Talon Winter Legal Thrillers Box Set

by Stephen Penner

  Talon thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No objection from the defense, Your Honor.”

  Cecilia echoed her agreement. “No objection from the State, Your Honor.”

  Another audible exhale from the bench, but one that sounded more of relief than concern. “Okay, good. Let’s start with the motion for the State to provide replacement copies of the discovery stolen from Ms. Winter’s office. That seems the most straightforward of the—”

  “The State will concede that motion,” Cecilia interrupted. “In fact,” she gestured to a document box sitting on a chair behind her. “I’ve brought the new copies with me to court today. Ms. Winter can have them as soon as the hearing is over.”

  “Or now,” Talon suggested with a snarl.

  “Or now.” Cecilia forced a smile. “They are here for the taking.”

  Talon looked at Judge Gainsborough for approval, who gave it in the form of a short nod. She walked over and retrieved the box, dropping it on the defense table a little louder than necessary.

  She was tempted to make a scene out of why a formal motion had been necessary in the first place. Why Cecilia couldn’t have just given her the damn box of reports when she’d first asked for it. But there was no advantage to wasting time on it. She’d won, and judges hated listening to whiny complaints and veiled personal attacks, especially when there was no point anymore.

  Instead, she simply looked up to Judge Gainsborough and inquired, “Next motion, Your Honor?”

  Gainsborough nodded. “The next logical motion, I believe, is the motion for the State to produce a new copy of the personnel records of Officer Dickerson which were provided directly to Ms. Winter by the police department.”

  Talon looked over at the prosecution side for another box of records, but there was none.

  “I’m going to deny that motion,” Judge Gainsborough announced.

  “What?” Talon blurted out. “Without any argument?”

  Gainsborough let the outburst pass. “You can make your argument, counsel, but I’m trying to be efficient here. You didn’t get the records from the prosecutor’s office. You got them from the police department.”

  “And had them stolen back by that same police department,” Talon asserted.

  Gainsborough frowned. “I don’t know about that. But I do know I can’t order the prosecutor to provide you something she herself never had possession of. You need to address your request to the police department.”

  “I’ve tried, Your Honor,” Talon explained. “They won’t answer my calls.”

  Gainsborough nodded. “I’m not surprised. But I’m also not in any position to force them to do something that a previous judge ordered they didn’t have to do. I’m not sure how you managed to convince them to provide the records despite Judge Kirshner’s ruling, but whatever you did, you’re going to have to do it again. I don’t have the authority to order the production of those records. At least not on the record before me. And certainly not from the prosecutor’s office. The motion is denied.”

  Talon suppressed another outburst. She had expected that particular request to be the most difficult of her motions. She didn’t expect Gainsborough to make a finding that the Tacoma Police Department had burglarized her law office, but she had hoped the judge might set up some sort of structure to get the records eventually. Require the prosecutor to ask for the records, then set a hearing if they were not produced, and require Fassbinder to appear personally to explain why he couldn’t provide a second copy of records he was willing to part with only a few weeks earlier. But no such luck. She was going to have to figure out a new way to threaten Fassbinder. She’d think of something.

  “The next motions I’d like to address,” Judge Gainsborough powered on, “are the motions to compel a witness interview or a deposition of Officer Dickerson. Ms. Winter, I’m a bit confused as to why you’ve filed both of these motions. Usually, depositions are only ordered in criminal cases if the witness refuses to agree to an interview. Has that happened here? Has Officer Dickerson refused an interview?”

  “All of my efforts on that front have been ignored, Your Honor,” Talon answered. “I believe Officer Dickerson would very much like to avoid speaking with me about this incident.”

  “That’s simply not true, Your Honor,” Cecilia interjected. “In fact, it is my understanding that Officer Dickerson’s personal attorney offered to allow his client to be deposed.”

