The Law of Innocence

by Michael Connelly

  “I’m thinking Dana has two days left at the max,” I said.

  “I’m thinking the same,” Maggie said. “So we go with Opparizio on Wednesday?”

  “Yeah, Wednesday. Good. Means I’ll be telling my side of this in less than seventy-two hours. Can’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  “And our other witnesses are set?”

  “They’re all good to go. I have the retired EPA guy—Art Schultz—flying in Wednesday morning. The rest are all local. So we should have everybody on hand, and you can put them on in whatever order we decide works best.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Depending on what we get on the phone records, you can slip Milton in anywhere or make him the grand finale. Have Moira from the bar and then him as a one-two punch at the end.”

  I nodded. It was good to set up witnesses so that we could handle any surprises or no-shows. Nothing would annoy Warfield or any judge more than having the jury ready but no witnesses to present to them. We needed to avoid that at all costs.

  “What’s our contingency if Opparizio doesn’t come back or sends a lawyer to quash?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Maggie said. “We could go to Warfield for a bench warrant. That’ll work across state lines. We’ll just have to get the locals out there to scoop him up.”

  “That could delay things for days.”

  “That’s why we play to Warfield. No one wants this trial over with more than you. But she’s second on that list, and we’ll make her see that she’s got to use her power to bring Opparizio in. He’s the centerpiece of the defense case. This could be reversed if we don’t get the opportunity to put him on the stand.”

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  There was a pause in the conversation and then I pointed it down another difficult track.

  “What about the FBI?” I asked. “Have we given up on that?”

  “No, not yet,” Maggie said. “I’ve talked to some people over there—sneaking into my office and using the phone. It helps to have the D.A.’s Office come up on their caller ID—they actually take the calls. I’m just trying to get an off-the-record sit-down with Agent Ruth.”

  “That’s a long shot.”

  “I know but I think if I can just talk to her, I can work something out. I know she’ll never get permission to testify, but if she would agree to just come and sit in court when it’s our turn to tell the story, we might win her over.”

  “To do what, testify without the bureau’s permission?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “That would be fantastic. But no way.”

  “You never know. She’s already helped you once. Maybe she’ll do it again. We just need to find a way for her to do it. I think she might come to court anyway to see what comes out about Opparizio and BioGreen.”

  “Well, send her an embossed invitation. We’ll save her a front-row seat. But I think it’ll be a seat that doesn’t get used.”

  It appeared we had covered everything. The week ahead would determine the future of my life. I felt confident in Maggie and myself and our case. But the dread was still there. It never went away. Anything could happen in court.

  Maggie picked up her mask and started looping the straps behind her ears. Even with the elastic the loops were too tight and pulled her ears slightly forward. In that moment I saw our daughter when she was younger and her ears were one of her most pronounced features.

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Oh, nothing. Your mask sort of pulls your ears out. It reminded me of Hay. Remember when we used to say she had to grow into her ears?”

  “I do. And she did.”

  I nodded at the memory and watched Maggie cover her smile.

  “So,” I said. “Who are you dating these days?”

  “Uh, that’s none of your business,” she said.

  “True. But I want to ask you out. I don’t want it to be a problem.”

  “Really? Why? Ask me out where?”

  “Next Sunday—one week from tonight. We go out and celebrate the big NG. I’ll take you to Mozza.”

  “You’re certainly confident.”

  “I have to be. It’s the only way to go. You in or out?”

  “What about Hayley?”

  “Hayley too. The whole firm—Haller, Haller, and McFierce, bringing new meaning to family law.”

  Maggie laughed.

  “Okay, you’re on.”

  She gathered the paperwork and got up. She knocked on the steel door and then turned back to me.

  “Stay safe, Mickey.”

  “That’s the plan. You, too.”

  The door was opened by a deputy, this one without a mask, and I watched her go. I realized after the door closed that I was falling in love again with Maggie McFierce.

  43

  Monday, February 24

  I was already in place at the defense table when Maggie arrived. She dropped a folded Metro section from the Times in front of me as she pulled her chair out.

  “I take it you haven’t seen the paper,” she said.

  “Nope,” I said. “I asked that it be delivered with my breakfast every morning but it never comes.”

  She tapped her finger on a story at the bottom corner of the page. The headline said it all: “Sheriff: Inmate Acted Alone in Assault on ‘Lincoln Lawyer.’”

  I started scanning the story but Maggie summarized it as I read.

  “They say that Mason Maddox acted completely on his own when he attempted to kill you. No one put him up to it and the Sheriff’s Department comes out squeaky clean, even though it was the sheriff’s office that handled the investigation.”

  I stopped reading and tossed the paper onto the table.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Then why’d he do it?”

  “That story says he told investigators he mistook you for another inmate he had a grudge against,” Maggie said.

