“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.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell Braxton.”
“No.”
“You didn’t do these things because you weren’t worried in the slightest that Jana Waters was going to follow through with her threat, were you?”
“No . . . I thought she was ranting. Jana did that sometimes. She’d get mad, get to talking.”
“You didn’t consider what she said a true threat, did you?”
“No,” Burns said.
Jason turned to Judge Conrad. “No further—”
“I wish I had,” Burns added.
Jason frowned at the witness. “Your Honor, I object, and I’d ask that Mr. Burns’s comment be stricken from the record and that the jury be instructed to disregard his last remark.”
“Sustained,” Judge Conrad said. “Members of the jury, please disregard Mr. Burns’s last comment.”
“I have nothing further at this time,” Jason said, still staring at Burns, who was now looking down at the floor.