Above the Law (52 page)

She said, “How do you reconcile this incredibly strong, decades-old animus with a cold-blooded murder for hire? The two are contradictory, they cancel each other out. It degrades the purity of Jerome’s main motive—primal hatred.”

I’d thought about this myself, because I’d had to reconcile it in my own mind.

“On the surface that’s a reasonable way to look at it,” I agreed, “but if you examine it more carefully, the reasons aren’t contradictory, they’re complementary. It’s uncontested that Jerome wanted to get Juarez on a pure emotional level. He was blind with hatred. Not only because of his sister, which elevated it to a fever pitch and drove him all those years, but because Juarez was a scourge. Jerome’s life is committed to wiping out drug dealing. So Jerome’s wanting to wipe Juarez off the face of the earth has genuine merit. I’m not unhappy Juarez is dead, are you?”

“No. It’s
how
that bothers me.”

“That’s right. The
how
is why we’re in this trial. So—Jerome’s been tracking this guy for years. Relentlessly, and unsuccessfully. Finally, he has him in his gun-sights. Figurative gun-sights. But he’s not allowed to kill him. That has to be maddening. He knows what can happen: Juarez hires a great lawyer and walks, or he jumps bail and flees the country to one he can’t be extradited from, it’s infuriating. Jerome knows Juarez is scum that should be eliminated. He wants the job dropping the pellet. But he’s not allowed to. It’s tearing him up inside.”

“I agree,” Kate said enthusiastically. “That’s my point exactly. It’s about emotion, not money. Money
weakens
the case, it doesn’t
strengthen
it.”

“No. Money is the excuse.”

She gave me a “what’re you, nuts?” look. “He didn’t need an excuse.”

“Yes, he did. This is a man who’s obsessed, he hasn’t thought logically about this for years. In his mind he can’t let emotion rule, that goes against some bullshit sense of professionalism. He has to be cold-blooded about it. But he wants to be the man who shot Liberty Valance. Plus he’s greedy. He’s a career civil servant, this is a chance for him to make one big score. He knows other drug gangs want Juarez out of the way, they all hate each other. He puts the word out, like Curtis Jackson said, then he waits. And as he figures, some other gang comes to him with a deal. Could be a black gang, Asian, Aryan, he doesn’t care. None of them could ever turn on him, it would be the word of a career DEA agent against criminals. Who’s not going to believe him?”

Kate whistled. “Boy, that’s cold. That makes him a pure mercenary. I’d think that makes it worse, not better.”

“How else do you explain the money? How else do you explain mounting that raid when he should have aborted? How else do you explain Juarez miraculously escaping from custody? Jerome’s the only one whose fingerprints are on everything. It has to be him.”

“When you put it that way, it does make sense.”

“Completely. Anyway, you said you were working on something else. What?”

She pushed some stray hair out of her face. “Nora Ray and Miller were unhappy with the way the DEA was conducting the investigation, so they decided to do their own, and they came to you.”

“It was mostly Nora, but Miller was involved, that’s right.”

“But Miller told you they’d been suspicious about that compound before Jerome came on the scene.”

“So?”

“Why didn’t they do something about it then?”

“You’re letting suspicion overrule reality, Kate. If Jerome’s raid had been successful, we wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Miller’s a sheriff, it’s his job to be suspicious. But no sheriffs department in the world can check out everything they think is questionable, regardless of the cost. You’ve been around, you know that.”

I locked up. We walked to our cars in the parking lot.

“If I come up with something, you’re going to want to know about it, right?” she asked, still tenacious about her hunch. “You don’t want me to bury anything, do you?”

“If you discover anything directly related to the case, let me know right away. Otherwise, sit on it until we’re done. It’s only another couple of weeks. Let’s take one thing at a time, okay? Let’s finish this trial.”

I would have loved to have put Curtis Jackson on the stand and have him testify about the rumor of Jerome taking a payoff from a rival gang to kill Juarez; but I couldn’t, of course, it was hearsay, inadmissible, and besides, he’d appeared in front of the grand jury under a full grant of immunity. He wouldn’t have testified in open court even if it had been permissible; someone would have whacked him, real fast. I would never put him in that position. McBee was aware of Jackson’s testimony, of course, so I figured he would lean over backward on my behalf regarding the latitude of my two remaining witnesses.

