chairs. No darting eyes, no coughs, no fidgeting. They just watched Josefina Baroso with empathy and concern for this brave woman. She was so damn good. She gave the appearance of trying to be fair. No, she can’t call it rape. Of course not, she never told the cops she’d been raped. A physical exam would have disproved that lie.
It was a flaw in her story, at least until she explained it away with her sob story about not knowing whether it was rape at all. Still, Patterson could cross-examine as to why she didn’t tell the cops the whole story.
McBain anticipated the question on cross-examination and defused it. “Ms. Baroso, you never told Sergeant Crawford that the defendant forced you to submit to sex, did you?”
“ No…I couldn’t. I was so ashamed. I blamed myself for it. Maybe I should have fought back, but I was afraid Simmy would hear. I was afraid someone would get killed.”
Josefina Baroso had spent four years on the sexual assault team in the state attorney’s office, and it showed. She knew what worked, and what didn’t, and when she spouted cliches, they sounded heartfelt.
“ Now, Ms. Baroso, what happened after the defendant forced you to submit to him?”
“ I was lying there crying, and Simmy came into the barn looking for me. Jake said something about wanting to thank him.”
“ Thank him?”
“ Yes. He turned to Simmy and smiled, a really vicious smile, and said, ‘Thanks, cowboy, for your money and your wife.”
In the jury box, it looked like 12-0 for stringing me up right there.
“ Then what happened?” McBain asked.
“ I was crying, but somehow I told Simmy what happened. He stayed calm. He was breathing hard, and he told Jake to leave or he’d take him apart. Jake laughed and said, ‘Try it.’ Simmy came at him, I’m not going to deny that. He wanted to throw him out of there so he could take care of me. But Jake was on him so quickly, tossing him into the wall, hitting his head. Jake is very strong, and even though Simmy was big, he wasn’t quick enough.”
Then she told the story, blow by blow, and it matched everything the jury had already heard. So warm and comforting for the finders of fact. They’d heard the story in McBain’s opening statement. They’d heard it again from the three police officers. Now, the eyewitness tells it one more time. Anticlimactic but reassuring. Lawyers like to say they tell jurors what they’re going to hear, then tell them, then tell them what they’ve told them. That’s what McBain was doing, and he’d recap it in closing argument.
So I sat at the defense table, a miscreant with curved horns and hairy ears, as my hellish deeds were recounted. I heard how I slammed Simmy around, stabbed him with a pitchfork, laughed in the face of the bull whip, tackled him in the corncrib, and eventually put a nail through his head. I heard every agonizing, perjurious detail, hoping for inconsistencies, but there were none.
She took the better part of the day, stopping several times to wipe the tears. As the afternoon wore on, the windowpanes of the courtroom shuddered with an approaching storm. Outside, the sky darkened, and snow cascaded from the sky. Inside, it was stuffy and the air so dry, the skin on my knuckles was splitting. I longed for the heat and humidity of home, for a gentle easterly, warm as a baby’s breath, as it crossed the Gulf Stream.
What was I doing here? I fought the urge to stand and run, the courtroom door banging behind me. My arms tensed. Would the bailiff stop me? No, he was asleep, waiting for his Social Security check.
Where would I go? An island, maybe. Barbados, Aruba, Curacao. I yearned for sunny days and wide beaches, and most of all, freedom. How far would I get? They would hunt me down. They would compare me to Ted Bundy, who crawled out a window in this very courthouse, before going on a rampage of rape and murder in Florida.
I’m not sure what my face showed, but Patterson put a calming hand on my shoulder. I forced myself to concentrate on a spot on the wall just above a line of old photographs of judges who presided here. And I thought about where we were and where we had to go.
McBain had done his job, and Jo Jo had done hers. It was all wrapped up neatly and tied with a bow, an early Christmas present for the jury. I was jotting down notes as the prosecutor was winding down his questioning.
“ Ms. Baroso, please forgive me for asking this, but did you love your husband?”
“ So very much. It was an unconventional arrangement, I know, but it worked for us. He had his ranch and his dreams of buried treasure. He was out here, in the country he loved. I had my career, contributing to society in the best way I could. In my heart, I know we loved each other as much as any other couple.”
“ Did you intend the defendant to follow you to Colorado?”
“ No. I didn’t even tell him I was coming here. He admitted to me he broke into my house and listened to my answering machine to find me.” A look of sadness for the pathetic, obsessed stalker seemed to cross her face. “I thought he had gotten over me, but once he began representing my brother again, something happened. It started all over again, and he began pursuing me.”
The poor woman. How could anyone blame her for all this?
“ So, in summary, Ms. Baroso, the defendant followed you to Colorado without your knowledge or consent, confronted you in the barn on your husband’s property, struck you and forced you to submit to sexual intercourse…”
I tugged at my lawyer’s sleeve, but he waved me off.
“…and when your husband found you, disheveled and beaten, the defendant taunted him, beat him, and finally shot a nail through his brain, killing him?”
“ Objection, leading,” Patterson said, quietly.
“ Granted. The jury will disregard the question…”
It didn’t matter if they disregarded the question. They already knew the answer.
“ Mr. McBain,” the judge said, “do you have anything further, because the bailiff tells me the weather is deteriorating, and I believe I’m going to let these good folks go home early today.”
“ Just about finished, Your Honor.”
“ Ms. Baroso, is there anything else you wish to say, anything you’ve left out?”
She didn’t even have to think about it. You don’t have to when you’ve rehearsed the closing line. “If only you could have known him,” she said, turning toward the jury. “Such a fine, decent man, so full of life. I loved him, and I miss him so.”
The judge cleared his throat and banged his gavel, telling everyone to be back at nine in the morning.
My eyes were still on Josefina Jovita Baroso, as she walked gallantly out of the courtroom. I thought about what Kip had said this morning, that nobody would believe her. My lovable nephew was wrong.
I can read their faces, Kipper. I can read their minds.
They believed her and were ready to convict. Hell, if I’d been on the jury, I would have convicted me, too.
CHAPTER 26
I didn’t go to Barbados, Aruba, or Curacao. Instead, I said good-bye to Patterson, slogged through the snow, and got my rental car from the garage at the foot of Galena Street. There were no beaches or bikinied lasses along the way. There were boots and gloves, scarves pulled tight against the cold. Before coming here, the last time I saw a ski mask, it was being introduced into evidence against my client who wore it when pointing an Uzi at a convenience store clerk in Hialeah.
My car yawked and hawked and sputtered like an old codger clearing his throat. I nearly flooded the carburetor but finally got it to turn over and cough itself to life. I pulled onto Main Street and turned left, for no good reason, it could just as well have been right. Clouds hung low, shrouding the town in a gray mist, obscuring the surrounding mountains. There was no wind, and the snow fell straight and hard, as if dumped from a celestial truck. I used to ski on days like this, the visibility so poor you had to guess where the next mogul would pop up. But then, I windsurf in thunderstorms, too.
I drove slowly, politely yielding the right of way a couple of times. Traffic was heavy, the Volvos and Jeeps, Range Rovers and Land Cruisers heading home, ski racks laden with equipment. Hey, fun seekers, I envy you, muscles stretched and lungs expanded. Load up with complex carbs tonight, stretch out with someone you love-or
