Chapter 78
YUKI WAS WIRED.
We were eating lunch at her desk, both of us picking through our salads as if we were looking for nuggets of gold instead of chicken. Yuki had asked me how I was feeling, but I didn’t have much to say and she was pent up, so I said, “You first,” and she was off.
“So, Davis calls her expert shrink, Dr. Maria Paige. Ever heard of her?” Yuki asked me.
I shook my head no.
“She’s on Court TV sometimes. Tall? Blond? Harvard?”
I shook my head no again and Yuki said, “Doesn’t matter. So, anyway. Davis puts this big-name shrink on the stand to tell us all about false confessions.”
“Ahh,” I said, getting it. “Junie Moon’s ‘false’ confession?”
“Right. And she’s a bright babe, this shrink. She’s got it all down. How and why Miranda rights came into being so that cops can’t coerce suspects. The landmark studies by Gudjonsson and Clark having to do with the suggestibility of certain subjects. And the Reid book for cops on how to get around Miranda.
“She sounds like she wrote the fricking book, Lindsay,” Yuki continued, getting even more pissed off. “She says with authority how cops can browbeat and trick suspects into making false confessions.”
“Well, some might do that — but I sure didn’t.”
“Of course not. And so then she says how certain people with low intelligence or low self-esteem would rather agree with cops than disagree with them. And so the jury looks at Junie.”
“Junie confessed all on her own —”
“I know, I know, but you know what Junie looks like — Bambi’s baby sister. So finally Dr. Paige wraps it up, and I’m wondering how I’m going to cancel out her testimony without showing the whole two-hour tape of your interview with Junie.”
“Well, you could’ve done that,” I said, snapping the plastic lid closed on my salad and tossing it into the trash can. Yuki did the same.
“Two hours, Lindsay? Of Junie denying everything? So listen. I got up and said, ‘Dr. Paige, did you ever meet Junie Moon?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ever see the tape of the interview with the police?’ ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Did the police browbeat the defendant or lie to her or trick her?’ ‘No, no, not really.’ ”
Yuki sipped her tea, then continued her reenactment of her cross-examination of Dr. Paige.
“So then I make a mistake.”
“What did you do?”
“I was exasperated, Lindsay.” Yuki grimaced. She raked her hair away from her lovely heart-shaped face.
“I said, ‘So, what did the police do, exactly?’ I know not to ask a question I don’t have an answer to, but shit! I’ve seen the damned interview two dozen times and you and Conklin did nothing!
“And now Red Dog is glaring at me, and the shrink is saying, ‘In my opinion, Miss Moon not only has bottomless low self-esteem, she feels guilty because she’s a prostitute and her confession was a way of reducing her guilt.’
“I couldn’t believe she was asking the jury to swallow that, so I sai
d, ‘So you’re saying she feels guilty that she’s a prostitute and that’s why she confessed to manslaughter?’
“ ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Paige says, so I say, ‘That’s all, Doctor.’ And Bendinger tells her to step down, and I’m squeezing in behind Red Dog’s chair, facing the gallery, and there’s Twilly,” Yuki said.
“Isn’t he there every day?” I asked my friend.
“Yeah, but now he’s sitting right behind me. And I’m making eye contact with him because that’s all I can do. And I hear Davis say she’s calling Junie Moon to the stand, and the judge says, ‘First we’re going to recess for lunch.’ And Red Dog pushes back his chair, pinning me chest to nose with that creep, Twilly.
“And Twilly sneers. And my stomach clenches and my skin gets cold and he whispers, ‘Point, Davis.’
“Omigod, and so Red Dog turns and gives me that withering look again, and I’m not going to lose this case over the testimony of that shrink, am I, Lindsay, am I? Because I’ll tell you, that just can’t happen.”
“It won’t —”