Three Blind Mice

4

Monday morning, the twentieth day of August, dawned hot and humid and hazy. Matthew awoke with the sun at ten minutes past seven and was in his pool swimming laps when the telephone rang. He swam over to the steps, picked up the modular phone, hit the talk button, and said, “Hello?” It could not have been later than a quarter to eight.

“Mr. Hope? It’s me. Andrew. I have that information you wanted.”

“Yes, Andrew, go ahead.”

“Running time of Casablanca is a hundred and three minutes. That’s an hour and forty-three minutes, sir.”

“Yes, Andrew.”

Leeds had told him they’d started watching the tape after dinner. He wondered now if Jessica had watched it all the way through. Or had she, like her husband, fallen asleep somewhere along the way?

“High tide was at one-thirty that Monday afternoon,” Andrew said, “low at seven fifty-four that evening.”

Which meant Leeds still would have had good water when he took the boat out that afternoon, and he’d have beat the outgoing tide when he came back in at six, six-thirty. His story checked out.

But Charlie Stubbs had claimed…

“High again at one forty-two on Tuesday morning,” Andrew said.

There it was.

The boat could have gone out again at ten-thirty, as Stubbs had claimed, when the tide was midway between high and low and the water still good enough for passage. And if the boat had come back in early on Tuesday morning, it would have caught the tide almost at full again, Matthew had no defense based on the navigability of Willowbee Creek.

“Thank you, Andrew,” he said, “that was very helpful.”

An addendum to the State Attorney’s response to Matthew’s demand for discovery was waiting on his desk when he got to the office at nine that morning.

Where Matthew had asked for the names and addresses of persons with information relevant to the offense, Patricia Demming was now adding Charles N. Stubbs to her former list of witnesses. She undoubtedly planned to have him testify that he had seen Leeds taking the boat out at ten-thirty on the night of the murder. Exactly what Matthew himself would have done in her position. No surprises thus far. Matthew hated surprises.

Where Matthew had asked for any written or taped verbatim witness statements made to the police, Patricia now included a written copy of Stubbs’s statement taken by one Detective Frank Bannion of the State Attorney’s office on Saturday, August 18, two days ago.

Where Matthew had asked for a list of any tangible paper or objects to be used at the hearing and trial, Patricia now listed: One billed yellow nylon mesh cap with interlocking BB monogram in red and one yellow windbreaker with nylon shell and insulated lining.

This was a surprise.

Matthew picked up the phone and asked Cynthia to get Jessica Leeds for him. She buzzed a moment later to say that Mrs. Leeds was on the line.

“Good morning,” Matthew said.

“Good morning, I was just about to call you.”

“When were they there?” Matthew asked.

“Do you mean the police?”

“Yes.”

“Late last night.”

“Did they have a search warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it? Rawles and Bloom again?”

“No. A detective from the State Attorney’s office.”

“Did you get his name?”

“Frank Bannion.”

“Was he looking specifically for the jacket and hat?”

“The search warrant called them ‘evidence or fruits of the crime.’ ”

“But did it say something like ‘Affiant specifically requests warrant to search for,’ something like that?”

“Yes. The jacket and hat. The warrant described them in detail.”

“Did it also describe the farm as the location for the search?”

“Yes. The exact location of the farm.”

“Did Bannion sign as affiant?”

“I think so.”

“Who granted the warrant?”

“Someone named Amores?”

“Amoros. With an o. Manuel Amoros, he’s a Circuit Court judge.”

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“Okay, so now she’s got the jacket and hat.”

“She?”

“Patricia Demming. The Assistant S.A. who’ll be trying the case. Tell me again, Mrs. Leeds. Are you sure your husband didn’t leave the house at any time on the night of the murders?”

“I’m positive.”

“Were you at home all night long?”

“Yes. All night long.”

“You didn’t go out for a walk or anything, during which time your husband might have…”

“No, I was home. We were home together. Stephen fell asleep watching the movie, but I watched it all the way through, and then I watched television for a while before going to sleep.”

“And slept the night through. Both of you.”

“Yes.”

“Until you were awakened by the police at nine the next morning.”

“Yes.”

“Can you remember the last time you saw that jacket and hat?”

“Stephen was wearing the hat when he came in off the boat that evening. Before dinner.”

