Until Proven Innocent

by Gene Grossman

  The thing that really surprises me here is that Myra had something to compare Suzi’s prints to.

  “Myra, I’m going to ask you only one question, and I pray to God that your answer isn’t what I’m afraid it might be. How did you know that those prints belonged to Suzi?”

  “Oh Peter, wake up. Are you afraid that I got her prints off of my computer at the house? Is that what’s bothering you? That I snuck around to try and nail her for something? Don’t be silly. Her prints were in the system for a whole bunch of reasons. Let’s see now, one time was when she immigrated to this country. Another time was when she tried to apply for volunteer work with the L.A.P.D. as an Eagle Scout, and then again when she became a home-schooled student. And another time was when she sent in her application for early admission to Harvard Law School, and those results were just on our first search. Need I continue? She’s been fingerprinted more times than you have, and she’s never been arrested.

  “And the reason why I had to subpoena her as a witness was because the only other alternative was to add her as a possible co-defendant. You know that I could never do that, so I’m afraid she’s on the list, and that’s final.

  “I know about the privileges involved in matters like this, and I assure you that the only questions that she’ll be asked are about her fingerprints on that casing, and nothing else. In fact, I won’t even be doing the asking. One of my deputies will be taking this case to trial. I may pop in on the day that Suzi’s on the stand, but otherwise, I’m keeping out of this one.”

  There’s no sense my telling the kid about her name being on the prosecution’s witness list, because I know that Myra wouldn’t have done it without explaining it to her first. Tony told me that he taught the kid how to use his reloading press, and I’m sure that Myra knows it too, because that’s the only way those little prints could have gotten there. Myra’s correct. If it ever came out that the kid’s prints were on the shell casing and the matter wasn’t followed up on there would be a full investigation, and none of us wants one of those. I’m also sure Myra doesn’t think Suzi planted that casing in there.

  I know this whole thing can’t be easy for the kid. On one hand, she’s deeply involved in trying to work with the defense team in trying to clear our client, who is also a neighbor and friend of hers. On the other hand, the only way she can help to win this case is by causing the defeat of Myra’s office, and I know that the kid idolizes her. Not an easy choice, and I know it. I face it every time I go up against our District Attorney.

  *****

  Evelyn is calling. She wants to get together with me again, but under the existing circumstances of her being a possible suspect in a criminal conspiracy, I can’t. And I don’t know how to tell her. The truth of the matter is that her daughter is part of the film company, and until we find out how many other people Ren might be working with, everyone from production assistants to the producer is under suspicion.

  Not only do I want to avoid hurting her feelings by hinting that her daughter is a possible suspect, but I can’t take the chance of tipping our hand about the piracy operation. If she were to tell her daughter and the word got out, then our whole investigation would be ruined. The bad guys would fold up their tent and disappear, and we’d lose the tiny advantage we now have of knowing what’s going on without them being aware of it. We need that gang desperately, to take the heat off of Tony. That gang is my ‘go-to’ suspect, my only way to try and create reasonable doubt of Tony’s guilt.

  I don’t want to lie to her, so I tell her that I’m in the middle of a capital case and every waking moment must be devoted to it, because a client’s life is at stake. She says that she understands, and asks me how the investigation is going. This doesn’t sit well with me. It can mean that she’s sincerely interested in my work, or that she wants to know how close we may be to nailing the bad guys because her daughter might be one of them. I give her the benefit of the doubt and thank her for her concern about my case. She seems to appreciate the fact that I’m not at liberty to discuss any of the details, so we both agree to get together after the case is finished. I suggest we try Pollo Meshuga again, but she’s got a better idea: if I win, she’d prefer the Lahaina Yacht Club on Maui. Boy, I sure hope I win this case. This may wind up being the best contingency fee any lawyer ever collected.

  Every time I get involved with a bright, attractive, solvent female, it seems like the relationship is cursed. Some reason always pops up that makes our future together impossible. It’s like the kid is putting some invisible hex on any woman except Myra. But not this time. The kid doesn’t even know Evelyn’s name, how I met her or anything about her. And neither does Myra. Keeping those two relationship saboteurs out of the loop may give me a chance with Evelyn. I’m going to give this one a chance to take its normal course, without any outside influence from the Suzi-Myra conspiracy.

  *****

  The around-the-clock surveillance of Renaldo is unproductive, but the team did manage to get some photos of him carrying a briefcase when he went to work, and also when returning to his apartment over the soundstage.

  I ask Tony about the rear exit from the soundstage building. He seems surprised.

  “What do you mean the rear exit? There’s no door back there, just a set of double doors that open to allow equipment trucks to come in and out. You can’t think that…”

  He stops himself before finishing his sentence and grabs his cell phone, quickly dialing a number.

  “This is Tony. I want an extra team on the soundstage, whenever it’s closed for business after the shooting day ends. The second team should cover the drive-in door in the alley. And I want pictures too.” Nobody’s perfect, and that includes Tony. He just remembered that back way is how he entered the soundstage the night of Joe’s murder. All this time, neither one of us thought to cover it because it’s rarely used for regular comings and goings.

