Cross Justice (34 page)

“Sustained,” Varney said before rapping his gavel. “We’ll take a lunch break and resume at one o’clock.”

PINKIE SLID INTO
the same booth we’d used before at the Bench, the restaurant by the courthouse. I sat opposite him while Nana Mama and my aunts took a table next to us. I’d tried to invite Patty Converse, but she’d left the courtroom before Varney ended the morning session.

“I thought things went better for Stefan today,” Pinkie said.

“I did too,” I said. “For the first time since the trial began, I saw some of the jurors really thinking about the evidence against him.”

My cell phone buzzed. An e-mail alert. The waitress came over to take our orders. I asked for the patty melt with a salad instead of fries and another cup of coffee. I’d been up for so many hours at that point that I was feeling woozy again.

“If Stefan did it, he would have been covered in Rashawn’s blood,” Pinkie said.

“Unless Frost is right and he washed off somewhere else and buried his clothes,” I said.

“But why not the saw?”

“I know. It’s not logical. But sometimes murder and its aftermath are not logical events. It twists people into something unrecognizable.”

“You’re kind of raining on Naomi’s parade.”

“Not at all,” I replied, happy to see the waitress bringing my coffee. “I think she’s going to mount a vigorous defense on Stefan’s behalf.”

“I can hear a
but
coming.”

“But I’ve worked on enough of these cases to know that when the evidence to convict a child killer is formidable, the defense had better be able to do more than just poke holes in the prosecution’s narrative.”

“Like what?” Pinkie asked.

“Like find the real killer,” I said. “We do that, Stefan walks. If not, even with some of the lab results we got back, he risks conviction.”

“I swear on my dead daddy’s grave that Finn and Marvin were in on it,” Pinkie said.

I glanced over at the booth where I’d spoken with Bell the week before, said, “Well, unless the police find some evidence that links Bell and Davis to the killing, you’re swearing in vain.”

“Finn tried to kill Pedelini, who all but admitted to you before he was shot that he was looking the other way for payoffs.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I’d have to see the test results on Davis’s rifle, but there is the possibility that Davis was shooting at me and hit Pedelini. We were fairly close and it was a long shot across that cove.”

The waitress returned with our orders, and we dug in. My head ached, and I had to force the food down.

After we’d finished, I was surprised that Nana Mama wanted to stay for the afternoon session. She’d been taking naps in the afternoon the past few months.

“I feel like something big is going to happen in that courtroom this afternoon,” she said, holding my elbow as we walked back to the courthouse. “And I don’t want to miss it.”

“You having premonitions now?” I asked, amused.

“I’m no swami or seer,” she snapped. “I just get feelings sometimes, and this is one of them.”

“Okay. This something big you’re feeling—is it good or bad for Stefan?”

My grandmother peered up at me with a confused expression on her face, said, “I can’t tell you one way or the other.”

We were outside the courthouse when my cell phone buzzed again, this time alerting me to a text. I sent Nana Mama in to claim our seats with Pinkie and my aunts, pulled out the cell to see a text from Bree:

Landed; in taxi on way to dealership to pick up car. Plan one stop, and then see you in court in two hours. How are things going?

I texted her back: Better. Naomi cross-examining Frost and scoring points. Drive safe and see you soon. Love you.

A moment later: Love you too.

I was about to stick my cell phone in my pocket when I remembered the e-mail that had come in during lunch. It was from one of my friends at Quantico, a report on the chemical compound that I’d taken from that basket in the tanker.

I RUSHED INTO
Judge Varney’s rapidly filling courtroom, went to the railing, and waved Naomi over. I said, “Do you have the state’s assay report on the meth found in the vial in Stefan’s basement?”

She thought about that, nodded, and went to dig through several large, legal-size boxes to retrieve it.

“What’s going on?” Naomi asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Just a hunch at this point.”

“You’ll let me know if it gets beyond a hunch?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

I took my seat next to Nana Mama, kissed her on the cheek, and started reading through the state’s report, a chemical assay that identified the substance found in the vial in Stefan’s basement as a very pure designer methamphetamine. They described the chemical structure, but the science went over my head. There was, however, a graphic representation of that structure on the second page.

