Claim of Innocence Page 13

  “So we’re going to see Detective Vaughn this morning,” Q said. “I hope you kick that jackass’s ass.”

  I smiled. “God, it’s good to have you here.”

  Just then, Ellie and Tania walked into the room with Detective Vaughn. The smile slid from my face, and I hurried ahead of them to the front of the courtroom. When I reached our table, I glanced at Vaughn, a guy who was probably in his early forties. As when I’d met him before, he was wearing casual pants and a button-down shirt, but he’d lost the snazzy running shoes he usually wore in favor of brown loafers, and he’d added a jacket.

  As he made his way to the witness stand, my mind sorted through the times I’d seen or spoken to Vaughn before—when he came to my office after Sam had disappeared and snidely insinuated I knew more than I did; when he questioned me after Jane had died and let it be known he thought it was me who’d done it; when he was at my home with a search warrant, taking glee in his uniformed officers pawing through my closets and my drawers.

  The memories pissed me off, and I dropped my eyes from him as he took the stand. I shuffled through my notes, and put a couple of exhibits in a file. This was a classic trial attorney move—act like the witness is nothing to you, even if they are. Out of the side of my vision, I saw Vaughn sitting down, adjusting the mike in front of him and Ellie Whelan standing to direct him. I took more time organizing things on the table, still ignoring them both. Maggie knew what I was doing, and she turned and spoke with Valerie to let me gather my thoughts.

  To distract myself a little, I glanced through the Plexiglas at the gallery, searching for Q again and hoping for the goofy smile he’d probably make to lighten the moment. But before I found his face, I spotted two other people I knew—my father, sitting near John Mayburn. They’d met very briefly when my dad returned to town, to life. Mayburn had done some digging on Vaughn and Valerie’s case, and even though he’d given me the information over the weekend—information I was about to use—he said he wanted to be here this morning, too, a fact I’d forgotten. And although I’d gotten my dad’s impressions on Vaughn’s cross, he hadn’t asked what courtroom I was in or what time Vaughn would take the stand. But then again, my father rarely asked anything. He simply knew.

  My dad and Mayburn shook hands, as if just recognizing each other. They both looked at me then. My dad, elegant in a suit that looked Italian, like most of his clothes, gave me a Go get ’em kind of nod. Mayburn held a quick thumbs-up.

  I turned back and looked in the direction of Vaughn and found he was watching me. Our eyes met. He didn’t look nervous to see me. In fact, he looked pleased. He cocked his head to one side a little and smiled as if to say a mild, Hello, again.

  Ellie started questioning him, took him through his background, then got right to the point. “Did you have any part in the investigation of the death of Amanda Miller?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I felt like guffawing. I’d met Vaughn a few times, and he wasn’t a “ma’am” kind of guy. That talk was clearly for the jury’s benefit.

  Ellie led him through how he became involved in the case, the steps he took to investigate. All the while, Vaughn was the picture of a well-bred officer. Ellie started asking more pointed questions, and soon, the state was hammering away at Valerie Solara, pointing out all the evidence that had highlighted her as the killer. Like the fact that Valerie had been cooking with Amanda the day she died, teaching her the recipe she would eat that night. In fact, it was a Mexican dish that had been handed down through Valerie’s family. The women had made two batches of food. The one that Amanda had eaten from had killed her.

  It got worse. Valerie had also tried to seduce Amanda’s husband, Vaughn said.

  “How do you know that, sir?” Ellie asked.

  “She said—”

  I stood and interrupted him. “Objection. Hearsay.”

  “It’s an admission against interest, Judge,” Ellie said.

  The judge thought about it for a second. “Overruled.”

  Vaughn threw me a smirk, then continued, saying that under questioning, Valerie had admitted to him that she had once hit on Zavy.

  Ellie asked who else he had questioned, and Vaughn said that Bridget, a close friend of Amanda and Valerie, told him that before Amanda died, Valerie had asked where she could get information on poisons.

  “Do you have an opinion as to who caused Amanda Miller’s death?” Ellie asked.

  I stood. “Objection,”

  “Foundation?” the judge asked.

  I didn’t really have a great cause, but I’d wanted to slow the impact of Vaughn’s testimony. “Calls for speculation.”

  “I’ll rephrase,” Ellie Whelan said. “Sir, with your experience in law enforcement for over two decades, having solved hundreds of crimes, do you have a professional opinion as to the perpetrator of the death of Amanda Miller?”

  I’d made things worse. Now, Vaughn sounded like the most stellar detective of all time.

  “Sorry,” I murmured to Maggie.

  She shook her head. Don’t worry about it.

  “Yes, I do have an opinion,” Vaughn said. “It was Valerie Solara.”

  “Why would Ms. Solara want to do that?”

  I had to do it. I stood again. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

  Ellie Whelan didn’t have a quick response this time.

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  But it had been a great direct exam, and Ellie knew it. “Nothing further,” she said, with triumph in her voice.

