The Big Lie

by James Grippando

  “Take the media down the elevator with you. I’m ducking out the back.”

  Charlotte played the Pied Piper, a dozen reporters in tow, and Jack made a clean getaway to the alley behind the courthouse. He had three minutes to get to College Avenue. No time to waste.

  Harland Sands was one of nine hundred or so lawyers at “Kessler,” a national law firm that formerly bore the name of Mr. Kessler and eight of his long-dead partners. It was a trendy mega-firm marketing strategy that didn’t apply to the likes of Jack Swyteck, P.A.—the dropping of all but one surname from the masthead to become a one-word brand, the Big Law equivalent of Heinz or Bacardi. Some were reminded of the late George Carlin’s comic routine about the paranoid sensation of walking through Sears and suddenly wondering, “Whoa, what ever happened to Roebuck?” Except that the more pertinent question had become, “Whoa, what ever happened to Sears?”

  Kessler occupied the penthouse in Highpoint Center, a skyscraper by Tallahassee standards, even if its fifteen stories were well short of the Capitol Tower. As Jack entered the ground-floor lobby, his cell phone chimed with an update from Bonnie: “Getting in elevator now.” Obviously her source was a Kessler insider.

  Damn, she’s good.

  Jack watched and waited, as the blinking elevator lights charted the “subject’s” descent from the penthouse.

  Jack was still assessing the damage done in Judge Martin’s courtroom. The 911 recording had been a two-edged sword. Charlotte’s admission was chilling. Had the call ended there, Jack would have been forced to put his own client on the witness stand to explain why she pulled the trigger. But the recording went on for another two minutes, and in between explaining where she was and answering the dispatcher’s questions, Charlotte had managed to say the right thing: “He pulled a gun, so I shot him.” Those eight words were now the heart of the case. They were either the honest-to-God truth, spoken by a woman who’d actually thought her life was in danger, or an after-the-fact story, made up by a reckless and trigger-happy shooter who’d killed an unarmed man without legal justification.

  It was more important than ever that Jack speak to Dr. Perez’s lawyer.

  The elevator doors opened. Jack recognized Sands from the firm Web site, even if his online photo was well overdue for an update. He introduced himself, but Sands kept walking.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time to talk.”

  Jack went with him, step for step. “I can walk and talk at the same time. How about you?”

  Sands continued across the lobby and out the glass doors. Jack was right at his side.

  “You didn’t return my calls,” said Jack. “I need your client to testify at the hearing.”

  “Dr. Perez is in Mexico.”

  “I’m sure Judge Martin will let us videoconference.”

  They stopped at the crosswalk. The afternoon sun glistened from the windshields of passing cars, an assault to the eyes. Sands put on his sunglasses. “My client is busy.”

  “Your client picked a fight with a man who said he had fire in his pocket. Charlotte Holmes had every reason to believe it was a life-or-death situation. That’s all I need Dr. Perez to say.”

  The traffic light cycled to green. “He’s very busy,” said Sands, and he stepped down from the curb. Jack stayed with him as they crossed the street.

  “Dr. Perez is my star witness.”

  “Your client is your star witness.”

  “She’s charged with second-degree murder. It would be malpractice for me to put her on the stand in a civil hearing like this. You know that as well as I do.”

  Sands stopped. They were standing outside Wolfie’s restaurant. “I can’t help you, Mr. Swyteck. I’m sorry.”

  “Do me one favor,” said Jack. “Take off your sunglasses.”

  Sands did, and Jack looked him straight in the eye: “Did General Barrow tell your client to leave the country until the hearing is over?”

  Sands didn’t blink. “No. I did.” He tucked his sunglasses into his coat pocket. “Good luck to you.”

  A delivery truck pulled away from the curb, leaving Jack in a cloud of diesel fumes as Dr. Perez’s lawyer turned and disappeared into the restaurant.

  Alone in her hotel room was no place for Charlotte. The words that had reverberated throughout the courtroom echoed in her head. Jack had told her the case was about eight words, but for her it was a different eight. I shot a man! I think he’s dead.

  Jack had shown no reaction to her frantic 911 call. Nor had Judge Martin. The stenographer’s fingers moved with no particular significance; Charlotte might as well have said, “I had coffee and a bagel for breakfast.” The angst was inside her—driven home by the sniffle she’d heard from the other side of the courtroom, on the public-seating side of the rail, from Mrs. Meyer. A judge or jury might someday determine that the homicide was “justifiable,” that her split-second decision to use deadly force had been “reasonable under the circumstances.” That didn’t mean Mr. Meyer deserved to die—at least not from his widow’s perspective.

  Solitary confinement in a hotel room triggered such thoughts. Charlotte hadn’t touched the club sandwich from room service. She was staring at the wall, drowning in guilt, when the phone rang. She probably should have ignored it, but it felt like a reprieve. It was the front desk.

  “Sorry to bother you, Ms. Holmes, but you have a visitor. She says it’s extremely urgent that she speak to you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Her name is Heidi Bristol.”

  Charlotte immediately suspected a ruse by a reporter, someone using the name of Alberto’s estranged wife to gain access to her. “Can you check her driver’s license, please?”

