Death, Taxes, and Green Tea Ice Cream

by Diane Kelly

  A little scuffle? I glanced back at Nick, who had a death glare locked on Geils. That little scuffle had involved three of Geils’ oversized goons jumping Nick and attempting to beat the shit out of him. As the photo Giacomo had entered into evidence showed, Nick ended the night with a swollen lip, a black eye, and several cracked ribs. Merle, too, was glaring at Geils. Another of the bastard’s goons had also attacked Merle, who was a disabled veteran. What kind of asshole does that? Still, none of the goons would have attacked Aaron, Nick, or Merle without being ordered to do so by Geils. He ran his club with an iron fist.

  “Next thing I know,” Geils said, “the girl who’d been working at my club as a bookkeeper comes running inside, uses a handgun to pistol-whip one of my security team, then shoots the other three in the foot. She runs over to the VIP lounge, shoots the lock off the door, and goes inside. I’ve got a waitress and customer inside the lounge, so I grab my gun and run in after her. When she spots me in the mirror, she turns and shoots me in the leg. I dropped my gun and she steps over and picks it up. She tells me she’s working undercover for the IRS and shoots me three more times. If not for the SWAT cop running into the room then, she probably would’ve emptied her clip in me.”

  What bullshit. If I’d wanted to empty my clip into him I would’ve done it.

  Kerr stood near the witness-box. “When Miss Holloway shot you, did she fire rapidly?”

  “No,” Geils spat. “She waited a few seconds between each shot.”

  How convenient that Kerr didn’t ask what transpired during those few seconds. That’s when I’d confronted Geils about the bad things he’d done. Of course Kerr wouldn’t want to remind the jury of what a loser the alleged victim was.

  When Kerr passed the witness, Giacomo stepped up to the box and laid into him. “You’ve conveniently left out some important details, haven’t you, Don?”

  Geils merely shrugged.

  “When Officer Menger and Special Agent Pratt attempted to stop your customer from sexually brutalizing Agent Marquez, you ordered your security team to go after them, didn’t you?”

  Geils’ gaze shifted up, a clear sign he was debating lying. Since they were negotiating a plea bargain, there had been no trial and thus no official findings or testimony about the facts of that night.

  “You can either admit that you ordered your team of bouncers to get Menger and Pratt out of the picture,” Giacomo said, “or you can lie about it and I’ll drag each and every one of them into this courtroom to tell us themselves.”

  Anthony’s ass just grew another hair. Plink.

  Geils scowled at Giacomo. “I didn’t know what those two had in mind. So, yeah, I told my security staff to take care of things.”

  They’d taken care of things all right.

  Giacomo continued his questions. “Before Agent Holloway fired on you, you aimed your gun at her back and had your finger on the trigger, ready to shoot her, didn’t you?”

  It was true. I’d been lucky the VIP room had a mirrored wall or I might not have seen him run in behind me, ready to put a bullet in my back. That mirror saved my life.

  Geils’ answer was evasive. “She’d shot up my staff.”

  “So that’s a ‘yes,’ Don?”

  Geils sat up in his seat. “Hell yeah, it’s a yes. I was afraid she’d kill someone.”

  I glanced over at the jury. All of them were watching Geils intently.

  “And it’s true that you, too, fired your weapon?”

  “I didn’t mean to fire. It was a reflex.”

  “A reflex,” Giacomo repeated, skepticism dripping from his words. “A reflex that resulted in your gun firing because your finger was already on the trigger, ready to shoot, correct?”

  Geils stared at Giacomo as if trying to incinerate him with his eyes. The harder Geils stared, the closer in Giacomo leaned, staring right back.

  At the prosecution table, Kerr cleared his throat, an obvious signal to his witness to provide an answer.

  “Yeah,” Geils finally spat. “My finger was already on the trigger. Like I said, I was afraid she’d kill somebody.”