“And the jacket? Was he wearing the jacket, too?”

“No. It was a very hot day.”

“Where does he normally keep the jacket?”

“In the hall closet.”

“And the hat?”

“The same closet. On the shelf there.”

“Is that where he put the hat when he came in that evening?”

“I suppose so. I really don’t remember. He was wearing it, but I don’t remember whether he put it in the closet or not. I didn’t know the hat was going to be important. Why is it suddenly so damn important? Why did they come for it?”

“Because they claim he was wearing it when he committed the murders.”

“He didn’t commit the murders. He was here with me all night long.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“How many times do I…?”

“Are you a very deep sleeper, Mrs. Leeds?”

“Yes.”

“Did you wake up at any time that night?”

“No.”

“You slept soundly the whole night through?”

“Yes.”

“Can you say for certain that your husband didn’t get out of bed at any time that night?”

“Well, I…”

“Because that’s what the State Attorney’s going to ask you, Mrs. Leeds.”

“I can’t say that for certain, no.”

“Then he might have got out of bed…”

“I suppose that’s possible…”

“… and gone downstairs to put on that yellow jacket and hat…”

“Yes, but…”

“… and driven your Maserati…”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t hear the car starting. I would have…”

“But you were sound asleep.”

“Well… yes.”

“So you wouldn’t have heard the car starting.”

“I guess not.”

“So you really can’t say for sure that your husband was home with you all night long.”

“Whose side are you on?” Jessie snapped.

“Yours, Mrs. Leeds. Your husband’s.”

“I was beginning to wonder.”

“No, don’t ever wonder about that. I’m only asking you what the S.A.’s going to ask. You’re his only alibi. If she can cast doubt on your…”

“My husband did not kill those men!” Jessie said sharply. “I may have been asleep, yes, I may not have heard everything happening in this goddamn house, but I know he did not go out to kill those men!”

“How can you know that?” Matthew asked.

“I just know it!”

“How?”

“Because he…”

She cut herself off.

There was a silence on the line.

Matthew waited.

“Yes?” he said at last.

“He…”

And another silence.

“Yes, he what?”

“He rejected the idea,” Jessie said.

“What idea?”

“Of having them killed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted them killed.”

Oh, no, please, Matthew thought.

“I wanted to find someone who’d kill them.”

No, you didn’t, he thought. Please.

“Have you mentioned this to anyone else?” he said.

“Of course not.”

“But you did mention it to your husband?”

Say no, he thought. Tell me you didn’t suggest it to your…

“Yes. I told him I wanted to… to start asking around… discreetly. Find out if there was someone. anyone. who would kill those animals for me. Rid the earth of them. There are such people, aren’t there? Who do these things for money?”

“Yes, there are such people,” Matthew said.

“But Stephen said no. He said the men who raped me would have to live with their consciences for the rest of their lives. That was God’s punishment, he said. And God’s punishment was enough.”

Try selling that to a jury, Matthew thought.

“Mrs. Leeds,” he said, “at the trial, your husband didn’t sound quite that magnanimous. He…”

“Yes, his outburst, I know. But that was in anger, and this was much later.”

“How much later?”

“We heard the verdict on Friday. This was on Sunday.”

“The day before the murders.”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

There was another silence on the line.

He was thinking, Please don’t let Demming get her hands on this.

“My husband didn’t kill those men,” Jessie said. “Believe me, I know he didn’t. He couldn’t have.”

But Matthew was thinking he could have.

The name of the place was Kickers.

Until just two months ago, it had been a seafood restaurant called The Shoreline Inn, and six months before that it had been a steak house called Jason’s Place, and three months before that it had been known as The Purple Seahorse, which served Continental food as precious as its name in an interior all done up in violet and lavender.

Kickers had opened at the beginning of June, not an auspicious month in that the tourists usually left shortly before Easter and the native trade down here could not in itself support a restaurant. If you hoped to get through the dog days of summer, you raked in your chips from November through April, and then either closed for part of the off-season or contented yourself with eking out a bare existence till the snowbirds flew down again. Opening at such a lousy time. Kickers should have followed the sad tradition of all the hard-luck joints that had come and gone on this spot, the exterior of the building remaining while the name and the interior decor changed every few months or so.

