Fatal Flaw Part 43

"No, ma'am."

"Go ahead, Mr. Jefferson, ask it again."

"Do you miss her, Mr. Cutlip?"

"Yes, I surely do. I'm in line for the insurance money, but I'd just as soon as toss it for how I'm getting it. She was like a daughter to me, more. She was taking care of me still, she was taking care of her poor sister, and then that there man killed her. He done this to me, and now my heart weeps tears of blood. I got no choice but to miss her, to miss her ever day, ever d.a.m.n day of the rest of my sorry life."

"Thank you, Mr. Cutlip," said Jefferson, trying unsuccessfully to hide his grin. "I pa.s.s the witness."

The judge's stare of inquest aimed right at my skull continued even as she asked for Troy Jefferson and myself to approach the bench. She waited for the court reporter to set up right by her side before she spoke.

"Mr. Carl," she said, "do you have any idea what you are doing in this trial?"

"Not really, ma'am, no."

"I didn't think so. You backed out of a stipulation which allowed this man and his tears onto the stand. I gave you opportunities to object at every step of his testimony, and still you ignored them. Is there anything you want to do now, any motion you want to make?"

"All I want, Your Honor, is the chance to pose a few questions to Mr. Cutlip myself."

"You want to cross-examine?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have questions for this witness?"

"Just a few."

"Are you sure? Don't you think it was bad enough already? Are you certain that it might not make more sense just to leave him be, hope the jury forgets what he said, and let the prosecution rest its case?"

"Just a few questions, Your Honor."

"Well, then, have at it, Mr. Carl. It's time to recess for the afternoon. So tomorrow, first thing, you'll get your chance. And do not say I didn't warn you."

49.

ONCE BEFORE in my career, during its early, naive stage, I had attempted to break a man on cross-examination. Carefully I prepared, laying out all my traps, hoping for the devastating blow. He was a city councilman, skilled in the use of language but hot of temper, and I believed I could make him blow. I was wrong. Oh, I brought forth flashes of anger and exposed to the jury with lovely clarity the brittle inconsistencies in his story, but that was all. He had murdered a man with his bare hands, proven later by a piece of physical evidence held closely by his wife, but on the stand I got none of that, and I felt my client's guilty verdict deep in my gut. in my career, during its early, naive stage, I had attempted to break a man on cross-examination. Carefully I prepared, laying out all my traps, hoping for the devastating blow. He was a city councilman, skilled in the use of language but hot of temper, and I believed I could make him blow. I was wrong. Oh, I brought forth flashes of anger and exposed to the jury with lovely clarity the brittle inconsistencies in his story, but that was all. He had murdered a man with his bare hands, proven later by a piece of physical evidence held closely by his wife, but on the stand I got none of that, and I felt my client's guilty verdict deep in my gut.

It taught me a fine lesson. Cross-examination is a lovely tool for highlighting inconsistencies and evident falsehoods, for painting a witness as a hapless prevaricator or even an outright liar, cross-examination can be the death of a thousand cuts for the credibility of that witness or an opponent's entire case, but it is not the place for the single crus.h.i.+ng blow. There are too many formalities involved, too many safeguards. Compare the polite confines of a courtroom with a police interrogation room in the dank recesses of a precinct house, a place of intimidation, of psychological manipulation, of violence imagined or real. The interrogation room is the place to break a suspect. But Lawrence Cutlip would never submit to the interrogation room and, I suspected, in its confines, furry with sweat and fear, he would be comfortably at home, able to withstand all manner of the interrogator's tricks. He was not the type to be badgered into confession. So there would be no interrogation here. I would have to make do with cross-examination, which, despite its fearsome reputation, is a gentler dance.

So how was I to proceed? Advice was more then plentiful.

Phil Skink: "Go right at him. Fast and furious. Get him on the ropes and don't let up."

"It's not a boxing match, Phil."

