Let’s talk specifically about what happened at the Saloon that night March 6, 2020, and your feeling that you had no choice but to go home with the Chief,” says Rik, as soon as the Rev calls the continued hearing to order. “Was this the first Friday night you’d spent at the Saloon, Mr. Cornish?”
“Hardly.”
“That was pretty much your habit at that time, right?”
“I don’t know about habit.”
“You were there often on Friday nights, right?”
“Sure. Me and a lot of guys. If I wasn’t on weekend duty. We’d hang, you know, chitchat about the week and whatnot. The crap that happened. There’s always crap that happened.”
“The ‘we’ is other officers on the Highland Isle force?”
“Sure.”
“Was Lucia Gomez-Barrera part of those groups?”
“Chief would come in sometimes. Later in the evening.”
“Later in the evening meaning nine p.m. or later?”
He shrugs. Okay.
“And she would drink and gossip and laugh with all the officers, right?”
“Generally, yeah.”
“And how long had you known the Chief?”
“Since she came on. Twenty years.”
“Did you work with her on the street?”
“She sometimes backed us up in Narcotics.”
“The answer is yes, you had worked together?”
“That’s the answer.”
“In fact, you knew each other well, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, even when she became your superior, how did you address her?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, if you were just talking in the station or at the Saloon, did you call her ‘Lucy’?”
“Sure. A lot of the older guys did. I’ll give her that. She didn’t get all puffed up or anything when she started moving up.”
“And the talk, in the Saloon on Friday nights, it was, let’s say, wide-ranging. Plenty of off-color talk, right?”
“Always.”
“And the Chief was part of that kind of back-and-forth, right?”
“I guess.”
“She didn’t stand on ceremony. In the Saloon, she was on equal footing, right? Everybody called her ‘Lucy,’ didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but she could think what she wanted to think. She didn’t pull rank, but you know, she’s still the Chief.”
“But she showed up at the Saloon on Friday nights for years and never asked for any deferential treatment, did she? Going back to the days when she was your sergeant, right?”
Cornish seesaws his head around. He’s not going to quarrel, though, and finally says okay.
“Now let me ask you about your memory of events. Do you recall that it was you who approached Chief Gomez that night in the Saloon, that you spoke for about an hour, and that it was you who suggested you leave together?”
Cornish glares and sits up straight. “No, I definitely don’t remember that.”
“Well, this night when you left with the Chief, was that the first time you took a woman home from the Saloon?”
Kelsey, the waitress who was outside for a smoke and remembers seeing Cornish and Lucy get into his car together, knows Cornish well and says he would regularly go on the prowl as 11:00 approached. He’d start buying drinks for women and often departed with one. I have found two former force civilian employees who went home with Walter from the Saloon. Neither wants to testify, but they like the Chief more than Cornish and might in a pinch. But as it turns out, we won’t get to go there. Marc stands to object.
Surprised and even a bit irked, Rik looks back over his shoulder and says, “What grounds?”
“Rape victim shield law,” says Marc and explains that the law, now a rule of evidence, prevents asking the victim of a sex crime about prior sexual behavior. Rik recoils like he’s been shot. He didn’t see that coming. Mrs. Langenhalter and the Rev get into some animated whispering, but Rik withdraws the question and also gives Marc a little complimentary wink. Rik can be a good sport, because he’s sure the commissioners know the score anyway.
“And did you drink when you were at the Saloon?”
“Course. It’s a tavern. You pay your rent for your seat, so to speak.”
“And what do you drink when you’re at the Saloon?”
“Beer. Maybe one boilermaker to start. Beer after that.”
“And in March 2020, do you recall what time you say you left with Chief Gomez?”
“Later.”
“Ten p.m.?”
“Maybe earlier. I don’t know.”
“Is ten a good estimate?”
“Maybe. I don’t really remember.”