  Talon cocked her head at Cecilia. Then she shook it and looked up to the judge. “Yes, Your Honor. Deposed by a different lawyer. And only if I allowed my client to also be deposed, notwithstanding the pending murder case and my client’s constitutional right to remain silent.”

  Cecilia didn’t look over at Talon during her reply. She simply kept her eyes on the judge and shrugged. “Sounds like standard negotiations to me, Your Honor. I’m sure they’ll work something out.”

  “I’m not working anything out with Dickerson’s civil defense attorney,” Talon snapped. “I’m going to interview him as part of this criminal case. He’s your star witness. I get to talk to him prior to trial.”

  Cecilia again didn’t look over at Talon. She kept her eyes on the bench and shrugged again. “I’m not sure the case law supports that absolute of a position. The witness is entitled to certain considerations as well. Especially when he is facing potential liability in a related civil action, filed—coincidentally, I’m sure—by one of Ms. Talon’s office mates.”

  Gainsborough’s eyebrows lifted for that piece of information. “Is that accurate, Ms. Winter?”

  “I referred an inquiry by the parents of my client’s slain friend to another attorney who handles civil litigation,” Talon responded carefully. “And yes, he and I share office space, along with four other attorneys. But nothing more than that, Your Honor.”

  “Enough more, Your Honor,” Cecilia added, “that Ms. Winter went to the discovery hearing in the civil case to discuss her office partner deposing Officer Dickerson.”

  Gainsborough’s other eyebrows raised. “Is that true?”

  Talon twisted back a frown and nodded. “Yes, Your Honor,” she admitted. “But I went only to observe. I may not be involved directly in that case, but I would obviously want a copy of any statement Officer Dickerson might make regarding this incident. Especially when,” she finally turned it back on Cecilia, “the officer won’t talk to me directly.”

  Gainsborough raised his hand at both attorneys to tell them to stop talking and let him think. After a few moments, he rubbed his chin and frowned. “This is more complicated than usual,” he began. “The State’s key witness is being sued for the same conduct he will testify about at trial. He is represented by counsel in the civil matter, who would understandably want to be involved in any interview or deposition. I don’t think he can refuse to testify at the trial—or rather, he could, but the State’s case would fail, and the criminal case would be dismissed. I doubt that’s an outcome either Ms. Thompson or Officer Dickerson’s attorney would want. So, I expect he will show up at trial, and he will testify under oath as to what happened that day. And when he does that, Ms. Winter, you will have the absolute right to cross examine him, under oath, on the record, and in front of the jury.”

  Talon’s jaw would have dropped if she hadn’t clenched it as Gainsborough began explaining his thought process.

  “I’m entitled to interview witnesses before they testify, Your Honor,” Talon protested. “It’s part of being fully prepared and Mr. Zlotnik has a constitutional right, not just to an attorney, but to a prepared attorney.”

  But Gainsborough shrugged. “I’m not sure about that, Ms. Winter. I mean, I agree that your client has to the right to prepared counsel, but he doesn’t have a right to perfectly prepared counsel. Perfection isn’t the standard. It couldn’t be. No attorney is perfect, not even you. I assume Officer Dickerson wrote a report about the incident, and I just ordered the State to provide you a second copy of that report. So, you won’t be compl
etely unprepared. If he testifies consistent with his report, then you’ll be ready for that. If he changes his story, I feel confident you will point that out to the jury, to the benefit of your client.”

  Talon looked down at Luke to see if he was digesting what was happening. Luke might not have been a lawyer, but it was pretty obvious to anyone watching that she had just lost two motions in a row. And the ones she cared about.

  She looked back up at the judge, aware of his decision, but still stung by it. “I take exception to Your Honor’s ruling,” was all she could think to say.

  “I appreciate that, Ms. Winter,” Judge Gainsborough replied evenly. “And I’m sure I would have, too, back when I was still doing your job. But I have a different job now. So, with that in mind, let’s move on to your next set of motions. The ones regarding the ballistics evidence.”

