Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

  It was a production and his troop was ready. Coached, primed, and pushed forward to do battle.

  “And let me tell you something about the actors you are going to hear from. That’s right, they’re all actors.”

  He turned and stepped to the DA’s table. He pointed at FBI Agent Worthy. “Exhibit A, this fine-looking, competent, believable FBI agent. You will hear from him, what he saw at the scene and what he learned from witnesses. But remember this: neither he nor the witnesses he’s talked to know anything about Turquoise shooting her uncle. Did they bother to ask her whether she had been wearing that Lakers shirt when she was watching over the family’s sheep and shot the rifle at predators?”

  He paused, his hand still outstretched, his finger pointed at the red-faced Worthy, who looked as if he might be fighting the urge to leap up and jam the accusing fingers back until they snapped. He looked down at the desk instead, placed his fingers on the tablet keyboard, and began typing, oblivious to the accusation.

  “Uh-huh,” Thaddeus said. He nodded at the agent. “Well, we’ll see if he looks you in the eye when I get to cross-examine him. Please remember when the DA asks her questions and Worthy performs as the professional witness he is. That he’s a paid gun, a man paid by your tax dollars to come into court and try to put your neighbors in jail.”

  “Objection!” cried DA Russell. “Argumentative.”

  “Sustained. Move along.”

  “Other witnesses are also paid parrots. They’re going to tell you this and that about blood spatters, distances, bullet trajectories, wounds, cause of death, and the rest of the rigmarole that goes into making you believe they actually know something about Turquoise. But here’s a news flash: none of them were there. None of them saw her fire a bullet into the uncle. None of them. They’re going to try to make it sound like they have the goods on her, but again, just like with the chief investigator, ask yourselves, what do they have on the girl herself? And that’s all she is, in the end. A girl, trapped somewhere between youth and adulthood, caught up in this unbelievable hurricane of witnesses, charts, diagrams, medical reports, firearms reports, and the rest of the storm the state is sending her way. When you see what a ruse this is, then I’m sure you’ll return with the only possible verdict. A verdict of not guilty. Thank you.”

  He took his seat. Turquoise dabbed her eyes. He quickly assessed: he liked what he’d had to say. His sense of the moment was that Wrasslin had hit a triple. Not a home run, a triple. She was almost there but couldn’t quite connect Turquoise to the actual shooting. She had motive, she had opportunity, she had fleeing the scene, she had physical evidence in the gunshot residue. But she didn’t have a confession, or a video, or an eyewitness. Thaddeus knew that much would depend on the jury’s perception of Turquoise. They would want to know whether she was capable of causing someone else’s death. There would need to be some prior bad act, some black mark that would convince them they had their killer. He drew a deep breath and released slowly. He didn’t think they had that, the prior bad act. There was nothing—at least nothing he was aware of—in her history that would equal a black mark. She was as pure as the fallen snow.

  Or so he thought.

  A fifteen-minute break supervened. The jurors filed out, headed for restrooms and the coffeepot in the jury room, and began establishing friendships among themselves—a newly formed tribe that would try to survive the Great American Trial together.

  Fifteen minutes later, the court instructed the state to call its first witness.

  “Let the testimony begin,” H. Ivan directed the attorneys.

  The first witness was Bobby Chee, the Navajo policeman who found Randy Begay dead in the girl’s bed. Thaddeus had tried to interview Bobby, but the man would never make himself available and failed to show on two different occasions after Thaddeus had twice driven out to the Navajo PD substation to meet. His supervisor each time claimed emergency. Something had come up on Bobby’s shift that had required him to be out in the field and he simply wasn’t available. Thaddeus thought he could make some use of the missed appointments, but he also knew juries’ sympathies would fall to the cop in most cases. Everyone knew their schedules were volatile and subject to change at any moment, without notice, no explanation required.

  Wrasslin took Bobby Chee through that afternoon’s events and spent probably more than an hour and a half reciting everything when thirty minutes would have served their case better. At the forty-five-minute mark, two jurors were beginning to lose interest and took to studying the courtroom, the architecture, the onlookers—anything to escape the tedium of the repeated, “What happened next?” questions. By the sixty-minute mark at least half the jury had taken up the same task of counting noses and studying pictures of ancient judges mounted on the walls. By ninety minutes they were all off somewhere else in la-la land.

  It had been an early afternoon of chasing speeders along the stretch of highway he and his partner were patrolling. They were hoping to tag at least three drunk drivers—their quota for the second half of that shift. They were parked at a billboard advertising “Fireworks Ahead!” in such a way that their green Toyota 4Runner was hidden from view of oncoming traffic. The speed gun was hot and they were pulling over driver after driver along the deserted highway that stretched twenty empty miles in both directions. They had one drunk driver in the bag—literally, locked in the back seat—and were preparing to head for the substation and holding cell, when the call came in. A young girl name of Turquoise Begay had been raped and was walking west on Navajo 59. They hit the gum balls and headed west, running at ninety for the better part of ten minutes. Then they spotted her, walking west on the north side of the highway, head down, arms swinging violently at her sides as she forged ahead. They pulled in behind her and whooped the siren. She stopped and turned.