Kelsey, the waitress, who is supposed to testify next, is precise about the time, because Ike, her boss, knows she needs that smoke at 10:00 and doesn’t mess with her break. I’ve interviewed Kelsey, a stringy-looking redhead with bad skin, a couple times. Marc had found her first. The owner of the Saloon, Ike Grbecki, told her to talk to Marc when he asked, since the city attorney essentially controls Ike’s liquor license. But Kelsey doesn’t like being in the middle. And Ike knows better than to make an enemy of the Chief. Kelsey was pretty straightforward with me about Cornish and will say on the stand that Cornish seemed to be squiring the Chief pretty happily. They were both laughing, and Cornish, playing the gentleman, opened the car door for her and even hung around to close it.
“You don’t recall,” says Rik to Cornish. “Yet you say you recall clearly that Chief Gomez approached you?”
“Yeah.”
“Now, you started drinking about five p.m. when you arrived, with your first boilermaker? And how many beers do you think you had before you left around ten p.m.?”
“I dunno. Two. Three.”
“You sat in a bar for approximately five hours and drank two beers? That’s how you paid your rent?”
“Two or three, yeah.”
“Do you know Kelsey Haelish?”
“Is that the waitress?”
“It is. And do you know that based on your drinking habits, she’s going to estimate you had at least ten beers that night?”
“No way,” Walter answers calmly. He knows that much alcohol in five hours would have put him way over the .08 alcohol limit in this state, meaning he was driving drunk.
“Does your memory get better or get worse after you’ve been drinking, Mr. Cornish?”
“I don’t know if I’ve noticed.”
“You haven’t noticed that your memory of events that occurred while you were drinking is worse than while you were sober?”
“Could be, I don’t know.”
Both the Rev and Mrs. Langenhalter, even Josea, are all smiling discreetly. As a witness, Cornish is starting to leak oil.
Rik flips through the yellow pad he’s holding.
“Now, you said on direct that your relationship with the Chief was strictly professional, is that right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And that you were ‘shocked’ when the Chief approached you. That’s a quote.”
“I was shocked.”
“And you were shocked because, again quoting, ‘you didn’t think of the Chief in that vein.’ Right?”
“You take good notes,” says Cornish, in a tone that suggests there is something sneaky about that.
“Now, do you recall ever saying in the squad room at the Highland Isle Police Station to a few officers, quote, ‘The Chief is symphony class on the skin flute’?”
Several people in the room, who understand the remark, can’t contain their sharp laughter.
Cornish, who knows from the way Rik put the question that we have a witness, gives it the back of his hand.
“So what?” he says. “Am I not supposed to kiss and tell?”
“You made that remark?”
He shakes his head. “I guess.”
“Well, do you remember that you made that comment in 2017, a few years before this supposed encounter with the Chief?”
Cornish screws up his mouth while he considers his options.
“Well then, I guess I didn’t say it.”
“So now you’re denying saying that? Which is it? Did you say it or not?”
“I don’t really remember one way or the other.”
“Well, do you know Sergeant Emmitt LaTreaux?”
Cornish snorts. “Oh, it’s him.”
“You don’t like Sergeant LaTreaux?”
“We don’t get on.”
“You had an argument about something you said, and you two stopped speaking in 2018.”
“What I said wasn’t racist, but he thought so.”
Marc stands to object about relevance. The Rev is frowning a little, thinking that Rik is trying to leverage race again, but Rik says, “I’m just putting a date on the conversation in the squad room.” It was Cornish, not Rik, who said LaTreaux thinks Walter is a racist, and the Rev seems to recognize that.
“All right,” says Reverend Dalrymple. “But let’s stick with the squad room.”
“Well, now that I’ve refreshed your recollection by mentioning Officer LaTreaux, do you deny saying in the squad room in 2017, ‘I can tell you, the Chief is symphony class on the skin flute’?”
“Like I said. I don’t remember that.”
“Well, you couldn’t have said it, could you, because you told us that as of March 2020, your relationship with the Chief had been strictly professional and you didn’t think of her in that vein, meaning in a sexual way?”
Cornish just glares. “If I said it, I wasn’t speaking firsthand. Must have been something I heard. I guess she got around. You know. Guys talk.”
“And again. Just to reaffirm. Your relationship with the Chief up to that conversation at the Saloon had been strictly professional, and you’d never thought of the Chief in a sexual vein, and so you were shocked by her request. You’re sticking with that?”
