Above the Law (41 page)

I started laying out the counterargument. “Buying ammunition for target shooting is not evidence of guilt. The type of bullet he bought bothers me, but not if it’s for target shooting. So by itself, I wouldn’t go on with that. That’s number one. The thing with the sister is complex as hell. That worries the shit out of me. But is it really that bad, from the DEA’s point of view? I’m not advocating that Jerome shouldn’t have divulged his family’s history with Juarez, of course he should have—but in the real world these guys live in, which is ugly and brutal, it could be seen as a good thing. If I’ve got a sister that’s running with a drug lord, don’t I want to break that up?”

“Except he didn’t know that then,” Kate clarified.

“You don’t know that,” I rebutted. “The fact that his sister says so doesn’t make it so. Maybe the family did know, or found out. Yeah, I know racism was a motive. Maybe the only one. But maybe drugs were, too. And…”

I paused, to make sure they really got this next point.

“Jerome’s going against department regs is the weakest link in this argument against him. He accomplished what he set out to do. He captured Juarez. How he did it happens in police work all the time. Sometimes you have to strike when the iron is hot, even if all your ducks aren’t lined up. That raid resulted in the capture of one of America’s most wanted criminals. If Juarez hadn’t escaped and been killed, we would not be having this discussion or investigation, and Jerome would be a hero. Jerome didn’t need to kill Juarez, killing him wasn’t as satisfying as parading him in front of the world, humiliating him, and throwing him in jail for the rest of his life. The Justice Department was already cranking up the press releases, until Juarez got away. Now Juarez is a martyr to a lot of people, and we may be indicting a career DEA agent. Shit, talk about a clusterfuck.”

Mutters and groans. I was raining on the parade. But I had to.

“The keys for me are this rumor going around that Jerome had crossed over, and the bank account. He’s not only a murderer for hire then, he’s a traitor to his country. But you don’t convict a man on the hearsay testimony of a criminal who has every motive in the world to lie. We can’t trust Jackson, he’s a crook. He’s a liar by definition.”

“Even liars tell the truth sometimes,” Keith said. Jackson was his key contribution to the investigation, he wanted that to be solid.

“Sure they can. And maybe he is. But we don’t take it on faith, agreed?”

Everyone agreed; reluctantly.

“So now the bank account. I agree that’s a biggie. But what if there’s an honest, legitimate explanation for it? He won the lottery. His mother died and the estate was settled. He hit it big in the stock market. There could be dozens of valid explanations. If he has one, we’re on shaky ground.”

I sat down. We’d gone as far as we could go, we’d covered the bases.

“If he doesn’t, then all those other things we’ve talked about carry much more weight. Tomorrow will tell.”

Nora caught me alone in the office. I was packing my briefcase, about to leave. Everyone else had gone home for the day.

“One minute of your time?” She took one step inside.

“Sure. As long as it’s about business. We don’t talk about anything personal anymore. And I don’t want to be alone with you, so make it quick. My wife and kid are waiting for me.”

“I understand,” she said, keeping her distance. “I just wanted to thank you for letting me in.”

“You’ve got a smart head, you can certainly help. As long as that’s all it is.”

“I can control myself. I promise.”

“You’ll have to. Anything else like what happened, the curtain goes down.”

“I know.”

“Good night, Nora.” I stuffed the remainder of my homework into my briefcase.

“Good luck tomorrow, Luke.”

I waited until I was sure she was gone, then I locked up and left.

A
S OPPOSED TO THE
angry, depressed, defensive man I’d met in West Virginia, the Sterling Jerome who entered the grand jury room and swore to tell the truth was calm and assured. We had ended our previous meeting as allies, so he thought—edgy and situational, but on the same page, two soldiers in the quest for the truth. He had no reason to believe this encounter would be any different.

