March
She walked to the podium, warm under the spotlights. In front of her on a high dais sat three justices of the First District Court of Appeals, San Francisco Division, three wise old men in solemn black robes.
Today was her first day in court.
They watched her, maybe a little curious because they had never seen her before. She set her notes in front of her, the tabbed background material, the appellate briefs. Behind her and to the side she felt the eyes of the deputy attorney general opposing her on the appeal and the many other lawyers here today to argue their cases. Her mouth felt full of cotton and her head felt-empty.
She had so much to fear, and so much at stake, and yet this wasn’t even her case. She was a substitute for another lawyer who was in the hospital.
For one whole week she had immersed herself in the issues, driven down to Soledad Prison to talk with the client, studied every case in the briefs, reviewed the evidence. The voice in her head that always stood in the way got louder every day, saying, you can’t do this. You’re not good enough. You haven’t had enough time handling this case. You’ll be tongue-tied and the whole court will laugh at you.
You will lose.
But other times, as she sat at her desk in the lamplight long after closing hours, searching for just the right words to persuade the justices that her client deserved another trial, a new feeling would well up in her: a determination to win. She couldn’t fail him. She had to act as a conduit, expressing the principles that would result in justice for him.
She dealt with the seesaw between fear and determination by working harder and longer. The night before the argument, at 4:00 A.M., Bobby woke her up, crying. She gave him some water and led him to the bathroom, then helped him back into his little bed.
I have a child, she thought to herself before going back to sleep, I have this child and have kept him alive. What could be harder or more important than that?
The morning scheduled for arguments in her case dawned in the traditional San Francisco way: foggy, cool, mysterious. She dressed in her black suit and wore her mother’s watch. At the courthouse downtown, standing outside the doors, Nina experienced one more moment of savage fright. A man’s liberty was at stake. His defense was entrusted to her, and who was she? Just a young woman without much self-confidence, not brilliant, not impressive, not experienced-who was she against the state of California?
Her case was called. She walked to the podium, under the lights. She laid down her papers and set her mind on her client, Klaus, her mother, all the people who had supported her over the long, lonely years and brought her to this place.
She opened her mouth and began to speak.
EXHIBIT ONE
OFFICE OF TRIAL COUNSEL
STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA
Gayle Nolan, NO. 101447
Attorney at Law
555B Franklin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
555/698-4947
THE STATE BAR COURT
THE STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA
HEARING DEPARTMENT-SAN FRANCISCO
In the Matter of
Nina F. Reilly, No. 379168
TO: NINA FOX REILLY, Respondent herein:
IF YOU FAIL TO FILE AN ANSWER TO THIS NOTICE WITHIN THE TIME ALLOWED BY STATE BAR RULES, INCLUDING EXTENSIONS, YOU MAY BE ENROLLED AS AN INVOLUNTARY INACTIVE MEMBER OF THE STATE BAR AND WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO PRACTICE LAW UNTIL AN ANSWER IS FILED.
You were admitted to the practice of law in the state of California on January 12, 1994. Pursuant to Rule 510, Rules of Procedure of the State Bar of California, reasonable cause has been found to conduct a formal disciplinary hearing, commencing at a time and place to be fixed by the state bar court (NOTICE OF THE TIME AND PLACE OF HEARING WILL BE MAILED TO YOU BY THE STATE BAR COURT CLERK’S OFFICE), by reason of the following:
COUNT ONE
1. In 2001, you were a sole practitioner in the law firm of Law Offices of Nina F. Reilly, Attorney at Law, 2489 South Lake Tahoe Boulevard, South Lake Tahoe, California.
2. While acting in your duties as an attorney, you occupied a position of trust for many clients. For our purposes here, one client group, consisting of Brandy Ann Taylor, Bruce R. Ford, and Angel Guillaume, is represented in this count.
3. Beginning on September 6, while serving in a lawyer-client relationship, and with a primary obligation to preserve the confidences and secrets of your clients, for the separate parties as referenced above, you failed to protect client information as required under California Business and Professions Code section 6068 (e) by leaving client files in an unlocked vehicle, which was subsequently stolen from you. You failed to implement the proper safeguards to ensure that client information remained confidential, a violation of your duty to perform competently.
4. Disclosure of the contents of those files has caused harm to your clients. After the loss of your client files, these three individuals were threatened and attacked by a man, Cody Stinson, whom they revealed in private conversations with you, their attorney, they had witnessed fleeing the scene of a murder.
COUNT TWO
1. While acting in your duties as an attorney, you knowingly assisted in the commission of a fraud against the Heritage Life Insurance Company Incorporated, by Kao Vang, former owner of Blue Star Market located in South Lake Tahoe, California.
2. Representing Kao Vang in an insurance claim against Heritage Life, you knew that arson had been committed by your client for the fraudulent purposes of obtaining an insurance settlement. The gross amount of that settlement, since paid in equal portions to Kao Vang and his wife, See Vang, was $210,000.
3. As a result of your personal, speedy delivery of funds to Kao Vang, he left the country before the fraud was apparent, making recovery of the fraudulently obtained funds difficult or impossible. The funds delivered to See Vang have been attached awaiting disposition of this count.
3. Your collection of any portion of that settlement constitutes a separate fraud.
COUNT THREE
1. While representing your client, Kevin Cruz, in a custody case, you engaged in a sexual relationship with him.
2. You employed undue influence in entering into the relationship, and implied that this level of intimacy was required in order for you to continue representation.
3. In violation of Rule 3-110 of the Rules of Professional Conduct of the State Bar of California, you continued to represent this client, even though the relationship damaged and prejudiced the client’s case, and resulted in the loss of temporary custody of his two minor children.
By committing the acts described above, you willfully violated your oath and duties as an attorney. In particular, you violated California Business and Professions Code section 6068 (e); and Rule 3-110 of the Rules of Professional Conduct.
“I N THE MATTER OF REILLY,” Judge Hugo Brock said in a soft voice. He had climbed the stairs to his seat with grave eyes downcast, without a word to his clerk. Decorum above all, Nina thought. He’s the type who worries about losing control in the courtroom. How will he handle Jack?
More to the point, how will Jack handle Judge Hugo Brock? She had asked Jack this very question. His answer was, “Don’t worry. Hugo beats the alternatives.”
The huge digital clock on the judge’s dais ticked off the seconds before the momentous switch to 9:30 A.M. In this moment before the hearing began, close together in the tense, windowless room, they all sat at attention, ignoring one another. The judge’s clerk, a girlish-looking woman with festive auburn hair and a midcalf-length blue skirt slit demurely up to her knees, paid no attention to anyone. Black headphones covering her ears, she stared at her computer, with them corporeally only. She might even be working on some other matter, transcribing the words of some other poor practitioner who had suffered in this very chair the previous week.
So defendants felt like this! Nina glanced at Gayle Nolan, the chief trial counsel. Jack called her Pit Bull Nolan, more or less an admission that he considered her competent. In navy wool, glasses low on her nose, her hair in a gray pageboy, she had a haggard expression. Retirement could not be far away, assuming that the state bar still gave its staff retirement benefits. The big money no longer rolled in from California’s attorneys, but the criticism of the whole disciplinary system got louder every year.
Now, from the hot seat, Nina began to see why. Salaried employees of the not-very-large entity, Gayle Nolan and Hugo Brock were coworkers. Their motivations should be radically different, exemplifying the enormous gap between judicial and enforcement branches, but in the end these two both represented the goals of the California State Bar.
And what were those goals? The president of the state bar had said in a speech Nina attended, “At the state bar, public protection is our number-one priority.”
This seemed a perversion to many California lawyers, who thought the state bar dues they paid each year should go to an organization with the number-one priority of supporting and encouraging them. When had the focus become weeding out the bad apples in the profession? Whatever happened to stabilizing the wobbly apples and protecting the ripe apples? How could the judge and the prosecutor work out of the same small, half-crippled system and not walk in lockstep?
As Nina whizzed through these thoughts, Gayle Nolan glanced back at her through designer glasses so enormous, so thick, so encrusted with decoration that the face behind them blurred. A blessing.
Her own eyes were bothering her, so she put on her horn-rims. With surgical fussiness, Jack wiped his glasses on his handkerchief, allowing not one mote of fuzz. Every single person in that courtroom was viewing the world through a layer of polymer or glass.
She looked down and discovered she was wringing her hands. She made an effort to sit still and betray nothing. Whatever she did, look scared or look calm, she felt that she looked guilty. Such are the thoughts of a defendant.
“Let’s start by, uh, clarifying the order of proof. I understand we have a change in the usual presentation, Counsel,” Judge Brock said.
Gayle Nolan stood up. “Yes, we do, Your Honor. As you know, this is a bifurcated hearing, with the first part presenting the culpability portion and the second part, mitigation. Right now we are just dealing with culpability. We have three sets of complaints here in three matters. Mr. McIntyre and I have agreed to put on each of the matters separately. I will put on the prosecution witnesses for Count One and Mr. McIntyre will cross-examine each witness and we will complete all the proof for that count before moving on to Count Two. If that is all right with the court.”
“So we will look at the Brandy Taylor matter first?”
“Right.”
“Actually,” Jack said, moving in to make his first impression, “we agreed to start with Officer Scholl, the officer who took the police report involving the stolen files. Her testimony relates to all the cases.”
“I was getting to that,” Nolan said. “That’s right, we will begin with Officer Scholl.” She clamped down on the words, as determined as a basketball player getting the ball back for her team.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes within the first two minutes.” He smiled, but the judge and the prosecutor stuck to their poker faces.
“Fine,” Judge Brock said. “Are we ready, then?”
“Ready,” Nolan said.
“Ready, Your Honor.” Jack patted Nina’s hand.
“Call Officer Jean Scholl.” Officer Scholl hustled in. “Raise your right hand.” She swore to be truthful, then launched into a minor complaint about having to take the whole day off to be in San Francisco for this hearing. The uniform accentuated her strong build and handsome unadorned face. Setting her clipboard in her lap, she gave Nolan, who was standing, her full attention.
“Good morning. I’m Gayle Nolan, I represent the State Bar of California.”
“Good morning,” Scholl said.
Over the previous several months, Paul had uncovered some more interesting details about Officer Scholl. Early in her career, she had worked with Kevin Cruz. On one occasion, Scholl had been along for the ride when Kevin Cruz busted a group of three young men for cocaine possession with intent to sell. The bust netted Kevin his first and only promotion, but rumors flew.
The three young men were honors students from UC Davis up for a weekend of skiing. None had ever been arrested for drugs before. One was in the middle of writing a senior thesis on the effects of illegal drugs on brain function. One had already inherited more family money than an oil baron, and therefore had little to gain and a lot to lose from selling drugs. Nevertheless, they had all been convicted, thanks to the testimony of Cruz and Scholl.
Scholl was as biased as they come, and maybe more. Nina leaned forward and tried to catch her mood, which was all too easy.
“You are a patrol officer with the South Lake Tahoe Police Department?”
“For the last eight years I’ve worked with the Patrol Watch Unit. Lately, I’ve also been working in conjunction with the Detective Unit, assisting on burglaries and robberies and undertaking some traffic-case investigations. It’s a small department so I get involved in several types of police work.”
“On or about September seventh of last year, were you called to the scene of a reported auto theft?”
The officer consulted her clipboard. “The call came in at seven-fifty A.M. Officer Dave Matthias and I responded and arrived at 96 Kulow Street, a single-family residence in the Pioneer Tract, at eight-twenty-four A.M.”
“And were you met at the scene by anyone?”
“By the defendant there. Ms. Reilly.”
“You already knew Ms. Reilly?”
“She’s an attorney who does-did-a lot of criminal-defense work. Trying to get her clients out of things. I had her in traffic court several times.”
“You testify regularly in the South Lake Tahoe court, where the defendant practices law?”
“Just about every week. She’s only been around a couple of years, but she picked up quite a few defendants. She started showing up as defense counsel in some of the big felonies up at the lake, which surprised and upset some of the local attorneys, I can tell you. She pushed hard for the high-profile cases, getting her name in the paper to promote her business. Quite a few of my colleagues came into contact with her.”
All of a sudden, the humdrum opening questions and answers had flown into unfamiliar realms. Police officers always tried for at least a semblance of objectivity. She had never heard Scholl get opinionated like this. Jack wasn’t moving, so she shifted in her chair. He had warned her not to expect the usual rules of court.
“You had several chances to observe the defendant at work?”
“Right.”
“How would you describe her work?” Jack sat like a fleck of lint. They should be talking about the Bronco, not about how this cop liked being cross-examined by Nina in court!
She nudged him. Jack leaned over. “They can’t do this,” she said. He held up a hand to shush her and turned his attention back to Scholl.
“Well, I felt that she wasn’t-I guess you would say, systematic. She rushed in at the last minute. She showed up late once or twice, as a matter of fact. She would try anything to get her clients off. Tricks. She had a reputation.”
“Jack!”
He gave Nina a nod, nothing more.
“A reputation in the police department?”
“Yes.”
“And can you describe that reputation?”
“Everyone said she would do just about anything to get her clients off. She attacked the officers in court, gave us a hard time and made us go over each and every detail hoping to find something wrong. She was-well, fly-by-night, always looking for some jazzy way to slip by the facts.”
“Can you give the court any specific example of this irresponsibility?”
“Objection,” Jack said, finally jumping up like his nimble namesake. About time. None of this would have been admissible in the courts Nina knew. Jack had entered the game late, but he would put a stop to this ridiculous character-bashing.
“Counsel should rephrase that,” was all Jack said, and sat down. Nina gave him an incredulous stare.
“I’ll decide that,” Judge Brock said. To Nolan, he said, “The word ‘irresponsibility’ calls for a conclusion. So I’ll sustain that objection.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Nolan kowtowed. “Did you observe how Ms. Reilly related to her clients?” Boggled as a kid in a toy store by the myriad possibilities for character assassination that appeared available to her, Nolan seemed to have forgotten her question about the specific acts of irresponsibility she’d been trying to learn about a second earlier.
“You bet I did,” Officer Scholl said. “She was much more friendly with them than the other attorneys, I thought. She’s a toucher. There were physical intimacies. She would hug them, set a hand on their shoulders right in the middle of the hearing. I saw her put an arm around one of her clients. She acted more like a friend than a person in a business relationship.”
Nina’s mouth dropped open. Now she knew exactly what Scholl had been thinking during those long days in court when she picked at Scholl’s police reports, looking for ways out for her clients. Now she understood the broader picture. She had won against Officer Scholl, and Officer Scholl did not forgive or forget. Nina no longer harbored doubts about whether Scholl had it in her to frame Nina and run her out of town. Scholl detested her.
Nolan cleared her throat. “So the defendant called you to her home. What did she tell you?”
“That her vehicle, a Ford Bronco, had been stolen during the night.”
“Could you summarize her statement to you?”
“She said she drove home from her office in the rain the night before about six P.M. and ran inside. She had not been able to locate her key earlier in the day, so she used a spare one. Later that night she remembered that she had some important files out in her car but she was sleepy so she went to bed instead of going out to retrieve them. Around seven the next morning she discovered the vehicle and its contents were gone.”
“Okay, let me back up a little. She said she lost her key?”
“Yes.”
“And that whole evening she knew that she had left it somewhere. Meanwhile, the vehicle sat outside unguarded and unprotected-”
“We’re leading just a little bit here,” Jack said.
“I withdraw that question. What exactly did the defendant say about what she did for the time period between six P.M. and seven A.M. with regard to locking her truck or removing the key from the ignition?”
“She claimed she locked the truck with her spare key. Is that what you mean? She said she knew the truck was out there and her key was gone and her files were in the back in the briefcase but she basically couldn’t be bothered.”
“She knew the main key was missing by then? In the hands of absolutely anyone?”
Officer Scholl had the character at least to glance down at her report on that one. “Well, she claimed she didn’t think about that.”
“All right. Now, she mentioned some important files had been left in the Bronco.”
“Yes. She was very insistent about us finding the files. They were in a burgundy leather briefcase, she said. She cared more about the files than the stolen vehicle.”
“And what did she tell you about these files?”
“She described them as client files, which had labels and names. She said the files held confidential information. Different information in each file. And what she called client-intake forms.”
“And did she give you the names of the clients?”
“No, she wouldn’t give us the names. She stated that the names were confidential. She wouldn’t say what the cases were about or if there was anything in the cases that might make somebody want to get at the files. I warned her that that would hinder our investigation but she wouldn’t budge.”
“And was the failure of the defendant to provide information about the files a hindrance to your work?”
“I asked right away, could the thief be after the files? She said she didn’t see how. I said, how can we find out if you won’t give us any details? I had to leave it at that.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“That her son had an ongoing friendship with an individual named Nicole Zack, who stayed at the house now and then. Nicole Zack is known to local law enforcement. She has had several arrests as a juvenile and a conviction for shoplifting. She was arrested for murder last year, which is how the defendant got to know her. She got her off.”
“The defendant in this instance had a close relationship with her client?”
“Obviously. Close enough that they hang out together at night at her house.”
The comment didn’t make a point, it slashed like a machete. Fussy adherence to petty concerns, reckless disregard for issues of serious import, and suggestive interactions with notorious lowlifes-Nina had done it all. The prosecution’s entire case relied on nothing more substantial than the imaginative slanders of this officer who hardly knew her.
“Do something!” Nina whispered to Jack. He shook his head sharply, warning her to stay out of it. As the questioning went on, Nina’s hands shook with frustration.
“The son had no car? He had to ride around on a bicycle?”
“He’s underage for a license.”
“And Nicole Zack?”
“She doesn’t have one yet. Not that that would stop her.”
“Did the defendant tell you anything else?”
Officer Scholl examined her report again. “Not until later. She called and gave us the names of three files. She said she had checked with the clients and they had allowed her to do that.”
“And what were those names?”
“Angel Guillaume and Brandy Taylor. Kao and See Vang. Kevin Cruz. But she claimed it was all confidential. She wouldn’t tell us anything about the contents of the files.”
“Now, Officer Scholl, were you also assigned the investigation of this theft?”
“I was. I located the vehicle several days later at the Heavenly parking lot. It looked like somebody had a long joyride and dumped the vehicle there. The defendant couldn’t identify any damage. I had it examined for forensic evidence and fingerprints. There were a number of prints of the defendant and her son. Dog hairs all over. Trash in the backseat, half-empty Gatorade and water bottles, a coffee cup that had been there awhile.”
Oh, great. Now she bad-mouthed Nina’s domestic inadequacies.
“Nothing that would help identify the perpetrator,” Scholl added.
“What about the missing key?”
“Left on the seat. Wiped clean of prints.”
“Were the files found in the vehicle?”
“No. The files were missing, and so was the briefcase.”
“Were the files ever located to your knowledge?”
“Not to my knowledge. I did interview Nicole Zack and the boy. I put out an APB on the truck. I did what I could, but without the defendant’s full cooperation, I couldn’t mount a full-scale investigation. I just had to wait until the truck got dumped. The auto-theft case is still open.”
“Let me ask you something now, Officer. Do you have any independent knowledge that these files were ever in the defendant’s stolen vehicle?”
“No.”
“The defendant could have accidentally left her briefcase in a supermarket or lost them in some other, even more egregious fashion?”
Officer Scholl looked thoughtful. “For all I know.”
“And used the auto theft as an excuse to claim she wasn’t totally responsible for the loss?”
“I never saw any files. I don’t know if there were in fact any files in a briefcase in that vehicle.”
“And has the perpetrator of the theft been identified at this time?”
“Not at this time. As I say, I’m still in charge of an open investigation.”
“Thank you. Nothing further.”
“We will take the midmorning break,” said Judge Brock. Nolan left. The clock stopped. The clerk took off her headphones and disappeared.
Jack nodded at the door.
“I’ll stay here for a minute,” Nina said, “and try to remember how hardworking and innocent I looked to myself only yesterday.”
“I warned you. They trowel on the accusations. Hearsay, opinion evidence, all sorts of character-battering is an integral part of the proceedings. You’ll get a better crack at showing a balanced picture of your career, who you are, how well you’ve done in your work, during the next phase, the mitigation hearing. This is a different kind of court.”
“Yeah, it’s a quasi-court practicing quasi-law with quasi-rules of procedure. And quasi-protection for the defendant.”
Jack said, “You’re right. Welcome to the Bizarro universe of law.”
“I read the rules, but I can’t believe the way they play out in practice. This is not supposed to be a criminal action, but it sure feels like one.”
“If only it were a criminal matter,” Jack said. “Then you might have the statutory presumption of innocence. You don’t get that here. You already know that the technical rules of evidence in criminal cases aren’t applicable. The case doesn’t even have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s unclear how much hearsay evidence can come in, and Hugo likes to hear it all.”
“Then why do I need an attorney?” Nina said rather rashly. “You don’t object. You can’t keep the worst slimeballing out. You can’t do anything but sit there.”
“I haven’t cross-examined yet.”
“Is that when you start defending me?”
“Look, we got off to a rough start this morning. I’ll take some of the blame.”
“I hate sitting there unable to open my mouth and defend myself. I feel like a crash-test dummy.” She helped herself to some of the bottled water.
“Back at my office, I have a quote from Kafka taped inside my drawer. Funny guy, in his bitter European way. The Trial speaks to some of your ordeal. You remember, this clerk, K, keeps getting hauled off to this court in this crummy run-down warehouse, and he can’t find out what the charges are. At first he scoffs, but he finally starts believing in the whole strange system. At that point he’s doomed.”
“Then he and I have nothing in common,” Nina said. “I refuse to let this sorry system ruin my life.”
“All they can do is lift your license.”
He said it lightly, but she heard the worry behind his words. Jack was being kind. They both knew this could go beyond the California bar court into a criminal investigation of fraud. “That can’t happen,” she said. “We won’t let it.”
“If it happens, it won’t be the end of the world.”
“Nobody is running me out of this career that I worked so damn hard to achieve.”
Silence while he digested this. “Good, because you’re exactly the kind of lawyer we need out there, dirty-kneed, trudging through the trenches.” He lifted her chin to look at her. “Ah, Nina. How life changes.”
“I’ve never feared change, Jack. I see it as an opportunity.” She got up. “I’m out of here. When does the kangaroo court resume?”
Jack looked at his watch. “Nine minutes. Nina-”
“What?”
“Relax a little with the constant pen and paper, okay? It makes the judge nervous. And you might want to slap a little lipstick on or powder your nose or something. Look like a winner. You look too worried.”
Wanting to fume in private, Nina went down a floor, an old trick of hers when she wanted to be alone, and paced around in that hallway. Nine minutes passed, then they returned to their tables in the ice-cold court.
Judge Brock entered and they all stood and sat down again in a clumsy shared motion. The clerk detached, plugging her headphones into some distant place like Mars, her eyes looking somewhere into the middle distance of the room where there was nothing but dead air to view. Officer Scholl was advised that she was still under oath.
“Good morning, Officer,” Jack said, receiving a curt nod in return.
“So you already knew Ms. Reilly from traffic court?”
“Yes.”
“You hand out the traffic citations, she fights them?”
“That’s about it.”
“How many times have you come up against Ms. Reilly?”
“Oh, five or six.”
“And every single time, she beat your ticket, didn’t she?”
“Objection,” said Nolan.
“Goes to bias.”
“Overruled.”
“She beat you, didn’t she?” Jack said with a little smile.
“I can’t remember every case.”
“Do you need me to refresh your recollection by having you go through this stack of records here and then putting in evidence each of the instances?”
“She got her client off on the tickets each time.”
“You say she resorted to trickery. What tricks did she pull?”
“She took advantage of the situation. She attacked the calibration of the radar gun. She continued cases until I or the other officers had a conflict and couldn’t make it to the court appearance, and got a dismissal that way. She knew we couldn’t remember every detail of a traffic stop from months before. She made one little inconsistency look like we were lying.”
“‘We were lying’? Wasn’t it just you up there?”
“She made it look like I was lying, which I wasn’t.”
“So you were humiliated by her tactics?”
Scholl flushed. “I take personal pride in my work.”
“She blighted your otherwise good record?”
“My record is otherwise very good.”
“Did the issue of your frequent losses in court on cases against defendants of Ms. Reilly come up during discussions with your superior officer about an upcoming promotion to the Detective Unit?”
Scholl paused and thought before she spoke. “Yes.”
“Did you get the promotion?”
“No.”
“Do you attribute your failure to be promoted to Ms. Reilly?”
“I can only say the citations were good, and I was accused of lying on the stand, and the judge dismissed the citations. And this was a factor.”
“Did she ever get sanctioned by a court for her tactics?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Did she ever get found in contempt?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“So she attacked the prosecution’s case and got her clients off on the tickets,” Jack mused as if to himself. “Guess that didn’t make her too popular with law enforcement up at Tahoe.”
“Exactly. She could not be trusted.”
“It sure didn’t make her very popular with you, did it?”
“I-I didn’t like her tactics.”
“You didn’t like her success, you mean. How do you like criminal-defense attorneys in general, from your viewpoint in law enforcement?”
“They are a necessary ev-they are part of the system.”
Smiling, Jack said, “They could all get shipped off to Timbuktu and you wouldn’t miss ’em, would you?”
“Not really.”
“I appreciate your forthrightness,” Jack said. He had a rhythm going, Nina thought. He wasn’t half bad. A small relief released some of the built-up pressure in her chest.
“Now, you mentioned that it didn’t help your investigation that Ms. Reilly wouldn’t tell you her clients’ names.”
“I felt she was not cooperating with the investigation.”
“Ever heard of Rule 1.6 (a)?”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“Indeed you aren’t. Let me put it this way. Did you know that there is a rule of practice for attorneys that prohibits them from revealing any information relating to the representation of a client unless the client consents after consultation?”
“Not even the name?”
“Not even the name.”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“And Ms. Reilly did give you the names as soon as she had talked to her clients?”
“Yes, but without knowing more about what was in the files we couldn’t tell if the theft might be related to one of the clients.”
“What about the attorney-client privilege? Ever heard of that?”
“Yes, but I’m not a lawyer. Like I said.”
“But it caused you trouble, Ms. Reilly fulfilling her duties as a lawyer?”
“I’m just saying-”
“Did she do anything besides protect the confidentiality of the files that caused you a problem?”
Officer Scholl thought that through. “I felt she was defensive about her relationship with Nicole Zack. I felt that individual was a suspect.”
“Didn’t you tell her Ms. Zack was bad news, in so many words?”
“It’s the truth.”
“And she defended Ms. Zack to you?”
“She wouldn’t hear a word against her.”
“Let me ask you this. Did you at any time in your investigation develop a shred of evidence, a scintilla of evidence, that Ms. Zack had anything to do with this theft?”
“No. But I still-”
“Now then. You testified that Ms. Reilly is a touchy-feely type who has gone so far as to hug a client in your presence?”
“That’s correct.”
“In what circumstances did she do this?”
“Well, the jury came in.”
“With a verdict?”
“Yes.”
“An acquittal?”
“Yes.”
“And they hugged each other?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you believe that hugging a client after an acquittal leads to moral turpitude, oh, for example, sleeping with her male clients?”
“Objection! There’s so much wrong with that question I don’t know where to start,” Nolan said, on her feet.
“Why, Counsel, isn’t that exactly what you were trying to imply?” Jack said innocently.
“Rephrase it, Counsel,” Judge Brock said, amusement twitching the corners of his mouth.
“Well, you know that Ms. Reilly is accused of sleeping with one of South Lake Tahoe’s finest, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she gets too intimate with her clients?”
“She befriends them. She hugs them.”
“Shocking, isn’t it.”
“Counsel, let’s move on,” Brock said.
“Just one last thing. When you found Ms. Reilly’s vehicle, it was full of papers and used coffee cups?”
“It was pretty trashed.”
“Do you attribute that to Ms. Reilly’s generally being a trashy person?”
“What kind of question is that?” Nolan said. “I object. Counsel is making fun of the witness.”
“She’s calling my client trashy, Your Honor.”
“Move on.”
“Was the truck locked when it was found?”
“No.”
“Anyone could have had a few Gatorades and left them in the back. The thief could have gotten thirsty while riding around in the stolen vehicle, isn’t that correct?”
“Correct or incorrect, it’s irrelevant and it’s frivolous,” Nolan said.
“Anyone could have left that trash,” Jack said. “I feel it’s a relevant point.”
“Objection sustained,” the judge said.
“Did you have the Gatorade bottles tested for DNA? Trashy people drink out of the bottle, you know.”
“We don’t have the resources to go that far for a simple auto theft.”
“How about the coffee cup?”
“It looked like it had been there a long time.”
“You assumed it was Ms. Reilly’s cup?”
“Well, it seemed to be.”
“So let’s see if I can summarize your testimony up to this point,” Jack said. “You took the report, you can’t stand Ms. Reilly or criminal-defense lawyers in general, you did a half-assed investigation and got lucky and finally stumbled across the truck, and you think Ms. Reilly must have slept with Kevin Cruz because you saw her hug a female client after an acquittal by a jury?”
“Objection!”
“Sustained.”
“Ever see Ms. Reilly and Officer Cruz together, Officer Scholl?”
“No,” Officer Scholl said flatly.
“You’re darn right you haven’t. I have nothing further, Your Honor.”
“Jack,” Nina whispered after he sat down. “What about the fact that she hates me for making her look like an idiot on the stand? What about the fact that she may have cooked up this whole malicious plot?”
“Let me ask you a question. Should we rock Brock to sleep with harebrained theories about what happened, or should we try to win this case?”
G AYLE NOLAN WALKED to the courtroom door and opened it. Stepping inside, she called her next witness. Bruce Ford entered, moving quickly to the stand. His date of birth put him in his late twenties, although he seemed older to Nina. Bristly hair fringed his face, and dark curls were cut tight to his head. Like almost all lawyers, he had to correct his eyes with specs, but these were a hip green-tinted pair. He appeared well ironed into an expensive suit, but not happy to be here.