But against all odds, it seemed to be surviving, possibly because Salty Pete’s — a rowdy saloon favored by year-round residents of Whisper Key — had considerately burned to the ground shortly after Kickers threw open its doors. There were those who voiced suspicions that Michael Grundy, the owner of Kickers, had himself engineered the unfortunate blaze at Salty Pete’s, but neither the police nor the fire department had found the slightest proof of arson.

Smack on the Intercoastal, Kickers inhabited a big old white clapboard building with a huge outdoor deck overlooking the water and a dock that could accommodate some ten to twelve boats, depending on their size. It was the site, of course, that had encouraged all those previous entrepreneurs to rush right in where angels might have feared to tread. And with a splendid view like this one — the waterway at one of its widest bends, the bridge to Whisper in the near distance, lazy boat traffic constantly drifting by in a no-wake zone — the mystery was why all those other places had failed.

Grundy had opted for the casual air of a honky-tonk saloon, wisely recognizing Salty Pete’s (before it burned down) as his only competition for the key’s steady drinking crowd. He hired a flock of fresh-faced young barmaids — six of them altogether, four behind the long bar in the main dining room, two behind the circular bar on the deck — and dressed them in white blouses low enough and black skirts short enough to delight men while not offending women. And for balance he hired a horde of handsome young waiters and a piano player with a Gene Kelly grin, and he dressed them in black trousers and open-throated white shirts with puffy sleeves and red garters. And then he made damn sure he was serving generous drinks, choice cuts of meat, and the freshest fish he could buy, all at reasonable prices. And before you could shout eureka, he had himself a place that looked like a saloon but behaved like a restaurant, attracting customers day and night by land and by sea. A Calusa success story. Of which there were not too many these days.

When Frank Bannion arrived at noon that Monday, the place was already beginning to fill up for lunch, and many of the customers looked like banking people who had driven over from the mainland, a sure harbinger of longevity. He parked his car — prominently marked with the State Attorney’s seal on both front doors — alongside a silver Lincoln Continental that looked like a beached shark, and then he followed the sound of a whorehouse piano into an interior bright with sunshine but nonetheless managing to convey the look and feel of a friendly, bustling, happy, cozy joint that had been here for the past hundred years and would be here as long as good food and drink were being served anywhere in the state of Florida. No small accomplishment for this jinxed location.

Bannion nodded his head in appreciation and walked through the main dining room and out onto the deck, where round white tables shaded by huge brown umbrellas overlooked the water. A boat under sail was gliding past on the wind. Boats made you want to be on them, Bannion thought, until you actually got on them. He sat at the bar and began chatting up the redhead who took his order for a gin and tonic. He was here to talk about the night of the murders. He had a choice of coming right out and saying he was a detective working for the State Attorney, or else he could just pretend to be somebody curious about what had happened. Sometimes if you came on like the Law, they froze. On the other hand, if you came on like a snoop, they sometimes told you to fuck off. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He decided to show his shield.

The girl was impressed.

“Wow,” she said.

Twenty-three years old, twenty-four maybe, with an amazing sun-tan for somebody with red hair. Bannion figured the hair color had been poured out of a bottle. Brown eyes. Little button nose. Her name was Rosie Aldrich, she told him.

“I hate the name Rosie, don’t you?” she said.

She’d come down from Brooklyn for a few weeks last winter, decided to stay awhile. She loved working here at Kickers, she told him. What she did, she alternated days and nights, which gave her a chance to spend time on the beach. She loved the beach. Loved the sun. Also, with a job like this, she got to meet a lot of interesting people. Like detectives from the State Attorney’s office, wow.

Bannion told her he had once bit a burglar on the backside.

Out of deference to her youth, he didn’t say ass.

He showed her the photograph of the burglar’s behind to prove it. His teethmarks on the burglar’s behind.

The girl shook her head in awe and admiration.

Bannion asked her if she’d been working here on Monday night, August thirteenth.

“Why, what happened then?” she asked.

Brown eyes saucer-wide.

“Routine investigation,” Bannion said. “Would that have been one of the nights you were working?”

“What night would that have been, the thirteenth?” she asked.

“A Monday,” Bannion said.

He was beginning to get the feeling she was kind of stupid. A sort of airheaded look in those brown eyes. Or maybe she was on something. A lot of kids these days, you figured them for dimwits, they were in fact stoned.

