by J J Miller
Gemmell was giving me a smartass check-mate kind of smile.
“I thought you might say that, Officer Gemmell. How long does gunshot residue last if left undisturbed?”
“A long time,” Gemmell answered, somewhat reluctantly, the air of triumph seeping away.
“A long time? How about forever?”
“Well—”
“You don’t have to answer that. As you know Chip Bowman was a security guard in a high-risk field. Your Honor, I’d like to enter the terms of Chip Bowman’s employment at HardShell.”
Judge Birch looked at Winter as he read over the copy I handed to him.
“Mr. Winter. Any objections?”
Winter shook his head. The document appeared harmless, but he knew that I would push to get it submitted and would likely succeed, and he chose not to fight this battle.
“Permission to approach the witness, Your Honor?”
“Granted.”
I handed Gemmell the contract.
“Officer Gemmell, as you can see, under the terms of his HardShell contract, Chip Bowman was required to spend two hours a week at the firing range to keep his shooting skills sharp. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So my question is this. Could the gunshot residue you found on Chip Bowman’s hand have gotten there days earlier, if not weeks?”
Gemmell’s mouth flatlined grimly. “It’s possible.”
“Right, so the gunshot residue you found on the defendant’s hand actually tells us nothing whatsoever of value, does it?”
Gemmell stammered. “You should not dismiss—”
“Gunshot residue, or GSR, is very easy to transfer, isn’t it, Officer Gemmell?”
“Yes, it is.”
“So if I had GSR on my hand I could easily transfer it onto yours, isn’t that right?”
“Um, yes.”
“So it’s possible too that the GSR on Chip Bowman’s hand was planted there?”
“It’s very unlikely.”
“I’m not asking if it’s unlikely. I’m asking if it’s possible.”
“Yes, it’s possible,” said Gemmell through gritted teeth.
“One last question. Does the GSR you found tell us for certain that it was Chip Bowman who used his gun against his co-workers with his firearm?”
“Like I said, there is other evidence.”
“I’m not talking about other evidence. There is no ironclad proof that Chip Bowman fired his weapon that night, is there?”
“Yes. There is. The ballistics tests.”
“They are one-hundred percent conclusive, are they? There is no room whatsoever for doubt in your conclusions, is that right?”
“Of course, there’s room for some doubt but it’s negligible.”
“You may deem it to be negligible, Officer Gemmell. Your life is not on the line here. But my client and I see things very differently. Is it possible that Chip Bowman did not fire his weapon that night?”
Gemmell breathed in deeply. His chest sagged as he exhaled. “Yes, it’s possible.”
“Thank you, Officer Gemmell.”
Chapter 35
I had the evening to revise how I’d go about cross-examining the next witness. Winter was calling Quinn Rollins, and I aimed to use him to expose his company for what it was: a modern-day pirate ship of cut-throats. The risk was that I’d be tarring Chip with the same brush. I felt confident that I had seeded doubt into the collective mind of the jury, but I needed to find a way to show that Chip was the black sheep in a white flock gone bad.
I hadn’t spoken to Rollins in a long time, not since he’d authorized my visit to HardShell. Since then, he’d made no effort to contact me, so I figured I was right in thinking his initial offer to help me was just a way to keep tabs on Chip.
I had managed to keep tabs on Rollins, however. I’d kept in contact with Cliff Loda, who remained my helpful if nervous insider at HardShell. He’d reported that ever since the fatal robbery, Rollins had practically been working around the clock. He’d met with all his clients and persuaded most to stay. He was micromanaging to such a degree that he sometimes manned the vans himself. He’d upped the internal monitoring, and he’d become intolerant of any mistakes. He’d fired half a dozen staff members for indiscretions he claimed were breaches of trust. Cliff assured me he knew of no illegal activity but to my mind Rollins sounded like a Scarface figure, a man who was an utter slave to his own manic ambition.
Every time I spoke with Cliff, I touched on the fact that I wanted him as a witness. I never pushed it because I knew he was terrified about the prospect of testifying. He’d told me Rollins had made it clear to all staff that Chip was the enemy and that anyone who did anything to help him would be shown the door. Cliff believed if he testified, Rollins wouldn’t hesitate to have him killed.
Someone else I stayed in touch with was Jack, of course. He’d long since recovered from his injury, and I’d managed to get Chanel’s permission for him to do some low-risk work—he didn’t have to leave the house. I wanted Jack to dig deep on Reed and Hendricks in their time at Fortis, the private security company. I wanted details on their apparently hasty departure from Iraq.
I sent Megan home from the office at seven, feeling I was as well prepared for my cross of Rollins as I could be. I never believed you could plan everything in advance. A cross-examination is a fluid interaction. No matter what strategy I took in, I had to be prepared to be responsive.
I made my way home around nine, and was disturbed to find Ace and two lesser Iron Raiders waiting for me outside my apartment building. They’d ridden their bikes up on the pavement and had remained in their saddles. Upon seeing me, Ace dismounted.
“You could have called, Ace. Not that I’m unhappy to see you.”
My attempt at disarming humor fell flat.