She had heard Nolan had twisted his arm to come. He didn’t want to come out publicly against a fellow attorney, although mean-spirited letter-writing was apparently acceptable practice. She shifted in her seat as Ford described his tax practice and educational background.
Gayle Nolan remained seated as she asked questions, the black notebooks on each side of the table framing her like big guns. Here was the chief trial counsel’s place of power, Nina thought, behind these windowless walls, in this aridity, fighting what she probably considered the good fight, sinking incompetent attorneys.
Attorneys like her.
“Mr. Ford, please tell us the circumstances that brought you here today.”
Bruce Ford took his glasses off and wiped them with a handkerchief, then placed them carefully back on his nose. “My fiancée, Brandy, hired Ms. Reilly as her attorney. She and her sister, Angel Guillaume, were present at South Lake Tahoe’s Campground by the Lake the night that Phoebe Palladino was killed. They had seen something that night, somebody running away from the tent Phoebe was in, so they went to ask Ms. Reilly for advice. They needed to talk to the police but were afraid about what would happen if they did. Turns out they were right to worry about that, only they should have been worrying just as much about who they chose to hire.”
“Shouldn’t you object?” Nina whispered. “He wasn’t even my client and he’s stating opinions.”
“We want the judge to see we respect his intelligence. He knows opinions differ from fact.”
“So Ms. Reilly was not specifically your attorney?” Nolan asked Bruce Ford.
“She was representing my fiancée.”
“What happened to you after your fiancée consulted Ms. Reilly?”
“I was in my office one day. A guy bullied his way through my receptionist and into my office. He introduced himself as Cody Stinson, but at the time that meant nothing to me. I didn’t know the name. Well, I see a lot of different types. First, I assumed he was a potential client who was just worked up about something. I get a lot of that. Then he started talking about strangling someone, and I suddenly realized he wasn’t there to consult me about anything.”
“In your opinion, Mr. Ford, why had he come there?”
“He was there to threaten and intimidate me.”
“What was the intimidation designed to accomplish?”
“He wanted my fiancée to quit talking to anyone about what happened at the campground. He was perfectly clear on that point. He swore she’d be sorry if she didn’t ‘shut her mouth’-only his language was much cruder than mine is here today. He threatened me, said he’d get me if I didn’t do something about her.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know how I did it. Years of handling my alcoholic dad, I think. Anyway, I threw him out.”
“Did he go peaceably?”
“He broke a porcelain lamp that was on the secretary’s desk.”
“How did he do that?”
“Knocked it down. He was yelling. Very angry.”
“After he left, what did you do?”
“Moved in with a friend.”
“Why?”
“As he was leaving, Stinson taunted me. Said he knew where I lived.”
“You were frightened?”
“Very.”
“Did you tell anyone where you were?”
“Not for a couple of days.”
“You didn’t call your fiancée?”
He stretched his neck uncomfortably. “We were-having a hard time, but I tried to reach her. Didn’t have much luck.”
“After a few days, you made contact?”
“She found me. I knew she could if she wanted to badly enough.”
“What effect did this incident have on your business?”
“I couldn’t work. I didn’t take calls. It cost me money and made it hard for me to complete the work I had at hand. It had a distinctly negative effect on my business.”
“And on you personally?”
“I suffered tremendous emotional distress. I had to see a doctor. It exacerbated the problems with my fiancée.”
Jack, taking a different tack, stood when he talked to Ford, although he stood behind the table. He moved his weight from one side to the other, his compact body swaying like a tree in a wild wind as he thought on his feet. “Mr. Ford, why didn’t you know about Cody Stinson in the first place?”
“I hadn’t talked to my fiancée, Brandy Taylor, for a couple of days.”
“And why was that?”
“She was out of town.”
“But you were on speaking terms.”
“Of course.” But the eyes behind the green tint blinked.
“Did she later tell you that she had been instructed by her attorney to contact you?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Did she say she tried to reach you before Cody Stinson ever came to your office to tell you what was going on?”
Ford had a toothache, judging from the tortured crook to his mouth. “Yes.”
“Why couldn’t she reach you to warn you?”
“My cell phone was out.”
“Why couldn’t she find you at the office?”
“She left some messages,” he admitted. “I was upset. I didn’t call her back. Believe me, I regret that very much now. I was wrong.”
“Mr. Ford, isn’t it true that you moved in with your friend several days before Cody Stinson showed up at your office?”
He was silent.
Busted, Nina thought. Jack hadn’t told her about that.
“You were having some problems in your relationship and moved out. You weren’t taking calls from your fiancée at home or at the office, isn’t that so, Mr. Ford?”
The tongue went back to work the bad molar again. “I’m not proud of how I behaved. I hate fighting with her. I guess the timing of the whole thing got confused in my mind,” he said.
“I guess it did, Mr. Ford. So any harm to your business, aside from a lamp that may have been broken accidentally, is really due to the problems you were having in your relationship, isn’t it?”
“Listen, that guy scared me. He threw me off my stride. He threatened my fiancée! He had no business doing that. She was scared to death. I felt so horrible when I found out.”
Ford didn’t come off too badly, just as a protective boyfriend, but his indignation no longer carried the heft of righteousness. The judge lost interest. He turned toward the clerk and said something. The clerk nodded, then focused harder on the mysteries unfolding on her computer.
“How did you know about that?” Nina whispered to Jack.
“I read it in his eyes.”
“You did?”
He took pity on her bewilderment. He whispered, “Paul just found out. He called me late last night. Just when you write him off as useless, he comes up with something.”
The next witness, Brandy Taylor, brought a breeze through the door with her, rushed up to the witness stand, and said “Sorry” when she almost tipped over the bottle of water on Nolan’s table.
Brandy wore a red jacket over a flowing chiffon skirt. Judge Brock gave her his full attention.
She gave her vital statistics, then began her story, her attitude apologetic. “I didn’t want to complain, but my boyfriend was so upset. He’s a lawyer and he said that it was like a civic duty, that what Ms. Reilly did to us was harmful. We could have died. You know, the truth is, we were all scared.”
Pushing her gaudy rims up tight to her eyes, Nolan straightened her padded shoulders and brightened all around. She laid on the sympathy lightly, as if knowing a heavy hand might twist things the wrong way. She didn’t say outright, “Poor you,” but a warmth under her questions carried the implication with every sentence. “Tell us, in your own words, Ms. Taylor, what happened.”
Brandy told the court at great length about their trip to the campground, angling around her troubles with her boyfriend, emphasizing the fun of a visit with her sister, Angel. She said the arguments at the tent next door escalated after Cody Stinson arrived, and she described the arrival of the park ranger and how relieved they felt. Then, she said, they couldn’t sleep anyway. “We got up in the middle of the night to use the-uh-bathroom.”
“You and your sister both?”
“We both went, yeah.”
“Tell us what happened then.”
“Well, it was super late at night and really dark. Even though the campground’s lit and you can see the lights reflecting on the lake through the trees, it’s not like daytime. On the other hand, it’s not so dark you can’t see. It was also quiet. When we got to the bathroom we waited a minute for this other woman to finish, then we were quick. It was on the way back that I saw Cody Stinson leaving Phoebe’s tent.”
“Which caused you to consult with Nina Reilly?”
“That’s right. We were frightened and didn’t know what to do.”
Brandy wasn’t enjoying this. In spite of Jack’s admonition, Nina scribbled on her notepad, the mindless doodles she hoped looked like serious note-taking to anyone who happened to notice. The doodling helped her think, as if the stick figures and their little randomly generated activities freed up her mind for more logical paths.
She doodled an outhouse with a half-moon cut in the door, a woman walking away, two shadowy figures waiting.
Hmm, she thought, the woman in the washroom, out and about in the middle of the night. Brandy and Angel had mentioned her on their first visit to Nina. Could that mean anything? The campground had been crowded.
Could be anyone.
Could be someone?
When Brandy got to Cody’s attack, she became teary. Gayle Nolan, entirely pleased with the girl’s performance, egged her on, but Brandy wiped her eyes quickly, saying it was months ago now, and nothing had happened since Stinson was put in jail. She even put a plug in for Paul’s role in Stinson’s capture, which Nina appreciated, even though Jack seemed unmoved.
Nolan didn’t let Brandy go before detailing the injury to Brandy and her sister. They had been menaced, attacked even, by this man who should never have had the information he had, which came straight out of Nina’s confidential client file.
When Jack’s turn came to question Brandy, she uncrossed her legs and pushed her back against the chair, as if recoiling from what she expected to be an unpleasant scene. Instead, he gently prodded her about the things Nina had done to prevent any harm the information in the file might have caused.
“She hired an investigator, who followed you even though you didn’t request protection. He was there when Cody Stinson confronted you at the beach, correct?”
“That’s right. She didn’t have to do that. I like Ms. Reilly, don’t get me wrong. I know she didn’t mean for us to get hurt.”
“Would you mind going into a little more detail about what happened when Cody Stinson ‘jumped out’ at you?”
“Certainly. We were just walking along, and there he was. I recognized him right away and I started screaming and kicking him, because Angel and I have two brothers, and I think it was just a reaction to the situation, you know? Because I recognized him right away. Angel kind of leaped onto his back.”
“And got knocked down.”
“Right.”
“What exactly did Cody Stinson do?”
“Well, he was shouting,” she said dubiously. “What do you mean, what did he do?”
“Did he pull a knife?”
“I didn’t see one. Doesn’t mean he didn’t have one, though.”
“What was he saying?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “I wasn’t listening, to tell you the truth. I was scared out of my brains.”
“Is it possible Cody Stinson just wanted to talk?”
“He knocked Angel down,” she said slowly. “So, no. I wouldn’t say so.”
“After she jumped on his back.”
“He jumped us,” she said firmly.
“After you screamed and kicked him.”
“What was I supposed to do! He’s a murderer and he shows up in the woods by the beach where I’m supposed to be meeting my fiancé! I’m damn proud we fought back!”
Jack calmed her down, praising her quick thinking, all the while making his points for the judge. When they got to the event at the women’s shelter, he tried for similar points. Why did Stinson knock? Hadn’t he said he just wanted to talk to them that night, too? Wasn’t it possible the broken window was just a result of his frustration about not getting their attention? He established that the Taylor-Ford home and Ford’s office were listed, as were Angel’s address and workplace, “accessible to anyone that can read.”
When he finished, his usually cool forehead had a sheen of moisture. “Brandy’s got the judge diving for his hanky,” Jack whispered to Nina. “Did you have to pick a client who’s so damn adorable and sympathetic?”
Cody Stinson’s jail jumpsuit hung on him. Escorted into the court by a guard, he took the stand nervously, stroking his goatee while Nolan shuffled through her notebooks for a minute. Then Nolan introduced herself and established that he was at present incarcerated and awaiting a trial in a murder case.
“You know why you’re here today?” Nolan asked.
He pulled his mouth into a pucker. “I guess to say bad things about that attorney over there, Nina Reilly.”
“Do you know Ms. Reilly?”
“Not personally, no.”
“You have nothing personal against her.”
“No.”
“And no reason to say bad things.”
“Right.”
“You are accused of murdering Phoebe Palladino at Campground by the Lake in South Lake Tahoe in the early-morning hours of September the first, last year?”
“I didn’t do it.”
“You’ve spoken to your attorney regarding your testimony here today?”
“I’ve waived my right to be silent and take the Fifth Amendment in writing. I want to talk about this. If I don’t say anything, I’ll never get out. You know, they let Mario Lopez go because of those bozo women. That’s just so lame.”
“We’re not here to determine your innocence or guilt, Mr. Stinson. What we’d like you to tell the court is how you received information about a confidential file on your case. How did you hear that Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume had some information of interest to the police regarding you in that case?”
“That’s easy. Somebody called me and told me.”
“Somebody?”
“Just a voice on the phone.”
“What did this person say exactly?”
“He-or she, whatever it was, said that these two women were running all over town telling everybody that they saw me kill Phoebe, which was a lie!”
“Up until that point, the police were looking at another suspect, isn’t that so?”
“Mario. Mario Lopez, that’s right.”
“In fact, you had established an alibi, which the police seemed to believe.”
“That broke down when those women said they saw me at the campground.”
“Made you mad, didn’t it?”
“Well, let’s face it. I knew I didn’t hurt Phoebe. I was just trying to save everybody the trouble of getting confused about what happened. I knew it would look bad, me being at the campground that night later. If I could, I would have kept my alibi.”
“Not only did it make you mad, it attracted the police’s attention.”
“Right. It looked like, up to that point, they didn’t think I was involved.”
“In fact, you were arrested as a result of the information Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume gave to the district attorney’s office. You must have seen that coming. You must have been upset.”
“Your Honor,” Jack said, “asked and answered.”
“Let’s not belabor the point,” said Brock. “Con-tinue.”
“What specific information did that person who called give you regarding the identity, whereabouts, and intentions of these witnesses?”
“He gave me their addresses, including one for a beauty salon where one of them worked, and the Ford guy’s office. Told me they were planning to go to the D.A. to say things about me.”
“When you received this information, what was your reaction?”
“I wanted to talk to them.”
“You wanted to talk,” Nolan repeated, eyes rolling slightly. “Mr. Stinson”-Nolan waved a stapled pile of papers at him-“isn’t it true that you stalked and assaulted these two women on at least two separate occasions with the intention of scaring them so completely they would never testify against you?”
“That’s sheer bullsh-they jumped me!”
“And, Mr. Stinson, in between surprising the two women on the beach and again at the women’s shelter at Tahoe, where you broke a window, frightening and disturbing the residents, you took the time to drive to Palo Alto and use these terrifying tactics, verbally abusing and attempting to assault Brandy’s fiancé, Bruce Ford?”
“What is this? I thought this was about how bad she was, not how bad I am! I didn’t attack nobody, not Phoebe, not those women, not that wuss Ford. I just wanted to straighten things out with them.”
“By straightening, do you mean you wanted them to leave town and not testify against you?”
He folded his arms. “That would suit me, yeah. Because they were lying.”
“Uh huh,” said Nolan. “If you had not received that anonymous phone call, would you have known about the potential witnesses?”
“Probably not. No.”
“You would not have gone after them?”
“To talk to them! No.”
“That’s all.”
Jack stood while Nolan sank back into her chair.
“Mr. Stinson, tell us more about what happened at the beach that day that you came upon Brandy Taylor and Angel Guillaume. What was your intention on that day?”
“I went there to talk to them, I swear. How many times do I have to tell you people?”
“Did you take a knife along?”
“No!”
“A gun?”
“No.”
“A weapon of any kind?”
“I didn’t take a weapon. These were women. I didn’t go looking for trouble.”
“Yet you ended up in a fight, didn’t you?”
“Like I said before, they jumped me first. Of course I’m not going to just take that. I pushed ’em off.”
“And at the women’s shelter?”
“Christ, I even knocked! Next thing I know, there’s a lady I never saw before waving a rifle at me.”
“When you went to Bruce Ford’s-”
“Okay, I was a little drunk. I said a few things. He’s a man, supposedly. I didn’t expect him to give in easy. I was just trying to be forceful, but I never laid a hand on him.”
Jack shifted gears. “Mr. Stinson, were there many people camping nearby the night that Phoebe Palladino died?”
“The place was packed.”
“Isn’t it possible someone else at the campground saw something that night, even saw Brandy and Angel leaving their tent, and you leaving Phoebe’s tent?”
“Sure. Anything’s possible. Who would have thought those two would happen to need to pee just the very second I was leaving the tent, huh?”
“Are you hard to find?”
“What?”
“Are you listed in the local directory?”
“Yes.”
“So anyone, anyone at the camp that night, might have called you?”
“Anyone can call me.”
“So an attorney’s missing files aren’t the only way someone might come to know about you or your return to the campground later that night?”
“You’re good, man,” Cody Stinson said. “That’s right except for one thing. How would anyone know my name?”
“Did the ranger take your name?”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“Who was there when he took down your name?”
“We had quite an audience, yeah, we did. You’re right! Maybe it was the old guy from Cambria at the campsite on the other side who kept hollering at us to shut up who saw and heard everything. Maybe he called me.”
“Thank you. That’ll be all,” Jack said.
On the way out of court, Nina walked over to Cody Stinson, who was sitting at the small round table in the reception area leafing through a magazine. “Thank you for your testimony,” she said. “I think you tried to be very honest,” which was a way of flattering him without saying he was honest, since she didn’t know.
He put his magazine down. “You’re the first to say so.”
“I’ve been wondering about the woman who alibied you,” she said. “My investigator tells me her name is Carol Ames.”
“She doesn’t know anything. Anyway, she’s out of the picture now.”
“You haven’t spoken with her lately?”
“No. Why?”
Nina smiled. “I don’t know why I thought about her. I guess I wondered if she was a girlfriend or something.”
“Not that it’s your business,” he said, “but I loved Phoebe. Everyone forgets I lived with her for nearly a year before Mario got out.”
“Oh, well. It’s probably nothing-”
“What?”
“Forget it,” she said. “I just-you don’t know where she is?”
“Not at the moment. But I could find her easy enough if I wanted to.”
“Hmm. Well, thanks anyway.”
She walked away, feeling his eyes on her back, a thought forming in her mind. She felt like a girl plucking daisies to determine her lover’s deepest feelings, impractical, but she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
“T HANKS FOR PICKING ME UP,” Nina told Paul. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. I couldn’t face a two-hundred-mile drive all the way back to Tahoe tonight, and anyway, I left my car there. Wish dropped me here this morning. He said he wanted to play in the city, but I know he just wanted to help.”
They walked side by side through the evening crowd toward a nearby parking lot to retrieve his Mustang. “We’ll be efficient,” Paul said, “make this a nonstop run if you like. But why are you going back tonight? You’re going to have to leave very early in the morning to get back here in time for court.”
“I have to get back to Bob. I spoke with Matt at lunch. He’s spending the night at the hospital with Andrea, and his kids are staying with friends. I couldn’t manage to organize anything else for Bob on such short notice.”
“Is Andrea okay?”
“Fine, I’m told, except her blood pressure’s up. She needs some bed rest. It’s tough when you’ve got two kids already and you’re nearly nine months along.”
“What are you going to do about Bob?”
“Well, after tonight, he could stay with Matt, although it’s a bad time for them.” She fretted. “Maybe I’ll just pack him and his books up and bring him back here. He could stay at the hotel with me or at Jack’s until we’re through.”
“Good plan.”
“Paul, today at court-Brandy mentioned some woman in the campground bathroom at about the same time Cody Stinson returned to the tent. And then Stinson testified and mentioned this woman, Carol Ames. What do you know about her?”
“You mean Cody Stinson’s alibi?”
“Right.”
“I told you I checked into their history. She’s an old flame. They broke up when he took up with Phoebe, nearly a year before Phoebe was killed. She’s been dating other guys since then, although I’m told there’s nothing serious. She’s some kind of freelancer. Works out of her house doing medical billing, I believe.”
He opened the door for Nina, which she appreciated. She reached down and took off her shoes and loosened her belt. “I don’t like being a defendant.”
“Hang in there.”
“Jack seems to know what he’s doing.”
“Seems to.”
“Anyway, about Carol Ames. Wonder what she saw in Cody. She sounds almost respectable.”
Paul got in and buckled up. He looked left, then right, then turned right on Howard and began to zigzag up and down short blocks, apparently hoping to blaze an unknown route to the Bay Bridge that no one else in San Francisco had discovered. “She loved that drug-dealin’, motorcycle-lovin’ Cody Stinson,” he said, “for whatever reason. But then, all couples are hard to picture.” The car lurched across an intersection on a red light. “Look at you and me.”
“Oh, no, let’s not.” She planted a kiss on his cheek. “I just want to hop on the back of your Mustang and ride off into the sunset, or toward the sunrise, in this case.”
“We don’t spend enough time together, Nina. You’re with Jack all the time.”
“I spend more time with him now than I did when we were married, isn’t that odd? I like him better this way, doing his job, being a pro, standing by me like he never did when we were married.” She smiled. “He’s redeemed himself.”
Paul said, watching the road, “He’s seeing someone.”
“Good,” Nina said. She hesitated. She didn’t want to know about it. “Were you worried that Jack and I might-”
“Not a bit,” Paul said. “I’m the better man and you’re smart enough to know it.”
“You weren’t a little bit-jealous?”
Paul snorted.
“You were,” Nina said.
“I’ll be glad when this inquisition is over and we can both get on with our lives. Then let’s resume where we left off in Carmel last summer, Nina. Could we do that?”
“Paul, why did you take the LSAT?”
“Why did you?” He didn’t sound happy.
“Did you really want to be a lawyer?”
“I would have been a terrible lawyer. I’m not a desk type. And lawyers work too many hours. I like what I do now.”
She didn’t quite believe him. Was that why Paul seemed so cavalier about the risk of her disbarment, because of some disappointment in his past? She thought about that, but couldn’t reach any conclusions, so she turned her attention to the erratic behavior of their fellow rush-hour motorists and the way Paul skidded through intersections on reds. Beginning to adjust her belt lower on her hips, she stopped and thought, well, if I die, at least I won’t have to come back here tomorrow morning to face the hangman.
They reached the bridge. Traffic suddenly moved right along. Paul sped up.
“Maybe Carol Ames liked excitement. She got that with Cody. I keep thinking about her,” Nina said. “About the campground. About what happened that night. About how Brandy and Angel saw a woman leaving the bathroom. It could have been any female camper, of course. It probably was. But I just keep thinking about Cody’s friend, Carol. How she loved him. How he came to her that night for the first time in a long time. Don’t you think she’d notice if he left? I would.”
Paul said, “There’s no special reason to put the two women together, Ames and the woman in the bathroom. But it’s a thought. Ames moved out of her place a while ago. You want me to locate her? I know who could help. John Kelly could.”
“Who’s that?”
“Stinson’s best friend. An old friend of Carol’s, too. I ran into his name a couple of months ago when I was looking at the drug connection. He did a little business with Mario and Cody a long time ago.”
“Do you think this is too far-fetched?”
“For me it’s just another evening like so many evenings before, without my love in my arms. I might as well eat poorly and hunt down another guy’s old girlfriend. Oh, Nina, I miss you.”
Inspired by this comment and further comments on the topic, they didn’t make it all the way to Tahoe nonstop. At eight-thirty she called Bob from her mobile phone explaining that she would be a little later than expected. She and Paul registered at a historic hotel on the main street in Placerville, stripped, and jumped together into the fresh, starchy sheets. For an hour they kissed, murmured, and touched each other’s skin. For Nina, the release felt fantastic, her passion intensified by her inner turmoil.
Later, eating shrimp salad on the balcony overlooking the main street while Paul had a nap, Nina realized that she wasn’t thinking at all about the hearing. Paul was the subject on her mind.
She loved Paul. She didn’t know what she would do about it, but she felt a decision was imminent, forming somehow out of her situation.
She woke him up a few minutes later. They got to Tahoe by ten. Kissing her warmly, he dropped her at the house on Kulow, declining to come inside. “I love you,” he said.
She kissed him again, not able to say the words.
“Bob?” she said, unlocking the door to their cabin. Strange that Hitchcock did not seem to be anywhere around. She dropped her small suitcase and briefcase right inside the entryway and dragged the house, calling for Bob and for Hitchcock. She checked Bob’s room, finding the door closed, lights off, and blinds shut. Hitchcock was definitely not at home, and neither, it seemed, was Bob.
In the kitchen, she pulled out some old wheat bread, spread peanut butter and jelly on it, and called Matt at the hospital. “How’s it going?”
“Andrea’s doing well. Should go home in the morning.”
“Matt, have you seen any sign of the boy?”
“Your boy? Why, no,” he said. “How’d it go at the hearing?”
“I’ll tell you later.” She asked some more after Andrea, but the questions were pro forma and he knew it, so they kept the conversation short. Pouring herself a drink from a pitcher of iced tea she found in the refrigerator, she called Taylor Nordholm’s house and got stuck in a diatribe his mother launched about the high school. “Have you seen Bob?” she finally asked.
“No.”
So, where could he be? Where was he now, her wandering boy, the boy of her tender care, the boy who was her joy and light, child of her love and prayer-then she realized where Bob must be. Resisting the impulse to stick her head out into the backyard and scream bloody murder, she ran upstairs to change into jeans and a sweater. She ran outside and fired up the Bronco.
She drove the couple of miles to the Bijou, parked across from the dilapidated cabin, and got out. Straightening her shoulders, she thought, well, I’m a Mom, I spell M-O-M. Mom.
She knocked on the door.
“Nina!” Daria Zack, eyes wide, her blouse open almost to her navel, answered the door, Hitchcock drooling beside her like a huge, black witch’s familiar. “Wow, did I not expect you.”
“Bob here?” Nina asked.
“Um. I don’t know,” Daria said. “Maybe.”
Well, Nikki had always described her mother, Nina’s former client, as a flake. Nina now knew what extremes of flakiness were possible, as she walked inside the sparse living room and greeted a man in his twenties, half dressed, sprawled across a few pillows near the fireplace.
“Hi,” he said feebly. Holding one hand across the fig-leaf area, he put his other hand over the smoldering joint in the fifties ashtray, as if he could hide these things behind six-inch hand spans.
Politely greeting him, Nina thought, Bob better not be here. At least Hitchcock remembered his manners. Since her arrival, he had stuck close to her heels.
“You could check her room,” said Daria, some small recognition of the seriousness of the situation dawning.
“Okay,” Nina said, heading toward one of the two bedrooms.
She tried the door and found it locked, so she knocked. There was no answer.
“Maybe they left,” Daria offered from a few feet behind, buttoning up the middle button on her blouse.
Nina knocked again. The door opened. Nikki, entirely too relaxed-looking, stood in front of her. “Oh, hello, Nina.” Behind her, Bob loomed, a worried look plastered across his mug.
“Ms. Reilly to you,” she told Nikki. She grabbed Bob’s arm and propelled him through the living room, out the front door, and into the car. Hitchcock jumped into the backseat.
“What’s your problem!” Bob asked as she pulled away.
“Why aren’t you home?”
“You said you’d be late. We wanted to practice-”
“Do not, please, do not give me that. She was high. I could see it in her eyes.”
Silence, then, “It was just really dark in the room. She doesn’t get high, far as I know.”
Really dark in the room. Reassuring words. “Are you?”
“What? Mom, I’m not even fourteen!”
“Are you,” she repeated, her voice steely, her hand on the wheel curled rigid as pipe, “high?”
“No.”
“Bob, we’ve talked about this.”
“About what?”
“Drugs.”
“I don’t do that stuff. I have zero interest. I told you!”
“Daria’s boyfriend was smoking pot in that house while you were there. That’s not only unacceptable, it’s illegal.”
“She told him to quit it and so he put it out. She’s not pushing a drug agenda, Mom.”
“Would you have taken anything if she was? Because my impression is that these people have a hold on you.”
“Nobody’s got a hold on me,” he protested.
Unfortunately, that included her. She decided to use Paul’s frequently stated solution: Nail his feet to the floor. She told him there would be no further practice of any kind, music or otherwise, with Nikki. Bob folded his arms, stared straight ahead, and no doubt hated her all the way home.
After Paul dropped Nina at her cabin, he called Wish, who needed to tell him all about the terrific spinning restaurant he had found at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco before agreeing to meet him in half an hour.
“Hey,” Paul said, pulling up next to him in the parking lot of the Starlake Building.
“Hey.” Wish climbed in beside him. “Where to?”
“Ever heard of this outfit?” He handed Wish a piece of paper Nina had written for him.
“Big Lake Sport Fishing,” he read. “Sure. They’ve got an office at the Keys.”
Turning right onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Paul glanced over at him. “You look sleek.”
“I do?” Wish wore a brown leather jacket over his jeans.
“So you had lunch in the city.”
“Yeah, after walking up to Chinatown and playing around for a couple of hours. I found a couple of Japanese animes I’ve been looking for.”
“Didn’t you drop Nina off this morning at nine? Strikes me as funny, you being in the same vicinity several hours later. So I surmise a special reason for hanging around. Hmm.” He tapped his chin. “Whatever could it be?”
Wish grunted.
“Lunch with a lady.”
“You caught me red-handed, Copper.”
“How was the food?”
“Good, like I told you already.”
“Brandy after?”
“Huh?” said Wish.
“A joke. You had lunch with Brandy Taylor, didn’t you?”
“She asked me.”
Paul turned toward the Keys.
“She just needs a friend.”
Paul turned the radio on.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what we talked about?”
“No.”
“She told me something.”
“She did?”
“Yeah,” Wish said, unaware of the sensation he had caused. “You remember the sex-problem thing with Bruce? She told me what was going on. I guess she told her sister, too, and her mom, and maybe other people, but she just can’t bring herself to tell Bruce.”
Paul sighed and put the car back where it belonged on the road. “Okay, so what did she tell you?”
“It’s a secret. I do have a question, Paul. If you know something about a guy, and if you told him you could maybe help mend a relationship, but it means you’ll ace yourself right out of the love picture, plus it isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to talk to another guy about, especially not a stranger, what do you do?”
“Hmm.”
“Plus there’s this added issue, which is, um, I, um. Aack. I have the same problem.”
Johnny quick draw? Johnny no comeback? Johnny shoot blanks? What in the world had Wish in such a tizzy?
“I like her, but I’d have to love her a whole lot,” Wish went on glumly. “A whole, whole lot.”
“Do the noble thing.” She wanted Bruce, not Wish, that much Paul knew. Poor Wish.
“Is that like, your personal wisdom, how you live your life?”
“What have I ever done to make you think a thing like that?”
