Free Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving Page B

who's arguing against him, he's home free. Beyond that, Scoot's prepared. And he can size up a witness after he listens to him for five minutes. Knows what it'll take to cozy up to him or get him so mad he'll spit blood. Most people lie on the witness stand, because the greatest human illusion is that we can remember anything accurately. But if Scoot decides a person's basically telling the truth, he can figure out a way to make him doubt what he believes… sometimes doubt what he actually saw. In my court once in a rape case, he kept a poor woman on the stand for a solid week. When she got off, she was destroyed. It was the most masterful job I'd ever seen, because this woman had described the rape in minute detail. And to this day I believe she was telling the truth."
    Young Warren had frowned. "Then why'd you let him go on at her for a whole week?"
    "Because I was fascinated by what he was doing! He brought three briefcases into court — he knew everything there was to know about this woman's life from the day she was born until the day she took the stand. And he knew everything there was to know about the law on sexual assault. I kept saying, 'Stay away from that, Mr. Shepard, it's not relevant,' and five minutes later he'd be back. I'd interrupt, and he'd come back some other clever way. The prosecutor tried for a while to stop him, then he just sat there and took it up the
culo.
I wouldn't have given old Scoot a cut dog's chance in this case — and by God, he won an acquittal!"
    His father's vision of the trial process made Warren uncomfortable. A battle, a joust between opposing counsel, where each victory is sweet and each defeat adds zest to the next challenge. In law school Warren had understood that most trial lawyers yearned to win — and so did he. Cross-examination was the ultimate confrontation, the gunfight that left either lawyer or witness bleeding in the dust. The great trial lawyer Racehorse Haynes had once said, "I continue to dream of the day when I am examining a witness and my questions are so probing and so brilliant that the fellow blurts out that he, not my defendant, committed the foul murder. Then he will pitch forward into my arms, dead of a heart attack."
    But there had to be more, Warren thought. More than adversaries and great actors, lawyers should be the standard-bearers of what was decent and fair. Should be, but rarely were: for they were born and shaped as human before they could be turned into lawyers.
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    The whites of Scoot's huge black eyes seemed more bloodshot than ever and beneath them were dark yellowish circles where the skin was drawn tight, as if he might have liver trouble or had undergone cosmetic surgery. He was probably sixty-five years old, but his hair was still full and black. Transplanted and dyed, Warren figured, but with flair, leaving small silver-gray wings above the ears.
    Scoot lowered the can of Lone Star. "What do you know about the Dr. Ott case? And my client, Johnnie Faye Boudreau?"
    Warren wondered for a moment why Scoot would want to discuss it with him. But he said, "Whatever I read in the
Chronicle,
and I was there in court when she pled poverty and you got the bail reduced to a hundred grand. And of course I remember the Underhill murder."
    Between pulls at the can of beer and puffs on his cigarette, Scoot gave him a synopsis.
    The victim, Clyde Ott, had been a successful Houston gynecologist. In his early thirties he had married one of his patients, Sharon Underhill, the forty-year-old widow of an oil-and-gas baron and the mother of two teenaged children. With Sharon's money Dr. Ott built the Houston Woman's Clinic, the Ott Clinic for alcoholics, the Underhill Clinic for drug addicts, and then a series of expensive retirement homes with small medical units attached. There was a waiting list to get into all of them.
    "I knew Clyde Ott," Scoot said. "We met now and then at dinner parties, and one of my nephews spent some time in the