The air came back into Wayne’s lungs. He was being set free. The only problem was that now his son was the one in harm’s way.
The judge ordered a recess after her ruling, providing time for Wayne to change out of the prison jumpsuit and into the business suit that Jessica had brought for him. Away from watchful eyes, Jessica embraced her ex-husband.
“You ready for round two?” Miller asked.
“No,” Jessica said.
“I understand,” Miller said. “There’s a better shot this time to defeat the warrant than there was before. Owen’s illness provides a hook that wasn’t present when they wanted to get DNA from Wayne. And Lisa will go all out in the cross. So keep the faith just a little while longer.”
When court resumed, Salvesen wasted no time calling Gabriel back to the stand. Just like when they sought Wayne Fiske’s DNA, the prosecutor had decided he was going to let Gabriel do the heavy lifting, which once again suited Gabriel just fine.
The other players had rearranged, however. Whereas before Alex Miller and Wayne Fiske sat at the defense table, their seats were now occupied by Jessica Sommers and Lisa Kaplan. Miller and Fiske were in the gallery.
“Lieutenant Velasquez, please tell Judge Martin the result of the DNA test you administered on Wayne Fiske?”
“It was a partial match.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the person who left blood at the crime scene is a blood relative of Wayne Fiske, but not Wayne Fiske.”
“Does Wayne Fiske have any other biological children aside from Owen Fiske?”
“Not to our knowledge.”
“Brothers or sisters?”
“Again, we have no knowledge of that.”
“Parents who are living?”
“No.”
“What conclusions, if any, did you draw from those facts?”
“That his son, Owen Fiske, left the blood at the crime scene.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to add, Lieutenant?” Salvesen asked.
“No.”
“That’s my examination, Judge,” Salvesen said, seemingly pleased to be done working. “We ask the court to take judicial notice of Lieutenant Velasquez’s prior testimony regarding motive, which applies now to Owen Fiske.”
“Understood,” Judge Martin said. “No need to replow that field. Ms. Kaplan, the witness is yours.”
Lisa Kaplan stepped up to the lectern. She was familiar to Gabriel from her days as an ADA. He liked it better when they had been on the same team and knew he was in for a grilling every bit as intense as Miller had done the last time.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Let’s start with the people you considered suspects in the murder of Mr. Sommers. Before you arrested Wayne Fiske, how many serious suspects were in the mix?”
“‘Serious suspect’ is not a term I use—”
“I don’t want to spar with you, Lieutenant. We’re just talking normal usage of words here. How many people did you think might have killed James Sommers?”
“In any murder case, the spouse is the first suspect.”
“Let me stop you there, Lieutenant. You’re talking about Ms. Jessica Sommers, the widow of James Sommers—who is not to be confused with Mrs. Haley Sommers, his ex-wife.”
“That’s right. Jessica Sommers.”
“Jessica Sommers did not have an alibi, right?”
“That is correct. She told us she was at home, alone, when the crime was committed.”
“Did you know then that Ms. Sommers was the beneficiary of a five-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on her husband?”
“We discovered that in the course of our investigation, yes.”
“I assume that you also discovered in the course of your investigation that the life insurance proceeds that Jessica Sommers recently received were desperately needed to pay for her son’s lifesaving cancer treatment.”
“We knew that Owen Fiske was undergoing a medical procedure, yes. We also knew it was expensive, and beyond Jessica Sommers’s and Wayne Fiske’s means, absent the insurance proceeds.”
“And even aside from the obvious motive to save her son, isn’t it also the case that the reason the wife is always the first suspect is that there’s always a possible motive between spouses, even if it isn’t known to anyone outside of the marriage?”
“Yes.”
“And here you didn’t even have to speculate as to that motive. She was essentially choosing between the life of her seventeen-year-old son or that of her husband of barely a year.”
It was about as improper a question as Gabriel could imagine. He shot a look in Salvesen’s direction, but the prosecutor’s head was down. With Kaplan on her A game, it would have been nice if Salvesen rose to the challenge too . . .
“Is that a question or an invitation for me to speculate about Ms. Sommers’s mental state?”
Kaplan smiled. The defense-lawyer equivalent of telling Gabriel, Well played.
“Who else was a suspect, Lieutenant?”
“We also considered Wayne Fiske—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just thought of a question I forgot to ask about Jessica Sommers. Apologies for jumping around on you, but before we discuss all the reasons why Wayne Fiske was considered a suspect by the NYPD, I wanted to ask whether Jessica Sommers cooperated with your investigation into the murder of her husband?”
“At first she did, but then she declined to provide a DNA sample upon request.”
“Just so we’re all on the same page . . . Jessica Sommers: No alibi. She had a motive because she needed the life insurance money to save her son, and she was not cooperating. Got it. Now, tell us about Wayne Fiske. In fact, let’s move this along. We know you thought he was such a good suspect that you actually arrested him, right?”
Gabriel had to hand it to Lisa Kaplan. She knew how to cross-examine a witness. Ask only questions that you knew would elicit the response you wanted, keep the witness off balance, and do as much testifying yourself as the judge would allow.
And he had to give credit where credit was due. Wayne Fiske and Jessica Sommers had hired a pit bull to represent their son so that she could blame them for James Sommers’s murder.
“Yes.”
“And that was because his fingerprints were at the crime scene, he had no alibi, he had motive in the form of the insurance proceeds, and
