“If we believe it was him, yes. But we don’t want the jury going away to deliberate without a couple of other theories rattling around.”
Hunt didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he asked, “And who is Lo, again?”
“He owns a bunch of Korean massage parlors.”
“And kills people, too? Kind of as a sideline?”
Hardy chuckled. “You do make it sound slightly absurd.”
Hunt said, “Not my intention. I’m just trying to save you a little money by barking up some possibly more productive trees.”
“I’ll take any and all suggestions.”
“All right. Like, what about the rest of Jessup’s personal life?”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he stole one of his friend’s girlfriends. Maybe he sold dope on the side and stiffed his supplier. Maybe he had a jealous gay lover. Maybe he ran over some crazy lady’s cat. The dude was a rapist. He had roofies, right? So there probably were other victims. What about if one of them killed him? Did he have any family?”
“He’s got a mother and a sister ten years older. Apparently he wasn’t close to either, although they were sad to see him killed and all.” Hardy heard a heavy breath over the line. “Am I getting desperate?” he asked.
“Sounds a little like it to me.”
“Can you give me twenty hours?”
“I’ll give you all the time you want. But I feel like I’m wasting your money, and I hate that.”
“If that feeling gets too bad, you don’t have to take the money.”
“Good one, Diz.”
“I know,” Hardy said. “I’m a laugh riot.”
SUSAN STOOD OUTSIDE the bathroom door adjacent to her daughter’s bedroom and knocked softly. “Brittany, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been in there for a half hour.”
“I know. I’m fine.”
“I don’t want to bother you, but I’m starting to worry.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Are you coming out to eat? I brought home some Chinese.”
“In another minute.”
“Okay. I’ll be at the table.”
With a heavy heart, Susan walked back to the kitchen. She put down a place mat on either side of the Formica table. On each one she set chopsticks, a cloth napkin, a plate, and a wineglass. She took a half-filled box of white wine out of the refrigerator and put it in the middle of the table. Finally, lifting the individual packages out of the paper bag on the counter, she arranged them, still closed, on the table within easy reach. Shrimp lo mein. Potstickers. Barbecued ribs. General Tso’s chicken. Steamed rice.
Stepping back, she surveyed the table and sighed. Soy sauce, she thought, and turned to grab the bottle from the pantry shelf.
Brittany was standing in front of her in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a borrowed pair of her father’s pajamas. She had been crying; her eyes were swollen and bleary with tears, her beautiful face was flushed, almost bruised-looking, without any sign of makeup. “I so hate myself,” she said.
A guttural noise escaped from somewhere inside her as Susan walked up to her daughter and wrapped her arms around her.
Brittany, stiff and resistant, held on for a couple of seconds, then broke down and began to sob.
GLITSKY SAT IN the passenger seat of Bill Schuyler’s car in front of his home. The fog was in and dusk well advanced. The FBI agent, about ten years Glitsky’s junior, was never a terribly relaxed man, and here in these close quarters, he fairly hummed with tension. Glitsky had invited him upstairs, but Schuyler clearly didn’t want whatever this was about to take up much time. He didn’t want to meet the family. He didn’t want anything to be personal.
“I don’t even know why we’re having this meeting,” he said. “I told you I don’t have any pull with the marshals. It’s a different jurisdiction.”
“I understand that.”
“Obviously not.”
“Are we going to argue about this or get down to it?”
Some of the fight went out of Schuyler. “You’re lucky to be out of the business,” he said. “I’m cranky because I’m in the middle of something else. It’s making everybody crazy. One crisis after another.”
“I remember it well. And I wasn’t even federal.”
“From all I hear, you got screwed.”
Glitsky coughed out a laugh. “Well, thanks. I’m looking on it as a blessing. Doing something else with my life.”
“And yet here you are, very much in the life, calling me.”
“Doing a favor for a friend. And before you tell me for the fifth time that you can’t help me, let me tell you that my friend and I, we’ve got no interest in disclosing the identity of the witness. We just want to know what he’s in for.”
“How do you even know to ask?”
“He bragged to his girlfriend, then dumped her.”
“What a unique story. And you think what he told her might not have been the whole truth?”
“We don’t know. He painted himself, no surprise, as something of a hero. Saw some bad guys doing bad things and decided he had to step up and testify against them.”
“Out of the blue? With no coercion? No trades for a lesser plea? He just came forward?”
“Apparently.”
“Well, I can tell you from my own experience that if that’s true, it’s one of the very few times. Usually, if somebody gets close enough to be a useful witness, they’re part of it, and not way down at the bottom, either. They get turned because we’ve got something to threaten them with, and then we disappear them.”
“I know that. It’s why we’re skeptical of this guy’s story. His first name is probably Tony, last name maybe starts with an S.”
“Soprano?”
“Good guess, but maybe something else. Probably out of the New York area, maybe Jersey. The big clue is we know he’s here, working as a bartender. One of your marshals will have him.”
“And you don’t want his name?”
