Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 32

"Two black-and-whites from Jacksonville Beach. And one civilian car."

"Belonging to?"

"A man named Victor Gambrel."

Gambrel was in the main living room, she explained, when she and Nickerson entered the house. He identified himself immediately as director of security for Zide Industries. He was with Mrs. Zide, taking care of her. He had been there for only a couple of minutes, he told them, after a telephone call he received from Neil Zide.

"Were you able in any way to corroborate that last statement of Mr. Gambrel's? That he'd been in the house 'only a couple of minutes'?"

"I believe the security guard corroborated it."

"Oh? The one down by the gate?"

"There was only one, I believe. So yes."

"When did you talk to him?"

"Sergeant Nickerson questioned him the next day. Down at the sheriff's office."

"You weren't present at that questioning?"

"I was doing some other work. I don't remember exactly what."

"And did either of you question Mr. Gambrel?"

"Sergeant Nickerson did, then and later. He and Gambrel knew each other. As soon as we walked in, Gambrel looked up and said, 'h.e.l.lo, Nick,' and Nickerson said, 'h.e.l.lo, Victor.' "

"Like they were old friends?"

"Not quite. Like they knew each other professionally, I'd say. I think Gambrel had been a JSO officer before he went into private work."

Gary Oliver was scribbling notes as fast as his black Flair pen could fly across or over the lines of his legal pad. His handwriting was a large scrawl, so that every minute or so he would flip the page loudly to uncover a fresh one. For a moment I glanced at Muriel Suarez. Her eye for that split second was on Gary as he wrote; she was frowning. In this courtroom today the lawyers didn't have to hide their emotions. There was no jury to observe, to wonder.

I looked at my own notes. "Ms. Tanagra, you said in direct examination that, as far as you knew, the crime scene had been preserved. I'm curious-what did you mean by 'as far as I knew'?"

"Well... it didn't seem to have been disturbed."

"How did you make that judgment?"

Her nostrils flared; she was angry. She wasn't a cop anymore, but she still wanted to be thought of as having been a good cop. "I don't recall," she said.

"By 'the crime scene,' I take it you mean the immediate area around the body of the murdered man."

"Yes, more or less."

"Did you ask Mrs. Zide and Mr. Neil Zide if they'd touched anything in that area? And if they'd moved the body at all?"

"Yes, I did ask. They said no."

"And you believed them?"

"They were in a state of shock," Tanagra said.

"That's not what I asked you. I asked if you believed them when they said they hadn't touched anything or moved the body."

"Up to a point. I mean, this was a hysterical woman. She was bleeding all over the place. She might have moved the body, might have tried to cradle her husband. Sure, that could have happened. A lot of things happen that aren't meant to happen. But the medical examiner-"

"Was the son hysterical?" I persisted. "Neil Zide?"

"A little. Yes, he was."

"Was Mr. Gambrel hysterical?"

"I don't recall that at all. He'd just arrived."

"He was calm?"

"I believe he was calm, yes."

"You talked to him?"

"No, Nick-Sergeant Nickerson talked to him. I went off to find the dog."

I'd been fis.h.i.+ng. The hook was wiggling a little in the murky depths, and I wasn't at all sure what was on it. But I felt that slight pressure.

Slowly I said, "Ms. Tanagra, you went off to find the dog at the beach cabanas, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And the dog, the Doberman, when you found him, was dead. Poisoned, as I recall, by Smith and Morgan." Darryl, at my side, s.h.i.+fted his weight and grunted. "By Smith," I corrected myself.

"Right."

"When you went off toward the beach, Ms. Tanagra, did you know the dog was dead?"

"No, of course not."

"Did you know there was a dog there at all?"

Her brow knitted; she was trying to recall. But it was thirteen years ago. That's nearly five thousand days and nights crammed with incident. She shrugged a bit helplessly.

"Let me see if I can refresh your memory again," I said, "and please stop me if I'm wrong. You left the living room, where all these people were gathered ... you went outside onto the terrace." She was nodding, so I kept going. "You could have gone in any direction, but you didn't. You turned left"-I knew that house and lawn and terrace, of course; I had partied there, I had even f.u.c.ked there- "and you crossed the lawn toward the beach. Why did you do that?"

"To see if the dog was all right," she said.

"Why did you want to see if the dog was all right?"

She spoke almost dreamily. "Because someone had said, 'I wonder why the dog didn't bark.' Or maybe, 'I wonder if the dog's all right. Why isn't he barking?' Something like that. I remember that now. And I went out there to find out. I went down to the beach. The son said that, I think. Said the dog was down by the beach and pointed in that direction. Yes, I'm fairly sure it was the son."

"Neil Zide?"

"Yes."

"Did you go down to the beach alone?"

"No, I took one of the Jacksonville Beach cops with me. Nick said, 'Don't go alone, Carmen. You never know who's out there.' So this cop went with me."

"And you left Neil Zide and Mrs. Zide and Victor Gambrel and Sergeant Nickerson and one other Beach patrolman in the house." "No, there were two other Beach cops. Three of them came in two patrol cars. One went with me to the cabanas-I remember he had this huge, powerful flashlight that he could hang on his belt. Two stayed behind."

I took a chance. "When you and the third Beach cop got back from the cabanas to tell them about the dead dog, were the two other Beach cops still in the living room with the Zides and Victor Gambrel and Sergeant Nickerson?"

"I don't think so," Carmen Tanagra said. "I think the ambulance was coming up the drive and those two guys were out there to flag it down. Yes, I'm positive of that."