“Where the fuck have you been, lawyer?” demanded Ace. “And what the fuck have you been doing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We had a deal. Remember? You said you were going to get Sonny out.”
“It’s in the works, Ace. It’s going to take some time.”
“Bullshit. Sonny says he doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on.”
“He said that?”
I was more than a little peeved but I wasn’t surprised. I’d visited Sonny in prison soon after I saw Ace—well, about a week after Jack and I got shot at in Toro Canyon. I’d explained to Sonny that I’d examined his case and that his useless defense attorney had screwed up. First, he failed to object when the prosecution produced harmful inadmissible evidence. Second, he failed to investigate the case satisfactorily, which meant he missed out on finding a key defense witness. A week later I filed an appeal under California Penal Code Section 1237 with twelve days left on the sixty-day clock.
“I explained to Sonny what was going on. I did it face to face. I’ve filed for appeal”
“When did you see him?”
“Months ago.”
Ace frowned. “And yet he’s still inside.”
“These things take time. All the briefs have been filed. I’m just waiting on a date for oral arguments.”
“Oral arguments?”
“It’s when I argue the appeal before a judge. The prosecution does the same, then the judge makes a call.”
“When’s that going to happen?”
“It usually takes a year. Sixteen months tops. Again, I explained this to Sonny.”
Ace nodded. “Well, his memory’s always been pretty shit.”
“Seriously, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Get your phone out and take this down.”
I did so and Ace gave me a number. He then motioned to his friends that it was time to go. “Call me as soon as that date is set.”
“Will do,” I said, adding Ace to my contact list.
I went up to my apartment, pulled open the fridge, and took out a beer. As I took a swig, I considered how much I’d love to get out of LA f
or a while. The thought soon led to my mind wandering off to a better place. Sunny weather. Bright sand. Blue water. Great surf.
Then and there, I resolved to make that daydream happen.
I went over to my dining table, took out my laptop and checked Bella’s school term dates. I checked out some accommodation at one of my favorite getaways: Hawaii. Then I texted Bella.
“Hey sweetheart. How does surfing in Hawaii for a week in August sound? Just you and me. Unless Mom’s got something planned? But maybe it’s the worst idea in the world.”
Of course, I was kidding. Bella loves surfing, loves the beach, and she has told me once or twice that she loves me.
Less than a minute later, my phone pinged.
“Are you kidding??? That would be AMAZING! Yes, yes and yes!!! Mom’s cool with it.”
“Fantastic. Booking now.”
“YESS! Thank you daddy xxx”
Within a minute, I’d booked an ocean view suite at Turtle Bay. Now I had something special to look forward to once this trial was over: a week away with my favorite girl in the world. I looked at the photos on the website and let my mind wander to a stunning place far from LA.
I was a happy man.
Chapter 36
Quinn Rollins looked like a man running on adrenaline, or some artificial stimulant; cold and composed yet wired at the same time. Immaculately dressed in a gray tailored suit and blue silk tie, he was calm in his movements but there was a manic intensity to his gaze. Staring out across the courtroom from the witness stand, he bored right through everything his eyes fell upon.
I wished it was him that was on trial, that I’d unearthed evidence to expose his duplicity, to lay bare the fact that this seemingly successful, if troubled, entrepreneur was in fact a drug trafficker. He was not the one on trial, but discrediting him was key to my strategy.
I caught Rollins’ eye for a second or two and I offered no greeting. He stared at me as though I was an unfamiliar object. His gaze then fell on Chip and his face turned sour. It was clear who he blamed for his unwelcome burdens.
The movement of Winter to the lectern broke Rollins’ attention away from Chip.
I knew what to expect from Quinn and I was ready. Or so I thought.
“Mr. Rollins,” Winter began. “Could you please explain your business, HardShell, for the court?”
“Certainly. We are a security firm manned by professionals, most of whom are military veterans. We offer a specialized service for businesses in the cannabis economy. Because of a non-alignment between state and federal cannabis law, the businesses involved face a rather unique problem. Most banks won’t accept their money, because in the eyes of federal authorities they’d be handling the proceeds of an illegal substance. So there’s a lot of unsecured cash that we offer to transport and store in our compounds, which are as safe as banks. Then we help our clients get their money into credit unions, and then into electronic funds and digital currency.”
“What was the job assigned to Nathaniel Reed, Bo Hendricks, and the defendant Chip Bowman the night of the crime?”
“They’d made a run from Humboldt County to Los Angeles. It was a four-day job. They drove up to Humboldt, collected over a million dollars’ worth of legally grown cannabis, and some cash that needed to be transferred.”
“Is your business successful, Mr. Rollins?”
“Very much so. It’s the biggest cannabis security company in California, which makes it the biggest in the world. No one else comes close.”
It seemed Rollins couldn’t help having a dig at his rival David McClean, even though his rival wasn’t in the courtroom.
“I guess the night your company was robbed changed all that.”
“Yes, it did. It was a horrible, tragic event for the families of Nate and Bo. But it made life very difficult for me and the rest of my staff.”
“Did you know Nate Reed and Bo Hendricks well?”
“Yes. Very well. Both of them have worked for me for the better part of ten years. They were part of my team in Iraq when all three of us worked for Fortis.”
