“I know that against an enemy like the AB, justice is an elusive concept, and the normal rules don’t seem to apply. Especially when you’ve lost one of your own. When punishment isn’t possible, when the enemy can’t be any more incapacitated than he already is, then revenge is the only thing left to fight for. But I think you made that decision a long time ago, even before Dad and Dot were killed. I think this ceased being an ordinary investigation—with arrests and indictments and prosecutions—around the time you began to work on it.”
“So what is it, if not an investigation?” Braxton said.
“You’ve been running a domestic counterinsurgency, working to sabotage and destabilize the AB, using informants like my dad. And like Edwards. I know you were present at the scene the day Edwards was killed. It doesn’t take too many inferences to guess why you were there.”
“Did your father tell you that?”
“No,” I said. “But he’s not a snitch. He never was. He was a fighter.”
Finally, Braxton’s shell seemed to crack a little. “That he was,” he said, lowering himself to the ground, now sitting facing me from five feet away.
On the other side of the park, a drum circle was starting up, its insistent, unskilled beat seeming to electrify the chill evening air.
“I know my dad better than you think,” I said. “I just can’t see him pledging fifteen years of his life to snitching on the AB. What I can imagine is his dedicating all that time and more to the mission of sabotaging these fuckers from within.”
“What’s this deal you’re talking about?” Braxton asked. “You’ve got two minutes before I need to break off this extremely insecure meeting and get back to my run.”
The fact that he was here at all had told me what I needed. I knew I’d gained his interest. Now I just wanted to close the deal. “It’s not information you care about,” I said to him, “though you pretend it is. You’re really waiting for just the right opportunity to drop the biggest possible bomb on the Aryan Brotherhood. You figured my brother was your best chance to do that. The thing is, you figured wrong.”
Braxton’s lip curled. “You’re the guy I should be dealing with, huh?”
“My father and Edwards were your best assets in the AB’s organization. Normally, losing them would represent a tremendous blow. But being in a disadvantageous position also brings certain possibilities to light. You’re now in a situation not unlike your targets. The same as these guys running criminal empires behind bars, you’ve already lost everything there is to lose. So, if you’ve learned anything, it should be that the person with nothing left to lose is probably your most dangerous adversary.”
“If you’re trying to get me to confirm or deny that the Bureau still has informants in the organization, it won’t work.” Braxton started to rise. “Tell Bo Wilder I said hello. You may even get to see him in person one of these days.”
“I’m sure Bo and his pals are pretty eager to know whether my father and Edwards were their only rats. I can’t help them. You’re the only one who knows.”
Braxton laughed. “You’re damn right. And I don’t share, not with crooked lawyers.”
It was easy to control my response. That’s because I’d sensed the undercurrent of excitement in his voice, which told me he saw where I was going but was holding back, trying to make me think he didn’t want to play.
“You wouldn’t spill anything,” I told him. “That’s exactly the point.” My tone was even. “It’s why I sent you the subpoena. One of the reasons, anyway. The chief reason, of course, being that you’re the key eyewitness to Edwards’s murder and can testify that Alice Ward was hysterical, in a panic.”
“You’re forgetting one thing. You can’t make me take the stand.”
“No, but you can choose to. Surely your boss will let you if you tell him why. It’ll be just the stage you need to accomplish your goal. Think of the lead: ‘Today, on the witness stand, an FBI agent denied that the FBI currently has confidential sources in place at the highest level of the Aryan Brotherhood.’” I paused, then went on. “Who’s to say that my father didn’t tell me all he knew before he died? My experience tells me that the questions I ask in cross-examination often prove more meaningful to my listeners than the answers a witness gives.”
“It sounds to me as if you’re looking for some kind of understanding that I’ll give testimony favorable to your client. Such an agreement’s not possible. What I say may be favorable, or it may be unfavorable. But if I do agree to testify, I’m not going to lie. You’ll get the truth … and your client may not like it.”
I started to speak, but he held up a hand. “You’re hoping I’ll tell you what I saw. But it’s not going to happen. And whatever I have to say, you’ll hear it for the first time when I take the witness stand—assuming I do. I just want to make sure you comprehend the terms. I’m not your friend, and I’m not your client’s friend. You need to realize, I don’t have the slightest interest in helping your client avoid prison.”
None of this was what I wanted, but I felt my only choice was to go along. “Fine. Ms. Ward’s willing to take her chances. So when will I have your answer?”
He rose from the ground, brushing himself off. “I have to get clearance from the director. This may have to go all the way to the Attorney General’s Office, which puts it above my pay grade. You’ll know I’ve agreed to testify if my name is called and I walk into the courtroom and up to the witness stand. If you don’t see me, then, well, you’ll also have your answer.”
CHAPTER 17
The start of Alice Ward’s trial was delayed by a day, owing to extra security procedures instituted in response to Sims’s threat to tamper with the jury. I’d revealed this tactic, and the need to take it seriously, during a conference in judicial chambers last Friday afternoon.