I greeted Jerome cordially. Ran through his background, his credentials as a federal agent, awards he’d won, citations he’d received, the usual crap. His résumé was impressive—he had done a lot of good work. In a small way the world was safer because of his efforts. He believed strongly in his work, in the cause. He was all-American, apple pie, motherhood. Unfortunately, he also was a man who made up the rules according to his own code, which didn’t always fit with the oath he’d taken. But shit happens, and in the end, good triumphs in the big-picture scheme of things.

That was his take on himself.

It was clear from his demeanor that he didn’t know about his sister’s meeting with Kate Blanchard. That was critical. If he had, he wouldn’t be sauntering in like this. He might not even have come, or at least he would have tried to throw a legal roadblock at me. That was a big part of my scheme—to try to catch him off-guard.

“I’m going to start out by asking you some questions about the raid on the compound that night,” I began my interrogation.

He nodded. “Fine. It’s all in the public record. My actions are an open book.”

He turned to the grand jurors, giving them a confident look. He was a professional, he was going to tell it like it was.

We’ll see, I thought.

“You spent a great amount of time setting up that operation, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“How much time?”

“I had been on the trail of Reynaldo Juarez for the better part of a decade. This particular operation was over a year in the making.”

“You were going to catch him red-handed, making a megabucks drug deal. Money and drugs were going to be exchanged, and you were going to catch him and the others in the act.”

“Yes.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “No, it didn’t, unfortunately.”

“When that sting went south, why did you proceed anyway? Didn’t you need to have that happen?”

“Technically, yes. Practically, no.”

“Would you explain for us what you mean by that?”

“Reynaldo Juarez was one of the most important and lethal drug lords in the United States. We needed to apprehend him.”

“So you decided to go ahead with your raid, even though the pretext had vanished.”

“We had no choice. It was that or let him flee.” Another look at the jury. “This man was quicksilver. He was impossible to pin down, locate. If we hadn’t tried to catch him that night, we might not have had another chance. This was our best, and most likely our only, opportunity to get him.”

“I see.” I glanced at my notes. “Did you inform your superiors about the change, and how you were going to deal with it?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, I did not.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“There wasn’t time to go through the bureaucracy. I was the agent in charge, on the scene. There are times when you have to make decisions based on your experience and what the alternatives are.”

“So you took it upon yourself to try and capture him, regardless of the conditions of the arrest warrant.”

“Yes,” he answered defiantly.

“Is that a commonplace occurrence? To go against the book, so to speak?”

“No. It isn’t commonplace. But it isn’t unknown, either. You do the best you can, given the circumstances.”

“Okay.” Another look at the notes. “So you decided to raid the place and catch them.”

“Yes.”

“Unawares. You were going to surprise-attack them.”

“Yes.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, we did.”

“You conferred with the other members of your team?”

He hesitated a moment. “We did. This was the decision we decided upon.”

The first lie. He had acted autonomously. The others on his team took his lead.

“When you went in, did you encounter resistance?”

“Yes.”

“Heavy resistance?”

“Very heavy.”

“Did you expect that would happen?”

“No. We didn’t.”

“Why not? This was an armed camp, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t they be ready to resist such an attack?”

He sighed heavily. “Because we had been given to believe that they were unprepared. That we could take them by surprise without encountering much resistance.”

“Who gave you that information?”

“We had an informant inside their camp.”

“One of your agents?”

“No.”

“Who was this informant? Someone you trusted, I assume.”

His countenance darkened. He was beginning to lose his cool; just a bit, but I could see the change. I wondered if the jurors could. Maybe not yet; but they would, of that I was sure.

“He was one of them.”

“A member of the drug ring?”

“Yes.”

“In common parlance, was he what is commonly known as a snitch? A turncoat, stool pigeon, to use an outmoded word?”

“Yes. Our informant was a snitch.”

“Then you’re saying that his information turned out to be bogus. He was wrong.”

“Very wrong.”

“Why was that, do you think?”