“We just want to know what he did. If he was a soldier or what. Particularly if he’s ever killed anybody.”
Schuyler looked across at him. “So all talk of retirement aside, you’re still in the homicide business? You’re saying this is a murder case?”
“I don’t recall using precisely those words. But I’d say they’re within the realm of the possible.”
With a curt nod, Schuyler said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
HARDY DIDN’T GET home from the office until a quarter to eight.
When he wasn’t at trial, he and Frannie were relatively democratic in their division of household chores. During trials, though, Frannie made it a point to try to keep potential sources of stress out of his life, and she took over most of the domestic duties. She got up early with him, made him a good breakfast, checked to see that his suits had been pressed, his shirts were back from the cleaners, his ties didn’t have stains, his shoes were shined. He made it a point to be home by eight, and when he showed up, she fixed him a cocktail—tonight an ice-cold dry martini of Hendrick’s gin with a slice of cucumber—while she had one glass of chardonnay.
For the next twenty minutes, while dinner simmered or baked or waited for Frannie’s return to the kitchen, they sat together on comfortable chairs, usually in their living room, and talked but did not mention anything about the trial. This was a hard-and-fast rule, arrived at early in their marriage when Hardy would get so engrossed in his work that he was unable to discuss anything except a trial for weeks at a time. Then he would stay up late, reading over his binders, after which he would usually suffer from insomnia. More often than not, his immune system would revolt and he’d get sick. Frannie finally convinced him that his trial habits were not only unhealthy for his mind and body, they detracted from his performance in the courtroom. Twenty minutes of nontrial conversation was never going to lose him a trial, and it might help him win one.
Tonight they had more than enough to fill up their talk time. Their son, Vincent, in Barcelona the summer before his senior year, had Skyped Frannie during the day, catching them up on his latest adventures—he had lost his backpack for an hour the previous night; it turned out he’d left it at a tapas bar, but miraculously, the owners had picked it up and stored it in the back room. This morning, he had climbed the curving tower of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s ornate and monstrous cathedral. He thought he might be addicted to paella.
That day, they’d received the invitation to Wes and Sam’s wedding, which would be held in early September at Buena Vista Park, across the street from their house. Frannie had called Sam and learned that there would be only sixty guests, surprising in an aspiring politician.
Hardy’s secretary/receptionist, Phyllis, had called in sick this morning, and he opined as to how many days in a row she’d have to miss before he would be justified in letting her go. After her forty years with the firm—in truth, since before it was a firm—it seemed cruel of him to demand perfect attendance. But if she missed three days in a row, then surely a case could be made.
The Beck, meanwhile, had invited Ben Feinstein to a picnic thrown by the firm where she was interning this summer. More developments to come.
Oh, and Abe and Treya were taking a real vacation for the first time perhaps ever, in late August, and asked if the Hardys had ever been to Santa Catalina island, and would they like to go along?
Dinner was Caesar salad, which Frannie made from scratch with Romaine lettuce, a raw egg and an entire tin of anchovies, garlic and Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard and the juice of a Meyer lemon, all emulsified with Parmesan cheese and extra-virgin olive oil. Frannie left out the croutons but added three jumbo prawns each, and they ate every speck.
By now the trial was no longer off-limits, and they replayed everything, beginning with the gorilla video, then proceeding from Dr. Paley’s exhaustive testimony to Susan’s hit man idea, to Glitsky’s decision to become a defense witness if Hardy needed him, to Wyatt Hunt’s objections to the wild goose chase of an investigation.
At nine-thirty, they were in bed.
At ten, he kissed her one last time, again told her he loved her, reached over, and turned out the bedside light.
30
PAUL STIER CAME out of his corner the next morning like a boxer who’d taken a bad hit in the previous round and wanted to prove he was still in the fight. Gone was the friendly avuncularity he’d shown to Winston Paley when he introduced himself and Gunderson. Similarly absent was the petulant and overmatched debater from the sidebar with Hardy yesterday.
Exuding confidence, Stier could barely wait to get out of his chair—indeed, from the corner of his eye, Hardy noted that Stier stood up twice as the judge first welcomed the jurors back for another day and then recalled Paley to the stand. For a man who hadn’t objected once the day before, he came out at the bell with an enthusiasm that Hardy found a bit unnerving. What the hell was he so excited about?
Stier’s opening line of cross-examination hammered Paley on his reference sources. It was well and good that the doctor had all the credentials in the world, and admittedly interesting that, in his opinion, buttressed by dozens if not hundreds of studies, eyewitness testimony was essentially useless. But could he cite specific studies that would lend credibility to his overall testimony?
For example: “Dr. Paley. You’ve testified that a short man with a weapon will be identified as over six feet tall. Does this happen every time?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so. You’re not sure?”
“It happens a majority of the time.”
“Do you have an exact percentage?”
“I’d say about ninety-five.”
“And the other five percent, do they get the size of the person with the weapon correct? Or perhaps someone who is five-eight, they say is five feet?”
“No. That doesn’t happen.”
“Never?”