After hearing me out, an angry Judge Ransom had initially proposed to remove me from the case on the grounds that, in his view, I’d become a potential witness against my client. This would disqualify me from also being her lawyer. Sloane, for her part, insisted she had no intention of informing the jury of Sims’s threats. Finally, Ransom cooled down enough to admit that the situation wasn’t my fault, especially after I’d explained that my family had been threatened, too.
“And you don’t feel that’s a conflict of interest?” he concluded.
“If it’s not me in the chair, it’d just be some other lawyer, maybe someone who’d be more intimidated by these kinds of tactics. The threats have nothing to do with my client. She deserves the best possible defense.”
“And you simply happen to be convinced that you’re the one who can give it to her,” Judge Ransom said.
I chose to interpret this comment as not requiring a response. As for the judge’s other questions, I respectfully declined to answer them.
“Any chance of your client reconsidering and taking that deal?” Sloane inquired after the conference.
“I’m afraid not,” I told her. “She’s determined to take her chances.”
“You really think you can beat a murder charge? Or are you banking on an ineffective assistance claim based on Sims’s threats against you?”
“I don’t try cases to lose them,” is what I told her.
“Look, if he’s threatened you, he must have threatened her. Come on, Leo. Do the right thing. Step aside. Let the PD’s office take over. The judge told you just now he thinks you should withdraw. I wouldn’t oppose a continuance.”
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t tempted. Every attorney wishes at some point for the whole complicated weight of a looming trial to suddenly be lifted from his shoulders, and last-minute pleas were common enough that such a reprieve felt tempting, within reach. But I knew that postponing the trial would only postpone the inevitable for Alice Ward, and for me. I might not live to see the retrial, but I was pigheadedly certain I was the only lawyer who could win her case. And winning, it seemed to me, was the only way out—for both of us.
I spent
the weekend working out of an office I’d borrowed from a colleague, splitting my time between there and the jail, having deemed my own place unsafe now that a warrant had been signed for Sims’s arrest.
The jury would be sequestered. “It’s an overreaction, I’m sure,” Ransom had informed the lawyers on Monday. This was when he’d called us back into chambers to discuss the special protocol he was using, a series of safeguards normally reserved only for gang cases.
“But I’ve got to stand for reelection next year, so I don’t intend to have an incident on my watch, or even the possibility of one. They’ll be bused back and forth to the hotel, and their meals will be brought in.”
As a result of this extra hardship that jury service would entail for those chosen, culling the panel took longer than usual. After a day and a half of the same questions repeated again and again, we’d ended up with a collection of fourteen retirees, widows and widowers, hourly workers, and students. All they had in common was that none of them had been able to dream up a good enough reason to get out of it. These men and women would be tasked with deciding Alice Ward’s fate.
Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, Sloane rose to give her opening statement. She worked without notes, seeming relaxed, entirely confident in her case and in possession of the courtroom, assured of her ability to command the jurors’ attention. I glanced covertly at my client, dressed in a borrowed pantsuit that made her appear even more diminutive than normal, my expression reinforcing the advice I’d shared with her before court this morning: Don’t react.
Sloane was competent and professional, beginning with a summary of the known and provable facts, all succinct and damning. She efficiently narrated the circumstances of the shooting itself, establishing that the defendant had run deliberately up to Edwards and shot him in the head without a word. This made it more than clear that there was no possibility of the shooting’s having been an accident, nor a crime in the heat of passion; rather, it was a willful, premeditated killing. Sloane then transitioned into the state’s burden of proof, running through the elements of the crime, including the state’s responsibility to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Edwards’s murder hadn’t been the result of provocation or committed in the heat of passion.
Suddenly, she switched tracks. “Now I want to talk to you for a few minutes about what the state doesn’t have to prove.” Here she paused, gathering the jurors’ attention as she prepared to discuss the weakness at the center of the DA’s case. She waited until she had their maximum focus.
“You’re probably asking yourself, why would a young woman commit such a horrific crime? Throughout this trial, I’m going to be as honest with you as I can. And the honest answer is, I don’t know. I doubt any of us ever will understand completely. But it’s important for you to realize that the presence or absence of a motive doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the question of her guilt.
“Alice Ward knew the victim years ago, when she was a child. Then he went to prison for six years. She didn’t see him again until the day she shot him. As you listen to the evidence, I want you to think about how much time six years is. Time for thought, time for reflection. Time for planning. Time for premeditation.
“Of course, even six seconds can be enough time to premeditate a murder. Or to have second thoughts. The evidence is going to show that in those few seconds before the murder, Alice Ward made a final, deliberate choice, and it was an irrevocable one. At the end of this trial I’ll stand here again and ask that you return a verdict of guilty on the charge of first-degree murder.”
Sloane sat down. I was already on my feet, moving quickly to usurp the jurors’ attention from Sloane’s last words.
I didn’t waste words. “Randolph Edwards lived in the house next door to the apartment building where Leann Ward and her daughter lived. They had one of the second-floor units. It was a cramped one-bedroom. Leann was a single mother who waited tables. Some nights her tips were good. Others, not. But even on the good nights, it probably seemed to her that there was never enough.
