Page 59 of Ashes of Us

When David finished his cross-examination of Elena and she was allowed to sit down, Judge Perella told Mathers to call his next witness, which, according to the sheet he had sent David, was Lucy, something Danica was looking forward to watching, but Mathers shook his head.

“I'm not going to call my last witness.” He announced, looking so pale and sweaty that Danica wondered if he was coming down with something. “Mr. Niehaus can go ahead.”

The Judge raised his eyebrow but didn't comment on it and looked at David instead. “Is your first witness ready to take the stand or would you prefer to recess and continue tomorrow morning?”

“He's ready.” David stood up and shuffled his papers quickly, pulling out a sheet with Sergeant Galvin's name on the top. “I'd like to call Sergeant Drew Galvin to the stand.”

The bailiff left the room and came back a few minutes later with Sergeant Galvin in tow.

When the detective was seated, he gave his full name and spelled it for the court stenographer.

He was then reminded he was still under oath.

David approached him. “Sergeant Galvin, can you please explain to the court how your involvement in this case came to be?”

“I'm the lead detective for the car accident that claimed Jasper Preston's life.” Danica watched as the Sergeant leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him, looking perfectly comfortable and at ease as a witness, but then he'd probably testified at hundreds of trials over the years, so this was probably just another annoying part of his job in his mind.

“Would you mind giving us a brief rundown of what happened?” David asked.

“Just so the court has the whole idea of everything that's led us to this point.” Galvin nodded and launched into a quick overview of the accident, when it occurred, what happened and the charges that had been laid against the other driver.

When he was finished, David thanked him and then asked him to explain why it took so long to inform Danica of Jasper's accident.

“When officers first arrived at the scene, Ms. Gamache was being loaded into an ambulance and claimed to be Jasper Preston's wife.

Since the EMTs believed she was actively miscarrying, it wasn't questioned until a nurse approached us while we were waiting to speak with her at the hospital and told us that Jasper Preston had a different name on file as his wife and next of kin.

When we questioned her, she insisted that Mrs. Preston was his ex-wife and he hadn't updated his next of kin after they got married.

It was only when she was told that we would be reaching out to the next of kin on file regardless, and if she wasn't being truthful, we would arrest her for obstruction of an investigation, that she admitted she was lying. We then had to track down Mrs. Preston, who was in Texas on a three-week business trip. We missed her in Austin and had to reach out to the Dallas police to do the notification on our behalf.”

“What was Ms. Gamache's reason for lying?” Danica noticed that David was matching Galvin's matter-of-fact tone, not trying to sensationalize or dramatize the information, and the stark bluntness in which they were discussing Lucy's lies was somehow making them stand out even more.

“She claimed she panicked.” Sergeant Galvin explained dryly. “The officer who questioned her decided not to push at that time because she had just had a miscarriage and was grieving the loss of her child.”

“It wasn't you who questioned her?” David paused, looking surprised as Galvin shook his head.

“I wasn't assigned to the case until the hospital notified us that Jasper Preston would never wake up after he was out of the operating room, which made it a Vehicular Homicide.

The Traffic Division and the Accident Reconstruction Unit handled the initial collision response.

When I say 'we', I'm referring to the Boston Police Department as a whole. I took over the case the afternoon after the collision, at which point I reached out to set up an interview with Mrs. Gamache, since she was considered a witness.”

David nodded as he understood. Danica was confused about his surprise, but then remembered his practice handled Wills and Estates and Family Law, so he wouldn't need to be well-versed in the policies and procedures of the different police units.

“And when were you able to get Ms. Gamache to come in for an interview?”

“I interviewed her on July 17th.” David raised his eyebrow at the detective's response and glanced at Danica, who could only shrug.

She had met up with Maverick and Sergeant Galvin at the impound lot on July 15th, but thinking back to their conversation, she remembered that Galvin hadn't said he had met with Lucy, just told her about her pretending to be Jasper's wife in the hospital.

“The Collision occurred on July 6th. Why did it take so long to interview her?”

“There were a couple of reasons,” Galvin sighed and ran his hand through his short, salt and pepper brown hair.

“I wasn't assigned the case until July 7th and I was cluing up another case, then I had to read over all the reports from the traffic and accident reconstruction units and follow up on a few things, including having both vehicles processed and getting warrants to collect evidence of the other drivers cell phone usage at the time of the crash, since witnesses at the scene stated he was on his phone. By the time I got around to trying to get in touch with Ms. Gamache, it was the 12th, and then she rescheduled twice.”

David nodded. “And did anything of interest come out of the interview?”

“No,” Galvan shook his head slowly. “Not right away. She told us her version of the events leading up to the accident, and we had no reason to think anything was wrong, at least until we got the dashcam audio back from the Technical Services Unit.”