We had a heated argument over those issues in chambers, John Q., the judge, and I, John Q. fighting to keep out anyone who wasn’t part of the narrow scope of the issues, I, of course, making the opposite argument. In both cases, I won—I could present my witnesses. John Q. would use McBee’s decisions to take the verdict to appeal (unless the defense won, a billion-to-one shot), but that would take years. And by then, it wouldn’t matter.

The Miami bank vice president detailed how five hundred thousand dollars had been transferred into Jerome’s new back account. His performance was dry, low-key, but devastating.

Jerome was furiously making notes the entire time the bank official was my witness. After I concluded, he conferred in heated, whispered tones with John Q., who listened half attentively, then got up and strolled to the lectern.

“Did you have any conversations with Mr. Jerome concerning this bank deposit?” he asked.

“No,” the man answered. “It was handled by computer transfer. That’s common practice with sums of money that size.”

“Then how did you know he was the one who did the transferring?”

“We checked with the bank that sent it. They verified it came from an account belonging to Mr. Jerome.”

“Isn’t that information privileged?”

“To the public, but not between institutions. We have to know the transfer is legitimate.”

“And this one was? You’re positive?”

“Of course. We wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.”

“And could you tell us, sir, how that bank verified that this money had been deposited by Mr. Jerome?”

“You’ll have to ask them that. I’m not privileged to give out such information. It was my responsibility to ascertain that the funds were as stated—which they were.”

“Do you know how long the money had been in that account?”

“No. That wouldn’t matter to my bank.”

“But it was possible that someone other than Mr. Jerome deposited the money into the first account.”

“I suppose so,” the banker said. “What does that have to do with this situation? It’s Mr. Jerome’s account. Beyond that, it’s none of my business, or my concern.”

Exactly, I thought. John Q. was leading this in the wrong direction. He was trying to lay the groundwork for his desperate idea that Jerome was being set up, that some sinister mystery player had deposited the money. But he hadn’t established that, so he wasn’t getting anywhere.

Keep going, I exhorted him silently. Go way out on the wrong limb.

John Q. kept pushing this. “Five hundred thousand dollars seems like a lot of money for one party to be putting into someone else’s bank account.”

“You’re wrong,” the banker said sharply. He was not a man who suffered being doubted. “My branch alone has two or three such transactions a day.”

John Q. looked at the jurors. They were as confused as he seemed to be. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to be helping them out of their confusion.

“Two or three a day?”

“Yes.”

I was enjoying this. John Q. was on the defensive, where no lawyer should ever be. Law 101—you never ask a question you don’t know the answer to, and it has to be an answer that helps you. If either of those criteria doesn’t apply, don’t ask. He had—now he was trying to fumble his way out of it.

“I sell a million dollars’ worth of stock,” the banker said, laying out a hypothetical situation. “I want to set up trusts for my two minor children. I open bank accounts for each to the tune of five hundred thousand dollars apiece. Later, I’ll invest that money. Meanwhile, it’s safe. Or I’m buying out a business partner. I wire money into his account. There are countless reasons.”

“Okay, fine,” John Q. said brusquely. He wanted to make his point and get done with it, but my witness wasn’t cooperating. “I want to ask my question one more time. Could this account have been opened without my client’s knowledge?”

The banker thought on that for a moment. “I suppose so,” he allowed. “Although it would be unlikely.”

“Because of the amount of money involved.”

The banker shook his head. “Who would put this much money into someone else’s account and not tell them?”

“Someone who wanted to frame the person receiving the money,” John Q. said quickly, turning to the jury as he did.

I was immediately on my feet. “Objection, Your Honor! That is inflammatory speculation.”

Judge McBee came down hard with the gavel.

“Sustained,” he said loudly. “Strike that remark,” he instructed the stenographer. He looked at the jury. “You didn’t hear that. It was uncalled for, and unsubstantiated.” Glaring down at John Q., he admonished him harshly. “No Perry Mason shenanigans in my courtroom, do you hear me? You’re looking at a citation and a bar hearing if you keep on this way.”

