"Yes, sir," Audrey said.
"You work as a legal a.s.sistant for one of my colleagues, and we"ve met on numerous occasions," he said, smiling.
"Yes, sir," she repeated.
"Do you have any idea what I think of you?"
She cringed. "No, sir."
"Well then, let me go on record. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," he boomed, "this woman is an absolute sweetheart. She"s as caring and kindhearted and compa.s.sionate as they come."
Some of the jurors smiled. All looked puzzled. Why would the defense attorney give a glowing character reference to the prosecution"s star witness?
Meredith didn"t know either, but her mouth immediately went tinny, and her gastrointestinal system started to churn.
"Audrey," the Warlock said, "it must have been very difficult for you to listen to that poor child cry night after night."
"Yes, sir," she said.
Meredith nodded. Just answer the question. Don"t volunteer anything.
"Did you ever talk to her mother about it?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"It wasn"t my place."
"Understandable," Woloch said. "Who among us wants to confront their neighbor and correct them on their parenting skills? You agree?"
Audrey nodded.
"So you just let poor little Kimi cry her eyes out night after night," he said.
Yeager didn"t say a word. She sat there, stone-faced.
"I"m sorry," Woloch said. "I didn"t hear your response. Maybe it"s because I just made a blanket statement. Let me rephrase it as a question. Did you, Ms. Yeager, let Kimi O"Keefe, alone and afraid, cry her little heart out for hours on end while her pitiful excuse for a parent sat on a bar stool getting blotto, hoping she could find anyone in a pair of pants who would come upstairs and bang the c.r.a.p out of her?"
"Objection!" the prosecutor yelled. "Badgering the witness."
"Sustained," the judge responded quickly. "Mr. Woloch, I will let you pursue this line of questioning, but I expect you to clean up your act and treat this witness more civilly."
"My apologies to the court," Woloch said. "And to Ms. Yeager. Audrey, I know you. You are made up of all those sterling character traits I described to the jury, and while I can believe you never spoke to Ms. O"Keefe about her substandard parenting, I cannot imagine you let that little girl suffer without doing something-anything-to help. Am I right?"
"Yes."
Meredith sat there, heart pounding, sweat coming out of every pore.
"Tell the jury what you did to help Kimi," Woloch said.
"One night I rang the bell," Yeager said. "I told her it was Audrey from next door. She knew me a little, and she opened the door. I went inside, and I calmed her down."
"How did you do that?"
"Oh, I"d read her a book, or we"d sing songs, or sometimes we"d play with her Barbies. We had lots of things we liked to do."
"So you visited Kimi more than once."
"Yes."
"More than five times?"
"Yes."
"More than ten?"
"Yes, sir."
"Let"s not quibble about a number. Can we just say you went next door and kept Kimi company lots of times? Or should we say often?"
"Lots of times."
"Did her mother know?"
"n.o.body knew," Audrey volunteered. "I told Kimi if she told anybody, they"d yell at me, and I would never be able to come back."
"Did you ever do anything to harm Kimi?" Woloch asked gently.
"Oh, G.o.d, no," Yeager said. "I...I loved her. I never had children. I couldn"t stand to watch how her mother treated her." Her eyes welled up, and tears ran down both cheeks. "I was like a surrogate mommy. She called me Mama Audrey. She was...she was the best thing that ever happened to me, and that...that..."
Audrey Yeager was a lady, and whatever word was forming in her brain never came out of her mouth.
Woloch walked to the defense table and handed her a box of tissues. He waited until Audrey regained her composure. "Go on," he said. "Please."
Audrey took a deep breath. "Kimi was the best thing that ever happened to me," she repeated, "and Rachael murdered her."
"You may be right," Woloch said. "It"s very possible that Rachael O"Keefe came home that night and murdered her daughter."
He paused and let the thought sit with the jury.
"But!" he screamed, and Meredith knew what was coming next.
"But," Woloch repeated softly, "Kimi was a love-starved child, willing-even eager-to open the door for anyone who heard her sobs and wanted to comfort her."
"Objection."
"Overruled."
"Maybe there was another compa.s.sionate neighbor. Or a not-so-compa.s.sionate neighbor who was tired of the incessant crying. Or a mentally deranged pizza deliveryman. Or any one of a thousand random strangers who could have wandered into the building while the doorman ran off for a quick bathroom break. So it could have been her," he said, pointing at Rachael and raising his voice again. "Or it could have been anybody. Am I right, Audrey?"
She shook her head.
"Speak up!"
"Yes, you"re right."
He turned to the jury. "Yes, I"m right. It...could...have...been...anybody. And Kimi, desperate for attention, would have opened the door and let that person in."
He walked slowly back to the defense table and pulled out his chair.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury-as Ms. Yeager, who is a legal a.s.sistant, can tell you-is what we call reasonable doubt. Very, very, very reasonable doubt," he said, and sat down.
The jury was mesmerized.
Once again, the Warlock had cast his spell.
Chapter 28.