“I’ve never heard of it happening. The differences—and now we’re only talking about the five percent—tend to be off by an inch or two.”
“Can you give us the study that corroborates this?”
“Not specifically. But James McDowell conducted several studies—”
“Who?”
“James McDowell, one of the first expert witnesses in California on this topic. He was a well-recognized and respected forensic psychologist.”
“Doctor, I notice you said ‘was.’ Is Mr. McDowell deceased?”
“Yes.”
“When did he die?”
“I’m not sure. Six or seven years ago.”
“And—I hope I’m getting this right—you say he wrote the primary study about the issue of people with weapons being identified as larger than they actually are?”
“Yes.”
“Again, the name of that study?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have it at my fingertips.”
“How about a publication that one of these seven-year-old studies appeared in?”
Hardy, if only to break up the attack, stood at his table. “Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative and badgering.”
With what Hardy saw as a look of mild disappointment, Gomez shook her head. “I think neither,” she said. “Overruled.”
Stier didn’t even seem to take a breath. He reminded the doctor of his last question. “A publication where any of these studies appeared?”
The doctor, straining to maintain his air of affability, motioned down in front of the witness stand. “I’m sure some of the publications and studies are in my briefcase.”
“But you don’t remember any specific names or publications?”
“Not at this time, no.”
This was a slight loss for Hardy. Paley’s value hinged on his credibility as a scientist who had the right answers. Stier was making it sound as though he might be making the stuff up, and therefore, by extension, it wasn’t even true.
The next exchange didn’t improve matters. “Doctor, you said yesterday that you have appeared as an expert witness over a hundred times?”
“Yes. Well over a hundred. Perhaps two or three hundred.”
“Three hundred times?”
“Approximately.”
“Out of those three hundred court appearances, how many times have you testified for the prosecution?”
“They haven’t asked me.”
“They haven’t asked you?” Stier, low-key, nevertheless managed to convey his astonishment to the jury. “They have never asked you?”
“No.”
“So you have never testified for the prosecution?”
Hardy stood. “Objection. Asked and answered. Badgering.”
Again, Gomez overruled him. “Not exactly. Doctor?”
“No. I’ve never testified for the prosecution.”
Stier, perhaps getting ahead of himself in his enthusiasm, did not want to appear to be badgering the witness, who remained, after all, sympathetic. Tearing a page from Hardy’s own playbook, he cleared his throat and walked back to his table for a sip of water. Returning to his place in front of the jury box, he continued, “Doctor, you have described yourself as a forensic psychologist. Would you characterize your profession as expert witness?”
“Yes.”
“Appearances like this make up at least part of your income, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“What percentage, would you say?”
Hardy pushed his chair back, got all the way to his feet. “Your Honor, immaterial. Irrelevant.”
Stier wasn’t the only one getting caught up in the moment. Hardy gave himself a mental kick in the pants almost before the words were out. He was objecting far too often to stuff he knew would be overruled, therefore alienating Gomez, and now he had given Stier an opportunity to make a speaking rebuttal.
“Your Honor,” said Stier, rising to the opportunity, “the fact that this man makes a living testif
ying for the defense gives him an obvious motive to color his testimony. He’s a gun for hire.”
Gomez: “Enough. Both of you. Mr. Hardy, the question is clearly proper. The objection is overruled. Mr. Stier, we can live without the editorializing. Confine yourself to proper legal argument.”
Paley threw an apologetic glance at Hardy. An experienced witness, he knew he was being skewered, but there was nothing he could do. Stier had done his homework. “Lately,” Paley said, “this type of work has comprised a large percentage of my income. Maybe eighty percent.”
Having won that skirmish, Stier elected not to risk another objection by asking exactly how much Paley was getting paid. He was flying along and had made the point: Paley’s testimony was for sale and far from objective. Ugly, living up to his nickname, moved along to the meat of the matter. “Doctor, have you ever received a request to testify where you’ve looked over the eyewitness testimony and said you’d prefer not to testify because the ID or IDs looked good to you?”
“Yes, I’ve done that.”
“And what did you do in preparation for this case?”
“I saw police reports, read the eyewitness testimony, looked at some transcripts.”
“And did you read about the identification testimonies of Anantha Douglas, Liza Moreno, Susan Antaramian, and Fred Dyer?”
“I did.”
“And which of these identification testimonies was the strongest?”
“I didn’t think any of them were particularly strong.”
Although he’d known that this answer was coming, Stier pretended that it surprised him. “None of them? Well, then, can you differentiate between the testimonies of these four witnesses?”
“Well, obviously, they are from four different people who had different interactions with the person they hoped to identify.”
“So each one of them got it wrong in his or her own way?”
“In fact, counsel, each of the witnesses got it wrong in part for the same reason. It appears they were improperly influenced by the police. To that extent, each of them got it wrong for the same reason.”
Stier straightened up, clearly stung by the body blow. But he came right back. “But just to be clear, Doctor, four separate witnesses picked the same wrong person?”
The Ophelia Cut Page 30
