No matter how many times they broke this down, it always circled back to the same place. Cathryn valued her career above everything, and it would devastate her if she were forced to give it up.
Stacie could only hope she didn’t have to. If they got through this awful mess without her bringing down Cathryn too, she would move to Houston after all. Hell, she might just get an office with a view of the refineries.
* * *
Cathryn awakened in the night to an empty bed. By the light that crept in around the curtains, she made out Stacie’s silhouette in the chair. “Is the thought of moving to Houston really that depressing?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together. That includes coming down to Texas and trying it on for size.”
That was all she needed to hear. Love had a way of smoothing out most differences as long as they put each other first. She’d do the same for Stacie. “I’ll compromise too. Once I get my reputation back, there will be other offers. Headhunters call me all the time, but I’ve never wanted to jump ship before. Now I have a reason to consider it.”
“I’m glad to know that…really glad.”
Cathryn patted the sheet beside her. “Come back to bed, sweetheart. We have a long day tomorrow.”
“I know.” Stacie sighed. “That’s actually why I can’t sleep. I’ve been worrying about my testimony.”
“You said it was a slam dunk.”
“The Depew part is…but there’s something else I’m afraid they’ll ask me about.”
“What is it?”
“Remember I told you about the guy who sneaked into our group, the one who was working for Depew and caused Colleen to have a wreck?”
Cathryn listened in disbelief to Stacie’s confession of how she’d set him up to be arrested. It wasn’t like her to break the rules.
“They were his drugs though. I found them hidden in his sleeping bag, so he was guilty of possession.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
“Because the guy was scum. I’m not proud of myself, Cathryn. It’s probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.”
She couldn’t disagree. These matters were best handled by the police, not by vigilantes. Still, it was hard to feel anything but contempt for him after all the people he hurt. “What’s done is done, Stacie. He deserves what’s coming to him.”
“He probably deserves more than that. If I could have trusted the sheriff’s department, I would have turned in the photos from the rally and let him face the music for Colleen. I would have handed over the drugs too. But I knew some of those deputies were getting money under the table from Depew. Now he’s telling anybody who’ll listen I set him up, and I have a gut feeling they’re going to ask me about it in the grand jury.”
“They can’t make you testify against yourself. Just refuse to answer.”
“That’s the other problem.” She put her head in her hands and groaned. “I may have made the stupidest screw-up of my whole life. Remember that time we were here in the hotel room and I called you on my prepaid cell phone? It’s possible I used the same phone to call the sheriff.”
It took Cathryn a moment to unravel what she was trying to explain. “Are you saying I could be…”
“If they track down those phone records, they won’t know who made the call. But they will know whoever did it called you too. I’ve been driving myself crazy about this. They might ask me if I know you. Hell, they might even ask you tomorrow if you know me.”
“Shit.” Admitting that would be tantamount to resigning from Nations Oil.
“And if all that isn’t bad enough, the fact that I’ve just told you everything means you’d have to testify against me if you were asked to.”
Cathryn threw back the covers and wrapped herself in a hotel robe. “Is there another chair?”
Chapter Nineteen
Margaret McCullough was a named partner in one of Minnesota’s oldest law firms, and Cathryn was lucky to have hired her before anyone else at Nations Oil could. At seventy-one, Meg knew the system cold and everyone in it. Even taller than Cathryn at five-eleven, she still wore high heels, and the shoulder pads in her pinstriped suit gave her a ferocious appearance.
Their limousine stopped at the courthouse steps and Meg touched up her blood-red lipstick. “The prosecutor should wrap up with you in a couple of hours. Remember, if they ask you about anything we haven’t gone over, stop talking immediately and ask to see me.”
Though Cathryn had been given immunity in return for her testimony against Nations Oil executives and Karl Depew, this was a wide-ranging investigation that also had implications for the Securities and Exchange Commission. She couldn’t afford to inadvertently incriminate herself in the manipulation of stock information, and now she had to worry about informing on Stacie too. All of it was complicated by the fact that she couldn’t have Meg in the room with her during questioning.
It had pained her to testify against Woody, but there was no way to avoid it, not with the US Attorney holding the copy she’d made of the original flow records and tanker logs. If he was smart, he’d accept a plea deal in return for testimony against Hoss and Bryce. Even then, the poor guy’s career in the oil business was already over at only age twenty-five.
Woody wasn’t the only one who needed to save his skin. According to Meg, most of Depew’s men were already in the wind, but one had come forward to describe their bullying tactics and payments to local officials, and a ranger from the Department of Natural Resources admitted to accepting a bribe to file the false report on the fish and bird kill. Bob Kryzwicki would soon be begging for a plea deal, but the evidence against him was so strong he had nothing of value to trade. The US Attorney seemed only slightly interested in Gregg, but had Hoss, Bryce and Larry squarely in his sights.
Then there was Depew, who Meg said was still being held in a Pittsburgh jail. Whether he talked or not didn’t matter, since his attack on Stacie had been videotaped. He’d get what was coming to him.
