The Kills

11

I had less than six minutes to corner Paige Vallis in the witness room and read her the riot act. "I can pull the plug on this entire proceeding right this minute. Do you want to explain to me what just happened on the witness stand? I told you from the moment we first met that there was only one thing you could do wrong and that was to lie to me about even the most seemingly insignificant question I've asked you. I don't give a damn about your judgment or your lifestyle or your morals. I need to know the truth."

"I've never lied to you, Alex."

"I'll walk into that courtroom and ask the judge to dismiss the charges if a single thing you have told me is not true. Now's the time-"

"I swear to you, every word I've told you is the truth."

"But you've left things out, is that what you mean? An omission is the same as a lie, if it has something to do with your case. What haven't you told me?"

"Nothing important that involves Andrew Tripping or these charges."

"Whether a fact is important or not isn't your decision, Paige. I need to know every single detail. Everything. I'll be the judge of what's important. Get it? Who was the 'friend' in the apartment that night?"

She returned my stare with a pitiful expression on her face.

"Don't give me that helpless, pathetic look. It was this-this Harry Strait guy, right?" I asked.

"What difference does that make? Andrew didn't know that at the time."

"This isn't a goddamn game, Paige. Do you understand that?" I was furious now. Maxine tapped on the glass panel of the door, reminding me to keep my voice down. "Why is it that when people go to doctors to ask for help, you tell them every symptom, every fact, every ache and pain, so they can make a precise diagnosis. With lawyers, people leave out whatever they want-things that make them look stupid or evil or crazy or thoughtless-then they expect the lawyer to be smart enough to cover their asses without knowing the full picture. Well, you've come to the wrong place, Paige."

"I'm sorry, Alex. It's, it's so…embarrassing."

"Well, it's damn embarrassing to be charged with first-degree rape, too. Especially if you didn't commit the crime."

"Andrew Tripping raped me." She was angry now, and I liked that. It was appropriate that she could still be outraged by the fact of her victimization.

"So what is it you neglected to tell me?" I pounded my index finger against the tabletop in the small, hot room. "Did Andrew and Harry know each other?"

"No," Paige answered quickly. She thought for a minute and then said, "Not that I was aware. I mean, neither had any reason to know about each other, so I had no way of thinking they were acquaintances. Why does it matter?"

"Because everything that went on matters, whether you think so or not. I need to know as much as Andrew's lawyer knows. I need to know every detail that he can provide to Robelon, because Robelon will use them to blow your ass-and mine-out of the courtroom. That's the only way I can protect you. If you had been raped by a stranger who climbed through your window, attacked you, and walked away, then he wouldn't know a thing about you to tell his lawyer."

She nodded her head in understanding.

"But this man spent three evenings with you, talking to you for hours each time. And you talked to him. You said things to him that I would never expect you to remember-little things, personal things that would have seemed of no import before the rape occurred. Yet I can't possibly reconstruct what they were, and I can't ever know what Andrew has told Peter Robelon. Worst-case scenario, want to play that out?" I asked.

Paige was puzzled. She didn't answer me.

"I'll help you. The night of March sixth, you go out with Andrew. Was Harry waiting back at your apartment that night?"

"No. By then-"

"Because all Mr. Robelon has to do is plant that seed with the jury. All he needs is a motive for you to lie."

"But I'm not-"

"Listen to me, Paige. All he has to do is convince them that Andrew seduced you, convinced you to spend the night with him at his place. You wake up early in the morning, realize you have to explain why you didn't come home to an angry boyfriend-"

"Harry wasn't my boyfriend by then. I'd ended it weeks earlier. I just couldn't get rid of him. He wouldn't leave me alone," she said, pleading with me to understand.

"That's all Robelon needs to work with. Harry's pissed off because you spent the night with another man. So you tell Harry it wasn't your choice. He doesn't believe you so you beef up the story a bit. Make it sound like Andrew forced you. He held you against your will and raped you."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" she asked me. It was not the first time a victim had been pushed to that question. "Andrew did rape me. I swear it. And Harry wasn't in my apartment the night of March sixth. Why would anyone lie about something as serious as rape?"

"To save her own neck. To get back at someone who hurt her in another way. I don't have time to give you all the reasons."

Maxine knocked again and stuck her head in. "The judge is ready."

