Unlucky in Law (11 page)

Stefan needed a pep talk. Klaus could do that. She would ask him to do that.

She stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up place mats, boxed sushi and a bottle of white wine for herself, chicken taquitos and vanilla soda for Bob along with a salad he probably wouldn't eat, arriving at the shabby white cottage in Pacific Grove late for dinner. As always. As always, she thought of their warm cabin in South Lake Tahoe, and asked herself if she had done the right thing coming back to the Central Coast.

Right after she took the job with Klaus, a few days before Paul had popped the question, Nina and Bob had moved their few things over to the house she had inherited from her aunt Helen, which Nina had been renting out for income.

Paul hadn't wanted her to leave, but having Bob sleeping in his office wasn't working, so he came around and helped them in the end, although now she understood his vigorous objections better. Here he was getting up the nerve to propose, and she was moving out.

While Paul had unloaded boxes, Nina cleared dust balls from corners and cupboards, Hitchcock stuck his doggy snout where it didn't belong, and Bob cut open the small pile of boxes piled on the living room floor. She had tried to stay cheerful and tried to engage Bob in making some future plans about how they would be spending their time here, but the move had been an ordeal.

Coming up the rickety steps, Nina held her case in one hand, and in the other the bag of groceries, which she set on the porch while she found her key and opened the door.

“Bob!” she called out.

“Yo, Mom!” he replied from his bedroom.

Most of their furniture was still at Tahoe, which Nina had left nearly three months before. The couch here was secondhand, and there was no fireplace to cheer the damp coastal nights. Thick area rugs covered the worn hardwood in the living room. Pillows, two easy chairs, a television stand, and a low table made up the rest of the furniture. Cheap vinyl blinds the previous tenants had installed for privacy were the only window coverings.

She put the groceries away and put Bob's meal into the microwave.

The bare bones of the cottage, an old white frame built over a hundred years ago, would be lovely if you could see them better, she decided, maneuvering herself onto the couch with her tray. She poured herself a glass of wine and popped a wasabi-and-soy-sauced piece of California roll into her mouth. The house was ideally located, up a slope and just a block from Lover's Point, offering a glimpse of the deep blue Pacific from its front yard. Various utilitarian renovations had taken place over the years to keep the tenants happy.

Some things would have to change, and soon. Nina was not the kind of person who considered her car or her house an outer symbol of some inner person, but she had her standards. The artificial turf leading up to the carport would have to go.

But why worry about this old place? If she married Paul, they would have to find a larger home that would suit all three of them.

After a few sips, Nina got up again. She set two new white plates on the woven blue place mats she had bought and found silverware and napkins. She set a square candle in the middle of the table and lit it, put the food on, then poured Bob a glass filled with ice and soda, and herself a tall ice water to chase the rest of the wine in her glass. The microwave beeped. From the hallway she called to Bob through his open door. “Dinner!”

“Busy,” he said.

“Come and eat,” she said. She waited, but getting no further response, walked to the open door and looked inside.

His room consisted of a bed with a wool blanket borrowed from Paul. His closet, gaping open, held a gym bag spilling its contents on the floor and empty metal hangers on the rod above. No posters decorated the bedroom walls; no bonsai tree like the one he had nursed at Tahoe spruced up this barren windowsill. Bob sat at a bare wooden table with his feet up, wearing headphones and an entranced expression.

She walked over to him and removed the headphones. “I hereby command the pleasure of your company at dinner.” She didn't make it a question, because that opened up a discussion, and all she wanted to do was to wolf down the rest of her sushi and turn on her precious half-hour news show, which made her forget her own concerns.

“I'm not hungry.”

“You ate?”

“Crackers and cheese.”

She hesitated, then said, “Come anyway.” She led, and eventually, grudgingly, he followed.

He sat down at the table across from her and in front of his steaming taquitos, arms crossed. The late evening sun spilled over the table and over his pinched face. His hair, a dark mop, was getting long.

“So, how was school?”

Eyes as dark as black coffee glowered. “If you really want to know, it sucks.”

“Please don't use that kind of language,” she said, knowing this was a futile battle, that she should respond to substance not style, but exhausted by the prospect.

“Well, you asked.”

“I know it's hard, going to a new school—”

“I want to go home.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She closed it.

“Back to Tahoe.”