  “You Turquoise?” Bobby Chee called as he exited.

  He closed the distance between them.

  “Your name Turquoise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone called Navajo PD about you. Was there a rape?”

  She looked away at the one-hundred-mile wasteland. Huddled in the distance were the sandstone stumps of Monument Valley. Then she nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not the first time he did it.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Randy Begay.”

  By this time Bobby Chee’s partner, Jimmy Yellowmexican, had joined.

  “I know him,” said Jimmy. “The one from Kayenta?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At the trailer.”

  “Does he have a weapon he used on you?”

  “No.”

  “Are there any weapons at the trailer?”

  “Coyote rifle.”

  “Is there ammunition?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did he point it at you?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Come with us, please. We need to talk to him.”

  She slid into the 4Runner’s front seat, so she was between the two cops. The hapless drunk driver lolled in the back seat, his face pointed at the ceiling, mouth open, snoring and snorting every few minutes. Harmless, in that he wasn’t going to throw up in the back seat. Security Plexiglas separated him from the cops, sound being allowed through only by a series of pencil holes grouped in the shape and size of a coffee saucer. “Go back to sleep, Mikey,” Jimmy shouted through the holes. “We have a stop to make.”

  Mikey obliged, closing his eyes and lapsing once again into his near-coma.

  They raced east, arriving at the same trailer they had passed coming west not fifteen minutes earlier. Bobby Chee quietly ascended the three metal steps and soundlessly opened the metal door. He stuck his head inside. His right hand found his holster and unsnapped the retention snap. The Glock 17’s grip curled into his hand and he pushed on inside.

  Jimmy Yellowmexican waited with Turquoise at the foot of the steps.

  Bobby
returned momentarily and spoke to Jimmy. “Call it in. Homicide. We need FBI and CSI rolling.”

  Jimmy returned to the SUV and Turquoise could see his mouth moving, microphone up, as he made the call. She was alone at the bottom of the steps; Bobby had disappeared back inside.

  She climbed the steps and peered into her living room, which now looked strangely remote and unwelcoming to her. There was the TV in which she escaped at night with the HBO that forever came and went, depending on whether the bill was current. There was the green love seat where Randy made her sit next to him while he rubbed her thigh and watched True Blood or Arizona Diamondbacks baseball. She hated baseball and had little use for vampires; still, it was enough to escape from her own personal hell, so she submitted and watched the channels he chose.

  Bobby Chee said that he found Randy Begay with the right half of his head blown away by the high-energy .30-.30 deer round. Randy was stiff, his brains scattered on the wall and drained down onto the pillow beneath his head. His hand was inside the waistband of his blue jeans. His fly was open and both boots were neatly arranged beside him on the floor. There was a gun in the room, he said, which he was careful not to touch. He told Turquoise to stay out, but she wasn’t trying to come into her bedroom anyway.

  She told Bobby she had called her caseworker Angelina Steinmar, who had told her to leave the trailer when she reported her uncle’s latest assault.

  Wrasslin went over this point again, evidently caught off-guard by this detail.

  “You’re sure she said Angelina Steinmar told her to leave?”

  “That’s what she said,” Bobby said, nodding his head as if there was no doubt.

  Wrasslin struggled with a follow-up question for several seconds. It was clear that her argument the girl had “fled the scene,” was in fact itself fleeing the scene. As it turned out, she hadn’t fled the scene at all, not according to Bobby Chee. As it turned out, her caseworker, a State of Arizona employee, had told her to leave and walk west on Navajo 59.

  Wrasslin backed out of the problematic discussion less than gracefully, abruptly asking the officer about the gun. Did he touch it? He did not. His police academy training had taught him never to touch a weapon at the scene of a crime when there was no threat.

  How had she missed such a key fact as the girl being told to leave? Thaddeus decided that Wrasslin had had the same problem with Bobby Chee as he: she hadn’t been able to interview him before trial and was merely working from his written police reports. The part about the caseworker was new, not included in the reports. Obviously Stall Worthy, in sandpapering witness testimony and statements, had missed the same piece of key information. But why wouldn’t they? They were certain it was Turquoise who had done the killing; of course she would flee. It was an instance of an assumption coming back to bite them in the ass. Score one for the defense. And he hadn’t had to lift a finger.

  “Did you ask Turquoise who shot her uncle?”

  “I did. I asked her if she did it.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she didn’t kill anything. She said she didn’t kill coyotes or wild dogs. She said she wouldn’t even kill a spider.”

  “Was she angry at her uncle?”

  “She hated him. But she didn’t kill him.”

  “You mean, that’s what she said.”

