“That’s not the point at all,” Geraldine interrupts. She moves past me, closer to the bench. “The point is that Mrs. Rawlings’s prints share space with skin fragments, hair, blood—all from her bludgeoned husband. Those aren’t things we’d expect to find on the fixtures in your home, Judge.” She turns and faces me again, her scowl saying she’s not about to comment on what she might find in mine.
“The exhibit proves the deceased was attacked with that fixture, Your Honor. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more?” Geraldine moves closer to me and her green eyes grow wide. “My Sister Counsel is mistaken,” she says to the judge. “The exhibit proves a good deal more than that.”
Geraldine “Sister Counsels” me every chance she gets. It’s one of those archaic traditions the Massachusetts Bar Association seems unable to part with—lawyers calling one another siblings. I find it utterly irritating. And Geraldine finds that irresistible.
She turns and points first at Louisa, then up at her captured swan on the bench. “The exhibit does prove the victim was attacked with it,” she says. “It also proves the defendant wielded the murder weapon. And it proves she’s the only person who did.”
“It proves no such thing,” I counter. “Anyone who watches Law & Order once in a while knows how to avoid leaving prints behind. The exhibit proves only that the murderer had access to the house, or at least to the fixture.”
Geraldine looks up at the ceiling and raises both hands, as if she just scored a touchdown. “Ah,” she says, her expression brightening, “my Sister Counsel brings us directly to my next point.”
Her Sister Counsel didn’t intend to do that, of course.
“Two people lived in that house,” she continues. “And now one of them is dead. The house has a security system, Judge.”
“But they didn’t use it, Your Honor.” I step closer to the bench. “It wasn’t activated.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Geraldine holds up one of the police reports. “There was no sign of forced entry.”
She’s right about that. The cops found no indication of surreptitious activity anywhere near the Easy Street estate. And Louisa noticed nothing out of the ordinary when she returned home from the club—and Lighthouse Beach—last Sunday.
“That’s true,” I tell the judge. “But like so many of us on the Cape, Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings weren’t big on locking their doors. And plenty of people had access, anyhow. Deliverymen, construction workers, landscapers…”
Geraldine lets out a small laugh and shakes her head. “We all know what happened here, Judge.” She stares up at the bench and points back at Louisa. “We may not know the details, but we’ve got the big picture. This woman knocked her husband out with a single blow. Maybe she was enraged, maybe not. Maybe she did it for the money, maybe not. Maybe she intended to render him unconscious, maybe not.”
Geraldine turns and locks eyes with Louisa. “But render him unconscious she did. And when she realized what she’d done, she decided to finish the job. She—”
“You have no business saying any of those things, Miss Geraldine.” Louisa’s voice isn’t trembling anymore; it’s steady and strong. She’s on her feet, leaning over our table, her dark eyes like lit coals. She’s mad. She stares up at the judge as everyone else’s eyes fix on her. “Surely this woman isn’t permitted to say such terrible things about me, Your Honor. There’s not a shred of truth in what she’s saying. I’m going to ask you to stop her.”
So much for my “let me do the talking” admonition.
Judge Long tucks his chin in and peers down over his half-glasses, the slightest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, but she is, Mrs. Rawlings. She is allowed to say such things about you. It’s part of her job. And frankly, it’d be easier to stop a freight train.”
“But the woman doesn’t even know me,” Louisa protests. “Her story is ridiculous.”
“Your Honor.” I glare at Louisa as I address the court, silently telling her to put a lid on it. “The bottom line is that the Commonwealth has nothing more than the accused’s fingerprints on an item where we’d expect to find them.” I pause and walk back toward our table, to stand beside Louisa. “Mrs. Rawlings is an attorney, Your Honor, a graduate of Yale Law School.”
Judge Long is obviously surprised by this revelation. He looks out at Louisa with heightened interest. Even Geraldine seems mildly intrigued. I pause a moment, to let them assess her demeanor, before I continue. “I guarantee you, Your Honor, if she’d used that fixture to attack her husband, her prints would not be on it.”
Geraldine throws her hands in the air and claims center stage again. “A defendant who’s smart enough to know better,” she says, “too smart to do something so stupid. Now there’s something we don’t see more than ten times a day.”
I stay focused on Judge Long, ignoring Geraldine’s sarcasm. “There’s not enough here, Your Honor. Her prints in her own home. It’s not enough to bind over.”
He raises his hands, palms out, to silence me. “Brief it,” he says to both of us. “I’ll hear argument in the morning. First thing.”
I turn to catch the Kydd’s eye and he’s waiting for me. He leans back in his chair and sighs, nodding repeatedly. He gets it, he’s telling me. We have a long night ahead.
The poker-faced matron returns to our table with the cuffs and directs Louisa to put her hands behind her back. Flashbulbs begin popping again as Louisa complies. She looks up at me as the cuffs clang shut, her tears flowing freely now, her eyes panicked. She has a long night ahead too. And she knows it.
CHAPTER 21
Tuesday, October 17
Nothing packs the Barnstable County Superior Courthouse like a case that gets top billing on the late-night news. The Kydd and I were in the office until well after midnight, but at eleven we flipped the conference room TV on to see if the coverage of Louisa Rawlings would be as inflammatory as we expected. It was worse.
The parking lot is full when I arrive. It takes ten minutes and more than a little creativity to find a spot. When I approach the back doors of the Superior Courthouse, a small circle of the nicotine-dependent moves aside without changing shape. Little white clouds rise up from the center of the ring. Smoke signals.
The courthouse hallway is jammed. I push my way through, doing my best to avoid reporters and photographers, but they’re everywhere. Their lights blind me and their boisterous, never-ending questions are indecipherable. Woody Timmons isn’t among them, though. I spot him as I climb the stairs to the second floor. He’s in an alcove talking with Officer Holt, their heads close together as if they might be keeping their voices low. They’re the only people in the building who’ve entertained that idea.
It’s a few minutes before eight when I reach the main court-room’s side door and I’m relieved to be here. This entry is reserved for attorneys, parties, and select witnesses. It’s protected from the press on this particular morning by a burly guard with a shaved head. He looks altogether forbidding even before the fluorescent light catches the shiny metal on his hip. He nods as I pass, never taking his eyes from the crowd.
Every seat in the gallery is already filled. Two court officers are stationed at the double doors in back, directing those spectators just arriving to line up single file against the side walls. They call out reminders to those forgetful souls who double up. The officers are trying to keep a small portion of the side aisles clear, but they’re losing the battle.
The space reserved for the press corps has tripled. Three front benches to the right of the center aisle are roped off now and most of the faces there are familiar: local guys from the small, town-based papers, even a reporter I recognize from the Nantucket Mirror. He looks a bit bedraggled; his suit coat is wrinkled and he could use a shave. He must have crossed the big pond on a Cape Air red-eye into Hyannis.