Page 111 of The Devil's Advocate

‘You lied to the jury in your original trial, you lied to this jury today about not making a deal with the prosecutor, but you expect this jury to believe you when you tell them Andy Dubois confessed to murder?’

‘This is bullshit, man. Do I still get my recommendation to the parole board for early release?’ he asked, looking around the room.

I turned to the jury, held up my hands, and said, ‘I have nothing further to ask this witness.’

Korn stood, ready to re-examine, and repair some of the damage.

‘Mr. Lawson, I just want to make something clear for the jury, and for the record, we did not make a deal for your early release in exchange for your testimony, correct?’

Lawson leaned forward, his finger pointing at Korn, his lips drawn back in a snarl. He was about to go at it with the prosecutor when the judge butted in.

‘I don’t think this witness carries credibility. If he is implying that the district attorney misled the court by eliciting false testimony, then we can ignore this witness.’

Korn saw Chandler throwing him a lifeline. He took it and Judge Chandler ordered Lawson from the stand. It didn’t shut him up, though.

‘We had a deal,’ he said as he was escorted from the witness stand by two corrections officers.

The judge had saved Korn, but I got the impression he wasn’t happy about it. For the first time, Korn got the kind of look Judge Chandler previously reserved for me alone. Either he didn’t like Korn being sloppy, or Chandler had a moral line that the DA was stretching over.

Korn’s case was shattering around him. He sat down, looked at his notes on the table. I saw that he was gripping his right thigh tightly. A red stain emerged on his pants, just at the top of the area where he pinched his flesh.

He let go, said, ‘The prosecution calls Mr. Buxton.’

Buxton was the truck driver who’d found Skylar’s body. He was not an essential witness, and I wondered if Korn would even call him.

Kate leaned over, whispered, ‘Korn is on the rails. He’s calling an easy witness. Buxton doesn’t say anything controversial. This is Korn getting his rhythm back. We have to pull the trigger on Buxton.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We plant the questions with Buxton. Then we answer them later. If Korn is struggling, we need to make sure he stays that way. Give him something else to worry about.’

Kate nodded, said, ‘I’ll take Buxton.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

KATE

Kate watched Ted Buxton take the stand. He wore a white shirt, blue tie and tan pants. A large man in his late forties, with brown hair, free from any gray, worn in a side parting. He was clean shaven, with a scent of soap and shoe polish catching Kate’s nose as he walked past. Buxton had put on his Sunday best for his court appearance.

He was sworn in and Korn rose awkwardly to his feet to address the witness. Before he did so, he placed a fat volume of statutes in front of him on the table in an effort to hide the bloodstain from the jury when he stood. Kate had noticed it too and wondered how he had hurt himself. It didn’t look like he had anything in his hands when his leg started bleeding, so she assumed it was an old injury, but it had looked like he had coaxed it into bleeding, as if he was punishing himself.

Some powerful men were like that. Through acting for various women in sexual harassment lawsuits, Kate had heard all kinds of stories from the victims. Mostly, they were the same story – a man who didn’t know how to speak or behave appropriately. That’s it. That’s the story. The rest were just details. But some of those details kept reappearing in different stories. Powerful men often fantasized about being hurt, or helpless.

Kate thought that the prosecutor may have hurt himself, on purpose.

‘Mr. Buxton, what is your profession?’

‘I’m a truck driver.’

‘And where were you on the night of the fourteenth of May, of this year?’

‘I was taking a rest break at a truck stop on Union Highway.’

‘What does that involve?’

‘I was taking some shut-eye in my cab. I’d driven my fill that day, and I needed to take my rest. I figured I’d save the hotel bill and sleep in the cab.’

Kate liked Buxton. There was no bullshit. He looked like a man who was simply there to tell the truth, and nothing else.

‘Did anything occur on that night?’