William Bernhardt - Murder One

Gradually, LaBelle brought her to the present, the twelfth and final year of their marriage. “A marriage changes over time. People change. It’s part of life. But we still had a happy marriage. We were still close. We were still … intimate. We were important to each other. We went out on dates—and we called them dates, just like when we were kids. We laughed and played and giggled. Joe had a real silly streak in him. I suppose his friends at work didn’t see much of it. But I did. I loved that about him.” She turned her face away, but Ben could still see the tiny twitch of her lips. “I loved everything about him.”

LaBelle cleared his throat. “When did you first suspect there was something wrong in your marriage?”

“When did I suspect? Never.” Her neck craned unnaturally. “I was such an idiot. I never had the slightest inkling. I thought everything was perfect.” She shook her head. “A fool in paradise.”

“When did you learn otherwise?”

“At lunch. That final day. I was visited by the wife of one of Joe’s partners on the force. Marge Matthews. I believe you’ve already met her husband, Arlen Matthews. I only slightly knew Marge, but for some reason she still felt it was incumbent upon her to spill my husband’s dark secret. She kept saying I had a right to know, which was a crock. She wasn’t there because I had a right to know. She was there because she wanted the dirty pleasure of being the one to tell me. To tell me what everyone else already knew.”

“What was that?”

Ben knew this question technically called for hearsay, but he saw no purpose in objecting. Everyone already knew the answer.

“She told me my husband was having an affair. That he had been having an affair for some months. With a teenager. A young girl the—well, the same age I was when he married me. All those years ago.”

“What was your reaction?”

“Oh, I went through the typical stages. At first I didn’t believe it. Deep denial. But Marge kept pounding away at me, inundating me with details. Where they met. Where they slept together. How often they did it. She even knew the dates, for God’s sake. And sure enough, the dates Marge said he’d been sleeping with this child were the same dates he claimed he’d been in Oklahoma City working on some big new investigation. After a while, I had to give in. It was obviously true. Joe had betrayed me.”

“What did you do?”

She turned her head away again, and for a moment, Ben was certain they were going to see tears, but Andrea managed to fight them back and continue. “I cried for the better part of the day. I walked into the shower, fully clothed, and screamed for an hour at the top of my lungs. I stared into the mirror and hurled insults at myself. I just felt so … cheap. So used. So pathetic.”

Ben dutifully made his check of the eyes of the jurors and saw that many of them—especially the women—were deeply affected.

“How long did this continue?”

“Too long. I was punishing myself. Finally I realized that this was not the right approach. After all, had I done anything wrong? No. I needed to stop tearing myself apart, and to start gathering my strength. So I confronted Joe.”

“What happened?”

“He didn’t deny it, but he wouldn’t agree to stop seeing her, either. I think he was embarrassed, ashamed. Like a little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Anyway, his pride got in the way and he refused to break it off. So I went to see her.”

“And by her you mean …”

“The defendant. Keri Dalcanton.” Her eyes moved to the defendant’s table only fleetingly, but the anger and hatred Ben felt as those eyes swept past was frightening in its intensity. “I rummaged through Joe’s address book till I found out where she lived. Then I hopped into my car and went over to see her.”

“When exactly was this?”

“After dark. About nine P.M. The night before he turned up in Bartlett Square.”

LaBelle nodded solemnly. The grim spectre of Bartlett Square awaited them, but apparently LaBelle wanted to postpone that for later. “What happened when you arrived at her apartment?”

“At first, it was almost comic. You see, she didn’t know who I was. I guess Joe never showed her my picture, which is understandable, I suppose. I showed up, ranting and raving and demanding that she break it off, and she didn’t even know who the hell I was. She was totally confused—until I said the W word. ‘I’m Joe’s wife, ’ I told her. The instant I said that, she became hostile and threatening.

“She was wearing some kind of exercise suit,” Andrea continued. “A skimpy thing—not much to it. Her little teenage heart was pounding away in her chest. She was sweaty and breathing hard—but not as hard as once we started talking.”

“Did you ask her to break it off?” LaBelle asked.

“No, I didn’t ask her to break it off. I told her it was over.”

“And her reaction?”

“She laughed at me.” Andrea’s jaw tightened. “Do you understand what I’m saying? She laughed at me. Laughed in my face.”

“This is not true,” Keri murmured, under her breath. She was being careful not to let her face betray her feelings, but Ben could hear her just the same. “This never happened.”

When Andrea’s face turned up again, a single tear was tracing its way down her cheek. “She was so heartless. So … smug. She told me that I couldn’t satisfy Joe. That he loved her. That they had done things together that … that I never dreamed of doing. She held nothing back. She wanted to destroy me.”

LaBelle took a step forward. “I’m sorry to make you relive this, ma’am. If you need a break—”

“No,” Andrea insisted, “I want to go on.” She swallowed hard. “I told her she couldn’t have my husband. She laughed and said he wasn’t my husband anymore. Nothing was mine anymore, she said. ‘Everything you have is mine.’ And then, just to make her point, she whipped back her hand and slapped me, right across the cheek.”

“This is a lie,” Keri whispered, back at the defendant’s table. “A complete fabrication.”

LaBelle continued the questioning. “And what happened after she assaulted you?”

Andrea licked her lips, then wiped the tear from her face. “I lost it. Just totally lost it. I slapped her back. And then we were fighting.”

“By fighting, you mean—”

“I mean the real thing. Not just words. A real knock-down-drag-out. She grabbed me by the shoulders and slung me onto the carpet. I remember I fell on some exercise machine she had—felt like I’d broken my spine. We rolled around on top of each other, clawing and scratching and hitting. She even bit me.” She held out her wrist. “You can still see traces of it, after all these months. It left a scar, for God’s sake. It was a serious fight.”

“When did it end?”

“When her brother Kirk came home. If not for that, we might still be fighting. Or one of us would be dead, more likely. I was bleeding from half a dozen places when he finally pulled us apart. And she wasn’t in the greatest shape herself.”

“Did anything else happen before you left?”

“Yes. As I stumbled out the door, she spat at me. Really truly spat at me. Her brother held her arms behind her back, but she struggled and shouted.”

“What did she say?”

Andrea drew in her breath. “The last thing she said was, ‘If I can’t have him, no one can!’ ”

The effect of these words on the jury was profound. Ben watched as, one after another, the jurors turned, shocked and appalled, to scrutinize the face of the woman who had allegedly spewed out these incriminating words.

LaBelle had been trying to establish a motive for murder, but now he had even more. This was not just a mere motive. It was more like a promise.