‘The knife was placed almost straight into the umbilicus. There was no tearing, ripping or pulling of the surrounding tissue, like you would expect to find if there was a struggle, or if the target was moving about when stabbed. The tissue below the navel is not vital, unless the blade were to puncture the loop of small intestines, which, as I testified before, didn’t happen in this case.’ Dr Larry Price, the trauma surgeon from Jackson who’d operated on David Marquette sat on the very edge of his seat in the witness chair, his entire face hovering less than an inch above the microphone. He was more than just a little uncomfortable being a witness; he was a nervous wreck. He’d been in that seat for an hour and twenty minutes already – on direct and then cross and now back on redirect – and that was an hour and nineteen minutes too long. For everyone. He shifted in his seat, wiped the sweat from his lip and cleared his throat. An ear-piercing twang of feedback blasted the courtroom. Judge Farley rubbed his ear and rolled his eyes.
‘And, again, if the intestines had been punctured, Dr Price?’ Rick asked.
‘I would’ve had to repair it. And, of course, there’s a risk, you know, of infection from spillage of the intestinal fluids into the abdominal cavity. So it can be serious, no doubt. But if you know what you’re doing, you know there is no vital, life-sustaining organ in that area.’ He looked over at the jury, his eyes finding one of the women jurors in the front row. Alice Wade, an elderly retired librarian from Iowa who lived in Leisure City now. ‘That’s why when the Japanese samurai would commit seppuku – a ritualistic form of suicide, known to the western world as hara-kiri – they would actually disembowel themselves by digging the knife in and then dragging it across their belly,’ he explained, gesturing with his own hand on his stomach, ‘and then pulling sharply upward at the end. More than a knife wound, it pretty much ensured death in the event they didn’t have an assistant – a kaishakunin – to cut off their heads and finish the job,’ he finished with a smile. Alice Wade turned green and looked away.
‘Objection,’ said Mel, standing. ‘Inflammatory and irrelevant.’
‘Definitely sustained,’ said Farley with a shake of his head. ‘Are you done with redirect now, Mr Bellido? I think the jury gets your point. I think we all get your point. It didn’t look like a suicide attempt to Dr Price. Let’s move this along.’ He tapped his watch.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Rick, sitting down. ‘I have nothing further, then.’
‘Mr Levenson? Tell me you’re done with this witness, please.’
‘Yes, Judge. Nothing further,’ Mel replied.
Dr Price practically ran for the courtroom doors.
‘Alright, then,’ said Farley with a sigh. ‘State, who’s next?’
Rick took a long, deliberate moment to look up from the table. The courtroom had excitedly learned to hang on his every pregnant pause now. He rose and straightened his expensive suit. ‘The State rests, Your Honor.’
A loud murmur broke out in the crowded courtroom. To the surprise, maybe, of the reporters, legal analysts and news commentators who were expecting the fourteen-week marathon of a Michael Jackson trial, it had taken just five days to put on the State’s case in chief, which included calling twenty-two witnesses to the stand. Leonard Farley might have the biggest docket in the courthouse by far, but when you finally got the man to actually go to trial, he was no nonsense. He’d told the pool during jury selection that if they were picked to serve, the case would take up only two weeks of their time, and he meant it. At whatever cost. So court had started at 10 a.m. – the second he finished his morning calendar – and it had ended most nights well past seven or eight. In the event the jury did find Marquette guilty of first-degree murder, they were told that the penalty phase would be carried out six weeks later, at a separate mini-trial where both sides would present witnesses. Then they would get to recommend whether David Marquette lived his life out in a maximum-security prison cell, or died for his crimes by either lethal injection or in the electric chair. And no matter what, Farley had assured the pool, that would take only one week.
It was Rick’s case, so he had handled most of the witnesses and the evidence, but Julia had been there beside him every day at the State’s table. She’d participated. She’d stood and asked all the right questions of her witnesses on direct. The Coral Gables PD records custodian, the Crime Scene techs who’d shot the video and taken the pictures, the techs who’d dusted the house for prints, the nurse anesthetist from Sinai who ID’d David Marquette’s voice on the 911 tape, the Marriott manager who testified that the defendant had been a registered guest at the Orlando World Center on the night of October eighth. She’d re-established those witnesses after Mel Levenson and Stan Grossbach had crossed them. She’d had marked and entered into evidence the hotel bills, lab reports and even the plaster casts of the distorted bloody footprints that had walked the halls of the house on Sorolla. She herself had used the poster-board pictures of the crime scene and the Marquette children to demonstrate where the bodies were found.
But all along, Julia felt as if she were watching someone else acting as her. Someone who was crumbling and slipping away a little piece at a time, day after day, until she feared she might not recognize the person that was left at the end of it all. And it frightened her.
‘Alright, then, Mel,’ said Farley after he’d dismissed the jury for the weekend. ‘Who’s on for Monday and what’s your time frame?’
‘I’ve got several defense witnesses, Judge. I’m not sure what order I’ll be putting them on in.’
‘Does your client plan on testifying?’ Farley asked doubtfully, looking over at the defense table. His white eyebrows crawled into a frown.
‘I’m not sure, yet,’ said Mel with a shrug. There was no way he was going to give away his hand in front of Rick Bellido and a courtroom still filled with cameras, but based on the peculiar behavior of his client, it wasn’t just Farley who was obviously doubting Marquette would testify. Through jury selection and now five days of oftentimes brutal and graphic testimony, Marquette had sat expressionless, tapping his foot under the table, and staring out into space, rolling his tongue about the inside of his mouth. Julia had often wondered how she would look if she stood accused of murder. She’d observed defendants in court before – defendants she’d brought to trial – and wondered how she would act if she were innocent. How she would act if she were guilty, but trying to look innocent. If there was a difference. Then there was the third category. How she would act if she were crazy …
‘I want to go to closing by next Friday. Is that going to happen, gentlemen?’ As an afterthought the judge looked at Julia and added, ‘Ladies?’
‘I know you have a schedule, Judge—’ began Mel.
‘No. I have a cruise. I’m leaving on the thirty-first. That gives us an extra week if we need it.’ He climbed off the bench and headed for the door, which Jefferson held open for him. ‘But I’m sure we won’t,’ he called out gruffly without turning around as he disappeared down the hallway.