"Last chance, Paige." I was face-to-face with her now, as close as I could get. "Screw around with me and I'll see that you're indicted for perjury. For filing a false report. Am I missing anything else?"

"No, I promise you, Alex. Harry Strait used to scare me to death, he was so jealous, so demanding. I didn't want his name brought into this. I had no idea that he had any contact with Andrew Tripping. I still don't know how or when they met, or why he's here today."

"Will you tell me about Harry this weekend? Either come in to my office on Sunday afternoon for a few hours or give me some time on the phone."

Paige nodded.

I went on. "I need you to think back about everything you remember, some way we can connect Strait and Tripping. Who is Harry Strait and what do you know about him? Why he scared you and what you mean by 'demanding'?" I was still hoping that my four o'clock interview with Tripping's son would take place, but I wanted to know why Paige was so fearful of Strait.

Reluctantly, Paige Vallis whispered, "Yes. Yes, I will tell you."

"And if he's back in the courtroom now, you're just going to have to suck it up and carry on. Trials are public. Judge Moffett hasn't got a basis to exclude him."

I opened the door, leading the way back inside. There were no spectators in the gallery. Moffett let the witness resume her seat before bringing in the jurors.

The smooth flow of the narrative that I had counted on was hopeless. On top of that, I worried that the jurors would now view Paige Vallis as hysterical and flighty. The tears, the trembling, and the freaked-out reaction to the reserved-looking man who had walked into court would be all three or four of them would need to discount her reliability.

"You may continue, Ms. Cooper."

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said, rising once again to stand at the podium. "I'm going to direct your attention to March sixth. Do you recall what day of the week that was?"

"It was a Wednesday. I had just come out of our regular staff luncheon meeting when Andrew telephoned."

"What was the purpose of his call?"

"He asked to see me again, for dinner."

"Had you heard from him since the last time you saw him, the night of your dinner at the Odeon?"

She shook her head back and forth.

"Words," Judge Moffett said to her. "You gotta answer in words. The court reporter can't take down your head movements."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, you heard from him?" the judge asked.

"No, I meant no to that." Now she sounded confused as well as slightly hysterical.

"Did you have dinner with the defendant?"

"Yes, I met him at seven-thirty, at a restaurant he suggested, near Grand Central Station." Paige Vallis described the meal, the bottle of red wine they split, and the conversation, which was mostly about the boy, Dulles Tripping.

"How was the dinner paid for this time?"

"Andrew took the check," she said.

Robelon called out, "What'd she say, Judge? I couldn't hear it."

It was hard for him to hear the answers that were helpful to his arguments, and those he would ask Paige Vallis to repeat. I could tell how he would work this fact. Now that Andrew Tripping had paid for the food and wine, of course his date was willing to put out for him. Robelon wanted to underscore that for the jury.

Paige had accounted for most of their time together in the restaurant. Then Andrew asked her if she wanted to come to his apartment to meet his son, Dulles.

"Yes, I said that I did. Andrew hadn't told me until that moment that he had left the boy alone for the evening. I was surprised, considering how young he was. So I agreed to go with him."

There was no touching, no hand-holding, no suggestion of intimacy as they walked to the building on East Thirty-sixth Street.

"Andrew opened the apartment door with a key. It was completely dark inside, so I thought perhaps-"

"Objection."

"Sustained."

"What happened when you entered the apartment?" I asked.

"Andrew turned on the light. Dulles wasn't asleep-I figured he might have been, because it was almost ten o'clock, and because it was so strange that he would be waiting in total darkness," Vallis said, slipping in her "thought" by the back door. "He was sitting on a chair, a straight-backed wooden chair, in a corner of the living room."

"Who spoke first?"

"Andrew did. He told the boy my name and asked him to introduce himself."

"And did he?"

"No. He didn't say a word. He didn't move a muscle. Andrew spoke again, and like a military commander, ordered Dulles to stand up and come shake my hand."

"What did you observe as the boy approached you?"

"Tears were streaming down his cheeks. That's the first thing I noticed. As he got closer, I could see that his left eye was bruised, and there seemed to be some scratches on his face, too."

"Did you say anything to him?"

"I dropped to my knees and grabbed hold of his elbows. I started to ask if he was all right, and as I was doing that, his father began shouting at him, telling him to grow up and act like a man."

"What did you do next?"

