A Plague of Secrets

by John Lescroart

  Hardy objected on the grounds of hearsay, but as he thought she might, Braun overruled him.

  Hearsay was one of the most flexible and confusing concepts in all of jurisprudence—sometimes allowed, sometimes not—and Braun’s interpretation today looked like she was going to be allowing Jansey’s testimony. She was buying Stier’s theory that Vogler’s statements were against his penal interest—something so unfavorable to him that he would never have said it if it wasn’t true. And this was an exception to the hearsay rule.

  Braun also appeared to accept Stier’s argument that the statements were admissible for Vogler’s state of mind, an argument so arcane that even Hardy couldn’t follow it. In any event, whether it was a valid legal call or not, Braun’s decision was going to be the rule in this courtroom today, and Hardy had to live with it.

  “Yes,” she said, “they had been intimate in college.”

  “And since then?”

  This time, in frustration, Hardy held up his hand. “Objection. Relevance.”

  “Goes to motive, Your Honor,” Stier replied. If he wasn’t going to convince the jury about the blackmail, he’d take the jilted lover as a backup position.

  Braun nodded in her brusque fashion and again shot Hardy down. “Overruled.”

  “Since they finished college, then, Ms. Ticknor, did Mr. Vogler tell you that he’d had an intimate relationship with Defendant?”

  “Yes. Up till a little before he met me.”

  Hardy felt a tight grip over his forearm and Maya’s voice sharp in his ear. “That’s a damn lie!” Loud enough for all the courtroom to hear it, and maybe even the one next door.

  Judge Braun slammed her gavel.

  But Maya, all but inert for much of these proceedings so far, suddenly had come alive. “That’s just not true,” she said to Hardy, then turned the other way in her seat, toward the jury, and addressed them directly. “That’s not true,” she repeated.

  Bam! Bam! “Mr. Hardy, control your client! Bailiffs.”

  But before either of the two bailiffs could get to her, Maya had turned completely around to face her husband, sitting in the row behind her. “It’s not,” she said, “it’s not.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I believe you.” And he went to put an arm out to touch her.

  But by this time the first bailiff had come up and gotten in between them, knocking Joel’s arm away, looking up at Braun for instructions. And as if in response to this escalation the entire gallery seemed to erupt at once over the steady cadence of the gavel.

  When at last, after nearly a minute, a restive silence, if not true order, had been restored, Braun glared down from the bench, looking to Hardy as if she’d suddenly aged ten years. Real fright that her courtroom had so quickly gotten out of her control showed in her face, in the set of her mouth. Maybe it hadn’t happened to her in a while, but whatever the reason, she had been unprepared. As Hardy’s heart pounded in his ear, from one pulse to the next, Braun shifted from intimidated oldster to wrathful prelate. She wielded her gavel, randomly, it seemed, in the near silence, and then dropped the little hammer again, until the silence was complete.

  Gathering herself, she summoned Stier and Hardy to sidebar. She spoke with an exaggerated quiet. “Mr. Hardy, any further outburst from your client such as the one we’ve just all endured, and I will order her removed from the courtroom. She can watch these proceedings on closed circuit TV if she can’t control herself. Is that about as clear as I can possibly make it?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” He could have gone on with a bit more of a floral apology but decided to leave it at that. If nothing else, his client had just achieved one of his primary objectives—humanizing herself to the jury.

  Hardy went back to counsel table and squeezed Maya’s hand.

  Stier, for his part, seemed to have enjoyed the blowup as well, for his own reasons. He would be happy to grant the defendant’s humanity, too, so long as it was a humanity characterized by a hot temper and a dismissive disregard of authority.

  He came back to his witness. “Ms. Ticknor, how long did this intimacy between himself and the defendant go on after Mr. Vogler got out of prison?”

  “Until he met me.”

  “And when was that?”

  “About six years ago.”

  Hardy had one hand over Maya’s own hand on the table and his other hand firmly holding her arm just above her elbow.

  “So they broke off their relationship because of you?”

  “Yes.”

  Maya leaned over and whispered to Hardy. “Why is she saying this?”

  Hardy thought he might know, but this really wasn’t the time to talk about it, so he shook his head very slightly and squeezed her arm tighter.

  Braun frowned in their direction.

  And Stier went on. “Yet, after this breakup, Mr. Vogler kept working for her at BBW. As his domestic partner, did you know Mr. Vogler’s salary there?”

  “Yes. Ninety thousand dollars a year.”

  A few gasps from the gallery greeted this intelligence.

  “Did your partner share with you why he was paid so handsomely?”

  “Your Honor”—Hardy showing some exasperation—“hearsay, relevance, facts not in evidence, conclusory. None of this entire line of questioning is probative.”

  “It all goes to motive,” Stier put in, “as will be clear shortly.”

  “Very well,” Braun said. “The objections are overruled. Go ahead, Mr. Stier.”

  Stier repeated the previous question, and Jansey nodded with some enthusiasm. “She wanted to keep him around because she loved him. She thought she’d get him back.”