  Charlotte could hear the muffled exchange at the front desk. A moment later, the attendant was back on the line. “It is Heidi Bristol. Coral Gables, Florida.”

  There was more background noise, but Charlotte couldn’t make it out.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Holmes,” said the attendant. “Would you excuse me for just one second?”

  Charlotte waited, getting more uncomfortable by the moment. Jack had told her about his meeting with Alberto’s wife, and that she suspected “another woman.”

  The attendant’s voice was back on the line. “Ms. Bristol wants you to meet her out by the swimming pool. She says she dares you.”

  Charlotte gripped the phone a little tighter. Apart from Jack, she’d told no one about Alberto’s text—the “dare” that had lured her to the meeting at Clyde’s. Not every fiber in her body was saying “meet this woman,” but she found herself saying it anyway.

  “Thank you,” said Charlotte. “Tell Ms. Bristol that I will be there in five minutes.”

  Chapter 41

  “The state of Florida rests its case,” said the attorney general.

  That after-lunch announcement in open court left many in the gallery scratching their heads, but Jack wasn’t surprised. The government had established the essential elements of homicide in the second degree, especially in the context of a “fitness” hearing, where the criminal standard of proof—“beyond a reasonable doubt”—simply didn’t apply. To prove that the shooting was justifiable, Jack would need more than a 911 recording with Charlotte’s self-serving statement that “he had a gun.” And even if Jack could prove up a defense, Barrow still had the right to rebuttal.

  “Mr. Swyteck, you may call your first witness,” said the judge.

  Jack could feel the anticipation in the air. Everyone in the courtroom—most of all the attorney general—wanted to know if Jack would put Charlotte on the stand. Charlotte had been smart enough to invite her lawyer to the poolside meeting, however, making Jack’s selection of witness number one a no-brainer.

  “The defense calls Heidi Bristol,” said Jack.

  The doors opened in the rear of the courtroom, and there was head scratching anew in public seating, as the unexpected witness walked down the center aisle, stopped to swear the oath, and took a seat facing Jack. Stating one�
�s name for the record was usually a formality, but this witness’s use of her maiden name with no mention of “Perez” was noteworthy.

  “Good morning, Ms. Bristol,” said Jack.

  “It’s actually the afternoon.”

  It was a common affliction among trial lawyers, not knowing if it was day or night. Jack hoped this inauspicious start wasn’t a sign of bad things to come. “You are married to Dr. Alberto Perez, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Nine years. We’ve been separated the last couple of months.”

  “Without delving too deeply into personal details, why did you and your husband separate?”

  “He told me there was someone else.”

  “Do you know who the ‘someone else’ is?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me.”

  “Did you do anything to find out?”

  She took a breath. They had gone over this beforehand, but she wasn’t the first witness to find the act of testifying in open court more daunting than expected. “I hired a private investigator,” she said.

  “When did you hire a PI?”

  “Not right away. Frankly, I was numb for a while. Alberto moved out. I didn’t do anything but get up in the morning and go through the motions. Then I found out he was taking a trip to Tallahassee. That’s where he went to college. Call it a woman’s intuition, but I got suspicious. Sure enough, I found out he was meeting with an old friend from school. A woman.”

  “Who was that old friend?”

  “I didn’t get the name beforehand. But as it turns out, it was Charlotte Holmes.”

  Jack should have anticipated the hateful glares that suddenly came from all corners of the courtroom and locked onto his client like a scarlet letter.

  “What did you do then?”

  “That’s when I hired the investigator.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a good question. Alberto had already told me there was someone else. I guess I just needed to know if she was the one—this old friend from college.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “It wasn’t her.”

  “Your husband was not having an affair with Charlotte Holmes?”

  “No. It was clear that this meeting at Clyde’s was the first time they’d seen each other since college.”

  The hateful glares from the gallery changed to ones of puzzlement.

  “Exactly how did that become clear to you, Ms. Bristol?”

  “I heard their conversation.”

  “Were you seated near them at Clyde’s?”

  “No.”

  “Were you in Tallahassee?”

  “No. I was in Coral Gables.”

  “Then how did you hear the conversation between your husband and Ms. Holmes?”

  “I listened to a recording.”

  “Whoa!” said Barrow, rising.

  “Is that an objection,” the judge asked.

  “You bet it is, Your Honor. May we have a sidebar? We’ve heard nothing about a recording until this very moment. This needs to be addressed outside the presence of the witness.”

  The judge agreed but went one better than a sidebar. “In my chambers.”

  The lawyers and the stenographer followed him out of the courtroom. The door closed with a thud, silencing the buzz of speculation that coursed through the gallery. The judge took a seat behind his desk. The lawyers remained standing. He addressed Jack first.

  “Is this the way things are done in Miami, Mr. Swyteck? Trial by ambush?”

  The dreaded slimy-lawyer syndrome. Any Miami lawyer who stepped out of Miami-Dade County was a suspected carrier. Jack had avoided it so far, having earned Judge Martin’s praise for the “professional manner” in which he’d handled the confidential FDLE report on Senator Scoville. This audio recording required some explanation.