"I tried to embrace the boy, telling him that he would be okay. But he stepped away from me and wiped his face with the backs of his hands. I stood up to get closer, so I could try to examine his eye. 'What happened to you?' I asked him."

Paige Vallis explained that Dulles resumed his seat while his father answered her question. "'He made mistakes,' is what Andrew told me. 'He's going to get things right this time. Aren't you, Dulles?'"

Then she described how Andrew pulled up two chairs, facing the boy, and ordered Paige to sit down in one of them.

"Did you sit?"

"Yes."

"Did you make any effort to leave?"

"No. Not then. I didn't think that-"

"Objection," Robelon said.

"Sustained. Don't tell us what you were thinking, tell us what you did," Moffett told the witness.

"Yes, Your Honor." She turned back to the jury. "Andrew began drilling the boy, talking to him like a soldier. He made him stand up at attention, and then fired a series of questions at him."

"Do you remember any of them?"

"I remember the first thing Andrew asked about. 'The lion's brood,' he said. 'Tell us their names.' Dulles answered him. He named Hannibal and his three brothers-they were weird names like Hasdrubal and Mago-I can't think of the others. He got it right, apparently. Then Andrew told him to list the winning battles of Aetius, who was some kind of Roman general. Dulles did that right, too. He knew all the places and the dates."

Paige continued with a litany of quizzes, all of them about military figures. Mike Chapman could have answered them without missing a beat, but the ten-year-old child had been force-fed the list in the few months he had taken up residence with his schizophrenic father.

She got through five subjects that she was able to recall and estimated that there was a handful more that she could not. She tensed visibly as she moved to a more difficult part of the scene.

"Then Andrew started peppering the child with questions about Benedict Arnold. 'Death to traitors,' he kept saying. 'You know what happens to traitors, don't you, boy?' Dulles knew about the betrayal of West Point and the Quebec campaign, but Andrew asked him something about the Battle of Valcour Island and the boy simply froze."

"What did Andrew say to him next?"

"He pointed at the closet door. 'The gun, Dulles, don't make me take out the gun again.'"

Paige Vallis described how the boy's body shook in response to the threat. She got up from her chair and went to grab him by the hand, begging Andrew to stop and let her take the boy with her.

"Did you attempt to leave the apartment?"

"Objection."

"Overruled. I'll hear this. Go on, Ms. Vallis."

"Of course I did. I told Andrew I was going and I was taking Dulles with me. He stood in front of the door and told me the boy couldn't leave. He said that if I went to the police, he had people who would take care of me. Those were his exact words. I swore I wouldn't go to the police, that I just wanted Dulles to see a doctor. I wasn't worried about myself-this was all about the poor little boy."

"Did Andrew Tripping step away from the door?"

"No, no, he did not. He put his hand on the child's shoulder and asked him if he had forgotten about the gun. 'Death to traitors,' he repeated. 'Benedict Arnold was the scum of the earth.'"

Paige Vallis lowered her head. 'That's when he stepped away from the door."

"Did you open it?"

"No, Miss Cooper. Not then."

The logical thing to ask her was why, but the law wasn't always logical. She was not allowed to talk about the workings of her mind, just what she did and what she observed. "What happened next?"

"Dulles broke loose from me and ran back to the chair. His father followed him."

"What did you do?"

"I stayed. I couldn't bear to leave the child in those circumstances."

This was one of the biggest problems we faced with the jury. I might have proved the misdemeanor charge of Tripping's endangering the welfare of his own child, but not much more. At that moment on March 6, Paige Vallis had the clear opportunity to get herself out of harm's way. She had not witnessed any assault on Dulles Tripping and had no clear understanding of how he had been bruised. She heard Andrew refer to a gun, but had not seen any weapon nor been threatened with the use of one.

"Objection," Peter Robelon said. "Move to strike."

"Motion granted," Moffett said, tapping on the railing in front of him, telling the reporter to strike the comment about Paige not being able to bear leaving Dulles behind.

But the jury had heard the words, and it was impossible to erase them from their minds.

"What did the defendant do next?"

"He took something out of his pocket. Something small. At first I couldn't see what it was. Dulles started to whimper. 'Please don't,' he said, over and over."

"Did there come a time when you could tell what the object was?"

"Tweezers. It was a small pair of metal tweezers. He leaned the child's head back, and inserted the tweezers in his nose."

