The Hallows, page 7
Her foot began to tap faster and she crossed her arms. Not good. Before I could say another word, Jia said, “Why don’t you guys wait outside?”
I looked at her and then to Will. I nodded and rose. “It was nice meeting you, Diana.”
Will and I went outside and down the stairs to the car. I sat on the hood and Will looked toward the apartment.
“What was that about?”
“She was terrified. She wasn’t going to give us anything. Jia sensed that, too. It’s better she do it.” I glanced at a mom and her daughter going into one of the apartments, then back to Will. “Can I ask you something? You looked familiar, but I didn’t place it until you made that goofy face inside the apartment just now. Your last name’s Aggie. You Darrell Aggie’s son?”
He nodded but didn’t smile or grin at the recognition. “I am.”
“Darrell was one of the richest guys in town when I was growing up.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad. Mr. Moneybags.”
“He had ties to Harvard. Is that where you went to school?”
“Nope. I went to the University of New Mexico.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to pay for it myself.”
“He wouldn’t cough up the dough, huh?”
He shook his head. “No, he would’ve. I just didn’t want his money. I wanted to do it myself.”
“Well, that’s both admirable and dumb. You could have a degree from Harvard right now.”
He grinned then. “Some people don’t care about stuff like that, Mr. Graham. Whenever I do anything, I just think, ‘How am I going to sleep tonight if I do this?’ I don’t think I’d be sleeping well if I let my dad do everything for me.”
I nodded. “He moved to Arizona, I’d heard.”
“Yup. Haven’t seen him since, actually. When I turned down entering the family business, he didn’t really call anymore.”
“I’m sorry. We get the fathers we get, not the ones we want.”
“That’s life, I guess. Can I ask you something now?” he said.
“Only fair.”
“Why’d you really leave Miami? You’re the top criminal attorney in the country, defending rock stars and models. Why would you abandon all that over just one client? I’m sure you’ve had other clients do horrible things after you got them off. What was different about this one?”
I inhaled deeply and said, “You ask this many questions of everybody you meet?”
He smiled. “Just the people I admire.”
“Well, don’t get too comfy with that. People don’t admire me for long.”
After a while, the door opened upstairs and Jia came out. She walked up to us and said, “Good news and bad news.”
“Good news first.”
“She said they dated for about a month. That he would drink and get high and become violent but then buy her things the next day and cry and apologize.”
“Sounds like a typical scumbag domestic abuser. What else?”
“Get this: One time he thought she had cheated on him with the manager at the bar. After slapping her around, he began choking her and said he would dump her body in the forest where no one could find it.”
“The proper term is strangle, not choke, don’t ever say choke in front of a jury. They’ll think about chicken bones. And nice work.”
Will said, “When’d she break up with him?”
“About four months ago, and she hasn’t talked to him since. Couldn’t give me anything relevant about the day of the abduction. She wasn’t working that night.”
“What’s the bad news?” Will asked.
“That wasn’t the first time Patty was at Skid Row. In fact, Diana says she was there a lot. They would talk sometimes while she sat at the bar. The last couple times she mentioned someone stalking her.”
“Stalking her how?” I said.
“Showing up at her school, driving by her house, following her around when they didn’t think she would notice. She told Diana it was a guy she had hooked up with, and she was getting freaked out. Asked if Diana thought it’d be a good idea for her to carry around a gun.”
“Anderson?”
Jia shook her head. “Diana said Patty talked about it in front of Anderson once. Not him.”
“Great,” Will said. “So she had a creepy stalker that isn’t one of the guys sitting in jail right now for her murder. Jury will love that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t like being convinced of guilt and then having another suspect pop up either. Gives me indigestion. But we’ll work it and see what shakes out. Take some notes and let’s get back. I wanna see you guys in action.”
22
We got back to River Falls, and Jia and Will grabbed their files and headed to the courtroom. I sat behind the prosecution table as they got ready.
The defense was a private attorney, an older man with glasses and a gray beard. The defendant was a middle-aged man wearing cowboy boots who smirked as he checked out Jia’s legs.
“Lemme see the police report,” I said.
I scanned it. Standard drug case. Utah Highway Patrol trooper pulled over a truck for speeding, and the defendant, Chad Irwin, and his passenger, Todd Hales, were acting nervous and the trooper thought he smelled pot. He took them out of the car after calling for backup and found a burned joint in the ashtray. As the police were inventorying the car and preparing to just write them a citation and send them on their way, the trooper that had pulled them over checked the trunk and found a brick of meth. The defense attorney had filed a motion to suppress the meth, saying they didn’t have probable cause to open a locked trunk, even though they’d gotten permission from the defendant. That Chad had been coerced to open it against his will because he was already in handcuffs and sitting on the ground and didn’t feel like he had a choice.
