Cruel Justice (48 page)

She lowered her head, and her next words were even softer than before. “But I wouldn’t have cared.”

Ben gazed across the courtroom at the poor, tormented woman. “You wanted a baby that much.”

“I did. I had to have a baby. If I didn’t—I would’ve died. I know it.”

“And after you got him?”

Her head rose slowly. “I would’ve done anything to keep him. Anything at all.”

B
ULLOCK TOOK A SHOT
at breaking the jury’s rapt attention. “Your honor, I reurge my objection. This testimony is not relevant.”

“I think the connections are emerging,” Ben replied.

“What connections?” Bullock insisted. “What is Kincaid trying to prove? That this woman murdered Maria Alvarez? Even his own alleged eyewitness said the murderer was a man!”

“Your honor, if you’ll just allow me a few more questions …”

“That’s what he said the last time,” Bullock urged. “Judge, this has gone on long enough!”

Hawkins shook his head. “Overruled. You may continue, counsel.”

Ben approached the witness stand and gently laid his hand on the edge of the box. “Ms. Rutherford, you’re the blonde sunbather Ramona de Vries remembered seeing by the pool, aren’t you? When Maria Alvarez was at the country club.”

Her nod was barely perceptible.

“Would you tell the jury what Mrs. Alvarez said to you?”

“If I knew, I would. But she was babbling in Spanish. I had Spanish in high school, but it’s been so long, I couldn’t follow her. She was so distraught, so excited. All I picked up was,
‘niño, niño’
—baby, baby.” Rachel paused. “And that was enough to terrify me.”

“What did you tell her?”

Seconds seemed to drag out like days. Rachel appeared trapped—trapped by an answer she didn’t want to give, but knew she couldn’t avoid.

“All I did,” Rachel said finally, “was tell her to talk to my husband.”

“Your honor,” Ben said, without missing a beat, “if the prosecutor will waive cross-examination, I will call Harold Rutherford to the stand.”

“Counsel?”

Bullock waved his acquiescence. He seemed to realize this trial was spiraling out of his control.

The judge called Harold Rutherford to the front. He met his wife at the gate separating the gallery from the main courtroom. They looked at one another and exchanged a deep, penetrating gaze. Ben would’ve given a great deal to know what mutually understood information was being conveyed in their eyes.

The sergeant at arms led Rutherford to the front of the courtroom where he was sworn. Rutherford settled into the witness chair and stared ahead at Ben, his face a stony mask.

After establishing Rutherford’s identity and background, Ben said, “Mr. Rutherford, there’s one issue everyone in this courtroom is wondering about, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll cut to the chase.”

“As you wish.”

“Isn’t it true that Maria Alvarez was your adopted son Abie’s natural mother?”

“No. That’s not true. I mean—” His voice betrayed the barest hint of a tremor. “How would I know? I know nothing about the woman.”

“Mr. Rutherford, one of my assistants has been scrutinizing Peruvian data banks for days, including birth records. And hospital records. He learned that shortly before Maria Alvarez applied for a visa to come to this country, she was in a hospital having a baby. A baby boy.”

His lips tightened. “So you say.”

“Would you like to see the birth certificate?” Ben held out the papers. “Or the hospital records?”

Rutherford waved them away. “What difference would it make? I was the adoptive parent. They never tell us who the natural parents are. I have no way of knowing.”

“Didn’t Maria Alvarez tell you she was Abie’s mother when she came to the country club?”

Rutherford hesitated. He couldn’t deny talking to Maria without calling his wife a liar. “I vaguely recall trying to talk to the woman,” he said at last. “But I don’t recall what was said. It certainly had nothing to do with my son. She probably wanted a job. Or a handout.”

Ben stepped closer. “Mr. Rutherford, isn’t it true Maria Alvarez told you she was Abie’s mother?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you ask her to meet you later that night? At the caddyshack?”

“Absolutely not.”

Ben addressed the court. “Your honor, I request that Carlee Crane be brought back into the courtroom.”

The judge nodded at the bailiff.

“And don’t tell her anything before she gets here,” Ben added.

The courtroom waited in suspended animation while the bailiff stepped out. Rutherford’s face remained impassive.

