“Relevance, for one.”
“The victim was working for Ms. Parker when she was assaulted,” Jay says. “I expect this witness to shed light on why she was in Pleasantville.”
“Sounds relevant to me,” the judge says.
Nichols looks stunned. “Based on what evidence?”
“Well, let’s let the woman take the stand and find out.”
“He’s trying to bring in stuff that has nothing to do with this trial.”
“If she knows anything about the girl’s last hours, it does,” Keppler says.
“He’s been picking at this for weeks now,” Nichols says. “Ms. Parker has repeatedly said she never hired Alicia Nowell, that the girl wasn’t one of hers.”
“You know, for someone who claims he didn’t know this witness was going to be called, who claims he had little time to attempt to interview her, you sure do know a lot about the inner workings of your boss’s campaign,” Keppler says, eyeing him over the rims of her glasses. “Bring her in,” she says, before nodding to her clerk to find someone to come check on the heating system.
Reese Parker dressed up for this.
She pressed a suit, tamed her blond, overprocessed, almost white hair into a chic sweep off her face. She put on panty hose and pinned a demure brooch to her lapel, a small star, glistening stones in red, white, and blue: rubies, diamonds, and tiny sapphires. She raises her right hand, smiling through her oath. All the way up until she’s plopped her considerable heft into the swiveling witness chair, she never stops smiling. “Good morning, Mr. Porter,” she says, addressing him before he’s even looked up from his notes on the lectern.
“Spell your name please,” he says.
“R-E-E-S-E P-A-R-K-E-R.”
“And where are you employed, Ms. Parker?”
“I am currently doing some consulting work for the Wolcott for mayor campaign.” She glances at the jury, another smile for the ladies in the first row, as if she imagines she might as well try to pick up a few votes while she’s here.
“For how long?”
“The campaign hired me six months or so before the general election.”
“And what are your duties with the campaign?”
“I consult.”
“On?”
The smile again. “Well, I wouldn’t want to give away any trade secrets.”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Jay says. “Witness is being unresponsive.”
“Sustained,” Keppler says coolly.
“You strategize, oversee media buys, raise funds, that sort of thing?”
“Sure.”
“Go over policy?”
“Yes.”
“Print campaign literature?”
Here, Parker hesitates. “Something like that.”
Jay notices she keeps looking over his shoulder toward someone in the back of the courtroom. Dabbing at his forehead, he turns slightly to scan the faces behind him, his eyes landing on Cynthia Maddox. She’s in a winter white pantsuit. Of everybody in the courtroom, she has the seat closest to the exit sign. She’s made no show of her presence, pointedly sitting herself behind the back of most of the reporters in the courtroom, watching the proceedings silently. The heat across his forehead spikes. “Ms. Parker, have you heard of an organization called America’s Tomorrow?”
Parker blanches, her skin going nearly as white as her hair.
Biting through another stiff smile, she says, “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”
“Is it a political action committee?”
“I believe so.”
“You do any consulting work for them?”
“Objection, relevance,” Nichols says.
“Sustained.”
Keppler shoots Jay a look from the bench.
He’ll have to come at this a different way.
Jay walks across the well between the lectern and the clerk’s desk, reaching into the box of evidentiary material for exhibit 37, the flyer. As he did with Detective Moore, he lays the flyer in front of the witness chair. It’s on his walk back to the lectern that he again catches sight of Keith Morehead. In the front row of the gallery, positioned just to the left of Neal, their faces are almost side by side, though Morehead is a few inches behind the defendant. Jay can’t believe he never noticed it before, the stark resemblance, the same nut brown skin and the hooded eyes. If he had to guess, he would put the difference in their heights at no more than an inch, and if either one of them was standing on a dark street corner, he might easily mistake one for the other.
The heat spreads down the sides of his neck, across his damp chest.
“Is there a question, Your Honor?” Nichols says.
Jay swings back around, stumbling slightly, flustered by a sudden, creeping suspicion. He leans against the lectern to steady himself, staring at his own handwritten words jumping across the legal pad in front of him.
“Have you seen that flyer before, Ms. Parker?”
Parker surprises him by answering, right off, “Yes.”
“And that’s because you wrote it, isn’t that right?”
“Objection, leading.”
“Sustained.”
Jay, out of the corner of his eye, watches Morehead next to his daughter.
“Did you write that flyer, Ms. Parker?”
Here Parker chuckles softly, at Mr. Porter’s innocent misunderstanding, her look to the jury says. “No, no,” she says. “I just, you know, during a campaign, stuff gets around. I’d heard these were circulating. I’d seen it.”
“Are you telling this court, under oath, that you are not the author of this flyer connecting Axel Hathorne to a bayou development project that would, according to that sheet of paper, negatively affect the residents of Pleasantville?”
Parker’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “No.”
“No, that’s not what you’re telling the court, or no, you didn’t write it?”
“I didn’t write it.”
“But you paid for it, right?”
“Me?” Parker says, carving her answer with a scalpel. “No.”
“That’s right. America’s Tomorrow paid for it.”
“Objection, Your Honor. Is he testifying now?”