“Yeah, but which Monday?” she said.

Today was Monday, the twentieth of August. One of those flip-up calendars behind the bar displayed the date in big white numbers on a black background. So what Monday could the thirteenth have been if not last Monday?

“Last Monday,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

He waited.

“When was that?” she said.

“Last Monday,” he explained. “The thirteenth. Last Monday night.”

He was thinking that even if she had seen anything, Demming would never put a dope like her on the stand.

“Were you working that night?” he asked.

“Gee, no,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, relieved.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Do you know who would’ve been working that night? Out here on the deck?”

“Why out here on the deck?” she asked.

“Would you know?” he asked, and smiled pleasantly and patiently.

“I’ll ask Sherry,” she said.

Sherry turned out to be the dark-haired girl serving drinks at the other end of the bar. She was very tall, five ten or eleven, Bannion guessed, giving the long-legged, high-heeled impression that her skirt was even shorter than it actually was. She listened intently to what Rosie was telling her, glanced down to where Bannion was sitting and nursing his gin and tonic, nodded, and then came over to him.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m from the State Att—”

“Yeah, Rosie told me. What’s this about?”

Intelligence flashing in her dark eyes, thank God; he hated stupid people. Sharp nose that gave her the look of a fox on the scent of a hare. Wide mouth, full lips. Actually, quite attractive, he thought. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, in there. He wondered if she knew his teeth and his hair were still his own.

“I’m investigating a murder,” he said.

Impress her flat out.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Were you working out here on the deck last Monday night, the thirteenth?”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

Watching him. Gauging him. Was he for real or was this some kind of pitch? Bannion was sure she got guys in here pretending to be all sorts of things they weren’t. He figured he’d better show her his shield.

“Okay,” she said, and nodded.

“Okay?” he said, and smiled.

He felt he had a very nice smile because all of his teeth were his own.

“I said okay, didn’t I?” she said, and returned the smile.

She had a nice smile, too.

“So what’s this murder?” she asked.

This morning, Bannion and the S.A. had studied a nautical chart together and had decided that the closest landing to Willowbee Creek was right here at Kickers, just off marker 63. Good dock space, even on a crowded night, and a Monday night wouldn’t have been that crowded. Pull the boat in, tie her up, get into a car, and then drive over to Little Asia, not fifteen minutes away. Leeds had to have pulled in here. Stubbs had seen him turning left out of the creek, heading south. The next place for docking a boat would’ve been The Captain’s Wheel, off marker 38, too far south to have made it back by car to the scene of the murders within the time estimated in the coroner’s postmortem interval. No, Leeds had to’ve got off his boat right here at Kickers.

“Were you here around ten-thirty, eleven o’clock that night?” he asked.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Working the bar here?”

“Yeah?”

“You can see the dock from the bar here, can’t you?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for a boat that would’ve come in around ten-thirty, eleven o’clock. Would’ve been coming down the Intercoastal from Willowbee Creek.”

“Marker 72,” she said, and nodded.

“Are you a boater?”

“I’ve been on a few boats,” she said, raising her eyebrows slightly and somehow conveying the impression that she had done some very interesting things on boats in waters hither and yon. Their eyes met. Bannion suddenly felt he had a shot at bedding this woman.

“I know the Willowbee Creek marker,” she said.

“This boat would’ve been a thirty-nine-foot Mainstream Mediterranean, coming down the waterway south from Willowbee. White boat with black trim, the name Felicity painted on the transom. Guy at the helm would’ve been wearing a yellow jacket and hat.”

“Sure,” Sherry said. “What about him?”

Emma Hailey had worked in what the Calusa County Courthouse called its Records Division since 1947, when the town was relatively unknown as a resort. Now in her late sixties, Emma wondered how it had ever become popular. The weather here was iffish at best in the wintertime and swelteringly hot in the summer, which melted directly into the hurricane season. There was none of the lushness one associated with tropical climates, nor for that matter any of the riotous show of color you got in Atlanta when the magnolias were blooming, or Birmingham or Tulsa when the azaleas popped, or anywhere in summertime Connecticut when the daylilies bloomed orange and red and yellow along every country lane. Even the springtime blooming of Calusa’s jacaranda trees was pale by comparison to the exuberant purple explosion on virtually every Los Angeles street at that time of the year.

