Outlaws

by Tim Green

  "No," Agnes said firmly.

  "No? I have a statement right here from Mr. Lyons that he made to an investigator on October second. Do I have to call Mr. Lyons into this court to testify jtCto the validity of this statement? Are you saying that he is a liar?" Madison said, tapping the paper and returning the school teacher's glare.

  "No," Agnes said a little softer.

  "So you did say that? You did threaten to kill someone?"

  "I was only--"

  "Objection!" Van Rawlins roared. "Counsel is--" "Overruled," boomed the judge.

  'Your honor," Madison said with disgust, "would you please direct the witness to answer my questions and remind her that she is under oath."

  "Ms. Tuttle," Judge Connack said as firmly as he could without being unkind, "please answer Ms. McCalls's questions. Yes or no will be fine."

  Agnes looked like she'd been hit in the head with a brick. Madison patiently watched her struggle.

  "Yes," Agnes said finally.

  "I'm sorry, your honor," Madison said. "I would like a clarification, please."

  The judge nodded.

  "So," Madison said, with deliberate drama, "you, Ms. Tuttle, yourself have threatened to kill someone?"

  'Yes," Agnes said, clenching her teeth with hatred.

  "Did you mean it?"

  "I most certainly did not!"

  'You mean sometimes people say things like that and they don't mean them at all, don't you?"

  'Yes!" the teacher said triumphantly.

  "I have no further questions, your honor," Madison said, turning her back on the witness and taking her seat.

  Judge Connack slammed his gavel down to signal a recess for lunch at ten minutes after noon. Van Rawlins scrambled out of the courthouse and onto the front steps to do a live shot for the noon news on seven. Other cameras hovered around, afraid they might miss a lively bite from the D. A. Agnes Tuttle did not want anyone asking any questions of her, so she stayed off to the side until the cameras had been turned off and the reporters had dispersed to get some lunch of their own. Van Rawlins was just about to step into a waiting car at the curb when she caught up to him.

  "Mr. Rawlins," she said.

  Van stopped and looked back. Normally he would have kept going, pretending he didn't hear, but a vote was a vote. He saw that the voice belonged to one of his witnesses, and he pasted a broad smile on his face.

  "Ms. Tuttle," he said, "I'm glad you stopped me. I wanted to thank you for your time and what you did up there today."

  "Well, I--"

  "I know," Van said, holding up his hand to silence her, "it was uncomfortable for you. But that's how some of our less reputable members of the bar behave."

  He was referring to Madison's brutal cross-examination.

  "Some people feel like they have something to prove," Rawlins said sympathetically.

  "I just hope 1 helped you put that man behind bars," Agnes said. "I knew by the way he spoke that night at the Green Mesquite that he was going to do it."

  "Yes, well, I hope you'll help me next week at election time. I know you've already helped me today, thank you again," Van said, turning to get into the car.

  "Mr. Rawlins," she said, stopping him once more, "there's something I have to tell you that I'd forgotten."

  Rawlins turned.

  "That woman," Agnes spit the words, "kept saying that the gentleman who was murdered . . ."

  "Jeff Board."

  "Yes, she kept saying that Mr. Board was insulting the wife, but that's just a lie." She could see that this didn't interest Van Rawlins so she cut to the chase.

  "Well, after Cody Grey threw him on the floor like an animal, poor Mr. Board said he'd make him pay, and then he said, 'I found your wife's money.' And then he swore at him. I'd forgotten all about that, it didn't seem like anything. But that's not an insult, is it? That's a lie. Wasn't that lawyer lying to the jury, Mr. Rawlins?" Agnes said emphatically.

  Van Rawlins was frozen in his place. He wasn't looking at Agnes Tuttle, he was staring somewhere up into the clear blue sky, thinking. When he realized that Agnes Tuttle had only paused to catch her breath before continuing to go on about Madison McCalls's lie, he looked down at her and gave her his most serious face. "I'm going to look into this, Ms. Tuttle," he said, "and I'm going to pursue it to the full extent of the law."

