CHAPTER ELEVEN
Claire had brunch with Annie, and then went to Penn Station with her. She couldn't hang around or she'd be late meeting Alex, so she hugged her shorter friend and said, "Thank you for caring."
Annie smiled. "I'm always here for you. Call whenever you need me. You're a lot stronger than you think, draw on that strength, girl, it will see you through." She patted Claire's shoulder. "Go, you don't want to keep Alex Cabot waiting."
Claire laughed. "I'm not going to ask how you knew that. I'll see you soon, Annie." She turned and walked out of Penn Station. Snow flurries hit her face as she turned left and walked to the taxi line. "One Hogan Place," she told the driver, staring out the window as he pulled away from the curb into traffic.
She got to Alex's office with a couple of minutes to spare. She saw Jack, sprawled on the couch, talking to Alex, at her desk with an open file spread before her. They stopped talking when she stepped into the office, smaller than Jack's but much bigger than her little cubicle. It didn't take a Harvard education to know they'd been talking about her. Did you tell her how badly it went last night? Claire thought, then flushed at her disloyalty. Jack didn't deserve it. He stood and lightly kissed her cheek, then guided her to the couch.
"Did Annie get away on time?" he asked.
"I guess so, I left her at the line going down to the platforms." Claire wiggled out of her navy pea coat and held it in her lap.
"Coffee?" Alex offered. When Claire nodded, Alex buzzed her clerk and asked for three coffees. "Are you ready for this?" She leaned back in her chair, trying to be casual and relaxed, unintimidating. The clerk came in before Claire answered, bearing a small tray with three blue and white cardboard cups of coffee. A handful of creamers and sugar packets were spread around the tray, covering the swizzle sticks. She put the tray on Alex's desk. "Thank you, Amy," Alex said, "please close the door on your way out."
When they had their coffees, Alex focused on Claire, absently tapping her swizzle stick against the cup. "I've tried to deal him out," she began. "He's determined to go through with this, he wants to see you break on the stand." She dropped the stick and sipped the bitter brew, involuntarily making a face. "This thing is moving faster than I wanted, that Legal Aid squirt wants to make a name for himself."
"What kind of motions has he filed?" Jack asked.
"None." Alex shrugged. "That's what I mean, he wants to go in fast, hit hard, and come away with a win."
"He can't win," Jack said. "Is the man nuts?"
Alex exhaled slowly, remembering that Jack was still her superior, no matter how personally involved he was in this clusterfuck. "I think his strategy is to shatter Claire on the stand, leave an impression of doubt in at least one juror's mind about her stability, and claim a hung jury as a victory." She looked at Claire. She was healing rapidly, her face was nearly back to normal, but her eyes were the eyes of a rabbit caught in the open. "We're all trial lawyers, we know how effective a withdrawn question can be for planting doubt. We need to make your testimony as strong as possible, simple, straightforward facts. You're going to have to withstand verbal assaults you know will be quickly withdrawn in answer to my objection. If we anticipate them, I'll design ways to counter them with redirect." She looked at Jack. "You and I are known for that piece of strategy, so let's brainstorm all the possibilities and countermoves."
"Her sexual history is the most obvious," Jack said, reaching for Claire's hand. "It's not allowed, we know that, but he can probe about our relationship as going to credibility."
"Exactly," Alex said, "If she'll lie about her relationship with you, she'll lie about other things."
"I've never lied about Jack," Claire protested.
"But you've never told Adam Schiff you were violating rule 312 either, have you? So is it a lie of omission or commission?" 312 was the rule in the guidebook regarding fraternizing between superiors and subordinates, specifically forbidding sexual relationships. "You can bet that will be allowed." Alex frowned. "So how do we block it, bring it up ourselves? Or try to get sustained by claiming it refers to her sexual history?" Alex talked to Jack. Claire felt isolated and uneasy.
"What judge did you draw?" Jack asked.
"McMurtry."
Jack thought. "Ellen McMurtry is a feminist, we can count on her slapping down any hint of sexual history."
"If she doesn't?"
"Then it puts Adam in a difficult position, but he can deal with it."
Alex looked at Claire. "Let's go over what happened, one sentence at a time." She clicked the button on her ballpoint pen. She rested her hand on a fresh legal pad.
Claire shifted, put her coat aside and crossed her legs, rubbing the denim covering her knee. "I was waiting for Jack to come home, I had to go to the bathroom."
Alex scribbled, then looked up. "Do you live with Jack?"
"I do for now, you know that."
"Claire, forget I know anything." Alex's expression was kind. "Forget we're friends. The jury won't know or care about that. Just answer my questions. Do you live with Jack?"
"If I say yes, that opens the door on 312 ."
"Would you rather I asked it, or Dutton, the Legal Aid attorney?"
Claire glanced at Jack. "At the time of the incident, I was not living with Jack. I was expecting him to come for dinner."
"Were you expecting him to spend the night?"
"Yes. I don't see why that has to be a follow-up question."
Alex appealed to Jack with her eyes. He cleared his throat. "It may not be, Claire, but we have to be ready for it."
"You mean I have to be ready." They heard the bitterness in her voice. "I'm the one hanging out to dry on the stand, not you, not Alex."
"Let's move on," Alex said. "You were waiting for Jack to arrive for dinner, and you went to the bathroom. What happened next?"
