a lawyer who engages chiefly in trying especially plaintiffs’ cases before courts of original jurisdiction
unnecessary BDE
Iam hopeful Judge Gillespy will end the day early and grant us a break from the heaviness of the case. Instead, we are met with a forensic toxicologist who D.A. Stern parades to the stand. This witness is sure to sear into us that three eye-drop bottles worth of tetrahydrozoline were more than enough to create the cardiac episode that resulted in Joe’s death. Furthermore, he states that the window of time for such a poisoning to result in a similar cardiac episode would have required consumption sometime that fateful morning. Durrant Hammerstead is sure to inform us this witness’s testimony is all speculative.
And then, finally, the D.A. calls his last witness—the police officer in charge at the scene takes the stand to describe the circumstances she walked into at the Kitsch home the day Joe died.
The initial responding officer, Officer Chavez, is a woman I estimate to be in her mid-forties, dressed in uniform with her black hair pulled back into a low, strict bun. D.A. Stern helps fill in the basics. She has seventeen years of service, all with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Before that, she graduated top of her class from the police academy. During her time with the force, she’s secured “dozens, if not hundreds” of crime scenes in her time, including twenty-four potential homicides.
“Who called 911 on the day Joe Kitsch died?” D.A. Stern asks after these introductory particulars.
“The house manager, Ms. Pembrooke.”
“And where were the children?”
“It was my understanding they were at school. It was mid-morning, ten forty-seven a.m., when the call was received.”
“Walk us through what you found when you arrived at the Kitsch home as the first officer on scene.”
“My partner, Ellison, and me, we arrived seven minutes after the call was made. We were met at the front entrance by the house manager. She was what I would call hysterical. Crying, screaming, not speaking particularly coherently. She kept saying, ‘He’s not moving. His eyes are open. His eyes are open.’ ” Officer Chavez’s eyes slide to Margot, then quickly back to D.A. Stern, as if she’s slipped by sneaking a peek at the defense table. I wonder if she is anAuthentic Momsfan, if she knew whose home she was walking into that day. “Ms. Pembrooke showed us to the kitchen, where we found the deceased.”
“What was Mr. Kitsch’s state when you entered?”
“He was seated at the kitchen table, slumped in his chair. Livor mortis was present, his lips were purple. We checked for a pulse. He was already gone.”
All the money and favor in the world, and it couldn’t buy him a long enough life.
A single tear meanders down Margot’s left cheek at the defense table. She presses a tissue to it gently.
Kara. Joe. The death of Margot’s marriage and what I thought I knew of it. These past several days have been consumed by death, and I’ve reached my tipping point of grief. My eyes pool. I feel a bit silly at my emotion, but it’s so much bigger than this moment of the trial. Damon looks over at me, concern written across his brow. He presses his thigh into mine, sturdy but soft, and holds it there, solidly there. I look up at him, and his eyes are narrowed in concern. Concern for me.
D.A. Stern turns to face us. “And wouldn’t a mother, looking to protect her children, ensure they were far away when something like this happened, sure they wouldn’t be the ones to find him?”
“Objection!” Durrant Hammerstead screams just as Judge Gillespy pounds her gavel. His scream indicates the D.A.’s actions are so egregious he doesn’t need to state the nature of the objection. Judge Gillespy seems equally angered—nostrils flared and chest high—clearly tired of the D.A. constantly testing the boundaries of her tolerance.
D.A. Stern is brash, arrogant in a way only a man of his stature and title seems to be. I worry other jurors will find his dominance worth following all the way through, like an authoritative platoon leader.
“Clear the room,” Judge Gillespy demands, eyebrows pressed together, raised at the center like a steeple, and we are quickly escorted out of the courtroom.
“That was intense,” Cam says as we enter the hallway. We linger there for several minutes as Judge Gillespy scolds D.A. Stern for his antics, I assume.
“You okay?” Damon asks as we take up in a far corner of the hallway away from the others.
“Yes. No. I don’t know, really.”
He runs his palm up and down my bare arm, seemingly forgetting people can see us. I take a quick look down the hall, and everyone seems consumed by what happened in the courtroom. I am, too.
“That must have been hard to hear,” he says, still running his palm along my arm.
“I feel like an idiot,” I say, looking up at him as he inches closer.
“Why?”
“Because I was excited to be on this trial. I lost sight of the fact that someone’s life is over. What that actually means.” The tears flow forcibly, gliding down my neck and collecting at the collar of my mint-green linen dress. They are mostly for Kara. And him. I’ve been holding in all my emotions about his return to my life, and the revelations associated with it, in a tight internal coil, and it’s now unfurling before him.
Damon doesn’t hesitate to pull me in. I press into him, my face curved into his chest, feeling my tears dampening his light gray dressshirt, all the empathy flowing out of me. But I don’t care about the optics of it right now. I don’t care how the two of us embracing in the corner may look to the others or how tear-stained his shirt will be when we part. Right now, he is the comfort I need.
“It’ll be okay,” he says into my hair. His saddle scent surrounds me like a halo of safety. He says those simple words now because he knows I’m upset about him. For him. And this time, hecanassure me.