Then I called up the report I’d just received from my FBI friends and saw the graphs matched. I reread the note attached to the Bureau’s study, which stated the substance was “a designer drug created by a gifted chemist.”

All sorts of suppositions and assumptions I’d been playing with now became concrete fact. Someone called Grandfather, probably Marvin Bell, was running a designer-meth distribution operation via the freight-rail system.

Some of that signature meth was found in Stefan’s basement. Either my cousin had access to the drug and was holding out on us, or someone involved in the designer-meth distribution system had planted it there.

I got up and gave Naomi a summary of what I’d found before the bailiff called, “All rise.”

Judge Varney came in, said, “Carry on, Ms. Cross.”

My niece approached the witness box, said, “Just to recap where we were, Detective Frost. The prosecution believes that on the night in question, Mr. Tate went into an alcohol-and-drug-fueled rage and raped and murdered Rashawn Turnbull.”

“No doubt in my mind,” Frost said.

Naomi let that slide, said, “What’s Mr. Tate’s motive? Why take his rage out on a boy? A boy who supposedly idolized him?”

“You don’t know how many nights I’ve lain awake thinking about that,” Frost said, directing his reply to the jury. “At some level, you can’t get your head around the depravity of what was done to Rashawn. The pure hatred behind it.

“But Tate had gone off the wagon in a big way. He was feeding drugs to underage girls, raping them. Sydney Fox said she saw Rashawn going into Tate’s place the same day Sharon
Lawrence says he drugged and attacked her. If so, I think Rashawn saw the rape. I think Rashawn said he was going to tell the police, and Tate just snapped.”

In the silence that followed, four or five jury members stared at Stefan as if he were already heading for death row. The others were watching my niece as if wondering why she hadn’t objected to Frost’s speculation.

Naomi went to the jury box, got the jury’s attention, said, “Detective, how do you explain the fact that Sydney Fox saw Rashawn go into that apartment but Sharon Lawrence testified that she never saw the victim the day she was allegedly attacked?”

I glanced over and saw Sharon Lawrence unglue herself from her cell phone.

Frost said, “She’d been drugged with a date-rape drug.”

“Any residue of a date-rape drug in Sharon Lawrence’s blood at the time of her reporting the alleged rape?”

Frost said, “She reported the attack a week after it happened.”

Naomi went to the defense table, retrieved a file. “The defense would like to introduce sworn testimony by several expert witnesses that all say date-rape drugs can linger in the bloodstream for up to fourteen days.”

Varney squinted, took the documents, scanned them, and then handed them to the clerk. He ran his hand back over his pompadour, looking kind of anxious. Another kidney stone coming on?

Naomi said, “So that part of Sharon Lawrence’s story is not correct, is it, Detective Frost? She wasn’t drugged, was she?”

“You said the drug
can
linger for up to fourteen days,” Frost said. “
Up to
means in some people, the drug is gone in a lot less than two weeks.”

Naomi paused, seemed to shift gears.

“The semen in her underwear. It was a direct match to my client?”

“DNA doesn’t lie,” Frost said.

“There’s no disputing the DNA test,” Naomi agreed. “When Ms. Lawrence came forward with her rape story, she had my client’s DNA in her panties.”

“Correct,” Frost said.

Naomi said, “Did you also find Ms. Lawrence’s DNA in the panties?”

“Yes,” Frost said.

Sharon Lawrence was looking at the ceiling above Judge Varney. Her mother held her hand tight.

“So you’ve got Mr. Tate’s semen and Ms. Lawrence’s body fluids, and you test them for DNA. What else did you test those substances for?”

The police detective frowned. “I’m not following you.”

“Did you have your lab do other tests on the semen and Ms. Lawrence’s body fluids? Say, drug tests?”

Frost blinked, said nothing.

“Detective?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so, no.”

“We’ve checked the record and you haven’t,” Naomi said. “So we had the FBI perform other tests on those samples.”

NAOMI HELD UP
a document, said, “The defense would like to introduce exhibit—”

“Objection!” Strong said, jumping to her feet. “The prosecution was not made aware of any such tests.”