“Just for the record, what is the Technical Services Unit, and why were the dashcams sent there?” Danica was doing her best to be patient as David kept asking Galvin to clarify things, but it was hard.

She understood David was establishing that the dashcams were appropriately handled and there was no reason for them to be dismissed, but God, this was tedious.

She found herself tuning out as Galvin explained things and only began listening again when David asked why the audio files made them think something was wrong.

“They completely contradicted Ms. Gamache's story.” Galvin shifted in his seat, pulling out a small flip notebook.

“In the interview on the 17th, she stated that Jasper Preston picked her up to take her out for dinner, she told him she was pregnant over dessert, and he was thrilled he was about to be a father.

They were on their way back to her place to celebrate, discussing Mr. Preston leaving his wife to raise their child together, and that's when the accident occurred.”

“Your Honour, I would like to officially enter the transcriptions from Jasper Preston's dash camera into evidence.” He passed a copy of the transcriptions to the court clerk to enter them into evidence as Exhibit 3, and after Mathers once again tried to object, only to be overruled, Judge Perella announced it would be admitted.

David passed a copy to Sergeant Galvin and asked if he recognized them.

When Galvin confirmed he did and why, David announced that he would play the audio clip instead of having the Sergeant read through the transcripts for the court.

Danica swallowed hard and had to force herself to remain seated.

Hearing the clips the first time had been reassuring at the time, but the Sergeant hadn't played all of them for her, saying he didn't think she needed to hear the crash, and she had a feeling David wouldn't be quite so nice about things.

Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing as Lucy's cheerful voice came over the speakers, followed by Jasper's angry one.

The first two files she was able to tune out, having already heard them, and the third was just Jasper yelling at her that she was lying, swearing up a storm while Lucy kept insisting they slept together, and it was his baby.

He told her he would be making an appointment for prenatal paternity testing first thing on Monday morning, and if she tried to back out, he would drag her there by her hair before the clip ended.

The last clip started with Jasper repeatedly telling Lucy to let go and get away from him with lots of colourful language sprinkled in while Lucy kept telling him he needed to leave his bitch of a wife and help her raise their child.

“I swear to god, if you don't let go, I'm going to -” Jasper's voice was low and dangerous, but Lucy interrupted him, utterly unconcerned about his anger.

“No! Why don't you believe it's your child? Why would I lie?” Lucy was whining, not crying or upset, literally whining like a child having a tantrum. “I told you; we slept together!”

“If we did, I was fucking asleep!” Jasper yelled, and then it was silent.

“You fucking cunt! Look what you did! Give it back to me, right now! Dammit, Ga-” Danica let out a muffled sob as the sound of the other car impacting her husbands came through loudly, Jasper and Lucy screaming, tires squealing, glass shattering and horns blaring filled the courtroom, and then silence.

Danica put her face in her hands, wishing she could unhear it.

She could hear Amy sobbing across the aisle and was immediately angry.

In her mind, this was all her fault, and she really hoped she got what was coming to her for dragging Danica through all this.

The courtroom was completely silent for what seemed like a very long time to Danica, and then the Judge cleared his throat.

“Mr. Mathers, when you've finished your cross-examination of Sergeant Galvin, we are going to recess for the day, but I want Ms. Gamache on the stand first thing in the morning. I want to hear from her directly regarding the argument we just heard on those recordings.” Mathers nodded, and Danica noticed he looked like he was about to be sick.

“Mr. Niehaus,” The Judge turned back to David. “Do you have any further questions?”

David shook his head somberly. “No, Your Honour. I believe the record before this court makes it abundantly clear: Jasper Preston neither wanted this child nor fathered it, and if he did, it was not the result of consent. I have nothing further. The respondent rests.”

Judge Perella's mouth went into a thin line as he looked at David for a long moment, then nodded. “I will take your motion under advisement, Mr. Niehaus. For now, I intend to complete the testimony I've ordered before making any final ruling. Mr. Mathers, your witness.”

David sighed softly as he sat beside Danica, and Mathers got up to start questioning Galvin. “Are you okay?” he murmured. “I'm sorry, I didn't realize you hadn't heard the last clip.” He reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder, keeping his voice to a low murmur. “It's over, Danica, we won.”

Danica slowly lowered her hands and gave him a confused look.

“But he wants to hear from Lucy.” She whispered, wondering why he thought they had won already.

She could hear Mathers in the background asking Galvin to walk him through the chain of custody after finding the dashcams, trying to find some reason to have them stricken from the record, but Danica wasn't too concerned about that, the Judge had already agreed they were admittable and Galvin was way too OCD to have messed up something that could make or break his case.

“Oh yeah, trust me.” David gave her a reassuring smile. “That's not going to end well for her.”