The Fifth Justice (Michael Gresham Legal Thrillers Book 10)

by John Ellsworth

  And just like that—snap of the fingers—we were back in the game. It was almost as if Maddy knew, legally, what she was doing. But I had to stop myself there and remind myself that, of course, Maddy knew. Maddy was Chloe and Chloe was a lawyer with years inside courtrooms where the fur flies.

  Maddy, I was beginning to realize, was nobody’s fool. She might be known to Chloe as the rageful teenager, but I now knew there was much more to her. Sadly, for her case, Prosecutor Betts was coming to the same conclusion. This was no one to push and prod, this Maddy. She took big bites when she opened her mouth sometimes. Ouch!

  “Maddy, when Justin killed Reno, you weren’t aware of any plan by Reno to hurt someone, correct?”

  “No, I didn’t know about his plans.”

  “As far as you knew, he didn’t have any plans at all, correct?”

  “I didn’t know about his plans.”

  “Thank you; I believe that’s all I have.”

  Great. The person whose homicide is justified is the person with a plan, a real design in mind, to kill or cause great bodily harm to another person. Maddy had just made it clear that, as far as she knew, and she was there, Reno had no such plan. The air was seeping out of my defense faster than it was going in. But now it was my chance to rehabilitate the witness on re-direct examination. The question I was facing was, is there anything here for me to work with? Or am I better off just letting Maddy fade away?

  I decided on to rehabilitate. “Maddy, had Reno ever shared any of his plans with you?”

  “Not with me. But I heard his plans all the time.”

  “Tell us about that.”

  “He always had a plan to bring more girls into California and send them to Chicago. He said he would never give that up.”

  “Really? When did he say he would never give it up?”

  “Everyday. The girls would beg him to be turned loose. He always told them that would never happen. He always told them they belonged to him.”

  I decided to let it stay right there. It wouldn’t get any better, and it could get much worse. So I backed off.

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Nothing further, Your Honor,” said Linda Betts. “Thank you, Maddy.”

  “Who?” said Chloe.

  “Counsel, please call your next witness,” the judge said to me.

  The wristwatch was up and out again.

  Chloe knew it was time to step down from the witness stand. She returned to the chair on my right and exhaled mightily.

  “Well done,” I said.

  She turned her face to me. “It was never Maddy. It was me this time.”

  “I know. Well done.”

  It was time to call Trang Anh Nguyen, the Vietnamese girl who was Reno’s sex slave.

  Trang was thirteen years old.

  Chapter 62: Trial

  When I called the name of Trang Anh Nguyen, the bailiff went into the hallway and accompanied her inside and down the aisle. It looked like she was being chaperoned, an image I didn’t mind at all.

  Trang at twelve was flat-chested and had no hips. She was genderless, if I may. By which I mean, she was so young she hadn’t begun to blossom into the woman she was meant to be. Maybe that would never happen, I realized as I waited for her to be sworn in. Perhaps the trauma would never allow her to become fully free, fully alive, fully woman.

  The girl was wearing a suit of black pants and an embroidered black jacket. A white shirt was open at the neck. She wore no necklace, rings, or earrings, just like I’d asked—or so I thought. Then when I approached the lectern, I got a closer look. She had opted to wear a tiny gold cross on a chain around her neck. I realized it was being worn just for her. Normally, I don’t like my clients to give hidden clues to a jury, but with someone this young and vulnerable I let it pass by. She looked like she needed some protecting, and whatever worked for her, it was fine.

  I smiled at her and waited for her to take a deep breath, as I had instructed her. She did that, and then I could begin.

  “Can you help us understand better about Reno?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I can.”

  “As an example, maybe you could tell us what he did to you personally. Before you begin, let me say we all understand this is private stuff we’re asking you to talk about. Normally, people keep private things to themselves. But this isn’t normally; this is a courtroom where judges and juries need to hear stories like yours so they can do justice. Will you be able to help us with the private story?”

  “I can.”

  “Tell us your story, then, beginning with Vietnam when you were eleven years old.”

  The child then recounted her fate.

  Her father had died when she was very young. Her mother hadn't remarried, being already saddled with six children under ten years of age. Who would take on such a woman? So they huddled inside a thatch hut without windows, even during monsoon when the green fuzz grew between her toes and under her arms. There were trips to the river for cleaning, of course, but the Di An River coursed along laden with mud and runoff excrement from the water buffalos that fertilized the paddies, so personal hygiene, personal cleanliness was a state of mind always, never existing in the world inhabited by Trang Anh and her siblings.

  The children of Phuc Lo Nguyen all worked from sunup to sundown in the paddy fields. If they did not work, they would not eat. If they did not eat, they would die. It was simple math that presented itself as an agonizing choice each day for Trang Anh, who wanted more than anything to go to school. She was lucky a missionary had taught her a bit of English.

  One day, returning from the river with two large water jugs suspended from her shoulder bar, Trang Anh was swooped up by marauding human traffickers and put inside a truck with a canvas cover. Reno Rivera was the boss of them all. His mode of operation was always the same: grab girls and boys between the ages of eight and fifteen. Under or over were unacceptable and were thrown into the harbor when their ages became known. Too young: overboard. Too old: overboard. Trang Anh watched her younger sister An Li struggle in the cold water of the harbor and finally relax and float away beneath the surface when it turned out she was only six. Trang Anh's last view of her beloved baby sister was the hand that struggled up and out of the water and paused there as if waiting for another human hand to reach out and save her.

