The Anonymous Client

through the heart.
    It was several minutes before Judge Graves managed to restore order. Fitzpatrick, under pressure, seemed capable of finding grounds for objection unheard of before in any court of law. Judge Graves listened to them all, then said calmly, “Objection overruled. It is an impeaching question, directed to a material point of the testimony of the witness. I direct the witness to answer.”
    Dirkson smiled. “Can you answer that question, Mr. Kemper?”
    Douglas Kemper was still visibly shaken. He opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “Could I have a glass of water please?’
    “Certainly,” Dirkson said. He made a show of being solicitous. He went to the judge’s bench and personally poured the water, then handed the glass to the witness. “Here you are. Take all the time you want. Just drink your water, and when you’re through, please answer my question.”
    Kemper gulped the water and took a breath. Some of the color returned to his cheeks. “The answer is, no, I did not.”
    “You did not discuss the decedent Donald Blake with Marilyn Harding? But you and Marilyn Harding did register at the Sand and Surf Motor Inn as Mr. and Mrs. Sampson?”
    “Objection,” Fitzpatrick said. “Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.”
    “Sustained.”
    “But is it not true,” Dirkson persisted, “that you and the defendant were having an affair; that Donald Blake learned of this affair and demanded money for his silence; that Marilyn Harding paid him ten thousand dollars and you paid him an additional twelve?”
    “No, it is not.”
    “And is it not true that after that Donald Blake demanded even more money? Money that you refused to pay? Is it not true that you argued with Donald Blake about that? In fact you argued on the very afternoon that he was killed?”
    “No, I did not.”
    “And didn’t that argument take place in Donald Blake’s apartment? And wasn’t the time of that argument at five-thirty in the afternoon of the ninth of October? And wasn’t it your voice the witness Margaret Millburn heard when she called and reported an altercation to the police?”
    “No.”
    “It was not?”
    “No.”
    “And you’ve never been in Donald Blake’s apartment?”
    “No, sir.”
    Dirkson picked up the glass from the witness stand. “Then sir, if I were to take this glass that you have been drinking from, and give it to Mr. Riker of the police crime lab, and ask him to compare the prints found on it with the unidentified prints found in the apartment of Donald Blake, are you telling me that there is no chance whatsoever that one of those prints might happen to be yours?”
    Douglas Kemper opened his mouth. Closed it again. He blinked twice. He looked around the courtroom, as if looking for a way out. His right hand reached up inside his jacket.
    There was a moment’s stunned anticipation. Dirkson took a step backward. The bailiff stiffened and reached for his gun.
    But it was not a gun Douglas Kemper pulled from his inside jacket pocket.
    It was the torn half of a dollar bill.

32.
    D OUGLAS K EMPER LOOKED AT S TEVE Winslow with pleading eyes. “You have to understand,” he said.
    “Oh, do I?”
    They were talking through the wire mesh screen in the police lockup. It was approximately two hours since Kemper produced the half of a dollar bill in court. In those two hours a lot had happened. Steve Winslow had come forward and announced that he was Kemper’s attorney. Judge Graves then dismissed the jury and refereed a long, brawling argument among Winslow, Dirkson, and Fitzpatrick. In the end, Graves adjourned court for the day and remanded Douglas Kemper to custody.
    So now, at long last, Steve Winslow was face to face with his elusive client.
    He wished he wasn’t.
    “You have to see it from my point of view,” Kemper said.
    “I can barely see it from mine,” Steve said. “You wanna talk, talk, but you better start now, ’cause my patience is wearing thin.”
    “I know, I know,” Kemper said. “Well, look, this thing with Marilyn. It wasn’t my fault. Or hers, either. We never planned anything. It just happened.”
    “It always does.”
    Kemper’s eyes flashed. “No, it doesn’t. You’re trying to make this sound like something cheap. It wasn’t. This is different. This is special. This is—”
    “Bullshit. You can save that for someone who wants to hear it. I don’t give a fuck if you were Romeo and Juliet. The fact is, you woke up and realized you married