“Tomorrow,” Donnelly said, “will be your first real test. The district attorney will offer in evidence pictures taken by Dr. Woodbridge, who performed the autopsy on Mrs. Pherson. His testimony will carry a lot of weight because he is the only forensic pathologist to see the actual body. The others who’ll take the stand have based their opinions on what may be regarded as secondhand information, tissue slides, lab tests of blood samples and the like. The credentials of these later pathologists may be equally impressive, and their opinions equally valid, but not to a jury. The district attorney is bound to repeat this over and over, that his pathologist is the only one to believe because he was the only one to see the actual body.”
“What kind of pictures will the jury be shown?”
“All kinds. The first will be of the body itself from various angles. After the clerk numbers each exhibit, it will be shown to the judge, then to me — and to you, since you’ll be sitting beside me — before it is passed along to the jury. All right, when you see the initial picture, how are you going to react?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“You’ve seen dead bodies before, haven’t you?”
“A few.”
“How did you feel?”
Cully considered this for a moment. “I felt, I’m glad it’s him and not me. And I felt very alive, you know, like going out and getting a woman. My blood was racing.”
“You will be looking at pictures of a woman you are accused of murdering. That ought to slow your blood down to a crawl. And while it’s crawling, you’ll have time to consider this fact: Twelve regular jurors, six alternates, and the thirteenth juror, the judge, will be watching your reactions as you study the pictures.”
The statement made Cully uneasy. “Well, how am I supposed to act to give them the right impression?”
“You are an ordinary man confronted with the picture of a woman drowned in the sea. Are you sorry for her?”
“Sure. Naturally.”
“So you will exhibit sorrow. Turn away, shaking your head, perhaps closing your eyes. I don’t suppose you cry easily.”
“I don’t know. I never tried.”
“When was the last time you cried?”
“I think it was at a movie.”
“You saw a dead person in a movie and it brought tears to your eyes?”
“No, it was a horse.”
“A horse?”
“It broke its leg and someone shot it. I don’t think it was fair, shooting a horse just because it broke its leg.”
“Forget the goddamn horse.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to imagine that I am showing you on this table the blowup of a picture of Madeline Pherson’s body when it was brought into the autopsy room. Remember, she didn’t want to die any more than the goddamn horse did. So how are you going to act?”
“I don’t see why you always get mad at me. I haven’t done anything.”
“Don’t change the subject. The picture is here on this table. Now look at it, dammit.”
“I’m looking.”
“Indicate shock, sorrow, pity.”
“All at once? That’s going to be hard.”
“One at a time,” Donnelly said through clenched teeth. “Now turn your head away, shaking it slightly, blinking your eyes.”
Cully did as he was told. His performance was ludicrously exaggerated as if he were on a large stage in front of thousands of people, not playing to an audience of one in a small, cold cubicle of a jail. “How’s that?”
“Can’t you make it more real?”
“If you make the picture more real.”
Donnelly wanted to laugh but didn’t. He had to keep this man under control, to avoid any camaraderie. “The pictures will be quite real tomorrow. And they will hit you. Whether or not you think you’re prepared, they will hit you. And my advice is to show some emotion. Don’t deadpan. I had a client a few months ago who dead-panned himself right into San Quentin, where he’ll spend the next ten years. In the adjoining courtroom another murder trial was going on. It was a vicious crime committed by a vicious man. The judge in the case had decided to permit television cameras during the trial. The murderer took full advantage of those cameras. Whenever one was aimed at him, he broke into the most heartrending sobs. Every night on the local news there was this clown crying up a storm. Both men were found guilty, but the deadpanner got ten years and the murderer got three.”
“You want me to sob?”
“I want you to show some emotion. If you feel bad, let the jurors see it.”
Both men were silent. The guard passed the window; the air conditioner whirred; someone screamed in the distance.
Cully said, “Do you always tell your clients how to act, like they had no feelings or brains or anything of their own?”
“No.”
“Why me? Do you think I’m going to make a fool of myself?”
“Whether you make a fool of yourself is your business. Whether you make a fool of me is mine, and I don’t intend to lose this case because some hard-nosed smartass won’t take advice.”
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that.”
“There’ll be others.”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“I’m not so crazy about talking to you either. But there are things we have to go over. What time did you and Mrs. Pherson arrive at the Bewitched?”
“About twenty-one hundred hours.”
“Better avoid sea slang. A jury is put off by expressions they don’t understand. Before I forget, there’s one more thing I want you to do which may turn out to be very important. Let me see your hands.”
Cully raised his hands, fingers spread apart.
“I see you bite your nails,” Donnelly said. “How long have you been doing that?”
“All my life. As long as I can remember anyway.”
“You’ll have to stop.”
“Why?”
“There isn’t time to go into it right now.”
“It’s tough to stop doing something you hardly know when you’re doing it, but I guess I can try.”
“Trying’s not good enough. Let your fingernails grow. Don’t bite, clip or file. Now to get back to Mrs. Pherson, what time did the two of you arrive at the Bewitched?”
“Between eight and nine o’clock.”
“What did you do for dinner?”
“Picked up a pizza on the way.”
“Not very French cuisine.”
“It was her idea, not mine. She said she’d never tasted pizza, and she wanted to do a lot of things she’d never done before. As it turned out, she didn’t even taste it. As soon as we reached my quarters, she passed out on the bunk without even taking off her clothes. How’s that for lousy luck?”
“My heart bleeds. What did you do then?”
“Ate the pizza. Had a couple more drinks. Then I slept for a few hours and got up again at three-thirty to check the engine. Once we cleared the harbor, Harry took over and I went below again for some more sleep. When I woke up, she was standing there staring down at me, the kind of stare that makes a man feel like he’s being — you know, measured. It was a funny feeling because I had a blanket over me at the time, she couldn’t see—”
“Go on with your story. Did she speak?”
“Not at first. I asked her what was the matter, and she said she wanted to go swimming and I was to come up and stop the boat.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Same clothes as the night before; only now they were kind of beat up and wrinkled. So was she. She didn’t look so good in the morning light. Also, I had a hangover.”
“So she looked beat up — an unfortunate choice of words under the circumstances. Better alter it.”
“Okay, she looked pale and sort of sick. She probably had a hangover, too. Maybe she figured the cold water would fix it. I explained how cold the water would be in mid-channel at that time of year, no more than fifty-five degrees. I said we were doing about twelve knots, and it would be crazy to stop the boat just so she could go swimming. She said that maybe I wouldn’t have to stop it. That she could keep up, she was an excellent swimmer. I said, so are the sharks. The shark business was what changed her mind.”