  Giacomo stood up straight now. “I’ve got just one more question for you, Don.” My attorney glanced at the jury once more before turning back to Geils. “Do you realize how lucky you are that Special Agent Holloway spared your life?”

  chapter forty

  Hostile Witness

  Geils grumbled about not feeling lucky at all to have a bum leg—as if a bum leg was at all comparable to a bullet between the eyes—and was dismissed. The marshal walked beside Geils as he limped his way down the aisle and back to his seat in the gallery.

  Kerr called his next witness. “Lu Lobozinski.”

  Lu had worn her best pantsuit for the occasion, a royal-blue polyester number with flares at the ankles and wrists. She’d paired the suit with her shiny black go-go boots. She’d fluffed her pinkish-orange hair up into a shorter version of her traditional beehive, her locks having finally gained sufficient length after she’d lost them to chemotherapy treatments months ago. She’d also amped up the makeup, her orange lipstick and blue eye shadow at least three layers thick.

  After being sworn in, she settled gingerly into the witness stand, glancing about her as if afraid Don Geils might have left cooties on the seat.

  Kerr approached the witness stand and asked Lu to identify herself and state her occupation for the record.

  “I’m Luella Lobozinski. I head up the IRS criminal investigations office here in Dallas.”

  “Last spring you hired Tara Holloway to work as a special agent, correct?”

  “I sure did. We were lucky to get her. She had some of the highest test scores in her training class. She was the best marksman, too. She’s one hell of a shot.”

  Why was Lu playing up my gun skills here? Didn’t she realize that could hurt my case?

  “She’s known at Criminal Investigations as the Annie Oakley of the IRS,” Kerr stated. “Isn’t that true?”

  “Sure is,” The Lobo replied.

  Kerr approached Lu with a copy of a document and asked Lu to state whether it was a true and correct copy of the internal affairs report from my last hearing, whether it had been prepared at or near the time of my hearing, and whether it was an accurate report of the findings of the internal affairs officer and director of field operations. She responded affirmatively to all three questions, thus authenticating the document.

  Kerr pointed to the last paragraph of the report. “This report indicates that Tara Holloway failed to follow proper procedures when she shot Don Geils in the leg. Correct?”

  “That’s correct,” Lu said.

  “What happened as a result of Miss Holloway’s failure to follow procedures?”

  “I was ordered to terminate her.”

  “Ordered by whom?”

  “The internal affairs officer, the director of field operations, and George Burton, the overall head of Treasury’s criminal investigations in Washington.”

  “After you terminated Miss Holloway for shooting Don Geils in the leg—”

  “She wasn’t fired for shooting Don Geils in the leg.”

  Kerr stood there, rigid. “You just said she was terminated for shooting him in the leg. That’s also what you told me when I interviewed you two weeks ago.”

  “No,” she said, “that’s not exactly what I said. You need to listen better. I said she was terminated for failing to follow proper procedures.”

  Kerr stammered, trying to make sense of her words. “Wh-h-a—”

  “We train our agents to respond with lethal force when confronted with lethal force,” Lu continued, unguided. “Failure to do so can be catastrophic. The agent can end up dead and put other agents or civilians at risk. Understand?” She didn’t wait for Kerr to respond. “Tara wasn’t let go because she shot Don Geils in the leg. She was let go because she didn’t shoot him between the eyes.”

  Kerr’s face turned purple. He held up a hand to silence Lu as he tried
to gather his wits. “But the report—”

  She ignored the hand. “Is poorly written and vague, I know. We’re not exactly poets at the IRS. We’re numbers people, not word people.”

  Kerr lowered the report to his side. “Nonetheless, putting four bullets in the leg of an unarmed man would not be acceptable.”

  Lu was relentless. “Geils was armed when Agent Holloway fired the first shot. At that point he was fair game. As far as the other three bullets, hell, she was under incredibly stressful circumstances. I can’t even imagine how it must have felt to be in her situation that night.” Lu shot Kerr a pointed look trimmed with thick, fake lashes. “Special agents are human beings, Mr. Kerr, not emotionless robots.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I knew Lu supported me, but hearing her lay her thoughts and feelings bare like this really hit home.