  “Yeah, well, like I said—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m still going to sue their asses when I get out of here.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  The conclusion of the investigation was not surprising but it made me feel more vulnerable. If the attack by Maddox had been orchestrated as payback by deputies in the jail, there was nothing to stop them from trying again. The first effort had been whitewashed—so would be the second.

  I didn’t get much time to dwell on it. Judge Warfield soon took the bench, and the jury remained in the assembly room while the hearing on the discovery issue that was revealed Friday continued. Maggie McFierce made a strong argument for reinstatement of bail as a sanction against the prosecution but it went down without Dana Berg’s even having to respond. Warfield simply rejected it out of hand with a simple “We’re not doing that.”

  The judge then asked if the defense wanted to entertain other sanctions. Maggie declined and the issue was left open, meaning it might come into play and give the defense an edge down the line if there was a tight ruling involving judicial discretion. The hope was that the judge would remember the prosecution’s unremedied violation of discovery and tip her discretion our way.

  Detective Kent Drucker was returned to the witness stand, and the prosecution took up where it had been forced to leave off Friday. As I had expected, Berg shortened her questions and picked up her pace, using the morning session to take Drucker through the post–crime scene investigation. This included the search of my home the morning after I was arrested, which led to the discovery of the blood and the bullet on the floor of my garage.

  To me this was the most damning evidence in the whole case but also the most confounding. To believe I was innocent, you had to believe that I slept through the murder that occurred right below my living space and then unknowingly drove around with the body in my trunk for a day. To believe I was guilty, you had to believe I went out and drugge
d and abducted Sam Scales, or had someone do it for me, then put his body in the trunk of the Lincoln and shot him before spending the next day with his body still in the trunk while I drove to and from the courthouse. Either way was a hard sell. And both the prosecution and defense knew it.

  At one point Berg put several blow-up photos of my house on easels in front of the jury box to help build the case for the guilty scenario. The house was located on a hillside that sloped down from the rear of the property to the front. At street level was the double-wide garage. Stairs to the right went up to the residential space above, which included the front deck, where I had been confronted by agents Aiello and Ruth. The front door led into the living room and dining room, which were directly over the garage. In the back were my bedroom and my home office.

  Berg moved Drucker through some testimony involving their testing of gunshots with and without various sound suppressors, so-called silencers, and with the garage door open or closed, in an effort to determine if someone could have broken into the garage, put a drugged Sam Scales into the trunk, and then shot him multiple times without my hearing it from above.

  Before Berg could ask the detective what his conclusions were, I objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge told us to approach.

  “Judge, I know what counsel is doing,” I began. “She’s going to ask him if all of this testing with gunfire could be heard upstairs, but the witness is not an expert in ballistics or the science of sound. He can’t give an opinion on this. No one can. There are too many factors not accounted for. Was the TV on? Was the stereo on? What about the washing machine and the dishwasher? You see, Judge? You can’t allow this. Where was I in the house when this was supposedly happening? In the shower? Asleep with earplugs in? She is trying to rebut a defense position before we have even put up a defense.”

  “Counsel makes a good point, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “I’m inclined to stop this line of questioning.”

  “Your Honor,” Berg said. “We’ve gone down this path for the past twenty minutes. If I’m not allowed to finish, the state will be unfairly held in a bad light by the jury. The witness is describing efforts made by the police to see if the suspect could actually be innocent. What happens during the defense phase when Mr. Haller trots out the tired tunnel-vision defense? He’ll accuse Detective Drucker of only focusing on his guilt to the exclusion of possibly exculpatory evidence. He can’t have it both ways.”

  “You make a good point as well, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “We are going to take the lunch break now and I’ll have a ruling on the objection when we come back at one sharp.”

  Court was adjourned and I was led back to the courtside holding cell for the hour break. Maggie didn’t join me there for almost a half hour, finally coming in with a sandwich Lorna had picked up at Cole’s, as well as news from Arizona.

  “They got him,” she said. “He was staying in his suite, having food brought in, and they thought they were going to have to door-knock him with the subpoena, when he ventured out to the pool. They got him in a bathing suit and bathrobe.”

  “Tony Soprano,” I said, recalling that the television mobster liked to lounge around the pool in a bathrobe.

  “Exactly what I thought.”

  “They get it on video?”

  “The whole thing. I have it on my phone. I can show you in the courtroom but they wouldn’t let me bring it in here.”

  I unwrapped my sandwich. It was roast beef on a roll. I took a bite and spoke with my mouth full.

  “Good. So we have Opparizio for Wednesday—if he shows up.”

  I took another bite. The sandwich was delicious, but then I noticed she wasn’t eating.

  “You want some of this?” I asked. “It’s great.”

  “No, I’m too nervous to eat,” Maggie said.

