“But you had no other witness, did you?”
“Leesa had told her friends of the abuse.”
“That was hearsay, and so not admissible. And the pediatrician, as we’ve heard already from Detective Torricelli, saw no indications of abuse. Did you have any other witnesses or admissible evidence on the abuse issue?”
“Not at that point, but I was looking for others.”
“Now, in his responsive pleadings, Mr. Dubé alleged that his wife was addicted to painkillers, often dumped her daughter at her mother’s house while she went on unexplained trips out of town, and was in many ways an unfit mother, isn’t that right?”
“Those were his allegations.”
“Did he have witnesses to back up those allegations?”
“He claimed he did.”
“You depose them?”
“Some of them, yes.”
“How’d the depositions go?”
“There were avenues to discredit the testimony.”
“I’ve been a lawyer long enough to interpret that. The testimony was pretty strong, wasn’t it?”
“It had some strength to it, yes.”
“Mr. Gullicksen, in your opinion was there a chance that Leesa would lose custody?”
“Objection as to relevance of the witness’s opinion,” said Mia Dalton.
“Mr. Carl? Is this whole line of questioning relevant?”
“Yes, Your Honor. I ask for some leeway here. I am not attempting to try the divorce case in this courtroom. But I do think it extremely relevant what Leesa Dubé’s lawyer thought of the case and what Mrs. Dubé thought of her chances in turn. Her fear of losing her child is at the heart of our defense.”
“Go ahead, then, but be careful.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Gullicksen, was there a chance that Leesa would lose custody?”
“Yes.”
“A pretty good chance?”
“A more-than-negligible chance.”
“And as per the ethical requirements of the Bar Association, you relayed that to your client?”
“I did.”
“How did she take it?”
“I can’t disclose anything she told me.”
“Of course not, but you can tell us her state of mind. How did she take the very real possibility of losing custody of her daughter, Amber, to the defendant?”
“Not well.”
“How about the money stuff? How was that looking?”
“There was going to be some alimony, absolutely. I was convinced we could get a significant amount of Mr. Dubé’s income, but, unfortunately, that income was limited. Child support depended on the custody issue, so that, too, was in doubt. And our investigation showed that there was really no equity in the restaurant, due to the financial structure of the business. So there was a chance that Leesa might have ended up with very little.”
“And you told her that, too?”
“Of course.”
“How’d she take that?”
Gullicksen smoothed back his hair. “Divorce is a very difficult time for all the parties.”
“She was upset?”
“You could say that.”
“Distraught at the possibilities?”
“If you choose to be dramatic about it, yes.”
“What would have helped, Mr. Gullicksen? How could she have improved the outlook of her case?”
“A divorce case is like every other type of trial. The quality of the lawyers is important, that’s why I get paid, but by and large it depends on the evidence.”
“So what she needed was more and better evidence, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you told that to Mrs. Dubé?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you tell her what kind of evidence might be most helpful?”
“I told her evidence that cast doubt on her husband’s ability to care for the child would be most valuable.”
“Evidence of drug use?”
“Absolutely.”
“Evidence of multiple sex partners?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Evidence of bizarre sexual perversions?”
He smiled and bared his teeth as if he were being offered a plump swimmer’s leg. “Such evidence is always helpful in these cases.”
“Did you suggest to Mrs. Dubé that she hire an investigator to see if such evidence existed?”
“I did, but she claimed she didn’t have sufficient funds after paying my retainer.”
“How much did you get up front, by the way?”
“Objection,” said Dalton.
“What’s the purpose of that question, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.
“Professional curiosity. I might be in the wrong branch of the business.”
“Objection sustained.”
“Thank you, Judge,” I said. “And thank you, Mr. Gullicksen. I have no further questions.”
65
I don’t know why I awoke when I did. There was a stillness in the air, and maybe that was it. I lived in the city, and in the early summer I kept my bedroom window open to the breeze, so I was serenaded to sleep each evening by the rise and fall of traffic, the distant horns, the laughter of passersby on my street having a better life than was I. But when I awoke that night, there was only the quiet. Maybe I was like the London man who was startled out of his slumber when Big Ben failed to chime.
Or maybe I was waiting for him. If so, he didn’t disappoint.
I was lying with my eyes open, letting the pieces of my consciousness fall together and adhere to one another, when the phone rang. My nerves reflexively jangled at the sound.
“Hello,” I said quickly.
No answer, and suddenly I knew who it was.
“It’s you, I suppose,” I said, without any desperation this time. In fact, if anything, my voice was downright hearty.
I heard nothing but the slight rasp of a breath.
“I figured you’d call again,” I said. “You don’t have anything to say? That’s okay. But please, don’t hang up. I have a special message especially for you.”
I waited a moment. The line stayed open.
“But before I relay the message” – was that a sigh I heard from the other end of the line? – “I wanted to tell you that there’s nothing personal in what I am doing. I like you, actually, against my better judgment maybe, but I do. And I sort of admire you, too. Those false classified ads were pretty funny. Annoying, yes, and you ruined my secretary’s day, what with all the people showing up for the paralegal job, but still, it was a pretty good gag. And the worst of it was those damn Labradoodles. My cell phone never stopped ringing. I turned it off to escape the desperate yapping of the callers, and whenever I turned it back on, there were, like, twenty new messages, all asking about Labradoodles. I still don’t know what the hell a Labradoodle is, it sounds like a kind of processed breakfast meat, but the demand, I can tell you, is insatiable.
“And I liked how you arranged to have those porno magazines scattered around my office with my name on the fake subscription labels. Cute. My secretary was not happy about that, first realizing what you had done and then searching high and low to see if she got them all. I’ll have you know I’ve taken them home with me, and I have spent hours scouring the evidence and I am still puzzled. Bottoms Up, I can understand, Jugs, sure, but Lesbian Grannies? Really? No wonder I’m having trouble sleeping. I can barely wait to see what you have in store for me next.
“But it isn’t the cleverness I most admire about you, or the wherewithal to inconvenience my life so. It’s the sense of obligation you have, the sense of mission. You like to help, you always say, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? More like an obsession. And I think I understand where it came from. But you have to understand, I have my own obligations. And my main obligation, right now, is to my client. Frankly, I don’t like François any more than I suppose you do, but still, he’s my client. That means something, at least to me. I have to do what I can to help him, and from where I’m sitting, to do that I have bring you into it all.
“You still there?”
I listened. Just the raspy breath, but it was enough.