The Kills

12

We take our witnesses as we find them, as I had told the jury in my opening statement. Now they would hear for themselves what had happened to Paige Vallis several months before she met Andrew Tripping.

"Is that statement you made to the defendant about killing a man true?"

Paige was strangely calmer now, as she told the story. "Yes, it is." She shifted her body in the chair and faced them squarely. "I mean, not on purpose. Shortly after last Thanksgiving, my father died. He was almost eighty-eight years old and passed away in his sleep.

"He had lived alone, in a small house in Virginia, since he retired more than twenty years ago. I was the only child-he had married late, and never really wanted a large family because of all the moving around his professional life entailed."

Robelon was on his feet, objecting again. "Your Honor, this would be a lovely retrospective for the Biography Channel," he said snidely, drawing a few smiles from the jury box, "but I think that all we need to know is that Ms. Vallis killed a man. Period."

"May we approach?" I asked.

Moffett waved my witness off the stand and away from the bench, while we conferenced the issue. "Where are you going with this, Alexandra?"

"If Peter doesn't intend to cross-examine my witness about how and why she-uh, she got into the situation she did, I'll leave it alone. But if he plans to ask a single question about the man's death, I'm going to bring out the facts on my direct. Ms. Vallis has got nothing to hide."

"How about it, Pete?"

"I've got a couple of questions for her, sure. But I'd rather give them up and move this along."

"You're telling me you're not going to touch the subject in summation, either?" I asked. I knew that when Robelon heard all the facts, he would be eager to remind the jury that Vallis had once defended herself when she was in mortal danger. He would say she was just as capable of defending herself against Tripping. I wanted to compare and contrast the circumstances, acknowledging-as she did-that it was the boy's life, not her own safety, that had concerned her on the night of March 6.

"I won't concede that."

Moffett was ready to think like Solomon and split the baby. "Alex, what are you trying to bring out here? That Ms. Vallis killed a man in self-defense? She have a weapon?"

"She didn't, Your Honor. There was an intruder-he's the one who had a knife. He held it to her throat and they struggled over it, and when they fell to the floor, he landed on the knife."

"Okay. So I'll allow you to ask that much. Skip over 'This is your life, Ms. Vallis.' You," Moffett said, addressing Peter Robelon. "I'm gonna limit you, too. Nothing beyond the scope of Cooper's direct, then short and sweet in summation."

That meant Moffett was reading the jury as already being in Robelon's favor. He was trying not to prolong my agony.

Paige recounted the short version of the event. I took her back to the night of the crime, letting her tell the panel that Tripping allowed her to walk out with his son after hearing that statement. I would later argue that the reason the defendant stayed in the apartment, the reason he didn't flee before the police arrived, is that he believed what Paige Vallis told him and thought she would not go to the police.

"What did you do when you left the apartment?"

"I got out on the sidewalk with Dulles. I needed to explain to him what I was going to do. I wanted him to understand that he wouldn't get hurt any more if I told the police, to know that he was entitled to be safe in his home. The first thing I did was take him to a coffee shop. I bought him breakfast-I don't think-excuse me, sir. He didn't look as though he'd had a real meal in months-and talked to him for almost an hour. Then, on our way out, I found the first uniformed policeman around, and asked him to drive us to the station house."

I could anticipate Robelon's cross now. So, Ms. Vallis, I expected him to say to her, after you were raped- beforeyou went to the police, before you talked to a doctor-you had two eggs over easy with a side order of bacon? Or were they scrambled? Did you back up your coffee with a mimosa or a Bloody Mary?

"And when you finished making your statement at the police station, where did you go?" I asked.

"To the hospital. They took me to Bellevue Hospital."

"Were you examined there?"

"Yes, by a nurse. I think they call them forensic nurse examiners. She did a very thorough physical exam."

I started to take Paige through the many steps of the painstaking procedure necessary to complete a rape evidence collection kit, everything from swabs for DNA to pubic hair combings to finger-nail scrapings.

"We'll stipulate to the medical findings," Robelon said.

Of course he would. None of them was harmful to his client.

"Did you sustain any injuries, Ms. Vallis?"

"No, no, I did not."

Physical injury was not an element of the crime of rape. In fact, fewer than a third of women reporting sexual assault have any external signs of injury or abuse. I couldn't go into that with Paige, but the nurse examiner would be qualified as an expert next week and take us through those facts.

