Play Dead

by David Rosenfelt

  He’s obviously surprised. “When?”

  “First flight you can get. You can check out Stacy’s background personally, go to her high school, talk to her neighbors…”

  He’s obviously not thrilled with the prospect. “Well, I could do that… but… I’ve got sinus issues,” he says.

  “Sinus issues?”

  He nods. “They’re inflamed. Taking off and landing could be a problem.”

  “A serious problem?” I ask.

  “Definitely. It could lead to an ear infection. Everything is connected.”

  I turn to Richard, who has been listening to Kevin’s hypochondria with an open mouth. He should be careful about that, because something could enter his mouth and head straight for his ears, since everything is connected.

  “Richard,” I say, “Kevin has a sinus condition that could lead to an ear infection if he takes off and lands. So are you okay spending the rest of your life in jail?”

  He smiles. “No problem.”

  I turn back to Kevin. “Richard is fine with it.”

  Kevin sighs; the battle is lost. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

  Kevin leaves; I think he’d rather be on the way to Minneapolis than have to be here when I tell Richard about Reggie. I debated keeping it from him, since there’s nothing he can do anyway, but I believe in being as honest as I can with my clients. Besides, with the police searching for Reggie, it’s likely to come to the media’s attention. If Richard is going to find out, I want it to be from me.

  “Richard, something has happened, and I don’t have an easy way to tell you. There was a break-in at my house last night, and they took Reggie.”

  He looks as if he has been hit with an emotional baseball bat, and it takes him a few minutes to recover enough to ask the obvious questions about who and why. I wish I had the answers to give him; all I can do is tell him that every effort will be made to find Reggie. He doesn’t seem comforted by that, and he shouldn’t be.

  I head into court, though Richard has to be brought in by the bailiffs. I’ll miss having Kevin next to me; he often sees and points out things that I’ve missed. But we need to get a handle on who Stacy really was, in a hurry.

  The testimony about Stacy that Hawpe elicits from his witnesses is no more impressive than in the first trial. He starts with two neighbors and two people from Stacy’s gym. All speak highly of her, though it is only the last woman, Susan Castro, who describes herself as Stacy’s “dear friend.” She had not described herself in that way during her testimony in the first trial, so unless she’s been attending a lot of séances, she’s been influenced by the publicity surrounding this one.

  My questions for the first three witnesses are perfunctory, designed to elicit that they really didn’t know what was going on in Stacy’s life, that they were shocked by her death, and that they knew and liked Richard.

  I decide to go further with Susan Castro, since I may need to point out later in the trial that Stacy deliberately avoided having any “dear friends,” because she was living a lie. I also do it for the childish reason that I don’t like Ms. Castro; she is essentially making this friendship up to draw attention to herself. The fact that Richard’s life is on the line is clearly not her first priority.

  “You and Stacy Harriman were dear friends?” I ask.

  “Yes, we certainly were,” she says.

  “What does it mean to you to be ‘dear friends’ with someone?”

  She seems taken aback by the question but then says, “I suppose it’s a willingness to share innermost feelings, to confide in a person and have them confide in you. To provide and receive comfort and support.”

  “I see. Let’s go through a list of innermost feelings that your dear friend Stacy may have confided in you. Where was she born?”

  Castro looks stumped by the first toughie of a question. “I’m not sure; I believe Kansas… or Wisconsin.”

  I nod sympathetically. “I always get those two confused myself. How many siblings did she have?”

  “I’m not sure; she didn’t mention any.”

  “Where did she go to college?”

  “Objection, Your Honor, relevance.”

  “Your Honor,” I say, “Mr. Hawpe took the witness through a speech about how close she and the defendant were. I have every right to demonstrate that her testimony was completely misleading in that regard.”

  Judge Gordon overrules the objection, but instead of telling me which college Stacy attended, she says, “We didn’t talk about those kind of things.”

  “Right, you talked about more intimate, innermost stuff. Was she ever married before?”

  “I think so… maybe not.”

  “Got it. Previous marital history—yes and no.” I have a little more fun with this and then let her off the stand. Hawpe calls Gale Chaplin, the neighbor I had visited in her house to discuss her testimony in the first trial.

  Chaplin’s recounting is once again damaging. She talks about Stacy’s admitting that she and Richard were having problems, and her concern about his temper. She comes off as credible because she makes no claims of great friendship. In fact, she says that she was surprised that Stacy confided in her at all.

  Chaplin’s testimony is troubling to me on two levels. Most important is the negative impact it can have on the jury. But I’m also puzzled about why Stacy would have had this conversation with someone who was not a close friend. Why make your whole life a secret and then pour things out to a relative stranger?

  In my cross I press Chaplin on the level of friendship she and Stacy had, as a way of diminishing the credibility that Stacy would have opened up like that. I’m not very effective, because Chaplin openly and repeatedly admits that they weren’t close.

  “Did Stacy tell you where she was from?” I ask.

  Chaplin nods. “Outside of Minneapolis, which is not far from where I’m from as well.”