Not a bad motion, but not great either. The better tactic would’ve been to waive every court hearing and set it for a bench trial—trial with a judge instead of a jury—to resolve the case as quickly as possible. Courts could usually set bench trials within a week because they didn’t have to call in any potential jurors. Then, you’d have Chad testify that the drugs were Todd’s, and Todd testify that the drugs were Chad’s, and that neither knew the other had it. Bam. Reasonable doubt handed to you on a silver platter. And if the judge refused to let them go because of such legal trickery, the appeals court would certainly slap the judge down and either reverse the verdict or grant a new trial, at which time a jury would very likely acquit, or the judge might just grant a motion to dismiss. There were few things as embarrassing to a judge as being told by the court of appeals they were wrong and needed to try again.
The first witness Will called to the stand was the trooper. He testified about why he pulled the men over, the search, and why he checked the trunk. They’d found a knife on Chad that had to be removed. Routine stuff. The defense attorney grilled him on cross about why he searched the trunk, but not too hard. A good tactic since he was putting Chad on the stand: just establish that the trooper may not have had enough reason to search the trunk and then put Chad up there to say he was intimidated and frightened and didn’t have a choice in opening the trunk or not.
After the trooper was done, Will said, “State rests, Your Honor.”
The defense attorney stood and said, “Defense calls Mr. Chad Irwin to the stand.”
Chad got up and walked over to the witness stand, winking at Jia. I saw her jaw muscles flex and imagined her pounding him to death with the thick Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure book in front of her.
“State your name for the record,” the defense attorney said.
“Chad Irwin.”
“And, Chad, you remember the events we’ve been discussing?”
“I do.”
“Now don’t worry about the stop—I mean, you were speeding, right?”
“Right.”
“Let’s just focus on when the trooper forced you to open the trunk. What do you remember about that?”
“I was sitting on the ground behind my car, and my hands were cuffed behind my back. The cuffs were so tight I had bruises on my wrists for like a week after. And so they find a little bit of pot, and Todd says it was his and that he’d smoked it like a day ago and that I hadn’t had any. So the cop said he would give him a ticket and let us go. He tested my eyes and made me walk in a straight line and things like that, but said I was fine and that they were gonna let us go.”
“Then what happened?”
“When I was sitting down, he came over and said that he wanted to search the trunk.”
“What did you say?”
“I first said no. Then he leaned down like really close to me. Like really close. Right in my face. And he said he’s searching that trunk one way or another, and that I could make it easy or I could make it hard. I seriously thought he might tase me or break my arm or something. He’s a big dude, too.”
“Were you nervous?”
“Hell yeah, I was nervous. When a cop gets in your face and tells you he’s gonna hurt you, you do what he says. So I said the keys were in my pocket, and he took them and opened the trunk.”
“Would you have given him the keys if he hadn’t threatened you?”
“No way. That’s why I told him no that first time.”
“Thank you, nothing further.”
The judge looked at Will and said, “Any cross, Mr. Aggie?”
“Yes, Judge.” Will rose and stood at the lectern. He was reading off a sheet where he’d written his questions. The Art of Jury Trial as War, chapter 27: “Never read from anything. You should be looking at the witness and glancing at the judge or jury when there’s something important being said that you want them to take note of.” Also, dirty little trick that works most of the time, when you want someone to say yes to something, you nod. When you want them to say no, you shake your head. I’ve gotten affirmative answers from people on questions they should’ve said “I don’t know” to just because of a little head nod. The unconscious mind: what a trip.
“So you said you were nervous?” Will said.
“Yes.”
“But I mean, you’ve been pulled over by cops before.”
He thought a second. “No. Not really.”
“You’ve never been pulled over by a cop?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I think I had a speeding ticket in high school. I don’t remember.”
“But you didn’t tell Trooper Harvey you were nervous that night.”
“Yeah I did.”
“You did? Then why isn’t it in his reports?”
“I don’t know. But I told him. I told him several times actually. He must’ve not written it in there.”
The Art of Jury Trial as War, chapter 6: “You never, never, ever ask an open-ended question of a witness unless you know the answer.” Every question is a yes or a no, and you tell your story through those yes and no answers. Basically, you wanted the witness to barely be a participant in what you were doing. I once had a DEA agent after a cross tell me that he didn’t even see why he showed up.
I leaned forward to Jia and said, “He’s losing.”
She nodded. “We anticipated losing.”
“What? Why would you do that?”
“It’s a bad search.”
“So?”
“So there’s no Perry Mason moments. Unless we can get him to confess the drugs were his, there’s not much we can do.”
I rose. “Your Honor, sorry to interrupt, Tatum Graham. Hi. I’m the new guy over at the County Attorney’s Office. I’m their supervisor and will be taking over the questioning for a moment if I may.”
He shrugged. “It’s your dime, Mr. Graham.”
I walked over to Will and said, “Watch.”