"Positive ... after thirteen years?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know," she said, but I could see by the fresh lines etched into her forehead that she was troubled by some memory or vision just beyond her grasp. Or maybe just within it, so that her mental fingertips touched it but couldn't haul it in.

"I have no more questions," I said, "for now."

Chapter 28.

IN THE AFTERNOON, after lunch, Whatley said calmly, "The State of Florida calls Constance Zide."

Heads turned, and necks craned. A uniformed bailiff escorted Connie into the courtroom, down the aisle past the bar and through the well to the witness stand. Even as the door hissed shut you could hear the clicking of Nikons and the soft roll of the rubber wheels on the big TV cameras. I turned too, and saw that Connie's black leather purse was raised in front of her face in the direction of the cameras.

When she pa.s.sed in front of me on her way to the stand, I understood why she was doing that. I hadn't seen Connie since the day Darryl Morgan had been given his death sentence by Judge Eglin. She was nearly sixty years old now. I had a.s.sumed that with her bone structure and her pale clear skin she would always remain a beautiful woman, that if you were young you would look at her and wish you'd known her in her prime.

That had not happened.

Her hair was the same color, dyed now to mask the gray, and it had lost some of its sheen. But her hair was almost the only recognizable feature.

Connie's cheeks were doughy, and a roll of flesh moved down from the chin to the thick throat. The scar was of course gone; cosmetic surgery had taken care of that. She wore a black suit as if she were still in mourning, but I remembered that she had once said, "Darling, black's not my color, it's too dramatic, although it does make one look thinner. The day you see me in black, you'll know I'm an over-the-hill bag."

When she walked she swayed with uncertainty, as if it took a certain effort to move her hips down the aisle, and she seemed grateful to finally sit down in the witness box. Diamonds and emeralds and heavyweight gold bangles bedecked her as though she were a film star, and I sensed that today they weren't fake. I was about twenty-five feet away from her, and when she gazed across the courtroom there was hardly any expression in her eyes: a minimal greeting by way of rapid blinking, a bit of anesthetized pain, perhaps, but that was all. The blue-green eyes were flecked at the corners with a tracery of pink. Surrounded by heavy pancake makeup and set above thin vermilion lips, they seemed moribund.

Oh, Connie ... my old dear Connie, what happened to you?

I wanted to reach out, touch her and comfort her. But I could hardly do that.

On the bench, Judge Fleming coughed, and when I looked quickly up I realized that for the first time he was wondering if it was so important to be enlightened. But it is, Judge-it is. I promise you.

John Whatley treated Connie gently.

He took her back thirteen years to the night of December 5, to the Mozart horn concerto and smoked Nova flown down from Zabar's on the West Side of Manhattan. And in a slightly hoa.r.s.e but warm voice, which had hardly changed over time, she told the story of that night.

I had heard it before. She had been my mistress and my witness. I had read her testimony later in the trial transcript. And I had thought about it now for nearly a year.

Telling that tale now took only fifteen minutes. She had heard shots, she recalled, and rushed outside to the terrace, where her husband lay dead. Two black men had been standing there, one with a pistol in his hand. Someone had slashed her in the face. That's all she remembered.

Whatley moved a deferential step backward, like a courtier withdrawing before a queen, and gave her a gracious smile as accolade.

"No further questions. Thank you, Mrs. Zide. We're sorry to have troubled you this way." He turned to me and said curtly, "Pa.s.s the witness."

"I have no questions," I said.

And Connie's eyes shone at me with a grat.i.tude beyond deserving.

I added, "But I would like to have Mrs. Zide stay in the courtroom, or nearby on call."

In most trials, witnesses are prohibited from hearing the testimony of the other witnesses. But that prohibition must be invoked by one side or the other-literally, the defense attorney or the prosecutor rises at the outset of trial and says, "Your Honor, we invoke the rule."

Neither Muriel nor I had done so in this hearing. I had my reasons, and I a.s.sumed that she did too. So Connie stayed in the courtroom to listen to her son testify. Neil had listened to her as well, and to Carmen Tanagra.

Neil's hair was still long and unruly, but he had shaved for this occasion, and wore a three-piece suit and pin-dot cranberry-colored tie instead of Levi's and silk cowboy s.h.i.+rt. The suit was black; Neil was slim and unafraid of drama.

His testimony about the failed burglary and the shooting echoed what his mother had said. He too had been my witness thirteen years before, so there were no surprises.

When Whatley said, "Pa.s.s the witness," I rose from my seat at the counsel table.

"Mr. Zide, you and I have known each other socially for about fourteen years, isn't that correct?"

"Yes, it is." He was already wary. I suppose he had thought I would let him go the way I had done with his mother.

"So you won't mind if I call you Neil?"

"No, of course not... Ted."

"I didn't want the court to think that I was taking liberties," I explained, and smiled up at Judge Fleming.

Then I turned back to Neil. "You've been in the courtroom, and you heard the testimony of Ms. Carmen Tanagra today, didn't you?"

"Yes, I was here," Neil said.

"So you heard her testify about going to find the Doberman in the dunes near the beach? And the dog was dead, she told us. Poisoned."

"Yes."

I consulted Gary Oliver's notes. "Sergeant Tanagra remembered that the reason she went down to the beach was because someone had said, 'I wonder if the dog's all right. Why isn't he barking?' And she thought that someone was you. Do you remember that, Neil?"