“During the time of your relationship with Jimmy Moore, did you have affairs with other men?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Miss Ashland?” It was a question not strictly relevant, but I couldn’t help myself from asking it.
“I don’t know. I was lonely, I guess. Bored. Jimmy had a wife. I had nothing but a part-time him.”
“Did you have an affair with Zack Bissonette?”
“Yes,” she said and that brought a little “Aaah” from one of the jurors who had finally begun to see what she was doing in this trial in the first place.
I hesitated for a moment, looked down at my papers. I shuffled one over the other and back again as I screwed up my courage to ask the next question. “And did you also have an affair with me?” The question itself was enough to silence any murmurs in the courtroom.
“Yes,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
I could have stopped there, I guess. I had tossed out the worst of it with that simple question and her simple answer. I could have left it to Eggert and Prescott to pick over the carcass of our dead relationship. Chester Concannon was glaring at me with a strange look of doubt that I had never seen from him before, a doubt that would only grow deeper the further I delved into what had happened between Veronica and me, and there was really no reason to delve any further. But when the judge called me to the bench and reamed me out for a good five minutes over getting involved with a witness, forcing me to explain to him that I didn’t know she was a witness when I started my involvement with her, I thought I should explain that very thing to the jury, since they too may have been suffering from a misapprehension. So instead of stopping like I could have, I continued on.
“How did you meet me, Miss Ashland?”
She gaped at me, and then said, “At a restaurant. You tried to pick me up with some of Jimmy’s champagne.”
“For how long did we see each other?”
“For as long as it was convenient.”
She was staring hard at me and I stared back at her and for a moment it was only her and me in the courtroom and I had the power to ask her anything I wanted. I was tempted to ask her about her feelings for me, did they ever exist, did I ever satisfy her, was our sex as incredible for her as it was for me, did she ever love me, did she ever dream, like I did, that it could go on forever. And could she forgive me for what I was putting her through now and, if so, was there any possibility that after this was all over, after the trial was finished, after she had cleaned herself up and our lives had resumed their unbearable stasis, after everything, could she ever consider coming back to me? That was what I wanted to ask her, all that and more. But what I asked instead was, “When did you tell me you had been sleeping with Zack Bissonette?”
“When you asked.”
“That was after we had become involved, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And did we continue our affair after I learned about your relationship with Bissonette?”
“Well, you kissed me after that,” she said. “When you gave me the subpoena.” That got a chuckle from the crowd.
“But now our relationship is over, is that right?”
“It was over before it started,” she said.
“And we’re not seeing each other anymore?”
“No,” she said and then she let out a sly smile. “Not even if you begged.”
I stepped back and winced. My reaction was noticed, there was a titter from the jury, a few slight laughs from the audience behind me. And somehow, with the laugher it all seemed all right now. It was the banter that did it, the clichéd angry girlfriend bit that did it. It was as if my relationship with Veronica now fell neatly into that whole boy-girl thing, absolving me of anything dark and sinister. I glanced over to the jury and there were some admiring glances, that someone like me could have played around with someone like her. I had been raised a few notches in their esteem. It was incredible, I thought, that a woman with whom I was obsessed could mash a grapefruit in my face in the middle of a crowded courtroom and it only served to build up my standing. Sure, let it happen just like that. I had a job to do, a story to tell, and now it was time to tell it.
“All right, Miss Ashland,” I said. “You have a checking account, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there another name on that account?”
“Chet’s name is also on the account.”
“Why?”
“I was getting some money from Jimmy every now and then through Chet. Putting Chet’s name on it made it easier for him to give me the money.”
“Did there come a time when certain large amounts were deposited in that account?”
“Yes,” she said. “Chet asked me to put in certain amounts of cash.”
“Chet asked?” She had made another mistake. “You mean the councilman.”
“No, Chet. I assumed he was asking on behalf of Jimmy. Everything before with that account had always been on behalf of Jimmy.” So that’s what she had meant when she said Jimmy had asked her to deposit the money. But why had Concannon gone along with it? I looked at Chester. He had the same look of doubt his face had held before.
“How much was deposited?” I continued.
“I don’t know the total, but each deposit was always just under ten thousand dollars.”
“How many deposits?”
“Ten or fifteen.”
“And what happened to the money?”
“I don’t know firsthand,” she said.
“Tell us what you know,” I said.
“Objection, hearsay,” said Prescott.
“Sustained,” said the judge.
“Well, what had you heard?” I asked.
“Objection,” said Prescott.
“Sustained,” said Judge Gimbel. “Move on, Mr. Carl.”
That line wasn’t working. She didn’t know enough to get out what I had wanted to get out about Norvel Goodwin and the money. Her knowledge was secondhand, her answers too indistinct. I looked over at the jury box. I saw a yawn. The sight of it cut me. I was losing them. I needed something big, now.
“All right, Miss Ashland, let’s move on to Zack Bissonette.” There was a pause, which sucked back the jury’s attention. “Where did you meet him?”
“At his club. Jimmy, Chet, Chuckie, and I used to go there. That’s how we met.”
“How did you start dating?”
“Dating?” She tossed me a little smirk, just to let everyone know she was no cheerleader in a ponytail. “He asked me out one night at the club.”
“While you were there with Jimmy?”
“Yes. Whatever his shortcomings, lack of gall was not one of them.”
“And what did you say?”
“I gave him my phone number.”
“You wrote it down for him?”
“I just told it to him. I figured if he was interested enough he would remember.”
“And he remembered?”
“Yes. He called me the next day.”
“And you went out together.”
“Yes.”
“Why, Miss Ashland? Why did you go out with Mr. Bissonette?”
“He was handsome, he had played baseball, poorly maybe, but he had played, he dressed in black, I don’t know, I guess I couldn’t think of a reason not to.”
“Now when you started going out with Mr. Bissonette, were you using drugs?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“How long had you been drug-free?”
“Over two years.”
“Did you see Mr. Bissonette many times?”
“A few.”
“Did you sleep with him?”