The Kills

10

"And at the conclusion of the case, ladies and gentlemen, I will again have the opportunity to stand before you," I said, walking to the defense table and stopping directly in front of Andrew Tripping. If I wanted the twelve good people in the box to look him in the eye and declare him guilty, I needed to show them that I was not afraid to do that myself. "At that time, I will ask you to consider the testimony of the witnesses who appeared before you, discuss the evidence that has been presented, and find this defendant guilty of the crimes with which he is charged."

Thorough, calm, understated. I had given them the basic elements of the crime, read the indictment, and previewed Paige Vallis's story. That way, when she gave them more, they would be surprised and somewhat pleased that I had not promised anything I could not deliver. Dulles Tripping, though essential to this case, was practically a footnote, so uncertain was I of the role he would be allowed to play.

Robelon was cool. He started his presentation at the podium, but then stood behind his client's seat, placing his hands on Tripping's shoulders. He was embracing the falsely accused man, as it were, just as Emily Frith leaned in to pat the defendant on the forearm.

He was staying away from specifics, laying in the general picture of the struggling single-parent father, trying to put bread on the table and care for a rambunctious child.

He didn't make my witness out to be a monster, but the under-current was set in motion.

The foundation he was building on would lead him to sum up, I assumed, with a description of Paige Vallis as emotionally unstable, socially insecure, confused by Andrew's mixed signals, and insensitive to his personal travails.

"Don't be taken in by Ms. Cooper, sitting here all alone at counsel table, while the three of us do our job with her witnesses," Robelon said, with a wink at the panel. I always liked that dynamic, assuming some jurors would cast me in the role of the underdog going against the triad of the defense team. In this instance, I thought, glancing across at them, they looked like corporate travelers sitting abreast in the business-class section of a New York to Chicago flight.

"She's got all the enormous resources of law enforcement available at her fingertips," he went on. "Believe me, if there was evidence to be found against my client, she had the means to gather every bit of that."

It may have been bullshit, but juries believed that argument. There was nothing the NYPD could do to enhance this case. We take our witnesses as we find them. Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry-and then, while you're at it, might as well throw in your psychos, junkies, liars, whackjobs, and hookers. I didn't believe in dressing any of them up or polishing their performance before the jury in any case I had ever tried. It was a technique that was bound to backfire. Whatever the point of weakness that would be apparent in the courtroom-whether drug addiction, mental illness, or any alternative lifestyle-that was the vulnerability that the perpetrator had identified and attacked on the street.

Robelon closed with the routine keep-an-open-mind pitch. He made no promises about whether his client would testify, insisting instead that he would hold my feet to the fire and dare me to prove my case.

"Let's have your first witness, Ms. Cooper," Moffett said.

"The People call Paige Vallis."

One of the court officers walked to the side door in the middle of the courtroom, which led to the corridor that housed the bare, dingy witness room. I stared at the group we had selected-eight men and four women-as every head followed him.

Fifteen pairs of eyes-twelve jurors, two alternates, and a curious judge-scrutinized Vallis as she walked in front of the first row of benches, alongside my table, and stepped up to her place on the stand. The officer asked her to put one hand on the Bible and raise the other to take the oath. She was trembling as she complied with his direction.

There was not a single spectator in the room, except for my paralegal, who was there to help steady Paige with eye contact and a reassuring smile.

"Good morning," I said to her, as I rose to begin my questioning. "Would you please tell the jury your name?"

Vallis reached for the paper cup filled with water before she spoke. It shook as she lifted it, and water splashed over its edge. "My name is Paige Vallis."

I took her through a series of pedigree questions, which I had told her I would use to try to calm her down, and get the jury to relate to her. If she could describe her background and her work to them, it would settle her in before moving into the more highly charged testimony about the crime. I wanted to humanize her for the people who would judge her credibility, so that they could understand she had no reason to fabricate the story she was about to tell.

"Where do you live?"

"Here in Manhattan, in TriBeCa." The judge had agreed with me that she did not need to put an exact street address into the public record.

"How old are you?"

"I'm thirty-six." We were exactly the same age, I thought, looking at the young woman whose life had become unraveled on the evening of March 6.

"Were you raised in New York?"

"No, I was not." I had prepped her to look at the jurors and talk directly to them, and she was trying to do that as she answered. She was dressed in a navy blue suit with a pale yellow blouse, and her naturally curly brown hair was swept back away from her plain-featured face. "I was born here, in the city. My father was in the diplomatic corps, so I spent most of my childhood abroad."

"Would you tell us about your educational background?"

"I attended the American schools wherever my father was posted. I returned to this country to go to college, and received my bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. I worked for a few years after graduating," she said, describing a number of entry-level jobs. "Then I decided to go to business school, and got my master's from Columbia five years ago."

Vallis had impressive academic credentials. So did a lot of crazy people I knew.

