Inside, the audience is milling, standing room only. I look at my watch and we are late. Kline is not at his table, nor is Stobel. Acosta is at ours, backed by a guard. I send Harry forward to chaperon. Something is up—it is in the air. One of the bailiffs approaches.
“They want you back in chambers,” he says.
I make my way down the corridor past the bench, wondering what intrigue of procedure Kline is up to now. My best guess, he is renewing his motion to reopen his case to call Lenore, some new evidence he claims to have discovered.
“They have been waiting for you inside.” It is a stern look I get from Radovich’s clerk when I show my face that is the first indication I may be wrong.
The minute I am through the judge’s door, I can feel that the air is heavy with a charge of electricity.
Radovich is behind his desk, brows knit and heavy, like images of God from the vaulted ceiling of some Renaissance chapel. Kline barely looks at me, and Stobel turns away.
“Mr. Madriani. I’m glad you could make it,” says the judge. This is clearly his party, and it has me worried.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” I offer some feeble excuse about cameras in the corridor.
“Never mind that,” says Radovich. “There have been some serious charges made. During the break Mr. Kline had one of his experts examine that calendar.”
All of a sudden there is a knot in my stomach the dimensions of a good-sized boulder.
“We are concerned,” says Radovich, “that they could not find any evidence of indented writing.”
I actually stammer in trying to speak, something Kline seems to enjoy, if a smile is an indication.
“How thorough could they have been in the time that they had?” I finally say.
“That could be it,” says the judge. “But I thought it was only fair to tell you that the people are making an inquiry in this matter.”
“Something for their case in rebuttal?” I say.
“That’s not what we have in mind,” says Kline. “I’m not worried about your witness. I suspect the jury can see through that for themselves. But suborning perjury is a more serious matter. Especially for an officer of the court.” Kline’s anger has laid quick roots.
“You’d better hope you can back that up,” I tell him. I take a step forward, in his face, as I say this. The best defense. . .
“For your sake I hope that he cannot,” says Radovich.
There are a million reasons, I tell the judge, why impressions of writing may be transitory. If heavy items were laid on top of the calendar in the evidence lockup, or if it was folded or rolled, what was there when we examined it months ago might now be obliterated.
“I am told that a scanning electron microscope can detect impressions if they were there,” says Kline. “We will find out.”
“Enough said,” says Radovich. “We have a trial to finish,” he says.
Up from behind his desk, he does not give me a warm look as we exit his chambers, though he is careful not to linger behind to show favoritism with Kline or Stobel. If nothing else, my antics with Franks as a witness, I suspect, have now lost me the trust of this judge.
The first thing I notice about Tony Arguillo as he takes the stand is that the swagger is still in his walk. He knows that the note taken by Lenore that night has long since been destroyed. No doubt by now Kline has found some way to inform him that the impression evidence, if it exists, has its limitations. The contents that could point to Tony are hearsay and inadmissible. He has the appearance of the bullet-proof man as he sits in the chair and looks at me.
“Can you tell us what you do for a living?” I say.
“Police officer. Sergeant,” he says.
“You were one of the officers present in the alley the night the body of the victim was discovered?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you know her, the victim?”
Tony looks at me. He would no doubt deny this if he thought he could. Still, we have already established by other witnesses that Hall was a police groupie, with a long association with Vice and its members.
“We were acquainted,” he finally says.
“Professionally or socially?”
“Professionally.” He is not willing to cross this line.
“Did you ever go to the victim’s residence?”
“Objection. Vague as to time,” says Kline.
“Sustained.”
“Let’s just talk about the time prior to her death. At any time before she was murdered had you ever had occasion to be inside the victim’s residence?”
Again Tony wants to consider this before he answers. It is the problem when you have no clue as to what the other side knows.
“It’s possible I was there,” he says. “I coulda been. As a cop you visit a lot of places. But I don’t have a specific recollection.”
“Is it possible that you were there more than once?”
By now Tony must figure there is some fact feeding this question, perhaps a nosy neighbor who has seen him on more than one occasion.
“I don’t know. Anything’s possible.”
“Indeed.” I say this as I walk away from the podium and Tony, my face toward the jury, an expression that says, “Let’s consider the possibilities.”
“You don’t have any specific recollection of such visits?”
He thinks for a moment, wondering what I may know, considers the safest answer, then says, “No.”
“Well. If you were there, is it fair to assume that these were professional visits and not social calls?”
“Right, they would have been professional.” This seems for Tony the only certainty.
“What would you have been doing there professionally?”
