“Do you remember going with your husband to the Ala Wai Inn on a certain night last September?”
“Yes. We went to a dance.”
“Did you have anything to drink?”
“Half of a highball. I don’t much care for liquor.”
“When did you leave the dance?”
“About eleven-thirty-five at night.”
“And where were you going?”
“I planned to walk around the corner and back.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I was tired and bored.”
“Where was Tommie?”
“When I saw him last he was dancing.”
“And where did you go?”
“I started walking toward Waikiki Beach.”
“I see. And tell me, where were you when something…unusual happened?”
Kelley was on his feet. “Once again, Your Honor, we are not here to retry the Ala Moana case. I must object to this line of questioning.”
Darrow’s smile was a mixture of benevolence and condescension. “Your Honor, all of this has bearing on Lt. Massie’s state of mind.”
Kelley was shaking his head, no. “What happened to this witness has no direct bearing on the sanity issue—the only pertinent question, Your Honor, is what she told her husband.”
A hissing arose from the gallery. The judge slammed his gavel twice, and frightened the snake into silence.
“Mr. Darrow,” Judge Davis said, “you will confine your questions to what Mrs. Massie told her husband, and what he told her.”
“Very well, Your Honor. Mrs. Massie, when did you next see Tommie? After you left the Inn?”
“About one o’clock in the morning. I’d finally reached my own home, and Lt. Massie telephoned me and I said, ‘Please come home right away, because something awful…’”
But that’s as far as she got. She buried her face in her hands, and her sobs echoed in the chamber. There was nothing Little Theater about it: this was real agony, and sent the ladies of the gallery dipping for their hankies in their purses.
Darrow’s expression was cheerless, but I knew within that sunken old breast, he was jumping for joy. Thalia’s cold-fish demeanor had transformed into the open sorrow of a wronged young woman.
Down from me at the table, Mrs. Fortescue, who’d been watching her daughter, eyes bright, chin up, reached for the sweating pitcher of ice water on the defense table and poured a glass. She pushed it down to Leisure, who nodded and rose, taking the glass up to Thalia. Leisure stayed up there, with Darrow, waiting for their witness to compose herself; it took a couple minutes.
Then Leisure took his seat, and Darrow resumed his questioning.
“What did you tell Tommie when he came home?”
“He asked me what happened. I…I didn’t want to tell him because it was so terrible….”
But she had told him, and now she told the jury, in all its awful detail, how she’d been beaten and raped, how Kahahawai had broken her jaw, how she’d not been allowed to pray, how one after another, they had assaulted her.
“I said, ‘You will knock my teeth out!’ He said, ‘What do I care, shut up, you…’ He called me something filthy. And the others stood around and laughed—”
“Your Honor,” Kelley said, sighing, not rising, “I don’t want to be interjecting constant objections, but she’s only allowed to say what she told her husband. That was your ruling.”
Darrow turned toward Kelley with startling swiftness for such an old man, and his tone was hard and low. “This is hardly the time to be making objections.”
Kelley’s voice had equal edge: “I haven’t been making enough of them!”
“Mr. Darrow,” the judge began, “confine yourself to…”
But Thalia took that cue to break down again. Judge Davis and everyone else waited for her sobs to subside, and then Darrow patiently led her through a recital of how she’d identified her attackers at the hospital, and how “wonderful” and “attentive” Tommie had been to her during her recovery.
“He took such good care of me,” she said, lips quivering. “He never complained about how often I woke him at night.”
“Did you notice any change in your husband’s behavior?”
“Oh yes. He never wanted to go out—the rumors bothered him so—and he didn’t sleep, he’d pace up and down the living room smoking cigarettes. He barely ate. He got so thin.”
“Did you know what he and your mother and the two sailors were planning?”
“No. Absolutely not. Once or twice Tommie said it would be wonderful to get a confession. I mean, it was always worrying him. I wanted him to forget about it, but he couldn’t.”
“On the day Joseph Kahahawai died, how did you learn what had happened?”
“Seaman Jones came to my door around ten o’clock.”
“Before or after the killing?”
“After! He came in and said all excitedly, ‘Here, take this,’ and gave me a gun, ‘Kahahawai has been killed!’ I asked him where Tommie was and he said he’d sent Tommie off with Mother in the car.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He asked me for a drink. I fixed him a highball. He drank it and said, ‘That’s not enough,’ so I filled his glass again. He was as pale as a ghost.”
So was she.
The tears of the witness and those of the gallery had ebbed; the emotional tenor had finally evened out. It was a good stopping place, and Darrow dismissed the witness.
“Your Honor,” Darrow said, “may I suggest we recess for the day, and not subject this witness to cross-examination at this time?”
Kelley was already approaching the witness stand. “Your Honor, I just have a few questions.”
“We’ll proceed,” the judge said.
Thalia shifted in her seat as Kelley moved in; her body seemed to stiffen, and her face took on a defiant cast, her mouth taking on a faint, defensive smirk. Darrow, taking his seat at the defense table, smiled at her, nodding his support, but I knew the old boy was worried: I could see the tightness around his eyes.
“Mrs. Massie, do you remember Captain Mclntosh and some other police coming to your house?”
“Yes.” Her tone was snippy.
“Did a telephone call come in that was answered by Jones?”
“No.” The smirk turned into a sneer.
Before our very eyes, the noble wronged wife was transmuting herself into an angry, bitchy child.
“Are you quite sure, Mrs. Massie?” Kelley stayed coldly polite.
She shifted stiffly in the chair. “Yes.”
“Well, perhaps you answered it and Jones asked who was calling.”
“No.”
“Who is Leo Pace?”
“Lt. Pace is commander of the S-34.”
“Your husband’s submarine commander.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember Jones going to the telephone and saying, ‘Leo—you’ve got to help Massie cover this up. Help us all cover this up.’ Words to that effect.”
“No! Jones would never address an officer by his first name.”
“Didn’t Jones refer to your husband as ‘Massie’ in front of the police?”
“He didn’t dare do it in my presence!”
I looked down at Darrow; his eyes were closed. This was as bad as Tommie’s similar remark about resenting familiarity from the enlisted man who helped him pull a kidnapping.
“Mrs. Massie, didn’t you instruct your maid, Beatrice Nakamura, to tell the police that Jones came over to your house not at ten, but at eight?”
“No.”
“Really. I can call Miss Nakamura to the stand, if you wish, Mrs. Massie.”
“That’s not what I told her.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her to say that he arrived a little after she came to work.”
“And when is that?”
“Eight-thirty.”
Thalia was displaying her remarkable ability to shift time; this was, after all, the same girl who had left the Ala Wai Inn at, variously, midnight, twelve-thirty, one o’clock, and (finally, at the cops’ request to fit the needs of their case) eleven-thirty-five.