She returned to the podium and flipped through her notes. Simon could almost feel the stares from some of the jurors, and they were not conveying sympathy.
“Now, once Ms. Barnett was dead, the defendant tried desperately to cover his tracks, to hide the evidence.” She lifted a document and waved it around. “This is called an advance directive. Also known as a living will. Typed up by the defendant, presented to Ms. Barnett in the hospital, probably while she was eating the cookies, and signed by her there, upon his advice.”
Raymond startled everyone by standing and yelling, “Objection, Your Honor. Pure speculation. Ms. Cook doesn’t know when the deceased ate the cookies.”
Her Honor was as shaken as everyone else by the outburst and took a second to react. Raymond thundered away, “Please instruct the prosecutor to stick to the facts, Your Honor.” He turned and glared at Cora and said, “Or maybe you do know if she was eating and what she was eating when she signed the document, and if you do know then please tell us, but don’t just fabricate facts.”
“Order, order, Mr. Lassiter,” the judge said. “That’s enough. This is an opening statement and great latitude is allowed. You’ll get your chance in a moment, Mr. Lassiter. Objection is overruled.”
Raymond angrily fell into his chair, still glaring at Cora as if she’d committed a major sin. She had not. She had simply massaged the facts a bit, something that happened all the time and was routinely allowed. Raymond’s loud interruption was nothing but drama, an attempt to intimidate Cora and also set the tone for the trial. He would not be pushed around.
Cora was flustered for a moment and lost her place. She shuffled some papers, checked her notes, and lifted another document, holding each by a corner as if they were sticky and odorous. “And this is a power of attorney signed by Ms. Barnett as she was signing her advance directive. Taken together, both documents gave the defendant the power to terminate her medical care with, of course, the advice of her doctors. On Wednesday, December 30, while on a ventilator and showing no brain activity, the defendant, along with the doctors, decided to pull the plug. She died ninety minutes later.”
Simon glanced at his watch, though there was no need. A large clock hung on the wall high above the bench. Cora had been going strong for almost an hour, and the jury was still captivated. Simon felt ill and struggled to maintain a look of concerned confidence.
Cora Cook was good and quite effective. She didn’t yell or preach or overplay the facts. She stuck to them, probably because they were in her favor. She walked the jury through the actions taken by the defendant immediately after Ms. Barnett died. Within two hours he called the funeral home and arranged to have her picked up from the hospital and whisked away to be...cremated!
Burning a corpse, even when done intentionally by a mortician, was such a dramatic visual and Cora banged the drum too long. Simon scribbled, “Enough already!”
What was the killer’s motive? Greed, money, absolute control of the estate, huge fees. The will the defendant typed himself and signed by Ms. Barnett gave him complete control of her assets. Her home, her stocks, everything she owned would be sold and the proceeds put in a trust and there was only one trustee — the defendant. He controlled the checkbook. He could play Santa Claus and give it all away. And while doing so he could pay himself rather generously to the tune of $500 an hour. Such a rate might seem low on Wall Street where billionaires and giant corporations sue each other, but for a general practice lawyer doing simple estate work in small-town America, the rate was excessive.
Again, she went on a bit too long as she found the greed angle irresistible. But she seemed to realize it, and moved quickly to the punch line, to the joke, to the hoax. It seemed as if the defendant’s scheme to collect huge fees was all for naught. At one point in her life Eleanor Barnett was a very wealthy woman, but the money vanished in bad investments. There was no fortune. Perhaps she was living in the past, still dreaming, but we’ll never know.
Cora finally began to wind down. Judge Shyam had not set a time limit and perhaps that was a mistake. Cora read the situation right and rushed through her final comments. She promised the jurors that when all the proof was in, they would have no problem believing the defendant poisoned his client. It would be their sworn duty to return a verdict of guilty.
Judge Shyam recessed for twenty minutes.
Chapter 44
Over coffee that morning, Raymond had told Casey and Simon that he was prepared to make one of three opening statements, depending on Cora’s tactics. She had a lot of ground to cover and he suspected she might ramble a bit. All in all, though, he gave her high marks for her presentation. The jury stayed with her as she told a compelling story and piled plenty of suspicion upon Simon.
Raymond’s approach would be that the defense had nothing to prove and would need only to poke holes in the prosecution’s case. Once the jurors had settled into their chairs after the recess, he walked to the podium, with no notes, and offered a charming smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to remind you that nothing you just heard from Ms. Cook has been proven, none of it is evidence, all of it just her speculation, her hopes and dreams maybe, of what the Commonwealth might try to prove against Simon Latch. She tells a nice story. She’s an experienced prosecutor. The problem is that she has promised too much. She can’t deliver all that she promised, nearly two hours’ worth, because she doesn’t have the proof.”
He stepped away from the podium and stuck both hands deep into his pants pockets. “There are so many important facts that she conveniently left out. For example, she said that Ms. Barnett was in the hospital being treated for injuries received in a car wreck. What she failed to include was that Ms. Barnett was driving too fast late at night, ran a red light, and T-boned another car, seriously injuring its occupants. At the time of the crash, she was driving and she was, well, let’s just say she was intoxicated. Point zero-nine, over the limit. It seems that she had been out partying with the girls, they had some type of ‘poker’ club they called it, and it was their annual Christmas party. She got hammered, got behind the wheel, and as her friend Doris rode shotgun they took off down the streets of Braxton at ten-thirty at night. She damned near killed Doris.”
He managed to make killing Doris sound almost humorous. Simon was impressed with his oratorical skills. For years he had heard stories about Raymond’s courtroom antics and abilities, but he had never seen him in action. With a packed house, an attentive jury, and everything on the line, Raymond was in the center of the ring and completely at home.
“Greed!” he snarled loudly. Then he managed a belly laugh that startled everyone. “Greed. For the simple will, Simon Latch charged Eleanor Barnett the greedy sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. And she never paid him! And for the retainer that she insisted on, he got really greedy and charged her one thousand dollars. And she never paid that bill either! For almost nine months of legal work, and not counting the long lunches she insisted on, nor the coffees, nor the late-night phone calls, nor the hospital visits, not counting anything but the hours spent at his desk tending to her legal matters, over sixty hours of billable time, the defendant, Simon Latch, received a total sum of...zero! Nothing, not a dime. Why are we talking about greed?”
Raymond wandered away from the podium, shaking his head at such foolishness.
“Something else Ms. Cook neglected. Mr. Simon Latch, a well-respected member of the bar with no ethics complaints or malpractice suits filed against him throughout his entire career in Braxton, was immediately suspicious of Ms. Barnett’s assertions of being rich. How often does a client walk into a law office to meet an attorney for the first time and claim to have twenty million or so in assets? In Braxton, Virginia? It never happens, I can assure you of that. Simon Latch was no fool. He saw the signs of modest affluence — the absence of debt, a nice pension inherited from her husband, a lovely home free and clear — but those things were not unusual. He immediately suspected she wasn’t being truthful. He repeatedly asked her for proof, as in periodic brokerage statements or bank records. When she resisted, he became even more suspicious.”