Here, there were listless bougainvillea and limp hibiscus, tame by Caribbean standards. The cluster of gold trees that bloomed in the spring on U.S. 41, down near Marina Lou’s and the bridge to Sabal Key, were admittedly impressive, but their glorious show of color was short-lived. Most of the year — and especially during the summer — Calusa’s foliage looked faded or scorched, and no one seemed to give a damn. Easier to go fishing than to water a garden. Why prune a bush when you could hop on a boat and sail out into the Gulf? The lack of concern showed. Calusa looked like an elegantly dressed woman whose soiled and tattered slip was showing.

Emma thought of it as drab.

Matthew’s partner thought of it as tacky.

Matthew wondered if they’d ever exchanged views.

“The trial went on for three weeks,” Emma was telling him. “We’ve got 1,260 pages of transcript here, are you sure you want to read them all?”

“If it’s no trouble,” Matthew said.

“Long as you carry ’em over to the desk, it makes no difference to me,” she said.

Emma was a stout woman with grey hair and a faint limp. She’d had the limp ever since Matthew had known her. He supposed it was from a childhood injury. Or perhaps undetected polio; he remembered with something like surprise that polio had once been the scourge of the earth. He followed her between rows and rows of filing cabinets marked in a system only Emma herself could fathom. The cabinets were of the old oaken style, heavy, sturdy-looking; he remembered with additional mild surprise that once upon a time many things had been fashioned of wood rather than metal or plastic. It goes by too fast, he thought. Where was the kid with hair in his eyes who played sandlot baseball in Chicago, Illinois? Where were the sandlots anymore?

“Transcript’d be in the People Versus section,” Emma said. “Have you got the names of them three? They were tried together, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

The defense team, of course, had tried to obtain separate trials, sever each defendant out, present each individually as a confused young man in ill-fitting clothes, a poor put-upon immigrant, sitting at the defense table with his eyes wide in bewilderment. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, could this shy, unassuming creature possibly have committed rape? Skye Bannister had prevailed. The three had been tried together. But the state had lost the case anyway.

“Ngo Long Khai,” Matthew said, reading from the slip of paper in his hand. “Dang Van…”

“Hold it, hold it,” Emma said. “Let me see that, willya, please?”

He handed her the slip of paper. She studied it in consternation, shaking her head all the while, and then limped down the aisle between the rows of cabinets. “Let’s try the Ho one,” she said. “I have a feeling I filed it under the Ho.”

Matthew could only imagine why.

But sure enough, she found the transcript filed under Ho Dao Bat, People vs. and flagged for reference to Ngo Long Khai and Dang Van Con, co-defendants.

“Can’t even lift it,” she said.

An exaggeration, even if it was a thick file — or rather files, in that the 1,200 some-odd pages of transcript had been separated into four more easily handlable bundles, each packaged between pale blue, stiff board binders secured with brass paper fasteners. Matthew took the binders out of the drawer one at a time, stacking them on top of the cabinet, and then closed the drawer and hoisted the stack off into his hands and his arms.

“Thank you, Emma,” he said.

“Call me when you’re done, okay?” Emma said. “I’ve got to sign ‘em back in.”

He followed her down the aisle. She snapped out the fluorescent lights behind them. The old oaken cabinets vanished in a wink, as if dismissed again to a remote and silent past. Ahead was a room with long windows and a high, beamed ceiling, another throwback to the turn of the century, when the courthouse was built. A long oaken table stood on stout, round legs. A furled American flag was in one corner of the room. A framed picture of George Washington was on the wall beside it. Early-afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows, burnishing the tabletop’s golden finish. Dust motes lazily climbed the slanting shafts of sunlight. The room was utterly still. Matthew suddenly remembered why he’d become a lawyer.

Alone, he sat at the table and opened the first of the binders.

It is four days before Christmas.

The weather here in Calusa, Florida, is wonderful for this time of year. No one can complain about temperatures that hover in the mid-seventies during the daytime and then drop to a good bedtime low of fifty-two or — three. No need for air conditioning, you simply throw open the windows and let the prevailing winds blow right on through. During the day, the sun smiles down beneficently, and Calusa’s miles and miles of white sand beaches are littered with the bodies of toasting tourists, the waters of the Gulf sprinkled with bobbing heads. Not a single native is in the water; to Floridians, this is the winter and only madmen go swimming in December.

