“That’s different. I’ve explained often enough that I didn’t think the car was stolen. But a piece of personal jewelry, I’d have missed it right away.”
“Because of its value?” Brett asked.
“For whatever reason, I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Does the date on the emblem have a sentimental or emotional significance for you, Mr. Thomson?”
Davic, Brett noticed, was reluctant to object. Earl’s voice was mild, but a potential violence seemed close to the surface of his smile... “Miss Brett, I’m sure you know the significance of that date, November 9, 1938. It commemorates an event in Germany called Crystal Night. I’m not sure of the details, but it was some sort of national event. I asked a jeweler in Philadelphia to engrave that date with my initials but he refused to do it. He told me that Crystal Night had offensive memories for him. Like a Japanese in this country might remember Pearl Harbor, I guess. So I got someone else to do the job. There’s nothing illegal about that.”
“Then this emblem,” Brett said casually, “couldn’t have been what you were searching for on Fairlee Road?”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“Sustained.”
Earl shrugged. “No. As you yourself said, it couldn’t have been.”
Davic seemed relieved by his client’s apparently calm response. He said, “Your Honor, Mr. Thomson has admitted that People’s Exhibit Three belongs to him! But since he also admitted that he lost that object, I respectfully ask you to instruct the People to tell us where they found it. Or how it came into their possession.”
Brett said, “If I may anticipate His Honor’s instructions, that object was worn by the man who kidnapped, tortured and raped Shana Selby. She tore it from his throat the night he attacked her. It is Shana’s blood, dried and blackened, that is still visible on those crosses—”
Davic’s objections cut across Brett’s final words. “I object to the hearsay, Your Honor, and to the incriminating, baseless insinuations...”
“Sustained.” Flood sounded his gavel for silence. “The hearsay is not admissible. The jury will ignore it.”
“But, Your Honor,” Brett protested, “you have already told Mr. Davic he may re-call the plaintiff for further examination.”
“But I cannot allow you to paraphrase what Miss Selby herself is best qualified to tell us.”
“All right, Your Honor, but how can my paraphrase be defined by Mr. Davic as an incriminating insinuation? I’ve stated that Shana Selby ripped that insignia from the throat of her attacker. By the sworn testimony elicited by Mr. Davic from his own witness, the Reverend Oliver Jessup, that attacker was a gray-haired, red-faced man with thick glasses. Is Mr. Davic casting doubts on his own witness? If not, how could the accusation possibly incriminate the dark-haired, young man without glasses now seated in the witness stand?”
“Your Honor,” Earl Thomson said, “if it’s not out of order, I’d like to make a point here.”
With noticeable tension, Davic said, “Your Honor, it is not in my client’s best interest to respond to any of these inquiries. He is eager to cooperate, which is commendable. But I must instruct him to remain silent. Also, the gray-haired man described by the Reverend Jessup would seem not to have been the plaintiff’s attacker — he was more correctly her companion.”
“I’d still like to straighten this out, Your Honor.” Earl’s tone remained amiable but persistent. “I’m a pretty fair judge of what’s in my best interest, after all. That’s something every soldier learns, if he intends to survive combat.” He smiled pleasantly. “Miss Brett is reluctant to call her exhibit by its proper name. I think her confusion begins right here.”
George Thomson leaned forward and spoke sharply to Davic. “Can’t you get a recess, for Christ’s sake?”
“I wouldn’t risk it. It’s safer to let him finish.”
“You better be goddamn sure, Davic.”
“We can destroy Miss Brett with two questions. I’m sure of that. But it’s not safe to cut your son off. I’m even more sure of that.”
Earl Thomson was saying in pedantic tone, “The young lady representing the prosecution doesn’t seem to know what to call the object she’s identified as an exhibit. Once she referred to it as a pendant, then as an emblem, in another instance, a necklace and finally as an ornament. I wonder if she knows what its real name is, or if she’s afraid or embarrassed to use it. Or perhaps she’s shrewd enough to simply let the jury’s imagination work overtime. That is a swastika, ladies and gentlemen,” Earl said, pointing at the gleaming silver crosses. “A swastika. Miss Brett is well aware, I think, that people tend to regard anyone wearing that insignia as some kind of racist or anti-Semite. But that isn’t true, philosophically or historically. The fact—”
“Mr. Thomson,” Judge Flood interrupted him, “you asked the court’s permission to make some point or other. But I fail to perceive any pertinence in these comments.”
“If you’ll indulge me for just another moment,” Earl said courteously, “I’d like to explain that the swastika per se is not ugly or obscene. It dates back to Greek mythology. It’s been used as a religious and heraldic device in India and in Finland. Great Britain, in fact, used a swastika on postage stamps it issued in Hong Kong some years ago. I’m trying, Your Honor, to make the good people on this jury realize that because I owned and wore a swastika — its more proper name is a gammadion, by the way, a cross made of four gammons — because of that I don’t have any particular interest in concentration camps or all the Jews who reportedly died in them.”
“Stop him,” George Thomson said to Davic.
“They’ve lied about a lot of things in that war, of course.” A faint tic pulled at the corner of Earl’s mouth. “They’ve lied about me during this trial too. She lied” — Earl nodded toward Shana — “she lied when she claimed she got my gammadion the night she was hurt.”
With a sudden tension, he went on, “You’ve lied, too, Miss Brett, and we know that. About things that happened to you, or the other way around.”
“Your Honor,” Davic said, raising his voice now. “I ask you to consider the ordeal my client’s been through these past few months.”
Flood sounded his gavel. “Mr. Thomson, the court has allowed you ample latitude. I will now ask you a two-part question, which Miss Brett has delayed asking: Where and when did you lose that pendant which you wore at The Green Lantern, and which you’ve heard described as People’s Exhibit Three?”
“Your Honor, please forgive me.” It was Davic who was stalling now, obviously hoping to ease Thomson’s spiraling anxiety. “May I ask one concession? That the court’s questions be put singly to my client to give him time to consider his answers seriatim.”
“Very well, Mr. Thomson, let’s start with the first one. When did you lose that object?”
Davic’s interruption gave Thomson a saving respite; his expression cleared, the glaze of unreason faded from his eyes, his expression became thoughtful.
“It was a Sunday morning,” he recalled, “six or eight weeks ago, cold but sunny. I wore a cardigan over a flannel shirt.” He nodded at the exhibit table. “I was also wearing that swastika.”
Brett could not stop him now, interrupt or object for any reason whatsoever. She looked at the clock and the closed doors of the courtroom. As she did she caught a glance from Captain Slocum, a look of complacence. There was no malice or triumph in the captain’s expression; this is how it is, his cold eyes told her, this is the way it’s played, you lose, lady.