Up ahead, lights illuminated the white-lettered sign for the sports-fishing business. They parked and walked up some outside stairs toward a second-story office that overlooked the marina. Paul had been told John Kelly often worked a late shift, doing paperwork and accounts in the office. Sure enough, the windows shone with lamplight. Wish raised his hand to knock.
Paul pulled it back. “Shh.” He looked around the side of the building into the window. “He’s in there, all right.” He led Wish back to the car. “Now we wait.”
Wish settled back against the car seat. “Who is this guy?”
“Cody Stinson’s best friend.”
“And we’re following him, why?”
“I checked with a guy I know at the Tahoe jail. Late this afternoon, Cody gave his old pal John Kelly a call. Nina was hoping he just might lead us straight to Carol Ames, and I think it’s a definite possibility.”
“Cody’s alibi? Why would he lead us to her?”
“Nina thought Cody might call on him to track Carol down tonight. John Kelly knows Carol and Cody both. He used to pal around with them back in the days when they were together.”
“Sounds like a stretch.”
“Well, maybe it is. But you know, Wish, in this business we feed on unsubstantiated rumors, innuendo, and gossip. Why not plain old hope now and then?”
A few minutes later, Kelly came out, locked the door behind him, and hopped on a motorcycle.
“Well, look at that.”
Paul followed at a discreet distance as Kelly wound his way around the parking lot and back out to the boulevard. He rode on for a little more than two miles to Ski Run, turned left again, toward the lake, and parked in a lot by the marina.
Kelly walked out toward one of the docks, stopped at the locked gate, and let himself in. A dozen boats floated in the black water, creaking as they bobbed on the crests. Kelly walked past several large cabin cruisers and stopped at a sailboat on the right side. He looked from side to side. Presumably satisfied no one else was taking an interest, he stepped aboard.
“Is she there?”
“Let’s find out,” Paul said. Moving quietly, they tried the gate, which Kelly had kindly left open, and walked up the dock toward the sailboat. A cold March wind winnowed its way inside Paul’s light windbreaker, and the marina lights danced like fairies over the water under a pale yellow moon.
A window cracked in the sailboat cabin made the two voices intimately accessible to Paul and Wish, who were crouched, as if that position might make them less visible.
“How’d you find me, John?” a woman asked, her voice nervous, but warm and mellow on the cold air.
Kelly said, “I called the apartment all day. Your roommate told me you weren’t expected, but I remembered your dad’s boat. Carol, Cody’s concerned.”
“You talked to him?”
“He called me from San Francisco today. He’s at that hearing about the attorney who’s caused so much trouble. What’s strange is, your name keeps popping up.”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of me, Carol. That would hurt my feelings. I just want to pass along the word. Cody wants you to stay hidden, in fact, he’s gonna insist.”
“I have work, you know-”
“I know all about that. Take it with you. This is just for a couple of days, ’til things die down. He’s worried they’ll try to call you and ask you about that night at the campground.”
“He was with me that night! Those girls were wrong, saying they saw him there.”
“Yeah, sure. So I heard. So everybody heard. But at this hearing today, he admitted he was there that night. He now says you were asleep and didn’t hear him go.”
“You’re kidding!”
“You’ve been out of the loop.”
“He told me to lay low and not to contact him. Oh, he’s such an idiot. Shit. We had him covered. If he had just stuck to that we could have gotten him off!”
“Oh, well. At least the police believe that you sleep heavy and had no idea what he was up to that night. Cody’s not so sure about these lawyers. He says they’re thinking too hard, digging too deep.”
“Tell me Cody didn’t admit to killing Phoebe.”
“No. He’s an idiot but even he’s not that stupid.”
“Why’d he cave in like that? Those women can identify him in court. He could go to jail for life, John! He had a good alibi. If he had just kept his mouth shut-now these silly girls are going to get up in court and get him put away-”
“Look, that can’t be fixed. But we can prevent them from dragging you into this any further. Now, since it was so easy for me to find your dad’s boat, maybe we can come up with someplace a little harder, at least until this hearing is over. I thought, maybe my sister’s place.”
“I’m fine here.”
John Kelly convinced her otherwise, and since his persuasion involved no physical urging, Paul let him. When Paul and Wish understood the two would be leaving the boat soon, they slipped back up the dock to the car and got in. After a few minutes, Kelly climbed on his bike and Carol Ames, small, dark-haired, and skinny, took the wheel of a Saturn. Kelly followed her as she pulled out, and Paul followed him. Ten minutes later, the bike and the Saturn pulled up to a house off the Kingsbury Grade. Kelly escorted Carol to the door, rang the bell, and saw her inside. After a few more minutes, he left.
“Well, now we know where she is. What are we going to do about it?” Wish asked.
“Wait,” Paul said.
Wish closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the Mustang’s headrest, where a dent that fit perfectly was forming.
By midnight, most of the lights in the houses on the street were dimmed. Even the crickets seemed to be sleeping.
“It’s quiet,” Wish said, startling awake. “Too quiet.”
“Very funny,” Paul said.
Moments later, the door to the house opened. Out came Carol Ames, dressed all in black, thin as a fork. She unlocked her car door quietly, got inside, and released the parking brake, rolling down the street in neutral until she was well past the house.
“Did you know she would leave again?” Wish said. “Who are you really, Mr. Psychic Hotline?”
“I didn’t know.” Paul started up his car and flipped it into gear. “I just didn’t know how we were going to get her alone. I thought we might have to wait until she left for somewhere in the morning.” They drove down the hill, well behind the blue Saturn. “This is good. I like the darkness.”
“Now you’re really scaring me,” Wish said. “Okay, I give up. Where is she going in the middle of the night? Only place I can think of is the casinos, but here we are going the other way, west.”
“I have an idea,” Paul said. He didn’t like the idea, but it was borne out soon enough, when the blue Saturn parked a few doors down from the Guillaume residence.
“Isn’t that where Angel lives?” Wish asked. “But I don’t understand. If she’s going to see Angel and Brandy, she better hit the road for San Francisco, because I happen to know they stayed there tonight.”
She got out of the car and unlocked the trunk, pulling something heavy out. She approached Angel’s house, unscrewing the lid of what appeared to be a fairly large can. At the edge of the house she stopped and listened, then moved closer and peered quite methodically through windows. All windows dark. No car in the carport. Quiet fir trees, a dark Tahoe night. Stopping at the back corner of the house, she wadded a piece of paper around a rock and hurled it through a kitchen windowpane. Then she tipped the can.
Paul and Wish grabbed her. For a small person, she fought big. After landing a light punch to Paul’s sternum, forcing him to stop breathing momentarily, she dropped the can on the ground. Wish sneaked up behind and pinned her while she scrambled for it.
“Out of gas?” Paul asked. “Let us help you with that.” He swooped down and wrenched the can from her grasp. “That’s strange. It’s full.”
“Who the hell are you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a guilty whisper. “I’ll scream for the cops! You can’t do this to me!”
Paul showed her his identification and introduced Wish. He explained who they were. “Want me to make that call for you?” he asked.
She hung her head.
“Seems to me, you owe us an explanation. What was your plan here?” Paul asked. “I have to say, it doesn’t look well conceived.”
“I wasn’t going to burn the house down. I just wanted to show them I meant business. I was only going to burn a little.”
“Well, take your pick,” Paul said. “The police or us for company.” He explained who they were and that they were working for Nina Reilly in a hearing only distantly related to Cody’s case.
“Don’t call the cops, please. It was just insurance,” she said. “Something serious to scare them off so they wouldn’t want to testify in Cody’s case when it comes up!”
“You ought to be ashamed,” Wish said.
“There was nobody home.”
Paul sent Wish through the window to retrieve the rock. “Reach inside to unlock it. It should be easy to open now.”
Wish came out complaining, sucking on a tiny cut on his finger. He handed the uncrumpled note to Paul, and the rock, which Paul stuck into a paper bag under the seat of his car.
“Testify in the Stinson case and you’ll see some real damage done,” the printed note said.
“What is your relationship with Cody Stinson?” Paul asked, pocketing the note.
“Old friends.”
“Nothing more?”
Silence.
“I understand you two were close once but he left you for Phoebe. That must have been a shock.”
Carol said slowly, “Yeah. It was.”
“You’ve been a good friend to him, Carol, considering he dumped you. Giving him that fake alibi.”
“I wish I hadn’t.” She pushed back some loose hair, and Paul saw water forming in her eyes. “Aw, shit! This has been the worst nightmare!”
Paul didn’t ask her any more. Nina had a plan, and he would stick with it, and that involved getting Carol Ames to the California State Bar hearing tomorrow.
So Paul blackmailed her into joining him for the long haul all the way back to San Francisco. No police, just a long midnight ramble.
The night passed in a blur of black trees, moonlight, and splashed puddles. After dropping Wish at home so that he could get to his classes the next day and allowing Carol Ames to pick up her bag from Kelly’s sister’s house, they hit Highway 50 and started the long descent to the flats.
Carol, who asked to be called Carol and “not Ms. Freaking Ames,” asked Paul some questions: Would Cody be there, who else might be there. He told her Cody would be there but Brandy and Angel would not, lies. As for what she would be expected to do, well, Paul told her, she would tell what happened that night. Now that everyone knew Cody had been at the campground and she couldn’t provide her old friend a real alibi, she had to tell that to the court to back him up, further nonsense, but he was tired and couldn’t come up with a better story.
Fortunately, she, too, was tired, apparently too tired to dispute his illogic, and of course she really didn’t want him talking to the police or anyone else about her little excursion through the trees with a gas can in the night. In spite of it being the middle of the night, she couldn’t shut up. “Oh, hell,” she said at intervals, and “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening after all these months. I can’t take it.”
In Placerville she finally fell asleep, mouth open, taking breaths in soft little gasps. She awoke frequently, jarred loose by any jump of the car or noise on the road. By the time they hit the Oakland Bay Bridge, dawn was at the Mustang’s hoofs.
Paul turned the radio to KQED, counting on news to keep him awake and correctly positioned in the middle lane. When that didn’t work and he almost took out a black Jaguar, he tuned in to AM radio where the blaring ads did the job. They also woke Carol again, who rummaged in her bag for a brush and asked for an immediate pit stop. In the city, they located a diner on Mission with spacious accommodations. She emerged from the rest room briskly, wearing a ton of eyeliner, not that it helped.
He was very tired, and that made him mean. She looked haggard and her peculiar hairdo didn’t help. “You look nice,” he said to counteract his thoughts, thinking, in fact, she looked more like how he felt, as if ragged fingernails were scratching at his pupils. She smiled at the compliment, which made him feel even more degenerate. But he wanted her to feel good. He bought a Chronicle, which they split, and eggs, which they ate in relative peace.
When the time came, they walked the few blocks over to Howard Street and rode up the elevator to the sixth floor.
Nina had not wanted him to confront Carol in any way. She had asked him to bring her to the court and conduct a simple test: Escort Carol into the presence of Angel and Brandy without Carol knowing Brandy and Angel would be there.
“Why not just show Brandy and Angel a photograph of her?” Paul had asked.
“It’s too late for that, even if I had one. If she was there that night, I want her to tell the bar court what she saw, what she knows. If she can back up Cody Stinson’s story that he’s innocent, which I suspect she can, we can prove to the court that he had no reason to attack Brandy, Angel, or Bruce, and that the loss of my file was not damaging in that case. And because of all this, Mario’s out of jail. Maybe they need to arrest him again before he disappears.”
He liked her theory, which fit into his philosophy of successful investigation, demanding equal sprinkles of wishful thinking and genuine possibility. He was only sorry she had not put him on to it during the past six dry-as-dust months.
After they passed through the metal detector and into the reception area, Paul looked around. In the left adjacent, windowed room, the chief trial counsel’s witnesses waited. In the right room, Paul caught a glimpse of Nina and Jack.
He took Carol by the arm and led her into the left room, throwing the door open wide. They entered.
Gayle Nolan, seated at a table, stood. “Who-?”
Brandy set a cup down and stood, too. “Why, what are you doing here?” she said.
“You know this woman?” Paul asked, holding tight to Carol’s arm.
“No. I mean-” Befuddlement blew across Brandy’s face and settled into confusion. “She was in the bathroom at the campground the night Phoebe died. Wasn’t she, Angel?”
Angel, remaining seated, stared. “You,” she said. “I noticed your haircut that night. Update on the old Vidal Sassoon,” she said. “You’re the one who tossed her cookies, right? That was such a mega-bad night.”
By now, Nolan had stepped behind Paul and was motioning the guard at the door for help.
Paul pulled Carol out of the room. “Sorry,” he said to Nolan. “My mistake.”
Nolan shut the door firmly behind them.
Paul touched Carol’s arm but she pushed him off, but not before he had a chance to realize how shocked she was. Her whole body was trembling, and the shadowy sockets of her eyes receded until her eyes were dark holes burnt into charcoal. “You set me up,” she cried.
At this point, they were joined by Nina and Jack, who had taken note of the commotion. Jack motioned them all back into the other witness waiting room.
“You lied to me!” Carol said, looking wildly around. “Where’s Cody?”
“He couldn’t make it after all,” Paul said.
Nina took over. “Look, as you’ve probably figured out from that little scene in there, we know everything.”
“Everything?” Carol asked.
“Everything,” Nina lied. “Now you go into that courtroom when they call your name, and you tell the truth. Tell them Cody didn’t do it, and how you know all about that. He didn’t, did he?”
“No.” Carol looked at her, looked at Paul, looked down at the floor. “I have to think,” she said. “Why don’t you all just leave me alone?”
The clock on the wall ticked and nobody breathed. Tears smeared through Carol Ames’s eyeliner and trickled like glue down her face.
Opening the door to the courtroom, the clerk announced that the judge was ready. Nina and Jack went in, Nina touching Paul on the sleeve as she passed him.
“It won’t take long,” Paul said. “They’re asking the judge to take you out of order. You won’t even have to wait.”
“Do I have to do this?” Carol seemed to be asking herself more than Paul, although he felt he should answer. Saving Paul from evaluating whether the truth would serve or a lie would get him into trouble, the clerk poked her head into the door again.
“Carol Ames?” she said. “Please follow me.” Jack wasn’t giving Carol time to think, Paul realized, assembling the last of his own little gray cells. Bravo, smart move, old buddy, now get Nina off and get the hell out of her life, willya? He handed Carol a tissue, and when she didn’t seem to know what to do with it, he wiped her face.
“I’m afraid.”
“Just tell the truth, Carol. Tell the truth about Cody.”
She hung her head again and followed the clerk into the courtroom. Paul put his head on the table and fell asleep.
Nina watched the young woman slump up to the stand to be sworn and waited impatiently through preliminaries that established her age, her place of residence, and everything else.
“You followed Cody Stinson to the campground the night Phoebe Palladino died, didn’t you?” Jack asked the young woman.
“Yes.”
Nina thought she looked awful, as though a tractor had run over her face.
“Why did you do that?”
“Love,” she said.
Nina felt Jack startle by her side, although his face revealed nothing. “You were in love with Mr. Stinson.”
“I never stopped loving him.”
Jack’s manner grew more elaborately casual, always a bad sign for the witness, Nina thought.
He consulted notes. He cleared his throat. He smiled a sympathetic smile. “You thought that night that he had come back to you, for good this time.”
Carol Ames lowered her head. “Yes. He told me he and Phoebe were history.”
“So when he left in the middle of the night-”
“I didn’t know what to think. I got in my car and I followed him. He parked his bike on Rufus Allen and walked into the campground, so I did, too.” Tears had started down. “He got her out of the tent and they sat down by the fire. He begged her to leave and take off with him, told her how much he loved her-I was out of my mind. Just an hour before that, he made love to me. He said he’d move in again in the morning. But he never stopped thinking about her. Phoebe.”
“You were upset, so-” Jack said.
“I ran to the bathroom. I threw up. I was feeling crazy. Those girls came in while I was cleaning up. I didn’t say a word to them, just went back and stood in the trees. Cody was just leaving.
“I waited. I went to the tent and pulled the flap open. After a couple of minutes, I took a look. The big guy was out cold, and she was, too. So I-I went inside. And I strangled her.”
“P ANDEFUCKINGMONIUM,” SAID JACK with satisfaction. He had recovered from the shock of Carol Ames’s testimony during the break called by Judge Brock after Carol was taken into custody by the bailiff. Nina watched as Paul uttered words of comfort and kept her steady.
She took Jack aside. “I’m having a hard time analyzing the impact of this,” she said. “I’m having a hard time thinking at all. I never imagined she would confess. She must have been working up to it, feeling guilty all these months. I know it’s a huge break for us, but a girl is dead-”
“An actual courtroom confession and we didn’t even know it was coming. Moments like this are why we practice law, Nina. Of course, it helps that we’re the side that benefits.”
“Paul came through,” Nina said, “as usual. He found her and brought her here and saved the day.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll clap him on the back just as soon as the marshal unleashes her.” The federal marshal had just arrived. Pinpoint eyes fixed on Carol Ames, he consulted with the judge. Paul, who had slipped into the courtroom when he heard the ruckus moments before, patted her hand. The marshal went over to them and quietly began telling Carol her rights. He took her by the arm and as she was led away, she cast one last glance back at Paul. Paul gave her a thumbs-up and a reassuring nod.
“I hope you didn’t promise to correspond with her from prison,” Jack said as Paul came over. “You know those relationships never work out.”
“I’ll make sure she gets good legal counsel,” Paul said. “We owe her that. In a way we tricked her into incriminating herself.”
“Whatever brings out the truth,” Jack said. They moved out into the reception area and huddled at the far end.
“Okay, ramifications,” Jack said. “Strategy adjustment. This girl killed the woman at the campsite. Ergo, Cody Stinson didn’t do it. Ergo, Stinson’s story that he was just trying to talk to these nervous Nellies is true. No attempted murder. No intent to assault. No intent to harm the clients. That’s the bottom line. The loss of the file, the fingering of Stinson as the killer by Brandy-she was wrong anyway.”
“But Cody Stinson says he did get a phone call from the thief,” Nina said. “And he scared these people as a result.”
“Only because they mistakenly thought he was a killer and made some wrong assumptions based on their fears and on the way he looks,” Jack said. “I think we’ve dodged this bullet. I sure as hell am going to argue that at the close of the hearing. I think we’re home free on this count, babe.” He grinned at Nina. “Your insurance company is going to be happy about this. They reserved half a million dollars in payouts to Bruce and Brandy and Angel, figuring they’d sue you for malpractice in civil court next.”
“When I think of all those sleepless nights feeling so guilty because I thought I sicced a murderer on Brandy and her family, I-I can’t believe it,” Nina said.
“Enjoy the moment,” Jack said. He checked his Rolex. “Okay, time’s up. Now we go back in and we argue ‘ergo’ to Hugo.”
Nina hung back with Paul. “Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Half-brained and dimwitted. Desperate and you know it. But you were willing to take it all the way. I’m always thanking you. You work it and work it until finally you crack it.”
This time Gayle Nolan came over to Jack and Nina’s table as soon as they sat down. “Is that confession for real? Is that gonna stand up?” she asked Jack.
“It’ll stand up. You going to let the South Lake Tahoe D.A.’s office know they’ve got an innocent man locked up?” Jack asked.
“I just put in a call. What they do about Stinson is up to them. You knew she was gonna confess?”
“We didn’t have a clue.”
“You sandbagged me,” Nolan said, but she didn’t show much conviction. She had seen the shock on all their faces.
“You’re buried up to your neck, but it’s your own fault. You brought the charges against this lady,” Jack said with unmistakable triumph in his voice.
“Get this, Jack,” Nolan said. “Maybe the first count goes away, but there are two more. Don’t get cocky.” She continued to ignore Nina.
“Ms. Nolan,” Nina said.
“What?”
“The judge has just come in.”
“What? Oh.” She skittered back to her chair. Judge Brock took his place. Various “X” expressions followed one another across his face. Vexed. Flummoxed. Perplexed.
“We’re back on the record and I’d like to know, what now?” he said in his mild voice. “I don’t like uproar in my courtroom. Are you planning any more shocks like this one, Counsel?”
“We were as astonished as the court,” Jack said, rising. “Astonished and gratified. It’s obvious Mr. Stinson was telling the truth when he testified that he was only trying to tell these people that he was innocent of the-”
“No more surprises, is that clear? If you have something like this, I want to know it’s coming.”
“Of course, Judge.”
“All right. This isn’t the time for argument. The court notes for the record that based on her purported confession to a murder, the previous witness, Carol Ames, has been taken into custody. Now let’s move forward with this. It’s eleven-thirty. We have half an hour. It’s still your turn, Counsel. You have a couple more witnesses on Count One listed.”
Jack said, “Well, we excused them, Your Honor. We are ready to move on to Count Two.”
“You’re resting for the defense on Count One?”
“Yes.”
“All righty then. Ms. Nolan, are you ready to go on Count Two?”
“Yes. The witness from Heritage Insurance is waiting outside.”
“Let’s move on, then. Count Two. Call your witness.”
“Marilyn Ann Rose.”
Marilyn Rose walked up to the box and was sworn. A heavyset woman with a pleasant, open face, she wore a demure, dove-gray pantsuit. Nina knew that Marilyn’s husband had died three months earlier, leaving her two children to support on her own. After the Vang fiasco she had left the company and moved out of state.
Her company had hired a lawyer who had managed to prevent Jack from deposing her. However, they knew what she would say about the Vang case. The actual document about to be introduced as evidence, Nina’s original intake notes, was the problem on this count.
The prosecution’s forensic writing examiner, Harvey Pell, came next on the problem list. Nina tried to yank herself mentally into the new universe of problems Count Two represented.
“Good morning, Ms. Rose. My name is Gayle Nolan and I represent the State Bar of California.”
“Good morning.” Nolan took Marilyn through a recitation of her job duties as a claims adjuster and brought her to the Vang case.
“I’m now showing you Exhibit 15, which has been previously admitted into evidence by stipulation. So Ms. Reilly presented you with this claim on or about August twenty-eighth of last year?”
“That’s correct.” The claim letter with its attachments was about four inches thick. Marilyn stared at it. They all stared at it.
“The claim was for how much for the losses due to the convenience-store fire?”
“They asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The policy limit.”
“And the claim contained a copy of the police report concluding that the fire was caused by a criminal agency?”
“Yes.”
“And was the arsonist identified by the South Lake Tahoe police, at the time the report was written or at any later time up to the time that you adjusted the claim and sent out the check?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was there any evidence in this claim letter or otherwise, up to the moment you sent out that check, that the store owner, Kao Vang, might have carried out the arson himself?”
“No. Of course our own investigator had done independent work on the fire, but he was unable to identify the arsonist and advised that he had no evidence that the claim was anything but legitimate.”
“Now, the defendant represented to you that she was Mr. and Mrs. Vang’s attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“You talked with her on numerous occasions throughout the adjusting process?”
“Yes. On the phone. Not in person.”
“Did she give you her version of the facts of the fire?”
“She said all she knew came from the police report, that her clients had suffered a lot. Told me about two previous violent incidents at the market. It all jibed with the theory she pushed on me, that the arson was a revenge act after Mr. Vang shot a robber during his second attempt to rob the store. She kept saying we had to have a heart for these people and even though the supporting inventories and receipts were in pretty bad shape, she practically begged me to give her clients the benefit of the doubt on the settlement.”
“And what was your response to her request that your company settle this matter for a generous amount?”
“I stuck my neck out and eventually offered two hundred ten thousand. That’s about right for a store of that type and size. To be honest, I suspected there was some padding in the inventories, and I suspected that if I had every scrap of paper translated and scrutinized it wouldn’t add up to that much. But these people weren’t your average store owners. They obviously didn’t use a standard system of accounting and were obviously new to American business systems. I took a chance and gave them as generous a settlement as I could.”
“You mailed out the check to Ms. Reilly?”
“Actually, she came and picked it up. The whole thing was a big rush for some reason I didn’t understand.”
Yes, and if she hadn’t heeded Jack’s advice and rushed those checks to the Vangs out-Nina stopped herself. She had already revisited that decision during more than one midnight.
“Looking back,” Marilyn Rose continued, “I have to assume that the time pressure was something Ms. Reilly invented as a strategy.”
“Objection. Speculation. Move to strike that last sentence.”
“She’s in the best position to understand why these events occurred,” said Nolan, but she wasn’t really fighting it; the point was made.
“Sustained.”
“Then what happened?”
Nina tensed. Now they moved to the meat.
“I received a manila file folder in my regular mail delivery with some papers in it.” Nolan went to her cart and pulled out the familiar file folder. Nina and Jack had had an opportunity to examine it, along with the notes inside, and to have it copied. As with the Bronco, there had been no prints and no lucky hairs or other forensic evidence.
“You kept the envelope it arrived in?”
“I had my secretary go back and retrieve it from the trash, yes.”
Nolan pulled out Exhibit 17, the full-size standard brown envelope. Marilyn Rose’s name and address were printed in capitals. After Marilyn identified it the envelope was received into evidence.
“Now. Do you know who sent this file, Exhibit 16, to you?”
“To this day I still have no idea. The police came out a week or so later to run some tests on it, but our legal counsel ensured that the file never left the company’s possession.”
“All right. You received the envelope, took out the file inside. Did you read the contents on that occasion?”
“Of course. I was quite curious. I didn’t realize it was her legal file.”
Jack shuffled his papers and got ready.
“And what was in the file?” Nolan asked.
“Objection,” Jack said. “The contents of that file contain attorney work-product and are privileged. The files did not lose their confidential aspect when they were stolen and inadvertently read by a third party. I have briefed this point thoroughly for the pretrial conference and ask that the court reconsider its ruling at that time.”
“The exhibit has already been admitted into evidence per my pretrial order,” Judge Brock said. “We have already gone over this several times.”
“For the record, Your Honor. These files were stolen. The clients haven’t waived the privilege. I understand that the state bar feels it can delve into confidential client files whenever it wants to. But my client and I, as practicing attorneys in the state of California, have to raise this objection again. And for the record we will appeal that pretrial ruling.”
Nolan, ready for this, spoke up. “The state bar has the right to discover the work-product of an attorney against whom disciplinary charges are pending when relevant to issues of the attorney’s breach of duty. I cite Code of Civil Procedure Section 2018 sub e and also Witkin, Cal Evidence third, Volume 2, Section 1145. This court has already issued a protective order limiting the testimony in some respects today. The evidence is relevant and crucial to showing that the defendant defrauded this insurance company.”
“You’ve said all that in the previous court conferences,” Jack said. “And I know there has been a ruling. Nevertheless, I can’t stand here and let this testimony come in without protesting. It’s a violation of the whole legal system that you are opening this confidential file in this hearing against the wishes of the client. It’s-”
“Your ongoing, undying objection is noted,” said Brock, making a small foray toward personality. “Now let’s move it.”
Jack’s face darkened. “This state bar court is requiring the violation of the Code of Professional Conduct required of attorneys and also the Business and Professions Code. Neither Ms. Reilly nor her client has attempted to waive the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Your objection is overruled.”
“This state bar court is without jurisdiction to flout the most sacred principles of the legal profession,” Jack said. “Any ruling based on this violation will be void.”
“Siddown, Counsel. Shout to the State Bar Journal after the case is over, not that you’ll get any attention from them. But don’t grandstand in my court. I won’t have it.”
Jack sat down.
“You didn’t have a chance, but thanks for trying,” Nina whispered.
“I did it for myself, too. I took the same oath when I was admitted.”
“What was in the file, Ms. Rose? You may answer,” Nolan asked, picking up the questioning without hesitation.
“A form that was headed Client Intake Interview.”
“Now, showing you Exhibit 18, a three-page document previously introduced into evidence after objection and argument. Is this the form?”
Marilyn took the sheets gingerly. She flipped to the last sheet and nodded her head. “This is it.”
Nolan took Marilyn through the next minutes after receipt of the envelope: She had read Nina’s intake notes several times, spoken with her superiors, then returned to her office and called Nina. As Marilyn described the telephone confrontation and Nina’s denials, Nina vividly recalled the unnerving call that had sent her home to bury her head under the covers.
“And what exactly about this document caused you to call Ms. Reilly?”
“The last sentence on the third page.”
“Read that sentence to us, please.”
“It says, ‘Client breaks down, says he set fire himself!’ There’s an exclamation point. Then it goes on, kind of scribbled, ‘Advised him don’t say any more, don’t want to hear this.’ ”
Judge Brock followed along on his copy. Nina read hers. Still it tore at her. She hadn’t written those words. Kao had not confessed. There was no evidence Kao had set fire to his own store, except for this damning, damnable forgery. For six months they had been trying to figure out who would go this far, and they simply couldn’t figure it out.
Only now, in this airtight room, did she see in great detail the hundred holes in her defense, the big, unresolved questions. On the other hand, every case she ever defended arrived in court too soon. There were always unanswered questions. That kept things alive and ever hopeful. She still had hope, as her clients must, watching the red digital clock change, minute by minute, that the tides would turn again. She would prevail against all odds. Jack would work a miracle or Paul would. The judge would somehow forgive her for that one moment of carelessness weighed against a lifetime of diligence and duty.
“And Ms. Reilly said that within two days of picking up the check she personally delivered it to her clients?”
“Yes.”
“In your experience, is that the usual turnaround time for clients to receive their settlements from law offices?”
“I’ve been doing this work for thirty years and I don’t remember ever seeing a check go into a trust account and out to a client that fast.”
“And have you ever received any explanation as to why this check was turned over so fast?”
“Just what I said. She claimed there was some mysterious danger to them.”
“Now, then. What did you do after speaking to Ms. Reilly about this file you received?”
“I went straight to my boss and told him the whole story. I was distraught. He had me write up a quick summary, and I packaged it with the claim file and a copy of the check. It was turned over to our legal counsel. A month later, I took my early retirement and left the company. I had gotten sloppy over the years. I had let her talk me into paying out too much money, even aside from the file. You get old and you lose your edge. You get lazy. I was finished. Then I-I lost my husband. It was time to go home to Kansas City.”
