Running From the Law Read online

“Mrs. Mateer, did you see the defendant do anything else unusual?”

  I leaned forward. “Objection, Your Honor. The question assumes the actions described were unusual.”

  Ryerson leapt to her pumps. “There certainly is something unusual about a man scurrying out of a private home, jumping into a car, and driving quickly in reverse.”

  Justice Millan smiled tightly. “Oh, really? I had an ex-husband who did just that.”

  The gallery laughed, but I didn’t. I was thinking of something. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Something was wrong, bothering me. I sat upright, listening.

  “Then what did you do, Mrs. Mateer?” Ryerson asked.

  “I waited a little, I wasn’t sure what to do. It all seemed so odd to me. Then I decided to call the police. They came and found Patricia, dead. Murdered.”

  “Thank you. I have no further questions,” Ryerson said, and sat down.

  Justice Millan eased back in her chair. “Ms. Morrone, your turn.”

  I stood up to cross. “Mrs. Mateer, let me begin with just a few general questions, if I may. Do you know that the distance from your kitchen window to the carriage house is about a hundred yards?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And there are trees in front of the carriage house, aren’t there?”

  “There are some trees.”

  I looked at my notes. “At least five large oaks, with very thick trunks, lie between your house and the carriage house, isn’t that right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Also, there’s a tall hedge between the two, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s about five feet, is it not?”

  “Yes, but we keep it trimmed.”

  “But it hasn’t been trimmed recently, has it?”

  “No. It was due in early June, but the lawn service isn’t overly reliable. Sometimes in the summer months, the service gets too busy, what with people spraying chemicals everywhere, willy-nilly.” She shuddered.

  “It was raining the afternoon of June 18, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The storm began about three o’clock, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Objection,” Ryerson said. “What’s the relevance of this weather report?”

  Fuck you. “Your Honor, the relevance will be clear if the young Mrs. Ryerson can be patient.”

  “Good. Overruled,” Justice Millan said, and Ryerson flounced into her chair like Scarlett O’Hara. Fiddle-dee-dee.

  I cleared my throat. “Do you recall that the sky became very dark as the storm came up, Mrs. Mateer?”

  “Yes. It got quite dark. It was the tail end of that tropical storm. Wind was gusting, trees were knocked over. Conestoga Road was blocked for some time, by a branch, in fact.” Her gold bangles jingled as she folded her hands on her lap.

  “Mrs. Mateer, wasn’t it raining hard when you saw this person?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a driving rain, was it not?”

  “A drenching rain, I would say. I was pleased to see it, as a gardener.”

  I thought of asking her about the garden club but dismissed it. With what was to come next, it would sound like I was bringing Kate into it. “Did the person you saw have the hat down over his or her eyes?”

  “Only partly.”

  “Do you remember if they held the brim of the hat, as if to shield themselves from the rain?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.” Mrs. Mateer closed her eyes, trying to remember, and her eyelids fluttered slightly. “Maybe, I don’t know,” she said, nodding, and Ryerson made a note.

  “Did you notice any jewelry on his or her hand as they held the hat brim?”

  She paused. “No. He may have been wearing gloves, I don’t recall for sure.”

  “Did the person have the collar of the raincoat up around their face?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Ryerson made another note.

  “And you testified the person was rushing, too, so you only saw him or her for a short time?”

  Justice Millan harrumphed from the dais. “Do we have to say ‘his or her’ every time, counselor? It sounds so politically correct.”

  The reporters laughed. Justice Millan gave good copy.

  “Your Honor, this witness’s identification of the defendant is sketchy at best. I can’t concede it was even a man that she saw.”

  “Fine, fine, fine,” Millan said. “But dump the ‘his or her.’ I’ll remember you have a continuing objection. I’m a woman judge, if you haven’t noticed.”

  The gallery chuckled.

  “Mrs. Mateer, you testified that you saw this person rush to a black Jaguar?”

  “Not exactly. I testified that I saw Judge Hamilton rush to the Jaguar.”

  Ouch. “And he got into the car and reversed out the driveway?” I tried to picture it in my mind.

  “Yes.”

  And the car was backward. “He didn’t turn around in the driveway and drive out with the front of the car facing you?”

  “No, there’s not enough room, one has to reverse out. It’s quite inconvenient.”

  I paused a minute and the courtroom fell silent. A reporter coughed in the back, and there was whispering. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was nagging at me as I pictured Fiske running to his car and jumping in.

  “Mrs. Mateer,” I asked, “did this person enter the car from its left side or its right?”

  She paused. “What do you mean?”

  “When the person got in the car, did he enter on the right side or the left?”

  She blinked. “I don’t recall. The driver’s side, of course.”

  I was building on something, but didn’t know exactly what. I got the same sort of hunch at the poker table, and followed it every time. “You say the driver’s side, Mrs. Mateer, but was it the left or the right side of the car?”

  “The right, I believe.” She held up a bejeweled index finger. “Wait … it was the left.”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Ryerson said. “Defense counsel is trying to confuse the witness.”

  Not this time. “Your Honor, I’m trying to understand exactly what Mrs. Mateer saw. The Commonwealth calls her an eyewitness, after all.”