“What’s Fortis?”
“It’s a private security contactor. It’s a very large organization hired by the US Government to perform various tasks in conflict zones. Anything from bodyguarding politicians to training Iraqi police.”
“What kind of men were Nate and Bo?”
“They were the tough, loyal, and brave kind. I had a lot of respect for them. That’s why I hired them in Iraq and back home. They were two of my best men.”
“Do you believe the robbery which cost them their lives was an inside job?”
“Yes, I do. It had to be. Only the personnel involved in the job knew the details of what they were assigned. Part of our security protocol is to restrict, or compartmentalize, the specific information about where a team is going and what they are tasked to do.”
“Who knows?”
“Well, there’s me. There’s our chief financial officer Scott Slovak, and there’s the men rostered on.”
“No one else?”
“The clients whose assets we are shipping are kept in the loop.”
“I see. How does that work?”
“We provide our clients with a tracking service, an app, that lets them monitor where their assets are.”
“Like tracking a FedEx package?”
“Exactly, but it’s not real time. We put a delay on that information, for the mutual security of all clients. They have our schedule and they know within thirty minutes whether their goods have reached point A, point B, and so on.”
“Before this crime, had HardShell been robbed before?”
“No, never.”
“Why do you believe it was an inside job?”
“Well, like I said, very few people know the exact, real-time whereabouts of our teams. For one, the attack took place in a new compound that had no security cameras in place yet. Then as you have heard, Nate and Dan were shot like sitting ducks. These guys are highly experienced soldiers with combat experience. Detecting even a hint of danger is a sixth sense to them. There’s no way an armed stranger could have gotten anywhere near them.”
Rollins then turned and looked at Chip. “Whoever shot them was someone who had their deep trust, the kind of trust they depend on when fighting shoulder-to-shoulder on the front line. They never knew what hit them.”
I had to hand it to Rollins, for a man who headed what was, at least in part, a criminal enterprise, a man who quite possibly planned this whole robbery for his own gain, he did a damned fine job of playing the victim scorned.
“What about Chip Bowman?”
“What about him?” Rollins was staring back at Winter now.
“What kind of an employee was he?”
“I didn’t know Chip before he started at HardShell. He was recommended to me by one of my most trusted employees, Scott Slovak. I interviewed him before hiring him and he seemed like a good man, and he proved to be a solid worker.”
“Was he loyal?”
“Yes. At least he seemed to be. And he showed promise and was good with people, so I gave him a leadership role and had him on client liaison. When he was on runs, he was in charge. He’d be contacting clients ahead of time, making the arrangements for pick-ups. He’d also boost our business by selling our financial services.”
“Did he earn good money?”
“Very good money. And he got commission for any finance package he sold.”
“I see. So you trusted him?”
“Yes. I came to trust him implicitly.”
“Did anything about Chip make you reconsider the wisdom of hiring him?”
“No. If I did have, he’d have been out the door pronto.”
“But you do believe that he has betrayed you?”
“Yes, I do, in the most egregious manner possible. I don’t want to believe he committed this crime, I hate to believe it, but I live in the real world. I’m a realist. I need to be, particularly in my line of work.”
>
“But did you ever doubt his ability?”
“Well, I did suspect he was unstable at one point.”
“Unstable, how do you mean?”
“Well, I heard from some of the men that—”
“Objection,” I called out. “Hearsay.”
“Sustained,” said Judge Birch. “Please stick to things that you know to be true, Mr. Rollins.”
“Yes, of course, Your Honor. All I mean was that I spoke to Chip about things that got back to me.”
I felt Chip shift beside me. “That’s a lie,” he seethed “Why’s he saying that?”
I leaned over to Chip and levelled my voice to a whisper. “Easy, Chip. Just hold it together. I told you this would be tough.”
Winter heard me talk, turned to me, and waited for silence. “Can you tell us what was discussed in that conversation?”
“I said it had come to my attention that he was talking loosely about how easy it would be to rob dispensaries.”
A muffled stir ran through the gallery behind me.
“Really?”
“Yes. This was after there were two in quick succession. Naturally, the men talked about it—you know, breakroom chatter. I told Chip that it had come to my attention that he’d been suggesting to other members of my staff that they should rob dispensaries.”
“Who told you this?”
“Nate Reed and Bo Hendricks.”
“The two men he is now accused of killing?”
Chip jostled next to me. “He’s lying!” he hissed to me. “That’s total bullshit!”
I gave Chip a look that reminded him to cool his jets. It had better be bullshit, Chip, I said to myself.
“That’s right,” continued Rollins. “Now, I could have taken this as pure macho talk, but nonetheless I told Chip he needed to stop talking crap and focus on the job.”
“Was this a warning?”
“An informal one; a piece of advice. He knew that if the problem persisted, he was gone. And I’ve been around enough vets to know that their heads can get a little crazy now and then. A lot of my men would not suit selling cars or waiting tables. They’ve been shaped by war, mentally and physically. The job I give them—to carry a gun, to guard these valuables with their lives, to work to a tight schedule, to follow plans, and obey orders—is what they’re good at. It’s their wheelhouse.”
