Page 52 of Courtroom Drama
someone whose account of events, observations, or experiences may be inaccurate, inconsistent, biased, or influenced by external factors
a five-year-old
Jackie Kitsch clears her throat. “Yes. Emblem did show me something concerning,” she says, in reference to D.A. Stern’s last question. She lifts the tattered tissue to her eyes again. “She pulled a teddy bear off the shelf. She laid it on the floor, face down, then ripped the Velcro back apart. It was one of those nanny-cam bears. A video camera in the eye. There, she pulled out a new collection. One I hadn’t seen before.” She pauses, looks at Margot again.
Margot listens intently, her expression pained, the corners of her mouth pulling downward. Her eyes are round, as though they were pinned open, forcing her to watch.
“What was the collection?”
Jackie Kitsch hesitates. It’s like all of us in the room are in a collective nosedive, and I’m unsure where and how we crash land. I, like the others, hang on her every word. On the silence between. Finally, Jackie Kitsch says, “It was a collection of eye-drop bottles. Three of them, all empty.”
A wave of low-decibel noise makes its way around the room.Hmms andhumphs and under-the-breath mumbles. Not enough for Judge Gillespy to strike her gavel, but enough for D.A. Stern to look over the gallery and jury in acknowledgment.
“Where would Emblem have found three eye-drop bottles?”
“I asked her,” Mrs. Kitsch says. “She said in the bathroom garbage in her parents’ room. I asked her when, but she couldn’t seem to give a straight answer. ‘A while ago’ was all she’d say. That’s how it goes with a five-year-old. She was only four then.” Mrs. Kitsch looks to her lap mournfully.
“What did you find concerning about the bottles?”
“Well, I found it odd there were three empty eye-drop bottles. Those things last forever in my house, years even. So, I wondered how else they might have been emptied so quickly. Embleminsistedthey were empty when she found them. This question kept nagging at me for days. Curious, I started googling. Uses for eye drops and such. I’m a bit of an internet sleuth. That’s what Joe used to call me.” She chuckles sadly and looks to her lap again, focused on the shredded tissue bits she holds there. “I came across an article about a husband in North Carolina who poisoned his wife by putting eye drops in her drinks. It was in the first page of results. It caused her to die from a cardiac episode.” She lets her words linger so we can make the intended inference.
A cardiac episode. Just like Joe.
She continues, “He killed her that way to collect her life insurance. That article... it made me pause.” A tear escapes, trailing down her cheek. “It made me question if Margot would do something like that. It was suspicious, to say the least. Her rush to cremate him, her inheritance, her... motives in their marriage. It all felt quite suspicious.”
I look around the room, rubbing at my chest. Jackie Kitsch is a sympathetic witness. She doesn’t come across as bitter or accusatory. Just factual and heartbroken. And as I sit here thinking about Mallory Bradburn, I feel for this witness in a visceral way I wasn’t prepared for.
Durrant Hammerstead cross-examines Jackie Kitsch, and it’s relatively straightforward. He emphasizes that Emblem did not specify in that conversation the day of the funeralwhenshe found the bottles and that we cannot be sure if it was even all together or individually over time. He gets Mrs. Kitsch to confirm she has no evidence of Margot’s wrongdoing, just a hunch, a gut feeling. Durrant Hammerstead’spoints are sound, but Jackie Kitsch’s testimony nags at me nonetheless. Likability is a huge factor in court cases. Jackie Kitsch is as likable and nonthreatening as they come. And I have to admit, the whole thingissuspicious.
Coming into this case, I had zero question of Margot’s innocence. But so much keeps coming to light...
The affairs.
Her disappearance at sixteen.
The book on poison she was reading in Mallorca.
The string of adverse character witnesses.
Now, the eye-drop bottles.
What does it all mean?
After Mrs. Kitsch steps down from the witness stand, there is little time to contemplate or recover. And soon, I understand why—D.A. Stern wants us to feel the connection and continuity between Jackie Kitsch and the next witness.
We all look on as the same screen where D.A. Stern displayed pictures of the Kitsch family during opening statements is pulled out again. Once everything in the courtroom is to his liking, D.A. Stern introduces five-year-old Emblem Kitsch as his next witness, before directing our attention to the screen and pressing play.
The prosecution and defense mercifully agreed to interview her on camera in a one-on-one setting versus parading her in this courtroom with its gallery and jury box full of gawking strangers. Even so, the thought of five-year-old Emblem Kitsch influencing the outcome of this trial, or being involved at all, causes a queasy wake in my gut.
In the prerecorded interview, Emblem sits in a conference room that appears to be somewhere in this courthouse. She wears a fluffy purple one-piece zip-up with the unicorn hood pulled up over her head, and I’m unsure if it’s pajamas, a costume, or something else. The length of her deep brown hair spools out on either side of her neck, and she props up a stuffed penguin to look as though it’s seated atop the table beside her. She is nothing short of adorable.
She resembles Joe far more than Margot. She inherited and thus preserved his blue eyes and prominent nose, heart-shaped mouth andnearly nonexistent eyebrows. I somehow equate this fact as likely to work in the prosecution’s favor.
The courtroom is pin-drop silent. This feels like the most important testimony to date. Perhaps it’s the anticipation of what unfiltered words might barrel out of a five-year-old’s mouth. Perhaps it’s because Margot Kitsch is sitting at the defense table, watching a video of her daughter’s testimony being presented as evidence for theprosecution. Perhaps it’s the stark reminder that there are children whose lives will be forever affected by the outcome of this case. Whatever it is, the courtroom is holding a collective breath.
It’s not D.A. Stern or Durrant Hammerstead who interview Emblem, but a court-approved child witness expert. I imagine there are several minutes of making Emblem feel comfortable, asking innocuous questions like how school is going and what her favorite foods are, cut for time. Our version goes straight into questions about her part in this case.
“Emblem, tell me about your collections,” the woman off-screen inquires.