  Kerr did his best to recover his case and his dignity, but he did a piss-poor job of it. He finally decided to cut his losses and passed the witness.

  When it was Giacomo’s turn to question Lu, the floor wiping began. “Ms. Lobozinski, when you were ordered to terminate Miss Holloway, how did you feel about that?”

  “Absolutely furious,” Lu replied. “Tara was one of the best agents to ever work for the agency. Smart. Determined. Resourceful. I didn’t want to lose her. With her exceptional weapons skills, I felt comfortable assigning her to the potentially violent cases. I knew she could take care of herself.”

  The lump in my throat swelled a little more and I swallowed to force it down. I glanced over at the jury box. One of the jurors was fooling with his shoelace while another was absentmindedly chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen. I fought the urge to run over and throttle them. Didn’t they realize how important this testimony was? Didn’t they realize what this trial meant to me? Fortunately, most of the other jurors appeared attentive.

  Giacomo returned to the table and pulled a large folded piece of paper from his briefcase. As he unfolded it, I realized it was the paper target from my firearms test at the end of my special agent training. I’d landed all six bullets dead center. The target had hung on the wall of my office in Criminal Investigations. It probably seemed conceited, but hey, I’d worked hard to develop my aim. I figured I’d earned bragging rights.

  When I’d packed up my office, I’d left the target behind along with a buy-six-sandwiches-get-one-free punch card from a local deli. Just one more punch and I’d have earned a free lunch.

  Giacomo held up the paper. “Do you recognize this target?”

  “I sure do.” Lu pointed to my name and the date in the bottom corner. “This was the target from Agent Holloway’s firearms test at the conclusion of her special agent training.”

  Giacomo pointed to the cluster of holes in the center. “What do these holes tell you?”

  Lu looked over at me, her blue-lidded eyes filled with emotion. Her voice was soft but sure. “They tell me I’ve lost an incredibly valuable agent.”

  The lump resurfaced, joined by the prickly feeling of tears forming in my eyes.

  Lu continued on. “If it had been any other special agent under investigation, I would’ve agreed with the decision to terminate. But with Tara’s marksmanship, she could safely disable a target without having to kill him. Problem was, George Burton and the others simply couldn’t believe she’s that damn good.”

  chapter forty-one

  Closing Arguments

  On redirect, Kerr did his best to make Lu look like a softie who simply felt bad for one of her staff, but when she rattled off the names of several employees she’d happily canned herself he gave up. His case ended with a fizzle, like a damp firework that refused to ignite.

  After the prosecution rested, Judge Trumbull dismissed us for a lunch break. “Be back here ready to go at one o’clock.”

  My entourage surrounded me, sweeping me along to the courthouse snack bar, where they pushed two large tables together in the back corner. The whispered consensus was that things had gone extremely well so far. Still, I didn’t dare let myself have too much hope. A conviction would only hurt that much worse if I let myself believe it wouldn’t happen.

  My mother set a red plastic basket containing a grilled-cheese sandwich and French fries in front of me. “You skipped breakfast,” she said. “You need to eat something now or you won’t be able to keep up your strength.”

  I managed to force down a dozen fries and half the sandwich. My father ate the other half while Giacomo helped himself to my remaining fries.

  When we returned from lunch, Giacomo presented my witnesses, calling Merle, Aaron, Nick, and Christina to the stand.

  Merle testified that he phoned me after realizing Christina had been drugged and seeing the goons jump Nick and Aaron when they went to help her. “One of the bouncers came after me when I went to help. I wouldn’t have gotten away from him if Miss Holloway hadn’t intervened.”

  Aaron testified that he’d been headed for the VIP room when one of the bouncers hit him upside the head with a chair. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.” He described his medical treatment and recovery in detail, showing the jury the still-pink scar on his head from the stitches needed to sew up his scalp.

