The One Who Got Away (26 page)

A Fox9 logo zoomed across the screen along with a photograph of Loren. The funeral was about to start.

‘We're coming to you live from the little church in Bienveneda where Loren Wynne-Estes was married,' said Liz.

‘Oh look,' said Cecile. ‘It's Liz again!'

‘Shhhh …'

‘And you can see here, a centrepiece inside the church is a photograph of Loren on her wedding day,' Liz continued in a reverential tone.

‘She's so pretty,' Cecile murmured.

The Fox9 cameras zoomed back to show different pictures of Loren, including one in which she was wearing Breton stripes – I know what they are because every woman at Bienveneda Sail owns a boat-neck top with Breton stripes, Cecile included – with her hair swept up in a ponytail, and David's arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders.

‘He's so creepy,' said Cecile.

The cameras zoomed away from the photographs, and back into the church. It seems that David's team – I'm guessing it was his team – had been busy all morning, tying yellow balloons to the posts at the end of each pew.

‘What's with all the yellow?' said Cecile, because the casket was likewise laden with yellow flowers.

I had no idea.

‘We'll just do a sweep over the guests,' whispered Liz, ‘and I think we'll find that Loren's father and stepsister are not here.'

The cameras swooped, and Liz was correct: Daniel and Molly were not there.

‘But we can see here, David's parents, Belle and Garrett Wynne-Estes,' whispered Liz. The camera lingered. Loren's parents-in-law sat stiffly near their son. They wore dark suits, and their lips were drawn thin.

‘Are you sure we don't know them?' I asked.

‘I wouldn't think so,' Cecile said immediately. ‘They aren't from here.'

‘They live on this road,' I said.

‘It's a long road,' she replied dryly.

David's regal sister, Janet, was next to fall into Fox9's all-seeing viewfinder.

‘Is that really a pillbox hat?' said Cecile. ‘She's like something out of
The Godfather
.'

‘And now, here, we see the little girls,' said Liz, her voice more hushed than ever.

Hannah and Peyton were seated near the very front, to the right and to the left of their father.

‘Now, they've been dressed by somebody who knows what they're doing,' said Cecile approvingly. From what I could tell, the girls had come as flower girls. Their dresses were white satin; they had wide yellow sashes, short socks, and polished black shoes.

‘Why all the yellow?' Cecile said again.

Liz must have heard. Quietly, she said, ‘And notice there, Hannah and Peyton also have the yellow in their sashes … yellow being Loren's favourite colour.'

‘He made that up,' said Cecile.

You can probably guess what colour David had chosen for his tie. Red. No, I jest. More yellow. The camera did another swoop over the audience, pausing here and there to pick up other bits of yellow.

‘Ooh, the Grammar girls have yellow ribbons in their hair,' said Cecile. The Grammar moms hadn't let the side down. They'd come with sunflowers.

‘Not one of them supports David,' said Cecile confidently. ‘He's become an absolute pariah. They're there for Loren.'

David's team had placed a simple rostrum on the stage, near Loren's coffin. There were a number of speakers. Liz's voice came on during breaks in speeches, reminding the audience at home that the matter of jurisdiction had been decided just hours earlier, meaning David would face trial.

‘Oh, come on,' said Cecile. ‘I only want to see the murdering bastard.'

The Fox9 cameraman seemed to get that. He spent much of the service with his lens trained on David, who sat with his arms around his daughters, who took turns resting on his chest and weeping.

‘Such a scene!' said Cecile.

When time came for David to speak, he rose, kissed each of the girls on the parting of their hair, and whispered something to each of them. Behind the rostrum, he heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I don't want to be here,' he said. ‘Burying my wife … it's wrong.'

‘Of course he doesn't want to be there,' said Cecile, ‘if she wasn't
dead
, he wouldn't be charged with murder.'

‘The fact that we all have so many unanswered questions just makes things so much harder,' David continued. He looked up to the ceiling. ‘But somebody knows the answer,' he said, pointing upward. ‘Our awesome God knows the answer.'

