Judgment at Santa Monica Read online

  ‘OK, who?’

  She rolled her eyes; I was clearly not playing along in the way she’d rehearsed it in her head. ‘Patrick McNabb.’

  Oh no. Not again.

  TWO

  ‘Sergeant LeRoy, thank you for testifying today,’ I began.

  ‘I was required to appear,’ Sergeant Antoinette LeRoy answered. This was not going to be a fun cross-examination and Madelyn Forsythe’s freedom pretty much hinged on my getting it right.

  When I was a prosecutor I had tried a few prostitution cases. Very few. Most of the time these things are negotiated with the public defender assigned to the case and they never see the inside of a courtroom. But in this instance Brian Longabaugh, the deputy DA assigned to the case, wasn’t in a mood for barter, I guess, and I had not been willing to trade much because my client was so obviously innocent. The charges were, to be polite, absurd.

  ‘Sergeant, when you were operating undercover as a man named Randy and you entered into an online conversation with the defendant, who thought she was talking to that man, did she ever demand payment for sexual acts?’ I’d be damned if I was going to call them sexual ‘favors’. A favor is when you take out somebody’s garbage for them on Thursday morning because they have a sprained ankle. That was decidedly not what LeRoy and Maddie had been discussing.

  ‘Demand?’ Sergeant LeRoy repeated back to me.

  ‘Yes. A charge of solicitation requires that the person in question demands payment for sexual services. Did Madelyn Forsythe ever say, in your online conversations, that she required payment for sexual acts?’

  The deputy district attorney raised a hand instead of standing up. ‘Objection.’

  What was there to object to? I’d asked a question.

  ‘Mr Longabaugh?’ Judge Amos Coffey sounded as startled as I felt.

  ‘The sergeant was operating undercover,’ Longabaugh said. ‘She could not ask whether Mrs Forsythe wanted money before the defendant broached the subject.’ He looked at me. ‘That would have been entrapment.’

  Longabaugh was new to me. I’d only tried one criminal case in Los Angeles before and the prosecutor in that one had been Bertram Cates, who would have disappeared if he turned in profile. Longabaugh, on the other hand, was one of the few people in Southern California not to work out obsessively, eat lots of kale and know his cholesterol numbers off the top of his head. He had a rather prominent midsection and had swung it around with some alacrity while getting LeRoy to recount the dogged pursuit of human traffickers, a category that did not even allegedly include Madelyn Forsythe. But she had said Maddie had solicited her (in the guise of ‘Randy’, the horny internet surfer) for sex.

  Judge Coffey looked weary. ‘Overruled, Mr Longabaugh.’ The prosecutor, looking disappointed, lowered his hand, which he’d forgotten he’d raised.

  ‘I was operating under cover,’ LeRoy parroted back, perhaps thinking that was a defense of her handling of Maddie’s case, which had been remarkably poor.

  ‘Of course you were,’ I admitted because it didn’t seem important. ‘Now, when you were involved in the sting operation online …’

  ‘Objection to the term “sting operation” as prejudicial,’ Longabaugh said. He again had not even risen from his chair, as the prominent midsection probably was putting a decent amount of stress on his knees.

  ‘Sustained,’ said Coffey, one of the many men in this case who seemed to believe that it was OK for guys to scour around online for sex but not OK for women to do the same. ‘Please refrain from the use of that term, Ms Moss.’

  ‘Certainly, Your Honor.’ Turning my attention back to LeRoy, I said, ‘Sergeant, when you were online searching for people involved in prostitution, how did you identify yourself to those you met in the chat room “Lonesome Lovers”?’

  LeRoy’s eyes betrayed more anger at me than you might expect for such an innocuous question, but the jury probably couldn’t see it from their detached vantage point.

  Her voice, however, gave away nothing. ‘As per my undercover assignment, I identified myself as Randy, a male in his forties.’

  ‘And Ms Forsythe showed interest in Randy?’ I asked.

  Police officers have to testify in court pretty frequently, so LeRoy knew how to behave. Her answers would be short and to-the-point and her demeanor would be unflappable. You couldn’t flap her with a six-foot spatula.