  Tony explains to his teams that there’s a possibility someone may have been using the back doors while the surveillance team was parked outside watching the front door to the soundstage, and Renaldo’s car parked on the street. This never occurred to them before, because there’s nothing particular within walking distance of the place, and they figured that if Ren was going anywhere, that he would take his car.

  We have to wait another couple of days before anything develops, but the alley team does come up with something. Between three and four in the morning, there was some activity in the alley. The back doors to the soundstage open and a vehicle pulled in. Less than an hour later, while it was still dark outside, the same vehicle left. When it happened again the next night, the team was ready with a third ‘tail’ unit standing by. It was composed of another cop who was driving a taxicab that Tony’s team borrowed from one of their snitches so that the cop/cab driver could follow the suspect vehicle. I thought it was pretty clever their using a cab for the tail, because it’s such a common sight, that even a paranoid person would have difficulty in thinking that a cab behind them was actually a tail. And at that hour of the morning, cabs are probably the most common vehicles on the street.

  The cab’s report comes in first. The vehicle left the soundstage, drove to the South Los Angeles suburb of Compton, and proceeded to stop at every mailbox in that neighborhood, dropping some small packages in each one.

  As far as I’m concerned, this nails down the piracy case, because that vehicle is obviously doing the mailings of DVDs to customers. The upsetting part of the report is when the alley team’s photos come in. They used a digital camera and a wireless Internet connection to e-mail us the photographs. At first I didn’t want to believe it, but there was a match when they ran the license plates. The registration showed up a name that was familiar to me. So was the feeling. The car belongs to Evelyn.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  I hate getting shot down like this again. The team’s photos don’t identify the driver any further than establishing the sex as being female, but whether it’
s Evelyn or her starlet daughter doesn’t really matter to me anymore, because the result will be the same. This is another relationship that’s over. At least I’ve avoided the embarrassment of having been warned about her in advance by Suzi and Myra. Without knowing it, they have one less relationship failure of mine to gloat over.

  We have a strategy meeting about how to handle this new evidence. If the guys pick up the driver, she’ll probably want to make a deal by pleading that it’s just a night job and she has no idea what’s in the packages. Even if she gives us Renaldo, that’s not good enough. We still won’t know how far up the food chain this gang goes, and Renaldo can claim that he was upstairs sleeping all night and had no idea that someone was breaking in the rear doors of the soundstage, probably with a stolen set of keys.

  If this ring is to be broken, we’ve got to find out everyone involved and how the actual piracy is being done. We’re unanimous on two decisions. First, we follow through and find out more about the operation. And second, we absolutely don’t bring Snell and the FBI into it. The last thing we need now is a bunch of guys in SWAT uniforms swarming in the soundstage, with news cameras filming the big ‘FBI’ emblems on the backs of their jackets. We’re not interested in publicity here, and our main concern isn’t busting a piracy gang. We want to find out who murdered Joe Caulfield. Anything else that comes out of it is pure gravy.

  I still have a problem believing that Evelyn is involved. If she doesn’t know that her daughter is using her car, the FBI’s prosecution won’t be my fault, and I might be able to salvage the relationship.

  Tony opens his file on the daughter, and then it hits me. According to Evelyn, after her husband was killed in that helicopter, they came into a sizeable settlement from the helicopter company. That was supposed to have happened at least five years ago, but just a year ago the daughter was tossed out of several acting schools for failure to pay her tuition. That raises the question of why the bills weren’t paid if there was plenty of money around.

  One of Tony’s guys prepared a supplemental report. Evelyn’s husband was killed in a helicopter accident all right, but it wasn’t the helicopter manufacturer’s fault. He was drunk and fell out of the chopper as it was landing. There was a lawsuit, but the helicopter company won and didn’t have to pay anything to widow Evelyn.

  This evidence tells us that they were poor a few years ago, and are quite well off now. We also know that it hasn’t been as a result of the daughter’s career, because she’s only made minimum scale on the couple of low budget pictures she’s worked on recently. So where did the money come from to pay off her lawsuits, get some nice clothes, a nice place to live, and a nice car to drive? Evelyn doesn’t have a job, so the money’s got to be coming in from somewhere.

  I take a closer look at the supplemental report on Evelyn’s late husband and see that he was working for a company that manufactured equipment for the entertainment industry. His job was to demonstrate and sell a special piece of equipment called a ‘Telecine.’ What a coincidence. I just happen to know where one of those things is.

  A friend of mine works at one of the major motion picture studios, so I call and ask him what a Telecine does. His answer clears up a lot of questions. That particular machine is used to transfer motion picture film to videotape, that can then be used for computer editing…or to make DVD’s.

  At this point we probably have enough to get a search warrant for the soundstage. From what we’ve put together, here’s how the operation runs: Ren un-splices one or two reels a night from the projectionist booth, brings them back to the soundstage, and then spends the next couple of hours using the Telecine for transferring the film to a master videotape. The next day he returns those reels to the booth and brings home others that night and repeats the same operation until he’s got the entire film copied onto some format that can be used to make bootlegged copies.

