In Self Defense Susan Sloan (summer reads .txt) 📖

“Your Honor, in order to properly assess these startling new allegations,” he said with what he hoped would be construed as a hint of disdain in his voice, “the people request a brief recess.”

“Yes, I thought you might,” Judge Naomi Lazarus replied mildly.  She glanced up at the clock that hangs above the jury box.  It read just after three.  She looked over at David.

“Defense has no objection,” the defense attorney said with a casual shrug.

“In that case, court will be adjourned until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock,” she declared and then she turned to the jury to give the usual admonitions.

But they could hardly hear a word she was saying.  The murmur had exploded into mayhem.

***

“They played me like a fucking violin,” Sundstrom fumed the moment he gained the sanctity of his office.  “They set the trap and I walked right into it like a goddamned first-year law student!”

“Feel sorry for yourself some other time,” Tom Colby suggested.  “Right now, you have to figure a way out of this.”

“I was right about her,” Sundstrom stormed.  “Right from the start, when the police brought me nothing, I had a hunch about her.  I told those detectives what to do, where to look -- damn it, I made their half-assed case for them.  And now I’m stuck with it. “

“And now you have to focus,” Colby said a trifle sharply.  “You were right.  She did mean to kill her husband.  She as good as admitted it.  So you’ve got her.”

“Yeah,” the prosecutor muttered, “and now all I have to do is figure out how to get the jury not to think about what a screw-up I am and nail her for it.”

“Let her talk,” Colby proposed.  “She obviously wants to tell all.  Let her.  Let her hang herself with her own words.”

“That’s risky,” Sundstrom said, but it was clear he was intrigued by the idea.  The question was -- could he figure out a way to trip her up?  “Johansen is no slouch.  He won’t let me turn her.”

Colby shrugged.  “She opened the door.”

***

“So, Mrs. Durant,” Sundstrom began the following morning, “just how do you think your husband was trying to kill you?”

“It started with arsenic poisoning,” Clare replied.  “I started getting sick a couple of months after two attorneys, the chief financial officer of Nicolaidis Industries, and I all told Richard what would happen if he chose to divorce me.”

“Arsenic poisoning?”

“I know it sounds melodramatic,” she said, “but since experiencing it firsthand, I’ve learned that this kind of poisoning can be very effective if done properly.  It’s undetectable and insidious the way it eats through your whole system.  I used to drink a particular brand of bottled water.  I had it delivered by the case, and I was the only one in the house who drank it.  When I was the only one to get sick, and none of the medications my doctor prescribed worked, he performed some tests on me that confirmed the presence of high levels of arsenic.  Then he requested that the water be tested, and sure enough, it tested positive for arsenic.”

“Water frequently contains arsenic,” the prosecutor suggested reasonably enough.

“Yes, but it’s usually a low, relatively harmless level,” she reminded him.  “The level found in the water I was drinking was thirty times higher than normal.  After the arsenic was discovered, the water company recalled hundreds of cases from the same lot, and reported that all of them tested negative.  Only my cases were contaminated.”

“That could be coincidental, you know.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I thought at the time,” Clare conceded.  “After all, I couldn’t think of anyone who would have any reason to want me dead.  But just a few months later, after I went through treatment, and my tests came back indicating that I was finally clear of the poison, came Father’s Day.”

“Father’s Day?” the prosecutor echoed.

“My husband, who had successfully climbed Mount Rainier, and considered anything less a waste of his time, suggested we spend Father’s Day in the Olympic Mountains.  And then he insisted on taking us down a remote route designated for only the most experienced climbers, which the children and I certainly were not.  And during that descent, and within talking distance of my children, I might add, I found myself unceremoniously helped off the side of the mountain and only by the grace of God did I end up clinging to a rock for dear life.”

“Are you sure?  Couldn’t you be mistaken?  Couldn’t you have simply tripped?”  The prosecutor knew he wasn’t getting what he wanted, but he was now hopelessly intrigued.

“You have no idea how badly I wanted to believe that I’d tripped, or maybe even that Richard had slipped and accidentally tripped me up,” Clare said tremulously, as memories of that day flood over her.  “And I probably could have gotten away with convincing myself of it, I was well on the way, in fact, but then, not four months later, when I was finally getting back on my feet and feeling whole again, a man in a black truck, who somehow knew exactly where I’d be and what car I’d be driving on a Saturday morning, deliberately ran me off the road.”

“Deliberately?”

“Two eyewitnesses said they believed it was deliberate.  And the man in the truck didn’t stop to contradict them.”

“And how exactly did you connect that to your husband?” Sundstrom asked.

“I found a check, made out to cash, from one of the children’s trust accounts,” Clare explained.  “It was dated two weeks before the incident.  It was for fifty thousand dollars.  We’d never taken that kind of cash out of that account before.  There’d never been any reason to.”

“Did you ask your husband about it?”

“Yes, of course I did.  He told me something about a surprise, for the children and me, for Christmas.  But, by then, I didn’t believe him anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I guess you’d just have to have known my husband as well as I did,”