“Stay close to me and don’t speak to anyone,” Meg said. By anyone, she meant the reporters who hung around the courthouse all day in case something juicy dropped.
The palatial corridor of the courthouse was lined with wooden benches, and Cathryn scanned them one by one until she spotted Stacie sitting with Matt Stevenson, her attorney from Duluth. She’d slipped out of the hotel a half hour before Meg’s limo arrived. Both attorneys knew about their relationship but agreed they should avoid being seen together in public, as it might invite questions about a conspiracy of their own.
“Don’t even look over there,” Meg said sharply, leading her into a stark waiting room where there were no windows or art, only stiff metal chairs. She unrolled a cushion from her briefcase and allowed it to self-inflate. “You don’t practice law for forty-five years without learning a few tricks.”
“Do you have any tricks for…” Cathryn stumbled over whether or not to bring up Stacie’s dilemma. “What if they ask me about something I don’t want to talk about?”
“For instance?”
With an eye on the door in case someone came in, she reluctantly related the story of Marty and the drugs, finishing with Stacie’s fear that her phone number had been compromised. “What do I say if they ask me if we know each other?”
“You answer them truthfully.”
“And then what? I might as well serve her up on a silver platter.”
“Cathryn, you have no choice. Your immunity deal depends on your cooperation, which means answering anything they might ask. Besides, you wouldn’t be serving her up. Admitting you know her is only circumstantial. They’d still have to prove she was the one who made those calls, and it’s doubtful they can do that.”
A uniformed bailiff entered through the side door. “They’re ready for you, Miss Mack.”
Meg held up a finger. “Tell the court I’m still meeting with my client. I’ll knock on the door when we’re finished.”
Cathryn waited un
til he left, and whispered, “What happens if I just say I don’t really know her very well?”
“That’s called perjury, and they send you to prison for it. On top of that, it would cancel your immunity deal and you could be tried as a co-conspirator alongside your boss. Cathryn, my job is to look out for you without regard to how anyone else is affected. I’m advising you not to do anything to jeopardize your deal.”
In other words, there were no good choices except to pray Stacie’s name never came up.
Meg rapped sharply on the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
The grand jury room bore very little resemblance to a courtroom. Eighteen jurors sat behind long tables arranged in a U, with microphones interspersed so they too could ask questions. Cathryn’s chair was at the front corner opposite a raised bench where the judge, an African-American woman of about sixty, sat with the prosecutor and court reporter.
The prosecutor, US Attorney Vincent Halperin, was a trim, handsome man in his early forties whose boyish blond hair and taste for designer eyeglasses made it a good bet he’d be drafted someday for higher public office. He began with a rundown of the formalities, reminding her she was still under oath, blah-blah, was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her truthful testimony, blah-blah, and had the right to request a conference with her attorney at any time.
“Miss Mack, I want to pick up where we left off yesterday with regard to the senior officers at Nations Oil in this apparent plot to subvert lawful regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency. I’m particularly interested in any discussions you may have witnessed or participated in involving Nations Oil’s general counsel, Gregg O’Connor.”
It became apparent as he guided her through detailed testimony about the conversations on the plane and in the hotel that he wanted very much to also capture Gregg in the conspiracy web. Though she had no recollection of Gregg’s specific role, she attested to his concerns about covering up the paper trail Woody created with his initial report on the discrepancy between the pump stations, and his agreement to bring in Karl Depew for security.
“We’re almost finished, Miss Mack. I just have one more topic I’d like to ask you about. Do you know Stacie Pilardi?”
After all her rumination and talks with Stacie and Meg, she still hadn’t settled on a plan. And now her time was up. “She’s the head of the Clean Energy Action Network.”
“Yes, of course. We all know that. What I’m interested in is whether or not you know her personally.”
“Personally? What do you mean?”
He studied her for a moment, clearly taken aback by her hesitation. “Have you ever met her? Had a friendly conversation with her? Talked with her on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Yes to which?”
“Each of those.”
Until now, Halperin had conducted virtually all of his questioning in a casual manner from his chair behind the bench. Now, because he’d obviously picked up the scent of blood in the water, he squeezed behind the court reporter and paced menacingly near her chair. “Did you happen to have a telephone conversation with her on the morning of July twentieth?”
If she concentrated, she could probably match up Stacie’s test call on her prepaid cell phone to that specific date, but not if she simply refused to think that hard. Technically speaking, the majority of their phone communications had been SappHere texts, which Halperin probably didn’t know about. “We communicated by phone on more than one occasion, but I can’t be sure of all the actual dates.”
Apparently the jurors also had picked up on her reluctance to elaborate. Several were leaning forward in their chairs and virtually all of them were frowning.
“What did you and Miss Pilardi talk about?”
“She tried to convince me of my company’s wrongdoing, and I tried to convince her we were operating within regulations, which I believed at the time to be true.”