  Talon suddenly had a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had expected to win every motion up to that point. But the combination of losing motions she thought she’d win and the judge grouping her next three motions together, rather than taking them one at a time, left her bracing for the worst.

  The motions built on each other. First, the State’s ballistics evidence should be examined by an independent (that is, defense) expert. Second, the evidence needed to be released by the police property room for that independent (defense) expert to do that examination. Third, somebody was going to have to pay that independent (defense) expert, and as her motion regarding the false confession expert had shown, it sure wasn’t going to be Luke Zlotnik’s family.

  Instead, before Talon could even argue, the judge attacked the very basis of all three motions. “Why do you need to examine the ballistics evidence, Ms. Winter? I thought your defense was that your client didn’t know what was going to happen inside. Isn’t that why you needed public defense money to hire a false confession expert?”

  Ah, Talon thought. He’s still upset about ordering public money to benefit a private client. And here she was again, asking for more of that money.

  “That is our defense, Your Honor,” Talon acknowledged, “but what happened inside the check-mart is vitally important.”

  Gainsborough narrowed his eyes a little at her. “Vitally?” he questioned. “Why does it matter what happened inside? If your client didn’t know it was a robbery, as you will argue, then he’s not responsible for anything that happened inside. But if he did know, as Ms. Thompson will argue, then he’s responsible for everything that happened inside, no matter who did the shooting. Don’t you agree?”

  “No, Your Honor, I don’t agree,” Talon answered. “First of all, I don’t believe I’m required to put all of my defense eggs in one basket. I certainly will argue that Mr. Zlotnik did not know what his friend was going to do inside the check-mart, but as you yourself just pointed out, Ms. Thompson is going to argue that he did. In the unfortunate event that the jury chooses to believe Ms. Thompson, then I am entitled to present another defense, for which the ballistics are exceedingly important.”

  “Vitally important,” Judge Gainsborough reminded her.

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Talon nodded.

  “And what is this other defense?” Judge Gainsborough inquired, “for which ballistics are so exceedingly, vitally important?”

  Talon stood up a little straighter as she presented her fallback theory. “Intervening actor, Your Honor. Officer Dickerson may have been responding to a robbery, but if he shot the people inside the check-mart for reasons unrelated to stopping the crime, then the deaths did not occur ‘in the course of’ the robbery, as required by the felony murder statute. Officer Dickerson would be an intervening actor, and his actions would be superseding events which break the chain of proximate cause between my client and the deaths.”

  Judge Gainsborough’s eyebrows knitted together. He leaned forward. “And just what sort of reasons are you suggesting, Ms. Winter, that would be unrelated to stopping the robbery?”

  Talon needed to keep some of her powder dry. “That’s why I need to interview Officer Dickerson prior to the trial, Your Honor. That’s why I need to see his personnel file for more than one night before it’s stolen from me. That’s why I need Your Honor to grant at least one of my motions today, so I can show that the deaths that occurred that day lay at the feet of a trained law enforcement officer, not at the feet an eighteen-year-old civilian who was just waiting for his friend to cash a check.”

  “Are you suggesting Officer Dickerson intentionally murdered the two victims?” Cecilia practically gasped.

  “Why not?” Talon returned. “You’re suggesting my client did, and it wasn’t his gun, or his bullets, that did the deed.”

  “Your Honor, this is outrageous!” Cecilia complained to the judge. “The Court can’t allow this sort of allegation to go unanswered.”

  Gainsborough’s perplexed expression remained, but he turned it from Talon to Cecilia. “I’m sure I’m not the one to answer that sort of allegation. I’m sure you will address it appropriately, at the time, to the people who matter. But right now, it’s not my job to defend anyone’s honor. Not the officer’s. Not the defendant’s. My job is to rule on the motions brought before me according to the law and to the best of my ability.”