  Their next step is to add the new available title to their website and then use a bunch of DVD burners to make product for filling their orders. When they verify that the direct bank transfers have been made, the videos and DVDs are packaged, addressed, stamped, and made ready for mailing. Whoever drives the delivery SUV pulls into the rear doors of the soundstage to get loaded up, and then goes on a countywide mailbox run.

  This is a neat little operation, but still begs the question of why kill Joe? From what the alley surveillance team saw, there were less than fifty packages mailed each night. According to their website, they only make about twenty dollars a package, so this means that on a steady basis, there’s only about a thousand dollars a night coming in. That’s a nice extra income for any average person, but if there are three or four people involved, that means all they’ve done is create a decent living wage for themselves, by working all night, and breaking some Federal laws. Hardly enough to kill a guy for.

  If their little scheme got off the ground with the formation of that motion picture film courier service, they might get a crack at some of the big budget premieres and sneak previews. With titles like that, they could charge twice as much, and sell much more, raising the potential income to a level of maybe five to ten thousand a night. They wouldn’t be able to drive around and find mailboxes at night for all of the orders, but they’d no doubt figured out how to overcome that problem.

  Another unanimous decision is that Joe wasn’t killed for stumbling onto the business. In all probability he was in on it, and was planning on using his connections in the industry to start the courier system up so that they could get direct access to the motion picture films and make some really big money. They needed him for that connection, so why kill him? I reluctantly agree that he may have been involved with the gang, but still have difficulty in believing it myself.

  *****

  There’s a knock on our hull. Looking over the side, I see that it’s some guy wearing a tie. Ordinarily, I would just let him know that I don’t need any insurance today and send him on his merry way, but this is my courteous day of the week. Without inviting him aboard, I try to find out why he’s bothering me.

  “What can I do for you?”

  He looks at his wristwatch. “I have an appointment with Doctor Braunstien.”

  This is a new twist. I know she intends to attend Harvard Law School and ultimately partner up with Myra, but I didn’t know that she became a doctor of anything while I was asleep last night. I might as well ask the main question, just to gauge the level of surprise that this sucker is in for.

  “Have you had the pleasure of meeting the good doctor before today?”

  “No I haven’t, but several of our law enforcement customers speak highly of her, and I know that she’s a very young, bright person.”

  I motion for him to come aboard. He gets his first surprise when the dog comes out to meet him.

  “My goodness, that’s an attractive large animal.”

  “That’s not an animal, that’s the doctor’s associate, Igor. Just walk that way. He’ll take you to the doctor’s laboratory.”

  They both disappear into the forward stateroom and the door closes behind them. This completely shuts me out of whatever they’re doing, but that’s the way things are around here. I handle the courtroom part of our business any way that I want to, and she takes care of the office operation. We’re sort of a Mister Outside, Miss Inside kind of team. There are things she does that are beyond my comprehension, and there are things I do that she has no ability to understand, like getting arrested for crimes, getting involved with female criminals, screwing up my marriage to Myra, and other complicated stuff not designed to be appreciated by kids like her.

  After about an hour in there, Mister Necktie is led out by Igor. I can’t help but notice that there’s something that looks familiar sticking out of the guy’s folder case. If my first glance is correct, it’s one of our law firm’s checks.

  Ordinarily, I let her do anything she wants, but when our money is being spent, my curiosity is aroused. There’s no way I would ever second-guess h
er decision to spend our money, but this time I’d at least like to have some idea of what it’s for, so I stop him with a smile and offer him a seat on the couch, letting him know that he’s got at least another hour or so before the traffic starts to get heavy. I’d like to know what we’ve purchased, but I also want to avoid looking too stupid.

  “So, how did your meeting with the doctor go today?”

  “Oh, quite nicely. You’re Mister Peter Sharp, the well known criminal attorney, aren’t you?”

  That’s it. I already like this guy. I modestly nod, letting him know that his exceptional powers of observation are correct. He goes on.

  “Recognizing people and objects is my life. It’s what I do for a living, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it.”

  It looks like this guy has no problem with modesty holding him back. The check in his folder seems to have given him a lot more confidence than he had when first coming aboard, so he goes on.

  “On behalf of our entire organization, I want to thank you for your order, and to let you know that you are now in position to be a leading forensic science firm.”

  He has a wonderful way of talking without saying anything that I’m really interested in. All I want to know now is ‘what the hell did we buy, and how much did we spend for it?’

  “On behalf of Doctor Braunstien and myself, I accept your thanks. When can we expect delivery?” I still haven’t exactly asked him what we bought, but maybe his answer to my delivery question will lead to the subject matter.

  “Oh, it’s already here. Because it’s only software, once I received your check, I went to our website, entered the proper authorization code, and gave your office access to the downloading process.”

  He looks at his wristwatch. “Depending on the width of your broadband connection, I’d say that it should be completely downloaded in two or three minutes.”