“He lied to me.” Jerome looked at the jurors yet again. “It’s an occupational hazard of the trade, unfortunately. Snitches aren’t always as reliable as you wish they were.” He gathered himself. “But they’re vital to solving crimes. It isn’t a pretty world out there. You take what you can get.” Amplifying, he continued, “They can get a big head. Think they know more than they do. These are immature, violent men. They think with their sexual organs instead of their brains.”

He had obviously rehearsed that reply. Expected the question and was ready with the best answer possible. “Let me say it again. It’s an ugly world we live in. If you wait for the perfect moment, the perfect informants, you can blow important arrests. I couldn’t wait. Juarez was too dangerous to be at large one day longer. I made a decision, and I went with it.”

“You didn’t feel you were being overzealous? Not cautious enough? Men were killed in that raid. In hindsight, don’t you wish you had waited for a more propitious moment to try and nab your quarry?”

He shook his head in disagreement. “Hindsight is for armchair historians. I had to go.”

I pushed my offensive. “That’s part of your MO, isn’t it, Agent Jerome? To charge in headfirst, without testing the waters? To bend the rules and hope the results will get you out of hot water?”

He flushed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You disobeyed a direct order that came from the top of the Justice Department, didn’t you?”

“No,” he answered defiantly.

“You didn’t?”

“No one ordered me
not
to raid that compound.”

“If you had checked with your superiors, wouldn’t they have told you not to, given the change in circumstances? The change in the entire operation? You were supposed to bust a multimillion-dollar drug transaction, and in the process apprehend Reynaldo Juarez and the others involved. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? No drug deal, no arrests. Yes or no, agent.”

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. I heard him; the jurors, sitting farther away, didn’t.

“The drug deal was the back end, okay?” he tried to explain. “Of course we wanted to make that. But getting Juarez was the primary objective.”

“Of yours or your agency’s?”

“Everyone’s.”

“So the drug deal was a pretext.”

“It was a sting. We wanted the drugs
and
Juarez.”

“So when you couldn’t get one, you figured at least you’d get the other.”

“Yes.” He sat up straight, obstinate, uncompromising in his conviction.

“Okay.” I felt I’d made that point. “I can understand how the means are supposed to justify the ends. Although I must tell you”—now I turned to the grand jurors—“that would be a very difficult case to prosecute and get a conviction on. Unless your prisoner never gets to go to trial.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he bristled.

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

We glared at each other for a moment. This was not the lovefest he’d thought it would be.

I moved on. “So you finished your raid and found Juarez.”

“Yes.” He smiled. “We found him. Hiding behind a wall of Popsicles.”

“He behaved in a cowardly fashion.”

“Very. He was a coward, deep down.”

“You arrested him. You interrogated him.”

“Yes.”

“About how long?”

“An hour. I wanted to get the show on the road. Get them into jail. Having them in custody out there wasn’t doing us any good.”

“But he escaped.”

Jerome closed his eyes. “Yes. He escaped.”

“Wasn’t he secured? In handcuffs?”

“Yes, he was handcuffed.”

“You cuffed him yourself’

“One of the other agents did,” he admitted, showing some uneasiness.

“Do you remember who?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“But he was definitely handcuffed. Secured.”

“Definitely.”

“You checked that personally.”

He started to reply, then stopped.

“Did you check that out yourself?”

“I assumed they were secured. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

“He wasn’t?”

“At the time.”

“Maybe they weren’t locked at all?”

“They had to be.”

“You don’t know how he got out of his handcuffs, do you, Agent Jerome?” I was motoring, asking my questions fast, not giving him time to think about his answers. I wanted spontaneity.

“I wish to God I did.”

A thought occurred to me. “Would your key open another agent’s handcuffs?”

“Yes, they would.”

“Why? Aren’t they unique, like the lock on my door?”

“They can’t be—for the security of the prisoner.” He explained to the jurors, “If you have to unlock an arrestee quickly, let’s say there’s a fire or an explosion, and you have to release him so he can be safely moved, my keys have to fit your handcuffs, and vice versa.”

“In other words, anyone who was there that night could have unlocked his handcuffs and freed him.”