Turning to Chad, I could see the little grin on his face as he stared at me. He knew he was winning and this case was getting tossed. I grinned back at him, took a second, and then said, “You carry a knife, right?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Hunting knife or combat knife?”
He glanced at his lawyer. “Hunting knife.”
“In your boot or a strap on your hip?”
“In a strap.”
“You carry a gun, too?” I said, taking a guess. More than half the people in this county were hunters and carried.
“Sometimes.”
“You carry this knife and gun for protection, right?”
He thought a second. “Yeah. I guess.”
“And the trooper, the night of the arrest, searched you for weapons like all good troopers do, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And he didn’t find the gun.”
“No, I didn’t have it on me.”
“It’s a felony to possess a firearm with illegal drugs. You’re aware of that, right?”
“Um. No.”
“No you are, or you aren’t aware of that?” I took a step closer to him. His grin was gone.
“Um, no I didn’t know that.”
I lifted the police report off the prosecution table and stepped closer to him. “Show me in this inventory of the car where your gun is listed.”
He glanced down and said, “It’s not there.”
“You left it at home.”
“Yeah.”
“And if the trooper had found the gun in the car, they would’ve charged you with a felony possession of a firearm, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“They could even charge it as a federal offense.”
He shrugged and his eyes had grown wide. He kept glancing at his lawyer, but I wasn’t saying anything objectionable, so there wasn’t anything he could do.
“Where did you learn that possessing a gun around drugs was a felony offense? On a website or from a buddy?”
If you wanted more than a yes or a no, you always presented the witness with an option and let them pick. It was like choosing the two best outfits for your kid to wear and letting them decide so they thought they had the victory. He had already stated he didn’t know it was a felony, but you just had to rephrase questions a little bit and people didn’t realize what they were being asked.
“Um, I don’t know . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know or don’t remember? Go ahead and jog your memory. We’ll wait.”
Silence in the courtroom while we sat there. I folded my arms and stared into his pupils. “Well?”
“Um, I guess I heard it from someone.”
Bingo.
“And your buddy that told you having guns near drugs was a felony told you that you should leave the gun at home when transporting drugs anywhere.”
He looked to his lawyer and I stepped between them. The lawyer stood up and said, “Objection. Relevance.”
I looked to the judge and said, “Do I even need to respond to that, Judge?”
“Overruled,” he said without looking at either of us.
I turned back to Chad. “So your buddy with experience in these things said transporting drugs with a gun is worse than drug dealing and you should leave the gun at home.”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“You left the gun at home.”
“Yeah.”
“Because it’s a felony to have a gun near drugs.”
“If you say so.”
“If I say so or it is?”
He first shook his head a little and then nodded and then didn’t know which answer was appropriate, so he just sat there.
“You were nervous because of the trooper that night.”
He nodded. “I was, like I already said.”
He seemed to relax a little, thinking he had dodged the bullet. I liked to change lines of questioning suddenly. It forced the witness to answer without the time to think or plan what to say.
“You and the trooper are about the same size, right?”
“He’s bigger.”
“And you’re scared of bigger people, right?”
“No, but he made me nervous. He had a gun.”
“You had a gun you left at home, right?”
“Right.”
“Because you knew that transporting drugs with a gun is a felony.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You a pussy, Chad?”
The defense lawyer stood up. “Your Honor!”
“Sorry, Judge, withdrawn,” I said without looking at the judge. “‘You a coward’ is what I meant to ask.”
“Hell no, I ain’t a coward.”
“You just said you were scared of the trooper because he’s a little bigger than you. You get beat up a lot?”
“No.”
“You get pushed around by the big boys in high school? They shove you in lockers?”
“No.”
“No dates, I bet, huh? Hard for cowards to get dates.”
“I ain’t a coward.”
The defense attorney stood up and said, “Objection.”
I said, “You afraid of me? I’m a little bigger than you.”
“No, I ain’t afraid.”
“But you crapped your pants with the trooper.”
“I didn’t shit my pants. He ain’t nothin’,” he said, his face turning red. “He’s lucky he wore that badge or we coulda gone toe to toe. I ain’t scared’a his goofy ass.”
I glanced at the defense attorney, who sighed and sat down. I winked at Chad and said, “No further questions, Your Honor. Unless Mr. Irwin would like to go toe to toe with the trooper right now like he was prepared to do that night.”
23
We went back to the office downstairs from the court, and Will said, “What just happened in there? How did we win?”
I sat down on the edge of a desk. “We won because technology changes, society changes, everything changes but one thing: people. We never change. We’re still hunter-gatherers out there on the plains. And one thing you can count on in people is ego and insecurity. Chad Irwin is the type of guy that would rather get convicted of a drug charge than admit in open court that he’s a coward. You just gotta read people and find that one thing. That little point in them that they try so desperately to hide from everybody. You find that point, and you’ll get your Perry Mason moment on the stand. Witnesses will forget they’re in a courtroom and shout at you like you’re in the street.”