  “And how did you feel about that?”

  “I didn’t like it, of course. I resented it.”

  “Did you ask him to quit his job?”

  “Several times.”

  “What reason did he give you for not quitting?”

  “He couldn’t make anywhere near as much anywhere else. Besides, he could sell the marijuana out of BBW without any hassles. He had the perfect situation, he said. He couldn’t be fired. She was paying him just to keep him around.”

  “So, to your knowledge, did Mr. Vogler tell you that Defendant knew about the marijuana sold out of her shop?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Another whisper from Maya. “That lying bitch!”

  Another upper-arm squeeze from Hardy.

  Stier paused for a moment. Pure theatricality. “Ms. Ticknor, did anything change between Mr. Vogler and Defendant in the last year?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was that?”

  “They started up an affair again.”

  “And how do you know about this?”

  “Dylan wasn’t coming home when he usually did and I called him on it.”

  “So he admitted it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I moved out. In with my parents.”

  “When was this?”

  “About this time last year. Say six months before—before he was killed.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “After a couple of weeks, he stopped it—the affair. He told me he’d made a mistake and begged me to come back to him, which I did. Mostly because of Ben. Our child. I wanted our son to have a father.” Jansey ran a fingertip under one of her eyes, then the other.

  “Yes, of course,” Stier replied with an admirable sanctimoniousness. He turned to the jury, including them in his heartfelt emotion. Now, returning to his witness, he cleared his throat. “After this second and most recent rejection of Defendant by Mr. Vogler, did things change at BBW?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “Now she wanted to punish Dylan for dropping her, to fire him, but he couldn’t let her do that. He had too much stuff going on at the store. He couldn’t let it go.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Well, mostly he threatened to tell her husband
about the affair, and also some of the stuff they’d done in college.”

  “In other words, he started blackmailing her.”

  “If you want to call it that. Yes.”

  “Thank you.” And turning, he said to Hardy. “Your witness.”

  In spite of Maya’s outburst both she and Hardy had known the gist of Jansey’s testimony before she’d gone onto the stand—they had heard a similar version of it during the preliminary hearing. Hardy had hoped that much of Jansey’s testimony would never in fact be heard by the jury because so much of it was hearsay.

  Well, that would show him.

  But against the urge to hope, he was always prepared. Taking some pages from his binder, he walked up to his place in front of Jansey, handing them to her. “Ms. Ticknor,” he began, “do you recognize these pages which I’ve just handed to you?”

  She glanced down at them, turned them over. “Yes. They’re transcripts of the talks I had with the inspectors.”

  “You’ve had a chance to read them and to compare them to the original tape-recorded statements that you gave police?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they are a full and complete record of those interviews?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Ms. Ticknor, you’ve just told Mr. Stier that you knew that Mr. Vogler was blackmailing the defendant, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, Ms. Ticknor, I’d like you to turn to page two and read to the jury the highlighted section.” Jansey looked down, found the place, and read in a shaky voice. “If he was blackmailing her, he could have just asked for a raise, and she would have had to give it to him, right?”

  “Thank you. For the jury’s benefit, Ms. Ticknor, the him and her you use refer to who?”

  “Dylan and Maya.”

  “Good. So you were asking the inspectors a question about if Dylan were blackmailing Maya, isn’t that so?”

  “I guess so, but—”

  Hardy cut her off. “So, Ms. Ticknor, if it is true that you knew at the time that Dylan was blackmailing Maya, why did you have to ask the inspector something that you already knew?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Let me ask you again. Did you know for a fact that Dylan was blackmailing Maya?”

  “Well, I don’t see how he could have—”

  “Ms. Ticknor. Excuse me. Yes or no? Did you know for a fact that Dylan was blackmailing Maya?”

  “Well, yes, he told me.”

  “But is it correct that you have no explanation for that passage in the transcript that you just read?”

  “No. I guess I was just confused.”

  “Thank you.” Hardy kept right on. “Now you have just testified that Dylan told you that he was not afraid of Maya because he could tell her husband about their affair and she needed him for the marijuana business. Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Thank you. Now I’d like you to read another short excerpt from the transcript of the same interview. Page four, please, the highlighted section.”

  Again, the witness found the spot and began to read: “‘You’re right, though, about him not being afraid of her, or of losing the job.’

  “ ‘But he never talked about why?’

  “ ‘The most he ever said was that she owed him.’ ” She looked back up at Hardy.

  “ ‘The most he ever said was that she owed him.’ Are those your words?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are referring to Dylan and Maya again, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re saying that the most Dylan ever said about not being afraid of Maya, or of losing his job, was that she owed him?”

  Again, a querulous, uncertain nod. “I guess so.”

  “This isn’t a guessing game, Ms. Ticknor. Again. Either that’s what you said or it wasn’t. Which is it?”

  “Okay, that’s what I said.”

  “The most Dylan said about not being afraid of Maya was that she owed him, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” Hardy turned to include the jury. “But you just testified that he said a lot more than that, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You just testified that he said he could blackmail her for two separate reasons. Would you agree that that’s different from that she owed him? Do you agree or not? Yes or no?”