“Did this matter have any impact on you personally?”
Marilyn blinked back tears. “It made my husband’s last months-hard.”
“I have nothing further,” Nolan told the judge.
Jack cross-examined. The answers were more of the same. Marilyn’s mood did not improve and neither did her testimony’s impact on their case. He kept the cross short. When Jack finished, the red numbers showed in five-inch-tall characters five minutes past twelve.
“We’ll recess until one-thirty,” the judge said. “We have the writing examiner ready, is that correct?”
“He’ll be here,” Nolan said.
“Court is adjourned.”
They all trooped out. Nina headed for the bathroom. As she washed her hands, Marilyn came out of one of the stalls.
“I’m very sorry you had to go through this, Marilyn,” Nina said. “But I didn’t lie to you. Somebody forged that document.”
“Don’t even try,” Marilyn said.
“Someday I hope you’ll-”
“I have a flight to catch. Pardon me if I don’t wish you luck.” She brushed coldly past.
“PANDEFUCKINGMONIUM,” SAID JACK with satisfaction. He had recovered from the shock of Carol Ames’s testimony during the break called by Judge Brock after Carol was taken into custody by the bailiff. Nina watched as Paul uttered words of comfort and kept her steady.
She took Jack aside. “I’m having a hard time analyzing the impact of this,” she said. “I’m having a hard time thinking at all. I never imagined she would confess. She must have been working up to it, feeling guilty all these months. I know it’s a huge break for us, but a girl is dead-”
“An actual courtroom confession and we didn’t even know it was coming. Moments like this are why we practice law, Nina. Of course, it helps that we’re the side that benefits.”
“Paul came through,” Nina said, “as usual. He found her and brought her here and saved the day.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll clap him on the back just as soon as the marshal unleashes her.” The federal marshal had just arrived. Pinpoint eyes fixed on Carol Ames, he consulted with the judge. Paul, who had slipped into the courtroom when he heard the ruckus moments before, patted her hand. The marshal went over to them and quietly began telling Carol her rights. He took her by the arm and as she was led away, she cast one last glance back at Paul. Paul gave her a thumbs-up and a reassuring nod.
“I hope you didn’t promise to correspond with her from prison,” Jack said as Paul came over. “You know those relationships never work out.”
“I’ll make sure she gets good legal counsel,” Paul said. “We owe her that. In a way we tricked her into incriminating herself.”
“Whatever brings out the truth,” Jack said. They moved out into the reception area and huddled at the far end.
“Okay, ramifications,” Jack said. “Strategy adjustment. This girl killed the woman at the campsite. Ergo, Cody Stinson didn’t do it. Ergo, Stinson’s story that he was just trying to talk to these nervous Nellies is true. No attempted murder. No intent to assault. No intent to harm the clients. That’s the bottom line. The loss of the file, the fingering of Stinson as the killer by Brandy-she was wrong anyway.”
“But Cody Stinson says he did get a phone call from the thief,” Nina said. “And he scared these people as a result.”
“Only because they mistakenly thought he was a killer and made some wrong assumptions based on their fears and on the way he looks,” Jack said. “I think we’ve dodged this bullet. I sure as hell am going to argue that at the close of the hearing. I think we’re home free on this count, babe.” He grinned at Nina. “Your insurance company is going to be happy about this. They reserved half a million dollars in payouts to Bruce and Brandy and Angel, figuring they’d sue you for malpractice in civil court next.”
“When I think of all those sleepless nights feeling so guilty because I thought I sicced a murderer on Brandy and her family, I-I can’t believe it,” Nina said.
“Enjoy the moment,” Jack said. He checked his Rolex. “Okay, time’s up. Now we go back in and we argue ‘ergo’ to Hugo.”
Nina hung back with Paul. “Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Half-brained and dimwitted. Desperate and you know it. But you were willing to take it all the way. I’m always thanking you. You work it and work it until finally you crack it.”
This time Gayle Nolan came over to Jack and Nina’s table as soon as they sat down. “Is that confession for real? Is that gonna stand up?” she asked Jack.
“It’ll stand up. You going to let the South Lake Tahoe D.A.’s office know they’ve got an innocent man locked up?” Jack asked.
“I just put in a call. What they do about Stinson is up to them. You knew she was gonna confess?”
“We didn’t have a clue.”
“You sandbagged me,” Nolan said, but she didn’t show much conviction. She had seen the shock on all their faces.
“You’re buried up to your neck, but it’s your own fault. You brought the charges against this lady,” Jack said with unmistakable triumph in his voice.
“Get this, Jack,” Nolan said. “Maybe the first count goes away, but there are two more. Don’t get cocky.” She continued to ignore Nina.
“Ms. Nolan,” Nina said.
“What?”
“The judge has just come in.”
“What? Oh.” She skittered back to her chair. Judge Brock took his place. Various “X” expressions followed one another across his face. Vexed. Flummoxed. Perplexed.
“We’re back on the record and I’d like to know, what now?” he said in his mild voice. “I don’t like uproar in my courtroom. Are you planning any more shocks like this one, Counsel?”
“We were as astonished as the court,” Jack said, rising. “Astonished and gratified. It’s obvious Mr. Stinson was telling the truth when he testified that he was only trying to tell these people that he was innocent of the-”
“No more surprises, is that clear? If you have something like this, I want to know it’s coming.”
“Of course, Judge.”
“All right. This isn’t the time for argument. The court notes for the record that based on her purported confession to a murder, the previous witness, Carol Ames, has been taken into custody. Now let’s move forward with this. It’s eleven-thirty. We have half an hour. It’s still your turn, Counsel. You have a couple more witnesses on Count One listed.”
Jack said, “Well, we excused them, Your Honor. We are ready to move on to Count Two.”
“You’re resting for the defense on Count One?”
“Yes.”
“All righty then. Ms. Nolan, are you ready to go on Count Two?”
“Yes. The witness from Heritage Insurance is waiting outside.”
“Let’s move on, then. Count Two. Call your witness.”
“Marilyn Ann Rose.”
Marilyn Rose walked up to the box and was sworn. A heavyset woman with a pleasant, open face, she wore a demure, dove-gray pantsuit. Nina knew that Marilyn’s husband had died three months earlier, leaving her two children to support on her own. After the Vang fiasco she had left the company and moved out of state.
Her company had hired a lawyer who had managed to prevent Jack from deposing her. However, they knew what she would say about the Vang case. The actual document about to be introduced as evidence, Nina’s original intake notes, was the problem on this count.
The prosecution’s forensic writing examiner, Harvey Pell, came next on the problem list. Nina tried to yank herself mentally into the new universe of problems Count Two represented.
“Good morning, Ms. Rose. My name is Gayle Nolan and I represent the State Bar of California.”
“Good morning.” Nolan took Marilyn through a recitation of her job duties as a claims adjuster and brought her to the Vang case.
“I’m now showing you Exhibit 15, which has been previously admitted into evidence by stipulation. So Ms. Reilly presented you with this claim on or about August twenty-eighth of last year?”
“That’s correct.” The claim letter with its attachments was about four inches thick. Marilyn stared at it. They all stared at it.
“The claim was for how much for the losses due to the convenience-store fire?”
“They asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The policy limit.”
“And the claim contained a copy of the police report concluding that the fire was caused by a criminal agency?”
“Yes.”
“And was the arsonist identified by the South Lake Tahoe police, at the time the report was written or at any later time up to the time that you adjusted the claim and sent out the check?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was there any evidence in this claim letter or otherwise, up to the moment you sent out that check, that the store owner, Kao Vang, might have carried out the arson himself?”
“No. Of course our own investigator had done independent work on the fire, but he was unable to identify the arsonist and advised that he had no evidence that the claim was anything but legitimate.”
“Now, the defendant represented to you that she was Mr. and Mrs. Vang’s attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“You talked with her on numerous occasions throughout the adjusting process?”
“Yes. On the phone. Not in person.”
“Did she give you her version of the facts of the fire?”
“She said all she knew came from the police report, that her clients had suffered a lot. Told me about two previous violent incidents at the market. It all jibed with the theory she pushed on me, that the arson was a revenge act after Mr. Vang shot a robber during his second attempt to rob the store. She kept saying we had to have a heart for these people and even though the supporting inventories and receipts were in pretty bad shape, she practically begged me to give her clients the benefit of the doubt on the settlement.”
“And what was your response to her request that your company settle this matter for a generous amount?”
“I stuck my neck out and eventually offered two hundred ten thousand. That’s about right for a store of that type and size. To be honest, I suspected there was some padding in the inventories, and I suspected that if I had every scrap of paper translated and scrutinized it wouldn’t add up to that much. But these people weren’t your average store owners. They obviously didn’t use a standard system of accounting and were obviously new to American business systems. I took a chance and gave them as generous a settlement as I could.”
“You mailed out the check to Ms. Reilly?”
“Actually, she came and picked it up. The whole thing was a big rush for some reason I didn’t understand.”
Yes, and if she hadn’t heeded Jack’s advice and rushed those checks to the Vangs out-Nina stopped herself. She had already revisited that decision during more than one midnight.
“Looking back,” Marilyn Rose continued, “I have to assume that the time pressure was something Ms. Reilly invented as a strategy.”
“Objection. Speculation. Move to strike that last sentence.”
“She’s in the best position to understand why these events occurred,” said Nolan, but she wasn’t really fighting it; the point was made.
“Sustained.”
“Then what happened?”
Nina tensed. Now they moved to the meat.
“I received a manila file folder in my regular mail delivery with some papers in it.” Nolan went to her cart and pulled out the familiar file folder. Nina and Jack had had an opportunity to examine it, along with the notes inside, and to have it copied. As with the Bronco, there had been no prints and no lucky hairs or other forensic evidence.
“You kept the envelope it arrived in?”
“I had my secretary go back and retrieve it from the trash, yes.”
Nolan pulled out Exhibit 17, the full-size standard brown envelope. Marilyn Rose’s name and address were printed in capitals. After Marilyn identified it the envelope was received into evidence.
“Now. Do you know who sent this file, Exhibit 16, to you?”
“To this day I still have no idea. The police came out a week or so later to run some tests on it, but our legal counsel ensured that the file never left the company’s possession.”
“All right. You received the envelope, took out the file inside. Did you read the contents on that occasion?”
“Of course. I was quite curious. I didn’t realize it was her legal file.”
Jack shuffled his papers and got ready.
“And what was in the file?” Nolan asked.
“Objection,” Jack said. “The contents of that file contain attorney work-product and are privileged. The files did not lose their confidential aspect when they were stolen and inadvertently read by a third party. I have briefed this point thoroughly for the pretrial conference and ask that the court reconsider its ruling at that time.”
“The exhibit has already been admitted into evidence per my pretrial order,” Judge Brock said. “We have already gone over this several times.”
“For the record, Your Honor. These files were stolen. The clients haven’t waived the privilege. I understand that the state bar feels it can delve into confidential client files whenever it wants to. But my client and I, as practicing attorneys in the state of California, have to raise this objection again. And for the record we will appeal that pretrial ruling.”
Nolan, ready for this, spoke up. “The state bar has the right to discover the work-product of an attorney against whom disciplinary charges are pending when relevant to issues of the attorney’s breach of duty. I cite Code of Civil Procedure Section 2018 sub e and also Witkin, Cal Evidence third, Volume 2, Section 1145. This court has already issued a protective order limiting the testimony in some respects today. The evidence is relevant and crucial to showing that the defendant defrauded this insurance company.”
“You’ve said all that in the previous court conferences,” Jack said. “And I know there has been a ruling. Nevertheless, I can’t stand here and let this testimony come in without protesting. It’s a violation of the whole legal system that you are opening this confidential file in this hearing against the wishes of the client. It’s-”
“Your ongoing, undying objection is noted,” said Brock, making a small foray toward personality. “Now let’s move it.”
Jack’s face darkened. “This state bar court is requiring the violation of the Code of Professional Conduct required of attorneys and also the Business and Professions Code. Neither Ms. Reilly nor her client has attempted to waive the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Your objection is overruled.”
“This state bar court is without jurisdiction to flout the most sacred principles of the legal profession,” Jack said. “Any ruling based on this violation will be void.”
“Siddown, Counsel. Shout to the State Bar Journal after the case is over, not that you’ll get any attention from them. But don’t grandstand in my court. I won’t have it.”
Jack sat down.
“You didn’t have a chance, but thanks for trying,” Nina whispered.
“I did it for myself, too. I took the same oath when I was admitted.”
“What was in the file, Ms. Rose? You may answer,” Nolan asked, picking up the questioning without hesitation.
“A form that was headed Client Intake Interview.”
“Now, showing you Exhibit 18, a three-page document previously introduced into evidence after objection and argument. Is this the form?”
Marilyn took the sheets gingerly. She flipped to the last sheet and nodded her head. “This is it.”
Nolan took Marilyn through the next minutes after receipt of the envelope: She had read Nina’s intake notes several times, spoken with her superiors, then returned to her office and called Nina. As Marilyn described the telephone confrontation and Nina’s denials, Nina vividly recalled the unnerving call that had sent her home to bury her head under the covers.
“And what exactly about this document caused you to call Ms. Reilly?”
“The last sentence on the third page.”
“Read that sentence to us, please.”
“It says, ‘Client breaks down, says he set fire himself!’ There’s an exclamation point. Then it goes on, kind of scribbled, ‘Advised him don’t say any more, don’t want to hear this.’ ”
Judge Brock followed along on his copy. Nina read hers. Still it tore at her. She hadn’t written those words. Kao had not confessed. There was no evidence Kao had set fire to his own store, except for this damning, damnable forgery. For six months they had been trying to figure out who would go this far, and they simply couldn’t figure it out.
Only now, in this airtight room, did she see in great detail the hundred holes in her defense, the big, unresolved questions. On the other hand, every case she ever defended arrived in court too soon. There were always unanswered questions. That kept things alive and ever hopeful. She still had hope, as her clients must, watching the red digital clock change, minute by minute, that the tides would turn again. She would prevail against all odds. Jack would work a miracle or Paul would. The judge would somehow forgive her for that one moment of carelessness weighed against a lifetime of diligence and duty.
“And Ms. Reilly said that within two days of picking up the check she personally delivered it to her clients?”
“Yes.”
“In your experience, is that the usual turnaround time for clients to receive their settlements from law offices?”
“I’ve been doing this work for thirty years and I don’t remember ever seeing a check go into a trust account and out to a client that fast.”
“And have you ever received any explanation as to why this check was turned over so fast?”
“Just what I said. She claimed there was some mysterious danger to them.”
“Now, then. What did you do after speaking to Ms. Reilly about this file you received?”
“I went straight to my boss and told him the whole story. I was distraught. He had me write up a quick summary, and I packaged it with the claim file and a copy of the check. It was turned over to our legal counsel. A month later, I took my early retirement and left the company. I had gotten sloppy over the years. I had let her talk me into paying out too much money, even aside from the file. You get old and you lose your edge. You get lazy. I was finished. Then I-I lost my husband. It was time to go home to Kansas City.”
“Did this matter have any impact on you personally?”
Marilyn blinked back tears. “It made my husband’s last months-hard.”
“I have nothing further,” Nolan told the judge.
Jack cross-examined. The answers were more of the same. Marilyn’s mood did not improve and neither did her testimony’s impact on their case. He kept the cross short. When Jack finished, the red numbers showed in five-inch-tall characters five minutes past twelve.
“We’ll recess until one-thirty,” the judge said. “We have the writing examiner ready, is that correct?”
“He’ll be here,” Nolan said.
“Court is adjourned.”
They all trooped out. Nina headed for the bathroom. As she washed her hands, Marilyn came out of one of the stalls.
“I’m very sorry you had to go through this, Marilyn,” Nina said. “But I didn’t lie to you. Somebody forged that document.”
“Don’t even try,” Marilyn said.
“Someday I hope you’ll-”
“I have a flight to catch. Pardon me if I don’t wish you luck.” She brushed coldly past.
“PANDEFUCKINGMONIUM,” SAID JACK with satisfaction. He had recovered from the shock of Carol Ames’s testimony during the break called by Judge Brock after Carol was taken into custody by the bailiff. Nina watched as Paul uttered words of comfort and kept her steady.
She took Jack aside. “I’m having a hard time analyzing the impact of this,” she said. “I’m having a hard time thinking at all. I never imagined she would confess. She must have been working up to it, feeling guilty all these months. I know it’s a huge break for us, but a girl is dead-”
“An actual courtroom confession and we didn’t even know it was coming. Moments like this are why we practice law, Nina. Of course, it helps that we’re the side that benefits.”
“Paul came through,” Nina said, “as usual. He found her and brought her here and saved the day.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll clap him on the back just as soon as the marshal unleashes her.” The federal marshal had just arrived. Pinpoint eyes fixed on Carol Ames, he consulted with the judge. Paul, who had slipped into the courtroom when he heard the ruckus moments before, patted her hand. The marshal went over to them and quietly began telling Carol her rights. He took her by the arm and as she was led away, she cast one last glance back at Paul. Paul gave her a thumbs-up and a reassuring nod.
“I hope you didn’t promise to correspond with her from prison,” Jack said as Paul came over. “You know those relationships never work out.”
“I’ll make sure she gets good legal counsel,” Paul said. “We owe her that. In a way we tricked her into incriminating herself.”
“Whatever brings out the truth,” Jack said. They moved out into the reception area and huddled at the far end.
“Okay, ramifications,” Jack said. “Strategy adjustment. This girl killed the woman at the campsite. Ergo, Cody Stinson didn’t do it. Ergo, Stinson’s story that he was just trying to talk to these nervous Nellies is true. No attempted murder. No intent to assault. No intent to harm the clients. That’s the bottom line. The loss of the file, the fingering of Stinson as the killer by Brandy-she was wrong anyway.”
“But Cody Stinson says he did get a phone call from the thief,” Nina said. “And he scared these people as a result.”
“Only because they mistakenly thought he was a killer and made some wrong assumptions based on their fears and on the way he looks,” Jack said. “I think we’ve dodged this bullet. I sure as hell am going to argue that at the close of the hearing. I think we’re home free on this count, babe.” He grinned at Nina. “Your insurance company is going to be happy about this. They reserved half a million dollars in payouts to Bruce and Brandy and Angel, figuring they’d sue you for malpractice in civil court next.”
“When I think of all those sleepless nights feeling so guilty because I thought I sicced a murderer on Brandy and her family, I-I can’t believe it,” Nina said.
“Enjoy the moment,” Jack said. He checked his Rolex. “Okay, time’s up. Now we go back in and we argue ‘ergo’ to Hugo.”
Nina hung back with Paul. “Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Half-brained and dimwitted. Desperate and you know it. But you were willing to take it all the way. I’m always thanking you. You work it and work it until finally you crack it.”
This time Gayle Nolan came over to Jack and Nina’s table as soon as they sat down. “Is that confession for real? Is that gonna stand up?” she asked Jack.
“It’ll stand up. You going to let the South Lake Tahoe D.A.’s office know they’ve got an innocent man locked up?” Jack asked.
“I just put in a call. What they do about Stinson is up to them. You knew she was gonna confess?”
“We didn’t have a clue.”
“You sandbagged me,” Nolan said, but she didn’t show much conviction. She had seen the shock on all their faces.
“You’re buried up to your neck, but it’s your own fault. You brought the charges against this lady,” Jack said with unmistakable triumph in his voice.
“Get this, Jack,” Nolan said. “Maybe the first count goes away, but there are two more. Don’t get cocky.” She continued to ignore Nina.
“Ms. Nolan,” Nina said.
“What?”
“The judge has just come in.”
“What? Oh.” She skittered back to her chair. Judge Brock took his place. Various “X” expressions followed one another across his face. Vexed. Flummoxed. Perplexed.
“We’re back on the record and I’d like to know, what now?” he said in his mild voice. “I don’t like uproar in my courtroom. Are you planning any more shocks like this one, Counsel?”
“We were as astonished as the court,” Jack said, rising. “Astonished and gratified. It’s obvious Mr. Stinson was telling the truth when he testified that he was only trying to tell these people that he was innocent of the-”
“No more surprises, is that clear? If you have something like this, I want to know it’s coming.”
“Of course, Judge.”
“All right. This isn’t the time for argument. The court notes for the record that based on her purported confession to a murder, the previous witness, Carol Ames, has been taken into custody. Now let’s move forward with this. It’s eleven-thirty. We have half an hour. It’s still your turn, Counsel. You have a couple more witnesses on Count One listed.”
Jack said, “Well, we excused them, Your Honor. We are ready to move on to Count Two.”
“You’re resting for the defense on Count One?”
“Yes.”
“All righty then. Ms. Nolan, are you ready to go on Count Two?”
“Yes. The witness from Heritage Insurance is waiting outside.”
“Let’s move on, then. Count Two. Call your witness.”
“Marilyn Ann Rose.”
Marilyn Rose walked up to the box and was sworn. A heavyset woman with a pleasant, open face, she wore a demure, dove-gray pantsuit. Nina knew that Marilyn’s husband had died three months earlier, leaving her two children to support on her own. After the Vang fiasco she had left the company and moved out of state.
Her company had hired a lawyer who had managed to prevent Jack from deposing her. However, they knew what she would say about the Vang case. The actual document about to be introduced as evidence, Nina’s original intake notes, was the problem on this count.
The prosecution’s forensic writing examiner, Harvey Pell, came next on the problem list. Nina tried to yank herself mentally into the new universe of problems Count Two represented.
“Good morning, Ms. Rose. My name is Gayle Nolan and I represent the State Bar of California.”
“Good morning.” Nolan took Marilyn through a recitation of her job duties as a claims adjuster and brought her to the Vang case.
“I’m now showing you Exhibit 15, which has been previously admitted into evidence by stipulation. So Ms. Reilly presented you with this claim on or about August twenty-eighth of last year?”
“That’s correct.” The claim letter with its attachments was about four inches thick. Marilyn stared at it. They all stared at it.
“The claim was for how much for the losses due to the convenience-store fire?”
“They asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The policy limit.”
“And the claim contained a copy of the police report concluding that the fire was caused by a criminal agency?”
“Yes.”
“And was the arsonist identified by the South Lake Tahoe police, at the time the report was written or at any later time up to the time that you adjusted the claim and sent out the check?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was there any evidence in this claim letter or otherwise, up to the moment you sent out that check, that the store owner, Kao Vang, might have carried out the arson himself?”
“No. Of course our own investigator had done independent work on the fire, but he was unable to identify the arsonist and advised that he had no evidence that the claim was anything but legitimate.”
“Now, the defendant represented to you that she was Mr. and Mrs. Vang’s attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“You talked with her on numerous occasions throughout the adjusting process?”
“Yes. On the phone. Not in person.”
“Did she give you her version of the facts of the fire?”
“She said all she knew came from the police report, that her clients had suffered a lot. Told me about two previous violent incidents at the market. It all jibed with the theory she pushed on me, that the arson was a revenge act after Mr. Vang shot a robber during his second attempt to rob the store. She kept saying we had to have a heart for these people and even though the supporting inventories and receipts were in pretty bad shape, she practically begged me to give her clients the benefit of the doubt on the settlement.”
“And what was your response to her request that your company settle this matter for a generous amount?”
“I stuck my neck out and eventually offered two hundred ten thousand. That’s about right for a store of that type and size. To be honest, I suspected there was some padding in the inventories, and I suspected that if I had every scrap of paper translated and scrutinized it wouldn’t add up to that much. But these people weren’t your average store owners. They obviously didn’t use a standard system of accounting and were obviously new to American business systems. I took a chance and gave them as generous a settlement as I could.”
“You mailed out the check to Ms. Reilly?”
“Actually, she came and picked it up. The whole thing was a big rush for some reason I didn’t understand.”
Yes, and if she hadn’t heeded Jack’s advice and rushed those checks to the Vangs out-Nina stopped herself. She had already revisited that decision during more than one midnight.
“Looking back,” Marilyn Rose continued, “I have to assume that the time pressure was something Ms. Reilly invented as a strategy.”
“Objection. Speculation. Move to strike that last sentence.”
“She’s in the best position to understand why these events occurred,” said Nolan, but she wasn’t really fighting it; the point was made.
“Sustained.”
“Then what happened?”
Nina tensed. Now they moved to the meat.
“I received a manila file folder in my regular mail delivery with some papers in it.” Nolan went to her cart and pulled out the familiar file folder. Nina and Jack had had an opportunity to examine it, along with the notes inside, and to have it copied. As with the Bronco, there had been no prints and no lucky hairs or other forensic evidence.
“You kept the envelope it arrived in?”
“I had my secretary go back and retrieve it from the trash, yes.”
Nolan pulled out Exhibit 17, the full-size standard brown envelope. Marilyn Rose’s name and address were printed in capitals. After Marilyn identified it the envelope was received into evidence.
“Now. Do you know who sent this file, Exhibit 16, to you?”
“To this day I still have no idea. The police came out a week or so later to run some tests on it, but our legal counsel ensured that the file never left the company’s possession.”
“All right. You received the envelope, took out the file inside. Did you read the contents on that occasion?”
“Of course. I was quite curious. I didn’t realize it was her legal file.”
Jack shuffled his papers and got ready.
“And what was in the file?” Nolan asked.
“Objection,” Jack said. “The contents of that file contain attorney work-product and are privileged. The files did not lose their confidential aspect when they were stolen and inadvertently read by a third party. I have briefed this point thoroughly for the pretrial conference and ask that the court reconsider its ruling at that time.”
“The exhibit has already been admitted into evidence per my pretrial order,” Judge Brock said. “We have already gone over this several times.”
“For the record, Your Honor. These files were stolen. The clients haven’t waived the privilege. I understand that the state bar feels it can delve into confidential client files whenever it wants to. But my client and I, as practicing attorneys in the state of California, have to raise this objection again. And for the record we will appeal that pretrial ruling.”
Nolan, ready for this, spoke up. “The state bar has the right to discover the work-product of an attorney against whom disciplinary charges are pending when relevant to issues of the attorney’s breach of duty. I cite Code of Civil Procedure Section 2018 sub e and also Witkin, Cal Evidence third, Volume 2, Section 1145. This court has already issued a protective order limiting the testimony in some respects today. The evidence is relevant and crucial to showing that the defendant defrauded this insurance company.”
“You’ve said all that in the previous court conferences,” Jack said. “And I know there has been a ruling. Nevertheless, I can’t stand here and let this testimony come in without protesting. It’s a violation of the whole legal system that you are opening this confidential file in this hearing against the wishes of the client. It’s-”
“Your ongoing, undying objection is noted,” said Brock, making a small foray toward personality. “Now let’s move it.”
Jack’s face darkened. “This state bar court is requiring the violation of the Code of Professional Conduct required of attorneys and also the Business and Professions Code. Neither Ms. Reilly nor her client has attempted to waive the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Your objection is overruled.”
“This state bar court is without jurisdiction to flout the most sacred principles of the legal profession,” Jack said. “Any ruling based on this violation will be void.”
“Siddown, Counsel. Shout to the State Bar Journal after the case is over, not that you’ll get any attention from them. But don’t grandstand in my court. I won’t have it.”
Jack sat down.
“You didn’t have a chance, but thanks for trying,” Nina whispered.
“I did it for myself, too. I took the same oath when I was admitted.”
“What was in the file, Ms. Rose? You may answer,” Nolan asked, picking up the questioning without hesitation.
“A form that was headed Client Intake Interview.”
“Now, showing you Exhibit 18, a three-page document previously introduced into evidence after objection and argument. Is this the form?”
Marilyn took the sheets gingerly. She flipped to the last sheet and nodded her head. “This is it.”
Nolan took Marilyn through the next minutes after receipt of the envelope: She had read Nina’s intake notes several times, spoken with her superiors, then returned to her office and called Nina. As Marilyn described the telephone confrontation and Nina’s denials, Nina vividly recalled the unnerving call that had sent her home to bury her head under the covers.
“And what exactly about this document caused you to call Ms. Reilly?”
“The last sentence on the third page.”
“Read that sentence to us, please.”
“It says, ‘Client breaks down, says he set fire himself!’ There’s an exclamation point. Then it goes on, kind of scribbled, ‘Advised him don’t say any more, don’t want to hear this.’ ”
Judge Brock followed along on his copy. Nina read hers. Still it tore at her. She hadn’t written those words. Kao had not confessed. There was no evidence Kao had set fire to his own store, except for this damning, damnable forgery. For six months they had been trying to figure out who would go this far, and they simply couldn’t figure it out.
Only now, in this airtight room, did she see in great detail the hundred holes in her defense, the big, unresolved questions. On the other hand, every case she ever defended arrived in court too soon. There were always unanswered questions. That kept things alive and ever hopeful. She still had hope, as her clients must, watching the red digital clock change, minute by minute, that the tides would turn again. She would prevail against all odds. Jack would work a miracle or Paul would. The judge would somehow forgive her for that one moment of carelessness weighed against a lifetime of diligence and duty.
“And Ms. Reilly said that within two days of picking up the check she personally delivered it to her clients?”
“Yes.”
“In your experience, is that the usual turnaround time for clients to receive their settlements from law offices?”
“I’ve been doing this work for thirty years and I don’t remember ever seeing a check go into a trust account and out to a client that fast.”
“And have you ever received any explanation as to why this check was turned over so fast?”
“Just what I said. She claimed there was some mysterious danger to them.”
“Now, then. What did you do after speaking to Ms. Reilly about this file you received?”
“I went straight to my boss and told him the whole story. I was distraught. He had me write up a quick summary, and I packaged it with the claim file and a copy of the check. It was turned over to our legal counsel. A month later, I took my early retirement and left the company. I had gotten sloppy over the years. I had let her talk me into paying out too much money, even aside from the file. You get old and you lose your edge. You get lazy. I was finished. Then I-I lost my husband. It was time to go home to Kansas City.”