Marc objects that the questions were asked and answered, but Walter talks over him and says, “Because it’s true.”
“Now, Mr. Cornish, you’re a single man, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you were single in 2020?”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Had you been married previously?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And your wife sued for divorce and claimed during the proceedings that you had been constantly unfaithful?”
Marc stands again. “Same objection. Mr. Cornish’s behavior, alleged or true, is irrelevant under the rape shield law.”
“There is no law,” Rik answers, “that prevents showing that a witness has lied under oath about a material matter in the current proceeding.”
Mrs. Langenhalter whispers in the Rev’s ear.
“Then let’s hear that proof,” the Rev says.
“That’s where I’m going,” says Rik. He comes to the table for the package Tonya brought me, which clearly came from Paulette Cornish, Tonya’s church buddy who didn’t want to talk to me because she had no interest in helping the Chief.
“Do you recall learning during your divorce proceedings that your wife’s attorney had hired a private investigator to follow you? And do you remember that her lawyer produced a number of affidavits from the investigator to you in discovery?”
Cornish scowls. “I thought that shit was confidential.”
“Again, Mr. Cornish, no confidentiality order permits you to lie under oath.”
Mrs. Langenhalter nods sagely.
“Now, do you recall, Mr. Cornish, that one of the affidavits from the private investigator stated specifically that he had followed you to the Saloon on Friday, May 16, 2014, that you had left in the company of a woman known to him as Lucia Gomez-Barrera, that you drove to the parking lot of a plant in Anglia and, to the investigator, appeared to be engaging in sexual intercourse in your automobile?”
Marc stands and says, “Isn’t that affidavit hearsay?”
“We can call the investigator as a witness if you prefer, Mr. Hess.”
The Rev intervenes. “Here’s the question for Cornish. Did that happen? That thing in 2014? With the Chief?”
Now Cornish is in trouble, because he may be buying himself a perjury rap, having testified so emphatically that things between the Chief and him were purely professional until 2020. Quickly hip to his problem, Cornish looks at the Rev and says, “I’m not gonna answer that.”
“I’m sorry, Reverend,” says Rik, “but either Mr. Cornish sits for full cross-examination and answers my questions, or the commission can’t consider his testimony. He doesn’t get to come in here and answer all of Mr. Hess’s questions but not mine.”
The Reverend mulls while Mrs. Langenhalter whispers to him, gesturing with her free hand. She clearly agrees with Rik.
Having the momentum, Rik forges ahead to fill the silence.
“Can we agree, Mr. Cornish, that you didn’t get promoted in May 2014 or anytime soon after this earlier meeting with the Chief?”
Cornish, confused about the legal ground he stands on, remains mute.
“Well,” says Rik, “do I assume you also won’t answer if I ask you about yet another prior personal meeting with the Chief?”
The Rev is staring at Cornish, his white eyebrows smelted together in an angry slash.
Walter is done, whether he knows it or not. The essential premise of his testimony has been shown to be a lie. He and the Chief were occasional fuck buddies. Nothing new in 2020. He wasn’t forced. He wasn’t shocked. And having been proven a liar under oath, there’s no reason to believe him on any of the other details. When the Chief says on the stand that Walter came on to her in 2020, which is what she’s told us from the start, her version will be essentially uncontested.
“The City withdraws the witness,” Marc says.
“I’m done?” asks Cornish.
“Oh, you’re done,” says Rik.
As the room begins to clear, the Chief remains seated at the respondent’s table. She has her hand over her mouth and is staring at the space the commissioners occupied, which is empty now. Rik touches her shoulder, right over the epaulets, and she reaches back to grip his hand for a second.
She was pretty defiant in the office about not apologizing for her sex life, but it’s hitting her now how all of this sounds in public. Walter Cornish can initiate a fuckathon every Friday night in the Saloon. But the Chief’s a woman, a personage in Highland Isle, and for a woman in a Catholic town, her behavior will still provoke a lot of nasty laughter. Rik will argue when he sums up that there are no explicit rules against ‘fraternization’ in Highland Isle. But the Chief’s daughters and her neighbors are going to be reading about all of this, skin flute and everything else. She’s won the round, but she isn’t going home in victory.