Chapter 19
There wasn’t much time to talk to Katy after getting through the more end-of-day, mundane procedural motions. Jeanie had taken her to a small conference room one floor down. I texted Eric that Jeanie and I would meet him back at the house within the hour.
Katy paced along the far wall as I walked into the room. Jeanie gave me an exasperated look as she sat at a small table, a notepad in front of her.
“She didn’t do her job,” Katy said. “Cass, why didn’t Detective DePaul look into Tom’s stalker?”
“That matters less than her not being able to provide a very good answer for that on the stand today.”
“I’m really surprised Addison didn’t try to rehabilitate her on that,” Jeanie said.
“I’m not,” I said. “He knows the more he underlines it for the jury, the more important a fact they’ll think it is.”
“I don’t understand Jenna either,” Katy said.
“It isn’t true what she said. I wasn’t frozen in place like that.
I was shocked. Yes. But that’s not how I remember it.
When she came in, I started walking toward her.
She ran. She wasn’t in that doorway for more than a second or two.
How can she possibly remember all the things she said she did?
It was so fast. For me and for her. You have to let me tell the jury that. They have to hear my side of this.”
“We’re not making that decision today,” I said.
“We’ve got a lot of trial left. The prosecutor isn’t even close to being done calling witnesses.
The only way we’re putting you on the stand is if I feel there’s no other choice.
We’ve gone over the risks of that strategy.
Right now, they far outweigh any benefit. ”
“I can’t just sit there,” she pleaded. “I see them staring at me. Everyone in the courtroom. Everyone on the jury. The way he’s making it sound, I’m some monster.
I don’t know why Tom saw a lawyer. But it can’t be for the reasons that man is implying.
Things were good between us. They were getting so much better. Cass, we were intimate the day before.”
“For now,” I said. “I just need you to try to decompress as much as you can. You must remain calm and stoic while you’re sitting next to me.
You cannot have outbursts like you did today.
You cannot verbally comment on whatever is happening in the witness box.
If you do that, you risk Quick being able to cross-examine you.
You force the issue. I cannot have this trial go out of control.
You might think you’re helping your cause, but you’re not. Okay?”
Her lip quivered. “You don’t know what this is like. You’ve never been on my side of the table. I’m not who that man is painting me out to be. My relationship with Tom isn’t what he’s trying to make it.”
“And we will have an opportunity to show your side of things as we go along. But right now, you need to keep calm. If you need to get upset, do it after court is done for the day. Rail and scream all you want. Just don’t do it in front of the jury. Are we clear?”
She put her hands on top of her head as if it were about to pop off. I’m sure she felt like it was. After some assurances from her that she’d behave herself tomorrow, I poked my head into the hallway and gestured for the deputies to take her back to holding.
Jeanie hitched a ride with me back to my house. She’d left her car there this morning. Eric was waiting for us in the war room.
“Well,” I said as we walked in. “Did either of you get a read on the jury today?”
One of the most crucial roles Jeanie and Eric could play was to observe the body language and facial expressions of the jury. They acted as eyes in the back of my head.
“They’re pretty stoic,” Eric said. “They all seem attentive and sober.”
“That’s a good thing,” Jeanie said. “It might mean they’re keeping an open mind. I didn’t see anybody giving Katy the evil eye. Not that they couldn’t be thinking it. But I agree with Eric; for now they all seem neutral.”
“She’s her own worst enemy,” I said. “She cannot have tantrums like that again. As of right now, I have zero confidence she could keep it together on cross if we decide to put her on.”
“She doesn’t get it, Cass,” Eric said. “That’s been my read on her from the beginning. I don’t think she realizes how damning this looks for her. She never has.”
“That’s Katy.” I sighed. “Joe always took care of her. I think it’s what attracted him to her in the first place.
He’s a sucker for a damsel in distress. I think Tom Loomis fulfilled the same role.
Katy just doesn’t ever think about consequences.
If it weren’t for how she was with Emma, I might not have been thrilled with Joe’s choice to marry her in the first place. ”
“And yet we all still loved her,” Jeanie said. “She made Joe happy for a very long time.”
“Are we any closer to finding Maisy Carmichael?” I asked Eric.
He shook his head. “The woman just seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I’ve been in contact with her sister again. She hasn’t heard from her either.”
“This happened though,” Jeanie said. She pulled out her phone and opened her podcast app.
“Tallon of Justice,” Eric read over her shoulder.
“Tallon Shipley, the girl you said you met at the cemetery,” Jeanie explained. “She dropped the first two episodes of her podcast on this trial.”
“I didn’t see her in the courtroom today,” I said.
“She wasn’t there very long,” Eric said.
