Paige gnawed at the corner of her lip and twisted a handkerchief in her hands. "No. I haven't got much family. Distant relatives are all. And my closest girlfriend told me to forget about going through a trial, to walk away from the whole thing."
My paralegal, Maxine, would be her anchor during the trial. They had worked together since Paige's first interview here, and I had encouraged them to talk to each other regularly. Maxine would be the virtual handholder for her through these next difficult hours.
"Do you think Andrew will take the stand?"
"I haven't a clue at this point, Paige." So much of that will depend on how you do, I thought to myself. Robelon did not have to make that decision until I had completed my case and rested. If Paige held up well throughout cross-examination, then he might gauge it necessary to let Andrew Tripping speak to the jurors. It could be a real problem for the defense, since the "bad acts" that had been ruled inadmissible on my direct case were things I could question him about if he chose to testify on his own behalf.
She could see that I was frustrated by my inability to give her definite answers about so much of what we were facing. "It seems so unbalanced," she said, forcing a wan smile. "You have to tell them everything about your case, and about me, but they don't have any obligation to do the same."
I returned the smile. "You've got to relax a bit and let me worry about that. It's a very uneven playing field, but Mercer and I are used to it."
I stood up to move Paige into the adjacent conference room and give her a newspaper to read for the time remaining before we went to court. "Alex, one more thing. Did you get a ruling about my sexual history? I mean, can Mr. Robelon ask about other men I've had intercourse with?" She colored deeply as she spoke to me.
We had talked about this issue before. "I thought I explained this to you," I said, sitting down again so I could look Paige directly in the eye. "That's why I gave you such a hard time about exactly what went on between you and Andrew on the three occasions you were together."
Like every witness I interviewed, I had pressed her aggressively about whether there was any kind of sexual overture or foreplay before the rape. It was common for many women to minimize or omit that fact from their narratives, fearful that a prosecutor would refuse to entertain a case in which there had been any sort of consensual conduct leading up to the crime.
"I've told you the truth about that, Alex."
"Then why are you worried? Nothing else is relevant."
"I went on-line last night," she said, now wringing the handkerchief between her hands. "I started to look up articles about cases that had been written up in the newspapers. Sort of to see what to expect."
I guess everything I had told her had not provided enough reassurance.
"I found a long feature in the Times that quoted you last year, talking about how bad the laws used to be. It kept me up all night."
"That's old news, Paige. That's all changed now." Rape shield laws had passed in every state in America in the last quarter of the twentieth century, protecting victims from questioning about their sexual activity with men other than the defendant. But until that time, a woman who had ever had intercourse prior to the rape-who was "unchaste"-was assumed to have consented to the act with the man on trial. The courts defined the ideal victim as a "virgin of uncontaminated purity."
"But that case you cited in the article?" she asked.
"It was decided before I got to law school. It's history, Paige."
At the time I studied the case, I had been stunned and disgusted that in my lifetime there was still a court in this country that threw out a man's rape conviction because the accuser had not been a virgin. Using the flowery rhetoric that referenced ancient Roman history, the court had asked: "Will you not more readily infer assent in the practiced Messalina, in loose attire, than in the reserved and virtuous Lucretia?" The unfaithful wife of Claudius was the Eighth Judicial Circuit's vision of an unfit victim, just as they held up to the world the virtuous Lucretia, who killed herself rather than see her rapist brought to justice.
"There'd have to be some direct relevance to Andrew's case," I told her. "They just can't go fishing into your private life anymore."
"C'mon, Paige," Mercer said, leading her out to the conference room. "Alex'll rip the throat out of anybody who tries to go after you that way. Won't happen."
They were almost at my door when she turned to look at me. "There's something else I need to tell you, Alex."
My fingers froze on the sheaf of papers in my hand. I was less than an hour away from addressing the jury. If Paige had not been honest with me about some fact in the case, this was my last chance to make that discovery.
"I had a phone call last night from a man I was-well-was involved with."
"Sexually?" Mercer asked. There wasn't enough time to be subtle.
"Socially, first. Then, yes, sexually."
Now I was standing, too. "Let's cut to the chase. Does it have anything to do with Andrew Tripping? With this trial?"
"It might." Paige's teeth were practically biting through her lip as she hesitated.
"The reason he called was to try to persuade me not to testify today."
"Someone threatened you?" I asked, as Mercer spoke over me, trying to get the man's name at the same time.
Her head swung back and forth between the two of us. "I can't exactly call it a threat. But it seems he talked to Andrew yesterday. He actually came to the courtroom and met with him."
I slapped my hand on the desk as I looked at Mercer. There hadn't been many people in Moffett's trial part, and I thought immediately of the lawyer who was the young boy's legal guardian. "Graham Hoyt," I said aloud. "The kid's lawyer."
"No, no. I don't know who that is. That's not his name," Paige protested. "It's Harry Strait, the one I'm talking about. He's a government agent, like Andrew Tripping claims to have been. He's with the CIA, I think."
10
"And at the conclusion of the case, ladies and gentlemen, I will again have the opportunity to stand before you," I said, walking to the defense table and stopping directly in front of Andrew Tripping. If I wanted the twelve good people in the box to look him in the eye and declare him guilty, I needed to show them that I was not afraid to do that myself. "At that time, I will ask you to consider the testimony of the witnesses who appeared before you, discuss the evidence that has been presented, and find this defendant guilty of the crimes with which he is charged."
Thorough, calm, understated. I had given them the basic elements of the crime, read the indictment, and previewed Paige Vallis's story. That way, when she gave them more, they would be surprised and somewhat pleased that I had not promised anything I could not deliver. Dulles Tripping, though essential to this case, was practically a footnote, so uncertain was I of the role he would be allowed to play.
Robelon was cool. He started his presentation at the podium, but then stood behind his client's seat, placing his hands on Tripping's shoulders. He was embracing the falsely accused man, as it were, just as Emily Frith leaned in to pat the defendant on the forearm.
He was staying away from specifics, laying in the general picture of the struggling single-parent father, trying to put bread on the table and care for a rambunctious child.
He didn't make my witness out to be a monster, but the under-current was set in motion.
The foundation he was building on would lead him to sum up, I assumed, with a description of Paige Vallis as emotionally unstable, socially insecure, confused by Andrew's mixed signals, and insensitive to his personal travails.
"Don't be taken in by Ms. Cooper, sitting here all alone at counsel table, while the three of us do our job with her witnesses," Robelon said, with a wink at the panel. I always liked that dynamic, assuming some jurors would cast me in the role of the underdog going against the triad of the defense team. In this instance, I thought, glancing across at them, they looked like corporate travelers sitting abreast in the business-class section of a New York to Chicago flight.