“Did this matter have any impact on you personally?”
Marilyn blinked back tears. “It made my husband’s last months-hard.”
“I have nothing further,” Nolan told the judge.
Jack cross-examined. The answers were more of the same. Marilyn’s mood did not improve and neither did her testimony’s impact on their case. He kept the cross short. When Jack finished, the red numbers showed in five-inch-tall characters five minutes past twelve.
“We’ll recess until one-thirty,” the judge said. “We have the writing examiner ready, is that correct?”
“He’ll be here,” Nolan said.
“Court is adjourned.”
They all trooped out. Nina headed for the bathroom. As she washed her hands, Marilyn came out of one of the stalls.
“I’m very sorry you had to go through this, Marilyn,” Nina said. “But I didn’t lie to you. Somebody forged that document.”
“Don’t even try,” Marilyn said.
“Someday I hope you’ll-”
“I have a flight to catch. Pardon me if I don’t wish you luck.” She brushed coldly past.
“PANDEFUCKINGMONIUM,” SAID JACK with satisfaction. He had recovered from the shock of Carol Ames’s testimony during the break called by Judge Brock after Carol was taken into custody by the bailiff. Nina watched as Paul uttered words of comfort and kept her steady.
She took Jack aside. “I’m having a hard time analyzing the impact of this,” she said. “I’m having a hard time thinking at all. I never imagined she would confess. She must have been working up to it, feeling guilty all these months. I know it’s a huge break for us, but a girl is dead-”
“An actual courtroom confession and we didn’t even know it was coming. Moments like this are why we practice law, Nina. Of course, it helps that we’re the side that benefits.”
“Paul came through,” Nina said, “as usual. He found her and brought her here and saved the day.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll clap him on the back just as soon as the marshal unleashes her.” The federal marshal had just arrived. Pinpoint eyes fixed on Carol Ames, he consulted with the judge. Paul, who had slipped into the courtroom when he heard the ruckus moments before, patted her hand. The marshal went over to them and quietly began telling Carol her rights. He took her by the arm and as she was led away, she cast one last glance back at Paul. Paul gave her a thumbs-up and a reassuring nod.
“I hope you didn’t promise to correspond with her from prison,” Jack said as Paul came over. “You know those relationships never work out.”
“I’ll make sure she gets good legal counsel,” Paul said. “We owe her that. In a way we tricked her into incriminating herself.”
“Whatever brings out the truth,” Jack said. They moved out into the reception area and huddled at the far end.
“Okay, ramifications,” Jack said. “Strategy adjustment. This girl killed the woman at the campsite. Ergo, Cody Stinson didn’t do it. Ergo, Stinson’s story that he was just trying to talk to these nervous Nellies is true. No attempted murder. No intent to assault. No intent to harm the clients. That’s the bottom line. The loss of the file, the fingering of Stinson as the killer by Brandy-she was wrong anyway.”
“But Cody Stinson says he did get a phone call from the thief,” Nina said. “And he scared these people as a result.”
“Only because they mistakenly thought he was a killer and made some wrong assumptions based on their fears and on the way he looks,” Jack said. “I think we’ve dodged this bullet. I sure as hell am going to argue that at the close of the hearing. I think we’re home free on this count, babe.” He grinned at Nina. “Your insurance company is going to be happy about this. They reserved half a million dollars in payouts to Bruce and Brandy and Angel, figuring they’d sue you for malpractice in civil court next.”
“When I think of all those sleepless nights feeling so guilty because I thought I sicced a murderer on Brandy and her family, I-I can’t believe it,” Nina said.
“Enjoy the moment,” Jack said. He checked his Rolex. “Okay, time’s up. Now we go back in and we argue ‘ergo’ to Hugo.”
Nina hung back with Paul. “Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Half-brained and dimwitted. Desperate and you know it. But you were willing to take it all the way. I’m always thanking you. You work it and work it until finally you crack it.”
This time Gayle Nolan came over to Jack and Nina’s table as soon as they sat down. “Is that confession for real? Is that gonna stand up?” she asked Jack.
“It’ll stand up. You going to let the South Lake Tahoe D.A.’s office know they’ve got an innocent man locked up?” Jack asked.
“I just put in a call. What they do about Stinson is up to them. You knew she was gonna confess?”
“We didn’t have a clue.”
“You sandbagged me,” Nolan said, but she didn’t show much conviction. She had seen the shock on all their faces.
“You’re buried up to your neck, but it’s your own fault. You brought the charges against this lady,” Jack said with unmistakable triumph in his voice.
“Get this, Jack,” Nolan said. “Maybe the first count goes away, but there are two more. Don’t get cocky.” She continued to ignore Nina.
“Ms. Nolan,” Nina said.
“What?”
“The judge has just come in.”
“What? Oh.” She skittered back to her chair. Judge Brock took his place. Various “X” expressions followed one another across his face. Vexed. Flummoxed. Perplexed.
“We’re back on the record and I’d like to know, what now?” he said in his mild voice. “I don’t like uproar in my courtroom. Are you planning any more shocks like this one, Counsel?”
“We were as astonished as the court,” Jack said, rising. “Astonished and gratified. It’s obvious Mr. Stinson was telling the truth when he testified that he was only trying to tell these people that he was innocent of the-”
“No more surprises, is that clear? If you have something like this, I want to know it’s coming.”
“Of course, Judge.”
“All right. This isn’t the time for argument. The court notes for the record that based on her purported confession to a murder, the previous witness, Carol Ames, has been taken into custody. Now let’s move forward with this. It’s eleven-thirty. We have half an hour. It’s still your turn, Counsel. You have a couple more witnesses on Count One listed.”
Jack said, “Well, we excused them, Your Honor. We are ready to move on to Count Two.”
“You’re resting for the defense on Count One?”
“Yes.”
“All righty then. Ms. Nolan, are you ready to go on Count Two?”
“Yes. The witness from Heritage Insurance is waiting outside.”
“Let’s move on, then. Count Two. Call your witness.”
“Marilyn Ann Rose.”
Marilyn Rose walked up to the box and was sworn. A heavyset woman with a pleasant, open face, she wore a demure, dove-gray pantsuit. Nina knew that Marilyn’s husband had died three months earlier, leaving her two children to support on her own. After the Vang fiasco she had left the company and moved out of state.
Her company had hired a lawyer who had managed to prevent Jack from deposing her. However, they knew what she would say about the Vang case. The actual document about to be introduced as evidence, Nina’s original intake notes, was the problem on this count.
The prosecution’s forensic writing examiner, Harvey Pell, came next on the problem list. Nina tried to yank herself mentally into the new universe of problems Count Two represented.
“Good morning, Ms. Rose. My name is Gayle Nolan and I represent the State Bar of California.”
“Good morning.” Nolan took Marilyn through a recitation of her job duties as a claims adjuster and brought her to the Vang case.
“I’m now showing you Exhibit 15, which has been previously admitted into evidence by stipulation. So Ms. Reilly presented you with this claim on or about August twenty-eighth of last year?”
“That’s correct.” The claim letter with its attachments was about four inches thick. Marilyn stared at it. They all stared at it.
“The claim was for how much for the losses due to the convenience-store fire?”
“They asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The policy limit.”
“And the claim contained a copy of the police report concluding that the fire was caused by a criminal agency?”
“Yes.”
“And was the arsonist identified by the South Lake Tahoe police, at the time the report was written or at any later time up to the time that you adjusted the claim and sent out the check?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was there any evidence in this claim letter or otherwise, up to the moment you sent out that check, that the store owner, Kao Vang, might have carried out the arson himself?”
“No. Of course our own investigator had done independent work on the fire, but he was unable to identify the arsonist and advised that he had no evidence that the claim was anything but legitimate.”
“Now, the defendant represented to you that she was Mr. and Mrs. Vang’s attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“You talked with her on numerous occasions throughout the adjusting process?”
“Yes. On the phone. Not in person.”
“Did she give you her version of the facts of the fire?”
“She said all she knew came from the police report, that her clients had suffered a lot. Told me about two previous violent incidents at the market. It all jibed with the theory she pushed on me, that the arson was a revenge act after Mr. Vang shot a robber during his second attempt to rob the store. She kept saying we had to have a heart for these people and even though the supporting inventories and receipts were in pretty bad shape, she practically begged me to give her clients the benefit of the doubt on the settlement.”
“And what was your response to her request that your company settle this matter for a generous amount?”
“I stuck my neck out and eventually offered two hundred ten thousand. That’s about right for a store of that type and size. To be honest, I suspected there was some padding in the inventories, and I suspected that if I had every scrap of paper translated and scrutinized it wouldn’t add up to that much. But these people weren’t your average store owners. They obviously didn’t use a standard system of accounting and were obviously new to American business systems. I took a chance and gave them as generous a settlement as I could.”
“You mailed out the check to Ms. Reilly?”
“Actually, she came and picked it up. The whole thing was a big rush for some reason I didn’t understand.”
Yes, and if she hadn’t heeded Jack’s advice and rushed those checks to the Vangs out-Nina stopped herself. She had already revisited that decision during more than one midnight.
“Looking back,” Marilyn Rose continued, “I have to assume that the time pressure was something Ms. Reilly invented as a strategy.”
“Objection. Speculation. Move to strike that last sentence.”
“She’s in the best position to understand why these events occurred,” said Nolan, but she wasn’t really fighting it; the point was made.
“Sustained.”
“Then what happened?”
Nina tensed. Now they moved to the meat.
“I received a manila file folder in my regular mail delivery with some papers in it.” Nolan went to her cart and pulled out the familiar file folder. Nina and Jack had had an opportunity to examine it, along with the notes inside, and to have it copied. As with the Bronco, there had been no prints and no lucky hairs or other forensic evidence.
“You kept the envelope it arrived in?”
“I had my secretary go back and retrieve it from the trash, yes.”
Nolan pulled out Exhibit 17, the full-size standard brown envelope. Marilyn Rose’s name and address were printed in capitals. After Marilyn identified it the envelope was received into evidence.
“Now. Do you know who sent this file, Exhibit 16, to you?”
“To this day I still have no idea. The police came out a week or so later to run some tests on it, but our legal counsel ensured that the file never left the company’s possession.”
“All right. You received the envelope, took out the file inside. Did you read the contents on that occasion?”
“Of course. I was quite curious. I didn’t realize it was her legal file.”
Jack shuffled his papers and got ready.
“And what was in the file?” Nolan asked.
“Objection,” Jack said. “The contents of that file contain attorney work-product and are privileged. The files did not lose their confidential aspect when they were stolen and inadvertently read by a third party. I have briefed this point thoroughly for the pretrial conference and ask that the court reconsider its ruling at that time.”
“The exhibit has already been admitted into evidence per my pretrial order,” Judge Brock said. “We have already gone over this several times.”
“For the record, Your Honor. These files were stolen. The clients haven’t waived the privilege. I understand that the state bar feels it can delve into confidential client files whenever it wants to. But my client and I, as practicing attorneys in the state of California, have to raise this objection again. And for the record we will appeal that pretrial ruling.”
Nolan, ready for this, spoke up. “The state bar has the right to discover the work-product of an attorney against whom disciplinary charges are pending when relevant to issues of the attorney’s breach of duty. I cite Code of Civil Procedure Section 2018 sub e and also Witkin, Cal Evidence third, Volume 2, Section 1145. This court has already issued a protective order limiting the testimony in some respects today. The evidence is relevant and crucial to showing that the defendant defrauded this insurance company.”
“You’ve said all that in the previous court conferences,” Jack said. “And I know there has been a ruling. Nevertheless, I can’t stand here and let this testimony come in without protesting. It’s a violation of the whole legal system that you are opening this confidential file in this hearing against the wishes of the client. It’s-”
“Your ongoing, undying objection is noted,” said Brock, making a small foray toward personality. “Now let’s move it.”
Jack’s face darkened. “This state bar court is requiring the violation of the Code of Professional Conduct required of attorneys and also the Business and Professions Code. Neither Ms. Reilly nor her client has attempted to waive the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Your objection is overruled.”
“This state bar court is without jurisdiction to flout the most sacred principles of the legal profession,” Jack said. “Any ruling based on this violation will be void.”
“Siddown, Counsel. Shout to the State Bar Journal after the case is over, not that you’ll get any attention from them. But don’t grandstand in my court. I won’t have it.”
Jack sat down.
“You didn’t have a chance, but thanks for trying,” Nina whispered.
“I did it for myself, too. I took the same oath when I was admitted.”
“What was in the file, Ms. Rose? You may answer,” Nolan asked, picking up the questioning without hesitation.
“A form that was headed Client Intake Interview.”
“Now, showing you Exhibit 18, a three-page document previously introduced into evidence after objection and argument. Is this the form?”
Marilyn took the sheets gingerly. She flipped to the last sheet and nodded her head. “This is it.”
Nolan took Marilyn through the next minutes after receipt of the envelope: She had read Nina’s intake notes several times, spoken with her superiors, then returned to her office and called Nina. As Marilyn described the telephone confrontation and Nina’s denials, Nina vividly recalled the unnerving call that had sent her home to bury her head under the covers.
“And what exactly about this document caused you to call Ms. Reilly?”
“The last sentence on the third page.”
“Read that sentence to us, please.”
“It says, ‘Client breaks down, says he set fire himself!’ There’s an exclamation point. Then it goes on, kind of scribbled, ‘Advised him don’t say any more, don’t want to hear this.’ ”
Judge Brock followed along on his copy. Nina read hers. Still it tore at her. She hadn’t written those words. Kao had not confessed. There was no evidence Kao had set fire to his own store, except for this damning, damnable forgery. For six months they had been trying to figure out who would go this far, and they simply couldn’t figure it out.
Only now, in this airtight room, did she see in great detail the hundred holes in her defense, the big, unresolved questions. On the other hand, every case she ever defended arrived in court too soon. There were always unanswered questions. That kept things alive and ever hopeful. She still had hope, as her clients must, watching the red digital clock change, minute by minute, that the tides would turn again. She would prevail against all odds. Jack would work a miracle or Paul would. The judge would somehow forgive her for that one moment of carelessness weighed against a lifetime of diligence and duty.
“And Ms. Reilly said that within two days of picking up the check she personally delivered it to her clients?”
“Yes.”
“In your experience, is that the usual turnaround time for clients to receive their settlements from law offices?”
“I’ve been doing this work for thirty years and I don’t remember ever seeing a check go into a trust account and out to a client that fast.”
“And have you ever received any explanation as to why this check was turned over so fast?”
“Just what I said. She claimed there was some mysterious danger to them.”
“Now, then. What did you do after speaking to Ms. Reilly about this file you received?”
“I went straight to my boss and told him the whole story. I was distraught. He had me write up a quick summary, and I packaged it with the claim file and a copy of the check. It was turned over to our legal counsel. A month later, I took my early retirement and left the company. I had gotten sloppy over the years. I had let her talk me into paying out too much money, even aside from the file. You get old and you lose your edge. You get lazy. I was finished. Then I-I lost my husband. It was time to go home to Kansas City.”
“Did this matter have any impact on you personally?”
Marilyn blinked back tears. “It made my husband’s last months-hard.”
“I have nothing further,” Nolan told the judge.
Jack cross-examined. The answers were more of the same. Marilyn’s mood did not improve and neither did her testimony’s impact on their case. He kept the cross short. When Jack finished, the red numbers showed in five-inch-tall characters five minutes past twelve.
“We’ll recess until one-thirty,” the judge said. “We have the writing examiner ready, is that correct?”
“He’ll be here,” Nolan said.
“Court is adjourned.”
They all trooped out. Nina headed for the bathroom. As she washed her hands, Marilyn came out of one of the stalls.
“I’m very sorry you had to go through this, Marilyn,” Nina said. “But I didn’t lie to you. Somebody forged that document.”
“Don’t even try,” Marilyn said.
“Someday I hope you’ll-”
“I have a flight to catch. Pardon me if I don’t wish you luck.” She brushed coldly past.
N INA WAS SWORN and took the stand. She and Jack had hashed this out and the pretrial struggles with Gayle Nolan had been fierce, but they had won many concessions: The scope of her testimony would be limited solely to the Vang case and notes.
From the witness box Jack looked far away, and she felt the Promethean presence of Judge Brock just to her right. Lines of tension pulled all around her. The judge seemed troubled to have a member of the bar seated in the box, though he must be used to it; she turned her head slightly to acknowledge him, but he looked away, shunning her.
Marilyn had wounded her. She wanted to protest, to defend herself, but the witness box was like a cage. She understood finally why even the most obstreperous witness answered respectfully and fell into the formality of the court ritual. She felt chastened already, and the questioning hadn’t even begun.
Nolan said from her table, “Ms. Reilly, you are a member of the State Bar of California and the defendant in this action?”
“Yes.”
“On or about August eighth, you were practicing law in your office in South Lake Tahoe, California?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet with a person named Kao Vang for the first time on that day?”
Jack sat upright in his chair, waiting for Nolan to make a false move, but with the rules of evidence as loose as they were, he would not be able to do much.
“Yes.”
“In what regard?”
“To discuss whether I would represent him in an insurance matter.”
“A claim against Heritage Insurance?”
“Yes.”
“And did you agree to that representation?”
“Yes.” She watched Jack. He nodded encouragingly. They had agreed that she would go that far.
“What did you agree to do for Mr. Vang?”
“I would respectfully like to state that I am only answering this entire line of questions because I have been ordered to do so by this court after making written objection through my attorney. Otherwise I would not answer these questions.”
Nolan smiled at that. Tapping her chin, she said, “Well, I don’t know why not, since at least thirty or forty people have seen the contents of the file by now, but let’s go ahead. You submitted a claim for Mr. Vang based on an alleged arson that destroyed his business, am I correct?”
“Yes.” The business was co-owned by Mrs. Vang, Nina wanted to say, but she and Jack had decided that she would volunteer nothing.
Nolan got up and went around to the front of her table, placing her at front and center. She folded her arms. “And during the course of that first meeting with Mr. Vang, was anyone else present?”
“Just Mr. and Mrs. Vang and their translator, Dr. Mai.”
“Did you or anyone tape record that initial conversation or videotape any part of it?”
“No.”
“Did you take any handwritten notes?”
“Yes.”
“Is this your usual procedure when first meeting with a client?”
“Yes. I have a form called Client Intake Interview. I fill in basic information about the client. Then I take notes of the discussion.”
“As the conversation is taking place?”
“Yes, although I might add something after the meeting is over that I want to remember.”
“And what is the purpose of this note-taking?”
“Well, to remind me of the information.”
“Who else sees this form?”
“No one, except my secretary, who might see it while she is affixing it to the file or-that’s about it.”
“And she might read it?”
“I have never told my secretary not to read it. She is free to read it. She needs to know what the case is about in order to perform her duties.”
“Does the client see this form?”
“Never.”
“If I asked you as your client to give me a copy, why wouldn’t you give me one?”
Nina said, “Because I may place my personal reactions and judgments into those notes. Not just the information stated. These are my personal confidential notes.”
“Are they entered into a computer at any point?”
“Never.”
“Where are those intake forms kept?”
“In a locked file behind my secretary’s desk.”
“All the time?” Nolan had begun walking back and forth as she warmed up.
Nina watched her like a cobra hypnotized by a flute-playing swami.
“From time to time I take files home that contain client-intake notes.” She glanced at Jack, who hid his embarrassment on her behalf well from the court and poorly from her. Oh, why in hell had she done that!
“And why would you take files home?”
“To work on them.” Do not volunteer, she reminded herself. Nolan was leading her toward the precipice.
“Did you, on September sixth of last year, take the client file of Mr. and Mrs. Vang to your home? The file that contained your intake interview?”
“Yes.” Nolan took her through the truck sequence, the evening, the storm, her fatigue, the lost key, the next morning, and the realization that the files had been in the truck. Nina kept her voice low and pleasant. She looked at the judge, as she had so often counseled her clients to do, but he turned his eyes to something on Nolan’s table and did not notice. She felt again, acutely, how she had let the three sets of clients down, but right alongside that feeling ran a defiance she simply could not quash.
“When was the next time you saw the Vang file?” Nolan asked, pacing in front of her, not looking at her either. Nolan was trying to keep her train of thought, keep the rhythm going, get the points out bang-bang-bang. Aware of Nolan’s thinking and Jack’s thinking as well as her own, Nina felt psychologically jerked around, as though she were playing all the roles in an enigmatic drama.
“I didn’t see it until my attorney and I went to your office. You called my attorney and said that the file had been recovered from Marilyn Rose, the previous witness.”
“And at that time did you come to my office with Mr. McIntyre?”
“Yes.”
Nolan dug out Exhibit 16. Nina tensed. “Is this the file you saw at my office?”
Nina took the exhibit and saw the familiar blue label, “Kao Vang.” “I’d have to look inside.” Nolan nodded and Nina opened it. The only contents were the three sheets of scribbled notes she had taken. The claim and its supporting documents had been kept in another file. She turned to the last page and saw the last sentences, the damning ones she hadn’t written.
Nolan said very carefully, “And is that the file you saw in my office, with the same contents?”
“Yes, it’s the one I saw in your office.”
“With the three-page form inside?”
“Yes, but this is not the three-page form in my original file. This form has been altered.” At last we come down to it, Nina thought.
The judge seemed to sigh and deflate a little. He looked down upon her at last, and she nervously decided she preferred his detachment after all.
“So,” Nolan said. “It’s the same manila folder?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the first page of notes you wrote at the time of the interview?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.”
“Same second page?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.”
“Same third page?”
“No. There are additional words. The last sentences. I didn’t write them.”
“These words? ‘Client breaks down, says he set fire himself! Advised him don’t say any more, don’t want to hear this’?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Reilly, please close that exhibit. Now, I want you to tell me the first full sentence on the second page.”
“Objection!” Jack said. “Irrelevant. Just because she can’t recite the whole thing by memory doesn’t prove that she can’t recognize words she never wrote.”
“She says she doesn’t remember writing these words,” Nolan said. “Let’s see what words she does remember.”
“That’s not a fair test, Judge. She knows what she was thinking at the time, what information she had heard at the time. That’s one reason she knows she didn’t write the words, because of the fact that the information was never given to her.”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Counsel,” Judge Brock said. “I will allow some limited testing of the witness’s memory as to the file contents.”
“The first full sentence on the second page, Ms. Reilly,” Nolan said, coming closer. “What does it say?”
“I have no idea,” Nina answered. “However, I know that what I wrote in that first sentence was based on something the client told me. So I know I wrote it. I also know that the last sentences on the third page are forged because they reflect information my client never gave me.”
“But you testified earlier that the notes often contain observations and judgments that are your own thoughts, did you not?”
“Yes, but the forged statements were not observations or judgments of mine at the time of the interview.”
“You also testified that you sometimes add things in later, after the client has left.”
“I didn’t add those final nineteen words. They were forged.”
“So you say. Is that your handwriting in those final sentences?”
“It looks like my handwriting. I might not even know it wasn’t my handwriting, except I know I never wrote those last words. That’s a forgery.”
“You’ll admit it looks like your handwriting?”
“It’s a decent forgery, I guess.”
“You insist that it’s a forgery. So who forged it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I can only speculate.”
“But do you have any personal knowledge? Can you enlighten us in some verifiable fashion as to who, why, when, where, anything at all?”
“Not of my own personal knowledge. However, I feel this is part of a pattern. In all three of the files there was some sort of interference prejudicial to the client. In the Vang case, these sentences were forged. In the Brandy Taylor matter, Cody Stinson received an anonymous call. In the Cruz matter, Ali Peck was called anonymously. Mr. Cruz has also now filed a blatantly false charge against me.”
“You may feel all sorts of things. But do you have any proof that there is someone out there trying to harm your clients?”
“The whole train of events. The theft of my files in the first place.”
“But that could just as easily have been a car thief who inadvertently rode off with your files, am I correct? For all you know?”
“But then the file contents were read and used. That’s more than a car theft.”
“Do you have any personal knowledge that the person who, as you put it, interfered in each case is the same person each time?”
“Makes sense to me,” Nina said. “Person or persons.”
“Okay, let’s look more closely at your theory that this is all part of a pattern. Now in the Brandy Taylor matter, Ms. Taylor told you, and you noted in the file, that she had evidence that Mr. Stinson had committed a murder. And I will remind you that Mr. Stinson testified that there was then a call to him stating exactly this damaging information.”
“Correct.”
“And in the Cruz matter, Mr. Cruz told you, and you noted in the file, that a witness named Ali Peck had information harmful to his custody case. And then let me represent to you and to the court that attorney Jeffrey Riesner will testify that he received a phone call informing him precisely about this harmful witness.”
“Yes.” Nina knew where Nolan was going, and that Jack couldn’t stop her. Helpless, she clenched her fists tight, holding on to her anger.
“So the file contents were read and reported to others, as you say.”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t it true that exactly the same thing happened in the third case? That your client Mr. Vang told you a secret, just as Ms. Taylor and Mr. Cruz did. You wrote it down. And just as in those two cases, Heritage was contacted, and the company was told the damaging information. Isn’t that the pattern?”
“No,” Nina said, continuing the struggle to keep her feelings off her face and out of her voice.
“This third party, whom none of us has identified, if this third party did all this, it would seem that his M.O. was to reveal secrets, not to make them up, wouldn’t it?”
“The Vang case was different. There was no secret in that case.”
“Mr. Vang didn’t break down and tell you that he had burned down his own store?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Mrs. Vang never said that?”
“No!”
“You didn’t learn that from someone and add it to your own notes?”
“No!”
“Who did burn down that store, then?”
“The police haven’t arrested anyone.”
“So Mr. Vang hasn’t been cleared?”
“He was never arrested. There’s no evidence that he burned his store down!”
“Oh, yes there is. There’s his confession in your file. And the little matter of his flight to Laos.”
Nina drew a long breath. “Even if he confessed to me, which he didn’t, it would be privileged information, inadmissible in any real court.”
“Strange to hear you say that, when it was your carelessness that allowed it to fall into the public eye, isn’t it?”
“Objection,” Jack said. “Argumentative.”
“Sustained. Let’s move on, Counsel.”
“Isn’t it true that there is no other suspect in connection with that fire and that Mr. Vang admitted to you he caused the fire?”
“Compound,” Jack said.
“Rephrase the question.” It was dizzying. Nolan was cross-examining Nina on direct examination. Nina struggled to get her bearings. She couldn’t anticipate what Nolan would ask next. The suspense in this box made strategic thinking impossible. Every moment, she felt the guillotine blade trembling above.
“Did Mr. Vang admit he caused the fire at the time of the interview?”
“No. No.”
“Did he deny it?”
“In so many words, yes.”
“Isn’t it true that you conspired with the Vangs to put in a fraudulent claim for them, knowing the arson was caused by Mr. Vang?”
“No, that is not true. Why would I put my career in jeopardy by doing something so unethical and criminal?”
“You’re a sole practitioner?”
“Yes.”
“Your income varies sometimes substantially from month to month?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you charge Mr. Vang for this work you did for him?” Nolan held up the exhibit that contained her billing to the Vangs.
“Two thousand four hundred dollars.”
“For writing a letter to the insurance company?”
“The case involved an extensive set of exhibits. I put in numerous hours helping the Vangs collate their receipts.”
“Couldn’t your secretary have done that? Collate receipts?”
“I preferred to do it.”
“Let me see, you were charging forty dollars an hour to collate receipts, so that would be-oh, here it is. Sixty hours. Sixty hours you put in to write this letter?”
“To meet with the clients, to help them assemble their claim, to negotiate, to write the claim letter, to follow up-yes. Sixty hours. In the end, the negotiated claim was for more than two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Isn’t it true that the price for your honor and integrity was two thousand four hundred dollars? That you were willing to commit a fraud for that amount, assuming you could hide behind the attorney-client privilege and no one would ever know your client had told you he did the arson?”
“Objection! Argumentative, compound, misstates the testimony, calls for a conclusion,” Jack said.
“It’s totally untrue,” Nina answered before the judge could rule, but her voice was choked. She could not disregard the cavalcade of feelings coursing through her, no matter how determined she felt. Such a pathetic amount of money it was they figured for the price of her soul. “I’m proud of my profession! I would never…!”
Judge Brock cut her off. “I will sustain the objection. Rephrase, Counsel.”
“That’s all right, Your Honor. I am finished with this witness.”
“Mr. McIntyre?”
“Ms. Reilly,” Jack said. “I just want this to be very clear for the record. Are you positive you never wrote those last nineteen words?”
“Positive.”
“You had no intent to defraud the insurance company, and so far as you know, Mr. Vang did not commit any arson?”
“That’s right.”
“You spent sixty hours working on this claim and obtained a settlement of two hundred and ten thousand dollars for your clients?”
“Yes.”
“Let the record reflect that Ms. Reilly’s fee amounted to one point one percent of the recovery,” Jack said. “I have nothing further of this witness.”
“We will adjourn. Court will resume at three.”
Freed, Nina got out of the box and walked tall back to Jack’s table. Gathering up documents from the other table, Nolan gave her a cynical smile. Jack took Nina by the arm. “Out we go,” he said.
The elevator arrived, jammed with people. Jack pushed forward and stuffed her into an invisible gap.
“How did I do?” she asked Jack as they ate sandwiches across the street.
“You sounded tremulous, but Brock will make allowances for that,” Jack said.
“I didn’t feel scared, Jack, if that’s what you’re thinking. My anger shook me. I had no idea how difficult it would be testifying. I wanted to leap off the stand and land a good one-two on Nolan’s nose. I kept seeing those dumb glasses under my high heels, broken on the floor. I bet her eyes look weak without them.”
“You okay now?”
“Yeah.”
“Chin up.”
