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
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.”