  “Well, that’s what I meant.”

  “And how often did you have these conversations?”

  “A lot of times.” She took her plea directly to the jury. “Just when we talked. It was just stuff he told me.”

  “But when?” Hardy persisted. “If you didn’t know about any of this when you spoke to the inspectors, after Dylan was already dead, when could you have talked about it with him?”

  Jansey threw an agonized glance over at Stier. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But we did. I’m sure we did.”

  The point made, Hardy left it. “One last short reading, if I may. The highlighted section in the middle of page five.”

  By this time her voice had shrunk to a near-whisper, but she found her place. “ ‘Did he say what she owed him for?’

  “ ‘It wasn’t like we really ever talked about it.’ ”

  “It wasn’t like you really ever talked about it. That would be you and Dylan, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just one more thing, Ms. Ticknor. Tell the jury what the police found in the attic of your home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean about a quarter million dollars’ worth of marijuana. That’s what I mean.”

  “Well, yes, the marijuana was up there.”

  “And that’s the marijuana that you have just told us Dylan was selling in Maya’s business?”

  “Yes.”

  “So naturally, you’ve been arrested and charged with having a very large stash of marijuana growing for sale in your house, haven’t you?”

  “Well, of course not.”

  “But you’ve just told us you knew it was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Growing in your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Providing the money that supported, at least in part, you and your child, right?”

  “Well, I never took any dope money.”

  “But the fact remains, you’ve never been arrested for or charged with possession of any of that sizable stash of marijuana. Did you ever discuss that possibility with the police?”

  “Well, yes, they told me I wouldn’t get in any trouble.”

  “Let me refresh your recollection, Ms. Ticknor, as to the order in which these conversations took place. First, you told the police you knew very little about what had happened, and nothing about the marijuana upstairs. Correct?”

  “Well, that was my first statement.”

  “Then, more than a week later, after police told you that you could go to jail for a very long time if they connected you to Dylan’s marijuana business, you recalled information that incriminated Maya Townshend. And then the police told you you wouldn’t be charged for the marijuana upstairs. Isn’t that pretty much the way it went?”

  “Well, okay, but it’s not the way you make it sound.”

  “Thank you,” Hardy said. “No further questions.”

  32

  It wasn’t as though the media had lost interest in the trial, and today’s testimony sent the scribes and pundits scurrying from the courtroom to their telephones and keyboards to report on the newly revealed allegations of Maya’s infidelity, her subsequent rejection, and the added motivation this would certainly have given her to have murdered Dylan Vogler.

  All this was, for example, on the evening news, which Hardy and his partners, over drinks, were watching on the huge TV they’d had installed in tasteful cabinetry on the back wall of the Solarium. Although as soon as the broadcast was done, Hardy
hit the remote and turned the television off. “Never mind that none of it happened,” he said, “though I hate to quibble.”

  Farrell, drinking espresso, was more or less back to being his old self, reconnected with his girlfriend, Sam, getting his hair cut with some regularity. Since it was after business hours, Phyllis had gone home, so Wes was comfortable enough coming downstairs with his dog and wearing his T-shirt, which today read “Eternity: Smoking or Nonsmoking.”

  “You live to quibble,” he said to Hardy. “Quibbling gives meaning to your life, as anyone who knows you will surely attest.”

  Gina Roake sipped her Oban, neat. “Are you sure?” she asked. “None of it happened?”

  “Okay, when they were in college. But not since. Sorry, but I believe Maya.”

  “So Jansey just perjured herself?” Gina asked.

  Hardy, in trial mode, took a pull at his bottle of water and nodded. “All over the place.”

  “Why?”

  Wes chuckled. “I love when you ask that, Gina. Like perjury’s a surprise.”

  “I’m not surprised so much as disappointed it keeps happening. And what’s in it for Jansey is, I guess, what I’m getting at.”

  “I think, first, mainly,” Hardy replied, “is she’s in no-man’s-land and this is her ticket out. Early on, Stier or Schiff or somebody probably told her something like, ‘We’re not interested in how much you knew about Dylan’s dope business, or what you got out of it, or if you’re still in it. We’re interested in Maya killing him, and if you can help us out on that, we’ll just conveniently forget about the rest.’ So she’s heavily motivated to give them something. And what better than a bunch of stuff Dylan supposedly said to her, which no one can ever check or even refute? It’s perfect. And she probably thinks Maya did it anyway, that is if Jansey didn’t do it herself . . .”

  “You think that’s possible?” Gina asked.

  Hardy shrugged. “Somebody did. Jansey’s alibi’s squishy at best. She’s got a new boyfriend already, probably had him before. She’s one of the best bets to have gotten her hands on the gun. But, though I hate to say it, Maya still doesn’t look too bad for it either.”

  “Attaboy.” Farrell had a strong and, it must be admitted, oft-justified prejudice that the client was always guilty. “Don’t wimp out on that now.”