Hear No Evil

“How did that make you feel, when you saw those photographs?”

Her eyes clouded over, and she reached for a tissue. “I was drugged and violated by my husband’s best friend. And my husband took photographs. How do you think it made me feel?”

He gave her more time. “I’m sorry I have to ask these questions,” said Jack. “Just a few more on this. Do you know what happened to those digital photographs?”

“No. Lord knows I searched the house for that camera. I wanted to destroy the images. But I never did find anything.”

“Before this happened, would you describe your sexual relationship with your husband as normal?”

“No,” she said, her voice quaking.

“I’m not prying for too much detail, but I have to ask this. What about it was not normal?”

She pulled herself together, took a breath. “After we were unable to conceive, Oscar took it as a blow to his manhood. It was a slow process, but he never really recovered. It was so irrational.” She paused as if searching for strength to continue. “I felt so much anger coming from him every time we were intimate. It was a perversion of the Marine mentality, that if you suck it up and try harder, you’ll succeed. But finally he had to accept that there was something wrong. We weren’t going to have our own child. And like I say, that realization was a real blow to him. As time went on-I’m talking years, now-it became more and more difficult for him to…perform.”

“When this incident with Lieutenant Johnson took place, did you have any sexual relationship at all with your husband?”

“No,” she said, staring down into her tissue. “Unless you call hiding in the closet and snapping photographs of your wife with another man a ‘relationship.’ ”

“What did your husband do with these photographs?”

“He kept them.”

“Do you know why?”

“He told me that-”

“Objection,” said Torres. “We’re getting into hearsay.”

Jack said, “Judge, the testimony is offered simply to prove that the witness felt threatened. It’s not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”

The judge made a face. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to evidentiary matters such as hearsay, and Jack had given him just enough to scare him away from excluding the testimony. “Overruled. The witness may answer.”

Lindsey said, “Oscar told me that if I didn’t continue to have sex with Lieutenant Johnson, he would divorce me and use the photographs to take Brian away from me. Prove I was an unfit mother, having sex with another man in my own bedroom while my deaf child slept in the next room.”

“But the photographs showed that you were unconscious, didn’t they?”

“It was hard to tell in the photographs. Lots of women close their eyes at some point while having sex.”

“So what did you do?”

“I did what he wanted me to do.” Her voice was barely audible.

The judge said, “Ms. Hart, you’ll have to speak up.”

“I did what he wanted me to do,” she said. “I continued to have sex with Lieutenant Johnson.”

“Were you drugged on those occasions?”

“No.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I didn’t see a choice. I didn’t want to lose my son.”

“Are you saying that you were prepared to do this for the rest of your life?”

“No. But you have to understand. Oscar was from a very powerful family. He was a respected Marine on a military base. My word against his wasn’t going to add up to much. Until I could figure something out and find help from someone I could trust, I had to go along with it.”

“So, when that Cuban soldier came into this courtroom and testified that he saw you and Lieutenant Johnson together, that could very well have happened?”

“If he saw anything, he saw me yielding to my husband’s threats. I was just going along with it.”

Jack nodded, as if satisfied. But in his own mind, he couldn’t help juxtaposing her “going along with it” against the soldier’s “going at it like a couple of porn stars.” Thankfully, those words never made it before the jury. “Ms. Hart, did you observe any impact that this ‘threesome,’ I’ll call it, was having on the friendship between your husband and Lieutenant Johnson?”

“Toward the end, I did.”

“What happened?”

“Lieutenant Johnson started showing up at my house alone, when Oscar wasn’t there.”

“Did you have sex with him when your husband wasn’t there?”

“No, never.”

“Did you tell your husband about Lieutenant Johnson’s extra visits?”

“Yes.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He was very angry. He told me that if he ever caught me and Lieutenant Johnson together, he’d kill us both.”

“So it was okay to be with Lieutenant Johnson only so long as your husband was there to watch.”

“Yeah. He was very much into control.”

“Did you ever observe your husband have any cross words with Lieutenant Johnson over this?”

“Only once, and they took it outside. I’m not sure what was said.”

“After this argument between the two men, did Lieutenant Johnson continue to come around, uninvited, so to speak?”

“No. He didn’t.”

“Did you tell your husband this?”

“No. In fact I told him the opposite. I told him that Johnson was continuing to come over asking for sex, just the two of us, no one taking pictures.”

“You lied to him?”

“Yes. I was desperate. I saw a way out. If Oscar got mad at Johnson, I thought it might be the end of this nightmare.”

“What happened after that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How soon after that did your husband turn up dead?”

“Objection,” said Torres. “The question unfairly implies there’s some linkage between the two.”

“What kind of objection is that?” said the judge. “Overruled. The witness shall answer.”

“Oscar was dead less than two weeks later.”

Jack said, “Ms. Hart, you didn’t tell anyone about the things your husband forced you to do with Lieutenant Johnson. Not even the police.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was ashamed of it. I didn’t think anyone would ever understand how trapped I felt. Mostly, I didn’t want Brian ever to know it.”

Jack listened like a lawyer, but her last answer hit him like a father. They’d rehearsed her testimony beforehand, but it was far different now, inside a packed courtroom with hundreds of sets of eyes and ears absorbing every detail. All those intimate secrets that Lindsey was too ashamed to share with anyone-even with her own lawyer, until it was almost too late-could now be gobbled up by any slob who could read a newspaper. It wouldn’t happen today, maybe not even next month or next year. But someday, Brian would know everything.

Jack said, “Let’s talk now about the specific morning of your husband’s death. How did the day begin for you?”

“Like any other. I was sleeping in Brian’s room when my alarm clock/radio went off.”

“You normally slept with your son?”

“I did, ever since the thing with Lieutenant Johnson started.”

“Did you check on your husband at all?”

“I wouldn’t say I checked on him. He was sleeping in the bed when I went to the master to take a shower and get my clothes.”

“Are you sure he was alive?”

“Yes. He was snoring.”

“So you showered, dressed, then what?”

“Grabbed a banana and went to work.”

“What time?”

“Usual time. Five-thirty. I worked at the hospital, and I liked the early shift, because I got home in time to meet Brian after school.”

“Did everything go as usual at work?”

“Yes, until Brian sent me a digital page. It was almost six A.M.”

“What was the message?”

“It said, ‘Mom, come home, now!’ The word ‘now’ was in all capital letters. And there were three exclamation points.”

“What did you do?”

“I hurried home.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I’d gotten messages like this before. Usually it was Brian getting mad because his father punished him, or was making him do pushups before school, something like that. I didn’t want to involve the police. Oscar would have been furious with me.”