The final sushi had stuck in her throat, so she cleared it. “High school is always tough. I cried every day for the first three weeks—”

He interrupted. He was not here to listen to her experiences; he was busy fighting through his own. “People here are different.”

“How?”

Sometimes lately this boy she knew so well, inside out, put on a face she didn't recognize. Now came one of those moments. “I can't explain, if you don't know. Plus, I never know what we're going to do. I mean, are we staying or going? If you get married, do we move back to that condo with Paul? Can I go live with Uncle Matt back in Tahoe, since I don't like it here? Do I show some guys they can't screw around with me, or let 'em do it because I'm leaving anyway and it doesn't matter? Do I go out for cross-country or will I have to quit? Why bother to join a club, if we're leaving?”

His forcefulness blew her down, typhoon-style. When Bob was a toddler and he cried, she would wrap him up in her arms, kiss his tears away, and make it all better. Unfortunately, that was no longer an option. He was now bigger than she was for starters, and he seemed to have developed an aversion to her touch. “We discussed all this. There will be some changes, but they aren't decided yet, and you will be in on any further decisions, I promise.”

“You told me I have to go to school here, so I'm going. That doesn't mean I like it.”

“I went to that high school. Carmel High has a good reputation—you have to give it a chance . . .”

“Don't tell me you had a great time, because, Mom, I'm tellin' you, I won't believe it.”

He knew she had not. She had rebelled against her parents, given them gray hair, run around, done all kinds of things she shouldn't have done. “Here's the thing I've learned. High school culture is its own world, and you should know the world's bigger than that. You don't have to hook up with that scene. You've been to Europe. I mean, you don't have to wear a letterman's jacket to be accepted!”

He sighed, a world-weary sigh befitting a traveler who was stuck in a culture where many people did view a letterman's jacket as the epitome of achievement.

She got up and began to make herself a supplemental chicken sandwich with chicken from a can, contrarily wishing Bob did want a letterman's jacket. He had once loved sports. “Honey,” she said finally, “I can't stand having you unhappy. What can I do?” It was the question she had to ask, whether she wanted to hear the answer or not.

He had an answer ready. As an interim measure, until a final decision was made on where they would live, he wanted to go back to Tahoe and get his belongings. He needed his skateboard, his bike, all his things. “I can't live out of just one bag.” He had only the things with him that he had taken on a summer trip to Sweden.

“We'll buy you some clothes if you need them.”

“I need my stuff!”

She recognized from when he was little the stubborn yet brittle look that held tears inside. Times like these, she hated being a mother. “After the trial is over.”

“Now!”

“Soon. I can't go while I'm in trial, Bob. You know that.” She petted Hitchcock, who was the only one who didn't give a damn where they were, who only cared that he was with them and that his food bowl had been filled.

“I'll go without you.”

She reacted to the blow by leaping up to tidy. “What?”

“I can take the train to Truckee. Uncle Matt will pick me up from there.”

“But—”

“I'm going.”

For quite a while, they went back and forth. Eventually, her ability to structure a reasonable argument vaporized in the face of his strenuous desire. Nina agreed to drive him up to the train station early Saturday morning. He would go for the weekend.

Her phone rang. Bob cleared the table and went back to his CDs while Klaus spoke.

“You have the autopsy and material sent from the medical examiner's office?” he asked.

“Of course.” She finished off the sandwich.

“Susan Misumi is up tomorrow.”

“Right,” she said.

“I enjoyed the picture you painted today of the brandy glass flying into Stefan's wide-open mouth.”

“Thank you. Did you call about anything particular?”

“I was just checking in,” Klaus said hesitantly, and Nina experienced another knuckle-biting moment of doubt. Had he forgotten why he called?

She asked him to talk to Stefan about trying to appear more confident in court, and, with a tolerant sigh, Klaus promised he would. “His courtroom style won't win the case.”

She knew it, and she knew very well the pitfalls in trying to control every ineffable in a case, but creating a good impression was about the only contribution Stefan could make at this point, and she felt he should be doing it. As for Klaus, he was an enigma.

Only thing she knew for sure was that second chair in this trial was an active place to be.

Later, from her bed, Nina called Paul. “Wish you were here. I could use your—”

“I like the sound of that,” he interrupted. “What are you wearing?”

“A cold compress on my neck.”

“Oh, yeah, you sexy thing.”

