“Or somebody’s wife. You think it’s her, Doc?”
“It’s too early to say who it is,” I reply.
“A terrible thing.”
“Yes, it is.” I put my jacket back on.
“Promise your phone will be right here when you leave. They just went into a recess,” says the ruddy-faced CSO named Brian.
He nods toward the glass, drawing my attention to a well-dressed man and woman drinking coffee on the brick walkway.
“Those two out there?” he says. “Connected to him, to Mr. Lott. Maybe friends, relatives, bigwigs from his shipping company. Christ knows. He owns half the world. How come Marino’s not with you?”
“He’s investigating the crime of no parking.”
“Good luck solving that one. Well, don’t be wandering around here too much by your lonesome, you hear?”
The man and woman on the other side of the glass are huddled close, looking out at the water. They turn their backs to us as if they know we’re interested, and I hurry up a stone stairway and take a marble-paneled elevator to the third floor. My heels click over polished granite as I rush past floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the harbor and the outer reaches of the bay, the courtrooms on my right behind heavy double wooden doors numbered in brass. I weave through people waiting to testify and conferring and loitering, some of them attorneys I recognize, and Dan Steward walks out of courtroom 17 just as I reach it.
“I’m really sorry,” I start to say, as he motions for me to follow him to an isolated area where the corridor ends beneath huge colorful panels of art.
“I managed to drag and stretch it out.” He exaggerates a drawl, immensely proud of himself. “You’re the last witness, and I probably won’t need anything from you on cross, obviously.”
“Both sides are resting their case for sure?” I can’t stop thinking about the timing.
I really am the last witness the jury’s going to hear, he says, and the timing is remarkable. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence, no matter how much I reassure myself it must be one.
“After we start closing arguments,” Steward says. “Hopefully we’ll wind it up today and the jury will begin deliberations before we break for the night. The good news is you haven’t delayed anything.” He stares at my breasts. “I told the judge what’s up, and I’m sure he’ll give you a chance to explain. That doesn’t mean he won’t chew you out. But if it wasn’t for me? Well, don’t think Jill bothered to stick up for you, even though you’re her witness.”
He takes off his wire-rimmed glasses, wipes them with a handkerchief, his eyes riveted to my chest, where he has a habit of looking rather constantly. I’ve never thought he means anything by it. Dan Steward isn’t the least bit lewd or crass, is a proper but awkward man of small stature in his thirties with a big head of dirty-blond hair and big teeth. He has terrible taste in suits, this one an ill-fitting tan corduroy with a cheap green paisley tie that’s too long and unfashionably wide. He always seems frazzled and nervous, his demeanor grating to juries, I’ve been told, and I believe it.
“But she knows,” I reply. “She understands why I’m late.”
“Hell, yes. Your office was courteous enough to call her. . . .”
“My office?” I can’t think whom he might mean.
“When we recessed a few minutes ago, she indicated she knew you were on your way.”
Bryce let Dan Steward know I was running late, but I can’t imagine which member of my staff might have left a message with Jill Donoghue, whose subpoena is the reason I’m here. I haven’t spoken to her directly. I wouldn’t in a situation like this, where there is nothing substantive I can offer to the case, only my physical presence so she can harass, manipulate, create high drama.
“And I told her not to make a big thing of it,” Steward says, and Donoghue probably has earned the distinction of being the most hated human being on his planet.
“What is there to make of anything if I haven’t caused a delay?”
“I’m sure you’re aware of what’s all over the news, Kay.”
“The body I just recovered has nothing to do with this, and I certainly can’t get into it, and I won’t.” I don’t mean to sound impatient or entitled, but I’m weary of courtroom antics and what I’ve come to call magic tricks.
Maybe total disillusionment better describes what I feel, because it’s simply stunning what defense attorneys manage to pull out of their hats these days. The more unbelievable and illogical the tactic, the more they seem to get away with it, and I’m not far from being entirely cynical about a process I used to believe in, at times unsure the jury system works anymore.
“Well, she just blasted a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the Gloucester investigator, not Kefe, thank God, because he’s dumb as dirt, but Lorey, who went away very unhappy. I feel kind of bad leaving him up there as long as I did during cross, but as a result technically nothing has been delayed,” Steward says to my chest. “But what happens next isn’t my call. And the judge happens to have a bit of a hard-on for her.”
“I’m really sorry, Dan. But not even two hours ago I had on a drysuit and dive mask and was recovering a dead body that I’m in a very big hurry to get back to.” I look out at the harbor, at a plane taking off from Logan and a red oil tanker gliding out to sea, and I can barely make out the Boston lighthouse jutting up in a volatile dark sky that threatens rain. “It was either be late for what truly is frivolous testimony or possibly lose evidence in what I’m fairly certain is a homicide.”
“That’s what I suspect Jill the cobra fully intends to spit into your eyes.” Steward shuffles through a folder filled with notes he’s made on sheets of yellow legal paper, and he seems rankled by my reference to frivolous testimony. “She hammered Lorey to a damn pulp about the obvious problem of there being no body in this case and the lack of scientific evidence, planting the usual doubts in the minds of the jurors, because no one seems to believe in circumstantial evidence anymore.”
“As we’ve discussed, these types of cases are extremely difficult. . . .”
“I mean, come on. His wife is recorded on the security camera going out of the house at night because she hears something, is obviously talking to someone she knows outside in the pitch dark, and vanishes. Never to be seen again.” He talks over me in his irritating reedy voice. “Evidence on her husband’s laptop shows he’d been shopping around for someone to murder her for a hundred grand, and that’s not enough to send him away for the rest of his life?”
“It’s not my case, for the very reasons you’re citing,” I remind him. “Her body hasn’t been found, and I’ve had nothing to do with the investigation beyond looking over medical records and your asking my opinion.” I refrain from adding that I’m here right now against my will because of him, and he of all people should have known that if he asked me anything in writing and I replied in writing, it would be discoverable.
Especially if the opposing counsel is Jill Donoghue, who at this moment is heading in our direction, carrying a to-go cup of coffee, stunning in a fitted olive-green suit with wide lapels and a slim skirt, her long, dark hair softly curled with bangs. One of the most feared defense attorneys in Massachusetts, it doesn’t help that she’s quite beautiful, a graduate of Harvard Law School who last year was the president of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
She participates in workshops and seminars at the Federal Judicial Center, where I’ve run into her on a number of occasions, her expertise electronic discovery, which of course includes e-mails. I can’t help but suspect that Steward deliberately set me up for exactly what I’m getting because he wants to sic me on his nemesis, as if I’m his pet pit bull when in fact what he’s manipulated more likely has given Donoghue an advantage.