The downtown streets, the parking lots of the malls, are all hung with Christmas decorations that seem out of place here in this climate. What is Santa Claus doing on a sleigh down here where there has never been snow? Why are there antlered reindeer in a climate better suited to alligators? Why doesn’t Frosty the Snowman melt?

But the neo-Floridians who have migrated from distant places north perhaps still remember the bite of a clear December day with a hint of snow in the air, and those who were born and bred here have heard tall tales of fabulous Christmas blizzards, the family snowed in while the turkey roasts and the fire crackles on the grate, and suddenly at the door, arriving with his arms laden with gifts… “Son! We knew you’d make it! Merry Christmas!”

And so there is the same frantic shopping mania here in the subtropical Southland as there is away up north in frigid Eagle Lake, Maine. So what if the Christmas trees are sprayed white? So what if the shoppers are wearing shorts and T-shirts? In only four days, it will be Christmas morning. And peace on earth will come to men of good will.

Women, too.

Maybe.

There will be no peace on earth for Jessica Leeds tonight.

Tonight, Jessica Leeds will be raped.

“The mall closed at ten o’clock. I…”

A transcript consists of cold type, the words of questioner and witness reduced to something less than conversation, a dialogue lacking inflection or nuance. Matthew can only guess at the fury underlining Jessica Leeds’s testimony, the anger she is controlling.

She describes a Chinese restaurant adjacent to the mall.

Cold type.

The restaurant is still open at ten… a little after ten, actually, by the time she reaches the car. She has parked it behind the restaurant, which is shaped like a pagoda, and which in fact is named The Pagoda. The car is an expensive one, and this is four days before Christmas. With all the traffic in the mall’s lot a dented fender is a distinct possibility, and so she has chosen this deserted spot behind The Pagoda, alongside a low fence beyond which is undeveloped scrub land. As she walks toward the restaurant, the mall’s parking lot is rapidly emptying of automobiles, except for those parked row after row outside the movie-theater complex at the far end. It is ten minutes past ten, she supposes, when she places in the trunk of her Maserati the several Christmas gifts she’s bought.

There are lights here behind the Chinese restaurant. It is not what anyone would call brightly lighted, but there is illumination enough to provide a sense of security. And besides, there’s a moon. Not quite full, just on the wane. Anyway, it is only a little after ten, this is not the dead of night, this is not a town where a woman alone needs to be afraid of unlocking the door of her automobile in an adequately lighted parking space behind a brilliantly lighted restaurant on a moonlit Thursday night four days before Christmas. Besides, there are three men standing behind the restaurant, smoking. All of them in shirtsleeves. Wearing long white aprons. Restaurant help. She unlocks the door of the car, closes and locks it behind her, turns on the lights, starts the engine, and is backing away from the low fence when she realizes she has a flat tire.

She tells this to the State Attorney, and she repeatedly tells it to the defense attorneys who come at her one after the other, trying to shake her story. In the transcript, each attorney is initially identified as he begins his cross, and then the form reverts to a simple Q and A, so that it is not necessary each time, over and over again, to indicate MR. AIELLO for Tran’s attorney or MR. SILBERKLEIT for Ho’s, or MRS. LEEDS for Jessica herself, it is Q and A, Q and A, Q and…

A: I got out of the car to change it. I didn’t realize I was going to be raped.

Q: Objection, Your Honor. We are here precisely to determine whether…

A: Yes, yes, sustained, Mr. Aiello. The jury will please ignore the witness’s answer.

The “A” this time is from the Circuit Court judge hearing the case, a man named Sterling Dooley, who has a reputation as a hanging judge. The team of defense attorneys — there are eight of them sitting at the defense table — would have preferred a different judge. They did, in fact, ask for a change of venue because of the publicity the rape (or alleged rape, as they would have it) generated in the media, but their request was denied. So they are stuck with Dooley, who now asks the clerk to please read Aiello’s question again—

“What did you do when you discovered the flat tire?”

— and the Q and A continues.

A: I got out of the car to change it.

Q: Yourself?

A: Yes, myself. I was alone.

