A murmur swells in the gallery and Judge Long bangs his gavel. He’s still standing.
“That won’t be necessary, Judge.” Geraldine is on my heels. “Everything we have to say this morning can be said on the record.”
What she really means, of course, is that she’d like to begin trying this case today—to the public and the press. This crowd will devour what she has to say. And the reporters will distribute it to the masses in vivid detail. Such a pity to waste it all on a sidebar.
Judge Long apparently has abandoned all hope of taking his seat. He hesitates for a moment, gavel still in hand, his eyes darting from me to Geraldine and back again. He moves to the side of his bench and faces away from the spectators. “Counsel,” he says, “approach.”
We’re already there.
“More surprise evidence,” I tell him.
“For Christ’s sake,” Geraldine snaps, “we got it an hour ago.”
“I’m not disputing that, Your Honor. I’m just asking for a little time to deal with it—the morning. We’re entitled to that much.” I point back at the noisy gallery and the judge’s eyes follow. “Especially with the feeding frenzy going on out there,” I add.
And frenzy it is. Sidebars almost always escalate the noise in the courtroom and this one is no exception. The crowd doesn’t like being left out. The judge bangs his gavel yet again.
“Give us the morning, Your Honor,” I repeat. “We’ll be ready by noon.”
“Nothing’s going to change between now and noon,” Geraldine insists.
The gavel worked. The room falls quiet all at once; the onlookers still. The glass-encased pendulum clock behind the jury box says it’s eight thirty-five. It’s been a hell of a long day and it’s barely begun. The judge looks out at the spectators again, then back at me. “It’s important,” I whisper.
He removes his half-glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. Judge Leon Long is the ultimate reasonable man, but he likes to get things done. Delays, he always reminds us, are not what the citizens pay him for. “Counsel,” he says quietly to both of us, “in my chambers. Now.”
“What can the pampered princess possibly tell us?” As usual, Geraldine is on her feet, pacing around the room. “Is she going to say some homicidal maniac sauntered into the palace, undetected even by the security system, clobbered the prince, and then suddenly remembered Miss Marple’s Rules of Manners and cleaned up the mess?”
Judge Long swivels his chair around and stares at me across the expanse of his mahogany desk. He glances up at Geraldine and then raises his graying eyebrows. The basic question buried in her dark little fairy tale is valid, he’s telling me. And he’s right. It is.
“I don’t know, Your Honor. I don’t know what Mrs. Rawlings can tell us. But we deserve an opportunity to talk with her, to think it through, to try and make sense of it.”
“Make sense of it?” Geraldine stops pacing, tosses her head back, and lets out a half-laugh. “I’ll make sense of it for you.”
I ignore her. “Look, Your Honor, the brass swan didn’t add up at first either.”
Geraldine throws her hands in the air. She’s going to say something about apples and oranges, I think, but Judge Long speaks first.
“Ms. Schilling, I did read the Medical Examiner’s report, but refresh my aging memory, please. How large a man was the deceased?”
Geraldine resumes pacing. “Large,” she says. “Six-one, twoten.”
The judge rests his elbows on his orderly desk, cradles his chin in one hand. “Now I’ll grant you, the accused isn’t a frail little thing…”
So Judge Long has noticed Louisa’s physique. What a surprise.
“…but do you really think she’s capable of dragging two hundred and ten pounds of unconscious weight from her house, loading it onto a vessel, and then lifting it again to dump it overboard?”
The judge’s words are the sanest ones I’ve heard so far today. For a split second, I breathe a little easier. But Geraldine laughs again, a real one this time, and I brace. Real laughter from Geraldine rarely means anything good.
“No,” she says to him, standing still now. “I don’t.”
The judge stares up at her, still cradling his chin, and I stare at him. We’re both silent.
“I think she had help,” Geraldine adds.
Judge Long studies his hands while we both absorb this information, then he sighs and looks up at Geraldine again. “And your theory is?”
Geraldine walks over and half sits on the edge of his desk, arms folded across her dark gray suit jacket, the pointed toe of one high heel pressing into the plush carpeting. “That the accused incapacitated her husband—and frankly, I don’t give a damn whether she meant to or not—and then panicked,” she tells the judge. “Decided she had to finish the job and get rid of him. Realized she couldn’t do that without help. And then got some.”
She shifts a little and turns her attention to me. “Beyond that,” she says, “I don’t have a theory. Unless the winsome widow decides to give me one.”
I return her gaze, but not her smile. “And why would she decide to do that?”
Geraldine stands again, turns her back to the judge, and takes a few small steps toward my chair. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe because I’d ask nicely. I’d even say pretty please.”
She pauses, apparently expecting a reaction to her stab at humor. I don’t give her one.
“Or maybe because she knows the cause of death was drowning, not head trauma.”
Now I see where she’s going with this. One look at Judge Long tells me he does too.
“Or maybe because as things stand at the moment,” Geraldine continues, “your Mrs. Rawlings is looking at life. Her only transportation out of Framingham is a pine box.”
MCI Framingham takes maximum security to a new high—or a new low, if you happen to live there. It’s the Commonwealth’s warehouse for the worst of its female violent offenders. Faced with a choice between Framingham and a pine box, Louisa Rawlings might just opt for the latter. She might climb in and close the lid herself.
“What are you offering?” I ask.
Geraldine smiles the way she does when she knows I’m sweating. “Not a damned thing,” she says. “At least not at the moment.” She moves back to her perch on the corner of the judge’s desk and crosses her legs. “Find out if your client is interested,” she adds. “And then we’ll talk.”
I hold one hand up to Geraldine, then rest my forehead in it, looking down at my lap. I need a few seconds to think. Something is wrong with this discussion. Technically, it doesn’t work. And Geraldine Schilling is nothing if not technically accurate. She never proffers a deal that isn’t. Never.
Louisa Rawlings can’t finger a third party, even if she’s willing, without damning herself in the process. To provide specifics—and Geraldine won’t barter with any defendant for generalities—Louisa will have to admit enough to cement her own conviction as well. As an accessory, at best. More likely as a co-conspirator.
Geraldine is still smiling at me when I look up from my lap. She knows what I’m thinking, but she sure as hell isn’t going to say it for me. “She’ll need immunity,” I tell her.
She nods, her eyes asking what in God’s name took me so long. “Qualified,” she says.
No surprise there. Qualified immunity is the best any prosecutor would offer under these circumstances, even one less rabid than Geraldine. Absolute immunity is almost unheard of. And at the moment, Louisa is lucky to be offered anything. She’s not exactly sitting in the catbird seat.
“She pleads to aggravated assault with intent regardless,” Geraldine adds. “And she does time, Martha, real time. But if she fingers the muscle in the operation, we can probably get her out before she needs a nursing home.”
Judge Long clears his throat. He’s got a packed courtroom waiting, he’s reminding us. There are other cases on his list.