"Where are you employed, and what specific duties does your job involve?"

"Before my graduation, I was recruited by an investment banking firm, where I had done a summer internship," Vallis said, clearly comfortable discussing the work she did. "The company is called Dibingham Partners. I'm a research analyst there, and I specialize in foreign equities."

Vallis went on to describe to the jury exactly what she did to investigate overseas companies in order to make recommendations about whether to purchase stocks for her customers' portfolios.

I flushed out the promotions she had been given and the number of people she supervised, establishing the stability of her professional performance.

"Are you single, Ms. Vallis?"

"Yes, I am. I've never been married."

"Do you know the defendant in this case, Andrew Tripping?"

Vallis cleared her throat and glanced quickly at the defense table. The few moments of relaxed testimony she had given came to an abrupt end, as she visibly tensed as she answered the question. "Yes, I do."

"For how long have you known him?"

"I met him in February of this year. February twentieth, to be exact."

"Your Honor, may we approach?" Robelon got to his feet. This was his style. Just as my victim was about to get her narrative going, he would interrupt as frequently as he could. It served the dual purpose of rattling the witness and distracting the jury from her story.

Moffett shrugged and reluctantly waved us up. He made Paige step down to the side as we huddled before the bench. "What is it?"

"I'm having trouble hearing Ms. Vallis. I'd like permission to move my chair over there." Robelon pointed to a spot behind my seat, directly in front of the jury panel.

"Sure. Go-"

"I'll just ask the witness to keep her voice up. Peter can sit exactly where he's supposed to."

"What's your beef, Alex?" Robelon asked.

"You ought to use one of your client's bayonets to clean the wax out of your ears. The only time you develop a problem is when a witness is testifying and the prosecutor's back is turned. The last time you repositioned yourself between me and the twelve angry men in the box, you spent the entire time rolling your eyes at them in disbelief and mumbling under your breath just loud enough so they could hear your comments."

"Cut it out, you two," Moffett said, turning to Paige. "Do you think you can speak any louder, young lady? Mr. Robelon needs to hear everything you say."

"I can try, Your Honor."

He waved us back to our seats and I picked up my questioning.

"I'm going to direct your attention, Ms. Vallis, to the evening of February twentieth. Would you tell us where you were and how you met the defendant?"

"Certainly. I attended a lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations, at their building on Park Avenue. I'm a member of that organization, and I had arranged to meet a girlfriend at the event, which started at seven o'clock. Then we were going to go to dinner together."

"Did you keep that plan?" I asked.

"No. I mean, I did go to the lecture, but my friend's plane was held on the runway in Boston because of snow. She called on my cell phone to tell me she wouldn't be able to make it."

Paige Vallis paused. "There was a cocktail reception after the lecture. I knew a number of the people there, so I decided to stay and chat for a while."

"Did you have anything to drink or eat at the reception?" Bring it out on the direct case, so that it didn't look like I was trying to hide any alcohol that was involved.

"Wine. I had a couple of glasses of white wine. Two. Nothing to eat."

"Did Mr. Tripping approach you that evening?"

"Objection. Leading."

"Overruled. Ms. Cooper's just trying to set some background up here."

Paige waited for the judge to tell her to proceed. "Three of us were standing together, talking about the situation in the Middle East, and what our own personal experiences had been there. Andrew must have heard me-"

"Objection as to what he might have heard."

"Sustained. Just tell us what he said or did."

The objections had their desired effect. Paige Vallis was shaken each time Robelon called out the word, as though she had done something wrong.

"Andrew Tripping asked me about Cairo," she said. "He wanted to know when I had lived there and for what reason."

Tripping started fidgeting as she spoke, trying to get his lawyer's attention. Robelon brushed him off, continuing to take notes on the details in Vallis's testimony that he had not heard before. The defendant put his head together with Emily Frith, whispering to her, distracting several jurors from the flow of the testimony.

"What did you tell him, exactly?"

"I talked about my father's career and told him what I remembered of his tour of duty in Egypt. I hadn't been back there since finishing high school."

"For how long did you talk?" I asked.

"Probably half an hour."

"Did you leave the council alone?"

Paige Vallis blushed and picked up her water cup again. "No, no, I didn't. Andrew told me he knew a nice restaurant in the neighborhood and invited me to go to dinner."

"Did anyone else-"

I started to ask the next question but Paige Vallis wanted to explain her decision to the jury. "I don't normally do that. I mean, go off somewhere with a man I don't know. But I can't imagine a safer place to meet a guy than a political policy discussion with the members of the council," she said, giggling a bit.

Laughter didn't work in the middle of a rape trial. I knew it was just a nervous reaction, but she would need to get beyond it. Don't apologize for anything you did, I had told Paige for weeks. Just tell the jury the facts. In my summation I would have lots of opportunity to talk about her judgment calls.

"Did anyone else go with you to dinner?"