When the bailiff returned, the courtroom was so quiet the creaking of the doors sounded like thunder. Behind the bailiff followed Carlee Crane.

Ben gestured for her to come forward, but she stopped halfway down the nave.

“My God!” She whispered, but the whisper was audible in every cranny of the still courtroom. Her face shifted from astonishment, to disbelief, to fear.

One by one, the spectators followed Carlee’s line of vision to the front of the courtroom—and the witness stand. Rutherford stared back at her, his eyes cold and hostile.

Carlee held out a shaking arm and pointed. “It’s him. He’s the man I saw in the caddyshack!”

“Your honor, I protest!” Bullock said angrily. “This is grossly improper!”

Hawkins banged his gavel. “I admit I didn’t realize Mr. Kincaid intended to—”

“This is outrageous!” Bullock continued. “And the jury has been hopelessly tainted by this improper identification. I move for a mistrial.”

“A mistrial!” Ben said. “Are you kidding? On what basis?”

“That woman trying to testify is not on the witness stand.”

“Fine,” Ben said. “I’ll excuse Mr. Rutherford, recall Carlee, and have her repeat what everyone in the courtroom has already heard.”

“I’ll object to that,” Bullock said. “She’s already testified, and she couldn’t identify the killer. She can’t change her story now.”

“What are you trying to do? She saw him! Why do you want to suppress her testimony?” Ben walked right up to Bullock. “Unless you care more about winning than you do about seeing justice done.”

Bullock glared back at him silently.

“The motion is overruled,” Hawkins said angrily. “Please continue with the direct examination of this witness.”

Ben stepped forward until he was practically hovering over Rutherford. “You can save everyone a lot of trouble by just telling us the truth now.”

Rutherford’s eyes darted from Carlee, to Ben, to the jury. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Again, Carlee broke the silence. “My God, didn’t anyone hear me? He did it! He killed her! I
saw
it!”

“Your honor, I want that woman out of here!” Bullock shouted.

The judge nodded and instructed me bailiff to remove her. The jurors’ eyes were moving like Ping-Pong balls, back and forth, from Carlee to Rutherford.

“Is it true?” Ben asked.

“Of course not,” Rutherford feinted.

“There’s no point in lying anymore. Isn’t it true you told Maria Alvarez to meet you late that night in the caddyshack?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it true you wanted to meet there because you thought you’d be alone?”

“I said no!”

“Isn’t it true you grabbed a golf club, swung it over your head, and killed her?”

“No, no,
no
!”

“But he’s
lying
!” Carlee was halfway out the door, struggling with the bailiff. “Don’t you understand? I
saw
him!”

Rutherford jumped out of his seat. “Would you
shut
—” He froze, hands clutching the rail.

“Mr. Rutherford, surely you realize that if you don’t confess, the most likely suspect will be your wife.”

A tiny turn of the head.

“Is that what you want—your wife in prison? After all you’ve done to protect her?”

Rutherford gripped the railing so tightly Ben was afraid it would snap.

“It’s over, Mr. Rutherford,” Ben said quietly. “Why don’t you just tell us what happened?”

Rutherford’s large chest heaved. The trembling spread from his arms and rippled through his entire body. Finally, all the wind seemed to blow out of him, like the final gust of a hurricane. He collapsed back into his chair.

“You have to understand,” Rutherford said, in a voice so dispirited that it seemed to come from an entirely different person. “You just … have to understand.”

“Understand what?” Ben asked.

Rutherford cradled his face in his large hands. “How much Rachel wanted children. And how much I wanted to make her … happy.” He paused. “We needed a baby.”

“She told us that was all she lived for.”

“She didn’t exaggerate. Rachel is not a … strong woman. She’s a good woman. A loving woman. But not strong. When she discovered she couldn’t have children … it was like she had lost a limb.”

He inhaled, searching for words. “She couldn’t function. Couldn’t live. Tried to kill herself. Twice. Almost succeeded. She cut her own flesh. Can you imagine?” He looked down at his hands. “But even when she was alive … she wasn’t really alive. She told you everything we tried. Nothing worked. And worst of all, she had to suffer through all those cruel deceptions, all those painful near misses. Thinking she had a baby, then having it snatched away from her. She couldn’t survive that again. I knew it as certainly as I knew anything. She just would not have survived.”