"Did you ever see or speak with Dulles Tripping again?"

"No, I did not."

"Until you walked into this courtroom this morning, did you ever see or speak with the defendant again?"

"Never."

I finished all the steps of my direct examination, cleaned up the loose ends, and told the court that I had no further questions of this witness. It was shortly before four o'clock in the afternoon, and a quick look over my shoulder confirmed that the spectator seats were still completely empty.

Robelon stood to begin his cross, but the judge wiggled the pinky ring in his direction and we both approached the bench. "That woman ought to be here with the kid any minute. Why don't we hold this until Monday morning?"

"I'm ready to go, Your Honor."

I knew that Robelon wanted to ask his first few questions. If he started with Paige Vallis, she would then be directed to have no conversation with me about the case throughout the weekend. The strategy was obvious, and though I objected, I really had no grounds, nor any reason to discuss the evidence with her. My curiosity about Harry Strait, who had not reappeared, would have to wait until she was off the stand.

It was also clear that Robelon didn't want the jurors to linger over her previous testimony with any sympathetic thoughts during the two-day hiatus. He wanted to score a few points about Paige's lack of injury that would sink in their minds over the weekend, so that they would be receptive to his consent defense.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Vallis, I'm Peter Robelon," he said, communicating the fact that in contrast to my easy familiarity with the witness, he had never met her before. "I see from your hospital records that there were no signs of trauma in your physical exam, is that correct?"

"It is."

"Any bleeding?"

"No."

"Redness or swelling, internally?"

"I-uh, I wouldn't know."

"Well, no discomfort that you complained of, was there?"

"Not once I left your client's bedroom."

"No lacerations that needed stitching or sutures?"

"No."

"No follow-up treatment necessary, was there?"

"Yes, actually, there was. I had to be tested for sexually transmitted disease," Paige told defense counsel, now looking at him instead of the jury. "I was quite worried about being forced to have unprotected sex." Robelon had made the same slip that many lawyers did, failing to get someone to interpret the seemingly illegible notes in the body of the medical record.

He bluffed his way through a few more questions and must have decided to give them a more careful review before going on. Within ten minutes, he told the court he was ready to suspend the proceedings for the day.

Moffett excused the jurors for the weekend, told the court officers to escort Paige Vallis to the witness room until I made arrangements for her to leave, and asked his clerk to call Ms. Taggart's office to see why she and Dulles were delayed.

Mercer Wallace had come up at three-thirty, as we had arranged earlier, so that he could wait for Paige and drive her home. He was sitting with her when I went to the witness room.

"Alex," she said, getting to her feet as I walked in, "I want to apologize again for what happened this morning. For-for leaving out that stuff about Harry Strait. I'd like to explain-"

"I'd like it, too, Paige. But it's got to wait until next week. Months ago you told me straightaway you had killed a man during a struggle for your life, but you couldn't even own up about a former lover who's somehow entangled in this mess?"

Mercer shook his head from side to side, wanting me to back off, cut Paige some slack.

"I'm trying to tell you I'm sorry. I had no idea it would be relevant."

"Okay, okay. Look, I can only talk to you about administrative things while you're Robelon's witness," I said, squaring away when Mercer would deliver her back here on Monday.

Maxine had followed me in and handed back Paige's pocketbook. Mercer picked up her briefcase, which she had left in my office.

"I don't know what to do with this, Alex, other than give it to you," Paige said, opening the clasp and removing a brown paper bag. "The hospital mailed this to me because they didn't have a home address for Dulles, once he was put in foster care."

I reached in and pulled out a blue baseball jacket. The wordYANKEES was written across the back of the windbreaker in white lettering, and the team logo was on the front breast. I smiled. At least the boy and I had one thing in common.

"I thought I'd see him here today, and be able to give it to him myself," she went on. "That's why I hung on to it. I'd like to talk to him, to see how-"

"Forget that one, Paige," I said. "Maybe when this is all over. I couldn't let you do that now, even if I wanted to. But this is going to be very useful to me, when I actually get to meet Dulles. It'll be a great icebreaker. Maybe I'll get him a cap to go with it."

"You'll give it to him then, for me?"

"You bet."

"We've got tickets for the play-off games at the end of the month," Mercer told her. "Maybe I'll just leave Alex home and take the kid."