After the break, Nolan called Sandy to the stand. She sat down in the box, arranging herself calmly. Dignified and impeccable, she wore her standards, a denim blue skirt and a white blouse, and had spiked her upswept black hair with a turquoise stick. Nina knew she had never testified in court before but wasn’t worried about Sandy. She could take Nolan down with a sneeze.
“So you took the new file that was handed to you and affixed the Client Intake Interview form to the back of the file?” Nolan asked.
“Yes. Like I always do.”
“Did you read the notes?” Judge Brock leaned in closer, wanting to hear the answer to this one.
“Might have,” Sandy said.
“What’s she doing!” Nina whispered. Jack shook his head slightly. They were both astounded. Sandy had told them several times that she had read the notes.
“Might have? Did you or did you not?”
“I might have.”
“You mean you have forgotten whether you read them?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Sandy said. “I’m the only one that does that.”
“Well, what do you mean, ‘might have’?”
“Maybe I did,” Sandy said. “I often did.”
“It was your practice to read the intake notes?”
“I often did.”
Clearly unnerved by Sandy’s attitude, Nolan handed Sandy the exhibit and had her read the notes. “Did you read these before or not?” she demanded. “You must answer to the best of your recollection.”
“I may well have,” Sandy said, nodding her head at the file. “I usually did.”
“Your Honor, I request that this witness be compelled to answer the question.”
“I think she’s doing the best she can,” Brock said. “Ms. Whitefeather, did you have any knowledge from that file or otherwise that Ms. Reilly knew her client had committed an arson?”
“No, sir. If I read these notes at the time, and it was my practice to do that, these last two sentences weren’t there. I do know that. Because I would have talked to her about it if they were. And she never would have filed the claim. Never. She’s one of the honest ones.”
“Request that whole statement be stricken,” Nolan said, glowering.
“She’s honest,” Sandy said again. “Unlike some I have known.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked the question,” Judge Brock said. “Sorry, Counsel. But her answer stands.”
A T LAST, A break.
Nina got into the elevator for the sixth floor with Jack with her head high and her self-confidence at an all-time low. Her entire life had been served up on a plate to prejudiced critics who made their livings feeding off the failures of their colleagues. Gayle Nolan didn’t hide her intolerance or feign objectivity. She hadn’t been acting; she felt disdain for Nina. Contempt, even! Nina’s colleague, who didn’t respect her, who even wanted to see her on her knees!
Although Judge Brock was less overt, she had a definite impression that her very presence in his courtroom embarrassed him, as if, in his view, only the worst lawyers fell this far down the system. He lumped her in with the dregs.
And Jack, standing beside her, humming a little tune? What did she want from him at this low point? Reassurance that she was a good person, this was what she wanted. But Jack gave her what she herself gave her clients: objectivity, strategy, a push forward. He assessed her like he assessed steak in the market. He had other worries besides her emotional well-being.
She felt like running right out those doors onto Howard Street, getting into her truck, and driving-where? She would never again look at a stricken client’s face without remembering this day.
Assuming she ever had a client again.
Their turn had come. With Kao Vang unavailable in the hills of Laos, they had only two witnesses for the defense on the Vang count, Mrs. Vang, who wouldn’t be arriving until later, and the handwriting expert, Lyuba Gleb, who was waiting for them as they came out of the elevator.
“Hello, there,” she said, shaking hands with Jack. “How is it going?”
“Just fine,” Jack said.
“You look so nice today, Jack,” Mrs. Gleb said. “I had no idea.” A chic woman of a certain age, she wore a neatly fitted Chanel suit. The flaring, emphatic eyebrows gave her the look of character she wore so gracefully. Her Roman nose and lips were accentuated by a faint mustache, and it all added up to a formidable, smiling, relaxed lady.
“You look ready for anything they can throw at you,” Jack said.
“What is to throw?” Mrs. Gleb said. “I can only tell the truth. Although, of course, it is a truth about art. They have their own expert all ready to refute what I say, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Dr. Harvey Pell. I don’t see him around.”
“Look for a bright spot in any room. He seeks the limelight. You should see his signature, two lines under it like he is Napoleon. So they have brought him all the way from Chicago. He is competent, so I was surprised to read his opinion.” She turned to Nina. “Don’t worry, darling, I am right and I will make the judge see this.”
“Mrs. Gleb. You are a questioned-document examiner?” Jack asked.
“Yes. My specialties are handwriting identification, disputed handwriting, anonymous letters, and graffiti. I perform infrared photo work of all sorts. I am an expert on ink identification and on nineteenth-century paper. I have performed this work since 1972.”
“What is your educational background?”
“I received my baccalaureate in chemistry from the Sorbonne in 1970. I was employed by the Sureté in Paris to assist in certain analyses of papers in a war-crimes case. That is where I received my on-the-job training. I was sent to the U.S. to take part in several seminars on handwriting identification during the seventies. I continued working at the Sureté and became head of the department investigating questioned documents in 1978.”
“Please describe your experience.”
“I served as head of the department from 1978 to 1984. During this time I often testified in the French court system. I began consulting for Interpol in the area of check forgeries. In 1985 I accepted a position as chief document examiner with the Bank of America and oversaw all of its forensic documents cases for the following ten years. I then went into independent consulting and most especially assisting police departments all over the country in questioned-documents cases.”
“In which courts have you previously qualified as an expert witness in this area?”
“I have qualified and testified as a questioned-document examiner in various courts in Douglas County and Washoe County, Nevada; in Queens and Manhattan counties, New York; in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties in California during the past five years.”
“Have you-”
“I am a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the International Association for Identification, and I am a member of and certified by the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.”
“And are you-”
“In addition to my consulting work, I have taught numerous seminars for bank and insurance examiners all over the country.”
“Request that this witness be qualified as an expert in the area of examination of questioned documents,” Jack said.
Nolan barely looked up. “No objection.”
Jack picked up his legal pad. “During November of last year, were you requested by me to examine a certain original document and to provide your expert opinion as to whether the last two sentences of that document were written by the same person who authored the rest of the document?”
“Yes, you retained me for that purpose.”
“Directing your attention to Exhibit 18, is this the document I gave you to examine?”
Mrs. Gleb took the exhibit. From a pocket she pulled out a small box and from the box she took a small magnifying eyepiece, which she appeared to screw into her eye. She bent to the document, and suddenly, all her animation froze on the task. Even her breathing halted. She wasn’t kidding around.
She lifted her head and rejoined them in court. “Yes, this appears to be the original document. I recognize the writing. I know it as well as my own at this moment.”
“All right. And did you examine the document during the month of December and thereafter?”
“Yes. It was obtained for me by you, and I examined it at my lab. I returned it to you in early March.”
“And what did you understand to be the purpose of your examination?”
“Well, as you said earlier, to find out if this attorney, Ms. Reilly, who did write all of the document up to the last two sentences, also wrote the final nineteen words.”
“Please describe the steps you took in examining the document.”
“First, I examined the ink content. I had it analyzed by a lab that I have used for years, Allied Laboratories. Their report came back in January.”
“And their conclusion?” Jack had the report and Nolan had stipulated that it could come into evidence.
Mrs. Gleb raised an eyebrow. “The ink in the final nineteen words was identical to the ink in the previous sentences.”
“What did that mean to you?”
“That the same pen had been used. I called you and questioned you further.”
That the pen used in the forgery belonged to her had distressed Nina for a full day. Only late that evening did she figure it all out and call Jack.
“You asked about the circumstances of the theft of the document, correct?” Jack asked.
“Yes. And you advised me that Ms. Reilly’s briefcase had been stolen. And inside was her Waterman pen. I had the ink reanalyzed, and all the ink used on this document was the standard ink used in Waterman ballpoint-pen cartridges.”
Nolan took notes, unperturbed. She knew all this already.
“Were you able to make any sort of examination as to the paper?”
“Just on the off chance that the entire third sheet might have been substituted, I performed my own analysis of the sheet. The third sheet was from the same standard type of yellow legal tablet as the others. I could not determine from the paper anything else. I did examine the entire document microscopically for overwriting, underwriting, any evidence of alteration. I found no sign of alterations.”
“What other examination did you undertake?”
“In my primary examination, I compared the last sentences, which are the ones in question, with the writing in the rest of the document. I used glass alignment plates to check the angle of writing, the height, the spacing. I used a comparison microscope as to one word that was repeated, the word don’t. I examined all the writing on the third page using magnifications from ten to fifty times in an attempt to ascertain whether there were signs of forgery.”
“And what would be some of the signs you might look for?”
“For example, signs of tracing. Signs of hesitation in the writing, wavering. Difference in pen pressure. Difference in slant and shape of letters. As to the writing itself, differences in, as I’ve said, height, angle, spacing.”
“Were you able to come to any conclusion regarding the question you were asked to address?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what was your conclusion?”
“I determined the writing in the last two sentences was a forgery. By a forger of limited skill and mediocre talent, I must add.”
“And on what specifically did you base this conclusion?”
At Mrs. Gleb’s signal, the bailiff brought up a slide on a screen to her right. Nina couldn’t see it very well.
“Lights,” Brock said.
The last words floated up there in the darkness.
“No immediate sign of hesitation. The writing flows,” Mrs. Gleb said. “However, there is an alteration in the pace of the writing, the flow, here. Look at the two dots above the i’s. They are directly above although the rest of the writing rushes forward, like Ms. Reilly’s writing. These i’s were dotted too carefully, later. Compare this with Ms. Reilly’s enthusiastic, optimistic i on page two of her notes.”
The i’s appearing in the phrase liquor-store killings in the part of the document Nina had written had dots that were far to the right of the letter. Nina looked at her i’s. They did seem to hurry toward the right margin of the paper.
But there was more to come. “Now the ends of the words,” Mrs. Gleb said. “Examine the final nineteen words again.” Magnified several times, they achieved the monumental abstract forms of a Motherwell painting, which was fitting, considering the monumental effect of these nineteen words on her life. To Nina, the last sentences looked like they arose out of the same hand as all the others-hers.
“Now look at this sentence from page one,” Mrs. Gleb went on. “I have put the two sentences side by side for comparison.” Nina saw no difference. “Note the terminals on the final letters of each word. The final letters in the last sentence have very small tails on them, you see? This writer wanted to put on even longer tails but restrained himself or herself. The writer of the last sentence wanted the final strokes to go upward, the sign of an extrovert, a gregarious person. You know how the song goes, ‘people who need people’? Our forger probably enjoys parties and loads up his or her spare time with all kinds of frivolous social events.
“Now, in contrast, study the final letters on the words Ms. Reilly admits she has written. No tails. The letters finish and by golly they are finished. Abruptly. Look here. The final stroke on the small d comes down below the basic line. This is a primitive stroke and denotes that the writer is opinionated and perhaps unreasonable at times. Ms. Reilly is perhaps a stubborn personality who casts off unnecessary details. She is not gregarious. She is not extroverted.
“Third point of difference. The breaks between letters. Look at the word advised from the last sentence. Note the breaks after the letters a and d. Under the microscope-where is that slide-thank you-very faint connecting lines can be seen. The forger is again acting contrary to his or her real personality in placing breaks between the strokes. The forger wants to connect these letters to the rest of the word, because he or she is a logical person, wary of intuition.
“All forgers are devious by nature, able to subsume the real personality. This forger is able to duplicate Ms. Reilly’s handwriting in a workmanlike manner, with only small, crass hints of form that reveal a covert crudeness in the character. He or she has some limited talent as a craftsman, with these limitations exposed by the roughness of this effort. It is Ms. Reilly, with her tricky breaks between letters-look here, she is practically printing-who is the creative person, the artist. I must say I cannot understand what she is doing in the law.”
As this unfortunate sentence came out of the garrulous expert’s mouth, Nina tried to suppress a nervous giggle. She hoped the judge wouldn’t agree with Mrs. Gleb.
“Anything else?” Jack said quickly.
“Point four. The loops that extend downward from the y and the f. Look at the lower loops of the nineteen words in question. The forger extends the stroke downward and there is just the minutest angle as he swoops into a big loop like Ms. Reilly’s. He doesn’t really want to make that big loop, he just wants a long line down. He is faking it.” Nina stared at the letters. The lower loops looked enormous. The bottoms of some of the loops didn’t look smooth, as though someone had done just what Mrs. Gleb was saying. She pictured the forger in a workshop lit by candlelight, crafting away like Geppetto.
“This forger is a practical type, perhaps interested in money. A controlling personality. Not a natural looper. In contrast, Ms. Reilly makes almost exaggerated lower loops, expressing the earthy demands made upon her by her own nature. Her loops indicate that her nature is sensuous. Her instinctive physical drives are strong.”
Mrs. Gleb paused while Nina died of embarrassment. She hadn’t sat in on Jack’s previous discussions with Mrs. Gleb.
“Anything else you based your decision on?”
“A strong feeling, my own intuition based on many years of experience,” Mrs. Gleb said. “However, I would have disregarded that if I did not find the other external evidence I have discussed.”
“And your conclusion, once again, based on your years of training and experience?”
“The final nineteen words were not written by the same person who wrote the rest of the document.”
“Thank you very much. No further questions.”
Gayle Nolan got up, every line in her face arched and incredulous. “Mrs. Gleb, what are the names of the last two books you have published?”
“Let me see. I have published ten. The last book was titled Graphology in Everyday Life.”
“And the one before that?”
“The Psychology of the Hand.”
“That is also supposed to be a book about graphology?”
“Yes. Graphology is my current area of interest.”
“What exactly is graphology?”
“It is a type of psychology, a method of determining personality by examining handwriting.”
“And you used graphology in making these observations about the last sentences and the preceding sentences in Exhibit 18, didn’t you?”
“Over the years I have developed greater insight into traditional methods of examining questioned documents using the methods of graphologists, and I took advantage of my insight in this case, yes.”
“Now, you testified that you examined the ink on the two samples and found them to be identical, right?”
“Yes. From the same pen, the lab concluded.”
“And you assume that the forger used Ms. Reilly’s pen, which was found when the briefcase was stolen?”
“That’s what I understood.”
“But in fact you have no personal knowledge that the pen was in the briefcase, right?”
Mrs. Gleb, unflappable, said, “None of us was there at that time. However, I saw the contents of the briefcase as listed in the police report Ms. Reilly gave on the day after the theft, and she mentioned her Waterman pen.”
Nice comeback, Nina thought.
“Let’s assume that we don’t know what happened to the pen,” Nolan said. “And all you had to go on was that the ink was identical. What would be your conclusion then? Based on that one fact alone?”
Jack stood up and said, “I think we’re running into trouble with this hypothetical. I object, lack of foundation. It’s not a fair question, Judge. No handwriting examiner ever looked at just one thing.”
“I understand the point, Counsel,” Judge Brock told Nolan. “We’ll go on.”
“All right, Your Honor. Now, Mrs. Gleb, the paper didn’t help you either, did it, since the questionable sentences were written on the same paper?”
“That is true.”
“So you were quite handicapped in terms of doing any sort of chemical analysis?”
“Yes.”
“Did you look for fingerprints?”
“Yes. Allied Laboratories did that. They discovered many smudged fingerprints. Apparently the papers passed from hand to hand at the insurance company. None were identifiable.”
“So you had no hard evidence of any forgery, isn’t that right?”
“Objection,” Jack said. “What’s hard evidence?”
“Let’s rephrase,” Brock said.
“The point is, all you had was the handwriting itself, is that correct?” Nolan asked.
“It was quite sufficient.”
“Okay, you said that you examined the angle of the writing, the slant, the spacing. You couldn’t conclude anything from that, right?”
“Not from that.”
“Did you find any evidence of tracing?”
“I would say, no.”
“Differences in pen pressure?”
“Nothing obvious.”
“Wavering? Hesitation?”
“No. This was a confident person.”
“So you based your conclusion on four factors, you testified.”
“That, and my overall experience. Many, many years of experience.”
“Right. The first factor you mentioned was the dot above the i.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Now, exactly how many i’s were you able to observe in these disputed final phrases?”
“Six.”
“And in every case, was the dot directly above the short line of the letter?”
“As I testified, only two of the six i’s had dots directly above the line. But these distinct variations from all the other i’s in the document are quite dispositive in my opinion. These two dots were damning, as they show a deliberation and care that does not come from a person taking notes, but only from a person forging a document.”
“The two damning dots were above, rather than to the right, as in the other i’s on the other pages?”
“Yes.”
“What was the difference?”
“I don’t know what you mean, the difference.”
“Between the dots? What you called the forged dots and the nonforged dots. How much out of alignment were the nonforged dots from their roots or slashes, whatever you call the rest of the i?”
“Well, the difference would be in millimeters.”
“Couldn’t Ms. Reilly have made a couple of dots just a millimeter closer to the main letter because she had something on her mind that was affecting her writing a little? Something that maybe made her feel a little less headlong than usual? Like finding out her client was a crook and deciding right then, as she was writing, that she would go along with it?”
“It’s true the sample was small. Only the two letters. However, people don’t usually vary much in the same piece of writing written at the same time.”
“But she’d just had a big piece of news there at the end.”
“Even so.”
“Okay, let’s move on to your second factor. What you call the terminals on the final letters of the words. You say there is evidence that in the questioned passage this extroverted forger wanted to curve up the terminals?”
“Yes. There was a tendency.”
“Let’s see that side-by-side slide again. A tendency, you say. Does that have anything to do with something we can observe?”
“Slide 12, please,” Mrs. Gleb said. A giant swooping geometrical design appeared. “That is the terminal s on the final word, this, found in the last sentence,” Mrs. Gleb said. “Note the slight movement upward.”
“It’s slight, all right. In fact, it’s microscopic, this tendency, isn’t it?”
“Most crucial details in this work are only observable under a microscope.”
“Hmm. Your third factor. The breaks between the letters. Looks to me like this so-called forger did put breaks between the letters.”
“Under the microscope I saw faint connecting lines.”
“Show us the slides then.”
“The slides did not pick up these slight lines.”
“Ah! Because they were only tendencies, too?”
“I saw them, but there are limits to photography. There was an almost imperceptible attempt to connect the letters in several instances.”
“Which you cannot show us in court today?”
“I can only testify they were seen by me.”
“And from these imperceptible tendencies, by the way, you adduced quite a lot about our so-called forger. He or she is a logician, a craftsman who will never be a Rembrandt. Unlike Ms. Reilly, who could dazzle the art world?”
“These are my observations.”
“These are your fantasies.”
“Objection!”
“Let’s move on.” Judge Brock obviously didn’t like to rule on things because inaction cut down on points to appeal.
“And now we move on to your fourth and final factor. Put that slide up, please. Okay, we have a little angularity on two of the letters, on the lower loops, right before they start to loop upward.”
“Where the forger wanted to stop.”
“You certainly are deep into the mind of this mythical forger, aren’t-”
“Objection!”
“Move on.”
“I’d like a ruling.”
“Sustained.” That’s more like it, Nina thought. At least a tiny semblance of real law practice endured.
“So the forger wanted to stop? To just make a straight line instead of a lower loop?”
“Correct. That is demonstrated by this stoppage, this angle here, for example.”
Nolan smiled. “It was hard for this speculative person to duplicate the evidence of Ms. Reilly’s huge appetite for life, her sexual vigor?”
“Objection!” Jack roared.
“She’s the one reading palms,” Nolan said.
“Counsel, restrain yourself,” Judge Brock said, his voice as affectless as ever, still attempting to demonstrate that he was a mere shell of a man, a nonpartisan vehicle for justice, in contrast to Nolan, who now openly flaunted the instincts of a starving she-wolf.
“That’s what you testified, isn’t it? The so-called forger is practical and money-oriented, not much of a lover, I take it. He was faking it, right? But according to you no one could ever accuse Ms. Reilly of faking it.”
“Your Honor, Counsel’s sarcasm isn’t getting us anywhere and is squandering the court’s valuable time,” Jack said. Nina bristled at his mildness. In good old Judge Milne’s court back at Lake Tahoe, the bailiff would be carting Nolan off to the tank, high heels kicking, on a contempt citation. Not only was Nolan assassinating Nina’s character, she was indulging in jokes at her expense, trivializing the whole proceeding as unworthy of serious attention. She wanted Nina clapped quickly into the stocks so the outraged townspeople could hurl rotten eggs at her.
“How much of your conclusion is based on court-approved techniques of questioned-documents analysis, versus graphology, Mrs. Gleb?”
“It is all relevant and important.”
“You can’t separate the two?”
“There is no separation. Let me say to you, Madam Attorney, that any examiner who tells you he isn’t using his intuition in the examination isn’t doing his job.”
“Right, intuition. I have nothing further for this witness.”
“You may step down.”
Mrs. Gleb left in a cloud of expensive perfume.
Jack had told Nina he tried out two other examiners before trying Mrs. Gleb, who had seemed so-so unperfumed back then. After examining the document, these alternative experts both admitted the likelihood of forgery, but had refused to stake their reputations on it.
Nina looked at the gigantic, swooping strokes of her handwriting, naked and eager on the screen. She looked down at her legal pad, at the notes she had been taking this morning with their huge lower loops everywhere. She turned the page hastily.
“We will take a final short break. You have one more witness on the Vang matter, is that right?” Judge Brock asked Jack.
“Yes. Mrs. See Vang,” Jack said.
“All right. We’ll take her then.”
Outside in the general waiting area, Mrs. Gleb cornered them before they could escape. “Know one thing,” she said. “I am right in what I say. You must ignore the mean-spirited sarcasm, as I’m sure the judge will do.”
“Thanks for coming, Mrs. Gleb,” Jack said. “We appreciate it.”
“Right is on your side, darlings, and what’s more practical, I’m there, too. Call me if there’s anything more I can do for you. I’m at the Marriott until the weekend.”
T HE BREAK ALLOWED just enough time for mutual recriminations.
“Why couldn’t you control her better?” Nina said to Jack as soon as they were on the next floor down and out of earshot. “She had some important points to make that had nothing to do with my voracious sexual appetite! I’m sure she signs her name with giant capitals, the better to express her inflated ego.”
“I talked to her at least three times on the phone. I saw a summary of what she would testify. She never mentioned those lower loops. Sometimes they do get carried away up there on the stand, as you well know.”
“You should have seen it coming. She’s flamboyant. I could see that right away. An expert should be conservative.”
“Hey, we owe her. Remember, we couldn’t get any other expert, and the truth is, she has a fantastic reputation in spite of Nolan’s vivisection, and she didn’t come off as badly as you make out. The forger used the same ink as you, the same paper, and wrote just a few words. There was no signature, and the fact is, nobody else had the guts and confidence to stick his neck out.”
“Graphology,” Nina said. “Sorta like astrology, right? I’m sure Judge Brock is having a private yuk in his chambers right now over that testimony. So how are we doing, Jack? Are we burying me alive? Because that’s how it feels.”
“Put aside your insecurity. Zip that lip and sit tight. We attack this thing point by point. Commit that to memory. Let’s go back in.”
Nina didn’t want to return to court and be a good girl. She was sick of Jack telling her what to do and irritated to trigger-finger sensitivity by her perpetual state of fury. She had abuse heaped up in her throat, backlogged. Jack deserved further tongue-lashing if she was to deliver him the conventional and complete client reflex.
She breathed four deep breaths, her mother’s advice from childhood for fending off tension and anger, and went back into the chamber of horrors, where the formidable Dr. Pell waited at the door.
The former FBI man, with his dark hair and devilish air, bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Andy Garcia. He kept his testimony earnest, succinct, and, well, Nina had to admit it, fair. To keep the issues straight and so that he could get back to work in Quantico, they had taken him out of order.
Gayle Nolan held the floor. Pell had brought his own set of slides, but he didn’t talk about loops. He testified merely that nobody could tell if the last sentences were forged or not, as the forensic evidence was insufficient and the sample too short for an examination of the phrasing. “There are no smoking guns,” he said. “No misspellings, no obvious variances from the preceding writing.”
“So the writing is consistent with the writing in the rest of the document?” Nolan asked.
“Yes, it’s consistent. But-”
“There is therefore no evid-”
“Objection,” Jack said. “Let the witness finish. He was stopped before he could complete his answer.”
“Did you wish to add to your answer?” Judge Brock said.
Ignoring Nolan, who clearly did not want him to continue, Dr. Pell said, “Yes. I have to add that while it is consistent, that does not mean that I can conclude that this sample is indeed the handwriting of the defendant. It’s consistent, but then a passable forgery will be consistent. I simply don’t have enough to go on. I can only say that there is insufficient evidence to conclude these nineteen words were forged.”
“There is no evidence that this is a forgery, Dr. Pell,” Nolan said. “None. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
Jack cross-examined Dr. Pell, making sure he reiterated his inability to draw a conclusion either way. So far, Pell had not injured them fatally and Jack kept it that way, sticking to his own agenda, making his points without allowing any wiggle room. Apparently Nolan had had the same trouble they had finding an unequivocal opinion.
Dr. Pell stepped down, leaving them all understanding that there was no way expert testimony would prove whether or not Nina had written the final words.
What they had in the Vang case at this point were two conflicting pieces of evidence: the writing itself, apparently made in the usual course of business and therefore legally presumed to be what it purported to be, and Nina’s testimony along with Sandy’s addition, bless her heart.
The only other witness they had would be Mrs. Vang, who had arrived and was waiting outside with the omnipresent Dr. Mai. She would testify that Kao Vang had spent the evening and night with her and therefore could not have set the fire.
During the preceding six months, much had happened in the Vang family. Kao Vang had left town and by all accounts was back in his home village in the middle hills of Laos, but he didn’t answer his letters. Mrs. Vang had divorced him and was now studying computer science at Fresno State. The children had stayed with her.
Nina had continued to learn about the Hmong in America and by now realized what tremendous steps away from tradition Mrs. Vang had taken in obtaining a divorce, in living alone, and even in keeping the children, who ordinarily would have stayed with the father’s family. The Vangs had suffered in the U.S. but they had survived, each in separate ways.
Kao Vang had taken his share of the money ahead of the insurance company’s lawyers and was a rich man now in his home country, pretty much untouchable by Heritage. But Mrs. Vang’s share of the settlement check had been placed in an escrow account pending the outcome of a civil lawsuit alleging fraud, which Heritage had filed against the Vangs.
And against Nina, as a coconspirator. She had been sued by Heritage, but the proceedings were on hold while this proceeding went forward. The fight over Mrs. Vang’s share of the settlement money, of course, meant that today, in this court, Mrs. Vang had a credibility problem, which Nina knew would be exploited to the fullest extent by Gayle Nolan.
Small and unassuming, Mrs. Vang came in, was sworn, and took the stand.
When a witness first sits down, an instant occurs in the box during which the rest of the courtroom takes a long look and forms impressions. Nina’s first reaction was personal. Mrs. Vang looked better than Nina had ever seen her. Her posture was erect and the exhausted expression from the days of collecting receipts and making the claim was gone. She wore a modest pantsuit and held a stylish purse in her lap. She did not look like a liar.
Nina’s second reaction was professional. Mrs. Vang might make an impressive witness. They should get everything they could from her. Jack watched her, too, squinting in his concentration, no doubt forming a similar opinion.
The only problem was that Mrs. Vang’s answers would have to be translated. She spoke only limited English. Nolan had agreed without comment that, in the absence of a local certified Hmong-language translator, Dr. Mai could interpret. Sitting in a chair directly in front of Mrs. Vang, between Nolan and the witness box, Dr. Mai wore the same old shirt and pants. He made no eye contact with Nina or Jack.
Judge Brock looked tired. Naptime. Not good. He consulted with his clerk in whispers.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Vang.”
Dr. Mai spoke briefly and she answered softly in English, “Good afternoon.”
Jack took her through the litany of misfortune that had befallen the family, first in Laos, then in the U.S. He came to the second robbery, in which Kao Vang had been armed and shot and killed the robber at the Blue Star Market.
“And you were present when all this occurred?”
“I was in the back room looking out through the curtain, very frightened. Mr. Vang, he pulled out the gun from under the cash register and he shot this man, Song Thoj.” Dr. Mai translated her words carefully, without emotion.
“What about the other man?”
Mrs. Vang looked troubled. She obviously didn’t want to talk about the other robber. She looked at Dr. Mai, who frowned.
“There was another person at the store that night, wasn’t there?” Jack said. “Mrs. Vang, you have sworn to tell the truth.”
She spoke. Dr. Mai’s frown deepened. He hesitated. A long moment passed before he translated her answer. “How did you know that?”
“Just answer the question,” Judge Brock told her.
Jack was already satisfied. He had established his new arson suspect but he forayed further, just as Nina would have done.
“Yes, there were two of them,” Mrs. Vang said quietly.
“And what happened after Mr. Vang shot one of them? What did the second person do?”
“Ran away.”
“And, to your knowledge, was this person ever arrested in connection with the robbery or arson?”
Struggling with herself, she shook her head. She did not want to say anything but did not want to commit perjury either.
“Speak up,” Brock said again, and she answered, “No.”
“So to your knowledge, this second robber saw his partner shot by Mr. Vang and he got away.”
“Yes.”
“Then your store burned to the ground some two months later?”
“Yes. Completely destroyed.”
“During the night of July fourth and into the following morning?”
“Yes. Independence Day it started burning. The fire went on for many hours.”
She spoke without rancor but Nina could hear the emotion camouflaged by her impassivity.
“And you were where during that entire night?” Jack asked.
“I worked at the store until five. Mr. Vang worked until twelve and then closed up. He came home by twelve-fifteen A.M. I was awake. We went to bed. About four A.M. the fire department called us to say the store was on fire. We went there right away without even taking the time to get dressed. Our Blue Star Market had already collapsed. Everything gone.”
Jack said, “Now, Mrs. Vang, was Mr. Vang with you that whole night between the time he got home and the time the fire department called?”
“Yes. We were in bed.”