Juror number four slinked down in her seat and closed her eyes. Squeamish, I guessed. An appropriate reaction. Number eight leaned forward and seemed to enjoy the detail. Too much television, no doubt.

"What did you do?"

"I ran to stop him. But I couldn't. He had already placed them in the child's nostril, and I was afraid I'd cause more damage if I shook his arm. In seconds, he pulled a bloody piece of cotton out of the boy's nose."

"Was there any discussion about that?"

"Yes, Andrew told me he had packed Dulles's nose to stop some earlier bleeding, before he came out to meet me for dinner. It looked to me as if the stuffing must have caused as much pain as the initial blow."

"Objection, Judge."

"Sustained."

Jurors were listening intently, some of them occasionally glancing over at the defense table to see whether Andrew Tripping was reacting to Paige Vallis's testimony. I desperately needed the testimony of Dulles himself. Without him, there was only this hint of what his father's nightly torture routine had been.

The luncheon recess interrupted the narrative's drama once again. Neither Paige nor I felt like eating. She noshed on a sandwich and I played with a salad, knowing how likely I was to develop a crushing headache by midafternoon with the combination of the stress level escalating during the proceedings and my failure to eat.

Back on the stand, Paige took us through the rest of the bizarre evening. Eventually, at some point after midnight, Andrew allowed Dulles to change into pajamas and go to sleep on the narrow cot that had been placed in the alcove off the kitchen.

Then, Vallis said, Andrew spent more than two hours telling her about the terrible pressures of raising the boy alone.

"It must have been two o'clock in the morning," she went on. "Andrew stood up in front of me. 'You're going to come inside,' he said. 'I want you to come in and take off your clothes.'"

"What did you do?"

"'No,' I said to him." Vallis tried to stay composed as she looked at me, instead of at the jurors. "'Don't do this, Andrew.' That's what I said."

"Did Andrew respond?"

"Yes. He said, 'Don't make me hurt you. Don't make me hurt my son.'"

"What did you do, Paige?" I asked.

"I had no choice. I, I-"

"Objection, Your Honor. The jury will decide that," Robelon said, smirking at the panel.

"Sustained."

"I went into the bedroom and did exactly what Andrew Tripping told me to do," Paige said, finally getting angry with Robelon. "I was afraid he'd kill his son, and I was afraid he would do something to hurt me."

"From the time that Dulles went to sleep, did Andrew ever mention his gun again?"

Vallis answered softly. "No."

"Did you ever see a gun in the apartment?"

"No."

"Did you see any other weapons?"

"Lots of them. Odd things, hanging on his walls and on table-tops. Machetes and swords and arcane-looking things with blades. I wouldn't even know what to call some of them."

"Did he threaten you with any of them?"

"No. Not explicitly."

Robelon and I would both try to use this fact to our advantage. He would argue that Tripping had the means to scare his companion into submission, if he had needed to threaten her into sex. I would say that a sign of her credibility was that despite the presence of so many sharp objects, she had never exaggerated the kinds of threats that the defendant made.

Paige Vallis went on to describe the sexual assault, which occurred for the next hour in Tripping's stark bedroom. Not a word was exchanged between them after he demanded that she undress and get onto the bed. He moved and positioned her as he desired, subjecting her to a variety of sexual acts that I made her detail for the jurors. She cried, she told them, from the moment she crossed the threshold into the room until her tormentor fell asleep beside her.

"What time was that?"

"Four o'clock in the morning, roughly."

"Did you leave then?"

"No. I just lay still in the bed until I could see daylight through the crack in the blinds. I got up and dressed myself. Quietly, very quietly. I awakened Dulles and helped him to put his clothes on. That's when I saw even more bruises, on his forearms and thighs. Andrew must have heard-"

"Objection."

"There was a noise in Andrew's bedroom, so I hurried the boy along. When the two of us got to the front door, Andrew was in the hallway near the living room. I told him I was walking Dulles to school, and that I had written my home phone number on the telephone pad in case I could help in the future."

"What did he say?"

"He asked again if I was going to the police, and started to walk towards us. I turned to face him, putting the boy behind me, nearer the stairwell that led to the building's exit."

"Did you answer him?" I asked.

"Yes, I did. I told him not to worry, not to come any closer, either. 'I can't go to the police,' is what I said to Andrew Tripping. 'I killed a man last year.'"