She laughed, then said more soberly, “Detective Banta practically convicted Stefan single-handedly today.”

“She's very experienced.”

Nina heard the comedy station in the background. “You knew her, didn't you?”

“Way back when. Sure, I knew Kelsey.”

“What did you think of her?” Nina didn't know what she was looking for and wasn't sure she wanted to find it anyway.

“Straight arrow,” Paul said.

“Did you date her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“She's attractive.”

He seemed to find the question amusing. “I like her, and I never knew her to tweak the truth. But no, I never dated her.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Nina, she was married. Then, when her brother got killed, she was a secret drinker. Not my idea of a fun date.” He waited for her to say something. When she didn't he said, “You there?”

“Just silently finishing my wine here,” she said.

He laughed. “Who's up tomorrow?”

“Uh, the medical examiner. Dr. Misumi.”

“Susan,” Paul said.

The way he said her name, a kind of warm familiarity as he wound his mouth around the word, made Nina sit up in bed alertly. “That's right. Susan Misumi. You know her?”

“Her, I dated,” Paul said.

9

Friday 9/19

D
ON
'
T ASK, DON
'
T TELL HAD BEEN THE ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN
P
AUL
and Nina regarding other recent partners. Even the fact that there was an arrangement had been a don't tell. In truth, they had never talked about it.

Nina admitted to herself now that she had been cowardly. She herself had nothing to tell that he didn't already know, and she wasn't certain how she would react to finding out about Paul's other lovers. She hadn't asked him for any details, had taken the news the night before with admirable lawyerly equanimity.

Then at four
A.M.
she woke up worrying, not about Stefan or Klaus or Bob, but about Paul, thinking, I shouldn't have moved out of his condo like that, on such short notice, without dealing with the implications first. I could have talked Paul into moving somewhere bigger, where he could have his office and space. Bob could be at the far end of the house with the space apart from us that he needs, too. I should have resolved the marriage issue right away, when Paul asked.

She knew the ostensible reason they had moved here. Aunt Helen's house, Nina's house now, had been available, and she hadn't had much time. But she had lurched gracelessly away from Paul, and she wouldn't be surprised if he held it against her, even if only unconsciously.

Putting the ostensible reason aside, why had she moved so swiftly?

After half an hour of lying in the dark with thoughts stomping heavily through her mind, she gave up and turned on the bed stand light. Her window was open and she could hear the distant bark of seals. The fog moved around in the room with her, like a living presence. In the little room down the hall, Bob muttered restlessly in his sleep.

Paul should give up on me, she thought with a sudden conviction, experiencing an awful mix of fear, insecurity, and loneliness.

After a year of seeing no one but Paul, and years before of seeing him nonexclusively, she should know what to do, but she felt as if she were balanced in the center of the seesaw, unable to move. Either direction, and she would land with a nasty thud.

They had such differences between them, and those differences could be fatal. She flashed to unhappy pictures of Paul in her mind: Paul cleaning his guns; Paul describing various acts of violence he had committed; Paul drunk one night when she had needed him; Paul telling her what to do, trying to push her around, resenting her for being the lawyer employing him as investigator, second-guessing her, not respecting her opinions.

But then: Paul making love to her so sweetly a few nights before. And: Paul's smarts, Paul's jokes, Paul's charm, his devotion over the past years, even when she had been married to another man.

And the moment that had defined their relationship forever: Paul lying in wait outside her house one night, waiting for a killer to arrive and try to break in; Paul killing for her, burying the body God knew where. No one except Bob had any inkling of it. They never talked about it. “I took out the trash,” Paul had once told her, and she—she had thanked him.

She loved so much about him, and she believed he loved her. He thought he had proved he would do anything for her, but she could never bridge the distance that the killing had opened between them. He had fearsome qualities that scared her. Ultimately, she did not trust him completely.

I love him, she thought as she had so many times before. I can't do without him. But . . .

She gave up and wandered into the living room. From outside, a streetlight spilled a soft glow over the old couch. She had loaned her cabin at Tahoe to a woman in trouble who had three kids, who now sat on the new brown couch she had bought, used the plates from Mikasa she and Bob had picked out. Another woman lawyer now sat in the Starlake Building office with the orange client chairs Nina had bought at Ric's in Reno one snowy day . . .

What am I doing here? she asked herself. Three hundred miles from Tahoe, where her home and her work were, she existed in a time warp, working for her boss from years ago, Bob not happy.

