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“In the back seat,” Murphy says. “In places that would indicate she was lying down back there.”
“You had an objection, Ms. Smith?” Judge Prentice says.
“I’d like to approach, Your Honor.”
He waves me forward. Ahearn is in lockstep with me as I head up there.
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
Prentice covers the microphone again. “Try.”
“This is bullshit,” I say, right before Prentice reaches for his gavel, overruling my objection, and Kevin Ahearn says there is one more piece of evidence he’d liked to enter into the record.
Eighteen
OFFICER MURPHY IS GETTINGto the good parts now. Because the evidence is a pair of panties.
Which he testifies are Laurel Gates’s panties.
Pink.
Such a joy.
“Your expert and scientific opinion is that these panties did in fact belong to Miss Gates,” Ahearn says.
As if he doesn’t know.
It’s actually a low-rise thong, in the plastic baggie that he’s proudly just held aloft as if carrying the Olympic torch. The kind of lingerie that I occasionally look at but never buy. Just in case I might be the one caught dead in them someday.
“Miss Gates purchased a similar pair at Bonne Nuit in East Hampton, two years ago this Fourth of July,” says Officer Murphy, as eager to please as ever. “But that wouldn’t be enough for me to reach this conclusion, of course.”
Of course not.
“The more important piece, if you can call it that, is some hair belonging to Miss Gates that we found in these panties.”
“Convenient,” I say.
“Was that an objection from you, Ms. Smith?”Ahearn says.
“More of an observation,” I say. Then add, “Withdrawn.”
Ahearn turns back to Officer Murphy. “Where did you find Miss Gates’s undergarment?”
Oh, go ahead,I think.Call it a thong, you dirty boy.
“Wedged into the space between the seat back and the seat,” Murphy says.
Ahearn says he has no further questions but reserves the right to redirect.
I walk toward Officer Murphy, who’s been having such a nice day. But that’s about to change.
“So you found this particular article of clothing in the place where people, oh, I don’t know, sometimes find loose change in the back seat?”
“I suppose,” Murphy says.
“But stuffed in there pretty tight. Am I right?”
“You could say,” Murphy says, as if wondering where I’m going with this.
