“And how do you know that? What’s the source?”
“His own lawyer, that Raquel lady,” Cohen said. “The only other Raquel I ever heard of was Raquel Welch. And this Raquel, in her day, must have been almost as good-looking.”
Oscar stared at Cohen in the same rearview mirror through which Cohen could see Oscar. “I’m not interested in football-and-beer bullshit,” Oscar said. “Don’t waste my time.”
His words did what he intended them to do: they dropped Cerullo and Cohen into an icy bath of fear. It was Cerullo who spoke next, taking over from the rattled Cohen: “We were at what they call a proffer session. His lawyer was on the phone, the DA was in the room with us.”
“Go ahead,” Oscar said, “I know what a proffer session is. What did she say?”
“That Suarez knows you, and that he might know what you do, who works for you, who you work for. The lawyer wants us to think Suarez knows a lot.”
“The problem you have,” Oscar Caliente said, “is that Suarez’s lawyer knows too much, or she may. I don’t like that. That does not work for me.”
Cerullo was facing forward as he spoke. He knew that Caliente was glaring at the back of his head. Cohen, still distracted by the fact that he had annoyed Caliente, was staring out the rain-streaked window.
“And she’s not the only one,” Cerullo said. “There is a Chinese lady who’s working with her. She’s been in the room with Suarez when Rematti is with Suarez. They know the same things.”
Abruptly, Oscar Caliente opened the rear door. As he was leaving, he said, “So that gives you guys two problems. Fix them.”
26.
All her years of experience had given Raquel Rematti an almost unerring sense of the course a trial was taking, just as a ship’s pilot has a sense of where the dangers in a channel are. By the second day of trial, Raquel had the unsettling sense that things were going very badly for Juan Suarez and for her. A television reporter had remarked on air after the first day of the trial that the legendary Raquel Rematti had been “flat” in her opening to the jury. And, late at night, when Raquel had replayed her opening on her iPad, she agreed. Her performance bothered her and her memory of it caused a pang of embarrassment. She had the tense sense that she herself was on trial. This was her first trial since the year-long struggle with cancer, the chemotherapy, and the surgery.
In the difficult week before the trial started, as she and Theresa worked twelve-hour days, Raquel was completely unsettled by the sudden lassitude, the all-pervasive weakness, that seemed to infuse the flow of her blood throughout her body. She knew it might be possible that her anxiety made her feel that way and that it was not the first dreadful signal of a recurrence, a resurgence, of the disease. Please, God, don’t let this happen again.
Although Raquel kept the sensation of weakness and fear to herself, Theresa, who was young, vibrant, and indefatigable, asked three days before the trial, “Raquel, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she had answered. “Just tired.”
Raquel was also worried about her trial instincts. She had not expected Joan Richardson to be the first prosecution witness. The more conventional approach, and the approach she had expected, was that Margaret Harding would start with the detectives. It took Raquel by surprise when Margaret Harding responded to Judge Conley’s instruction “Call your first witness” by announcing, “The People call Mrs. Joan Richardson.”
From the very beginning, Margaret Harding wasted no time: her first question, after Joan Richardson had spelled her name for the court reporter, was, “Mrs. Richardson, were you married to Brad Richardson?”
“I was.”
“What happened to your husband?”
“He was murdered.” Joan’s voice was clear and forceful.
“When?”
“In October of last year.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it.”
“Did you see his body?”
“I did.”
“Where?”
“In our home.”
“Where is that?”
“On Egypt Beach, in East Hampton.”
The testimony was already riveting, it had the jury’s full attention, and Raquel Rematti was startled by the speed of this. It was like opening a movie about an assassination plot with the assassination itself, in vivid detail.
“And what did you see?”
“My husband, his body, blood on the floor.”
“Were you with other people?”
“There were detectives and police.”
“What else did you see at the time you saw your husband’s body?”
“We had two dogs. They were not far from my husband’s body. Their heads had been cut off.”
“How do you know that?”
Raquel Rematti knew she had to interrupt this flow of questions and answers. As she stood, she said, “Objection. This is not relevant. This is a trial about the murder of a person, not dogs.”
Bland-looking as always, Judge Conley spoke distinctly into her microphone. She sounded commanding, as if her ego was enlarged by the television cameras broadcasting the trial to the world. “Ms. Rematti, I instructed both sides not to explain their objections. Just say ‘Objection.’ I don’t need an explanation for this. Objection overruled.”
“Let me ask you the question again, Mrs. Richardson. How do you know what happened to the dogs?”
“I saw their heads in one place and their bodies in another.”
When Margaret Harding gave a hand signal to a technician, the lighting in the courtroom dimmed. A police video of the room in which Brad was killed appeared on a white screen facing the jurors. Partially covered in a blood-stained sheet, Brad’s body was plainly visible.
“Does this film,” Margaret asked, “depict what you saw?”
“I don’t understand.”
And then Margaret Harding made the question simpler. “Is that your husband’s body?”
“It is.”
Using a laser beam from a wand no larger than a pen, Margaret moved the beam to the area where the dogs lay.
“And those are the dogs, correct?”
“Yes, they are.”
The scene faded and then ended. The courtroom lights were restored. “When did you see this carnage?”
“Objection,” Raquel Rematti, standing, said.
Judge Conley touched the black frame of her unstylish glasses. “Rephrase the question, Ms. Harding.”
“When did you see this?”
“When it happened.” Her voice wavered. “I mean, it was what I saw when the police showed me the room where Brad was and where the dogs were.”
“Mrs. Richardson,” Margaret Harding asked, “what time did you get to your house?”
“It was late, probably the next day, the very early morning of the next day.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t really do anything. I was stunned. When I got out of the car I stood there for a second, or maybe more than a second, and then I saw Detective Halsey.
“Who is Detective Halsey?”
“He was the man who told me my husband was dead.”
“What happened next?”
“We walked to the house. I had no idea what was happening, Ms. Harding. I knew he was dead. That my husband was dead. It was like a moonwalk.”
As Raquel recognized, Margaret Harding was a very smart trial lawyer. Margaret had carefully prepared Joan Richardson for her testimony and wasn’t going to let her wander off the script. She was beginning to wander.
“Listen to me, Mrs. Richardson: what happened next?”
Joan Richardson, her blonde hair tautly drawn to the back of her head, looked at the jurors for the first time, as if understanding that Margaret Harding was trying to give her direction. “I went into the house.”