Ben spoke softly. “Maria Alvarez wanted her baby back, didn’t she?”

Rutherford nodded. Tears crept out of the corners of his eyes. “My Spanish isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to understand what she wanted. She’d changed her mind. Wanted Abie back. I’m not sure she ever really consented to the adoption, at least not when she was in full possession of her senses. As soon as she got out of the hospital, she started trying to get him back. But by then, Abie had already been snatched by the merchants at La Flavita. By the time she tracked them down, he had already been sold to Pearson and taken to the United States. So she came to the United States to get her son back.” He paused again. “Our son.”

Rutherford lifted his head. “And she could’ve gotten him, too. The manner in which Ron handled the adoption was, well, less than legal. If she had raised a stink, made a complaint at the embassy or filed a lawsuit or something, she’d have gotten her baby back. Courts always favor the natural mother. I knew that.” He gazed at his wife, now seated in the third row of the gallery. “I also knew what that would do to my Rachel.”

“So you asked Maria to meet you at the caddy shack. Late at night.”

He nodded. “I had the keys to that place. All of us on the board did back then. I thought it would be deserted. Safe.” He leaned forward suddenly. “I didn’t go there to kill her. I want you to understand that. I tried to reason with her. I told her how attached Abie and Rachel had become. It didn’t matter to her. I tried to give her money. That mattered even less.”

“And then what happened?”

“She began to get loud, violent. She threatened to report us, to tell everyone we had stolen her son. She said she was going to our house right that minute to take her baby back!”

He covered his watery eyes with his hands. “Don’t you see? It would have killed Rachel! Literally killed her! It was self-defense, for Chrissake! I was protecting my wife!”

“By killing Maria Alvarez.”

Rutherford shook his head, lost, dazed. “I don’t know what came over me. I saw what she was going to do, what it would do to my wife. I couldn’t let another baby be snatched out of Rachel’s hands. Especially not after she’d spent so much time with him.”

He straightened himself and stared at the ceiling. “I just lost control. I grabbed the nearest thing—a club out of a golf bag. I swung it over my head, again and again and—”

He opened his mouth again, but no words emerged. Finally: “I really wasn’t conscious of what was happening, what I was doing, until it was all over. Then—I was horrified.”

Ben nodded.” And then you tried to cover it up.”

“Yes. But before I had a chance, I saw …
him.
” He shrugged toward Leeman. “He was cowering under one of the cots, watching me the whole time. At least I assumed he was. Maybe he never saw my face; I don’t know. I tried to pull him out from under the cot, but he crawled out the other end and ran out of the caddyshack. I ran after him. Ran all over the goddamn golf course, but didn’t find him. A few minutes later I came back to the caddyshack.”

“And?”

“And, there he was. I don’t know where he’d been; must’ve doubled back on me. He didn’t see me come back in. I stepped into the shadows and watched as he gazed at the horrible mess in the corner and tried to understand what had happened to the woman. He threw himself on her body. Got blood all over himself. He pulled on the club. I think he was trying to get her down, to put her to rest. But he couldn’t do it. Then he ran out of the caddyshack again. That gave me my opportunity.”

“To frame him.”

Rutherford bit down on his lower lip. “I didn’t know that much about the kid, but I knew he was … not quite right in the head. I knew he’d have a hard time explaining himself. Figured the courts would go a lot softer on him than they would on me. So I put the golf bag in his locker, with the woman’s necklace. I’d lifted the clubs from the pro shop that afternoon—I often did that, to try out new clubs. Leeman caddied for me; that’s why his prints were on the bag. I wiped my prints off everything and left. I lived in fear the next few days, thinking that kid might be able to identify me … but he never did.”

“He couldn’t,” Ben said. “I don’t know if he saw your face. But even if he had, he wouldn’t have known how to communicate the information.”

“I felt horrible when he was arrested. I really did. But I always thought … since he was, you know, that he wouldn’t be tried. He would just get sent to some home where he’d probably be better off anyway. I had no idea that—ten years later—this mess would come back to haunt us both.”

“And your wife?”

“Rachel never knew. I swear to you. She may have … wondered, but she never knew.”

“Your honor,” Ben said quietly, “I move that the case against Leeman Hayes be dismissed.”