John Lescroart - The Suspect

If nothing else, the objection had succeeded in slowing things down.

Toynbee, whose earlier sunnier disposition seemed in the light of his own current intensity as though it must have been an apparition, was not thrilled with the exchange. "All right, both of you," he said. "That's strike two. Ms. Roake, your objection is overruled. The question was obviously proper. Mr. Abrams, when I need your advice on how to run my courtroom, I'll ask for it. I swear to you, if the two of you don't settle down, somebody's going to walk out of here with a lighter pocketbook."

Abrams went apoplectic. "Your Honor, I haven't done-"

The judge glared, grabbed his gavel and slammed it down, shutting him up. "I've ruled on the objection, Counselor," he said in a firm tone. "You may continue questioning your witness."

Gina was going back to her table. Behind her, she heard Abrams ask the judge if the court recorder could read back Bethany's testimony so he could take up where she had left off. As she'd hoped, Gina's objection and the argument around it had made Abrams lose his place. After a minute, the recorder had found the spot. "Mr. Abrams: 'Did you recognize the car, Bethany?' " she intoned. Then, "The witness: 'Yes. I'd ridden in it many times. It belonged to my neighbor across the street.' "

Abrams, back in his place, said, "And do you see that neighbor in court today? The neighbor who owned the car?"

She pointed to Stuart without looking at him. Abrams, back in his place, said, "So you recognized the car, did you not, Bethany?"

"Yes, I did."

"Could you describe it, please?" "Yes, it's a black Lexus SUV."

"Is there anything else distinguishing about this car?" "Yes, there is." "And what's that?" "The license plate."

Next to her, Stuart shifted in his chair and started to say something. Gina quickly put a hand over his forearm, leaned into him, "Not now," she whispered harshly. But in fact Gina, too, had a very bad feeling. In all the transcripts that Gina had seen of Bethany's testimony in her discovery, she'd never once mentioned the license plate, or the fact that she'd seen it.

Abrams was going on. "What about the license plate, Bethany?"

"It's a personalized plate. It says G-H-O-T-I."

Next to her, Stuart said, "That's bullshit! She couldn't have seen that."

Gina squeezed her fingernails into his forearm. "Shut up. Suck it up."

Toynbee was glaring at the small disturbance they made, his gavel poised to fall. But Stuart managed to calm himself. Gina eased the pressure on his arm. Toynbee lowered the gavel and again turned his attention to Abrams, who smiled at Bethany and said, "Are you absolutely sure, Bethany, that these were the letters you saw on the license plate as it turned into the driveway across the street and into the garage?"

With a last defiant glare at Stuart, Bethany nodded to Abrams and said, "Yes, sir, I am."

In spite of Gina's many objections, some of them merely for the sake of disturbance, Abrams and Bethany went on to establish that the same car had pulled out of Stuart's garage at a quarter to one, but the real damage had already been done. The prosecution had presented firsthand eyewitness testimony from a credible person who was giving false witness although, Gina believed, she might truly believe that she was telling the whole truth and nothing but.

Before Abrams was finished with her, Bethany also delivered an emotional recasting of the so-called threat from Stuart that Kymberly had conveyed. Gina's strenuous objection that there was no evidence tying whatever Kym might or might not have done to Stuart was for naught. At trial, she knew, the prosecution would just drag in Kym and impeach her if she had claimed it was her own idea. But for now, the evidence was coming in even without that necessary foundation, and there didn't seem to be a damn thing she could do about it. In the telling, Bethany came all the way to tears, and Toynbee had to call a short recess to let her regain her composure. After that, she testified that the message from Kymberly contained an explicit warning from Stuart that if Bethany went on the stand to testify against him, something very bad was going to happen to her. She'd had to miss two days of school, pretending to be sick because she was so afraid of going out of her house.

And then, luckily, the police had arrested Stuart.

Gina had her work cut out for her. She came to her position before Bethany in the middle of the courtroom and gave her a warm smile, which the witness did not return. "Bethany," she began, "when did you first give your account of the night of September eleventh to Inspector Juhle?"

Now Gina's mission was precisely the opposite of her strategy during Abrams' direct. This time she wanted to get Bethany talking freely so that something unguarded and unrehearsed might slip out. "I don't know exactly. I think it was the next day. The day after Caryn died."

"And you told the inspector the whole truth, didn't you? You didn't hold anything back?"

"Yes, I told him the whole truth."

"And you knew that Caryn Dryden was dead, and how important this was, so you tried to be as helpful and complete as you could, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"Now, during that conversation, were you aware that Inspector Juhle had a tape recorder going?"

"Yes. He asked my permission before he began."

"So the entire conversation, as far as you know, is on tape, right?"

"Right."

"Did he ask you any questions before he turned the tape recorder on or after he turned it off?"

"Just whether I agreed to have the tape on, but nothing else."

Gina continued. "Now, that conversation was just a short while after Caryn's death, and a lot has happened since then, hasn't it? Scary things, like your talk with Kym and having to testify here today. Do you think your memory might have been a little better back then than it is today?"

"Well, my memory is pretty good today."

"But if you said something on the tape, and you say something different now, don't you think it would be more likely that what you said on the tape was right, just because of the amount of time that has passed and the things that have happened?"

"Probably so."

"And in that first discussion, did you tell Inspector Juhle that you recognized Mr. Gorman's car?"

"Yes. That's what he was asking about."

"And you identified it as you have today, as a black Lexus SUV. Kind of a smaller sport utility vehicle?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell him what the license plate was during that conversation?"

"Yes."

"Bethany. Has anyone given you a copy of the tape to listen to, to prepare for your testimony?"

"Yes."

Nodding, Gina walked swiftly over to her table and pulled some pages from the open folder she'd left there. "Bethany, I've got here a transcript of that original talk, and I'd like you to take a look at it for a minute-it's not long-and point out for the court where you told Inspector Juhle about the personalized license plate."

"Sure." Happy to cooperate, Bethany took the papers in her hands and began looking through them.

Gina turned and stole a glance at Gerry Abrams, who was busily arranging his own materials and didn't meet her eyes.

For all of her inexperience with murder proceedings, Gina was very familiar with most of the games attendant in criminal proceedings in general. She was certain that she was dealing with one of the most common of these now. Since all transcriptions of testimony had to be included in discovery, which the prosecution then had to give to defense counsel, sometimes discussions with crucial witnesses happened, as though by inadvertence, "off tape." This meant that critical testimony, such as the kind Bethany had presented here, could be shaped and even created out of whole cloth and remain outside of the record until it could be dropped as a surprise to maximum effect at a trial or hearing.