"So do you remember, Bethany, the exact time? Was it, for example, after you came to believe that Stuart had threatened you?"
"No! I knew it before then. I knew it right away."
"Then why didn't you say anything about it?"
"I don't know. I guess I didn't know how important it would be."
Gina paused to compose herself. Despite her best efforts, she found herself enraged. "Bethany," she asked, forcing a pleasant expression, "I read in the newspaper this morning that you've got a grade point average of four point two, one of the highest in your class, don't you?"
"Yes." Perking up a bit.
"And Inspector Juhle asked you specifically how you recognized the car, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"And you knew it was an important question, didn't you?" "Well, not exactly."
"Well, you knew that you recognized the car because of the license plate, right?"
"Yes."
"And you were telling the whole truth, right? Not holding anything back?"
"Yes." Her voice smaller.
"But Bethany, isn't it true that right up until today in court, you never said during any of your other taped interviews that you remembered the license plate? Isn't that true? How could a smart girl like you not recognize the importance of that information?"
"Your Honor!" Abrams called out in outrage. "This is badgering heaped upon insult!"
Damn right it is, she thought. And every word on purpose.
But as Toynbee sustained the objection, Gina nodded meekly. "I'll withdraw the question, Your Honor."
Without Kymberly Gorman available as a witness to refute Bethany's testimony on the alleged threat, Gina didn't think she could make any points revisiting the subject. Clearly, whatever words Bethany had heard, she'd interpreted as threatening. That was her reality, reinforced by her mother's acceptance of it, steeled in the forge of yesterday's attack on Stuart, and Gina couldn't really see any point in trying to change it. Without having accomplished much with Bethany, Gina reluctantly dismissed the witness.
She very much expected Abrams to call as witnesses the two neighbors who'd testified about the fights at Stuart's house, as well as some or all four of the officers who'd responded to the domestic disturbance calls. All of these people were already waiting outside the courtroom. As was Debra Dryden, whom Abrams presumably was going to question regarding her five-day idyll with Stuart up in the mountains.
But evidently Bethany's unambiguous testimony that it was Stuart's car at the murder scene, and Gina's inability to shake that, had convinced Abrams to quit while he was ahead. Certainly, Bethany's eyewitness identification of Stuart's car seemed to put him at the house at the time of death. Since he denied being there, the only reasonable explanation was that he had killed his wife. That having been established, Abrams clearly decided that he wanted to save the remaining witnesses for trial, so he'd have something to show Stuart's defense team next time around that it hadn't already seen and analyzed.
So, much to Gina's surprise, when Bethany had left the courtroom, Abrams rested the People's case. Judge Toynbee asked Gina if she would be ready to begin calling her witnesses after lunch. She told him she would, and he brought down his gavel and called the recess.
Thirty-five
When Gina finally got home that evening, it was at a little after seven o'clock. She walked into her bedroom and changed out of her court clothes. Normally, she coped with enervation and mental fatigue by putting some miles on her running shoes, and she reached almost automatically for her sweats, but then stopped herself. There was very little that was normal about the bone-weariness she was experiencing now.
At last, feeling guilty about the lazy slug she had become, nevertheless she changed instead into some baggy chinos and a black tank top.
Catching sight of herself in the mirror on the closet door, she brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead and tried to smooth away the darkness under her eyes. Sighing, she went barefoot out to the kitchen and ran hot water over a washcloth, which she applied to her face, then made it a few more steps onto the living room rug before she all but collapsed, folding upon herself down to the floor.
Now, pole-axed from the rigors of the day, she lay flat on her
back, awake but nearly unconscious, her chest slowly rising and falling, the tepid washcloth folded over her eyes.
The afternoon session had been grueling and frustrating, which she would have gladly endured had it been effective as well. But it had not been; it had been a disaster.
She'd known that she had to try to get PII somehow into the record, and she'd called Fred Furth, thinking to have him elucidate Caryn's connection with the company, her concerns over the clinical trials data, her professional relationship not only with Furth himself, but with Bill Blair and Kelley Rusnak. Abrams, his objections perhaps numbering close to fifty, had been a bulldog. In the end, having never established a rhythm or even the tiniest objective relevancy to whatever had happened to Caryn, she'd had to excuse Furth without her theory gaining much traction.
So her assault on Robert McAfee, trying to establish him as another legitimate suspect, had begun with her on the defensive. The court had just formally warned her not to waste its time. And as she began her direct, she couldn't completely escape the conclusion that this was exactly what she was doing. True, McAfee appeared to have had a strong motive to have killed Caryn. True, they'd been lovers once and might have been again. Yes, he stood to gain financially and professionally from her death. Finally, his alibi for the night of the event had just gone south.
But the plain fact remained that there was no hint of McAfee's involvement on any level with PII, or with Kelley Rusnak. And without that, Gina knew in her heart that in her exhaustive attempt to implicate the doctor, she was really just whistling Dixie. The theory was probably arguable, but at best it was no less a sham than Abrams' attempt to portray Stuart's drive down the Peninsula as a flight from justice that screamed consciousness of guilt. The underlying cynicism of it had worn her down as she went on, until at last she couldn't even take pleasure in shattering McAfee's alibi, which didn't stop her from doing it.
So she'd spent almost the entire afternoon smearing the name and reputation of a probably pretty decent guy, whose only mistake had been forgetting that he'd gone out one night after a day with his kids to buy some Ovaltine so he could get some sleep. Gina no longer thought it was reasonable that Bob McAfee had killed Caryn. She didn't even believe that implicating him would do any good for her client. Not as far as Toynbee was concerned. The fact that there might be another plausible suspect in no way removed Stuart from suspicion; Gina wasn't proposing that McAfee had been driving Stuart's car, was she? But she'd gone ahead anyway. Building nothing, but hammering nails all day just the same.
The thought of it, of the damage she'd done to the doctor's good name, made her sick.
She put her hands up to the washcloth and pressed the now-cool cloth down on her eyes.
"I thought we were going to stop meeting like this," Gina said.
Wyatt Hunt stood in her doorway. "I know," he said. "We were. It just got too hard." The rain had stopped. He stepped out of the wet cloud that hovered at street level into Gina's apartment again. "Miracles do happen," he said, "I don't care what they say."
"What's the miracle?"
"I figured I'd get it over with, so I called Devin after work and mentioned your idea that he could still do some good around this case. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic, but luckily I happened to mention that he could even become an actual hero if he wasn't careful. I happen to know," Hunt said modestly with a self-deprecating smile, "that the guy's got a bit of a hero complex and that this was the magic word. Anyway, he had me make a call to Kymberly's number and since there was a subpoena out on her anyway, there wasn't even a conflict with him using his magic GPS positioning and calling out some troops to run her down."