  Nick detailed how, after Aaron hit the floor, three of the goons had turned on him, the other going after Merle when he emerged from the administrative wing of the club. He mentioned his black eye and cracked ribs, lifting his shirt to point to the particular ribs that had been cracked. The women in the jury craned their necks to get a better look at Nick’s six-pack abs. One even gestured for him to raise his shirt higher. Trumbull lifted her gavel as if prepared to bang it but then took a gander at Nick’s abs herself and changed her mind.

  “Officer Menger, Agent Marquez, and I were in big trouble,” Nick said from the witness-box. “Way over our heads. I’m grateful Agent Holloway arrived when she did.” His eyes sought mine from across the room. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  I blinked back the tears pooling in my eyes and bit my lip to stop it from quivering.

  When Christina took the stand, she described the horror of waking up to find herself covered in painful bite marks. She showed the jurors an arched scar that remained across her shoulder blade. Several of the jurors cringed, while one of the females began to weep.

  “These types of busts are extremely stressful and dangerous,” Christina said. “Officers have to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. Agent Holloway did what she believed was necessary to protect me and the other agents. No more. No less.”

  Christina’s gaze met mine and I offered her a small smile in gratitude, which she promptly returned.

  When Christina left the stand, I leaned over and whispered to my attorney, “Are you calling me next?”

  “No,” he said. “Things have gone well. I don’t want to risk it.”

  Ugh! Though I knew Giacomo was making a strategic decision based on his many years of experience as a criminal defense attorney, I felt frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t tell my side of the story in my own words. That I couldn’t tell the jurors how freaked out I’d been by the horrors I’d witnessed in the club that night. That despite Don Geils being a total scumbag, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to end his life.

  That I didn’t deserve to be convicted.

  Giacomo stood. “The defense rests.”

  A tremor of terror rippled through me. Had there been enough evidence in my favor? Had we successfully refuted Kerr’s accusations? Had the jurors gotten a true sense of what I went through that night?

  God, I hoped so. If not, it was too late.

  Trumbull motioned to Troy Kerr. “Begin your closing arguments.”

  Kerr did his best to minimize the damage Lu had caused. He stood before the jury box, pleading with the men and women to convict me. “Regardless of the findings at the IRS internal affairs hearing, you are charged with making an independent determination in this criminal proceeding.” Ironic words given that Kerr had
admitted my internal affairs report in order to bolster his case and was only now asking the jurors to ignore the evidence after it backfired on him. “The evidence and testimony clearly showed that Miss Holloway fired bullets into the leg of a defenseless man. If we allow this type of abusive behavior to go unchecked, the Constitution means nothing. Our rights mean nothing. I’m not asking you to convict Miss Holloway for Don Geils’ sake,” he said. “I’m asking you to convict her for America.”

  Jeez. I’m surprised the guy didn’t wave a flag and ask the jurors to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  When Kerr completed his closing argument, he thanked the jurors and took his seat.

  Giacomo walked over to the jury box. He glanced back at Kerr. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you really want to do something for America, you’ll allow Miss Holloway, a young woman who put her own life in danger to serve her country honorably and faithfully, to go free. You heard the testimony today. Had Miss Holloway used the force she’d been trained to use, Don Geils wouldn’t be sitting over there.”

  Giacomo pointed over at Geils, who was using his pinky fingernail to dig something from his teeth. I supposed they didn’t allow toothpicks in jail. One of the inmates might stab another with it. I wondered how many jabs with a toothpick it would take to kill someone. I’d be willing to try it on Geils and find out.

  “Don Geils shouldn’t be alive today,” Giacomo said, raising his palms. “He should be pushing up daisies, six feet under. Worm food.” He pointed at Geils again. “Yet there he sits, alive and well and digging his lunch out of his teeth. His heart is beating. His lungs are taking in air.”

  Geils glared at my attorney.

  Giacomo turned back to the jurors. “To say Miss Holloway used excessive force is entirely illogical. She didn’t use excessive force. She used insufficient force. Rather than taking Don Geils’ life, she spared it.” He let his words sink in for a moment, then ducked his chin in a gracious nod. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We trust that you’ll make the right decision.”