  Agnes Tuttle gave him a curt nod of satisfaction. Van thanked her once more and escaped in the waiting car.

  "Kooch," he said to his man in the front seat, "was Cody Grey's wife in the courtroom?"

  Kooch thought a moment, then said, "No, I don't think she was."

  "Why wasn't she there?"

  'Truth is," Kooch said, "rumor has it that Grey and his wife are on the serious outs. She still lives in the house, but people who know say they don't even talk."

  This news seemed to make Rawlins happy.

  "Stop the car, Mike," Van said to his office's chief investigator, Mike Horan, who was driving the car.

  "I've got a job for you," Van said to Kooch. "It's big. Find Grey's wife. Find her today. Tell her I want to see her in my office at five o'clock this afternoon, after the trial. Tell her not to get smart with any attorneys or anything like that. If she does, you tell her I'll be making a call to the IRS about the money Jeff Board found, the money that belongs to her. You got all that?"

  Kooch spun around in his seat.

  "I got it," he said.

  "Go ahead," Van said, stepping out of the car.

  "Now?" Kooch asked. "Where are you going?"

  "I'm going to get some damn lunch at that sub shop on the comer there," Van said. "You make sure you get it done, Kooch. Take Mike with you; he'll know how to find her. We may just get CNN here and wrap up our guarantee in the same day. I'm going to blow Cody Grey's alibi into a million fucking pieces and make Madison McCall look like a backwoods lawyer to boot. Come on, Ben."

  Ben Cherrit stepped out of the backseat with his mouth hanging open. Van shut the door and the car sped off.

  "What was that about?" Cherrit said to his boss.

  "I'll tell you at lunch," Van said.

  Cody, Madison, and Marty ate in a small, windowless conference room inside the courthouse. The walls were covered with a drab, greenish-blue paint, a color that can only be found inside a government building. An associate from the firm had been sent out for sandwiches, and they sat there amid a mountain of wax paper and Styrofoam cups, eating and discussing the way things had gone in the morning. Rawlins had paraded out three other witnesses besides Agnes Tuttle who had also been at the restaurant. Madison disposed with each of them in much the same way, only with less drama and relish than she had with Agnes. The other witnesses knew what was coming and had the opportunity to leam from Agnes's mistakes, so they were much more subdued about Cody's threat. All in all, Madison made the whole incident at the Green Mesquite seem rather innocuous.

  Rawlins fought back by calling to the stand three men whom Cody had assaulted over the past several years, attempting to establish that Cody Grey was not like any of the earlier witnesses who had admitted to Madison that they'd made threats they didn't mean to cany out. Van's point was that unlike the witnesses Madison had cross-examined, Cody had carried out his threats of violence before. Madison objected to these witnesses, contending that they were entirely prejudicial and had no relevance to the case at hand. Rawlins explained that he was establishing a pattern of violence that showed Cody Grey consistently made verbal threats and then carried them out.

  Walter gave it to Rawlins, and Madison knew he was right. The three men had no trouble portraying Cody as a man with a short temper who had no compunction in carrying out a threat of physical violence. In each case Cody made some kind of verbal threat and then attacked. Madison did her best to tear these witnesses down, questioning their motives and their manhood. She made them out to be womanizers bent on seducing Cody's wife. Most of all, however, Madison played to the old-fashioned Texas notion that if someone else went after y
our woman, you had every right to punch them in the nose.

  "He's going to start putting the hard stuff down this afternoon," Madison said through half a mouthful of tuna on whole-wheat. "We won't see the eyewitness until tomorrow."

  "Hard stuff?" Cody said.

  "Crime-scene stuff," she said. 'The footprints, the shoes, the computer, the bullet that killed him . . ."

  "What's the plan?" Cody asked, although he'd heard it two dozen times.

  "He keeps setting it up, I'll keep trying to knock it down."

  "Can I have your pickle?" Marty said, reaching over and fishing it out of Madison's wrapper.

  "What do you think, Marty?" Cody asked. "How's it going?"

  "I think good," Marty said cheerily.

  "Let's not talk about how we're doing," Madison said. "I'm superstitious. You never know with a jury- You never know...."