  Trang Anh was sobbing as her sister struggled, so she was immediately kicked into the hold by the captain's cabin girl. “No crying!” commanded the girl, not much older than Trang Anh herself. “Men don't like girls who cry.”

  Reno’s freighter delivered its rubber and its children upon arrival in San Francisco. They were herded onto converted school buses with the windows painted over and immediately headed out for St. Louis. Half would be distributed among Reno’s prostitution ring flourishing there; the rest of them would soon call Reno’s motel in Chicago their home away from home.

  After reaching St. Louis, the girls in Trang's group were driven across the river to Alton. There they were taken to the rambling old Victorian house where Reno and Chloe were living. This was when the worst of the abuse began.

  “On the fourth afternoon we were in Alton; the men were taking turns beating us.”

  I asked, “This would be Reno’s men who were doing the beatings?”

  “Yes. Reno’s men and Reno himself. He came into the room and immediately fell on me. He raped me. I didn’t know what rape was until it happened to me.”

  “There were other women present when it happened?”

  “Yes. Everyone stood by and just watched. Maybe they were too stunned or just too hurt to speak up. It was my first time to lay with a man. I was in hell for the entire four minutes he humped me. Sometimes he was inside me; sometimes he was just against my private parts. When it was over, he cuffed me on the side of the head, nearly knocking me unconscious. ‘Next time, don't cry,’ he commanded. ‘If you do, you will die.’ I told Chloe about this later.”

  “What did Chlo
e do?”

  “She took me in her arms and rocked me on the floor, her back against the wall until I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was still holding me. She took me into the bathroom and showed me how to wash. Together we watched the blood go down the bathtub drain.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Chloe had to return to her room when it was getting light outside.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When the men abandoned the room, and the women were again alone, it took everything I could call on deep down inside to keep from weeping, which would have made him come in and hurt me again. My body hurt, again I felt blood between my legs, and I was terrified.”

  “What did the others do?”

  “An older girl couldn't dissuade me from moaning. She knew it would bring them back. She held her hand over my mouth until I stopped.”

  “But you managed to stop?”

  “I did. I was so hungry by then, with the loss of blood and no food, that I think I passed out.”

  “Tell us about the food, Trang.”

  “We were all starving. One bowl of rice each day was our allotment. Every third day there was a piece of fried chicken from a fast-food where the driver's assistant would order four buckets of chicken. A fight over the chicken would erupt. I counted myself among the lucky when I managed to get away with a wing or a thigh. Once, there was even a breast, white meat—it brought tears to my eyes as I chewed. I couldn't begin to imagine how the Americans lived. Food like this anytime they wanted? It surpassed anything I could believe.”

  “Did you eventually travel to Chicago?”

  “Only when they thought we had put on enough weight. And only when we knew how to wash and clean ourselves American style. Then they brought girls to show us how to make up and how to act with men. Then we were trucked north to Chicago.”

  “What happened in Chicago?”

  “Reno moved us into his motel. He locked our doors. When men came, Niles would come and open the door, and the man would come in. He would choose a girl out of three or four to a room. The others read and listened to music while he did his sex to the one he chose. We tried not to look because we were all embarrassed. We never talked about it later. If one of us was hurt, the others pitched in to hide her the rest of that day, so she didn’t get chosen again. I hid in the shower many days. You couldn’t sit down in there; you had to stand until the man left. Or until the men left, because sometimes they came in pairs and doubled down on one girl. Those were the worst. Men are at their worst when they’re with another man doing sex. Then they hurt you and laugh about it. I don’t understand it. I hated them. I would have killed them all if I had a gun.”

  “Did you feel physically threatened by Reno Rivera during this time? I know it’s a kind of dumb question, but I have to ask it.”

  “Do you mean, did he come in every day and hurt us?”

  “Did you feel every day like he might come in and hurt you?”

  “Of course. If we didn’t do sex with whoever he sent, he came and beat us. Not just the holdout; he would remove his belt and beat all the girls in the room. This made us force each other to do sex. We forced the chosen one, so we didn’t all get beat.”

  “So you lived in constant fear of getting beaten by Reno Rivera?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “I don’t understand. Feel how?”

  “Were you scared all the time?”

  She had withdrawn from the question. I was sparking old feelings back to life, and she was afraid.

  “All the time. We got beat every day for one thing or another. Sometimes more than once.”

  “Did the men know you were beaten?”

  “The men liked the bruises and cuts, most of them. It made them feel superior. They didn’t mind at all.”

  “How old are you now, Trang. I might have already asked.”

  “Twelve, going on seventy-five.”

  There. That said it all. I thanked the witness and took my seat. She started to get up out of the witness chair, but the judge told her to remain seated, that the prosecutor might have cross-examination. Linda Betts got to her feet and said no, she had no questions. Her voice was soft and without energy. I knew, then, we were winning, because if she had been touched, so had the jury. We were on our way, I believed. Now if I could only get Justin to come out and talk.

