those cracks, you must go.”

She followed him outside to the old silver Jag. Klaus got into the passenger seat and tossed her the keys. Somehow over the past couple of weeks, in addition to being second chair, she had become the official Pohlmann chauffeur.

“You should have stayed with me,” Klaus said, fastening his seat belt.

“That’s not fair,” Nina said. “I learned a lot from you, but I had to leave to learn other things.” She thought for a moment, then said hesitantly, “I’m not you. I don’t have your set of talents. I have to work hard to make up for my deficiencies-my lack of experience.”

One thing definitely remained: Klaus’s lovely, booming laugh. “I’d trade my talents to have the forty years of law you still have ahead of you. Why pay attention to what I say, anyway? You think I’m very far over the hill, in the next valley wandering aimlessly amid the cows and sheep and goats, don’t you?”

“No. Of course-”

“Moo-oo-oo!” He laughed again, looking out the window.

Now did not seem the right time to share her fears. Besides, Klaus seemed spookily aware all of a sudden, as alert as ever. She said, “What exactly are you trying to advise me with regard to this case?”

“You cannot treat this case as an intellectual exercise. It is not. This tragic story holds great mystery and hidden truths we will discover, because our client didn’t kill the woman. Somebody else did. We will expose that person, Miss Reilly. That person and the motives behind this crime will leap from the shadows at us, and we will grab for them.”

She checked the street and pulled the car into traffic, enjoying the smooth hum of the engine and incredible receptivity of the steering. Klaus knew how to live, and had shown over and over he knew how to practice law. Nevertheless, she checked again for wayward cars once she got into the flow. She liked to know what was out there. She preferred her shadows mapped.

As she let Klaus out on the curb, he said, “You and I are privileged to be called to practice this great art.” And she thought, Forty more years? I’ll never make it.

Inside the courtroom, the bailiff called everyone to order just as Nina slipped into her chair. The jury members appeared to have enjoyed their midday repast in the back room. Stefan had spent the break fulminating about Erin. What did Nina think the jury thought so far? What would the newspapers say? How might Erin respond when she read the reports? As a witness, she couldn’t be in the courtroom during the trial, and she was continuing to refuse to see him. “I made the biggest mistake of my life, that night, didn’t I? I fucked up!”

Nina worked on him, trying to turn his thoughts to what was happening in the courtroom right now. “Don’t finger your tie,” she reminded him. “Keep your hands on the table, relaxed. Face the court. Look strong, but not conceited. Look at the jury.”

He tried. His tie drooped.

“Call Detective Kelsey Banta,” Jaime said. Detective Banta, who had been sitting right next to him, strode quickly, making short work of her journey to the witness box.

A well-respected cop, Kelsey Banta had worked herself up from her initial position as a receptionist into a job as one of only two homicide detectives. It had taken her almost twenty years. Five years before, her brother, a police officer in Campbell, California, had been killed while trying to prevent a bank robbery. Paul had told Nina that Banta had reacted badly, winding up in an alcohol rehab facility eighteen months ago. Since then, her record had stayed clean, though-no DUI’s or alcohol-related legal problems.

Busty and long-legged, she had black eyebrows, pink cheeks, deep-set blue eyes, and long bleached blonde hair pulled into a work-time ponytail in back. She wore black pants and a blazer with a lacy beige blouse beneath, one button more than appropriate slyly undone. She didn’t seem to have altered her usual style at all for her day in court. Maybe she had been in so many trials she had adopted this low-key uniform for them.

As Banta answered Jaime’s introductory questions in a cigarette voice, Nina wondered how well Paul knew her. He had been on the Monterey police force himself, working homicide detail, several years before.

Funny, when she was practicing law at Tahoe, she had never thought about the web of friends and acquaintances Paul would have down here on the Monterey Peninsula. He had been married twice when he was younger, and had always liked women. Right now, she could feel his presence behind her, comfortable in the familiar setting, lounging on an aisle seat so that he could leave when necessary.

Had he and Banta exchanged glances as she came into court? Nina hadn’t noticed.

Just as Klaus, who seemed to be snoozing at her left, had predicted, Jaime took the events of Banta’s long shift the night of April 12 through 13 in chronological order, starting with taking custody of Stefan Wyatt from Officer Millman at the station.

Trying to take the hint from Klaus’s instructions, Nina took no notes. Like most of the jurors, she just watched and listened. Immediately she realized that Kelsey Banta was a straight-shooter. Banta did not infer anything, but offered precise, probing analyses of the facts. She was a good witness with an excellent memory, who only occasionally refreshed her recollection from her report. Talking about booking Stefan on suspicion after a phone conversation with Jaime, whom she woke up at home, she described how the attorney from Klaus’s firm, Alan Turk, had come in for a brief conference with Stefan. He later left, with instructions to Stefan to exercise his right to remain silent.

Not very enlightening yet, but Nina did wonder what sort of legal problem had led Stefan’s brother, Gabe, to the firm and Alan. She wrote on her pad, “Talk to Alan Turk,” then sat back, folding her arms to listen some more. Banta was answering questions about the search of Stefan’s clothing on booking.

“Now, this medal you found on Stefan Wyatt…”

“I didn’t know what it was at the time,” Banta said.

Stefan folded his arms, whispering to Nina, “As if I did!”

“But the amount of dirt suggested it probably came out of the grave,” Banta continued. “I scraped off a sample for forensics. I could see the remains of a striped orange and black ribbon and a round metal thing about the size of a silver dollar. There was some engraving on it, but the inscription was in Cyrillic.”