"No? You're going in there to put him away, right?. It's no time for subtle mercy. You need be to Jack Dempsey-hook, hook, hook, and then step into the right what breaks his jaw."

"Have you found anything yet?"

"Don't you think I'd have told you?"

"I need it."

"I knows you need it, mate, and I'll be getting it, too. But you remember what I says. Jack Dempsey. Hook, hook, hook, and then the right to the jaw. Drop him like a sack of potatoes, you will."

Beth Derringer: "Be gentle, subtle. He can handle anger, he's used to it, it's all he's ever known, but the soft emotions will confuse him."

"Skink thinks I should be Jack Dempsey in there."

"Guys like Skink only know one way. But there is another. Dance around the truth so he doesn't realize what you're getting at until it is too late. A little bit here, a little bit there. He'll be expecting a masculine rush up the middle, a straight through line like a fullback off tackle. You should take a more circular tack."

"Virginia Woolf as opposed to Ernest Hemingway."

"Yes, yes. Exactly."

"It sounds nice, but I didn't know that the Bloomsbury group was a law firm. Woolf, Strachey, Forster, Keynes and Woolf."

"Let me tell you something, Victor. Be glad you never met up with Virginia Woolf in court. Be very glad."

Reverend Henson: "The thing with Cutlip," he said when I called him for his share of advice, "is that he wants to think he is a good man, despite all he has done. None believe they are evil, even the evil. And, more desperately, he wants the world to think he is a good man, too. So he'll deny everything, and deny it with a conviction that will be una.s.sailable. But if he's trapped, then he'll change. He'll turn ugly, turn irrational, search desperately for someone who can't defend himself and lay the blame on him. As in the Bible, where Aaron was commanded to lay his hands upon the head of a live goat and confess over it all the sins of the Children of Israel. Leviticus sixteen, verse twenty-two: 'And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.' He'll try to do the same to some poor soul, someone not able to defend himself."

"I don't understand how that helps us."

"Because his efforts to hide his guilt through use of a scapegoat are necessarily futile. Hebrews ten, verse four: 'For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.' You can only create a scapegoat by following the biblical command to confess. It is a necessary part of the process. When he tries to s.h.i.+ft blame onto his scapegoat, then will his sins be evident for all to see."

To this counsel I added one piece more, lifted from the book I had been reading, Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment. I often found literature of little use in the bare-knuckle world of the law, the psychological gap between the fictional and real is often so wide, but no one ever came as close to spanning that canyon as Dostoyevsky. In the book the investigating magistrate stalks Raskolnikov with an ingenious psychological method that I thought might be the only tactic to crack a hard nut like Cutlip. He patiently waits for Raskolnikov, guilty of ax-murdering two old women, to come to him. "He won't run away from me, even if he had some place to run to," says the investigator, "because of a law of nature. Ever watched a moth before a lighted candle? Well, he, too, will be circling round and round me like a moth round a candle. He'll get sick of his freedom. He'll start brooding. He'll get himself so thoroughly entangled that he won't be able to get out. He'll worry himself to death. And he'll keep on describing circles round me, smaller and smaller circles, till-flop!-he'll fly straight into my mouth and I'll swallow him!" And true to the method, 446 pages after the murders, Raskolnikov staggers into the St. Petersburg police station and exclaims, "It was I." Cutlip seemed willing, almost desperate, to talk about his niece. He couldn't help himself. It would be my job to keep him talking, to keep him circling, to find a truth to which he felt compelled to get closer, closer, closer, until that truth, no matter how ugly, became bright enough to burn. I often found literature of little use in the bare-knuckle world of the law, the psychological gap between the fictional and real is often so wide, but no one ever came as close to spanning that canyon as Dostoyevsky. In the book the investigating magistrate stalks Raskolnikov with an ingenious psychological method that I thought might be the only tactic to crack a hard nut like Cutlip. He patiently waits for Raskolnikov, guilty of ax-murdering two old women, to come to him. "He won't run away from me, even if he had some place to run to," says the investigator, "because of a law of nature. Ever watched a moth before a lighted candle? Well, he, too, will be circling round and round me like a moth round a candle. He'll get sick of his freedom. He'll start brooding. He'll get himself so thoroughly entangled that he won't be able to get out. He'll worry himself to death. And he'll keep on describing circles round me, smaller and smaller circles, till-flop!-he'll fly straight into my mouth and I'll swallow him!" And true to the method, 446 pages after the murders, Raskolnikov staggers into the St. Petersburg police station and exclaims, "It was I." Cutlip seemed willing, almost desperate, to talk about his niece. He couldn't help himself. It would be my job to keep him talking, to keep him circling, to find a truth to which he felt compelled to get closer, closer, closer, until that truth, no matter how ugly, became bright enough to burn.

