Fatal Flaw

“I don’t understand how that helps us.”

“Because his efforts to hide his guilt through use of a scapegoat are necessarily futile. Hebrews ten, verse four: ‘For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.’ You can only create a scapegoat by following the biblical command to confess. It is a necessary part of the process. When he tries to shift blame onto his scapegoat, then will his sins be evident for all to see.”

To this counsel I added one piece more, lifted from the book I had been reading, Crime and Punishment. I often found literature of little use in the bare-knuckle world of the law, the psychological gap between the fictional and real is often so wide, but no one ever came as close to spa

I took the schemes of all my advisers and swirled them together into a single desperate strategy. I would force Lawrence Cutlip to confront his crimes, edging him subtly when possible, shoving and badgering him like a boxer when necessary, spiraling him closer and closer to the flame of truth until the fire grew so hot upon his soul that he was forced, not to confess, because that was not his way, but instead to do as the Reverend Henson said he would do, find a scapegoat and shift the blame. Onto whom would he shift it, I had no idea. Bobo? Guy? Jesse Sterrett? It wouldn’t matter, once it shifted, it would be apparent. And once it was apparent, the story would be over, Guy would be acquitted, and Cutlip would be under arrest. That was the upside. That was what I focused on as I prepared.

But there was a downside, too, a downside I couldn’t ignore. If I failed, if my cross-examination proved to be too gentle a dance to dent Cutlip’s armor, then consequences would befall my client and myself. Guy’s defense would be exposed as a fraud. It would seem he was trying to foist blame on the grieving uncle, who had sacrificed his youth to care for his young nieces. And once the phone records were disclosed and Breger co

So it was strategy that I focused upon, but not only strategy. I brought to my apartment everything I had found about this case, from the forensic reports of the murder to the notes I had taken of my trips to Pierce, West Virginia, to the notes of testimony already collected, to the contents of Hailey Prouix’s safe-deposit box. I examined everything, questioned every assumption, turned everything upside down and downside up, twisted back to front and vice versa. I reviewed my notes of Cutlip’s direct testimony, and as I did so, and examined everything else, something seemed not right, something seemed out of order.

And then it came clear, in a sudden burst of insight, something I had badly mislabeled, something that was very much other than what I had thought it to be.

Now I had something, something definite, something to work with, something that might just force Cutlip to come face to face with his past, force him to describe smaller and smaller circles around the truth, until – flop! – and that would be the end of him.

And it had been there, the crucial piece of evidence, been there almost the entire time, right in front of my face.

50

“MR. CUTLIP, this is my client, Guy Forrest,” I said, standing behind Guy with my hands on his shoulders. “Before this trial had you ever laid eyes on him?”

“No, I ain’t.”

“Ever spoken to him?”

“Nope, and can’t say I’m sad about it neither.”

“And yet it was your testimony that without ever meeting him or talking to him you were against your niece’s marrying him, isn’t that right?”

“After what he done to his family, walked out like a dog, yes, I was.”

“You told Hailey Prouix she was making a mistake with him, isn’t that what you said? You told her to get away from him while she could.”

“And I was right about it, too, wasn’t I?”

“Can I approach, Your Honor?”

The judge nodded.

“I’d like this marked Defense Exhibit Nine.” I gave a copy to Troy Jefferson and took the original to the court reporter to be marked before dropping it in front of Cutlip. “You recognize the man in this picture?”

“I never seen this picture before.”

“Just answer my question. Do you recognize the man in the picture?”

“Yeah, it’s him.”

“The record will indicate that the witness was pointing at the defendant, Guy Forrest. This, then, is a picture of the man who wanted to marry your niece and is accused by you and the state of murdering her. What do you feel about this man?”

“I hate his whole guts, what you expect? He killed my niece dead and stole my world like a thief.”

“Good. Now, here I’m handing you a black Sharpie marker. Cross out the picture of this man you hate so.”

“Why?”

“Indulge me.”

“What for? I told you I never done seen this picture. I’m just here to say the dead woman, she was my niece. I don’t understand.”

“It’s not up to you to understand, sir. It’s only up to you to do it.” I put a little juice into the “do it,” just enough to get his back up about it, and it did. I saw that lovely serpentine flicker of hate in his eyes. “Don’t be a coward, now, the picture’s not going to jump up and bite you.” That got a little laugh, which made him even angrier. “Just go ahead and do what I tell you to do. Cross it out.”

He gave me a slow, insolent stare and then went at the picture with the marker.

“Fine, thank you.”

I picked the photograph off the front rail of the witness stand and showed it first to Troy Jefferson and then to the jury, a fine color photograph of Guy Forrest with a ragged, violent zig-zag-zig ru

“So you never approved of Guy Forrest for your niece. Did you know she was seeing someone else at the time?”

“She said something or other like that, just to rile me.”

“Rile you? Why would that rile you?”

“I didn’t like her acting like no tramp.”

“She never told you who he was, this other lover, did she?”

“No, not exactly. But I heard things. I heard he was some Puerto Rican or something.”