“If I have no specific recollection of being at her apartment, how am I supposed to remember why I might have gone there?” He looks at the jury a little nervously, then laughs, like the logic of this is self-evident.
“Is it possible you might have been there discussing cases?”
“Probably,” he says. “We both worked Vice.”
“Precisely,” I say.
There are certain taboos, questions I cannot ask Tony, that relate to my prior representation, questions of corruption that I skirt.
“When you were there, if you were there”—we continue to play this game—“is it likely you would have gone there with others besides the victim, or would you have been alone?”
“I can’t remember. Probably with others,” he says. This sounds better to Tony, more businesslike.
“Do you know, did the victim, did Ms. Hall, have your home telephone number?”
“How do I know?”
“Did she ever call you at home?”
He makes a face. Tony knows we have access to phone records.
“She might have.”
“Your home number is unlisted, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So how would she get it unless you gave it to her?”
This stumps him for a moment. Tony in a quandary, darting eyes. Then he says, “She could have gotten it from the department, if she had a business reason.”
“Ah. Policy? To give out your number?”
“Sometimes.” He actually smiles, satisfied with a good answer; he knows I cannot check this out without more time.
“So your number could have been included in her personal phone directory?”
“I don’t know.”
“Unfortunately, nor do we. It seems the pages under the letter A were ripped from that directory.”
Tony looks at me as if this were an accusation. Kline is on his feet, about to object, when I turn it into a question.
“You wouldn’t know how this happened, the pages being
ripped out?” I say.
“No. How would I know?”
“I thought it might be something else you forgot,” I tell him.
“Objection.” Kline shoots to his feet.
“Sustained. The jury is to disregard. Mr. Madriani!” says Radovich. He shakes the gavel in my direction. “Are you done with this witness?”
“Not quite, Your Honor.”
“Then get on with it, but be quick.”
“Sergeant Arguillo, can you tell the jury how they came to identify the victim in the alley the night she died?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, as I understand it she was not clothed or carrying any form of identification. How did the police know who she was?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure,” he says.
“But you were on the scene.”
“Right,” he says.
“You didn’t see the body? You never looked at the victim?”
“Maybe from a distance,” he says.
“So how did they identify her?”
“They had some trouble,” he says. “It took a while.”
“How long?”
“A couple of hours,” he says.
“And in the end how did they do it?”
“I think it might have been another cop,” he says. “Somebody from the department who recognized her.”
“But you had worked with the victim in Vice,” I remind him.
“True,” he says. “But I didn’t get a close look.”
The problem for Tony is that he is now victimized by his own conniving. It took time to call Lenore, to have her trek to the victim’s apartment, to look for a note and destroy it. Tony needed time. The only way he could buy it was to keep his colleagues in the dark as to the victim’s identity. Tony kept his cool, stayed mum at the scene, and used his cellular.
“So you waited for two hours in the dark, looking for evidence, knowing that the other officers could not identify the body, and you never thought to take a look yourself?”
“No,” he says.
“Did anybody order you not to look at the body?”
“No.”
“You simply chose not to?”
“Right,” he says. This does not fit the image. A nearly naked young woman, even in death a feast for an army of male eyes, ogling cops from three jurisdictions, and Tony doesn’t take the time to look.
“Were you there in Ms. Hall’s apartment that night?” I ask. “The night she was killed?”
“That’s a lie,” he says. As a witness, Tony is too hot by half.
“Objection. Vague as to time.” Kline understands the question. Tony does not.
He suddenly senses that he has overreacted, but in doing so, has conveyed more than he intended.
“Rephrase the question,” says the judge.
“Sorry,” I say. By now I am smiling at Tony, who is looking red-faced.
“Did you have occasion to visit the victim’s apartment that evening or in the early-morning hours following her murder? In your official capacity?” I add.
“Oh,” says Tony. “Yeah. I was one of the cops—officers—who was directed to the scene after her body was found.”
“After she was identified?”
“Right.”
“And who directed you there?”
“Lieutenant Stobel. He was in charge.”
“And what did you do once you arrived at the apartment?”
“Canvassed for evidence. Talked to neighbors. The usual.”
I turn from him for a moment.
“Can you tell us, Sergeant, how it is that your name came to appear in a note stuck to the victim’s calendar for the date of the murder?”
There is commotion in the courtroom, jostling bodies in the press rows for a better angle to see the witness.
“Objection!” Kline is on his feet as if propelled by a skyrocket. “Assumes facts not in evidence. Outrageous! Can we approach?” he asks the judge.
“Sustained,” says Radovich. “To the bench,” he says, eyes like two blazing coals, aimed at me.