  By that time, after hearing all the evidence against Valerie, I felt a little sick about representing her. But I kept thinking of how Vaughn had once added up evidence against me, deciding I had killed someone.

  Sometimes it’s a nice move for a lawyer to stand and introduce themselves to the witness on the stand, to say something like, Good morning, detective, I’m Izzy McNeil, and I represent Valerie Solara in this case. I have just a few questions. The jury likes to see people act cordially, at least at first, and this gives the witness the impression you might not have too many hard questions.

  But there was going to be no politesse between Vaughn and me. I had no qualms about showing I had only tough queries.

  “Detective,” I said without introduction, “you explained to the jury that the evidence in this case all pointed to Valerie Solara, is that correct?”

  He paused, studying me, a small smirk on his face. “Yes.”

  I squinted at the police records in my hand, as if confused. “Well, let’s take a step back here. Initially, you considered Amanda Miller’s husband, Xavier Miller, correct?”

  “Yes. In homicide investigations, it’s standard to look first at the spouse. Basically, you start inside and work your way out. So generally we’ll look at family first, then the next ring of people like neighbors and—”

  “Thank you, Detective. I don’t know what you need to do generally. I’m asking you a specific question. The next person you suspected was the Miller’s live-in nanny, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “A Ms. Sylvia Zowinski? That was her name?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you considered her not just because Ms. Zowinski was on the ‘inside,’ as you put it. There were other reasons you investigated her, correct?”

  He paused. He was trying to figure out how much I knew. In addition to what my father had noticed about the records, Mayburn had also found some dirt.

  While I waited for Vaughn to answer, I glanced at the gallery again and saw my father and Mayburn leaning in to speak to one another. It gave me the best idea. I tucked it away for later. “Detective, you had other—”

  Now he was the one to interrupt, with a terse, “Yes. Yes, we looked at the nanny.”

  “That wasn’t my question.” I said this like I was being very patient with a small child. “There were other reasons why you wanted to investigate Sylvia Zowinski, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “She had a crimina
l record under a different name, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Convictions for—” I looked at my notes as if consulting a huge scroll of Sylvia Zowinski’s former crimes “—fraud, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And embezzlement?”

  “Yes.”

  “And impersonating a corrections officer, correct?”

  He almost sighed, but held it in. “Correct.”

  “So, Detective,” I said, striding toward the witness box, starting to feel the high that only comes with a good cross, “it’s your testimony that you suspected first Mr. Miller, then Ms. Zowinski, and ultimately Ms. Solara, is that correct?”

  Vaughn grunted.

  “Detective, you’ll have to answer out loud for the jury.”

  Shooting me a derisive glare, he leaned toward the microphone. “Yes.”

  “Who else did you suspect?”

  He paused. He was smart to do so. He was, in his head, reviewing anything he’d said at the grand jury, any testimony he’d given at a motion on this case. “That’s it,” he answered.

  I scrunched up my face and stared at the notes I’d taken from my discussion with my dad. “I don’t think that’s right.” I looked up at the judge. “May I approach the witness?”

  The judge nodded.

  The jury looked interested now.

  I walked up to Vaughn. We were so close I could smell his cologne, which if I didn’t hate him so much I might admit was appealing in a clean, beachy kind of way.

  He looked me up and down and made a face as if disgusted at what he found there.

  “Sir,” I said, “showing you exhibit number sixteen, these are the general progress reports that you made on the day after Amanda Miller died, correct?”

  Ellie Whelan stood. “Objection, foundation.”

  “I’m laying my foundation, Your Honor, if counsel would let me ask my questions.”

  “Overruled.” The judge looked at the detective. “You can answer.”

  “Yes.”

  I took him through what the report looked like, the fact that it was a form created by the Chicago Police Department.

  “And in these progress reports, these GPRs,” I said, “you made notes for yourself, which were later the basis for your typed reports, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you suspected three people.”

  “Ultimately, yes.”

  “I’m referring to the day after Ms. Miller died.”

  “I can’t remember exactly what day everything happened, but ultimately, yes, there were three suspects.”

  “You testified that it wasn’t until two days after Ms. Miller died that you first considered Ms. Solara’s involvement, isn’t that right?”

  He paused. He couldn’t get around what he’d said in his direct testimony. “Yes.”

  “And yet on the day after the death, you had three suspects, according to your notes, correct?”

  “No.” He paused. An anxious look crossed his face. I was acting very, very confident and any witness who testified a lot, as Vaughn had, knew the signs of an impending catch when an attorney was about to snare you. “I don’t believe so,” he said, hedging.

  “Detective, can you look closely at the notes you made?” I handed him my copy of the GPRs.

  He perused them with apparent concentration.

  “Now, Detective, what is the notation that you see there?” I pointed at the notes.

  “It’s a number three.”

  “Correct. You wrote a number three in parenthesis, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that notation is just above and to the right of the word suspects.”

  He said nothing.

  “Is that right?”

  He cleared his throat, and threw in a “yeah” at the end.