“Because we ordered them last night and they came in this morning.”

“That’s impossible. The backlog of work at the FBI’s lab is—”

“Quantico did a rush job on the tests as a favor to my uncle.”

The district attorney looked to Judge Varney.

The judge rotated his head around to ease a cramp in his neck, glanced at me and the others in the cheap seats, said, “The court will admit the FBI’s tests.”

Naomi beamed. She handed copies to the clerk, the prosecution, and Detective Frost. Interested now, the jurors shifted in their seats, wondering just what the tests said. I tried not to
smile, but I was proud of my niece. She had every person in the courtroom in the palm of her hand.

Naomi said, “You’ll see the necessary stamps, signatures, and so forth on pages one and two. Turn to page three. You’ll see that we submitted Ms. Lawrence’s body fluids at the time of the alleged rape for evidence of illicit drugs commonly used during date rapes, like Rohypnol.”

She walked over to the witness, said, “Can you read us the results, Detective?”

Frost said, “No drugs or alcohol present.”

“No drugs or alcohol present in Ms. Lawrence’s sample,” Naomi said.

Sharon Lawrence looked ready to be sick. She said something to her mother, who shook her head and held her hand tight.

Strong and Brady, meanwhile, were poring over the pages. So were the judge and the detective on the witness stand. The jurors were transfixed. Police Chief Sherman was leaning over the railing trying unsuccessfully to get the prosecutors’ attention.

Naomi said, “Detective Frost, on page four, what are the results of the test on my client’s semen at the time of the alleged rape?”

Frost’s voice cracked before he cleared his throat and said, “Negative for drugs and alcohol.”

“At the time of the alleged rape?”

“Correct.”

“No drugs or alcohol at all,” she said to the jury. “But that goes completely against the story to which Ms. Lawrence testified under oath. She said they were drinking, doing drugs, carrying on, and having a good old time before Mr. Tate slipped
her a date-rape drug and had his way with her. Is that a fair summary of her story, Detective?”

“It is,” Frost said.

“Do you now believe my client raped Ms. Lawrence as she described?”

“Objection!” Strong said.

Sharon Lawrence was weeping silently. Her mother looked ready to crawl out of her skin.

Naomi said, “Judge, I’m asking a detective with two and a half decades of experience to evaluate the facts as he knows them now and form an opinion.”

Varney hesitated, said, “Overruled, Ms. Strong. Rephrase the question, Ms. Cross.”

“Does Ms. Lawrence’s story jibe with these FBI tests?”

“No, but she could have just embellished that part of the story,” Frost said.

“Or she embellished the entire story, in which case she can be prosecuted for perjury, along with her mother, and for planting false evidence,” Naomi said. “They’ll both do time.”

“No!” Ann Lawrence cried, getting to her feet. “She … we …”

Varney rapped his gavel, said, “Sit down, Mrs. Lawrence.”

She sat back down, looking wobbly, next to her daughter, who stared at the floor.

Naomi said, “The defense calls Sharon Lawrence to the stand.”

“Are you done with Detective Frost?” Judge Varney asked.

“For the moment, Judge,” Naomi said. “But I’d prefer he remain available.”

Varney instructed Frost to stay and, along with the rest of the crowded courtroom, watched him pass a pale, nervous Sharon Lawrence heading toward the witness stand.

Ann Lawrence’s face had gone flushed, and she sat small in her seat. Cece’s mother and father were staring at the woman as if she were some dark mystery.

“Ms. Lawrence,” Naomi said. “Did you hear Detective Frost’s testimony just now?”

“Yes.”

“And the results of the drug tests?”

Sharon Lawrence nodded feebly.

“Did Coach Stefan Tate drug and rape you?”

The girl said nothing for several long moments. Her lips trembled, and she looked out at her mother and then at Stefan Tate.

“No,” she whispered as tears poured down her face. “It was all a lie.”

THE COURTROOM ERUPTED.
My cousin put his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Judge Varney looked bewildered as he gaveled the court silent. Stefan picked up his head and looked at his mother and then Patty Converse. For the first time in days, I saw hope in Patty’s face.