“You,” he points at me before I get there, “are trying my patience,” he says.
“We request an admonishment, before the jury,” says Kline. He’s gauged the judge’s anger and will take advantage where he can get it.
“Where is this going?” asks the judge.
“We have a right to ask whether he met with the victim that night before her death.”
Kline argues that there is no basis in the evidence for such a belief.
“We should be allowed to ask the question,” I insist.
Radovich mulls this momentarily as we both eye him.
“One question,” he finally says, “but no innuendo.”
Before I am back to the rostrum he is giving the admonition. “The jury is to disregard the last question by the defense counsel as if it had never been asked.”
He gives me a nod, like ask your question.
“Sergeant. Did you have a date with the victim, Brittany Hall, on the evening of July fifteenth, the night that she was murdered?”
“No,” he says. Tony seems at a loss as to how to play this, whether indignation or detached professionalism, and so the denial comes off as something less than emphatic.
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Objection. Asked and answered,” says Kline.
“Absolutely.” Tony answers before the judge can rule, and Radovich lets it stand.
“And to your knowledge, your name did not appear on a small Post-it note on her calendar for the date in question?”
The inference here is slick, the jury left to wonder if Tony did not remove the note himself, once he reported to the scene.
Kline shoots to his feet, an objection at the top of his lungs.
“Your Honor, I’m asking him if he knows.”
“Sustained,” says Radovich. “I’ve warned you,” he says. He’s halfway out of his chair up on the bench, the gavel pointed at me like a Roman candle about to shoot flaming colored balls.
“No. There was no note,” says Tony.
“Shut up,” says Radovich.
Tony hunches his head down into his collar, like a turtle shrinking into its shell.
“You don’t answer a question when I’ve sustained an objection.” He would add, “you stupid shit” but the collection of bulging eyes in the jury box has curbed his temper.
“The jury will disregard the question, and the answer,” he says. “Both are stricken.”
The only one foolish enough to speak at this moment is yours truly.
“There is a good-faith reason for the question,” I tell him.
Radovich looks at me as if there is nothing this side of the moon that could possibly justify what I have done after his earlier admonition.
“There is evidence, a basis upon which I have pursued this question.”
He sends the jury out. Radovich looks at me, fire in his eyes. “In chambers,” he says. “And it better be good.”
CHAPTER 30
IT STARTS AS A TRIP TO THE JUDICIAL WOODSHED.
“I hope to hell you brought your toothbrush.” It is Radovich’s opener to me from behind the mahogany desk once we arrive in chambers. He is not smiling. He doesn’t sit or remove his robes, the sign that he expects this to be short—a summary execution.
Kline and Stobel take up positions like bookends, with Harry and me in the middle. We huddle, standing around the desk, jockeying for position to advance our arguments. The court reporter has his little machine between his knees, though he has not started scribing. My guess is that the judge would not want these overt threats on the record, one of the perks that come with power.
“You keep stirring the embers on this note from the calendar,” says Radovich. “Something you can’t prove up.”
“There is a reason,” I say.
“It better damn well be a good one, or you’re gonna do the night in jail,” he tells me.
There are sniggers and smiles from Kline and Stobel, like two kids who just farted in choir.
Kline weighs in, making his pitch that we are trying to impeach our own witness, a taboo of procedure, unless Tony is declared to be a hostile witness. He claims there is no basis for this.
“There’s no evidence that he’s lying, or that he’s surprised you.”
The legal test in pursuing the alleged note on the calendar is a good-faith belief. If there is some basis in fact for me to believe the note existed and that Tony’s name was on it, I have a right to ask. If not, I will be undergoing cavity searches by sunset.
I ask to make an offer of proof, a showing that I have such a good-faith belief. I ask Radovich if I can bring in one more person.
The judge nods. “Make it quick.”
When Harry opens the door it is to admit Laurie Snyder, the special master appointed by Radovich to oversee the collection of our physical evidence.
Snyder is in her late thirties, a big woman, taller than I—dark hair and all business. She is now in private practice, but spent eight years working as a prosecutor in this town. Her appearance in chambers takes some of the edge off of Radovich’s attitude, so that when he sees her he is compelled to at least smile and offer a greeting.
After this he slumps into his chair, a concession that this is likely to take longer than he’d hoped.
“Two days ago, early in the afternoon,” I say, “evidence was discovered, the significance of which was only made apparent to us this morning,” I tell Radovich.
“I should have known,” says Kline. “Last-minute surprises. Your Honor, if this is evidence we have not seen I’m going to object.”
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