“She slipped in the back just after Jenna Rodney took the stand. She followed Jenna out after she finished testifying. Tried to get her to go on the record. Jenna had a boyfriend with her. Big, burly guy who looked like trouble. He hustled Jenna to the elevator and fended Tallon off.”
“Good for him,” I said.
“She recorded her conversation with you at the funeral,” Jeanie said.
She hit play on her phone. I heard my own voice, slightly distorted due to the quality of the recording.
It had been windy that day at the cemetery.
I’d said next to nothing, but she recorded it anyway, against my express wishes. Taken out of context, I was horrified.
“I ran into the accused’s defense attorney and former sister-in-law at the victim’s funeral of all places,” Tallon said. “She was surprisingly willing to talk to me, if only briefly. When I asked her about Tom Loomis, here’s the answer I got.”
He helped break up my brother’s marriage. All I really knew is that he had money. He let Katy spend it on whatever she wanted. The first year they were together she spent it on plastic surgery. She really did become a different person around him.
“It remains to be seen whether the prosecution will call Ms. Leary’s own brother to the stand,” Tallon’s voiceover played.
“How she plans to handle that will be interesting indeed. From everything I’ve been able to discern, Joe Leary was never a person of interest in the investigation of Tom Loomis’s murder.
In episode two, we’ll explore what is known about Katy Leary Loomis’s early life.
I’ve reached out to Joe Leary, her first husband, but he’s so far refused to take my calls.
If that changes, you’ll be the first to know. ”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “She’s lying. I didn’t talk to her. Not like that. She recorded part of my private conversation with Eric!”
“I’ll call Joe,” Eric said. “He won’t be dumb enough to give this woman anything. But …”
“Just in case,” Jeanie and I said in unison.
“Keep listening,” I said to Jeanie. “If she’s been secretly recording from the courtroom itself, we might need a court order to ban her from the building.”
“Addison Quick will join in on that,” Jeanie said. “He’s not going to be happy about this either.”
“I can’t stop her from broadcasting,” I said. “But I can stop her from interfering if it gets to that.”
“What’s next?” Eric asked.
“Pretty sure Quick is going to call the medical examiner tomorrow.”
“You made a solid point about the timeline, I think,” Jeanie said. “It seems irrational that Katy would actually be frozen in place for what, an hour before Jenna got there.”
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” I said. “I was grasping and Quick is smart enough to know it. She didn’t have to be standing in one spot for an hour.
Nobody can prove whether she was or wasn’t.
Just because there were no bloody footprints around the room doesn’t mean Katy never moved.
Quick doesn’t have to prove Jenna walked in just after the act. ”
“But you got them questioning DePaul’s decision-making,” Jeanie said. “Maisy Carmichael wasn’t just some random stalker. She followed Tom from Detroit to here. DePaul never even bothered questioning anyone from the Detroit station.”
“Because it’s not her job to prove a negative,” Eric said.
“I’m sorry. I get why you had to open that door.
But had this been my case? I don’t know that I’d have gone much further than she did to run down that lead.
There’s not even an inkling that Maisy Carmichael was anywhere near the Loomis house that day.
And even if she had been, how do you explain her gaining access to the house? And we know nobody broke in.”
“We don’t have to prove she did it,” Jeanie said. “We only have to make the jury question why Sharon DePaul never even considered it.”
Eric turned his palms over in a half-hearted gesture of surrender. “I’m just saying. I’m not convinced there was anything unreasonable about Sharon’s actions.”
“Whose side are you on?” Jeanie asked.
I saw Eric draw a sharp intake of breath, ready to vehemently defend himself.
“Stop,” I interjected. “We’re all on the same side. And I don’t need yes men, Jeanie. I can’t afford tunnel vision on this one.”
“What’s your plan with the ME?” Eric asked, mercifully changing the subject.
“Same as with everyone else. None of what’s in the autopsy proves Katy’s the one who stabbed Tom.
And it’s thin. This isn’t the kind of case I like to put on.
Just holding Addison to his proofs isn’t going to be enough.
I feel that in my bones. If I can’t give that jury a viable alternative suspect, what’s your over-under on the verdict? ”
Both Jeanie and Eric’s faces fell. I didn’t need them to verbalize their answers after that, but they did anyway.
“Fifty-fifty,” Jeanie said.
Eric locked his gaze with mine. “I’m sorry, baby. I’d say you’re at seventy-thirty. And that’s being generous.”
“Don’t be generous, Eric. I told you I don’t need a yes man.”
“Fine,” he said, his tone grim. “If you don’t have a viable alternative suspect. I’m ninety percent sure they’re going to convict.”
Something banged against the wall behind us. I went out into the hall where I could see into the kitchen. Emma stood at the counter, her face ashen. I didn’t need to ask what she’d just overheard.