Fox9 had been carrying tweets from home along the bottom of the screen, and Twitter at this point exploded: tweets like ‘#spareme' were typical.

Looking out towards his daughters, David continued. ‘Hannah and Peyton, I'm speaking directly to you now. Whatever gossip you might hear, your mom loved you. She really did. She loved you from the bottom of her heart. When she found out she was pregnant with the two of you – that was the happiest I had ever seen her. And the joy when you arrived … oh, yes, she loved you to the moon and back.'

Cecile's expression was priceless.

‘What do you think?' I asked, amused.

‘I'm thinking: lucky I'm not there, I'd pick up a cucumber sandwich and hurl it in his face. Now shush.'

David was still speaking. ‘My darling girls, I know you're finding it hard to accept that Mom is gone. But she is gone, and we have to accept it.'

The Fox9 cameraman did a sweep back across the audience. The twins were weeping uncontrollably. Janet had taken up David's seat between them. She mopped their tears with yellow tissues.

‘Now I'm going to show you some photographs to help you remember your mom,' said David, stepping back to allow viewers to see photographs rolling along the big screens in both corners of the church. There were pictures of Loren and David on their wedding day; photographs of Loren in a lopsided tiara, seated on the now famous gold throne; photographs of Loren pregnant, with a delighted David pressing his hand against her belly; of Loren cradling the two babies at once; of David and Loren boarding the
Silver Lining
with champagne glasses in their hands.

‘Oh, he's so gross,' said Cecile.

The photographs faded to black. A pastor stepped up, hands folded gently in front of white robes. Pallbearers – David included – got to their feet.

‘They're not going to need eight men to carry the coffin,' cried Cecile, ‘it's empty!'

They assembled nonetheless. Dolly Parton's version of ‘I Will Always Love You' began to play.

‘Look at them, look at them,' said Cecile, ‘the coffin is so light it's wobbling everywhere.'

The cameras zoomed in on David's face. He was to the right-side front of the coffin, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Behind him came the girls, also weeping. Aunt Janet stepped forward with her hard face, using her handbag to usher them towards a waiting limousine.

David did not join them. He waited for their car to be halfway down the hill before clearing his throat, a signal that he wanted to speak. Reporters gathered round with iPhones and microphones.

‘You've no doubt heard the news,' he said. ‘Our motion in court this morning – it failed. I won't be able to speak to you again before the trial, so I'm using this – my last few moments of freedom – to make it plain: I did not kill my wife. Loren did a dreadful thing in killing Ms Morales, but I would've continued to support her for as long as I was able. Instead, I stand accused of doing my wife harm. Never in a million years did I expect to be here, saying, “I'm looking forward to my day in court.” But I am. I'm looking forward to clearing my name and returning to my family.'

The camera watched as David got into a second limousine and went down the hill. He didn't get far. Sandy Ruiz had done
a deal with Dick van Nispen in my courtroom to take David into custody immediately following the funeral. The police waited for the limousine to pass the corner down the hill before flipping the lights atop the patrol car. David's limousine stopped. The driver got out and opened a rear door. David stepped out and put his wrists together, on went the cuffs, and off David went, into custody, to await his day in court.

* * *

The original, domed Bienveneda Courthouse was destroyed by fire in 1998. The new building is modern. I would say stark, but that is a cliché. My chambers are adjacent. By chance, I was there when the telephone rang. It was my clerk, Ben Tandberg, saying, ‘I've got San Francisco on the line.'

San Francisco?

The California Superior Courts are headquartered in San Francisco. Judges sit in fifty-eight locations across the state, Bienveneda being one of them. I'd sent my letter of resignation to San Francisco on the day of my seventieth birthday as required by Californian law and, as per tradition, I was due to leave on 30 December of the year in which I turned seventy.

Dick van Nispen's motion to dismiss was to have been my last day in court, and the last of my responsibilities as a judge. I was in the process of placing books into boxes and googling the best way to store my robes when the call came in. Could I stay?