"I think it was like a security blanket for that child. The one constant in his young life. His grandmother gave it to him before she died, and he wouldn't leave the house without it, the morning I took him," she said, shaking her head.

I folded it over and replaced it in the bag, glad to have some connection to happier days with which to begin my eventual conversation with Dulles.

"Anything else you need before you go home?" I asked. "You'll call or beep Mercer if Harry Strait shows up on your doorstep this weekend? Or if you get any other calls connected to the case, right?"

"Of course."

I thanked her for her fortitude and patience with the process, and sent her off with Mercer, walking down the corridor to the main hallway so that Maxine and I could reenter the courtroom through the front door.

Mike Chapman was leaning against a column close to the entrance to the trial part. He was holding a red-and-white Marlboro box-odd, since he never smoked cigarettes-and it looked like it had a thin metal strip extended for an inch above its edge. He was speaking into the piece of wire as I approached, and Andrew Tripping was pacing frenetically just three feet away from Mike.

"What's going on?" I asked, as he waved at Mercer over my head.

"Agent four-two to command central," Mike said, doing an obvious stage whisper into the wire. "Subject is agitated. Blonde persecutor is approaching and subject is twitching and tweaking-"

"Would you please cut it out before I get called on the carpet for this?"

"Works like a charm on a paranoid schizophrenic. Another few minutes of my talking into this paper clip and your man Tripping will flip out big-time. I've been telling command central that I thought the perp was ready for a secret assignment inside Attica, like going undercover as the girlfriend of the biggest, baddest inmate in the joint."

"Put your toy away," I said, pushing in the double doors.

"Mercer said you might need help carrying your files downstairs after he left."

I handed him the paper bag with the Yankees jacket. "Hold on to this for me. I don't have enough evidence in this case to overburden myself."

"I'm also here to tell you that we might get lucky. Those lifts we got from Queenie's apartment?"

"Yeah?"

Mike was referring to the latent fingerprints for which the Crime Scene Unit had dusted.

"Well, they got prints of value."

"Fresh? I mean, it sounds like there were kids in and out all the time, doing errands for her."

"These should be good. You know those raised seats, the plastic ones, that have to be on top of the toilet if you've got injuries or health problems and you can't lower yourself down all the way?"

"Sure." Queenie Ransome had suffered a stroke, and I thought again of how every aspect of her privacy, every shred of dignity left to her, had been invaded and abused by this investigation.

"The killer must have stopped to relieve himself, and picked up the seat to place it on the floor. Lifted some good prints right off the sides. Both hands, four fingers each. Clean and clear."

"Have you run them through NCIC?"

"Jeez, Ms. Cooper, how did I make it this far without you?"

"So there's no match?"

"Nope, not yet. But it gives us something to work with."

"See you downstairs. I've got to finish up here," I said, letting the doors swing shut behind me.

Within minutes, Nancy Taggart and Dulles's lawyer, Graham Hoyt, pushed through the same doorway, and marched together, grim-faced, down the aisle toward us.

"I don't like to be kept waiting, Ms. Taggart. You're holding up the works here. And that's the second time today for you, Mr. Hoyt," Moffett said, stepping down from the bench, unhooking the clasps of his black robe and heading for his chambers. "You, Robelon. You and your client are excused until Monday. We'll start up at nine-thirty sharp."

Hoyt shook hands with both Andrew Tripping and Peter Robelon as they passed him, with Emily Frith trailing behind them. He spoke quietly into Robelon's ear.

"Follow me," the judge said, when the others had left the room. "You wanna get the kid? And the foster mother?"

"We've come to tell you we can't do that, Your Honor. There's a problem," Taggart said, unable even to look in my direction.

"Now what?"

Nancy Taggart began to explain to the judge. I rose to my feet, tapping the cap of my pen against my file, anxious to tell Moffett that this was predictable from the mother's phone call to me last evening. Now we had lost a whole day because Taggart had demanded that I leave this in her capable hands.

"Judge, Ms. Taggart isn't being entirely candid with you. Let me tell you what happened yesterday afternoon, and about my conversation with Ms. Taggart thereafter. I offered to provide all the help she needed to find this foster mother, whoever she is-"

Taggart pointed to the hallway behind her. "I've got Mrs. Wykoff here-the foster mother. She's not the problem. It's Dulles who's gone missing, sir. He's run away."