  I glanced at the state’s attorneys’ table and saw Ellie Whelan and Tania Castle frowning. On direct, Ellie had taken Vaughn through his investigation in a more general way. Now I was making it precise.

  “Detective Vaughn, I’d like you to think back to after Ms. Miller died. Specifically, the day after she died. On that date, you had three suspects in mind, isn’t that correct?” I crossed my arms and stared boldly at him, daring him to disagree with me.

  He glanced at Ellie Whelan, who couldn’t do anything except look right back at him.

  “Take your time,” I said, gracious now.

  Vaughn waited another few seconds, looking down at the records without touching them. He then leaned toward the microphone. “We had three suspects on that day.”

  “And in addition to Mr. Miller and Ms. Zowinski, please tell the jury who the third suspect was on the day after Amanda Miller’s death.”

  I glanced at the jury. I had them. Some bent forward, waiting for the answer.

  “There was a neighbor,” Vaughn said.

  I gave a curt nod, like, Yep, that’s what I thought.

  At the state’s attorney’s table, Tania and Ellie were whispering fiercely. A neighbor had been mentioned in the notes as a witness, but not as a suspect. And yet Mayburn had surveyed the area the Millers lived in and a number of people not only remembered the case, they wanted to talk about it. The cops were asking a lot of questions about a particular neighbor, and that neighbor had been taken into a station for questioning.

  “Please tell us the identity of that neighbor,” I said.

  “I don’t recall his name. He was just someone we wanted to converse with.”

  “You don’t recall his name?”

  “No.”

  “Would your notes help your recollection?”

  He seemed to almost sigh. “Probably.”

  “May I approach, Judge?”

  “You may.”

  Again, I walked up to Vaughn and handed him his general progress reports.

  He took his sweet time looking at them. “The neighbor’s name was Dominick St. John.”

  I gave a big nod, like There we go.

  “Please tell us why you wanted to talk to Mr. St. John.”

  Vaughn blinked once. Then again. “He’s a doctor.”

  “Oh, so you remember him, then. Good. What kind of doctor is he?”

  “I believe he is an internist.”

  “And did you want to talk to him in his capacity as an internal medicine doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Tell us why you wanted to talk to Dr. St. John.”

  He had the sense to affect a bored air. “The nanny mentioned that Mr. and Ms. Miller had been fighting with a neighbor.”

  “In fact, she was seen fighting with that neighbor, Dr. St. John, on the day Amanda died, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You learned this from other neighbors.”

  Vaughn gave me a loathing, laserlike look.

  “Is that a yes, detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, you learned that the Millers and Dr. St. John had been in a feud over some property issue for years, correct?”

  A sigh. “Correct.”

  “Specifically, what kind of property issues did the feud concern?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Why don’t you know?”

  He sighed with frustration. “We didn’t need to. We learned everything we needed about Valerie Solara.”

  “Two days after that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But on the day after Ms. Miller died, the first day you were on the case, you had three potential suspects, one of which included the Millers’ neighbor.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But you didn’t look into the specific disagreement that the Millers and the neighbor had?”

  “No.”

  “Let me make sure I understand this. You don’t know what that disagreement was about?”

  “Property.”

  “You don’t know specifically.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know if the resolution of those property
issues would have meant a good deal of money for either Dr. St. John or the Millers, do you?”

  He inhaled. I didn’t know the answer to that question, either, not yet, but then, I wasn’t the one on the stand. “Detective?”

  “No.”

  I nodded. “Because it wasn’t important. Isn’t that right?”

  Vaughn opened his mouth. His eyes flashed with anger.

  But I took back my copy of his notes and turned around. “No further questions,” I said before he could answer.

  Ellie stood and went through a redirect to rehabilitate her witness, showing how thorough Detective Vaughn and his brother detectives had been. But as far as I could tell, I’d done some damage to the state’s case, hopefully giving the impression that the cops either rushed the investigation or were hiding something.

  When Vaughn left the stand, he threw me a look, one of abhorrence.

  I gave him a big, shiny grin. He stalked from the room.

  32

  The judge announced a fifteen-minute break, and the jury filed out. Q came forward and hugged me, whispering that I’d done “fabulously,” then he took off.

  Valerie stood and came to my side. “You were excellent. Thank you.”

  “Of course. So, about this weekend…”

  “Yes, I wanted to say thank you. And I’d like your mother’s address to send her a note. That was lovely of her.”

  “Sure. You took off pretty fast.” And without telling me what you were about to reveal to Amanda and Bridget that night. I wanted so badly to know. But I didn’t want to push her.

  “Yes, I apologize.” Nothing else was forthcoming.

  “That’s okay. We’ll do it again. Get together, I mean.”

  “Sure.”

  I could tell she was like an animal about to bolt for the safety of the deep woods, so I said nothing else about that topic. I turned and pointed to Mayburn. “That man is an investigator I use sometimes to help on cases. He came up with a lot of the material that I used with Detective Vaughn. And so did my father.” I pointed at him. “He’s…kind of an investigator, too. Would you like to meet them?”