  Justin Maybe. I turned and looked at Chloe, who was turning to look at me at the same moment. Our eyes met and locked.

  We both knew: it was Justin Maybe time.

  Chapter 63: Trial

  Justin’s appearance in the courtroom was a shock. Not because he showed up; by the time he appeared on the witness stand, the jury was more or less accustomed to the experience of watching Chloe’s demeanor change and a different personality appear. But what was shocking about Justin was the voice. It was a man’s voice, deep and strong, the kind of voice you wouldn’t think a female would be capable of projecting. It wasn’t because females weren’t strong and capable; it was a mechanical thing, meaning not a lot of women can scare up a voice like Justin’s.

  But Chloe did.

  He answered my first question, “Is Justin Maybe here today?” without hesitation.

  “Here, Mr. Gresham. How can I help you?”

  I looked over at the jury. They seemed pleased with how easy it was getting the actual killer before them. Some were poised with pencil and notepad, but most were leaning forward, anticipating, ready to see and hear from the killer himself. This was the moment of decision for most, if not all, of them. Justin would either set Chloe free or put her behind bars for a long, long time.

  “Justin, I’d like to talk to you about Reno Rivera. Did you know him?”

  “Of course. I knew him from the very beginning.”

  “You knew him at the time he raped Chloe and got sent to prison?”

  “I did. I wanted to kill him, but I wasn’t able.”

  “Really? What stopped you from killing him when he was raping Chloe?”

  “She stopped me. She wouldn’t allow me to come out.”

  His answer stopped me. He was saying Chloe could control him. If that were the case, then Chloe would have to have been involved in the decision to kill Reno. That wouldn’t be good, for the murderous intent would shift from Justin back to Chloe. I didn’t want that; I wanted it all on Justin.

  “What about the night you killed Reno? Did Chloe allow that? Could she have stopped you?”

  Justin laughed, a harsh, manly laugh, a laugh you might hear at a construction site when off-color jokes are heard. “Hah! No, she couldn’t have stopped me. We were way down the road by then.”

  “What’s that mean, ‘way down the road?’”

  “When I hear certain words, there’s no stopping me. I heard those words the night I killed Reno Rivera. Chloe had no way of preventing what came next.”

  I asked the question everyone wanted me to ask.

  “What are those words, Justin?”

  “‘Just a baby.’ When I hear that, I come forward and seize control. I don’t ask permission; I am permission. There’s no stopping me. Chloe had no part in the killing of Reno Rivera. It was way beyond her decision at that point. It was like she just didn’t count.”

  “Tell us what happened the night Reno died.”

  Justin took over the floor for the next ten or twelve minutes. Without pausing except to have a drink of water on two occasions, he recited the events of the night of the murder without faltering once. It all came out—the hotel, the phone call for Justin Maybe, the walk to Hammond’s restaurant, the locating of the target, the bathroom, the actual kill, and the escape. He didn’t elaborate on his feeling or mental states during any of these times when he was acting, so I knew I had my work cut out for me once he finished his narrative. After all, I had to establish, somehow, that the homicide was justified in that it was committed to prevent an imminent attack by Reno while Reno demonstrated a clear design to
commit that attack or murder someone himself. So I allowed Justin to get it out, tell his story, while I waited to move in and elicit the answers necessary to justify what Justin did that night.

  A quick side-note to all this: When Justin was testifying, I had the distinct impression that I was listening to the actions of a sovereign human being that night. It wasn’t Chloe I was hearing about; it was Justin Maybe. Likewise, I knew the jury would be having the same impression, that the ballgame belonged to Justin from the moment the first call came in until the moment the second call came in and Chloe returned. It was developing in this respect exactly like Chloe needed it to develop if she were to be absolved of all guilt: it had to be Justin’s homicide, not Chloe’s. It had to have been done by Justin to prevent further harm to others or to Chloe rather than having been done by Chloe as payback for all the hell Reno had put her through. One was anticipatory; one was past tense. I needed the anticipatory slant for the jury, not the payback slant.

  While I took Justin through the steps necessary to prove a homicide committed to prevent a known criminal design from happening, I could feel the eyes of Linda Betts on my backside. She was loading her guns, making ready to take Justin apart on cross-examination. When I’d finished up with Justin, when I’d proven the homicide was justified, Linda Betts had to restrain herself from actually running to the lectern to tear Justin Maybe apart. She was locked and loaded.

  I took my seat, and within seconds, Linda was the lectern, smoothing her notes, making ready to launch her attack.

  “Mr. Maybe,” she began, “may I call you ‘Mister Maybe?’”

  “I have no preference about that,” Justin replied in a guarded voice I hadn’t heard before. He’d received the memo: this woman was danger. Besides, she was fencing with him over the name thing, maybe even hoping he’d duck behind and not come back.

  “You told Mr. Gresham that Reno Rivera had some designs on Chloe’s son, Andrew Junior, correct?”

  “I did tell him that. I heard Reno and Niles making plans to kidnap Reno’s son away from Andrew Senior. They were going to put him in porno films.”