James Grippando - Hear No Evil

“I did what he wanted me to do.” Her voice was barely audible.

The judge said, “Ms. Hart, you’ll have to speak up.”

“I did what he wanted me to do,” she said. “I continued to have sex with Lieutenant Johnson.”

“Were you drugged on those occasions?”

“No.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I didn’t see a choice. I didn’t want to lose my son.”

“Are you saying that you were prepared to do this for the rest of your life?”

“No. But you have to understand. Oscar was from a very powerful family. He was a respected Marine on a military base. My word against his wasn’t going to add up to much. Until I could figure something out and find help from someone I could trust, I had to go along with it.”

“So, when that Cuban soldier came into this courtroom and testified that he saw you and Lieutenant Johnson together, that could very well have happened?”

“If he saw anything, he saw me yielding to my husband’s threats. I was just going along with it.”

Jack nodded, as if satisfied. But in his own mind, he couldn’t help juxtaposing her “going along with it” against the soldier’s “going at it like a couple of porn stars.” Thankfully, those words never made it before the jury. “Ms. Hart, did you observe any impact that this ‘threesome,’ I’ll call it, was having on the friendship between your husband and Lieutenant Johnson?”

“Toward the end, I did.”

“What happened?”

“Lieutenant Johnson started showing up at my house alone, when Oscar wasn’t there.”

“Did you have sex with him when your husband wasn’t there?”

“No, never.”

“Did you tell your husband about Lieutenant Johnson’s extra visits?”

“Yes.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He was very angry. He told me that if he ever caught me and Lieutenant Johnson together, he’d kill us both.”

“So it was okay to be with Lieutenant Johnson only so long as your husband was there to watch.”

“Yeah. He was very much into control.”

“Did you ever observe your husband have any cross words with Lieutenant Johnson over this?”

“Only once, and they took it outside. I’m not sure what was said.”

“After this argument between the two men, did Lieutenant Johnson continue to come around, uninvited, so to speak?”

“No. He didn’t.”

“Did you tell your husband this?”

“No. In fact I told him the opposite. I told him that Johnson was continuing to come over asking for sex, just the two of us, no one taking pictures.”

“You lied to him?”

“Yes. I was desperate. I saw a way out. If Oscar got mad at Johnson, I thought it might be the end of this nightmare.”

“What happened after that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How soon after that did your husband turn up dead?”

“Objection,” said Torres. “The question unfairly implies there’s some linkage between the two.”

“What kind of objection is that?” said the judge. “Overruled. The witness shall answer.”

“Oscar was dead less than two weeks later.”

Jack said, “Ms. Hart, you didn’t tell anyone about the things your husband forced you to do with Lieutenant Johnson. Not even the police.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was ashamed of it. I didn’t think anyone would ever understand how trapped I felt. Mostly, I didn’t want Brian ever to know it.”

Jack listened like a lawyer, but her last answer hit him like a father. They’d rehearsed her testimony beforehand, but it was far different now, inside a packed courtroom with hundreds of sets of eyes and ears absorbing every detail. All those intimate secrets that Lindsey was too ashamed to share with anyone-even with her own lawyer, until it was almost too late-could now be gobbled up by any slob who could read a newspaper. It wouldn’t happen today, maybe not even next month or next year. But someday, Brian would know everything.

Jack said, “Let’s talk now about the specific morning of your husband’s death. How did the day begin for you?”

“Like any other. I was sleeping in Brian’s room when my alarm clock/radio went off.”

“You normally slept with your son?”

“I did, ever since the thing with Lieutenant Johnson started.”

“Did you check on your husband at all?”

“I wouldn’t say I checked on him. He was sleeping in the bed when I went to the master to take a shower and get my clothes.”

“Are you sure he was alive?”

“Yes. He was snoring.”

“So you showered, dressed, then what?”

“Grabbed a banana and went to work.”

“What time?”

“Usual time. Five-thirty. I worked at the hospital, and I liked the early shift, because I got home in time to meet Brian after school.”

“Did everything go as usual at work?”

“Yes, until Brian sent me a digital page. It was almost six A.M.”

“What was the message?”

“It said, ‘Mom, come home, now!’ The word ‘now’ was in all capital letters. And there were three exclamation points.”

“What did you do?”

“I hurried home.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I’d gotten messages like this before. Usually it was Brian getting mad because his father punished him, or was making him do pushups before school, something like that. I didn’t want to involve the police. Oscar would have been furious with me.”

“What did you find when you got home?”

“Brian was in his room, crying. He has some verbal ability, even though he’s deaf, but he was way too shaken to come up with words. In sign he told me to check in the master bedroom. So I went.”

“What did you find?”

“Oscar. He was in the bed, and there was a lot of blood on the sheets and pillow. I ran to him, knelt at his side. I could see that he’d been shot in the head. It was…” Her eyes closed, then opened. “It was an awful-looking wound. He had no pulse, wasn’t breathing. I knew he was dead.”

“What did you do?”

“I called the police.”

“Anything else?”

“It was all such a blur. But I remember…I remember seeing his gun on the floor next to the bed.”

“Did you touch it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She looked at the jury and said, “I put the safety on the gun.”

A low murmur swept across the courtroom. The prosecutor looked puzzled, and several jurors straightened in their seats. The significance of the safety being on or off-homicide versus suicide-seemed to have been lost on no one.

Jack waited for silence, then asked, “Why did you put the safety on?”

“When I saw his body lying there, dead, my first thought was that Oscar had killed himself. He was alive when I had left for work. As far as I knew, no one had come by the house. His own gun was on the floor next to the bed. And that whole thing with Lieutenant Johnson had me convinced that he was disturbed or depressed.”

“Let me ask you again: Why did you put the safety on the gun?”

She swallowed hard. “That’s what I was explaining. I married a Marine. Brian’s father was a captain, a leader. In a Marine’s world, courage is everything. I knew that someday Brian would probably have to know the truth about his father. But at that moment, all I could think of was that I didn’t want my ten-year-old boy to have to deal with the fact that his father was a coward who killed himself.”

“So you put the safety on the gun?”

“Yes. I knew the police wouldn’t think it was suicide if the safety was on.”

“But, by doing that, you made yourself into a murder suspect.”

“The thought of becoming a suspect didn’t cross my mind at that particular moment. If anything, I didn’t see how I could be a suspect. I was at work when Oscar was shot.”