  Cody sucked on his Coke until the straw started buckling. He jiggled the ice and tilted the cup, trying for a little more.

  "Want some?" Madison said, handing her drink to him.

  "Thanks," he said and took a few swallows.

  Madison took it back and began drinking it again right away, flipping absently through her notes on the afternoon witnesses she expected to see.

  "I'm gonna use the bathroom before we head back in," Cody said, "I'll be right back."

  "It's around the comer, second door on your left," Madison said, waving her finger but not looking up.

  When the door was shut, Marty said, "A little intimate there with the client, aren't you, Madison?"

  "What the hell are you talking about, Marty?" she said looking abruptly up from her notes.

  "Sharing a drink with the guy like that. I don't know ..." Marty trailed off, shaking his head sarcastically.

  "Hey, Marty, cut the crap, okay? I'm in the middle of a trial here!"

  "I was only kidding," Marty said calmly.

  "Well, I don't feel like kidding," Madison snapped.

  Marty simply sat there, staring, letting his eyes lock with hers as was her habit when bickering. Then Madison dropped her gaze and looked away. He thought he saw her cheeks flush a light pink.

  "Why did you do that?" Marty said.

  "Do what?" she said nonchalantly, pretending to look down again at her notes.

  "I was only kidding about Cody," he said. "For God's sake, Madison, I was going for a little comic relief to cut into the tension here, but you couldn't look at me. Why not?"

  "I can look at you," Madison said, raising her stone-cold face, her eyes meeting his.

  "But you didn't," he replied, sounding mystified.

  They sat for some time in silence, looking at each other intensely.

  "I was kidding," Matty said, as if finally figuring the answer to an intricate puzzle, "but you weren't. Were you?"

  "Marty," she said, still holding his gaze, "I don't have time for this right now. Now, I'm going to look down. You can interpret it any way you like, but I'm going to get ready to cross those witnesses this afternoon."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Van Rawlins presented the evidence of the footprint, the shoe, and the bullet that had been used to kill Board. Madison let the direct go on without protest or complaint, and she declined to cross. She had been willing to stipulate that the shoe that made the prints in Boards house was Cody's. She had also been willing to stipulate that the bullet found in the mess that had been Jeff Board's brain was certainly the cause of death. Rawlins, however, didn't let up. He wanted to parade the evidence in front of the jury in a dramatic display of cunning detective work. Madison let it all slide by because the sooner it was over the better.

  The first time Madison rose to conduct a cross-examination in the afternoon wasn't until almost three o'clock, after Van Rawlins finished his direct examination of Robert Nusser. Nusser was the Austin Police Department's computer expert who discovered that the IRS files that should have been on Board's computer had been destroyed. It was clear after his testimony that Board's files had been intentionally destroyed. Nusser explained that even when files are deleted or erased on a computer's hard drive, even if the computer itself is mechanically destroyed, that the information stored in the magnetic fields of the disk usually survive and can be retrieved with some sophisticated software.

  Deleted files, Nusser explained, are merely marked as open space for new information. So, until a vast quantity of new information is added, even a deleted file can be retrieved. Board's computer hard drive was empty except for a framework of paths that had once been used to write and retrieve the files that had existed. Nusser, with the use of an intricate retrieval program, also discovered that the computer's internal clock, disengaged when all the substantial information on the hard drive was destroyed, read 1.26 A. M., only minutes before Board was shot and killed.

  "Mr. Nusser," Madison said with a pleasant smile that suggested she had no beef with him, "from what you've told us, it seems that to completely destroy the files on the victim's computer would be quite a sophisticated process, isn't that right?"

  Nusser was twenty-eight, but he looked closer to sixteen. To compensate, he projected his voice with as much force as his tiny ribcage could muster.

  "It's not that big a deal," Nusser said.

  'To you, you mean?"

  "No, or to anyone who could use a computer," he replied.

  Madison nodded and said, "Could you just run through for me, from the point you turn the computer on, what exactly you would have to do to destroy an entire hard drive of computer files in the manner in which they were destroyed on the victim's computer?"