  “Overruled.” Justice Millan nodded, and Ryerson sulked in her chair.

  “Mrs. Mateer, I need to know whether the person you saw got into the car from the right or the left. Please take a minute and think about it.”

  Ryerson sighed, making a great show of her exasperation, and Fiske tensed at my elbow. He knew where I was going and suddenly so did I.

  “The left side,” Mrs. Mateer said. “I’m positive now. The left.”

  GO FOR IT! Fiske wrote on my legal pad, but I shook my head. Better to save it for later. It wasn’t a home run at a preliminary hearing but might be enough to constitute a reasonable doubt at trial. I didn’t want to show my hand.

  “Mrs. Mateer, you’re sure that the person got into the car on the left in a great hurry, started it immediately, and drove off?”

  “Yes.” She drew a deep breath, now that she felt on safer ground.

  “And the person didn’t slide over in the front seat to start the car?”

  “No.”

  “He jumped in and started right off?”

  “Yes.”

  Fiske wrote GO! GO! GO! on the pad.

  No, I wrote back. Not today.

  He pursed his lips. He couldn’t have been as good a chess player as I thought. I had learned something, but the police wouldn’t drop a murder charge on it. Fiske’s Jaguar, being British-made, had the steering wheel on the right, so the driver would have entered from the right side of the car. Either Mrs. Mateer wasn’t so good on the details or Fiske was being framed for murder by someone who knew his license plate but didn’t know about his steering wheel. Or who had forgotten.

  “Do you have any further questions, Ms. Morrone?” Justice Millan said. “Let’s
keep things moving.”

  “Just a couple, Your Honor. Mrs. Mateer, how often do you look out of your kitchen window?”

  “Every time I’m at the sink. And other times, to check on my garden.”

  “I understand.” You’re not a nosy old bird. “Did you ever see people coming and going from the carriage house?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was mostly men who came and went, isn’t that right?”

  “Objection, Your Honor!” Ryerson said. “What is defense counsel suggesting?”

  “Your Honor, I’m hoping Mrs. Mateer can help me understand who visited the carriage house. That is highly relevant to proving who killed Patricia Sullivan, which is the only thing the Commonwealth should be concerned about.”

  “Overruled,” Justice Millan said. “She’s entitled to inquire.”

  “Mrs. Mateer, you said you rented to Patricia Sullivan for a two-year period. Did you happen to notice that men visited her during that time?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Would you say that many men visited her or just a few?”

  She paused. “I would have to say more than a few.”

  “You would have to say ‘many,’ am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  The reporters started yapping, as I knew they would. I wondered how Fiske would take this. Or Paul. “Mrs. Mateer, did you meet any of these men?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s back up. You work in the garden out back, and you’re a gardener, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a member of the Wayne Garden Club, by the way?”

  “I was for many years, but no longer.”

  Hmmm. Kate’s club. Did it matter? “When you were out working in your garden, did Patricia Sullivan ever introduce you to any of her visitors?”

  “No … well, only one. I forget his name.”

  “Is he in the courtroom today?”

  She scanned the crowd slowly. I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t point at Paul. I’d normally never ask such an open question on cross, but I needed this answer. After a long time, Mrs. Mateer said: “Well, I see a man I recognize, but Patricia never introduced us.”

  My mouth went dry. “Who would that be?”

  She pointed a bony finger at the gallery. Heads swiveled frantically among the pews. I looked at Paul, who sat bolt upright, seemingly unafraid of her identification.

  “In the back,” Mrs. Mateer said. She aimed her finger at Stan Julicher, who raised his hand and smiled at the press.

  “Besides him, is there anyone else?”

  “No.”

  My mind flipped through the drawings I’d seen in the other sketchbooks in the garage, then the sketch I stepped on. “Mrs. Mateer, wasn’t there one man who visited more frequently than others?”

  “I have to object, Your Honor,” Ryerson said. “This line of questioning casts aspersions on the character of the victim. This is the worst kind of—”

  “Overruled. Get to the point, Ms. Morrone,” Justice Millan interrupted. “I’m not interested in watching while you fish.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Mrs. Mateer, there was one man who visited more than the others, wasn’t there?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  I thought of the front door, unlocked. “Did he live with Miss Sullivan?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He was tall, wasn’t he, about six feet?”

  She nodded. “I suppose.”

  Ready, set, go. “And he was black, was he not?”

  Mrs. Mateer cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”

  The gallery burst into excited chatter and Justice Millan pounded the gavel. “Now, children,” she said.

  “And he rode a BMW motorcycle, didn’t he?”

  “Why, yes.”

  And he left the seat up, too, but we won’t go into that. I glanced at Fiske, who looked puzzled. Paul didn’t. “Mrs. Mateer, I have one final question. You never saw Judge Hamilton visit the carriage house, did you?”

  “No.”

  Thank God, Fiske had kept his trysts nocturnal. “I have no further questions of this witness.”

