Why would he? Any opinion they might offer on the witness stand would be followed by the obvious, and devastating, defense query: “Doctor, have you examined the accused?”
Next to me Leisure was smiling. This was his handiwork, but Darrow’s delivery was priceless.
“Your objection is overruled, Mr. Kelley,” Judge Davis said. “You may continue questioning along these lines, Mr. Darrow.”
And he did. Probing gently, Darrow withdrew from Tommie his tale of the Ala Wai Inn party and his search for his wife, as the party wound down; how he’d finally reached Thalia by phone to hear her cry, “Come home at once! Something awful has happened!” And in excruciating detail, Tommie told of Thalia’s description to him of the injuries and indignities she’d endured.
“She said Kahahawai had beaten her more than anyone,” Tommie said. “She said when Kahahawai assaulted her, she prayed for mercy and his answer was to hit her in the jaw.”
At the defense table, Mrs. Fortescue’s stoic, noble mask began to quiver; tears rolled down her flushed cheeks, unattended, as her son-in-law described her daughter’s suffering.
“She said over and over again,” Tommie was saying, “why hadn’t the men just killed her? She wished they’d killed her.”
Many of the women in the gallery were weeping now; sobbing.
“The followin’ day,” Tommie said, “when she was in the hospital, the police brought in the four assailants.”
Kelley, remaining seated, said quietly, “Your Honor, I object to the use of the word ‘assailants.’”
Darrow turned to Kelley, shrugged, said, “‘Alleged assailants,’ then. Or suppose we call them four men?”
“She said these four men were the ones,” Tommie said, lips twisting as if he were tasting something foul. “I said, ‘Don’t let there be any doubt about it,’ and she said, ‘Don’t you think if there were any doubt I could never draw another easy breath?’”
This slice of melodrama seemed a little ripe to me; I didn’t know how the rest of the room was taking it, but to me Tommie’s Little Theater background was showing. And in trying too hard, he had introduced, at least vaguely, Thalia Massie’s possible doubts about the identity of Ida and company.
Darrow steered Tommie gently back on course, drawing from him a description of the faithful days and nights he’d spent at the hospital and at home, nursing his beloved bride back to health. Tommie described nightmares of Thalia’s from which she awoke screaming, “Kahahawai is here!”
“Could you ever get the incident out of your mind?” Darrow asked.
“Never! And then the rumors started…vile…rotten! We were gettin’ a divorce, I’d found my wife in bed with a fellow officer, I’d beaten her myself, a crowd of naval officers assaulted her, she wasn’t assaulted at all…every stupid foul variation you could imagine. It got to where I couldn’t stand crowds, couldn’t look people in the face. I couldn’t sleep, I would get up and pace the floor and all I could see was the picture of my wife’s crushed face…. I felt so miserable I wanted to take a knife and cut my brain out of my head!”
Considering what Tommie had just said, Darrow’s next question seemed almost comical. “Did you consult a doctor?”
“Yes, but I was more concerned with what a lawyer thought. I was advised that the best way to stop these vicious rumors was to get a signed confession from one of the…four men. I’d heard Kahahawai was gettin’ ready to crack, and spoke to my mother-in-law…”
“Other than these rumors,” Darrow asked gently, “did anything else prey upon your mind?”
“Y-yes. We knew an operation was necessary to…prevent pregnancy.”
This was dangerous ground. I knew that Darrow knew Thalia had not been pregnant; I wasn’t sure if Tommie knew, and God only knew if Kelley knew….
Yet Darrow pressed on: “Were you sure she was pregnant?”
“There could be no doubt.”
Kelley was going through some papers; did he have the medical report signed by Darrow’s friend Dr. Porter?
But still Darrow continued: “Could the pregnancy have been due to you?”
“No. It couldn’t have been.”
“Was it done, the operation?”
“Yes. I took her to the hospital and Dr. Porter performed it. This…this had a strange effect on my mind.”
And Tommie began to weep.
Kelley wasn’t making a move; if he did have the card, he’d decided not to play it. It was clear Tommie believed Thalia had been pregnant; he wasn’t that good an actor.
“It’s getting late in the day, Your Honor,” Darrow said sorrowfully. “Might I request an adjournment until tomorrow?”
The judge accepted Darrow’s suggestion with no objection from Kelley. Mrs. Fortescue bolted from the defense table to guide her son-in-law off the stand. With her arm around the child-man’s shoulder, the tall woman walked up the aisle of a courtroom filled with teary-eyed haole women as Chang Apana led Tommie and Mrs. Fortescue and the two gobs to their Shore Patrol escorts.
At the next session, as Tommie again took the stand, Darrow faced the judge and dropped a bombshell that blew Kelley immediately to his feet.
“Your Honor,” Darrow said, a thumb in one of his suspenders, “there seems to be a little misunderstanding between the prosecutor and myself and I’d like to set it right. We are willing to state that Lt. Massie held the gun that fired the fatal shot.”
A tidal wave of reaction rolled over the gallery and the judge gaveled the courtroom to silence.
Darrow continued, as if he hadn’t noticed the stir he’d caused: “Now, Lieutenant, if we can get back to these rumors that had been plaguing you and your wife…”
Kelley said in a machine-gun burst of words: “Even with this admission, Your Honor, this line of questioning involving the Ala Moana case is admissible only under a plea of insanity, and even so, any information supplied to Lt. Massie by his wife and others in reference to that case is hearsay and should be stricken from the record.”
“Your Honor,” Darrow said patiently, “we expect the evidence to show that this defendant was insane. I did not say that he would testify that he killed the deceased. We will show that the gun was in his hand when the shot was fired…but whether Lt. Massie knew what he was doing at the time is another question.”
Judge Davis thought about that, then said, “Mr. Kelley, it appears that the defense is relying on the defense of insanity and that the witness now on the stand fired the fatal shot. This opens the door for testimony bearing on the defendant’s state of mind.”
“My objection has been met, Your Honor,” Kelley said. “However, we feel we’re entitled at this time to know the type of insanity Lt. Massie is alleged to have been laboring under when he fired the shot.”
Darrow said, “Come now, Mr. Kelley, surely you’re aware that even leading experts use different terminology for identical psychological disorders. Your Honor, may I resume my examination of the witness?”
“You may,” the judge said.
Kelley, seeming for the first time flustered, returned to his seat.
Darrow patiently took Tommie through the formation of the abduction plot, from discussions with his mother-in-law to his first meetings with Jones and Lord.
“Was the purpose of your plan to kill the deceased?”
“Certainly not!”
Finally Darrow had reached the point in Tommie’s story where, back on the Alton in that first interview, C.D. had refused to let his client continue.
Now, here in court, I would finally hear the “true” story.
“I drove to Mrs. Fortescue’s house, up into the garage,” Tommie said. “When I got inside, in the kitchen, I took Jones’s gun from the counter.”
“That was a .32?”
Tommie was almost motionless, and machine precise as he testified. “A .32, yes sir. And I called out and said, ‘All right, come in—Major Ross is in here.’ Kahahawai still believed he was on his way to see the major. I took off my dark glasses and gloves—the chauffeur apparel—and then we were all in the livin’ room, Kahahawai sittin’ down in a chair. Mrs. Fortescue and Lord came in. Stood nearby as I went over and confronted Kahahawai. I had the gun in my hand.”