Judge Varney was weaker and sallower than the last time I’d seen him, when he’d been flushed and contorting against the pain of kidney stones as EMTs rolled him from the courtroom. But the judge still had a commanding presence as he took the bench, picked up his gavel, and called his court to order.
“I apologize for my illness,” he said. “Ukrainian blood on my mother’s side. And I’d like to say how tragic it is that Sheriff Bean passed so suddenly this morning. He was a man of great integrity and honor.”
Varney’s eyes stayed locked ahead during his introductory remarks, as if he were not addressing the courtroom as a whole but someone in particular sitting in the gallery. Who, I couldn’t tell. But maybe it was just my imagination.
Varney picked up a piece of paper on the bench, read it, said, “Ms. Cross, the court has been notified that your cross-examination witness Sharon Lawrence will be unavailable today, as she has taken ill and is in the hospital. Is that correct?”
Ann Lawrence, her mother, stood and said, “Yes, Your Honor. She’s on IVs with a hundred and three fever.”
“Then I expect you’ll want to be at her side,” Varney said.
“Yes, Judge, thank you,” she said.
The mother of the girl who’d accused my cousin of rape and tried to frame Jannie glanced hurriedly at us and then left.
“She’s hiding something,” Bree whispered in my ear.
“Big-time,” I said, wanting to get up and follow her, ask her more than a few pointed questions.
But then Judge Varney said, “Counselor, when Ms. Lawrence is recovered, you’ll be given the opportunity to continue your cross. In the meantime, I’d like to move forward. Unless you have questions or concerns?”
“I have concerns, Your Honor,” Naomi said. “With all due respect to the memory of Sheriff Bean, there has been a fundamental breakdown in my client’s protection. Sheriff’s deputies allowed inmates to beat and kick my client until—”
“Objection!” the prosecutor cried. “There’s no evidence that any deputy ‘allowed’ the altercation.”
“Judge, Mr. Tate appears before you with multiple contusions, swelling, a broken jaw, and a probable concussion,” Naomi shot back. “At the very least, you can allow a competent neurologist to examine him before we continue with trial.”
Strong said, “Mr. Tate was treated by jail doctors, who tell me that he shows no sign of concussion.”
“Mr. Tate?” Judge Varney said. “Do you understand what’s going on around you? Where you are? What you’re doing here?”
Stefan nodded, spoke thickly through the wires on his teeth. “I do, Judge.”
Naomi looked exasperated.
The judge said, “Very well, then, the trial will continue, and I am ordering the sheriff’s office to double the guards with Mr. Tate at all times. Does that satisfy, Counselor?”
Naomi hesitated, then gave up and said, “It does, Judge.”
As far as the defense was concerned, that was the high point of the day. The district attorney called forensics experts who hammered home the damning evidence as it was introduced: Stefan’s semen on Rashawn’s body, Stefan’s semen in Sharon Lawrence’s panties, and Rashawn’s blood and body tissue on the foldable pruning saw found in my cousin’s basement.
Patty Converse turned ashen during this last testimony, especially when a fingerprint expert testified that the only clear prints on the saw were Stefan’s.
Naomi tried to damage the evidence of Stefan’s DNA in the teenage girl’s underwear, asking if, in the days between the time Lawrence claimed my cousin had raped her and Rashawn’s death, someone could have planted the semen. The people’s expert said it was possible but unlikely, given that Lawrence had thought to put the panties in a zip-lock bag.
“Unless Ms. Lawrence put the semen there herself,” Naomi said.
The expert said, “Correct, but we have no evidence of that.”
During the lunch recess, the service manager at the dealership where we’d left our Explorer called to tell me it looked like a rock had knocked an already loose hydraulic brake line free of its connection. The fluid ran out. We’d lost the brakes.
“You been driving many dirt roads?” he asked.
“A few, but I don’t remember something like a big rock hitting the undercarriage,” I said. “You’re not seeing signs of sabotage?”
“Like someone wanted your brakes to fail?” he said.
“Like that.”
“There’s easier ways to make brakes fail than banging a rock on the hydraulic line.”
“Unless you want it to look like an accident,” I said.
“I guess.”
I asked the manager to take pictures of the damage, and we agreed on a price to fix the car and a time for me to pick it up the following morning.
After lunch, the trial got even worse for Stefan and Naomi. Detective Carmichael took the stand and walked the jury through the evidence that had been logged in the old limestone quarry, including Stefan’s bloody school ID card.
Naomi tried to get Carmichael to admit the ID could have been planted, but the detective wouldn’t bite, said, “Your client was so hopped up on booze and drugs and so deep into his sadistic ways that he wasn’t thinking straight.”
Detective Frost testified about photographs taken at the scene. I’d seen them all before, but blown up like that, the brutality of what had been done to Rashawn’s body was magnified. There were audible gasps in the room, several from the jurors.
“Monster!” Cece Turnbull screamed as she leaped to her feet and stabbed her finger at Stefan. “You butchered him! You butchered him like there was nothing human and good there at all!”
For several beats, Judge Varney hammered his gavel and called for order, and then he instructed the bailiffs to escort Rashawn’s mother from the court yet again.
Cece was having none of it and screeched and spit at Stefan before the bailiffs could get hold of her and muscle her out. Cece’s mother wept while her father held his wife and stared in loathing at my cousin.
After the session, Naomi emerged from the courthouse and tried to put a positive spin on the day for the reporters gathered out front.
She left them finally and came over to Bree, Pinkie, and me in the parking lot. My aunts and Nana Mama had gone home at lunch.
Naomi said, “I know the judge instructed the jury to ignore Cece’s rant, but they’ll remember it.”
“They couldn’t help but remember it,” Bree said. “She left me shaking.”
Naomi looked away, wiped at her watering eyes. “Me too. I know it’s unprofessional of me, but I’m beginning to wonder whether Stefan did those things to Rashawn.”
“I am too,” said Patty Converse, who walked up to us. “I’m asking myself how I could have missed so much.”
“I’m considering whether or not to ask for a plea bargain,” Naomi said. “I know Matt Brady. He’ll be fair.”
“Don’t throw in the towel just yet,” I said.
“We’ve got nothing to refute Stefan’s being at the crime scene,” Naomi said. “They’ve got his DNA all over the place.”
Before I could respond to that, my phone rang, and I turned away. It was Coach Greene calling.
“You don’t know how much I hate to say this, Dr. Cross, but I just received a call from Detective Pedelini with the sheriff’s office. The blood and urine tests on your daughter both came back positive for cocaine and methamphetamine. I’m afraid Jannie can’t continue training with us, and Duke will be withdrawing its offer of a scholarship.”