To say that I was flummoxed would be to understate it. The judge who had been announced as my replacement, Rebecca Buckley, had become ensnared in a scandal involving her domestic staff. An investigation by the
Bugle
had revealed that her nanny and housekeeper were undocumented. According to
the
Bugle
, Rebecca had also failed to pay their health insurance and withhold their taxes.

That's one, two, three offences right there. She couldn't take the appointment.

I put down the phone and called Cecile.

She sympathised with Rebecca. ‘Maybe they had fake papers. How was she to know?' she said.

‘Judges are held to higher standards.'

‘The rules work against women. If Rebecca was a man, she'd have a wife. But wives don't get wives.'

‘The question is, do I stay on?' I said. The decision would mean taking on the Wynne-Estes matter.

‘Oh dear,' said Cecile, ‘although it'll certainly be satisfying, seeing David go to prison.'

I wasn't so sure he would go to prison. The case was as flimsy as it had been when Dick's motion came to court: there was still no body, no witnesses, and no cause of death. Not that it mattered what I thought. Judges don't decide the outcome of murder trials; juries do.

Judges preside. Juries decide. That's my mantra.

I accepted the appointment and soon after accepted another call from my clerk. The
Bugle
's editor-in-chief, Marguerite Herrera, had an idea.

‘I feel we almost missed an opportunity, and now we're saved. This will be your last big case,' Marguerite said.

‘It will.'

‘I've always wanted to ask a judge to chronicle their experience. It's difficult because nobody wants to do it while they're still sitting. But you're retiring. So I'm asking you. Take daily notes. We'll turn them into a special for
Bugle
readers –
INSIDE THE MIND OF THE JUDGE
.'

I sat, contemplating. ‘It's rather unorthodox,' I said.

‘That's what will make it readable. The judge sits through the whole trial yet we rarely get to hear what he or she thinks. I'm not asking you to say whether you think the jury reached the right verdict …'

‘I should hope not,' I said.

‘But I am asking you to comment on the process. Take us into the mind of the person who has to sit there, presiding over the circus.'

I laughed. Marguerite wasn't wrong. A trial can be a circus.

And so it was agreed. I would take notes.

‘Maybe start by saying how you feel about being asked to take notes,' Marguerite suggested. Very well.

Twenty-seven years I have been a judge in Bienveneda. Never before have I been asked for my opinion on the justice system. So why now? The
Bugle
says it's because I'm retiring and therefore I can speak freely. That may well be right. But the truth is that few trials have excited our town like the Wynne-Estes murder trial.

And why is that?

I say it's because we live in a town divided. Literally and figuratively. Our town is divided by the Bienveneda River, but that's not all that divides us. Income divides us. Race divides us. How many African-Americans live on the High Side? Not many. How many of my neighbours turn up as defendants in my courtroom? Hardly any. Who do I see in court? Mainly people from the Low Side of town. Why is that? We kid ourselves that we're better over here: better parents, with kids in better schools. Can that really be the reason? The Low Side lives much closer to the poverty line
than we do. People ask me if race plays a role. Of course it plays a role. Sit in court every day for years, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that African-Americans commit more crime than white folk, but it's not so. African-Americans are more likely to be charged and brought to court; less likely to get off with a warning. It's a subtle but important difference.

Besides being African-American, most of the offenders I see are in poor health. The circumstances in which they live – poverty, mental illness, alcoholism and illiteracy – are ugly. Occasionally, I'll say: ‘How do you plead?' The defendant might say: ‘Why does that matter?' None come with lawyers. We have to give them lawyers. The press isn't interested; the
Bugle
occasionally sends a junior reporter into court to file some brief items for the
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
page. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen a TV camera in the back of the court.

This case is different. It involves beautiful people with a great deal of money. The defendant is – or was – a successful businessman. He presents well. The crime of which he stands accused is ugly, but he's not. He's white. He's fit. He's handsome. His parents are upstanding members of our community. They have a fine home on the same road I live on with my wife, Cecile.