Q: I mean… don’t you belong to any club offering emergency road service?

A: No, I don’t.

Q: Couldn’t you have called a garage?

A: I know how to change a tire.

Q: But the way you were dressed…

A: The way I was dressed has nothing to do with changing a tire.

Q: I merely thought… high heels… a short skirt…

A: Objection, Your Honor.

This from the State Attorney. Skye Bannister himself. In person. Hair as golden as wheat, eyes the color of his given name. Tall and rangy and enormously good-looking. Undoubtedly leaping to his feet in high dudgeon.

A: Sustained. Leave off that line of questioning, please, Mr. Aiello.

Q: Couldn’t you have called your husband to help you?

A: I didn’t want to get him out of bed.

Q: You knew he was in bed, did you?

A: He had a cold. He was in bed when I left the house that night.

Q: And this was now what time?

A: A quarter after ten.

Q: So naturally, you didn’t want to get him out of bed. Was it a quarter after ten exactly?

A: I can’t say exactly. I’m assuming it took me ten minutes or so to walk to the car and put my packages in the trunk.

Q: And you say there were three men standing outside the back door to the restaurant when you…

A: Yes. The defendants. The three men sitting right…

Q: I haven’t asked you to identify anyone, Mrs. Leeds.

A: Well, that’s who they were.

Q: Your Honor…

A: Yes, strike all that. Witness will please not offer testimony unless it is asked for.

Q: Did you speak to these men?

A: No.

Q: Had you seen these men prior to this time — a quarter after ten, you say it was?

A: Around a quarter after ten. No, I hadn’t seen them before then.

Q: That was the very first time you saw them.

A: Yes.

Q: But you’re not sure it was a quarter after ten exactly.

A: Not exactly. But certainly around then.

Q: Could it have been half past ten?

A: I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have taken me that long to walk back to the car.

Q: How about twenty to eleven? Could it have been twenty to eleven?

A: No.

Q: Or ten to eleven? Could it have been ten to eleven?

A: No. I told you, it was…

Q: Or a quarter after…

A: No, it was.

Q: Let me finish the question, please.

A: I thought you were finished.

Q: Could it have been a quarter after eleven? Rather than a quarter after ten?

A: No, it was a quarter after ten.

Q: Mrs. Leeds, what time did you arrive at the mall that night?

A: Around eight o’clock.

Q: To do your shopping.

A: Yes.

Q: Was it dark when you arrived?

A: Yes.

Q: And did you park your car behind The Pagoda at that time?

A: Yes.

Q: Were there lights behind the restaurant?

A: Yes.

Q: Was there anyone standing out back at that time?

A: I didn’t see anyone.

Q: Didn’t you see three men standing there, smoking cigarettes? Under the light over the back door?

A: No, I didn’t see anyone.

Q: Didn’t you see the three men you later…

A: No.

Q: Your Honor, may I please be allowed to complete my question?

A: Mrs. Leeds, please listen to the entire question, won’t you, before you answer? Go ahead, Mr. Aiello.

Q: At eight o’clock that night, when you parked your car behind the restaurant, didn’t you see the three men you later claim…

A: Objection, Your Honor.

Skye Bannister again.

“Mrs. Leeds has already stated that she did not see anyone standing behind the restaurant. Mr. Aiello is merely asking the same question in a different guise. And it has already been answered.”

“Mr. Aiello?”

“Your Honor, we have heard a previous witness testifying to the fact that a conversation took place between Mrs. Leeds and the three defendants shortly after she parked her car that night. We have heard from the defendants themselves what the content of that conversation was. I am merely trying to refresh Mrs. Leeds’s memory of the exchange.”

“I’ll allow the question.”

Q: Mrs. Leeds, isn’t it true that as you were getting out of your car, you turned to the three defendants and said, ‘Good evening, boys’?

A: No.

Q: You didn’t see them, so naturally you couldn’t have said anything like that to them.

A: I wouldn’t have said anything to them in any case.

Q: Well, ‘Good evening’ is only a form of greeting, isn’t it? Nothing provocative about that. Nothing seductive. Why couldn’t you have said, ‘Good evening, boys’?

A: Because I’m not in the habit of talking to strange men.

Q: Especially when they’re invisible, isn’t that so?

A: I don’t understand your question.