  The judge tuned back to Talon. He sighed again. The sigh of a mentor, perhaps. Or a father. An old man who thought he knew more than her and was disappointed she didn’t agree.

  “Ms. Winter,” he began what was obviously going to be a speech. “As I said, I have a job now, and it’s not to help out one side or the other. But I used to have your job. I used to stand next to people accused of crimes, accused of doing the worst things human beings do to each other. I used to fight every fight and battle every battle. Sometimes I won, but most of the times I lost. Sometimes I lost because my clients were guilty and there was just too much evidence. Sometimes I lost because my clients were innocent, but the evidence seemed to show something it shouldn’t have. But most of the time, I lost because juries trust the system, and they trust the prosecutors, and they trust the police. They don’t want to believe they live in a society where innocent people are charged with crimes, and they put two and two together when elected prosecutors and elected judges make the decisions about what to do with high-profile cases, especially cases where the victim is one of those police officers they trust. They want to trust. They need to trust, to keep believing we live in the fair and just society they want to live in.”

  He gestured a loose hand at Talon, not a pointing finger exactly, but reminiscent of one. “Your best defense in this case is to convince the jury that your client didn’t know what his friend was going to do. In order to do that, you’re going to have to impugn the honor of the officers who took his confession. That is going to be a steep enough hill to climb. But if you add to that an accusation that the responding officer was a homicidal maniac rather than the heroic first responder Ms. Thompson is going to paint him as, then I can guarantee you will lose the jury, and they will not listen to a word you say. And your client will become another of a long list of clients who will be convicted despite what you believed were your very best efforts.

  “So, I am not going to release the ballistics evidence in this case to a defense expert. I am not going to appoint a defense ballistics expert. And I am definitely not raiding the public defense coffers again for an endeavor worse than quixotic.”

  Talon stood motionless before the judge, her enraged expression doing the talking for her.

  “You may not agree with my rulings today, Ms. Winter,” Judge Gainsborough offered, “but if you follow where they lead, you may well thank me for them after the jury renders its verdict.”

  Talon doubted that very much. She wasn’t about to take someone else’s advice on how best to defend her case, and certainly not from some know-it-all judge who was trying to force her to try the case the way he would have done it, years ago, before he’d quit the game, given up the glory of being a player for the power of being a referee.r />
  “Don’t count on it,” she finally said, before adding, just barely, the obligatory but definitely not heartfelt, “Your Honor.”

  And that was that. The hearing was over. Cecilia started packing up her stuff. Gainsborough left the bench. Talon had lost every motion. Every motion that mattered. She dropped into her chair, staring ahead blankly.

  After several seconds, Luke leaned over to her. “How bad is it?”

  Talon swiveled her head to him. There was no point in lying. “It couldn’t be worse.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Talon couldn’t leave it like that with Luke. She couldn’t send him back to his cell to sit alone, waiting for the trial date, his last image of her being a wide-eyed, dropped jaw, ‘I can’t believe how bad we just got screwed’ expression of disbelief and horror.

  She pulled her files and books together. Then she pulled herself together. Then she went back to her office and pulled Curt from his office so they could go to the jail together. She needed a witness. And, if she was honest with herself, a little support.

  Talon couldn’t tell if Luke looked any worse than the last time she’d seen him inside the jail. There was something about fluorescent lights and whitewashed cinderblock walls that could make anyone look sickly. But she knew he didn’t look any better.

  “How are you holding up?” she started, once she, Luke, and Curt were alone in the consultation room.

  Luke just shrugged. “I dunno. It doesn’t matter anyway. We just lost all those motions you said were important. So, I guess now the only thing left is to lose in the trial. Everybody in here was right. It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent. Nobody cares.”

  “I care,” Talon assured him.

  Another shrug. “You get paid to care.”

  Talon half-smiled at that. “Not really. Your parents couldn’t really afford my retainer. I haven’t been paid even half of what this case is worth, considering how much work I have to do.”