“And you were present in Ms. Reilly’s office during the time of the first consultation with her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you or your husband ever tell Ms. Reilly that he started the fire himself?”
“No. We never said anything like that.”
“Thank you. Nothing further.”
Jack sat down, smiling.
Nina whispered, “You should have asked-”
“I got what we needed. Shh,” Jack said.
Nolan started in on Mrs. Vang. “So let’s see. Mrs. Vang, you’re telling us that your, um, ex-husband had nothing to do with this fire. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And you collected, or tried to collect, between the two of you, two hundred ten thousand dollars as a result of this fire.”
“I have collected nothing. The company took the money from me.”
“Ex-actly. And the company’s suing you, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you of course deny that your husband had anything to do with it? And he’s conveniently absented himself from court process so he doesn’t have to speak up?”
“Objection! What’s this ‘of course’? These editorial comments are improper, Judge.”
“Let’s move on,” Brock said. Nina was sick of the judge’s now stock response, which evaded so many issues.
“So you have all that money at stake, though?”
“Objection!”
“The point is taken, Ms. Nolan. Move on.”
Nolan took a breath, then pointed her finger at Mrs. Vang. “Did Ms. Reilly help you cook up this story about there being two robbers?”
“Objection!”
“Rephrase that, Counsel.”
“That testimony you just gave, that you saw a second robber, that’s untrue, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“You still claim a second person was present?”
“Yes.”
“Then, Mrs. Vang, why oh why didn’t you mention it in the police report? Why did you and your husband in fact tell the police that only one man, the man your husband killed, came to the store that night?” Nolan asked. She pushed her pointing finger closer to Mrs. Vang as she spoke, triumphant.
Mrs. Vang looked down. She spoke in a low voice. “I am ashamed to say we lied.”
“You lied then? Or you’re lying now?”
“No, there were two men.”
“Come on, Mrs. Vang. What reason could you possibly have to lie to the police when you had just gone through such a terrible event? Why would you lie to the police?”
Mrs. Vang began to weep. Dr. Mai looked distressed.
“Well, Mrs. Vang?” said Nolan.
In a voice punctuated by weeping, Mrs. Vang spoke, drawing out a large cotton handkerchief to hold to her eyes. “I can’t say,” she said.
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“I can only admit, there was another man. Because it is true.”
Nolan shook her head in disgust. “I have nothing further from this witness.”
“You may be excused,” Judge Brock said, but Jack was already saying “I just have a few questions on redirect.”
“Remain seated,” Brock told Mrs. Vang.
Jack bent his head toward Nina. “Well? Do we do this to her?”
“She won’t lie,” Nina said. “And the details are important, why the second man was motivated to commit arson. Ask her-ask her if she knew him.”
“Mrs. Vang,” Jack said, “had you ever seen this second man before?”
“I can’t say.” Jack glanced at Nina and she nodded.
“You knew this man, didn’t you? Mrs. Vang, you are in a court of law and you have sworn to tell the truth.”
“Yes. This is the land of the free,” Mrs. Vang said.
“You must speak the truth.”
“I am ashamed.” She wept.
Jack gave her a second. “You knew this man?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“Moua Thoj.”
“Same last name as the man your husband shot in his store?”
“Yes. Song Thoj’s brother.”
“Tell us about it, Mrs. Vang,” Jack said kindly.
Mrs. Vang spoke at some length this time, haltingly, in Hmong. Eventually Dr. Mai held up his hand to stop her. Nolan sat at her table, disdainful but also taking furious notes.
“She says-excuse me. Moua and his brother, Song, belonged to a gang in Fresno together. We told our daughter she cannot ever see Song, but our daughter lied to us and she saw him one day after school. We found out later. He was angry that we would not consider him to be our daughter’s husband. He and his brother, Moua, they came to the store and robbed it and shot my husband.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police who did this?”
“Because my husband said no. In our country a girl who lied to her parents and saw a boy alone is considered not a good person for a marriage. She dishonored our family. My husband almost died because of this dishonor. Better to try to handle it ourselves. So we made our daughter stay home from school, and my husband wanted to take her back to Laos.”
“But then there was a second robbery.”
“I believe the brothers came back to the store again to kill Mr. Vang, not to rob. Because still he would not allow the marriage. Their family-they had lost face. They came in and I was watching. And Song said, ‘You fool!’ to my husband. He had a gun. And Kao Vang reached under the counter and shot Song and killed him. Moua ran away.”
She spoke with the despair of a person telling the truth.
Judge Brock had awakened and pricked his ears. Nolan had stopped writing and gripped the side of the table as though she wanted to jump up.
“Then came the fire,” Jack said.
“My husband and I were having great trouble. He was very bitter that our daughter had brought all this harm to us. He insisted that she go back to Laos. I couldn’t let that happen. It is no good for women in Laos. She would have a terrible life. I thought, we must take our chances here. And so, after the fire, I left my husband and I took my daughter and son. I could not have done that at home. But in this country, women are free.”
“Are we just going to let this witness rattle on forever with her stories?” Nolan said.
Judge Brock said, “I want to hear this.”
“And did you ever see this Moua after your husband shot his brother?”
“We were still working at the store. He came in and threatened us again. He said Kao owed him revenge money because Kao killed his brother. I told him I would call the police. He ran away again. But the next night-then the fire. All was lost.”
“Mrs. Vang,” Jack said, “why didn’t you tell the police this time about Moua?”
“What is the use? What could they prove? My husband said, we are trying to get a settlement for losing our store and then we are going back to Laos right away and away from this country. I helped him. But I was unhappy and frightened. I will never go back to Laos. My daughter and son will be citizens. I left my husband and took my children. I am staying here.”
“Do you know where Moua is now?” Jack said.
“I hear his family moved to New York when an investigator showed up asking many questions one day some months ago. He won’t come back. He is afraid of the police coming now.”
So Paul had scared Moua Thoj away by asking all those questions back in September, Nina thought, and made things safer for the Vangs, a ramble in the dark that resulted in inadvertent good.
“And your daughter is where?”
“She is with me. She works at the same store as me.”
Jack gave Nina a look that said, anything else?
“We have suffered,” Mrs. Vang said. “But here there is hope.”
“I have nothing further,” Jack said.
Recess for the day. They marched out. Mrs. Vang and Dr. Mai came over to shake hands.
“We’ll get you your money,” Jack told her. “We’re going to win.”
“Good luck,” Nina said. “To you and your children.”
Bashing all around. Jack bashed Paul, Paul bashed Jack, and Bob had a birthday bash.
He was fourteen tonight, and since they were stuck in San Francisco, Paul had suggested the spinning Equinox restaurant for the celebration, based on Wish’s rave review. The view, spectacular at sunset, had turned foggy and now swirled romantic and ambiguous in gray, black, and white. Of course, the place lacked kid-pizzazz. Bob was the only person under thirty here, Nina thought, unless you counted how childish Jack and Paul were acting. They had traded bad jokes from the moment they met at the entrance to the restaurant. For men who collided as often as they did, they sure had fun together.
Fortunately, Bob seemed not to mind the company of adults or his recent exile. Since Nina had dragged him back with her to San Francisco to sleep in the Galleria Park Hotel on Sutter Street, he had amused himself exploring the city. Incapable of hanging around a hotel room doing schoolwork, so far he had spent his birthday riding around on the cable cars by himself for hours at a time while Nina sat in the court. He planned to take the ferry to Sausalito the next day. As a result, his face rubbed red by the wind, flush with health and fresh local lore, he couldn’t stop talking.
Although Jack had offered to put him up, Nina knew stranding him in Bernal Heights would just cause trouble. Downtown he could find so many things to do, and now that he was six feet tall, she didn’t worry as much about him in this city he knew well. Also, although she considered it, she couldn’t make herself go back to Jack’s condo, not with her memories of what had gone on in the past between her and Jack, and her fantasies of what had come after. That phase of her life had ended.
A waiter came by to take their orders, shutting Bob up while he pored over the menu. First, they chose drinks all around, with Bob deciding on root beer while the others dived into the harder choices. Paul and Jack engaged in a hot contest over dinner wine, then settled for one red and one white. The men picked food quickly, Paul ordering prime rib, Jack the pork tenderloin. Bob vacillated lengthily between penne pasta and salmon, driving the waiter to erase two orders before the pasta scored the winning vote. Nina went with the evocatively named lemongrass-skewered sea scallops.
The Bay Bridge tiptoed nearer, inching toward them like a virtual property tour as the floor spun, making a full revolution every forty minutes. Bob, gulping his root beer, stared out the window, fascinated by the misty scene. Rain began drizzling down the window and fought the fog.
“You going back to Carmel tonight?” Jack asked Paul.
“What? And miss the ongoing human drama happening right down there on Howard Street?” After a brief foray into the events of the day, they declared a moratorium on court talk. They all felt hopeful; they all felt like they needed to forget it all for an hour or two. Then Bob started talking about his favorite piece in a recent MAD magazine, an article about phrases you really don’t want to read in news articles about yourself.
“Helpless bystander,” Paul said.
“Hail of bullets,” Jack contributed.
“Horrified onlookers,” Nina said.
“Identified by dental records,” Bob said, winning the competition for the biggest laugh.
Tiring of that game, they small-talked about the big view outside. Nina tried to point out landmarks, but Bob knew them all and in the end, he proved to have the superior knowledge.
This was Bob’s fourteenth birthday and Nina wanted to celebrate him, his life, his importance to her. She raised a toast to him, recounting the story of his birth, which she always tried to do on his birthday. Bob listened happily. Paul and Jack made messy, funny follow-up toasts, harking back to themselves at fourteen, promising Nina Bob would not behave at all like they had behaved at his age, not to worry, while Bob assured her he planned to do exactly that.
While she smiled at the horsing around, she found her mind drifting away, in spite of her resolution, from Bob to tomorrow’s testimony on the Kevin Cruz count. What could motivate him to file that gigantic lie of a complaint? What would it take to get him to abandon it? Listening to the chat with half an ear, she pondered these questions until she noticed Bob watching her. She ruffled his hair, ashamed of herself. She was missing yet another milestone moment.
Still, she had an idea, and the idea turned in her mind like a windmill.
When the food came, the men attacked theirs. Bob twiddled his fork in the pasta and ate a few bites, and Nina tasted the shellfish and decided she was very hungry. The waiter brought cupcakes with candles, as she had arranged, and they all sang “Happy Birthday,” Jack hoarsely, Paul self-consciously, and Nina too loud, to make up for their small number. Afterward, Bob opened presents. Jack gave him a scrimshaw-handled penknife he had bought in the Caribbean. “Carved by a pirate,” he said with a wink. Paul gave him a certificate for karate lessons.
A knife and an education in how to fight, Nina thought, adding to the pile her own gift, the newest video-game system, a true gift of guilt. Now he could fight for real and for fake. All violent bases were officially covered.
His eyes opened very wide. “Mom, I can’t believe this!”
Neither could Paul or Jack, who had listened to her rail against video and computer games for years, but for once they must have agreed. Neither said a word as Bob opened two more boxes, with games that had names that made Nina cringe and Bob glow.
A few other small gifts from family and friends and a major contribution to his college fund from his grandpa rounded off the collection. Last, he opened his present from his father.
“How weird,” he said. “A Swedish dictionary.”
Everyone found the gift very mysterious, and the note accompanying the present even more suggestive: “Did you know the North Sea is warm enough to swim in?”
“I thought Kurt lived in Germany,” Jack said.
“He does. I’m just as mystified as you are,” Nina said. They bagged up the presents in a green garbage bag and left the restaurant.
Paul and Jack indulged in a final jousting match over who could drive her and Bob back to the hotel, which Paul won, asking Nina to join him for a nightcap in the bar downstairs. She promised to meet him in a few minutes.
Back in their room, Bob flopped on the bed. “This is the best birthday. This is the best city in the entire universe. Mom, thank you so much.”
She hugged him.
“Is it okay if I call my dad to thank him for the dictionary?” Bob yelled through the door as she washed her hands in the bathroom.
“Isn’t it the middle of the night for him?”
“He says call anytime. He says he doesn’t like to sleep much anyway.”
“Okay, then.”
When she came back into the room, Bob was deep in conversation. He waved her out, so she went downstairs to meet Paul.
Paul had switched to tonic water, but Nina had another glass of wine. “One more can’t possibly make a difference.”
“Drink water with it, then, like the Italians do. We don’t want the judge to get the wrong impression of our upright young do-gooder tomorrow morning, rolling her bloodshot eyes at him.”
“I think Bob loved his birthday party. Thanks for coming. The guest list would have been awfully sparse otherwise. It probably isn’t your favorite kind of thing.”
“I had a great time. Bob’s a good kid. It was nice to relax and remember there is life outside the courtroom, and it’s a pretty good life.” He paused. “Isn’t it, Nina?”
But she was distracted. “I keep thinking I’ve handled things badly. I didn’t push you to investigate more over the last six months-even though you nagged me about that more than once.”
“I do not nag.”
“I wanted to believe things would magically resolve.”
“Entirely natural. You didn’t want to face trouble, so you ignored it. Everybody does that.”
“Don’t defend me,” she said. “I get enough of that in court from Jack.”
They laughed together.
She took a breath. “Paul, it’s been hard. I’ve had doubts…”
“Big surprise.”
“No, hear me out. Almost everyone in my life tells me this job is destructive. But I’ve thought it through. Law’s part of me. It isn’t everything, but I believe, when it all shakes down, I’ve helped these people, in spite of it all. I stood up for them.”
“Yes, you have,” he said.
“But here’s what I’m facing right now. These people I tried to help are trying to ruin me. It’s demoralizing.”
Paul took her hand. “Get up.” He got the waiter to come over. “Save the table? We’ll be back in five,” he said, slipping him a bill. The waiter nodded and left.
He put a finger to his lips, took her by the arm, and led her straight out of the hotel and onto Sutter Street.
Neon shivered in the puddles. A man in a torn sweatshirt staggered by, hit Paul up for a buck, and moved on. A taxi careened around the corner, loaded with laughing passengers. Way up the hill, a cable car clanged, beginning its precarious descent through a riot of traffic.
“Yikes,” Nina said. “Kind of a contrast to the piano bar.”
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Paul said.
“It’s so clear after rain here. You can even see the stars.”
“Orion,” Paul said, pointing. “The one constellation I’m sure about.” He pulled her tight to keep her warm. “See what’s happening? Mad dashing to and fro. Chaos on the street. Stars exploding.”
“Guys peeing,” Nina said, watching one. “Ugh.”
Paul laughed. “You want life neat. It isn’t.”
“They’re saying I’m unfit to do my job.”
“You’re so much more than your job.”
They stood for a long time on the street. When they went back inside, Nina felt recharged, plugged into a power source. They warmed up again at their table. “I hate having the state bar after me. They’re my colleagues.”
“The bar court only operates based on the information it’s given-in this case, complaints that look perfectly legit. There’s a hidden agenda here, but it isn’t the California State Bar’s.”
“Yes,” she said. “We come back to that. My enemy.” She tinkled a spoon against her glass, took a sip, and tinkled it again. “Oh, Paul! Here’s an idea I had while we were celebrating with Bob.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about Mrs. Gleb. You know, after she testified she practically begged us to find something else for her to do.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t want Jack to know about this, okay? I don’t want him to get into trouble.”
“Then I’m your man.”
She hesitated for a moment. “It involves Mrs. Gleb, and it involves you, and it involves some pretty shady stuff.”
“I’m liking this.”
She explained what she had in mind. Paul took out a pocket notebook. They took turns writing in it, erasing, and adding for several minutes.
Nina said, “I believe Kevin wouldn’t have lied about our relationship on his own. He had nothing to gain. It’s my theory he is being manipulated by someone smarter and more powerful. Lately I’ve been thinking maybe he and Lisa are in cahoots.”
“What a wild thought,” Paul said. “So she put him up to hiring you and then accusing you of the harassment for some kind of sick revenge? Boy, that’s damned nefarious. She didn’t strike me as that smart. I can see her better taking a bat to your car.”
“Maybe she offered him a better deal on the custody?”
“I guess that would be her bargaining chip,” Paul said.
“Anyway, for the moment, Lisa’s out of the picture because she’s in Tahoe. But Kevin’s here.”
“So we put Officer Scholl and Jeffrey Riesner on the short list,” Paul said.
Nina nodded. “Now, Scholl was Kevin Cruz’s associate in the past. She worked closely with him on the case that got him his first promotion. She hates me. Maybe she’s blackmailing Cruz into doing this. Maybe she knows something about that drug seizure that would get him kicked off the force.”
“He planted the drugs on those college students?”
“Could be. Everyone said it was a strange bust.”
“Hey, how come he isn’t fired already, considering Ali, the underaged wood chopper?”
“I hear he got himself a good attorney for a change,” Nina said with a straight face.
They cracked up.
“Okay, let’s move on to the subject of Jeffrey Riesner,” Paul said.
“Okay. He loathes me. He knows that Sandy and I know about past activities regarding a will that was rewritten in his favor that could cost him his job. Even though we’ve kept our mouths shut, he has to be worried.”
“Then there are the clients you stole.”
“And the way I mortified him in front of the big gaming guys. Oh,” she said. “Those were good times.”
“But we have to consider what his connection is to Kevin,” Paul said.
“Right. Well, the only thing that connects them is the custody fight. Riesner represents Kevin’s wife. This presents a real problem. What in the world could Jeffrey Riesner do to benefit Kevin in any way?”
“How about-he promised to throw Lisa to the dogs. Maybe he told Kevin he knew something that would definitely assure that Kevin would win his kids in the permanent-custody hearing.”
Nina shook her head. “No. Riesner would never intentionally lose a case. Ten angels couldn’t persuade him to do that. Maybe a million bucks would, but Kevin doesn’t have a million bucks.”
“Has the permanent-custody hearing come up yet?”
“I believe it’s set in two weeks. There have been some delays,” Nina said.
“Because of Riesner?”
“Why, yes, now that you mention it. Paul, I think you might be on to something. Maybe I’m just collateral damage in a fierce divorce fight. Kevin cares more about his children than he cares about me. He sacrifices my reputation to get his kids. Kevin is a fool if that’s it, because Riesner won’t come through with his end of the deal.” She thought hard about that. “He’s got the timing worked out so that Kevin’s final custody hearing comes up after this hearing. He can get me, then double-cross Kevin later.”
“Kevin’s a cop. He’s not that stupid.”
“He is stupid, Paul. Stupid with desperation. I think he’d consider suicide if he lost permanent custody. I think he might fall for it.”
“You’re actually saying that Jeffrey Riesner stole your truck?”
“Seems incredible, but-Riesner could have picked up my key that Thursday at court. I just don’t know. On the whole, I’d say Jean Scholl is the better suspect. It’s nothing for her to rip off a car and take the files at her leisure. And she makes sure there’s no forensic evidence to discuss. And she knows forgers, if it comes down to that.”
“I always thought that was a squirrelly investigation she ran. So tonight we arrange for further information about the clandestine activities of one unscrupulous manipulator,” Paul said, putting the pencil to paper. “Who’s the big, bad wolf? Kevin Cruz, Officer Scholl, or Jeffrey Riesner?”
“Or if it’s not them, we’ll learn that, too. We’ll try to use Kevin to flush out the wolf.”
“Keep thinking about Lisa Cruz, even if she isn’t around at the moment.”
They wrote for a long time, drafting and redrafting.
“I won’t be forced out,” she announced when they were satisfied with their work. She drank an entire glass of water, set it down, and stood up. “I’ll run up to tell Bob we’ll be a few more minutes and pick up some samples we can give Mrs. Gleb. You wait here.”
“Okay, boss.”
They took a cab to the Marriott and located Mrs. Gleb on the fifth floor.
Mrs. Gleb answered in a red silk robe. Pink silk mules with delicate heels flopped on her feet as she moved to invite them inside. They sat down in two chairs next to a table stacked with books. Mrs. Gleb perched on the bed, tucking her legs comfortably beneath her.
“I expected you,” she said after Nina introduced Paul.
“You did?” Nina asked. “Why?”
“‘Truth is on the march and nothing can stop it.’ ”
Nina shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t know that expression.”
“I am reading Zola tonight. You have the same passion for life, struggle, and intensity. You refuse to lose, isn’t that so?”
“In this case, that’s so.”
“And you need me,” she said smugly.
“Mrs. Gleb,” Paul said. “You know all about forgery, right?”
“Correct.”
“Ever tried your hand at it?”
“Darling, I’m very, very good. You saw me on the stand. I tell the truth.”
“It’s not exactly truth we’ve got in mind here,” Paul said. “In fact, the opposite.”
“‘Noble lies to persuade the city,’ ” said Mrs. Gleb.
“Ignoble, noble, whatever,” Nina said. “Let’s get cracking.”
First thing, back at the Galleria Park, after a long good-bye at the door with Paul, Nina hit the bathroom, drank some more water, and gargled. Then she asked Bob how things went with his dad.
“Mystery solved,” he said. “Say, Mom, what do you think about me taking a little trip this summer?”
“To visit Kurt?” To keep her voice calm, she turned away from him. Couldn’t she get through tonight without another challenge? She had organized a last-minute party. She had bought Bob presents he loved that she hated. She rummaged in her suitcase for pajamas and a robe. How she would love a bath. She checked her watch. Not too late yet. Maybe Bob would give this up, give her until morning when she would be fresh-
“He misses me. And I never get to see him.” While Bob pressured her, he also watched the muted television.
“Of course you miss each other,” she said automatically. There were so many times, now, raising his son, when Kurt was recalled by a bend in Bob’s earlobe or a certain quality in his changing voice. He played a peculiar role in their lives, dipping in like a seagull to snatch fish now and then, otherwise flying around far away. She was not ready to deal with Kurt’s sudden interference or yet another need of Bob’s. She needed to sleep and gather up vibes that would give her strength for tomorrow. “I don’t know.”
“Mom, he needs me, too. I told you that.”
She tended to her clothes, folding some dirty ones into a zipper pocket, throwing others on her bed for the next morning. “Let me think about it, okay?”
“I hate when you say that. You might as well just say no.”
“I don’t mean no.”
“You do. Think about it is a euphemism for no way.”
“I am not saying that. I’m saying it’s probably all right, okay?”
“So the answer is going to be yes?”
“Just let me have a day or two to sit on the idea.”
“Don’t bother. I have my answer.” He turned the sound up on the television. “You have to tell Dad, though. I’m not going to break his heart.”
“Bob, I’m saying the answer is probably yes, not no! Nobody’s heart needs to be broken here! I just need time to be sure. I need to check some things.”
He brightened instantly, jumped up, and hugged her. “I’ll call him and tell him tomorrow night, okay? We’ve got a lot of things to talk about. And that’ll give you some time.”
“I haven’t promised you anything. Remember that,” she said, knowing it was useless. There was no going back. He had heard his power word, yes, and now he would never let her forget it. She sighed. “So what was all that stuff about Sweden and the North Sea?”
“He’s teaching at the Stockholm Music Institute this summer. Says there’s a great program up there for me that he’ll pay for. He’ll arrange everything. Mom, I can learn Swedish!”
Well, she thought a few minutes later, drawing a bath so hot it would burn her skin red, why the heck not? Swedish made as much sense as anything.
“D ID YOU SEE THE WAY he looked at me?” Nina said the next morning to Jack as they walked through the metal detector and into the reception area. Jeffrey Riesner sat in one of the small upholstered chairs in front of the circular table, lounging like a man who was relaxed and rich and on top of the world. Nina, on the other hand, had suffered another of the long, dark nights of the soul with Bob sleeping in the next bed over. She wasn’t far from rolling her bloodshot eyes at the judge after all, although eyedrops borrowed from the clerk at the hotel had helped.
“Ignore him,” Jack said.
“I knew this would be a tough day.”
“All days here are tough, Nina,” Jack said, holding open the door to the witness waiting room on the right for her. They walked in and shut the door behind them. “Now forget about him. We’ve got to get to this Cruz guy.”
“Jack, he’s gloating! I can’t help believing he’s behind this, and it’s driving me nuts, not knowing. Him or Scholl or Lisa or Kevin. Scholl or Lisa and Kevin together-”
“Drink your coffee,” Jack ordered. “All of it. And concentrate on what we can do right now. I’m thinking Riesner’s testimony will last until the lunch break. Then I want you to do something, Nina.”
If Riesner had his letter, and Scholl had hers, she would be too busy to do anything for Jack. If all had gone right, the three players had received letters at their hotels late last night that would occupy at least two of them during this upcoming lunchtime. Thank goodness all the witnesses had agreed to stay in town for the duration of the hearing in case they were needed. “What?”
“I want you to talk to Kevin.”
“No, Jack.” That couldn’t help now, and if her and Paul’s plan worked, it would not be necessary anyway. They would know who had set her up, and could proceed accordingly. Jack got his dark look, so she justified her refusal. “I tried to talk with him several times over the past several months, right after I got that letter from him and two other times. He doesn’t want to talk to me. Anyway, now we’re in the middle of this.”
Although she thought of it frequently, she had never confronted Jack with the fact that if he hadn’t insisted on her rushing the insurance check to the Vangs over that fateful weekend, she might have averted that particular catastrophe by waiting until Monday, when Marilyn Rose had called, hoping she hadn’t yet sent the check. She didn’t blame Jack for pushing her to send it before she was ready. That wouldn’t be right. Still, she wished he could acknowledge the error. If he had noticed, he apparently didn’t see it as his mistake at all.
“Kevin Cruz’s case isn’t a criminal matter,” Jack said. “He doesn’t have a lawyer representing him on this. You have as much right to talk to him as anyone.”
“What exactly could you expect me to say at this point? ‘Thanks for the nonexistent roll in the hay? Hope it was good for you ’cause it wasn’t for me’?”
“According to us, you never slept with this guy, never got involved sexually, were set up. It’s always hard to prove a negative. Look, I know it’s a long shot, but use your feminine powers of persuasion. Shut him the fuck up before he kills us.”
“Jack, I have no leverage with this guy.”
“You afraid?”
“Don’t be idiotic.”
“Then do it.”
They had squared off. She had her arms folded. He had his folded. Jack, master of all he surveyed, she remembered him well. She couldn’t help laughing at the two of them, on the same side but acting like enemies, adversarial as they always had been and always would be, wishing to control each other, wishing the best for each other. He wanted her to do what he wanted her to do. She wanted different.
“Whatever you say,” she said, because she used to say that when he made unreasonable demands and it always placated him long enough to get him off her back. She rubbed his arm to show she was friendly. She wasn’t willing to fight that way, using feminine wiles or legal wiles either; she was going to fight dirty. Jack would approve of their alternate plan when he heard all about it later if it paid off, because when it came down to it, Jack loved to win, however it happened.
Before they went into court, she planted a light kiss on his cheek. She wanted him to remember her sweetness.
After Judge Brock took his seat and the digital clock erupted into life, the attorneys spent the first few minutes going over some technicalities, then Nolan called Jeffrey Riesner.
This morning, the state bar attorney wore a slightly less rigorous uniform, a blue suit so light it verged on pastel. Nina herself had slicked her hair into a relatively tame position, tied it in a band at the back of her neck, and wore her best suit, in forest green, with a gold abstract pin her mother had left her stuck prominently upon her left lapel. If they were going to bring her down, she would go down looking like the woman of substance she was, not as a victim.
Riesner swore to tell the truth and sat down, a subdued and normal-appearing form of the devil Nina knew to be hiding up there in plain view.
Gayle Nolan introduced herself, then went through his credentials at great length, while Riesner, acting the consummate professional, casually gestured with his Stanford ring. He was wearing a blue pinstriped suit Nina could swear was identical to the one he had worn the first time she met him. Well, he knew what worked. He looked sleek and vulpine as always. His bright, white canines twinkled as he flashed his teeth.
“He’s an attorney in good standing with the bar,” Nina whispered to Jack. “We get that already!”
Jack shushed her.
Nolan finally got to the questions. She asked Riesner to summarize his custody case and representation of Lisa Cruz in that matter, then said, “You received a phone call on Friday, September seventh of last year regarding Ms. Reilly’s client in that custody case, Kevin Cruz, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
This was so Riesner, to parrot her formality when a simple yes would do. Nina couldn’t help it, she bristled over every word he spoke, every hand gesture, every slight movement of his cheek. Here it was, the moment in this hearing she had so dreaded. The colleague she disliked most in the world was here not only to witness her public vilification, but also to add to it. At last, it appeared, Jeffrey Riesner might win one big case against her, the biggest.
“Please tell the court the content of that call.”
He cleared his throat, a sound that made Nina want to gag. “Very early, I would say about six A.M. on Friday, September seventh, I received a telephone call at my residence. I had a particularly busy day-too many clients to count needed my personal attention, so I was already working, preparing for court. I answered the phone myself. I can’t tell you if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. It’s my considered opinion this person was using some kind of a sound-altering device.
“The voice said that Kevin Cruz had a lover, an underage teenaged girl named Alexandra Peck. The voice also offered me her phone number, which I wrote down. I checked a cross-directory listing to get an address to match that number. I called, and spoke with one of her parents, verifying that she did indeed know Kevin Cruz and had been in contact with him almost daily through a cadet program. Her mother described them as former colleagues and friends. I then woke a few people up to arrange a subpoena demanding that Miss Peck appear in court at a custody hearing scheduled for that very day.”
“And you notified Ms. Reilly of this new witness when?”
“That same morning, via fax.”
“And what was her reaction to the news that her case was about to burst wide open?”
“Oh, she did the best she could do to discredit my motives and professionalism to the judge. That’s pretty much her defense style, resorting to personal attacks.”
He stopped short of sticking his tongue out at her.
“And what did the judge decide?”