I took the schemes of all my advisers and swirled them together into a single desperate strategy. I would force Lawrence Cutlip to confront his crimes, edging him subtly when possible, shoving and badgering him like a boxer when necessary, spiraling him closer and closer to the flame of truth until the fire grew so hot upon his soul that he was forced, not to confess, because that was not his way, but instead to do as the Reverend Henson said he would do, find a scapegoat and s.h.i.+ft the blame. Onto whom would he s.h.i.+ft it, I had no idea. Bobo? Guy? Jesse Sterrett? It wouldn't matter, once it s.h.i.+fted, it would be apparent. And once it was apparent, the story would be over, Guy would be acquitted, and Cutlip would be under arrest. That was the upside. That was what I focused on as I prepared.

But there was a downside, too, a downside I couldn't ignore. If I failed, if my cross-examination proved to be too gentle a dance to dent Cutlip's armor, then consequences would befall my client and myself. Guy's defense would be exposed as a fraud. It would seem he was trying to foist blame on the grieving uncle, who had sacrificed his youth to care for his young nieces. And once the phone records were disclosed and Breger connected all the dots, the pointed finger aimed at the unknown lover would look just as fraudulent. A life sentence, no doubt, possibly death, or, at best, a mistrial, declared by Judge Tifaro, based on my behavior. And as for me, well, my legal career would be over for sure, a good thing, considering, but still. Thrust headfirst and unprepared into the cold black street of capitalism, I would be forced to find some other form of income, accounting maybe, or the wonderful world of retail. I heard that the Gap was hiring, which was a great comfort, let me tell you.

So it was strategy that I focused upon, but not only strategy. I brought to my apartment everything I had found about this case, from the forensic reports of the murder to the notes I had taken of my trips to Pierce, West Virginia, to the notes of testimony already collected, to the contents of Hailey Prouix's safe-deposit box. I examined everything, questioned every a.s.sumption, turned everything upside down and downside up, twisted back to front and vice versa. I reviewed my notes of Cutlip's direct testimony, and as I did so, and examined everything else, something seemed not right, something seemed out of order.

And then it came clear, in a sudden burst of insight, something I had badly mislabeled, something that was very much other than what I had thought it to be.

Now I had something, something definite, something to work with, something that might just force Cutlip to come face to face with his past, force him to describe smaller and smaller circles around the truth, until-flop!-and that would be the end of him.

And it had been there, the crucial piece of evidence, been there almost the entire time, right in front of my face.

50.

"MR. CUTLIP, this is my client, Guy Forrest," I said, standing behind Guy with my hands on his shoulders. "Before this trial had you ever laid eyes on him?" this is my client, Guy Forrest," I said, standing behind Guy with my hands on his shoulders. "Before this trial had you ever laid eyes on him?"

"No, I ain't."

"Ever spoken to him?"

"Nope, and can't say I'm sad about it neither."

"And yet it was your testimony that without ever meeting him or talking to him you were against your niece's marrying him, isn't that right?"