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  I gave a glance to the jury, who appeared to be taking their civic duty seriously, having been unable to duck out of this session. Sometimes they appear disgruntled, but this panel had been carefully selected and was excited by the idea of a crime involving (at least theoretical) sex. Two of the men on the jury kept looking over at Maddie and smiling. If I could prove she was not in fact a prostitute they were going to be severely disappointed. I had tried to block both of them unsuccessfully from the panel.

  There was also a buzz of noise at the back of the courtroom, but I didn’t turn back to see what was causing it. Maybe someone had fallen ill, in which case the judge would put us in recess, or maybe someone had spilled their coffee, in which case everybody would get out of the way and eventually some maintenance worker would be called to clean up what was left. Probably after we were finished with this trial.

  ‘How did Ms Forsythe express that interest?’ I asked LeRoy.

  I had not broken the rule about asking a question to which you did not know the answer in advance because I had read the transcript of the online chat conversation that had taken place between Maddie and LeRoy. And LeRoy knew that.

  ‘She said she was available every night of the week,’ she responded. ‘She said that she was hoping to find a man like Randy and that she could be very responsive if he were willing to meet her qualifications.’

  One of the men on the jury licked his lips.

  Coffey, surveying what had become a fairly noticeable disturbance in the back of the room, said to no one in general, ‘What is going on back there?’

  The bailiff, a very nice man named Matt, started up the aisle toward the disturbance, but my stomach sent up a little acid when I heard a voice calling from the back, ‘So sorry, Judge. I promise we won’t make another sound. Everyone sit down, please.’

  That voice. The one with the British accent that had started out Cockney and ended in the upper classes. That easy jocularity, just-another-guy voice.

  Patrick McNabb.

  The crowd that had gathered around him – a small one, but it was a courtroom – had no doubt been clamoring for autographs. Patrick had been a big star on Legality, a TV drama that pretended to be about the law, and was now an even bigger star on Torn, about a private investigator with (get ready) multiple personality disorder. Which was about as plausible as Patrick showing up in the courtroom exactly when I was trying a case.

  I’d come to Los Angeles about a year before, ready to put criminal law behind and deal with ‘family law’, which is mainly divorce cases and their aftermaths. I’d just been assisting on Patrick’s divorce when it became a murder case (he was accused of killing his estranged wife with a bow and arrow) and the firm, with its curious sense of humor, had assigned me his defense.

  Let’s just say Patrick and I had become friends in the process, despite his constantly driving me nuts with his insistence on participating in his case given his vast experience of playing a lawyer on television. But I’d gotten him acquitted anyway.

  In this courtroom all his fans sat down, some grudgingly, not having gotten the moment they’d sought out, and Patrick was visible, smiling with his charming ease and crinkling his eyes just to remind me that he could. He actually looked at me and waved. In a courtroom.

  I turned back toward Coffey. ‘May I have a five-minute recess, Your Honor? I think I can make the commotion go away.’ And I’ll admit I made a point of staring at Patrick while I said those last two words.

  Coffey made a little exasperated sigh. He probably had a tee time coming up and didn’t want this hearing to g
o on much longer. ‘Exactly five minutes, Ms Moss.’ He actually used the gavel, interesting in that – aside from Patrick’s posse – there were maybe eleven people in the courtroom to hear it.

  I thanked him and walked to the back of the courtroom, even as I saw Longabaugh make a gesture of futility with his hands, wondering why he had to put up with such nonsense. I decided at that moment to beat him badly in this case and to kill Patrick McNabb as soon as Angie could figure out how to best dispose of the body.

  ‘Sandy!’ Patrick was in an ebullient mood, which was typical when his life wasn’t in danger. Of course, I’d known him mostly when his life was in danger and he had still been ebullient most of the time, so go figure. ‘How wonderful to see you again!’

  I did not return his gleeful tone. ‘Patrick,’ I hissed, trying to keep my voice from rising in volume. ‘What are you doing here? I’m working.’