“So your relationship was adversarial?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that at all.” So far she was holding her own. “I respected her even though we disagreed, and I believe she also respected me.”
“How often did you and Miss Pilardi speak by phone?”
“Not very often.”
By his scowl, Halperin was clearly agitated that he wasn’t getting what he wanted. “Not often, and yet you have no idea of the dates?”
“You asked about a specific date, and I told you I didn’t remember.”
“So you did.” He returned to the bench to retrieve his notes and studied them pensively. “In any of your conversations with Miss Pilardi, did she ever mention a man by the name of Martin Winthrop?”
There it was, the kill shot. By asking about “any” of their conversations instead of only those they’d had by phone, he left her no room to dance around it, no way to avoid implicating Stacie. If she said yes, he’d surely hammer away until he got the whole story.
“I’d like to speak to my attorney.”
Unfazed by her request, he glared at her fiercely. “Let me remind you, Miss Mack, your immunity agreement compels you to testify truthfully.”
The judge’s gavel broke the tension in the room, and she calmly said, “That’s enough, Mr. Halperin. She asked for her attorney, and my stomach tells me this is a good time to break for lunch. You can resume your questioning at two o’clock.”
Meg was on the phone in the waiting room and seemed surprised at her early return. “Did everything go all right?”
“They asked about Stacie. I don’t want to tell them.”
“We went through this. You have to.”
Cathryn shook her head adamantly. “No, she could go to prison. I can’t do that to someone I love.”
* * *
Stacie gripped Cathryn’s hand as they followed Matt and Meg off the elevator at the seventh floor of the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. “You guys go ahead. We need just a minute.”
Meg stopped short and made a dramatic display of checking her watch. “A minute is exactly what you have. If Cathryn isn’t back in front of that grand jury at two o’clock, she’ll be held in contempt.”
“One minute, I promise,” Stacie said. She flitted her fingers to send the attorneys down the hallway, and took both of Cathryn’s hands. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?”
“I can’t let you go to jail. Halperin’s questions…he put me in a box. No matter what I say, he’s going to use it against you. Meg says this is the only way.”
“Meg is brilliant, by the way. But this is for real. We’re going to walk out of here—”
“Minute’s up!” Meg shouted from the end of the hall.
“I love you,” Cathryn whispered. “I’m sure about that. And I’m sure you’d do the same thing if I were in your shoes.”
No question. “I would, and I love you too.”
“Then let’s do this.”
Margaret McCullough was indeed a genius, and it didn’t hurt that she also knew all the right people in local government. Otherwise they’d never have been able to pull this off so quickly.
A receptionist led them into the chambers of Judge Charles Willis, a grandfatherly figure who was eating lunch at his desk. “Meg!”
“Charlie!” She met him at his chair and they shared a hug, a clear sign they were old friends. “Thank you so much for doing this on short notice.”
“Anything for you.” He held out both hands toward Cathryn and Matt. “Is this the happy couple?”
“You’re half right.” She nudged Matt aside and pushed Stacie and Cathryn together. “This is. They just got their license downstairs, and we all have to be back in federal court in St. Paul in…forty-two minutes.”
He looked at her skeptically. “Is any of this for real?”
“We love each other,” Stacie said emphatically.
Meg tapped her watch. “Forty-one.”
“Yes, of course.” He picked up a laminated placard from his desk. “This solemn agreem
ent between—”
“Cathryn and Stacie.”
“This solemn agreement between Cathryn and Stacie has permanent legal standing, and we are serving as witnesses to it. Cathryn, will you have this woman to be your wife, to live with her in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”
“I will.” Cathryn said it without a moment’s hesitation and squeezed her hand.
Permanent legal standing. Permanent as in forever.
“…for as long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” Stacie said.
The judge craned his neck toward them. “I don’t suppose either of you brought rings.”
“They plan to go ring shopping later,” Meg said impatiently. “We really need to run, Charlie.”
“Very well. By the power vested in me by Hennepin County, Minnesota, I pronounce you married. You can kiss in the elevator.”
* * *
Cathryn settled again in her seat at the front of the grand jury room as Halperin paced the area between her and the jurors. By the wrinkle of his brow, his mood hadn’t improved since she’d raced out of the room earlier.
It was hard not to notice that several of the jurors looked as though they were ready for a nap. Warm room, full bellies. Always a risky combination.
“Miss Mack, before I continue my questioning, I’d like to recap briefly for the jurors where we left off. You told us you and Stacie Pilardi had communicated several times by phone, but you couldn’t be sure of the dates. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
He held up a calendar of July with the twentieth circled in red and turned to show it to the jurors. “Records indicate that Miss Pilardi checked out of the St. Paul Hotel on July twentieth shortly after a call was placed to your phone. That was a Sunday morning about eleven thirty. I know dates can be confusing, but I wonder if perhaps you remember getting a call on a Sunday morning, perhaps one in which she mentioned being in St. Paul. Does that ring a bell?”
Anyone But You Page 22