  “Yes.”

  “No further questions.”

  Thaddeus decided it couldn’t get any better, so he declined cross-examinations.

  “Defense has no questions, Your Honor.”

  H. Ivan Trautman cocked an eyebrow at him, but Thaddeus stood firm. Cross-examination could only serve to weaken the officer’s statements. Thaddeus had no intention of doing that as parts of it favored Turquoise.

  “It’s eleven thirty-five,” said Trautman. “We’ll break for lunch. Jury back and ready to go at one p.m. Remember the admonition: do not discuss the case among yourselves or with anyone else, do not read newspaper accounts or watch TV reports of the trial or participants, report anyone who attempts to discuss the case with you. We’re in recess.”

  Thaddeus found Katy in the hallway. She said she’d been in and out; she was too nervous to sit still for very long. They went south on San Francisco Street, ate beans and sprouts and pita at a local health food restaurant (Thaddeus begged a turkey hot dog from the waitress), and drank two iced teas while they discussed strategy.

  Then back to the courthouse, where things resumed.

  42

  With the next witness, Thaddeus knew the roof was about to cave in on Turquoise. Special Agent Stall Worthy had been through the FBI academy in Virginia and was a professional witness, both by training and the experience of testifying in thousands of trials. His office was in Flagstaff, in the Bank of America building, where he worked with seven other agents under his command. He parceled out the assignments and kept the homicides for himself as first responder. He was on the scene within hours of the call coming in. A homicide might later get passed off to another agent, but that hadn’t been done in this case, mainly because Randy Begay’s father was a retired Navajo PD officer—which Thaddeus hadn’t known. Turquoise’s own grandfather was a policeman. So what in the hell, Thaddeus mused, had happened to this worthless son, Randy, that he had become a child rapist, child molester, drug pusher/user, and total all-around drain on society and loser? They didn’t come much worse than Randy Begay.

  Special Agent Stall Worthy was the canvas upon which all the other testimony for the prosecution would be painted. Wrasslin got the basics out of him. He got to the scene, took control, allowed CSI and M.E. access, oversaw the collection of evidence and handling of the weapon, and ran things from the beginning up until now. No signs of struggle, no fingerprints on the body, hands had been bagged and came back negative for DNA under fingernails and negative for evidence of scratching, which, he intoned officiously, told him Randy Begay never saw it coming. His eyes were closed at death, which didn’t indicate much, except it could have meant he was asleep. Why was his hand inside his blue jeans? Actually, the hand was not only inside his blue jeans, it was also inside his JC Penney underwear and firmly gripping his penis. At the mention of hand-on-penis there was a collective inhalation of air from the jury box. By now the crowd inside the courtroom had thinned to almost nothing and there was no commotion from that part of the room. If they only knew what they were missing, Thaddeus wryly mused. It was an unimportant case; a representative from the Coconino Examiner had been present for the early morning session but had departed when Bobby Chee finished up. No news is good news, thought Thaddeus. The less pressure there was on the jury to “do the right thing” and convict someone, the better his case.

  But then things got ugly.

  Wrasslin: “Did you speak to the defendant at the scene?”

  Worthy: “I did.”

  “Did you ask about her relationship with her uncle, the decedent?”

  “I did.”

  “Tell the jury what she said.”

  Looking over at jury. “She said she seldom saw her uncle. She didn’t know him that well.”

  “Did you ask her about rape?”

  “I asked her whether she was angry with her uncle.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she hadn’t thought much about it either way.”

  “Did you ask her about the gonorrhea?”

  “Later I did. After I found out about it. At the jail, when you were present.”

  “What did she say about the STD?”

  “She said her boyfriend gave her the STD. That he had to take medicine too.”

  “Did she say anything about having sex with her uncle?”

  “She did. She denied having sex with her uncle.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  “She never had sex with her uncle.”

  “I specifically asked her, ‘Did you ever have sex with your uncle?’ She specifically said she’d never had sex with her uncle.”

&
nbsp; “That is all. Thank you.”

  Thaddeus rubbed his temples and slowly looked over at the agent.

  “But you wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d had sex with her uncle?”

  “Objection. Speculation.”

  “It is speculative, but harmless. He may answer.”

  “I wouldn’t have been surprised? I wouldn’t have been surprised, no. But the fact is, she said she didn’t have sex with her uncle.”

  “Object to the commentary, ask that it be stricken and the jury told to disregard.”

  Judge Trautman nodded, once. “The jury is instructed to disregard the comment that she didn’t have sex with her uncle. That portion of the answer is nonresponsive and should be ignored.”

  Wrasslin jumped up. “But Judge, the jury doesn’t have to ignore that he told me the same thing on direct examination, does it?”

  “Objection,” said Thaddeus coolly. “If the district attorney wishes to testify why I’ll be glad to call her as a witness just as soon as I’m finished with Mr. Worthy.”