  ‘Yes, and you’re doing a wonderful job of it.’ Patrick, largely because I managed to keep him out of jail for the rest of his life but not only because of that, thinks I am a legal genius. It’s one of the myriad areas in which he is wrong.

  Maybe I’m being too hard on Patrick. He’s really a very nice guy and a good actor and we’d gotten very close during his trial. We’d even kissed once just after the whole thing was over. And then Patrick had let me drive him home, thanked me, and not gotten in touch again until this very morning in this very courtroom. While standing next to a stunning blonde who was drawing as much attention as him, I thought, because she was wearing a shirt – if you could call it that – that left little to the imagination.

  Maybe I’m not being too hard on Patrick.

  ‘First of all, no I’m not doing a wonderful job. At the moment I’m losing a case that shouldn’t even have made it to court. And you didn’t answer the question. Why are you here, Patrick?’

  ‘Because you are wonderful,’ he answered. Seeing that hadn’t made my face light up as he must have anticipated, he added, ‘and my friend Cynthia here is in a dire position. We need you, Sandy.’

  I should have figured.

  THREE

  I put Patrick off by telling him we’d discuss his problem (Cynthia’s problem) later and that I had to get back to work. He agreed to leave the courtroom after I pretty much made that a condition of my talking to him, and I got back to questioning Sergeant LeRoy, with the judge only a little grumpier than he’d been before the commotion. You’d think he’d be grateful to me for calming the courtroom down. You’d be wrong.

  ‘Did the defendant ever bring up the subject of payment?’ I asked LeRoy when we’d started the proceedings up again.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ LeRoy answered.

  No, she hadn’t. ‘I’ve read the transcript of your conversations with Ms Forsythe, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Can you point out the section where she says that she will require payment in exchange for sexual acts?’

  Maddie grimaced just a bit. Her children were thankfully nowhere near the courtroom, but they were in the custody of their father at the moment and that didn’t seem better. I was glad they couldn’t hear the things being said about their mom, but I had to remind myself that I was arguing not just for her freedom but for any chance she might have to return to a normal relationship with them.

  ‘She said I’d have to pay the price,’ LeRoy said.

  ‘Where in the transcript can I find those words, Sergeant?’

  LeRoy looked at the judge. ‘May I see the document, Your Honor?’ she asked.

  Coffey nodded and gestured to Longabaugh, who produced the printout of the transcript from a file on his table and handed it to me.

  ‘Are you satisfied that is the correct document, Ms Moss?’ Coffey asked.

  I scanned the pages and saw what I had seen before, but I couldn’t read it closely line for line. ‘I believe it is, Your Honor.’

  Matt handed the document to LeRoy, who scanned it intently.

  ‘I’ll repeat the question. Sergeant LeRoy, where in this document do you see the words from Ms Forsythe, “you’ll have to pay the price” in regards to sex?’

  LeRoy, who had put on a pair of half-glasses, looked downright professorial. ‘On page fourteen,’ she said.

  She took off the half-glasses.

  Calm down; I knew Maddie had used that phrase. ‘Sergeant, could you read the exchange on that page that begins with you, as Randy, saying, “It’s gonna be a long night”, please?’

  LeRoy was not crazy about having to read the words she’d typed when trying to convince a suspected call girl (call woman?) to incriminate herself. But she did not even glance at Coffey for confirmation that this would be necessary. ‘It’s gonna be a long night,’ she read, her voice instinctively dropping into a lower register. That must have been the voice she imagined when she was playing ‘Randy’. In a town full of actors, even the cops knew how to get into character. ‘What do you say we meet at your place?’

  ‘What was the response?’ I asked.

  ‘Not here,’ LeRoy read from the document. ‘We can meet at a hotel in town. I’ll book the room but you’ll have to pay the price.’ She looked up, vindicated in her own mind. Yes, Madelyn Forsythe had typed those words.

  ‘Is that when you told Ms Forsythe that she had been identified as a prostitute and was facing arrest and possible imprisonment?’ I asked.

  ‘No. That came after the IT experts could verify the address and location of the computer being used to communicate on the chat room,’ LeRoy said.