Q: Well, you said they weren’t there, didn’t you? That means they were invisible.

A: No, that means they weren’t there.

Q: You only saw them later.

A: Yes.

Q: These same three men.

A: Yes. No. I didn’t see anyone at eight o’clock, I only saw these men when I came back to the car.

Q: At a quarter after ten…

A: Yes.

Q: … or a quarter after eleven, whenever it was.

A: It was a quarter after ten. I’ve already told you…

A: Really, Mr. Aiello.

Q: I’m sorry. Your Honor, but if you’ll allow me…

A: Where are you going?

Q: I am trying to show, Your Honor, that the witness’s account of what happened at what time, or what was said at what time, is confusing at best. And if she’s confused about the basic facts of the…

A: I’m not confused about anything that happened that night. You’re the one who’s trying to confuse the facts!

Q: Your Honor, may I please proceed?

A: Let’s hear where you’re going, Mr. Aiello.

Q: Thank you. Mrs. Leeds, you say these three men were standing outside the back door of the restaurant, smoking under the light back there, when you returned to your car at a quarter after ten.

A: Yes.

Q: You heard them testify earlier, did you not, that they were in the kitchen at that time, washing dishes?

A: I heard them, yes.

Q: One of you must be mistaken, don’t you think?

A: Not me.

Q: You heard them testify, did you not, that the only time they saw you was at eight, when you parked the car?

A: I heard them.

Q: Are they mistaken about that, too?

A: Or lying.

Q: And were they lying when they said you showed a great deal of leg while you were getting out of the car…

A: No one was there when I got out of the car!

Q: And that you said, ‘Good evening, boys.’ Was that a lie? The testimony of all three men to that effect?

A: It was a lie.

Q: Did you hear the testimony of the chef, Mr. Kee Lu, to the effect that these three men were in the kitchen washing dishes at a quarter past ten and could not possibly have been outside smoking at that time?

A: I heard him.

Q: But he must be mistaken, too. Or lying. Or both.

A: If he says they weren’t outside, then he’s lying.

Q: You alone are telling the truth.

A: About that, yes.

Q: But not about anything else?

A: I’m telling the truth about everything.

Q: As, of course, you’ve sworn to do. But you say these others are lying.

A: If they claim…

Q: Everyone’s lying but you, is that it, Mrs. Leeds? But isn’t it possible that you’re confusing what happened at eight o’clock with what happened at a quarter past ten?

A: I wasn’t raped at eight o’clock!

Q: Nor has anyone said you were. But, tell me… were you worried about getting raped when you parked the car?

A: No.

Q: While you were parking the car, you weren’t concerned about the possibility of rape?

A: No, I didn’t even consider that possibility.

Q: Because if you had, you might have parked the car elsewhere, isn’t that so?

A: There weren’t very many spaces left when I got to the mall. Anyway, it’s an expensive car, I was worried it might get damaged. So I parked it away from the other cars.

Q: But if you’d considered the possibility of rape, you might have parked elsewhere, isn’t that so?

A: No, it was only a short walk to the mall.

Q: You weren’t worried about getting raped on your short walk from the car to the mall, were you?

A: No.

Q: Or on your walk back to the car after the mall closed, were you?

A: No.

Q: So, really, Mrs. Leeds, you weren’t worried at all about getting raped there where you’d parked the car, were you?

A: No, I did not expect to be raped.

Q: When you came back to the car, did you expect to be raped then?

A: No.

Q: Even though there were three men standing there behind the restaurant?

A: I knew they worked there.

Q: How did you know that?

A: They looked like kitchen help.

Q: Isn’t it possible that you weren’t afraid of getting raped at a quarter past ten because there was no one there to rape you at that time?

A: Oh, they were there, all right.

Q: But not when you say they were there.

A: Objection!

A: Was that a question, Mr. Aiello?

Q: I’ll rephrase it. Your Honor. What time was it when you claim to have seen these three men?

A: A quarter past ten! How many times do I…?

Q: While they were washing dishes in the restaurant kitchen!

A: No! While they were raping me on the hood of the goddamn…

Q: Objection!

A: Sustained. Please answer the question, Mrs. Leeds.

A: That’s the only time I ever saw them. The only place I ever saw them. While I was being…

Q: No further questions.

But of course there were further questions.