“My apologies, Your Honor,” John Q. said morosely. He turned back to the banker. “If I wanted to set someone up, to make it look like they were taking money under the table, I could put this much money into an account I’d set up for that person and not tell him. Keep it a secret until I need to use it against him.”

Judge McBee turned to me, inviting me to object. I didn’t—I wanted this to get in.

The judge waited a moment more, then turned to my witness. “Answer the question, please.”

“You could, but you wouldn’t. Not if you had any brains,” he added acidly.

“Why not?” John Q. came back combatively.

“If you wanted to set somebody up, like you’re hypothesizing, you don’t need to waste half a million dollars to do it,” the banker said scornfully. “One-tenth of that would do the trick. Anyone who has five hundred thousand dollars in liquid money knows how to employ it wisely. He isn’t going to spend more than is necessary. Half a million dollars would be overkill.”

John Q. was turning crimson. If I’d been asking these questions, he would have been all over me objecting, and he would have been sustained. But because they were his questions, he was royally screwed.

He turned away, his shoulders sagging. “No further questions.”

John Q. had done my work for me, so I passed on redirect. Judge McBee put us in recess until the following morning at nine o’clock. As I was leaving the courtroom, I noticed that they were looking glum over at the defense table: Jerome arguing with John Q., John Q. shaking his head like a dog trying to rid himself of a swarm of gnats. When the sheriff’s deputies came for Jerome, they were still arguing.

I worked late into the night. One final day for me—the most important day. If I got through tomorrow as I hoped to, it was going to be a downhill run to the finish line.

I didn’t get home until after ten. Riva was waiting up for me with a beer and a shot and a turkey sandwich. I ate and drank and went to bed, but I couldn’t get to sleep. Too restless. Riva, lying beside me, stroked my arm.

“Calm down, Luke.”

“I can’t help it. I’ve got to get through tomorrow, it’s the capper for everything.”

“You will.”

“People collapse under stress.”

She started rubbing my shoulders. “You’re tight. You need to loosen up. I don’t want you getting an ulcer.”

“Once tomorrow’s over, I won’t be like this.”

She started kissing me, starting with my mouth, then moving down my body. I let go of everything, lost in her passion and caring; I only flashed on the trial a few times before I exploded and almost immediately fell asleep all tangled up in her arms and the sheets and the sounds of the winds, still nightmarish to me as reminders of the shootings in the desert, blowing through the bleak skies outside our windows.

“Call Diane Richards.”

A side door opened and Diane Jerome Richards, dressed almost funereally in black, entered the courtroom. She walked up the aisle to the witness stand, her posture erect, eyes straight ahead, not turning to look at her brother seated at the defense table. Jerome, conversely, stared at her.

Diane was sworn in and sat down. Hands in lap, feet primly crossed at the ankles like a schoolgirl. I approached the podium.

“Good morning, Mrs. Richards,” I greeted her.

“Good morning.” Her voice was crisp, clear. No nonsense, no fake familiarity. It was painful what she was about to endure. The object was to get through it as dispassionately and unsentimentally as possible.

Riva had come to see her. So had three times as many reporters as had been around for the others. This was a red-meat story. Blood against blood, sister against brother, almost biblical in its dimensions.

She was a compelling witness, completely believable. There wasn’t one false note in anything she said, recalled, detailed. It was one of the most bravura performances I’d ever seen in a courtroom, because it was so heartfelt, and so honest.

At the beginning, John Q. objected a few times, but he was overruled on each one, and he quickly realized that not only were his attempts going to be futile, they compounded the damage. The jury was with this woman, hanging on every word she spoke. They took his objections to be unwelcome intrusions, you could see the animosity in their faces. Pretty soon he gave up and sat there listening, occasionally making a note, but for the most part frozen in place.

Jerome, sitting next to John Q., looked at her some of the time, as if trying to burn a hole in her with a laser-vision stare. She paid him no attention. If she saw him looking at her at all, she gave no indication. She kept her attention on me throughout the entire time she was on the stand, unless she had to explain something to the jury, in which case she talked to them directly, or similarly to the judge.