"After what he done to his family, walked out like a dog, yes, I was."

"You told Hailey Prouix she was making a mistake with him, isn't that what you said? You told her to get away from him while she could."

"And I was right about it, too, wasn't I?"

"Can I approach, Your Honor?"

The judge nodded.

"I'd like this marked Defense Exhibit Nine." I gave a copy to Troy Jefferson and took the original to the court reporter to be marked before dropping it in front of Cutlip. "You recognize the man in this picture?"

"I never seen this picture before."

"Just answer my question. Do you recognize the man in the picture?"

"Yeah, it's him."

"The record will indicate that the witness was pointing at the defendant, Guy Forrest. This, then, is a picture of the man who wanted to marry your niece and is accused by you and the state of murdering her. What do you feel about this man?"

"I hate his whole guts, what you expect? He killed my niece dead and stole my world like a thief."

"Good. Now, here I'm handing you a black Sharpie marker. Cross out the picture of this man you hate so."

"Why?"

"Indulge me."

"What for? I told you I never done seen this picture. I'm just here to say the dead woman, she was my niece. I don't understand."

"It's not up to you to understand, sir. It's only up to you to do it." I put a little juice into the "do it," just enough to get his back up about it, and it did. I saw that lovely serpentine flicker of hate in his eyes. "Don't be a coward, now, the picture's not going to jump up and bite you." That got a little laugh, which made him even angrier. "Just go ahead and do what I tell you to do. Cross it out."

He gave me a slow, insolent stare and then went at the picture with the marker.

"Fine, thank you."

I picked the photograph off the front rail of the witness stand and showed it first to Troy Jefferson and then to the jury, a fine color photograph of Guy Forrest with a ragged, violent zig-zag-zig running through it.

"So you never approved of Guy Forrest for your niece. Did you know she was seeing someone else at the time?"

"She said something or other like that, just to rile me."

"Rile you? Why would that rile you?"

"I didn't like her acting like no tramp."

"She never told you who he was, this other lover, did she?"

"No, not exactly. But I heard things. I heard he was some Puerto Rican or something."

"Puerto Rican?" I thought on that a moment, turned to Beth, who simply shrugged, and then I remembered. "You're referring to Juan Gonzalez, isn't that right?"

"Yeah, right. I heard she got mixed up with him somehow, and I hated to hear it."

"You rejected Guy Forrest as a suitable husband for your niece, without ever meeting or talking to him, and you were against her other Puerto Rican lover, so my question, Mr. Cutlip, is this: Of which of your niece's boyfriends did you ever approve?"

"Objection, Your Honor," said Troy Jefferson. "This is pretty far afield."

"It goes to bias, Your Honor. It goes to credibility. The People opened this door in direct, opened a lot of doors in direct. It is not for Mr. Jefferson now to object when I walk through them."

"I think that's right, Mr. Jefferson. You did open the door. Go ahead, Mr. Carl, but very carefully."

"I'll repeat the question, Mr. Cutlip: Of which of your niece's boyfriends did you ever approve?"

"None of your d.a.m.n business."

"Oh, I think it is. Answer the question, please, or I'll ask the judge to compel you to answer it."

Cutlip turned to look at Judge Tifaro, who was peering down at him through her half gla.s.ses like a librarian from h.e.l.l.

"There was some, I suppose," he answered.

"Who? Tell us."

"Well, there was the football player, that Ricky Bronson she was with her last years in high school. I didn't mind him so much."

"Is that because, as you so wittily told me, he was more interested in standing over the center than he was in being with her?"

"Maybe. And he wasn't even the quarterback." He slapped the rail and laughed, his little staccato laugh, and some joined in, which made him laugh even harder.

"What about Grady Pritchett? You didn't like him much, did you?"

"Oh, I didn't mind old Grady."

"You went after him with a shotgun, didn't you? Want me to bring him up here from West Virginia to tell the court how you went after him with a shotgun?"