Claire professionally admired Alex's spin on her testimony, but personally cringed at telling the rest. "I stepped out of the bathroom and Marc Meadows grabbed me, put a knife to my throat."
"You recognized him at that moment? Did he come at you from behind, or was he facing you?"
"From behind. He would have been on my left when I walked out."
"So someone grabbed you from behind and put a knife to your throat. When did you recognize your attacker?"
"When he threw me down on the bed. He dragged me from the bathroom doorway to the bedroom and threw me on the bed, then sat on me, the knife at my throat."
"Did he say anything?"
"He said if I made a sound, he'd cut my throat."
"Do you remember his exact words?"
"No, but it was something like make one sound, bitch, and I'll cut your throat."
Alex's hand moved across the legal pad. "You need to try to remember his exact words if you can. What happened next?"
Claire moved closer to Jack; he moved the pea coat between them to his other side and put his arm around her. "He used his knife to cut my clothes, he ripped my pants apart and then he raped me."
"Did you fight him?"
"No. I wanted to survive."
"Did he say anything while he was raping you?"
"No." She rapidly acquired that thousand yard stare as she remembered. "Unless you count grunts. It hurt like hell."
"Did you call out, scream?"
She shook her head. "I believed him, that he'd kill me if I screamed. That knife was huge."
"Go back for a second. What were you wearing?"
She thought. "Cotton pants and a tee shirt."
Alex made a notation. "OK. When he finished raping you - did he ejaculate?"
"Yes." Her hands clenched into fists, and Jack tightened his grip on her shoulder.
"OK. He ejaculated. Then what happened?"
"He pulled back, on his knees, and then started hitting me."
"Fists or open-handed?"
"Fists. He punched my face over and over."
"I know this is hard. So what happened next?"
"He pulled up his pants, and cut my throat." She couldn't stop the tears that erupted and flowed down her cheeks. "Then he went out through the window to the fire escape."
Alex wrote quickly, then looked up expectantly.
"I thought I was dying. I don't know how long it was after he left that Jack came in."
"He had a key?"
"Yes, Alex." Claire stared at her fists in her lap.
"She's trying to get around 312," Jack whispered.
"So Jack came in. What happened then?"
"He called 911. I don't remember much after that. I recall the police and EMTs, the paramedics working on my neck, and then the next thing I remember is the hospital. A doctor was doing a rape kit."
"How did you recognize Marc Meadows?"
"I'd prosecuted him for a rape eighteen months earlier. The verdict was overturned on appeal and he was released."
Alex wrote that down and drew an arrow upward. "I should have asked that much earlier, I will when we practice. We want the jury to know he's raped before. It can't be excluded as a prior bad act because you prosecuted him, it provides our motive." She doodled on the pad. "OK, back to the hospital. The rape kit was positive for fluids, for DNA. Have the results of his AIDS test come back?" Claire shook her head. "I'll call about that, you should have them by now. I'll introduce the photographs of your face, your injuries, especially that knife wound, play it as sheer luck that the blade didn't go deeper. Of course, his attorney will maintain he didn't want to kill you, but the pictures of your neck should sway the jury. We have other forensic evidence, fingerprints, hairs, a footprint on the floor beneath the window. You doing OK?"
Claire wanted to vomit, but she swallowed and said "Yeah."
"Where did you go when you were released from the hospital?"
"That's irrelevant, Alex," Jack said.
"It's one of those sneak it in by the back door, withdrawn Your Honor, questions. I don't want you to answer it, OK? Do not answer any questions if I object."
"I know the drill, Alex," Claire said.
Alex realized Claire had reached her limit. "OK, that'll do for now. I want to see you in a couple of days to practice. I'll have Casey Novak be the defense." She clicked her pen and put it on the pad, pushing both away. "I wish I could make this easier for you."
"I know." Claire held on by sheer willpower. She felt like she was going to hurl. "Gotta go." She bolted, fingers to her lips, hoping like hell the ladies' room was in the same place on this floor. It was. She slid to her knees in front of a toilet and vomited.
A few seconds later, hands pulled her hair away from her face. "I'm sorry," Alex said, "I really am."
Dry heaves wracked Claire's body, then she reached for the handle and flushed the toilet before slumping on the floor. "I know," she whispered. Alex dropped her hair and went to the sink, soaking paper towels and using them to wipe Claire's face. Claire took them and pressed them to her mouth. "This is so embarrassing," she said.
"It shouldn't be. It happens all the time," Alex said. "Sometimes I hate my job."
Claire struggled up. Alex helped her get on her feet, and then Claire went to the sinks. She splashed water on her face, rinsed her mouth, and dried her face.
Alex put her hands on Claire's shoulders. "Is it nerves, or…"
"Nerves," Claire said, too quickly, cutting off the question.
"Are you sure?" Alex dropped her hands and leaned on the counter.
"Not entirely, but my faith is in Pfizer Pharmaceuticals."
"OK," Alex said. "Jack's having a cow, you ready to go back?"
Claire smiled at the image. "Yeah. Thanks." They walked out of the bathroom to Alex's office. Jack stopped mid-pace when he saw them. "I'm fine, Jack," she said. She got her coat and pulled it on. "Let's get out of here. Talk to you later, Alex."
She walked to the door with them. "Take care of yourself. I'll see you in a couple of days."