She answered her own question. She was here for herself and Paul.

Paul, who had told her just a few hours before, “You weren't available at the time, and Susan is an old friend, so we got together a few times. That's all.” She had heard the small resentment in his voice, as if it were her fault he'd had to find another lover to fill in the space.

Due to other matters Judge Salas had to take up, court resumed at eleven on Friday morning and was scheduled to run only through twelve, then from one-thirty to three. Nina wore her black suit with the white silk blouse with cuffs. After some hesitation she had also sprayed on some ancient Chanel No. 5 of Aunt Helen's she found hidden at the back of the bathroom cupboard. Two ibuprofen, Rice Krispies, and orange juice sloshed against each other in her stomach.

As usual, all the seats had been taken. Madeleine Frey had brought a cushion for her leg today, and Larry Santa Ana was talking across her to another male juror, who listened attentively. He was a schmoozer, and Nina didn't like networking jurors. Silently, selfishly, she prayed for Ms. Frey's leg to feel better fast, and for Larry to take a header. The two young women she had managed to get on the jury seemed relatively indifferent to Stefan's charm. His perpetually wringing hands and sagging face went beyond the cute-puppy effect, straying into mangy-dog territory, which didn't help his cause with them.

Today, trying to follow Klaus's advice about giving a straight-backed, upstanding-citizen impression, Stefan wore another new suit with squarer shoulders.

Jaime had the staunch posture and sanguine smile of a prosecutor who hasn't been touched yet. Nina wanted to wipe that grin off his face very soon, yet there was little she could do at this phase of the trial, because the police witnesses in general were competent people who had done their job and weren't playing games. Kelsey Banta slouched in her seat next to him, as relaxed as if she were watching TV, the hard work over for her.

Paul sat in the audience behind them, a fence between her and the tough world out there. And Klaus, beside Nina and smelling like a rose, predominated over a court in some faraway universe, peacefully next to Stefan, speckled hands folded on the table, not a thought in his head, for all she could tell.

“Call Susan Misumi.” Heads craned. Dr. Misumi was brought in from the hall, where the witnesses had to wait, by the bailiff.

She was no raving beauty, Nina was relieved to see as she stepped into the witness box and sat down, placing her reports carefully in front of her. She wore the uniform of women professionals in California, a black suit jacket with a green, lace-tipped tank T-shirt showing a subtle bit of cleavage, expensive black slacks, and shoes with a slight lift to the heel. About Paul's age, fortyish, reading glasses that dangled from an artistically beaded chain around her neck. She had classic Japanese skin, very pale and fine, bright eyes, and a face that tended toward the round. The feathery bangs probably cost a fortune to maintain.

A smart woman who took care of herself, great, but why would Paul be attracted to her? Nina couldn't help remembering his comment about having dated her. In her mind, Paul's type would be a blonde bimbo, lots of makeup—was
this
Paul's type? This important lady answering Jaime's questions in a measured voice, saying she had in fact gotten her medical degree at Johns Hopkins, received specialized training in forensic pathology at Stanford, and been appointed Assistant Chief Medical Examiner for the County of Monterey some four years before, couldn't be Paul's type. She spent her days cutting open dead people! She did have a nice voice, low and musical, though, and a beautiful mouth, with full cushiony lips.

The mouth must have been what got him.

Nina felt a blurry sea of hot juicy emotion, part anger, part self-dislike, part hatred of this woman, part admiration for her. Sum it up as jealousy, a feeling she remembered well from the days before her divorce from Jack McIntyre had become final.

Klaus was supposed to do the cross-exam, but Nina knew by now not to rely on him, so she began taking notes, though her eyes burned and she found it hard to look at the witness.

Dr. Misumi looked hard back at her. She must know about Nina's place in Paul's life, and she must care.

Misumi went through the autopsy report for the jury. She had been called to the scene, made sure photos were taken of the body of Christina Zhukovsky in situ, and ordered the body taken to Natividad Hospital in Salinas, where the county morgue was. She had also supervised the opening of the coffin and the photos and removal of any leftover bits of human remains.