  ‘How did you know that Madelyn Forsythe was the person typing those words in that house?’ I said. ‘How did you know it wasn’t her husband Edward?’

  ‘Mr Forsythe was not present in the house at the time of the conversation,’ LeRoy said.

  ‘But you weren’t aware of that at the time of the incident,’ I answered. ‘It could have been him. It could have been a visitor. It could have been a babysitter. The fact is, when you requested the arrest warrant for Madelyn Forsythe, you had no idea if she was the person you’d been trying to entrap.’

  Longabaugh half-stood. It was the best he could do. ‘Objection,’ he said.

  ‘Sustained. There has been no suggestion of entrapment in this case and you know it, Ms Moss.’

  I nodded. ‘Sorry, Your Honor.’ I turned my attention back to LeRoy. ‘So you felt that the phrase, “pay the price” meant money for sex?’

  ‘Yes.’ The professional witness was back.

  ‘Did it not occur to you that she was suggesting “Randy” had to pay for the hotel room? So that this wouldn’t take place in the house with her children present?’

  Still LeRoy would not allow for anything but the testimony she had practiced, probably with a quick reminder from Longabaugh. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? The exchange came immediately after you and she were discussing where to hook up. Wouldn’t a real prostitute have a place picked out that she operated from regularly?’

  ‘Yes,’ LeRoy said, ‘and quite often it will be a hotel. So her suggesting that “Randy” go to a hotel actually made me more certain she was soliciting.’

  I think to this day that Longabaugh cringed a little when she said that.

  ‘Did you discuss price?’ I asked. ‘Because I didn’t see any negotiating in the transcript.’

  ‘We did not,’ LeRoy said.

  ‘So on what are you basing your claim that Ms Forsythe was soliciting money for sex? On the suggestion that you pay for the hotel room?’

  ‘That and the tone of the previous conversations, all of which are in the transcript,’ LeRoy answered, a veritable filibuster coming from her.

  ‘So just to be clear, you’re saying that the previous conversations, which took place over a two-week period, point to Ms Forsythe being a prostitute despite the fact that she never mentioned money once?’ I asked.

  ‘Asked and answered,’ Longabaugh said from his chair.

  ‘Overruled,’ Judge Coffey said. ‘I don’t believe the answer regarding the previous conversat
ions was adequate. The witness will answer the question.’ He nodded toward the court reporter. ‘Will you read it back, please?’

  She did, and LeRoy, who had surely heard it the first time, said, ‘A professional would not have mentioned payment directly in an internet chat room. It is too likely to be monitored.’

  ‘So I’ll ask again,’ I said, ignoring the fact that LeRoy had indeed been trolling around the chat room looking for prostitutes while Edward the husband was in his apartment with the dental hygienist and not paying a dime. ‘What made you think Ms Forsythe’s behavior warranted an arrest for prostitution?’

  ‘Her tone made it clear she wanted to have sex with “Randy” and that she expected him to pay for the privilege,’ LeRoy answered.

  ‘In whose mind, Sergeant, Ms Forsythe’s or yours?’

  ‘Objection.’

  ‘Withdrawn. No more questions.’

  ‘Mr Longabaugh,’ the judge said. ‘Cross-examination?’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honor,’ like he was being introduced by the emcee at a celebrity roast. Longabaugh rose from his perch and approached Sergeant LeRoy. ‘Sergeant, despite what the defense attorney is alleging, does the dialogue between yourself and Mrs Forsythe as related in the transcript fit the definition of prostitution under the laws of this state?’

  ‘Yes it does.’

  It was my turn to stand. ‘Objection, Your Honor. It is not the witness’s place to determine what does and does not fit the definition as the law states. That is up to the court.’

  ‘Sustained. Please don’t ask the witness for legal advice, Counselor.’

  There was a small titter around the room, which was far from full. There were four more cases on the docket just for today and the spectators probably weren’t here for this one. I saw two people in the back kissing up a storm and another eating a burrito just a few rows back.

  ‘Yes, Your Honor,’ Longabaugh replied. Then, back to LeRoy: ‘As a police officer, have you made arrests before based on this kind of experience and this kind of behavior?’