We go up and Woodruff makes a show of fairness, but most of the hunks taken are out of my ass. He tells me if I cannot control her he will do it, and the picture for the jury will not be pleasant.
We go back out and Cassidy picks up again with Jack.
Vega tells the court that he lost not only a wife but a child.
‘Mr. Vega,’ says Cassidy, ‘can you tell the court when it was that you first learned that Melanie was pregnant?’
On this Jack weaves a yarn that it was Melanie who first told him, that they were looking forward to the new child, a melding of his existing family, the older children with the new. He tells the jury that they had taken no precautions, that Melanie was not on the pill.
I am incredulous. He says nothing about his own vasectomy. At this moment it hits me. Jack has told Morgan nothing about this. Vega, the ultimate deceiver, has laid her bare on the biggest element of our case, Jack’s jealousies, the motive for murder, that somebody else had fathered his wife’s child.
It is on this plateau of martyrdom that Morgan leaves Jack, turning him over to me on cross.
For a long moment, one of those watersheds, a dramatic pause at trial, Jack and I study each other with wary eyes as I approach the witness box. I make a face for the jury to see, like I accept only a small portion of his testimony as gospel. In dealing with Jack, the order of evidence is critical. My task is clear: to dismantle his character a stick at a time and then hammer on the joint themes of motive and opportunity.
‘Mr. Vega. We know each other, don’t we?’
He looks at me but does not answer, uncertain whether I am referring to kinship, or perhaps the fact that I know him by character.
‘I mean to say that we were once related by marriage. Is that not so?’
‘Yes,’ he says. He tells the court that he once considered me a friend. His use of the past tense is not lost on the jury.
I want to get this before them early so Jack cannot use it later, inferences that I bear personal animus toward him based solely on the sorry family experiences between him and Laurel. Jack would use this like a shield, as if I am beating on him in some personal vendetta.
Then I ease into it, reading one of his statements to the police the night of the murder, when he told them he never owned a gun. He insists that he does not. I remind him about the chrome-plated collector’s item, the nine-millimeter pistol given to him by some lobbyist to toughen his stance against a gun-control bill, years before.
Darting eyes in the box, he decides to tough this out, my word against his.
‘I, ah — I have no recollection of that,’ he says. It is classic Jack. No denial, just a weak memory.
The paper blizzard starts. I hand copies to Cassidy and the court clerk for use by the judge.
‘Mr. Vega, do you recognize this document?’ I hand him a copy. He pulls a pair of cheaters from his pocket and reads.
‘Looks familiar,’ he says.
‘It should,’ I say. ‘Is that your signature at the bottom of the last page?’
He looks. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Is this not the property-settlement agreement you signed with the defendant, Laurel Vega, at the time of your divorce?’
Then it dawns on him. ‘I remember now,’ he says. ‘There was a gun. Long time ago. I’d forgotten,’ he says.
‘Would you look at page twelve, item eighty-seven?’
‘I’ve already said I remember about the gun.’
‘Fine. Now look for the item.’
A lot of anger in his eyes, Jack flips through the pages and finds it.
‘Could you read that one item?’
‘Fine, for what it’s worth,’ he says. ‘To the Petitioner, one chrome-plated nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol in walnut box,’ he says. ‘There. I already told you about it.’
‘But you didn’t tell the police about it the night of the murder. Why not?’
‘For the obvious reason that I forgot.’
‘What happened to the gun, Mr. Vega?’
‘I, ah … I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember.’
I am convinced that this is not the murder weapon. Jack may be a fool, but he is not demented. He would never use a gun that could be traced back to himself, not when it is so easy to get another weapon and somebody else to pull the trigger. What this does, however, is to set a pattern for the jury, of Vega’s convenient memory.
‘So it wasn’t true what you told the police the night of the murder,’ I say. ‘That you never owned a gun?’
‘People forget things,’ he says. ‘How am I supposed to remember everything I owned all of my life?’
‘Do you often have trouble with your memory?’ I say. It is a stinging question, but not subject to objection.
He doesn’t answer, but gives me a look, something that might turn the more timid to stone.
‘Well, then, let me ask you this,’ I say. ‘Do you consider the listing of items in this document, the property-settlement agreement signed by yourself and the defendant, to be a more accurate reflection of physical possessions, yours and the defendant’s, than your memory?’ I say.
‘That’s why people usually write things down, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Because they tend to forget.’
He puts all the emphasis on the last word, like this should be obvious to any idiot.
‘Precisely,’ I say.
He tries to hand the document back to me.
‘Not quite yet,’ I say. ‘Would you turn to page four, item twenty-six?’
He flips pages.
‘Please read it aloud to the court?’
He scans it first, then looks at me, an expression like some doe about to be nailed by a train.
‘Read it,’ I say, my tone stiffening.
‘To Respondent-’ He stops reading and silently absorbs this.
‘Fine. With the court’s permission I’ll read it. “To the Respondent, one handcrafted white woven bath rug, with geometric floral design, label ‘by Gerri.’”
‘But she didn’t get it,’ he says. ‘I did.’ Jack’s coming out of the chair.
‘Did you sign this agreement?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘And who was the Respondent in your divorce?’ I ask him.
He’s seemingly baffled, wondering how this could have happened. The gun is one thing. He doesn’t answer the question.
‘You were the Petitioner. Isn’t it a fact that the bathroom rug with the label “by Gerri” belonged to your former wife, to Laurel Vega? Isn’t it a fact, sir, that it went to her as part of the property-settlement agreement following your divorce?’
A lot of shrugging shoulders. Jack looking at the print on the page like if he studies it long enough it might disappear.
I retreat to the evidence cart and grab the rug, approach the witness box, and flip the back of the carpet, sticking it six inches under Jack’s nose.
‘Tell the jury what that label says,’ I tell him. ‘Read it to the jury.’
When he looks up at me, the cheaters have slid halfway down his nose.
‘What does it say?’
‘ “By Gerri,” ’ he says.
‘Thank you.’
I leave the rug balanced in front of him on the railing, like an albatross around his neck, and turn. When I do, I see Cassidy looking at me, wondering how they could have missed this. I cannot blame them. I would never have found it myself, except for my recollections about Jack’s antics with the gun, and Laurel’s admonition the day I met with her in the jail, that Vega had raised such a stink about the pistol, demanding that his claim be embedded in the settlement agreement. When I got to reading, one item lead to another. What Jack must be thinking at this moment — the things we do that bite us in the butt.
There is now a major cloud hovering over the last piece of physical evidence linking Laurel to Melanie’s murder. And while Jack is still insisting that the rug was in his house the night she was killed, he has no clever explanation for its appearance under Laurel’s column in the property-settlement agreement.
This afternoon Harry drinks his lunch in celebration of this, two Manhattans and a Long Island Tea. His nose is redder than Rudolph’s by the time we return to court, where a courier is waiting for me with a large box. True to her word, Dana has delivered Jack into our arms, not with a kiss, but a kick.