At the morgue, she had determined from the relaxation of rigor mortis and other signs that the victim had been dead for between approximately twenty-six and twenty-eight hours, making time of death between one and three
A.M.
the previous morning, April 12. The victim had not been killed at the scene, but had been brought there at some indeterminate time—Nina noted this—and then buried. Stefan claimed he had spent Friday night into Saturday morning drunk, in the arms of Erin, who could hardly corroborate, being drunk herself.

“The immediate cause of death was asphyxia. The jugular veins were pressed, which prevents blood returning from the brain. The blood backing up in the brain leads to unconsciousness, depressed respiration, and asphyxia. She suffocated due to blunt force trauma to the neck,” Dr. Misumi said directly to the jury.

“And on what do you base this opinion?” Jaime asked.

“Well, on both exterior and interior evidence. I examined the exterior of the victim, the skin and hair first. The body exhibited obvious contusions on the anterior neck,” she said. “The front of the neck.” Photos went around the jury. Toughened by the relentlessly graphic photos by now, nobody batted an eye. “I noted one thumb touch pad contusion on the left posterior section.”

“Indicating?”

“Manual strangulation. Often only the thumb makes a mark on the neck. The fingers don't press as deeply.”

“What if anything did you conclude from this mark?”

“That the victim was approached from behind by a right-handed person who reached around”—she clasped her own neck with her right hand—“and squeezed deeply, fingers against the throat. She was probably being held tightly against the body of the killer behind her.”

“Any other bruises?”

“On the neck, there were also two curvilinear abrasions on the anterior neck. The photo marked Exhibit A-twelve.”

“Do you have an opinion as to what would have caused such abrasions?”

“The abrasions were caused by fingernails.”

“The killer's?”

“No. The victim's. What happened is that the victim put her hands up to try to pry away the fingers of the attacker.” She paused and looked at the jury. Madeleine Frey's eyes filled and she rubbed her leg, and Nina thought, This woman is going to be a problem.

“There were also petechiae, small hemorrhages of the skin. They look like pinpoints of red on the skin. They are a sign of asphyxiation.”

“And where were these located?”

“I found petechiae in the mucosa of the lower lip. I didn't find them on the neck or anywhere on the external skin, on the conjunctiva of the eyes, or on the deep internal organs. You do look for petechiae there, but their absence doesn't disprove strangulation.”

Copies of photos of Misumi's “petechiae” were now going around. Even the hardened jurors blanched at the one Misumi was now discussing.

“There were also internal signs of strangulation. Here. Exhibit A-fourteen,” she said. “I took that photograph at the postmortem.”

“And what does it indicate?”

“See the little red spots? Petechiae.”

“Located where?”

“On the underside of the scalp. In the picture, the scalp was shown reflected forward over the face”—and this was something even Nina couldn't stand to look at—“which shows the undersurface of the scalp. Petechiae due to strangulation were found there.”

“And did you note any other internal evidence of strangulation?”

Misumi picked up her report and read from it. “I did a complete dissection, removing the larynx, including the hyoid bone. It wasn't broken, but it only gets broken in about one third of strangulation cases, so that's not telling. I examined the superficial and deep musculature. Nothing there, no contusions. I examined the laryngeal skeleton for fracture. Nothing. I then opened the cervical spine and examined it for injury. Nothing. So the internal examination of the neck was, I would say, inconclusive, but the external evidence was quite clear.”

Jaime had been sitting at the counsel table as he fired these questions. Now he went around the counsel table, sucking in his gut, an imposing, stocky, authoritative figure for the jury to observe. Standing near both the jury box and Stefan, he asked, “Is there any way to tell whether the attacker was a man or woman based on your postmortem, Doctor?”

“You could estimate the amount of force involved, which in this case was considerable, to leave the thumb impression. But no, that wouldn't rule out a woman. Very little force is needed to strangle someone who is unconscious or intoxicated, especially a small woman like this one. Although the blood tests showed the victim had not been drinking much, even a small force applied in the right place can get past the protective muscles and skeleton.”

“And—”

“May I add something?”

“Surely,” Jaime said, waving his hand in courtly fashion.

“The amount of force required also varies depending on the amount of neck musculature of the victim. In this case the victim was somewhat frail, with rather less musculature than I would expect. That means less force would have been needed, than, for example, to strangle a football player.”

“You're saying it would have been easy for a muscular young man to do the job?” Jaime asked.

“Oh, yes. If she was unable to get away from him.”

“Did you try to match the thumb contusion with thumbprints of the defendant?”