  “So you two discussed your hometowns, maybe common friends and experiences?”

  “No, she didn’t seem to want to talk about that at all,” Chaplin says, consistent with what she told me at her house.

  I brought this up in case I am able to bring before the jury that Stacy’s background was fabricated. Her reluctance to talk about her supposed hometown will fit in well with that.

  It’s a small point, the only kind I seem to make these days.

  WEEKENDS ESSENTIALLY DO not exist during a trial.

  While court is closed, I still treat Saturday and Sunday as full workdays, unless, of course, it’s an NFL Sunday and the Giants are playing.

  Since this is a non-NFL Saturday, I’m reading and rereading my case files within a few minutes of returning from the morning walk with Tara. It’s weird, because he was here only a short time, but the house seems empty without Reggie. Even Tara seems depressed about it.

  But I have to force myself to focus. The trial is going to kick into a higher gear on Monday, and even though I feel that I’m ready for it, there are different levels of “ready.”

  Kevin calls at about eleven o’clock from Minneapolis. He gets right to the point. “She never lived here, Andy.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  He hesitates. “You’ll have to speak a little louder; since the landing I’ve lost most of the hearing in my left ear.”

  I yell, “THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD HOLD THE PHONE TO YOUR RIGHT EAR!”

  It’s not the answer Kevin was looking for; he was hoping I’d ask sympathetic questions about his sinus issues. When it’s obvious I won’t, he gets down to business.

  “I went to the home address listed. It’s a garden apartment complex, and the specific apartment has been lived in by a married couple for thirty-one years. Neither they nor the superintendent of the complex ever heard of Stacy Harriman, and they didn’t recognize her picture.”

  “How many people did you ask?”

  “At least two dozen,” he says. “All people who have been here for years. She never lived at this address, A
ndy.”

  “What else did you find out?”

  “She never went to the high school, either. No teachers ever heard of her, and she’s not listed in the yearbook.”

  “But she has a transcript,” I say.

  “The school administration wouldn’t talk to me about it; they said the records are confidential.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “That’s what I told them, but they weren’t impressed. But the bottom line is that unless she was invisible while she was here, then her background is faked.”

  “Have you got documentation?” I ask, knowing that he must.

  Kevin confirms that he has a folder full of documents and sworn declarations that we can use in court as evidence for what he has found out, if we get the opportunity. “Andy, I never thought I’d say this, but I think Reggie was right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Richard is innocent.”

  “Absolutely. And you should get back here fast so we can figure out how to get him out of prison,” I say.

  “I’m on a two o’clock flight.”

  “Take care of that ear. And keep an eye on your nose and mouth; everything’s connected.”

  “Wise-ass,” he snarls, and hangs up.

  It doesn’t pay to be concerned about people.

  I hang up and call Sam Willis, who says that he had just been ready to call me. Sam presents more of the same; the further he digs into Stacy’s background, the more obvious it is that her real history has been completely concealed.

  “And this isn’t run-of-the-mill stuff, Andy. “We’re talking driver’s license, voter registration card, passport, social security number—all issued in fantasyland.”

  “Let me ask you this,” I say. “You’ve been able to access all this stuff on the computer. Could somebody as good as you, or even better—”

  “Better?” he interrupts. “Better?”

  “If such a thing were possible, could somebody as good or better have created all of this? Some citizen with a computer?”

  He thinks about it for a few moments before answering. “No. Maybe some of it, but not all the stuff that I’m looking at. The effort involved would be unbelievable, and even then it wouldn’t be this thorough. This has to be bigger than that.”

  This seems to be the prevailing view, and it’s one I share. Another factor that also supports this conclusion is that as far as I can tell, Stacy Harriman never went around trumpeting her background. She was always pretty quiet about it, speaking in vague generalities. If she had gone to all the trouble of creating it, she would have held it out there more.

  It’s not until nine o’clock at night that Laurie calls to add her voice to the chorus. It’s a sign of how exciting my life is that I’m already in bed, watching television.

  Laurie has spoken to her friend at LAPD, though she gave him only generalities, not specifics. “He says it has to be WITSEC,” she says.

  She’s talking about the government agency that handles witness security. Contrary to common perception, it is not run by the FBI but rather by the U.S. Marshals Service.

  I tell her about my conversations with Kevin and Sam, which only reinforce her conclusion.

  “Is your friend familiar with any cases in which they’ve been forced to provide information about one of the people they’re protecting?” I ask.

  “As far as I know, that never happens.”

  “You doubt my powers?”

  “Never. But you might want to utilize Kevin’s powers on this as well.”

  “Good idea.” I had already planned to meet with Kevin tomorrow, and I’ll leave him a message to that effect when I get off the phone with Laurie.

  “Any word on Reggie?” she asks.

  “No. Pete says every cop in the area has been notified, but no sign of him.”

  We commiserate about this for a few minutes, and then she asks, “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I can’t decide. I was thinking maybe a movie and then stopping for a drink, or there’s a terrific new jazz club that just opened.”