  I sat down and half listened to a repetitious redirect by Ryerson, then put myself on autopilot as Lieutenant Dunstan described in mind-numbing detail the police procedures for license-plate and fingerprint identification. He testified that they’d found Fiske’s prints in the living room, which squared with what Fiske had told me. He’d confined his close encounters to the sofa. Why do you think they call it a love seat?

  On cross-examination, I established that the police had dusted the carriage house and found no other fingerprints from Fiske, and had examined Fiske’s Jaguar and had not yet found any evidence of the victim’s blood, hair, or fibers from her clothes. But I couldn’t resist a final line of questions, just to get the press salivating.

  “Lieutenant Dunstan, did the police consider that one of the male visitors to the carriage house could have committed the crime?”

  He nodded. “We investigated thoroughly, including the gentleman you referred to.”

  A shake, rattle, and roll emanated from the back of the courtroom. I looked back. It was Tobin, shaking his box of Jujyfruits, presumably warning me not to press further. Still, I couldn’t resist a parting shot:

  “Lieutenant Dunstan, how easy do you think it is to make a fake Pennsylvania license plate, one that would look real at a hundred yards, in the middle of a dark rainstorm?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What if I told you I made one this morning in only ten minutes, out of cardboard and indelible markers?”

  “Objection!” Ryerson said, but the reporters responded predictably, salivating and scribbling, scribbling and salivating. Justice Millan banged her gavel again and again, to no avail. All the news that’s fit to spin was being spun, like straw into gold.

  “Never mind, I withdraw the question,” I said. “I have no further questions.”

  I sat down and promised myself that someday I’d try to make a license plate out of cardboard and indelible markers. When I got a spare ten minutes.

  18

  After the preliminary hearing, we regrouped in Fiske’s study. It was large, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a rolling library ladder for reaching that emergency copy of Milton. Fiske kept the air-conditioning high so the first editions wouldn’t molder and grow mushrooms in the dim room. The only light came from two narrow, arched windows, crisscrossed with leaded glass. It was a nice effect if you liked Early Medieval, but since I came from the serfing class I’d always felt uncomfortable here. Especially today, since I was wondering if I was sitting in this drafty castle with a killer.

  Despite my link to these players, I felt suspicious of them. Fiske, who’d been framed for murder—maybe. Kate, who drove an identical black Jaguar with an almost identical license plate, and who was furious at Patricia for suing her husband. And my own beloved, who had slept with Patricia and taken with him the only thing that would prove he knew her. Had Paul killed her? Could he? Could any of them?

  It was almost impossible to believe. I had known them for years and never would have dreamed any of them capable of such brutality. And Paul, never. Still, I had lots of questions and no answers, and any lawyer would have been thinking the same way. So I set aside my personal feelings, put on a poker face, and watched the cards. In this case, the face cards, all of which were, not coincidentally, two-faced. I started play with a gutsy opening bet:

  “I think someone is trying to frame Fiske for murder,” I said. “Any thoughts? Suspicions? Guesses?”

  “Not a one. I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Fiske said. He sat at the head of a long table with six wooden chess games in various stages of play. Next to each chessboard was a stack of postcards. Fiske seemed to be looking at the closest chess game, albeit without much concentration.

  “A judge without an enemy? Don’t you make an enemy in every case—the loser?”

  “Not rea
lly. I’ve been on the bench for almost twenty years and I run my courtroom fairly. Civil litigants know that.”

  “How about in the criminal cases, in sentencing cases? You sentence in the drug cases, don’t you? They’re federal.”

  “The guideline cases, of course. We’re overwhelmed.”

  “Has anybody you’ve sentenced gotten especially upset? Screamed at you, threatened you?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. All the possibilities.”

  “What about someone from the bar association or your old firm? No old grudges? Nobody on the district court?”

  “My colleagues? Judges? No, no.” He fingered the White King, then set it back down. “It’s this motorcycle rider that concerns me.” He winced slightly and I knew he wasn’t thinking about Kf8 and Kc7.

  “I agree. I’m going to see if I can find him.”

  He looked up from the chess game. “How?”

  “Investigate. I have some ideas.”

  Kate edged forward on the arm of a club chair, a stubby cigarette smoldering between her fingers, a Waterford ashtray in her other hand. She had apparently started smoking again. “Do you really believe Fiske was framed, Rita? That this was an intentional act? It seems the unlikeliest option to me.”

  “Why?” Fiske said to her. “How else would a Jag with my license plate appear in her driveway?”

  She shrugged. “How indeed? I can think of lots of reasons short of someone actually trying to frame you, dear. Maybe Mrs. Mateer saw the license plate wrong. She simply could have misread it.”

  “You don’t know Mrs. Mateer, do you, Kate?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “Besides,” Kate continued, “it was a great distance, and with the thunderstorm, everything was gray and dark. Maybe she read it incorrectly.”

  “Mother, you can read a license plate in a thunderstorm,” Paul said. He stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the sun, and it was hard to see his face. “Yellow letters on a blue background, like the Pennsylvania plate? It’s easy to read.”

  “Then maybe she remembered it wrong.” Kate blew a jet of smoke at the high ceiling. “How many times have you thought you remembered a number but didn’t? Gotten one letter wrong or two? I always get phone numbers mixed up.”