  “What, about the trial?”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t think Maggie McFierce ever got nervous.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “So, who is Opparizio using these days? Back during the Lisa Trammel case, he used Zimmer and Cross to try to quash our subpoena. They failed. I heard he fired them right after that.”

  “As far as we can tell from documents we’ve located on BioGreen, he uses the firm of Dempsey and Geraldo for a lot of his stuff. Whether they provide criminal defense, I don’t know.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve run up against them before. They rep a lot of cops. Especially Dempsey. Looks like with Opparizio they’re at the other end of the spectrum.”

  Maggie pursed her lips and I knew she was considering something.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just thinking, is all,” she said. “I’d like to get a list of their clients who are cops. See if there’s a connection to Officer Milton.”

  “You can get that.”

  “They’re not going to just give it to me.”

  “No, but you have access to the county courts database. Put their names into it, and you’ll get hits on every case they’re involved with.”

  “I took a leave, Mickey, remember? I could get fired if I did that.”

  “You told me yesterday you were sneaking in to use your office phone.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How’s—”

  Deputy Chan opened the cell door and told us it was time to go back to court. Maggie and I dropped the conversation there.

  Once we were back at the defense table, Maggie pulled her phone and played me the video she had received from Cisco in Scottsdale. She had the sound down low but I could hear enough. And I could tell from Opparizio’s contorted and red face that he was angry at being served with the subpoena. He was equally upset with the camera recording the event. He lunged at it, his bathrobe flapping open and his flour-white gut hanging over his board shorts. The man behind the camera—one of Cisco’s Indians—was lighter on his feet and the lens swiftly moved out of range of Opparizio’s swinging hand without ever losing him in the frame.

  The reference to Tony Soprano had been spot-on and I wondered if Opparizio himself embraced the resemblance.

  After missing the camera, Opparizio followed the momentum of his swinging arm and turned back toward Cisco. Opparizio took two steps toward him while Cisco calmly stood his ground. I saw his shoulders and arms tense. So did Opparizio. He thought better of his move and stopped in his tracks. He went with the finger instead of the fight, pointing it at Cisco’s face and yelling an empty threat at him. At no point did Opparizio say anything about the subpoena being invalid when served in another state. He clearly didn’t know.

  Maggie cut the video as Chan announced that court was coming to order.

  “That’s the end,” she whispered. “He runs back to his room after cussing Cisco out.”

  She dropped the phone into her briefcase as Judge Warfield took the bench.

  Before bringing the jury back in, the judge ruled on the objection I had made.

  “Ms. Berg, you have accomplished what you set out to show,” she said. “Detective Drucker has testified to the experiments at the defendant’s house, but his opinions about what the experiments mean are irrelevant. You will move on to another area of inquiry.”

  Another minor victory for the defense.

  The jury was brought in and Detective Drucker returned to the stand. Berg completed eliciting his direct testimony an hour into the afternoon, ending with a line of questioning designed to outline the motive for my killing Sam Scales: money.

  Through Drucker’s testimony about the search of my records at my warehouse, she introduced the letter I had sent Scales in a final effort to collect the money he owed me. The letter was entered into the record as a state’s exhibit without my objection. I didn’t want to keep it from the jury. It was my belief that it cut both ways, and that would become clear when I put on my defense.

  Through her questioning, Berg tried to make it seem to the jury that the letter was a
key piece of evidence that I had tried to conceal by burying it in records hidden in a massive warehouse full of other possessions and junk.

  “Where exactly did you find this letter in Mr. Haller’s warehouse?”

  “There was a small closet toward the back of this place. The door was kind of hidden behind a rack of clothes. But we found it, and inside we found some file cabinets. The drawers were full of files and didn’t really seem to be in any order. We found a file on Sam Scales and the letter was inside it.”

  “And when you read the letter, did you recognize it as potential evidence in the case?”

  “Yes, right away. It was a demand—a final demand—for money that Haller believed he was owed.”

  “Did you perceive the letter as a threat to Sam Scales?”

  Maggie hit my arm and nodded toward the witness stand. She wanted me to object before Drucker could answer—giving an opinion on what should be a jury decision. But I shook my head. I wanted Drucker’s answer so that I could turn it against him when it was my time.

  “Yes, definitely a threat,” Drucker said. “It says right in the letter that this was the final request before serious action would follow.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” Berg said. “Now the final thing I want to do is have you introduce a video in which you spoke to the defendant, but in his capacity as his own lawyer. Do you recall that conversation?”

  “I do.”

  “And it was video-recorded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s play that for the jury.”

  Maggie leaned in to me.

  “What is this?” she whispered.

  “His last try to get me to confess,” I whispered back. “I told him to fuck off.”

  The video was played on the big wall screen over the clerk’s station. It was from an interview room at Twin Towers. I had already been jailed for a week or so when Drucker and his partner, Lopes, came to see me to tell me what they had and to see if I would roll over.