“To get to the truth,” Lescroix spat out. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Now, tell us, sir, was the pile of wood covered with anything?”
A slight frown. He’d only be wondering why Lescroix was focussing on this fact but the result was a wonderfully suspicious expression.
“Yes. By an old tarp.”
“And was the tarp staked to the ground?”
“Yes, it was.”
“And you’d put the tarp over the wood yourself?”
“Yes.”
“When?” Lescroix demanded.
“I don’t remember.”
“No? Could it have been just a few days before you hired Jerry?”
Cabot looked befuddled. “No... Well, maybe.”
“Did Jerry say anything about the tarp?”
“I don’t recall.”
Lescroix said patiently, “Didn’t Jerry say to you that the stakes were pounded into the ground too hard to pull out and that he’d have to loosen them somehow to uncover the wood?”
Cabot looked up at the judge, miserable. He swallowed again, seemed to think about taking a glass of water, but he hesitated; his hands were shaking too badly. “Do I have to answer these questions?”
“Yes, you do,” the judge said solemnly.
“Maybe.”
“And did you tell him there were some tools in the garage he could use if he needed them?”
Another weighty pause. Cabot sought the answer in the murky plaster heaven above them. “I might have.”
“Ah.” Lescroix’s face lit up. Easily half the jury was with him now, floating along with the music, wondering where the tune was going. “Could you tell our friends on the jury how many tools you have in your garage, sir?”
“For Christ’s sake, I don’t know.”
A sacrilege in front of the jury. Deliciously bad form.
“Let me be more specific,” Lescroix said helpfully. “How many hammers do you own?”
“Hammers?” He glanced at the murder weapon, a claw hammer, sitting, brown with his wife’s stale blood, on the prosecution’s table. The jury looked at it too.
“Just one. That one.”
“So,” Lescroix’s voice rose, “when you told Jerry to get a tool from the garage to loosen the stakes you’d pounded into the ground, you knew there was only one tool he could pick. That hammer right there?”
“No... I mean, I don’t know what he used—”
“You didn’t know he used that hammer to loosen the stakes?”
“Well, I knew that. Yes. But...” The eyes grew dark. “Why’re you accusing me?”
Lescroix froze and he turned to the witness. “Accusing you? What on earth would I be accusing you of, Mr. Cabot? You’re not on trial here. Why are you worried that anyone’s accusing you of something?”
“I...”
Lescroix let the silence build up until it was unbearable. Then he said, “And therefore, as a result of directing him to use that hammer, his fingerprints are now on the murder weapon. Isn’t that the case?”
Cabot stared at the prosecutor’s disgusted face. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Sonata for witness and jury...
“Maybe it’s true. But—”
“Sir, let’s go on. On that day, the second of June, after Jerry Pilsett had mowed the lawn and loaded the wood into his pickup truck to be carted off you asked him inside to pay him, right?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And you asked him into your living room, right?”
“I don’t remember.”
Lescroix flipped through a number of sheets in the inquisitor’s folder. He stared at one page for a moment, as blank as the other. “You don’t?”
Cabot too stared at the folder. “Well, I guess I did. Yes.”
“You gave him a glass of water.”
“Maybe.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“Yes! I did.”
“And you showed him your latest possession, your new stereo. The one you later claimed he stole.”
“We were talking about music and I thought he might be interested in it.”
“I see.” Lescroix was frowning. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cabot, but help me out here. This seems odd. Here’s a man who’s been working for hours in the summer heat. He’s full of dirt, sweat, grass stains... and you ask him inside. Not into the entry hall, not into the kitchen, but into the living room.”
“I was just being civil.”
“Good of you. Only the result of this... this civility was to put his shoeprints on the carpet and his fingerprints on the stereo, a water glass, doorknobs, and who knows what else?”
“What are you saying?” Cabot asked. His expression was even better than Lescroix could have hoped for. It was supposed to be shocked but it looked mean and sneaky. A Nixon look.
“Please answer, sir.”
“All right! Yes, his fingerprints were on everything. Or some things. But—”
“Thank you. Now, Mr. Cabot, would you tell the jury whether or not you asked Jerry Pilsett to come back the following day.”
“What?”
“Did you ask Jerry to come back to your house the next day? That would be Saturday, June third.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Lescroix frowned dramatically. He opened the folder again, found another important blank sheet, and pretended to read. “You didn’t say to Jerry Pilsett, and I quote, ‘You did a good job, Jerry. Come back about five tomorrow and I’ll have some more work for you’?”
“I didn’t say that. No.”
A breathless scoff. “You’re denying you said that?”
He swallowed, glanced at the prosecutor. “Yes.”
“Mr. Cabot, His Honor will remind you that lying under oath is perjury and that’s a serious crime. Now answer the question. Did you or did you not ask Jerry Pilsett to come back to your house at five P.M. on Saturday, June third?”
Cabot’s eyes swung around the room. His childlike face sweated profusely, his hands squeezed together, a praying schoolboy. “No, I didn’t! Really!”
You poor bastard...
Lescroix turning toward the jury, puffing air through cheeks. A few more sympathetic smiles. Some shaking heads too, revealing shared exasperation at a lying witness. The second movement of Lescroix’s performance seemed to have gone over well.
“All right,” the lawyer muttered sceptically. “Let’s go back to the events of June third, sir.”
Cabot put his hands in his lap like a sullen little boy. A pose the jury reads as purest guilt. Perfect.
“You told the court that you came home about five P.M. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Where had you been?”
“The office.”
“On Saturday?”
Cabot managed a feeble smile. “When you have your own business you frequently work Saturdays. I do, at any rate.”
“You came back at five and found Jerry Pilsett standing in the doorway.”
“Yes, holding the hammer.”
“The bloody hammer.”
“Yes.”
“It was bloody, right?”
“Yes.”
Again an examination of the infamous file. “Hmmm. Now the police found your car on the parking strip fifty feet from the door where you allegedly saw Jerry. Is that what you claimed?”
“It’s where the car was. It’s the truth.”
Lescroix forged on. “Why was the car that far away from the house?”
“I... well, when I was driving up to the house I panicked and drove over the curb. I was worried about my wife.”
“But you couldn’t see your wife, could you?”
A pause. “Well, no. But I could see the hammer.”
“Fifty feet a way’s a pretty good distance. You could actually see the hammer in Jerry’s hand?”
Calling him “Jerry,” never “the defendant” or “Pilsett.” Make him human. Make him a buddy of every member of the jury. Make him the victim here.