  “Judge, our smartphones have microphones. We leave them on desks and tabletops wherever we go. It’s a simple technological feat for a private investigator to control that microphone remotely and eavesdrop on our conversations.”

  Judge Martin was far from a techie, but he seemed intrigued. “So you’re saying that Dr. Perez’s phone picked up his entire conversation with Ms. Holmes while they were sitting outside Clyde’s on the night of the shooting?”

  “Not just his conversation with Ms. Holmes,” said Jack. “Also his verbal altercation with Mr. Meyer. And the shooting.”

  “Are you asking me to allow Ms. Bristol to testify as to what she heard through this eavesdropping device?”

  The attorney general jumped in. “I object on multiple grounds. Hearsay, reliability, to name a couple.”

  “We’re not relying on Ms. Bristol’s memory to reconstruct the events,” said Jack. “We want the court to listen to the same recording she heard—the one made by her investigator.”

  “I object to that even more,” said Barrow.

  “You haven’t even heard it,” said Jack.

  “Talk to me, not to each other,” the judge told the lawyers. “Mr. Swyteck, how do we know this tape is authentic?”

  “Ms. Bristol hired one of the top private investigators in Miami. Thirty years with the FBI. He knows how to make a recording. It’s authentic.”

  “I still object,” said Barrow. “I want to cross-examine this so-called recording expert.”

  The judge considered it. “Ms. Barrow makes a reasonable request. It’s an important piece of evidence. Mr. Swyteck, how soon can you have this investigator in my courtroom?”

  “He’s in Miami. I can get him on an early-evening flight.”

  “I’ve done evening sessions before in nonjury cases. How does eight p.m. sound?”

  “Good for me,” said Jack.

  The attorney general didn’t answer. It was clear that this audio recording was the last thing she wanted.

  “Ms. Barrow?” the judge prodded. “Eight p.m. is good?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be ready.”

  Chapter 42

  “Harder!” the president shouted into his desktop speakerphone. “When they hit us, we hit back twice as hard, Paulette!”

  MacLeod was behind closed doors in the Oval Office, his senior strategist seated on the other side of the oak desk. Florida allowed television cameras in state court, and the president hadn’t missed a minute of the Charlotte Holmes fitness hearing. He’d even controlled his urge to micromanage the attorney general’s legal strategy—until the battle over Heidi Bristol’s audio recording came up.

  “We’re doing our best,” said Barrow.

  MacLeod rolled his eyes, then glanced across his desk. “Oscar, tell the attorney general how I feel about people who ‘do their best.’”

  “They’re losers,” Teague said, but without sufficient emphasis.

  “Losers!” shouted MacLeod, as he leaned into the speakerphone and used his thumb and index finger to make an “L” on his forehead, as if the attorney general could see it. “They’re big . . . fat . . . losers!”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “And spice things up a little, will you? Your ratings are terrible. Below terrible. This is worse than the remake of Knight Rider, for Pete’s sake.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the comparison, sir.”

  “You’re right. I’m not being fair to the producers of Knight Rider. Nobody should have expected a remake to out-Hasselhoff the one and only David Hasselhoff. Let’s put all comparisons aside: you suck! That’s what I’m saying. Your show sucks!”

  “But . . . this isn’t a TV show.”

  “It’s on TV, Paulette! Make it good TV.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And no more bad news out of Florida. I’ve heard enough.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pres—”

  MacLeod cut her off before she could finish, ending the call with the push of a button. He sat back in his leather chair and groaned at the ceiling in his exasperation. Then he jackknifed into action, frantically rummaging t
hrough the mess of papers on his desktop.

  “Where the hell is my phone?” he muttered.

  Teague watched with trepidation. “You’re not going to tweet, are you, sir?”

  MacLeod shoved a stack of unread memos aside, knocking a few loose pages to the floor. Still no sight of his cell phone. “Somebody needs to salvage this shit show.”

  “You mean the hearing, sir? You want to tweet about the hearing in the middle of the hearing?”

  The president paused long enough to fire off his signature look of contempt, which was usually reserved for members of the media. “You make it sound like a bad thing,” he said, then continued searching through the mess. Beneath a foot-tall stack of magazine clippings—mostly articles about himself—he struck pay dirt.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said, but Teague grabbed it before he could.

  MacLeod laid the magazine clippings aside and reached across the desktop. “Give it.”

  Teague tightened his grip on the cell. “No, sir.”

  The president cocked his head, not quite comprehending. “Excuse me?”

  “You shouldn’t tweet about the hearing until it’s over.”

  “I’ll tweet whenever I damn well want to tweet. Now, give me my phone.”

  Teague swallowed the lump in his throat. “No.”

  “Don’t make me come over there and get it, Oscar.”

  The senior advisor didn’t budge, except to lick his suddenly dry lips.

  “You have five seconds to hand it over.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President. But this is for your own good.”

  “Five, four, three—”

  Teague launched from his chair, about to make a run for it. MacLeod was even quicker, propelling himself out of his chair and around his desk and heading off his senior advisor before he could get a jump toward the exit. Teague reversed direction and raced around the other side of the desk, MacLeod in hot pursuit.