Gina, though chastened, nevertheless felt emboldened by her new knowledge about the probable murder of Kelley Rusnak, and tried to open a discussion with the judge concerning the relevance of
PII issues to the matter at hand. Unfortunately for Gina, in his free time yesterday afternoon, Toynbee had reviewed the proposed testimony of Bethany Robley and had found it reasonably compelling. Clearly, in spite of the incredible unlikelihood of Kelley's and Caryn's murders being unrelated, Stuart still seemed very much the main suspect in Caryn Dryden's murder in Toynbee's mind. This was disconcerting, to say the least, and made Gina wonder if the judge was somehow privy to information she'd not been made aware of. She was about to find out.
When she walked into the courtroom from behind the judge's bench, she was immediately struck by the hostility in the air. It was ugly back there, the gallery packed with many more people than there had been yesterday, when it was merely SRO. Abrams still had most of his usual allies: Jackman for the second day in a row, when his presence in a courtroom was normally a newsworthy event on its own; more uniforms; the neighbors she recognized as witnesses; Bethany Robley today in the front row, next to an obviously angry black man who, Gina thought, must be her father.
She wondered about the psychology of the mob. Stuart, after all, was the one who'd been attacked. And yet, somehow, this crowd seemed, if possible, more weighted against him than the one yesterday. When the bailiff opened the back door and let Stuart into the courtroom-this was before Toynbee had taken the bench-the ominous rumble behind her in the gallery was enough to make the hairs on Gina's neck stand up. What was that about? she wondered.
Her client still sported the bandage from yesterday's attack, and looked positively worn down and exhausted. They should feel sympathy for him, if for anybody. At least, Gina thought that until she realized that most of these people undoubtedly still believed that Stuart had killed his wife-after all, he'd been arrested for it!-and on top of that, that he'd threatened this young, sweet, shy, A-student witness, whom the Chronicle had also profiled that morning.
For his part, Stuart got to the table and paid no attention to the gallery, instead leaning over and whispering to Gina, "I'm so sorry about last night. I didn't mean to yell at you. You're the only one holding this together. I'm just not ready to accept Kym as any part of this. Can you understand that?"
Her jaw set, Gina could only nod. Just.
"Miss Robley," Abrams began. "Would it be okay if I called you Bethany?"
She answered in a small voice, her voice shaky, her eyes darting over to Stuart, out to her father, back to Abrams. Terrified. "That would be fine," she said.
"Bethany, would you tell the court what you were doing at around eleven thirty on Sunday night, September eleventh, of this year."
"Sure." But she hesitated before beginning, chancing one more look at all these adults who were either tormenting or supporting her.
In the last couple of weeks, especially since those terrible first days before she had told her mother about the threat to her that Kymberly had delivered, she had come to some fundamental decisions about who was on her side and who wasn't. Before, she had always liked Mr. Gorman-enough to be comfortable calling him Stuart, for example-but she'd always known that when he lost his temper, he could be terrifying.
The time that stuck in her mind the most was once when they all were skiing and this snowboarder came from out of nowhere from behind them and smashed into Kymberly, going pretty much full speed. After Stuart made sure that his daughter wasn't seriously injured, he skied down to where the boarder had fallen, moaning in the snow. Bethany would never forget not only the look in Stuart's eyes, but the true sense she had that he was going to stab the kid with his pole. As it was, he picked him up-an adult-size kid-and yelling and swearing at him the whole time that he ought to watch where the fuck he was going, he slammed him back down onto the hard-packed snow a couple of times before he got himself back under control.
He had talked about it half the way home, too, saying he wished he had hurt the kid more. He'd missed his chance. But at least he'd intimidated the snowboarder enough to get his address and phone number, in case there were complications with Kymberly. He told the girls he was still considering looking the guy up and hunting him down. Bethany thought at the time he was mostly kidding, blowing off steam-but even so, it wasn't funny kidding. She believed he really might do it.
Now she dared a quick glance at this man who, she'd convinced herself, had absolutely clearly told her that if she went ahead and testified against him, something really bad was going to happen to her. That was all the proof she needed that he'd actually killed his wife.
Watching the young woman's hesitation as she assessed the danger Stuart posed to her, as she then turned and waited for the nods of assurance from Gerry Abrams and from her father, Gina suddenly felt a stab of panic. She had studied and well knew the psychology of ter-ror-from the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages came to admire and even love their captors, to a situation such as this one.
Gina's instinct now told her that Bethany had come to the un-shakeable conclusion that Stuart was a dangerous man who needed to be put away, and that was all there was to it. In the past ten days, that nascent belief had grown to a dead certainty within her. The stress and responsibility placed on her, her willingness and even need to please her protectors, and the intense coaching she'd received from Gerry Abrams and her parents-there was much literature documenting that factors such as these could actually conspire to change Bethany's wiring, down to the level of her synapses, and this in turn might affect the actual details in her memory. Her certainty about what she must have seen in her mind might now be indistinguishable from what she actually had seen. And if that were the case, they were in big, big trouble.
Gina leaned over and whispered to Stuart. "Don't look back at her. And no matter what she says, stay cool."
And now, on the stand, Bethany brought her gaze back to the center of the courtroom. Getting a confident nod from her protector, Gerry Abrams, she began. "Well, I was doing homework in my room, but it was getting to be about eleven thirty, which is my bedtime. I closed my books and was going in to brush my teeth and get ready for bed when I looked out my bedroom window and saw a car pulling up to the house across the street. And then the garage door coming open."
"Did you recognize the car, Bethany?"
"Yes. I'd ridden in it many times. It belonged to my neighbor across the street."
"And do you see that neighbor in the courtroom today?"
Desperate to break up the rhythm of Bethany's testimony, Gina recognized an early opportunity and stood up. "Objection. I'm sorry, Your Honor. Vague. Does counsel mean the neighbor who owns the car? Because there's been no testimony that the witness saw the driver of the car that night."
"Obviously," Abrams responded, "the question calls for an identification of the neighbor who owned the car, and I'd ask that Ms. Roake be admonished not to interrupt the testimony of an already-uncomfortable witness with frivolous objections."
If nothing else, the objection had succeeded in slowing things down.
Toynbee, whose earlier sunnier disposition seemed in the light of his own current intensity as though it must have been an apparition, was not thrilled with the exchange. "All right, both of you," he said. "That's strike two. Ms. Roake, your objection is overruled. The question was obviously proper. Mr. Abrams, when I need your advice on how to run my courtroom, I'll ask for it. I swear to you, if the two of you don't settle down, somebody's going to walk out of here with a lighter pocketbook."
Abrams went apoplectic. "Your Honor, I haven't done-"
The judge glared, grabbed his gavel and slammed it down, shutting him up. "I've ruled on the objection, Counselor," he said in a firm tone. "You may continue questioning your witness."