"No. I said good night to the people I knew, got my coat from the checkroom, and we walked three or four blocks to a small bistro on a side street."

She took us through the dinner and conversation. Yes, there was another glass of wine for each of them. Yes, they both discussed their personal lives. Andrew told her that he was widowed, and that his mother had raised his son until her recent death. No, she certainly could not remember everything that they had talked about.

I would argue that was because there was no significance to most of the conversation at this first meeting. Robelon would attribute her lack of specifics to the third glass of wine.

"What time did you leave the restaurant, and where did you go?"

"I saw that it was getting late-after ten o'clock. I told Andrew that I had to be in my office before eight the next morning. He put me in a cab outside the restaurant and we said good night."

"Who paid for the meal?"

She looked at me and reddened again. "We split the check. I paid for my dinner and he paid for his."

"Did you kiss each other?"

"No."

"Was there any kind of physical contact-touching each other or holding hands as you walked on the street?"

"None."

"Did he ask for your phone number?"

"No."

"Did he say-"

"Hey, Ms. Cooper," Judge Moffett said, "whatever happened to woman's lib? Ms. Vallis, did you ask him for his number?"

"No, sir."

"Was there any discussion about seeing each other again?" I asked.

"No, there wasn't. I got in the cab, closed the door, and went on my way home. I thought it was a pleasant evening, but that was the end of it."

"When was the next time you had any contact with Andrew Tripping?"

"About three or four days later, when he called me."

"Where were you when he called?"

"At my office. Dibingham Partners," Vallis said, looking over at the jurors. "My personal phone isn't listed. I had told Andrew where I worked, and I guess-"

"Objection."

"Sustained. You can't guess in my courtroom, Ms. Vallis," the judge barked at the young woman from his elevated position over her head, and she recoiled, shaken again. "I'm sorry, Your Honor."

"Would you please tell us what the defendant said in that conversation?"

"It was a very short discussion. I told him I was about to go into a meeting. He asked if I wanted to have dinner with him the following night, and I said, 'Sure.' We arranged to meet at the Odeon. That's a restaurant near my apartment. That's all."

"Did you keep that date?"

"Yes, we did. I got there first. When Andrew arrived, we each ordered a glass of wine and chatted for a while before we ate dinner."

"What did this conversation concern?"

Paige Vallis described a coolly impersonal meeting, in which her companion spent most of the time talking about himself or questioning her about her political views. She only had one drink and again she paid her own way. There were no sexual overtures when he walked her back to her building at ten o'clock.

"Did you invite the defendant up to your apartment?" I asked.

"There was no reason to. I thought-"

"Objection as to what she thought, Your Honor," Robelon said.

"Sustained."

The heavy oak door creaked open behind me. I kept my attention on Paige Vallis, but she picked her head up at the sound and stared off in the distance.

"Ms. Vallis, what did you say or do when you reached your building?"

Her mouth twitched and she answered softly, "Andrew asked if he could come in for a cup of coffee. I told him that would be impossible. I-uh-I had a friend in from out of town who was staying in the apartment. Actually, I'm just remembering that now, as I try to recall the details of our dinner," she said, looking back at me.

I squeezed the pen I was holding so tightly I thought it would break in half and spurt ink all over the jurors. I had never heard that explanation in all the weeks of preparing Paige to testify. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Better late than never. What friend, I wondered to myself, and what relevance did this have to her story?

Paige Vallis was trembling visibly now, as I tried to direct her attention to the night of the crime. "I'm going to ask you some questions about the day and evening of March sixth of this year."

She licked her lips to moisten them and reached for the water. Her hand missed and knocked the cup off the railing in front of her; water began dripping onto the court stenographer, who shoved her machine out of the way and reached for tissues to wipe up the mess. Paige stood and leaned over as though to reach for the fallen cup, bursting into tears as she tried to apologize to the judge for the disturbance.

Moffett banged his gavel on the bench. "Brief recess. We'll take ten minutes."

Paige spoke to him before the jurors could be led out of the box. "I'm so sorry, Judge. I can't testify about this in front of him. Does he have to be here?"

She was pointing a finger, while Moffett answered her, and I moved forward to calm her and bring tissues to wipe her face. "Of course he has to be here. The Constitution gives him that right, young-"

"Not Andrew, Your Honor. Him." Paige lifted her head and I turned around to look.

The older of the two men whom Chapman had tried to identify in the courtroom the day before was seated alone now in the back row. He must have been the person who came in just as Paige had fallen apart a few questions back. He rose as my witness waved her hand in his direction, and he pushed the swinging door to exit.

"That's Harry Strait, Alexandra," Paige said, grabbing my hand as I extended the tissue to her. "That's the man I told you about."

Andrew Tripping smiled broadly, put his arm on his lawyer's shoulder, and broke away to follow Harry Strait out into the corridor.