Rich Blood (Jason Rich #1)(85)

“Do you remember talking with me in the hours after the discovery of your father’s body?” Shay asked.

“Yes, I do.” Nola looked at her mother.

“Do you remember what you told me?”

“Yes.”

“Will you please tell the jury?”

Jason stood to object. “Your Honor, may we approach?”

Seconds later, he and Shay were standing in front of the bench, speaking in tones barely above a whisper. “Mr. Rich?” His Honor asked.

“It’s our belief that the prosecution is now about to elicit opinion testimony as to who Nola Waters thought killed her father. Namely, my client. We believe this to be highly prejudicial, not to mention irrelevant. Nola Waters is not a medical examiner nor is she a law enforcement officer. Her opinions wouldn’t benefit the jury and would greatly prejudice the defendant.”

“Ms. Lankford, what is the witness about to say?”

“That she told me she thought her mother killed her father.”

Conrad leaned back in his chair, seemed to think about it for a couple of seconds, and peered at Jason. “Objection sustained. You are not to elicit that testimony, Ms. Lankford.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Jason exhaled on his way back to the table, realizing he’d been holding his breath the entire time he’d been standing.

“Ms. Waters, please disregard the previous question. Were you aware of any trouble between your parents in the days prior to your father’s death?”

“Yes, ma’am. They’d been fighting a lot. And my dad had told me and my sister that he was going to file for divorce.”

Jason almost objected on hearsay grounds, but he knew he couldn’t get around this undisputed fact, so he let it stand.

“When did he tell you this?”

“A few days before he was killed. Niecy came home for the weekend, and he told us all together in the kitchen.”

“Thank you, Nola. No further questions.”

“Cross-examination, Mr. Rich?”

Jason stood and looked at Nola and then down at his client, who was openly weeping and staring off into space. Jason had never seen his sister look so helpless, and he felt an ache in his heart for her and Nola.

“No, Your Honor. We have no questions for the witness.”





68


The last witness for the state was Jackson Burns, first up on Thursday morning. Though Jason couldn’t guarantee the state would rest after Burns’s testimony, he thought they would. After covering the preliminaries of his name, occupation, and the fact that he had been friends with Braxton Waters for years and neighbors of the Waterses on Buck Island for over a decade, Shay got down to brass tacks.

“Mr. Burns, were you aware that the Waterses were having trouble in their marriage?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I saw them have arguments several times in the months before Braxton’s death. Course Braxton told me a lot too.”

“Did you ever talk with the defendant about her marital problems?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And when was that?”

“It was the night of July 3.”

“And where did you see Ms. Waters?”

“She was on her dock. Sipping on a drink and listening to some tunes. I was driving by on my boat. I’d been fishing at Goose Pond.”

“And what did you say to her?”

“Just hello and how she was doing. She said she’d been better, and so I asked her what was wrong.”

“How’d she respond?”

“She said that her marriage was over. That Braxton was about to file for divorce and was going to cut her off their joint accounts. She also told me she’d taken fifteen grand out of one of their accounts that afternoon.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Yeah, she did.” Burns glared at Jana, and Jason felt a twinge of anger at the car dealer playing up the punch line.

Shay looked at the jury and back at Burns. “What did she say, Mr. Burns?”

“That she’d kill the bastard before she let him ruin her life.”

Jason could hear tapping next to him and placed his right foot over his sister’s.

“No further questions,” Shay said, turning to Jason. “Your witness.”



“Braxton Waters was your best friend, isn’t that correct, Mr. Burns?” Jason asked, speaking with as much enthusiasm as he could muster and hearing Knox Rogers’s voice in his head. “Never let them see you sweat.”

“Yes.”

“Y’all had been best friends for over thirty years, hadn’t you?”

“Something like that. Since high school, for sure.”

“So, Mr. Burns, surely if you had any idea that your friend Dr. Waters was in mortal danger, you would have told him, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you thought someone was going to kill Braxton Waters, you would also have told the police, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Jason walked to the jury railing. “And isn’t it true that you did neither of those things after Jana Waters threatened to ‘kill the bastard,’ as you quoted her.”