“Leann’s death is on the books as an unsolved murder. She was found with a needle in her arm. The cause of death was a heroin overdose. I say ‘she was found,’ but her daughter Alice was the one who discovered her unresponsive body. She was there in the next room, sleeping or trying to sleep, the night her mother was killed. The needle was still in her mother’s arm the next morning when this young girl went to wake her. Leann’s eyes were open and her skin was cold.”
Here I moved over to place a hand on Alice’s shoulder, allowing the jurors the chance to look at her—and, I hoped, to see her for what she was: a scared teenager who ought to have just gotten her driver’s license. I’d prepared her for this moment, and she tentatively raised her head.
“At first, it looked like an accident, a single mother who’d yielded to the pressures of trying to support a daughter on an unreliable income in an uncertain world. But the medical examiner’s reports show marks on the victim’s neck and bruising on her wrists, indicating she was held down. The death was ruled a homicide. No one was ever arrested—though that doesn’t mean the police and the authorities don’t know who did it. But let me first go back and give you a picture of Leann’s situation in the period preceding her death.”
Sticking closely to the parts of my client’s story we’d rehearsed, I briefly summarized what I knew about the Plum Tree holdup, Leann Ward’s role in it, and the circumstances of her murder after the job was botched. Then I told the jurors about Sims’s and Edwards’s imprisonments on unrelated charges.
“You see, the FBI was interested in these men. But the federal government was after a bigger target than a pair of murderers associated with a local restaurant heist gone bad. The Aryan Brotherhood had started as a prison gang. But by the time Sims and Edwards went to prison, it had become one of the largest organized crime syndicates in California. What this meant was that the FBI needed reliable, long-term informants inside the organization.
“There’s no dispute that my client killed Randolph Edwards. She pulled the trigger. However, I expect the evidence to show that she was provoked, and that she acted in the heat of passion. As you listen to the evidence, I want you to ask yourselves why the state, represented here by Ms. Sloane, who says she wants to be honest, is trying to hide or obscure so many key details, beginning with what happened at the Plum Tree years ago and ending with an FBI agent being an actual witness to the shooting.
“At the end of this case, I’m confident you’ll see that Alice Ward was provoked by calculating men expert at manipulating others to do their dirty work for them. Men who don’t mind spilling blood if it serves their goals. Men like Jack Sims and his counterparts in the FBI.”
CHAPTER 18
I’d bought a half-dozen prepaid cell phones before Teddy and his family’s departure with Car for Anaheim. They’d driven my Saab down, and were staying in a rental condo that we’d reserved and paid for under an assumed name through an online site. That evening, after opening statements, I checked in with my brother.
He picked up on the first ring. “Still having fun?” We’d talked twice already: once on Friday, when Teddy’d called to confirm their safe arrival, and again on Monday night.
“One of us is,” he answered. “We spent yesterday and today at the amusement park. Leo, I can’t handle these crowds. After an hour my head feels as if it’s going to explode. Tomorrow’s a rest day. We’re going to stick close to home, float in the pool. And watch our backs.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” I then briefly filled him in about the tack I’d taken in my opening statement, and how I’d worked in a mention of Jack Sims’s name in open court for the first time, suggesting a connection to the FBI. However, as I’d already informed my brother, there’d been a warrant out for Sims’s arrest since Friday afternoon.
“I’ll tell Car. Don’t worry, he’s already on his toes.”
“Where is he now?”
“Went to get groceries.
He ought to be back soon.”
I could tell from Teddy’s voice that things weren’t going so well on that front. “I know the situation isn’t ideal,” I said, trying to sound understanding, apologetic, and unyielding all at once. “But, from a selfish point of view, I don’t think I’d be able to do this if he weren’t there.”
“Car’s not a man with a lot of patience for human weakness,” Teddy said. “He’s like you. He remembers how I used to be, and he keeps expecting me to take charge. But unlike you, he hasn’t come around to the way things are these days.”
“It may seem that way, but people have a funny way of expressing loyalty. You know, after Dad and Dot were murdered, Car told me the story of how he first came to work with you. That court case you were working, the shooting he was involved in. He talked about coming clean to you and you offering him a job.”
“No shit.” The line was silent for a moment. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“He hasn’t,” I assured him. “Car is who he is. He’s unforgiving, and he’s caustic, but he’s very, very good at what he does—and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to keep you and your family safe. He and Tam getting along okay?”
“Like oil and water. So, I guess about as good as you’d expect.”
In the background I heard a door thump open, and Carly’s voice asking Daddy who he was talking to. Teddy let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s Leo, darling,” he told her. Then, more distinctly: “Here’s Carly to say hello.”
“Uncle Leo?” Carly asked, and as soon as she heard my voice she began breathlessly telling me about all the Disney princesses she’d seen over the last few days, several of whose names I hadn’t even heard before, and all the rides she’d been on. For more than a minute I couldn’t get a word in, even during her brief pauses, which were filled with rapturous intakes of breath ending in renewed bursts of speech. Despite my fatigue and worry, I stood there with a smile, recognizing I’d be happy to go on listening to such nonsense for hours.
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