Cousins has straight blond hair that spends a lot of time covering half of his face, images of Adolf, and eyes that reek of unmitigated evil. His features, while fine, look as if they have been chiseled in arctic ice, so hard is his demeanor; a face that for its expression could carve the heart out of a passing nun and not look back.
Cousins’ trial has become a farm club for shrinks who want to break into the big time of courtroom testimony. This is all paid for by Louis’s father, who is leading a sort of psychic safari into his son’s past. Each therapist and clinician has a more entertaining notion of Louis’s debased and brutal childhood, all of which of course occurred behind the walls of private estates and the tinted windows of chauffeured limos.
After hours of examination, and tests that some might equate to the stirring of entrails in a dish, the high priests of the human mind seem no longer to be in doubt to what happened, only who did it. This was quickly resolved after a brief consideration of Old Man Cousins’ net worth, the source of their fees. It has now been determined that it was one of Louis’s nannies who must have debased the boy during his formative years. At least this is what Louis has fished from his repressed memory during hours of psychic handholding and graphic descriptions by his lawyers of death in the gas chamber. His attorneys are now hell-bent for retirement peddling this theory to the jury.
Harry is deeply moved by the compassion of those who heal the human mind. Lately he has asked more than once why Laurel can’t come up with her own horrific tales of childhood trauma. Like Harry says, ‘she could at least sit on the commode for a while and try.’
Harry is playing Keenan counsel. In cases involving the death penalty in this state the defendant is entitled to two lawyers: one to handle guilt or innocence — my role — and the other to do what is called the penalty phase, whether if convicted, Laurel should be put to death or be sentenced to life in prison. Harry is therefore on a perpetual search for mitigation, anything that might jerk a tear from the eye of an empaneled juror.
This morning Laurel is brought in without shackles, followed by a matron and another guard, who melt into the background as soon as she is seated at the table with us. This is done each day of the trial, before the jury is allowed into the box, to avoid any implications of guilt that might attach if jurors were to see her constantly in custody, attended by guards.
She is wearing a flowing brown skirt, pleated from the waist, and a white double-breasted blouse, cotton broadcloth with long sleeves, all very plain except for the collar, which is nonexistent and a little severe.
I comment on this.
‘A touch from Mary Queen of Scots,’ she tells me.
Harry, the resident historian, gets into it, that in fact they wore big ruffled collars back then.
‘Not when they cut off her head,’ says Laurel.
Harry considers this for a moment, then concedes the point.
Laurel, it seems, has a refined and sharpened sense of gallows humor.
Still, her dress is tasteful. I have known clients who left to their own devices on the first day of trial would show up looking like the heroine in some potboiling bodice-ripper, blouse tattered by a cat-o’-nine-tails, and tied to a stake like Joan of Arc.
We go over the lineup of probable witnesses for the day.
‘First up is Lama,’ I tell her. ‘Unless they changed the order.’
Cassidy is at work, assembling the bits and pieces of their case.
Word is that Jimmy is particularly angry with me. My treatment of him during pretrial motions. As if this, being the subject of Lama’s enmity, is a new experience for me.
I am hearing rumors that Jimmy has stumbled over dirt from the post office bombing, physical evidence involving fingerprints, my own, that federal investigators turned up at the scene. Knowing him as I do, Lama is no doubt puzzled by the fact that the feds are not all over me at this moment like some cheap blanket in a rainstorm. Seeing only a part of the picture, Lama wouldn’t know that they’ve already taken my statement, that in fact they know what I was doing there. I am not anxious to have Jimmy know this, as it would give up a part of our theory surrounding Jack and the Merlows.
‘Lieutenant Lama, can you tell the court how the body was discovered?’ Cassidy has him on direct.
Lama’s on the stand, pursed lips as if the question takes some consideration before responding. I think Jimmy’s disappointed. There’s only a smattering of press in the front rows. We are not likely to get the full contingent until the Cousins trial is over. Woodruff has allowed the spectacle to be piped outside the courtroom to the cable channel that specializes in notorious trials. But it seems that Jimmy has even lost out on this. While it’s true they are taping it, there will be no live broadcast. Without some heavy precedent, some wild advance in the law of severed penises or other legal novelty to boost ratings, Jimmy’s testimony is likely to fill the dead air in the middle of the night.
‘The victim was found by her husband,’ he says, ‘lying in the bathtub of the couple’s master bedroom.’
‘By the victim’s husband, you’re referring to Mr. Jack Vega?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And about what time was this called in to the police?’
Jimmy looks at his notes. ‘According to our log sheet at the station, the call was received at exactly zero-forty-three hours.’
‘And in civilian time?’
‘Twelve forty-three in the morning,’ he says.
‘Just before one A.M.?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were you the first officer on the scene?’
‘No. A patrol car with two officers was the first to arrive. They were followed by the EMTs-’
‘The emergency medical technicians?’
‘Yeah. That’s right. I got there about-’ He reviews his notes. ‘One-thirty.’
‘A.M.,’ says Cassidy.
‘Correct.’
Cassidy is slow and meticulous, like a mason with bricks, skillful with the mortar, knowing that to build her case everything on these lower courses must be true and level.
‘And what did you find when you arrived?’
‘The body. The victim was lying on her back in a large bathtub in the master bath. There was some blood in the tub, no evidence of any struggle.’ He pushes this, a lot of facial ticks and misplaced emphasis. But it’s a big point. The state is trying to shut the door on any last-minute ploy for manslaughter, inferences of a battle for the gun, and an accident. They have been moving in this direction from the inception of their case.
‘There appeared to be a single gunshot wound under the chin — here.’ Lama points with a forefinger like a cocked pistol up under the jaw, to one side, a little to the right, close to the throat, showing the path of the bullet up into the head.
‘Was the body clothed?’
‘No. She was, ahh-’ He motions with his hands, groping like he’s not sure how to say it. In the buff. Bareass. Jimmy, who no doubt clawed his way out of the womb spitting profanities about darkness and water, is now busy doing the sensitive detective.
‘She was in the altogether,’ he finally says.
‘She was naked?’ Cassidy looking at him.
Fine. There — a woman has said it.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Naked.’
‘Like maybe she was getting ready for a bath?’
‘Objection. Leading.’ I shoot at it while seated, with the eraser end of a pencil.
‘Sustained.’
Cassidy regroups.
‘Did you have any way of determining what the victim was doing just before she was shot?’
‘It looked like she was getting ready to take a bath,’ says Lama. Oh, good. He got it.
‘There was a folded towel on the floor near the bath, and some bath oils on the side.’
‘You indicated earlier that you found no evidence of a struggle. How did you determine this?’
‘A number of things,’ he says. ‘It’s true that there was a couple of broken bottles on the floor across the room, but quite a distance from where the body was found,’ he says. ‘There was no obvious tattooing around the bullet wound.’