  “You’re in bed watching television,” she says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “Because I know you better than you know you.”

  “You make me feel naked,” I say, in mock protest.

  “If I were there you would be.”

  Kevin is over at ten in the morning. He brings his own tissues, since occasionally in the past I’ve only had paper towels to give him when he needed to blow his nose. He blows his nose a lot.

  Kevin also brings some case law research he did last night after getting my message. It relates to previous rulings that the courts have made concerning efforts to penetrate WITSEC; that is, to get them to reveal specific information about people in their program.

  The agency has been notoriously loath to provide anything, which in most cases makes perfect sense. Their protection efforts depend on total secrecy; it is by definition a matter of life and death.

  The crucial difference here is that the death has already occurred. There is obviously a logical problem in protecting someone who has already been murdered, and we need to use that as a wedge to find out what we need to know.

  Kevin could find no specific case law directly on point. Just as it makes little sense to try to protect a dead witness, there has been little reason over the years for people to want to learn who those already dead witnesses might be.

  We kick around our options, and though it’s obvious that we must go to Judge Gordon, our key decision revolves around timing. The prosecution presumably knows nothing about this, and anytime we know something that they don’t, it is a distinct advantage that is not lightly discarded. Once we go to the judge, then Hawpe will know what we know.

  Which is not such a big deal, because we don’t know a hell of a lot.

  Kevin and I come to the same conclusion: We need to go to Judge Gordon immediately. If we can get definitive information that Stacy Harriman was in the witness protection program, the impact on our case will be immeasurable. If such dangerous killers were after her that she had to start a new life to escape them, then reasonable doubt about Richard’s guilt can’t help but kick in.

  We’ve had two days’ worth of witnesses, but this case really starts tomorrow.

  “YOUR HONOR, STACY Harriman was not Stacy Harriman.”

  That is how I start the meeting in Judge Gordon’s chambers. Present are only the judge, Hawpe, a stenographer, and myself.

  “What does that mean?” he asks. “Who was she?”

  “That’s what we need you to find out,” I say, and then lay out chapter and verse of what we have learned about Stacy’s faked background. I leave out the other areas of government intervention, like the phone tap and the FBI’s taking over the highway shooting case. To me that stuff adds credibility to our argument but might take the case on an unnecessary tangent.

  I conclude with “I have consulted an expert in the field, and the only reasonable explanation that I can come up with is that she has been in the WITSEC program.”

  “And you’re asking me to subpoena the information from the U.S. marshals?”

  I nod. “Yes, Your Honor. And to hold a hearing if they refuse to comply.”

  “Mr. Hawpe?”

  “Your Honor, first I would like to assure you that this is the first I’ve heard of this, so my reaction is an initial one. But I do not believe that the court should become an arm of the defense, to be used to conduct what seems on its face to be a fishing expedition.”

  I shake my head in disagreement. “If it is a fishing expedition, all evidence to the contrary, then no harm is done, and only a little of the court’s time is wasted. If, on the other hand, it is true that Stacy Harriman’s life was being protected by the U.S. marshals, then that is of monumental importance to Richard Evans’s defense and to the search for the truth.”

  Judge Gordon nods slightly and turns back to Hawpe. “And your objection is merely a desire to
be protective of the court’s time?”

  Hawpe says, “That and the possible impact of unfounded speculation like this on the jury.”

  Judge Gordon makes his decision. “I’ll contact the U.S. Marshals Service immediately and, if necessary, issue a subpoena.”

  He goes on to impose a gag order, prohibiting either side from mentioning this to the press. I have no problem with that now, but if we don’t get the information, I’ll press to have it lifted.

  Judge Gordon delays the start of the trial for one hour so that he can attend to this. I’m very pleased with his reaction; he completely understands the importance of the issue.

  When the trial resumes, Hawpe’s first witness is Lou Mazzola, the night manager of the pier where Richard kept his boat. He was on duty the night that Stacy was murdered, and he testified that he saw Richard and Stacy on the boat as it was leaving.

  Mazzola’s sole purpose is to place Stacy on the boat, and I have no desire to refute it, because I know it to be true, and others will say the same thing. Nevertheless, it offends my defense attorney’s sensibility to let him get away without my accomplishing anything.

  “Mr. Mazzola, were Mr. Evans and Ms. Harriman alone that night?”

  “They had their dog with them.” It’s a fact that Hawpe conveniently forgot to bring out on direct.

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No, he was with them pretty much every time.”

  “What kind of dog was it?”

  “A golden retriever. It’s the one I saw on television last month.”

  I can’t help but smile; Mazzola has just made an important point for our side, that Reggie turned up alive recently. I can only hope that he still is.

  Hawpe doesn’t want to object, because the statement has already been made, and because he doesn’t want a fight over Reggie’s identity. The court has already made a ruling about that at the hearing.

  “So you’re certain the dog was with them that night?”

  “Absolutely. I kept dog biscuits in my office, and I gave him one every time they were there, including that night.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about their actions that night? For example, were they unfriendly to you, or fighting amongst themselves?”