“To allow Ali Peck to testify, of course. Everything I did was perfectly legitimate. I did what I could to provide opposing counsel with prompt notification. Naturally, the judge wants all the information possible before determining a custody case. He didn’t want to decide based on false or limited information, when there was someone sitting right there in court with pertinent testimony, ready to come forward.”
“And what was Ali Peck’s testimony?”
At this point, Nina tuned out. She knew what had happened in court that day and she did not care to hear his version. She scribbled on her notepad and tried to drum up a tune to hum mentally. His voice settled like yellow smog over the court.
Of course he presented himself in the best possible light and Nina in the worst as he gave lengthy answers to Nolan’s questions. They finally got to the heart of the matter. Yes, Riesner said, he believed that he had won temporary custody for his client based on Alexandra Peck’s testimony against Kevin Cruz. Yes, the leak of what had been in Nina’s confidential file was probably the strongest determining factor in that win.
Once Nolan had finished, making sure the points were made and triple-made, Jack stood up.
“Today in court, you say you received an anonymous phone call informing you about Ali Peck, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Yet that’s not what you told Ms. Reilly, is it?”
“I told my opposing counsel exactly what she needed to know, no more than that.”
“You suggested that Ali Peck had contacted you, didn’t you?”
“You know how it is sometimes, when someone is just after you and after you about something-you toss them a bone because you don’t want to be engaged in exhaustive argument or confrontation. It’s not something I’m proud of, but you know, I wasn’t under oath when I was talking with her, unlike today.”
“You lied to her, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t characterize my comments that way at all. I may have allowed her to believe something that was incorrect. It’s the way things work in law. Sometimes you allow misunderstandings to float if they will serve your client.”
“Help us out here. I don’t think this is very clear. In what way does having an anonymous phone call versus a direct phone call serve your client?”
“It was my judgment that Ali Peck’s evidence would seem more credible to opposing counsel if she jumped to the conclusion that the information came directly from the girl, and was willingly offered. It was just a way to push opposing counsel a little off-balance, make an appearance of more strength than we had, a tried-and-true method I’m sure you’ve used in your day,” Riesner said.
“It’s your judgment that it’s okay to lie if it suits your purposes.”
“I did not lie. I said clearly that I did not know who made the call-” And he stirred up a frothy brew of obfuscation and confusion, trying to keep his actions palatable to the California State Bar. The testimony went on like that for a long time. Jack continued to beat away at him and Riesner continued to parry until Jack finally sat down again. He hadn’t scored, and he knew it.
“You don’t make points with this guy,” he whispered to Nina. “You make war.”
“Now you know.”
S TANDING IN THE HALLWAY outside the courtroom area and past the elevator banks, Nina decided they had a few minutes before they had to leave, and Paul had disappeared into the rest room. She called Sandy to check in. To her surprise, Wish answered the phone. “Where’s Sandy?”
“Oh, uh-” He sounded distracted. “Sorry, there are two people who’ve been waiting in here for half an hour. What should I do with them?”
“Who are they?”
“I think they need legal representation.” His hand went down over the phone and she heard some muffled conversation. “Yep, that’s what it is.”
“Take their names and numbers. Tell them we’ll call them to arrange an appointment later on today or tomorrow morning. Then send them home.”
“Okay.”
She waited while he achieved this feat.
Sounding relieved, he came back on the phone. “They were waiting at the door when I got here. Mom left in such a rush she didn’t tell me what to do about them.”
“Where is she?”
“Remember that thing where the president came to Tahoe a few years ago and put some money into Indian projects and returned some land?”
“Yes,” Nina said.
“She headed a committee about that. She has also been on the Washoe Tribal Council and is real active in pressuring the government to return tribal homelands in the Tahoe Basin to the Washoe. Plus she and Dad have been doing a lot of work organizing the tribe, helping with zoning problems, helping people to figure out what to do with tribal lands, that type of thing. And of course, you knew she was a member of the Leviathan Land Council when they were persuading the feds to designate an abandoned sulfur mine a Superfund site?”
“Uh. I guess I heard something about that.” But not from Sandy. Anything she had heard, she had read in the papers.
“So she got a call yesterday. Some big shot is in town and wanted to talk to her.”
“What about?”
“A job. They’ve been after her for a while about it.”
“What? She never said a word to me.”
“They want her to work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs this summer on some huge report the government is doing about, uh, Indian affairs, I guess. Supposed to take months, but you know how those things go on for years.”
Holy-Sandy could leave her? Before she had time to absorb the blow, Wish spoke again.
“Don’t worry, Nina. Don’t get the wrong idea. She would never leave you high and dry. She just went to tell them no. Oh, and she left a note-something she wanted me to tell you.” He shuffled papers. “Here it is. ‘I talked to that graphologist lady after court when I was up there.’ ”
“That’s all it says?”
“Uh oh. There seems to be a second part missing. I tossed a bunch of these tiny sticky yellow slips a few minutes ago. Hang on and I’ll look.”
“Wish, I’m sorry. I don’t have time to wait right now. Tell you what. You call me if you find it, okay?”
“Mom won’t like this. She said it was real important.” He shuffled a few more papers. “But I guess it’ll have to wait. Nina?”
“Yes?”
“Is Brandy around?”
“Not today, Wish.”
The phone on the other side went down with a clunk. When Wish picked it up, he sounded congested. “I’ve got a major problem.”
“Brandy?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her. There’s no future for us because she loves that guy. Maybe someone else will come along like her, someone that-”
“Wish, she’s going to marry Bruce-”
“I’ve been thinking about generosity. Courage. All that stuff. How good people do the right thing even if it costs them. And don’t complain or even blow their own horns about it after, you know, except maybe Peter Pan. He was an awful braggart.”
“Is there something I can help you with, Wish?” She didn’t have time, but he sounded so woeful.
“Let me talk to Paul, okay? I’ll call back when I find that paper Mom wrote.”
Paul had reappeared at her side. She handed the phone to him and went to get her things from the witness waiting room.
“I took your advice,” Wish told Paul. “I told Bruce Ford to get circumcised.”
“You-what?”
“Just think, a girl caring so much that her fiancé wasn’t circumcised that she couldn’t marry him, but was still too chicken to tell him how he could fix things. She’d leave him first!”
Paul put a hand to his mouth to keep it shut.
“What’s funny is, once she broke down and told her sister, she told everybody who would listen. So why not tell him, is what I asked her. But she just couldn’t do it. So I did. I gotta tell you, Bruce Ford’s her kind of man, completely. He’d do anything to please her, turns out. They definitely belong together. No way would I go through that, not even for someone as foxy as Brandy.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
Wish made an inarticulate sound.
“Wish, I’m sorry. I have to go.” Nina was standing over in front of the metal detector, pointing to her watch. “Nina says thanks for taking care of the office.”
On the way out, they almost collided with Kevin, who was coming out of the state bar’s witness waiting room and into the hallway, hustling like a man with a plan.
Nina grabbed Paul’s arm, waved good-bye to a surprised Jack, and led him to the stairs. “Let’s go. Kevin already caught an elevator.”
They made their way down to the first floor and into the narrow, T-shaped plaza beside the building in record time and scanned for a place to hide. Paul led Nina to a spot behind the fountain, where they had a clear view all the way to a burnished steel sculpture by entry gates that opened onto Spear Street.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to stay so close? What if they see us?” Nina fretted.
“We need to be close in case they leave, Nina. We need to watch them.” Paul adjusted a small earpiece that led to a wire directly into his shirt pocket.
“I never saw a white man’s face so red. I’m thinking, I’m hoping he’s mad enough that he gives someone a piece of his mind and we hear every word. But even if we do, Paul, it’s illegal, listening in like this. We can’t use anything we hear in court.”
“We want to know what’s going on,” Paul said. “The rest will follow.”
“Oh, no,” she worried as lunchtime pedestrians whizzed past. “I hope he’s not too mad.”
“All we said was that there’s a change of plans, meet me, essentially.” Paul peered around the fountain. “Kevin’s there sitting on one of those concrete benches, puffing on a cigarette,” he said, holding his finger to his ear. “And it’s quiet. Reception’s good.” Invisible construction efforts involving orange cones had most of the traffic on Spear Street at a dead halt. “I can hear him thinking.”
“If it’s Riesner, he’s thinking Riesner’s going to screw him. If it’s Scholl, she’s going to turn him in. Did you get your gun back from security when we left court?”
“I did.”
“Because I don’t want you to use it.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Litter flew in the wind in misty whirlpools. Nina pulled her jacket tighter. “Too much fog. I can hardly see the spot.”
“It could be worse,” Paul said. “It could be raining.”
“No sign of anyone,” Nina said. “Oh, God, Paul. What if nobody comes?”
Paul stood beside her, eyes narrowed, head turning from side to side. “Don’t these thousands of people have anything better to do on a March afternoon than wander the town? We should have chosen a spot with fewer than seven thousand people at a time.”
“They would want to meet in a public place. Somewhere close to the court.” The letters had been short and to the point. To recipients Scholl and Riesner, Mrs. Gleb had happily, chuckling and drinking tea all the while, forged two separate notes that said, “I changed my mind. I won’t testify. I’ll meet you down in the plaza right outside the state bar building at the Spear Street entrance at twelve-fifteen today if you want to know why.” The signature at the bottom, KC, had all the small crabbed character of Kevin’s real signature, which Nina had brought her.
To Kevin, she had sent another note: “You won’t be testifying. Meet me at twelve-fifteen where the plaza outside the state bar building opens onto Spear Street.” She hadn’t signed it.
If there was no conspiracy, there was no reason for anyone to show up, including Kevin. They would all be mystified, and would continue with the process of bringing Nina to her knees.
“Nina, look.” Paul thrashed back and ducked down, pushing her down beside him.
“Ow. I don’t see anyone.” She poked her head around the fountain. Leading with his finger, he pointed the way.
“What?”
“Can’t you see? It’s Jean Scholl, right by that wall, keeping out of sight.”
So it was Scholl. She had responded to their forged note. Scholl was behind the whole thing. Nina’s thoughts made her shiver. All this because she had crossed the wrong cop in the ordinary course of her business. It seemed incredible, impossible, but here was the living proof.
Simply doing her job was dangerous. Her brother, Matt, had said that more than once.
“See her now?”
“No.”
“Her back is to us, but I’d recognize that rear end anywhere.”
“But, Paul, why is she hiding? Isn’t she supposed to be meeting Kevin?”
“Don’t know,” he said shortly. She noticed his hand.
“There’ll be no shooting here!” she said. “There are too many people! Someone could get hurt!”
“Nina. Nobody gets hurt if they behave. That goes double for you. Now what have we here?”
Kevin Cruz came walking up and looked around. He put his hands in his pockets.
“What’s Scholl doing?” Nina asked, rubbing her ankle with her hand.
“Watching. Waiting.”
Kevin checked his watch.
“He came, Paul. That means he expects to meet her. So why is she hanging back?”
Paul started to laugh. He laughed so hard for so long, Nina got worried. “What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“It’s Scholl,” he finally gasped out. “She’s-she’s-”
“She’s what?”
Suddenly, Kevin shifted his body so that he was facing toward the street, away from them. He tensed with anticipation.
“Someone else is coming,” Nina said.
Jeffrey Riesner strolled into view. Kevin stood up to meet him.
“I don’t understand,” Nina said, pulling back. “I thought we were going to pin down who’s who in this. They all came. Are they in this together? I’m confused. What do we do now?”
“Nina, take a good long look at Scholl. Look at how she’s hiding. Check out the piece she’s holding.”
“It’s weird all right. She’s watching.”
“Nina, she’s investigating! She’s being a cop!”
“What?”
“She got a suspicious message and decided to check it out. Thatta girl.”
Nina’s attention dodged toward the two men, who were engaged in heated debate. She scooched in close to Paul. He took the tiny receiver out of his ear, and they both listened.
“You told me you had that judge in the bag!” they heard Kevin say, his voice rising clearly above the dull background roar of the city. “You said you could get me the kids!”
Riesner’s voice was lower, but in intermittent pieces they caught the gist. He wanted to know what the hell Kevin thought he was pulling, switching allegiance at the last minute. “I promise you won’t see your kids again until you’re drooling and senile, asshole.”
So Riesner was behind it all after all, Nina thought. He was the poison, the thin red snake slithering behind all of them, but the realization gave her no relief, no pleasure.
Apparently, Scholl had heard enough. Stepping out from behind the doorway on Spear Street where she had been hiding, she tucked her gun into a pocket and, holding it out of sight, faced the two men.
“She’ll arrest them,” Nina said. “My God, Paul. It’s finally over.”
“Maybe.”
“Hello, boys,” Officer Scholl said to Riesner and Cruz. She stood directly in front of them, looking at ease in the middle of a seething crowd of city folk.
“You?” Jeffrey Riesner said. “What brings you here?”
“Curiosity,” she said. “Then I couldn’t help overhearing,” Scholl said. “Excuse me for crashing your party, but you two have sure been cooking, and whew, does it smell.”
A hole opened around the three where they stood next to the sculpture. They looked like everyone else, but they were not. They were connected, a unit, and the air around them seemed particularly charged. Those passing drifted uneasily around their fringes.
“I’ve worked out this much.” Holding her hand very near her body she exposed her gun to Riesner, who reacted with a jump back. “You,” she said to him, “got him”-she pointed at Cruz-“to lie, with the ultimate goal of pulverizing our favorite lady lawyer in return for the custody of his kids. I also have a gnawing suspicion that you stole yourself a key one fine day in court and made immediate use of it. And-” She thought, then put a finger to her chin. “The forgery. Your case last fall-the counterfeiter you defended. I’ll bet he could tell me a few things about how he paid a hotshot like you. Tinkering with Reilly’s paperwork? Or did he just show you a few tricks of the trade?”
Kevin Cruz stared at Riesner. “You did all that?”
Riesner said, “Why don’t you run on back home to Tahoe and write a few tickets, investigate a couple of nasty fender benders. Try to salvage something before you make a complete fool of yourself, Scholl. You have nothing on me. I’ve got a position in that town and powerful friends. Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.”
“And you, Kevin,” Scholl said, ignoring him. “What a shame. I’m deeply disappointed in you. He has an excuse. He’s a lawyer. It’s his business to lie and cheat to get what he wants. But you’re an officer of the law. Didn’t you tell me after that last time you’d walk a straight line? Didn’t you promise me that?”
“Welcome to real life, Jeanie,” Kevin Cruz said.
“What did he tell you? That Judge Milne was an old golf buddy who just needed a little whisper from his pal to give you what you want? Because that’s a laugh, let me tell you. Milne’s straight.”
“Why did you come here? What is this?” Riesner asked. “Some kind of lame shakedown?”
“Not exactly,” Scholl said.
“What do you want?”
“Right this minute, to get out of here. I don’t think it’s a very good idea, us sharing our feelings like this in such a public forum. We need to talk privately. You up for that? A little talk in a private place, and a lot less trouble all around?”
A smile played around Riesner’s thin lips. Talk? He was an expert. Sure, he would talk.
Tipping her sunglasses so that she could see better through the fog, Scholl’s eyes darted around, suddenly narrower. “Tell me something. You got letters?” she asked the two men.
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” She frowned. This time, she scanned the street and then the plaza very deliberately, looking straight toward the fountain. Nina and Paul ducked back. Too late? What had she seen? Scholl whispered something to the two men, and they took off at a fast clip, heading left up Spear Street toward Market.
Paul tucked his earpiece into his pocket. “We still don’t know the whole story,” he said. They walked quickly to the silver sculpture. Paul took just a second to retrieve the bug he had placed there earlier.
“Let’s follow them,” Nina decided, taking the lead.
“Okay.” Paul quickly overtook and passed Nina, using his elbows when necessary to make his way through the energetic street crowd.
In the sunless afternoon, the San Francisco streets were filled with Hopperesque scenes of lit stools and loiterers. Three people stepped in front of them to panhandle. Paul took Nina’s arm and sidestepped them.
“Where are they going?” Nina asked, huffing, clutching her bag to prevent it from hitting people. “I thought we’d have a chance to confront them back there. Scholl really threw me off.”
“When I saw her there, I could have sworn she was about to arrest them. I wonder what she plans to do now.”
“What do we do? Just run up to them and tell them what we know?”
“No,” Paul said. “We’re outnumbered, and Officer Scholl has her weapon. Change of plans. Let’s not be stupid, but let’s not let them get away. We follow, then get the cops.”
The trio up ahead hit a red light at Mission, so they crossed over Spear to the Rincon Center and crossed again to pass Lightning Foods. Nina and Paul stayed on the opposite side of the street behind them, dodging the new concrete berms that lined the sidewalk, protecting the Federal Reserve Bank on the corner of Market Street.
“They’re going for the Hyatt,” Nina guessed. “That’s so strange. This is where we celebrated Bob’s birthday.”
A cable car sat in front of the hotel, a smattering of passengers perched on its wooden benches. The conductor let loose a clang, sang, “He-e-ere we go!” and it took off up the hill. Nobody stopped to watch. Riesner entered the hotel first from a side exit on Market Street, catching hold of an opening door and holding it for Scholl and Cruz.
Nina and Paul ducked past the valets in the parking area and into the automatic revolving door. They took escalators up to the main hotel level.
One of the world’s signature hotels, the San Francisco Hyatt was remarkable for a huge interior courtyard framed by balcony corridors that angled up from the lobby level almost to the full height of the tower. Skylights at the top cast natural light down on the busy restaurants and services that lined the courtyard, and a huge, tubular gold sculpture formed a centerpiece. Water below the sculpture gurgled in a square black pool and spilled in unreal sheets to another level, shivering like a stretch of Saran Wrap.
On one side of the courtyard, glassed-in elevators shaped like funicular mailing tubes sailed up to the hotel rooms lining the open corridors. The effect was very Blade Runner, a glimpse into a fantastic world where architecture substituted for, and sometimes outdid, nature.
Nina and Paul skulked between pillars and behind the sculpture while their three quarries repaired to the 13 Views, the main courtyard restaurant.
“They’re talking,” Nina said. “Now what?”
“Wait,” said Paul.
After a few moments, Riesner got up.
“She’s letting him go?” Nina asked, amazed.
He walked toward the rest rooms and disappeared inside. Scholl watched him go in. A minute passed. Although she continued to watch for Riesner, she and Kevin began to talk again.
A moment’s distraction was all it took.
With the swooping, invisible speed of a short-track ice skater, Riesner skidded out, ducked around behind Scholl, and headed for the elevators. Nina and Paul, trying to stay out of sight, followed as quickly as they could.
By the time they got to the nearest elevator, the doors were already closing. The elevator ascended, Riesner clearly visible through the glass. Then it stopped. Then it started up again. Nina and Paul tipped their heads back, observing it.
“The fifth floor,” she said. “He got off. Let’s go.” She pressed the elevator button.
“No, Nina. You stay down here and watch these two. And call the police. Wait for them. Direct them up to the fifth floor. I’ll hold him until they get here.”
She experienced a fear so intense in her belly she thought she would fall down with the pain. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Look, Nina, he’s a white-collar coward, not a mobster,” he said. “I’m tougher than him, and I hope you know that much. And then, I’ve got a gun, remember?” He touched the back of her neck with his finger. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine as long as you are.”
“Got your pepper spray?”
She patted her bag.
“Keep it handy.”
He hurried down to the end of the long courtyard and took the stairs up.
Leaning against a wall near the restaurant, Nina took out her mobile phone and tried to make a call to 911. Busy. She tried again, got through, and waited on hold. Was this legal, no one answering an emergency call instantly? While she held on with growing dread, watching Scholl and Cruz with one eye, her call-waiting buzzed. She took the call.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Wish.”
“I can’t talk.”
“Wait, Nina, this is important! I found the rest of the note from my mom. It says, ‘Received transcript of Gleb testimony. Forger is extrovert, likes money, craftsman.’ ”
“I’m sorry, Wish, I have to go.”
“And I forgot to tell you, she left a paper bag with something in it-wait a sec-” Paper rattled through the phone line and then Wish said in a puzzled voice, “Huh. It’s this wooden lazy Susan my dad uses out in the garage. She brought it home from her old office one Christmas.”
An image came to Nina of a man in a dark basement, carving for hours to make a perfect tiny puppet replica of Nina that he jerked around in private. “That’s your mom’s way of warning me it’s Riesner,” she said.
“We cracked it!”
“We sure did,” she said, clicking him off. What a trial that boy must be to his mother.
“ 911,” a woman’s voice said suddenly.
Okay, elapsed waiting time not long at all. “Yes, I’m-” A sharp poke to her back stopped her.
“I’ll take that.” A hand reached out and snapped her phone shut.
“Hello, Counselor,” Jeffrey Riesner’s voice said. “I spotted you and your knucklehead friend back there quite a while ago. Nice of him to leave you alone for me. Makes things much easier.” He yanked her bag away and tossed it on the ground, and dumped the phone after it. “Now I think we take a little walk. This way.”
He steered her along the low rectangular pond, back toward the elevators. She swallowed, trying to find her voice. “You don’t want to do this!” she said.
“Shut the hell up and get in there.” He shoved her into a waiting elevator and pushed a button. Once inside, she faced his moist face. She faced his gleaming gun.
“You won’t shoot me. You’re not a killer,” she said. “You’re a lawyer.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You will never again embarrass me in front of my colleagues. You will never win again.”
“Wait. We can make a deal, Jeff.”
The floor numbers lit up as they passed. There was no thirteenth floor, which made the fourteenth floor her unlucky alternative. The elevator stopped there. He pushed her out. “Walk.”
She walked down a long hallway, echoes of laughter and music emanating from the gaping open space beyond the balcony’s edge. She thought of screaming. But he would shoot her. He held her in a grip like iron.
“There will be no deals,” he said. “There will be a sad death, your death, because, by God, I will not let you get away from me. If I can’t see you ruined I will see you dead. Suicide, out of disgrace. Too bad it’s such a crude solution.”
“Kevin Cruz won’t be a party to this! And what about Scholl?”
“Cruz? He’s in my pocket too deep to peep. And Scholl’s an idiot.” Riesner imitated Scholl’s deliberate voice. “‘Thing is, you stole the Bronco. That makes you my problem and I’m takin’ you in.’ All she could think about was your broken-down truck! I’ll find a way to keep her quiet and happy.”
“What’s this about? Why do you-hate me?”
His hand on her tightened. “Because your smelly perfume and your messy hair make me sick. Because you steal my clients. Because you despise me. But most of all because you are ruining me. They want to fire me.”
“They can’t! You’re a partner! Besides, you can always get another job!”
“They want to fire me and hire you to take my place.”
“What? No! But I would never take it!”
“Ever since you fucked me so completely in that casino case, ever since then, they’ve been riding me. I lost our biggest client that day. The casinos want me gone and you in. It’s been Reilly this and Reilly that. So brilliant. Such a star in the legal firmament.” The words sputtered out of him like spit. “I won’t be humiliated by a woman. By you.”
Nina struggled to say something soothing, something to save her life, but she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. She hated him at this moment almost too much to try to save herself. He watched her try.
“It’s-just-business,” she managed finally, thickly.
“I am my business.”
Seeing they were coming to the end of the long hall, she stopped, turned, and faced him. “You don’t have to kill me. You’re good enough to get out of this.”
“For years now I’ve watched you,” Riesner said. “Clicking down the halls of the court. I detest the sound of your officious, vain little shoes.”
“Jeff-I saved your life once.”
“Your mistake.” His stony expression scared her more than anything. She had always been able to goad him before, always been able to arouse some kind of reaction. This time, the granite cold of his eyes told her everything. He meant to kill her.
He moved in closer and put a hand on her rear, pinching her buttock. “Get up there. Hmm. You’ll need a life-” He caught her around the waist with his free hand.
She jerked away from him. Knocking back against the balcony’s wall, she felt for her suit pocket.
He grabbed her, lifted her up to the shoulder-high railing while she struggled, and pushed. The balcony wall did not end with the usual narrow railing. Extending beyond it only a couple of inches below the edge of the balcony railing was a flat metal grid at least two feet wide, exactly like a ladder on its side, designed to prevent nasty accidents. Now, out of balance on that grid, fighting for her life, she rummaged in her pocket, turned toward Riesner, pulled out the pepper spray canister she had stuck in there on Paul’s reminder, and sprayed directly at his face.
Nothing came out. The canister was empty. She had forgotten to get a new one after using it on Riesner once before!
Unable to get her loose from his position on the floor, he threw a leg up and joined her on the grid.
“Paul!” she yelled. “Help!”
Trying to get her off-balance, Riesner hit her in the face.
Her eyesight blurred on his face. She leaned back, then smashed the canister straight into his eye as hard as she could.
His hands flew up and he tumbled on top of her. She wriggled away and by some miracle did not fall. Jumping off the metal grid, she threw herself back to the safe floor of the corridor.
The empty can dropped into the void beyond the railing. When she hit him, Riesner had slipped close to the edge, and as he squirmed around, his body suddenly went over. He managed to grab for, and catch, the edge. Both hands held on. His eye bled.
Without climbing back onto the grid, Nina could not reach him. She lifted a leg up over the balcony wall, heaved herself up, wedged her legs in the gaps between the bars, and grabbed for his wrist, trying to pull him back up. Impossible. He was too large, and she too small. Calling out for help, and seeing no one nearby, she strained to hold on, she sweated, she pulled, and all the while he shouted at her, terrified words of pleading, of fear, of wrath.
Way down in the restaurant below, faces turned up toward them, pulled invisibly by the gravity of the situation. Once the people saw the dangling man, they shouted and cried out, chairs creaking, footsteps running. Down the hall from them a door opened. A hefty man, one towel around his waist, another rubbing his sopping hair, looked out and then toward Nina.
Nina cried out.
The man dropped his hand towel and ran toward her, his bare feet slapping along the rug.
He was too far away! She could feel every tendon, muscle, and bone in her arms stretched to the breaking point; through her pain she could feel them snapping, separating, and through her fingers she felt the rapid-fire beating of Jeffrey Riesner’s heart in his wrist. She looked into his face, the open mouth saying things she could no longer hear, the eyes stained red. A moment passed between them.
He forgave nothing.
Suddenly from behind her, a hand thrust forward, grabbing for the wrist Nina was holding with both hands. Paul! His fully extended arm could barely reach to the edge of the safety grid. She let go and jumped off the grid and back to the floor as he climbed up over the wall toward Riesner, listening to his labored breathing as he lay down on the grid, pulling with one hand, both hands, and all his strength.
The barefoot man arrived behind Nina, wet hair dribbling down his neck, panting with fear. “What’s going on?” he asked, frantic. “Can I help?”
But he could not reach Riesner, who was dangling too far away, hanging by one arm now, held aloft by Paul and nothing else. Too busy straining the muscles in his arms, his mouth stretched into a grimace of effort, Paul said nothing.
Nina shook her head. “Stay back,” she told the barefoot man.
Slowly, methodically, rhythmic as a man bringing up a bucket from a well, hand over hand, Paul pulled him up. Riesner’s foot scrabbled against the rails. One time, two times, three times he lifted his slick leather shoe, trying to find a toehold. Suddenly, his foot stopped on the thin metal edge. Then, more scraping while a second foot looked for and found its place.
Paul helped him up. Suddenly, shockingly safe, Riesner looked through the safety grid into the vast open space of the atrium. A hush cloaked them all in woolen quiet, a hush filled with breathless anticipation as a hundred people watched what was happening above them. Riesner looked at the people below, their frightened faces, watching his shame.
Horrified onlookers.
He looked at Paul and Nina.
Paul broke the silence, his voice holding a fury Nina had never heard before. “I should have smacked you harder in that bathroom a couple years ago. Maybe it would have wised you up.”
“So it was you,” Riesner sputtered. A fleck of foam coagulated on the side of his mouth. He wiped blood out of his eyes. “You son of a bitch!”
Paul whispered to him, “You’re history, punk.”
Riesner moved suddenly, striking like a snake. In a last desperate motion, he grabbed Paul by the neck and tried to take him along into the abyss. He managed to get him over the ledge. They toppled onto the grid together, Riesner twisting Paul around so that he lost his balance. Paul’s foot slipped and he began to go over.
“Paul!” screamed Nina. She flung her entire body over the railing and grabbed his jacket, slowing his momentum just slightly.
Paul looked up at Nina and smiled. In a long moment, an eternal moment that hovered somewhere between life and death, he said, “Love you.”
“No! Paul! Don’t leave me, please don’t. I love you!” Nina screamed.
And slowly, imperceptibly, Paul stopped falling. His fingers tightened on the metal edge. His arms whitened as he began to straighten himself up with brute strength, even with Riesner still clutching him in a crude headlock, even with both his legs hanging into space. Riesner’s right hand clutched at Paul’s throat, grasping for his windpipe, clawing at him.
Nina saw a strange change come over Paul’s countenance-strong, certain, terrifying.
Once he made it back up on the ladder platform, Paul’s hand shot out. He took Riesner’s hand into his and began to squeeze, increasing the pressure until Riesner began to scream. The bones in his fingers began to pop, then his hand, and then with one violent twist, Paul shattered Riesner’s arm and dumped him back on the corridor walkway in a heap. The lawyer shrieked in pain.
“Loser,” Paul said, breathing hard.
Riesner rolled over, cradling his useless arm, faceup, contorted. Nina and Paul stood over him, looking down.
Tears started up and rolled down Riesner’s face. He stood up slowly, brushing himself off with his good hand. Casting one quick glance into the eyes of his conquerors, he examined the faces of the onlookers below. How they ogled.
Nina had no trouble reading his face. His humiliation was complete. No one would ever respect him again.
Whirling around, fast as a gust of wind, he jumped over the balcony rail and hurled himself headlong into space.
Screaming all the way, he fell sixteen stories, down past the pretty green plants and white linen tabletops gleaming with glassware to the pretty concentric circular patterns on the atrium floor.
They heard him land.