Kylie and I rolled up Third Avenue, both of us lost in our own heads. I was writing soap opera scenarios, all ending with Cheryl dumping me for Matt Smith. Knowing Kylie, I figured she was probably plotting how she could use her superpowers to save her husband from self-destruction.
We hung a right on 92nd Street and pulled up to a disaster area known as the Second Avenue Subway project.
The grand idea to bore a subway tunnel under Second Avenue from Harlem to the financial district was first proposed decades before I was born. They finally broke ground in 2007, and if they ever fund and finish the entire eight mile run, it will be long after I"m dead. In the meantime, Second Avenue from 63rd to 96th looks like Baghdad after the shock and awe.
We parked on First and walked back. Fall was in the air. The temperature had dropped to the low forties, and the bars along Second were in full-scale Halloween promotion mode, their windows adorned with posters of goblins, ghosts, vampires, and Sam Adams Octoberfest beer.
Our first stop was the Foggy Goggle, which is typical of the cutesy bar names on the Upper East Side. When I was a kid, our local gin mill was Chop"s Tavern, but n.o.body in this zip code is going to pay fifteen bucks for an appletini at a joint called Chop"s.
Monday nights during football season are as busy as Fridays, and even though neither of the New York teams were playing, the place was packed with fanatics hoping to see the New England Patriots get clobbered by Miami.
We had flyers of Evelyn and started with our best bet-the smokers outside the bar. A few had seen her on the evening news, but n.o.body had seen her walk past the bar on Friday night. n.o.body inside was any help either.
The next stop was Sticks and b.a.l.l.s, where there were almost as many people in the back room watching the Monday night pool tournament as there were rooting against the Patriots.
Kylie and I split up to work the room. At least half a dozen guys, their testosterone fueled by alcohol, thought they "just might know something" and offered to discuss it with Kylie over a drink.
Kylie had a stock answer: "Great. How about my place-Nineteenth Precinct. You can spend the night."
After ten minutes, we knew we"d struck out again and moved on to Not a Health Club. The name must have resonated with their target audience, because there were at least twice as many smokers outside as there had been at the first two bars.
One by one, they looked at Evelyn"s picture and shook their heads. We had questioned about half of them when one of the smokers walked up to Kylie and said, "I"m Romeo. You been looking for me?"
He was five feet six, 250 pounds, with thinning, curly hair and a thick, unruly beard that made his moon-pie face even rounder. I seriously doubted if any woman was looking for him-especially if his pickup line was "I"m Romeo. You been looking for me?"
"Am I looking for you for what?" Kylie said.
"You"re the cops, right? You"re looking for information about her," he said, pointing at the flyer in Kylie"s hand. "I"m the guy who called you. Joe Romeo."
"When did you call?" Kylie said.
"Tonight, right after I heard about this Evelyn Parker-Steele murder on the six o"clock news. I called the crime stoppers hotline number on your website. The one where they give you a two-thousand-dollar reward if my tip helps you nail the killer. Then I called them back at seven thirty and told them I can"t hang around my apartment all night, and you could meet me here."
When there"s a page-one homicide, our tip line logs hundreds of calls. Eventually the department follows up on all of them, so there was no sense telling Romeo his message was buried at the bottom of a slush pile.
"Oh, yes," I said. "We got both calls. Tell us what you know, Mr. Romeo."
"It was Friday night around eleven. I"m out here having a smoke, and I see this Evelyn Parker-Steele walking up Second. I didn"t know who she was at the time, but I was checking her out. I"m in the rag trade, and this woman knew how to dress. Gray pantsuit, burgundy silk blouse, Brian Atwood slingbacks-not cheap."
"Did you see where she walked to?" Kylie asked. "Did she turn the corner? Pop into another bar?"
"No, a car pulled up alongside her," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. "A black SUV."
"Did you see the driver?" I said.
"No, but the guy in the backseat rolled down the window, and he called out to her."
The guy in the backseat? Kylie and I looked at each other.
"You"re sure the man was in the backseat?" I asked.
"Yeah. I could tell she didn"t know him. I figured he was just some douchebag hitting on random chicks, but she walked over to him. Now I"m totally tuned in, because I"m waiting for her to tell him to f.u.c.k off, but she listens for maybe ten seconds, opens the door, and gets in."
"She just got in?" I said. "He didn"t step out of the car and help her in?"
He shook his head. "Nope. She just hopped in the back."
"But you"re absolutely sure there were two men in the car," I said. Eyewitnesses who have been drinking are not that reliable, and I was pushing Romeo to see if he stuck with his story.
"No," he said. "I"m not sure there were two men. I never saw the driver. It could have been a woman or a trained monkey."
"Can you describe the man in the backseat?"
"He was white."
"What else?"
"I don"t know. I never saw his face, but his hand was resting on the window. Hey, don"t try to beat me out of the reward just because I couldn"t see faces. I gave you the black car and a white guy. That"s gotta be worth something."
"Absolutely," I said. "You"ve been very helpful. Thank you for calling it in."