  Nusser took the opportunity to show the judge, the jury, and the media how brilliant he really was. He rapidly described the steps, one by one. The commands and their sequence were overwhelmingly complex.

  "That's quite impressive," Madison said. "I see you are a computer engineer with a masters in quantum mathematics, Mr. Nusser, is that right?"

  "Yes," Nusser said, his chest puffed out.

  "Then something that is simple to you might not be so simple for the rest of us?" Madison suggested, pointing to herself and the jury.

  "Maybe not," Nusser admitted.

  "And it would be next to impossible for a man who knew nothing about computers, who didn't even own one, to do something as complex as that, wouldn't it?" Madison said.

  "I guess it might be pretty hard, yes," he said.

  Madison nodded, indicating that he had guessed correct.

  "So it is very unlikely that Cody Grey, a man who did not take one computer course in college, a man who doesn't own, hasn't owned, and hasn't even lived with another person who has owned a computer, would be able to perform this task at all, isn't it?"

  Nusser looked to Rawlins before saying apologetically, "I guess so."

  "Is that a yes or a no, Mr. Nusser," Madison said. "I mean as far as it being highly unlikely?"

  "Yes."

  "I have no further questions, your honor," Madison said, turning in time to see the looks of satisfaction on the faces of the jury. Madison thought she was home free. Rawlins was silent. Nusser started down from the jury box.

  "Your honor," Rawlins said suddenly, "may it please the court, I would like to redirect the witness."

  "Mr. Nusser, would you remain in the witness stand?" the judge said.

  Nusser sat down, and Van went to the podium.

  "Mr. Nusser," he said. "If I knew nothing of computers, nothing at all, and I came to you, or someone like you, could you write down for me everything you just said, so that I could destroy the files on someone's computer?"

  Nusser smiled with relief and said, "Yes, I could."

  'Thank you."

  Rawlins's last witness for the day was detective Zimmer. Zimmer was the lead homicide detective on the case. He had been a good solid cop for fifteen years. Murder trials were part of his job, and Madison knew from experience that he was a tough nut to crack. Rawlins used Zimmer to tie together all the forensic and ballistic
evidence, as well as the empty computer, to give the jury a clear-cut summary of why all these things meant that Cody Grey was the murderer. Together, in what Madison knew was a well-rehearsed drama, the two of them unfolded just how they pieced together the mystery of who killed Jeff Board. The climax was the shoes that were found under the bridge by the river. Rawlins sat down with a grim face. He only smiled when his head was turned away from the jury. He didn't want to come across as being smug.

  "Detective Zimmer," Madison said, addressing the cop from where she stood at her own table, "How many murder investigations have you been involved with that have gone to trial?"

  "A lot," Zimmer said unenthusiastically.

  "About how many," Madison said pleasantly. "A thousand? Two dozen?"

  "A hundred or so," he said.

  Madison raised her eyebrows even though she knew full well that he'd been involved in the investigation of one hundred and seventeen murder cases that had gone to trial.

  "That's quite impressive," she said. "And in those hundred cases, how many times have you found a piece of evidence like these turf shoes four uxth after the crime was committed?"

  "Objection, your honor," Rawlins said tiredly. "Irrelevant."

  'Your honor, I am simply trying to establish through this witness, whom the prosecution has touted and the court has accepted as an expert in police work, the likelihood of the events in a real murder being played out in this manner.

  Please remember, your honor, that it is our contention that this entire murder was a conspiracy to make Cody Grey look like the guilty party."

  "Overruled," Judge Connack said, "you may answer the question."

  Zimmer thought about the question briefly before saying, "It's not uncommon at all to find incriminating evidence. Probably half."

  "And when you don't find the evidence, is it simply because you didn't look hard enough?" Madison said, baiting him.

  "1 think probably," the detective said, "we don't find evidence only because some of the people who commit these murders are smart enough to get rid of the evidence."

  "And where would they get rid of it?"

  "I don't know," Zimmer answered with a smirk. "If I did, it wouldn't be missing evidence."