Witness for the Persecution Page 3

  ‘Ms Moss,’ he said simply when I walked in. It was like he’d been expecting me, but not that he’d been especially thrilled with the prospect. Trench and I have a mutual admiration. I consider him to be an exceptionally good and fair police detective and he thinks I’m something of a nuisance but a decent lawyer. So perhaps ‘mutual admiration’ was a bit of a stretch.

  ‘Lieutenant, I have worked on three homicide cases since I moved here and you have been involved in all three,’ I said. Best to disarm him with attitude, something which comes genetically to a Jersey girl. ‘Do you get all the murder cases in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Just the ones on which you are the defense attorney,’ he countered. ‘The rest of the time I occupy myself with handing out jaywalking tickets and rescuing kittens from tree limbs. Which of my cases has brought you here today?’ He gestured vaguely that I should sit down, which I took to be a sign of reluctance because Trench never does anything vaguely when he cares about it.

  I sat down.

  ‘The charges against Robert Reeves in the death of James Drake.’

  Trench did not have to refer to notes or even consult his computer screen, which was out of my view but was probably activating a screen saver displaying crime-scene photographs of his past cases. Trench, in my mind, did not exist outside a murder investigation. Maybe not in his mind, either. ‘The director who murdered his stunt performer,’ he said.

  ‘Allegedly murdered his stunt performer,’ I corrected.

  Trench waved a hand casually, palm toward himself. ‘Allegedly, of course.’

  ‘So exactly how is this a homicide and not an extremely unfortunate accident?’ I asked. ‘The stunt was set up and the cables broke. My client believes that he did everything possible to keep the performer safe. Why do you think that’s not true?’

  If Trench were the type to allow himself a rueful smile, this would have been the moment. One of the things I like about him is that he is not that type. ‘Ms Moss, how many of your clients tell you they are innocent of the charges brought against them?’

  ‘All of them,’ I admitted.

  ‘And how many of them are convicted?’ he continued.

  I had a hole card to play. ‘In Los Angeles murder cases, none.’

  ‘None so far.’

  I tipped my head in his direction. ‘So far,’ I agreed. ‘And yes, Lieutenant, I did notice that you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘So far.’

  Why was Trench being cagey? ‘Are you confident in your facts?’ I asked him. ‘Are you concerned that maybe you arrested the wrong guy?’

  ‘Ms Moss, in this case I believe your streak of wins is in serious danger. The facts are as follows: Your client devised an unnecessarily dangerous stunt for this man to perform. He overlooked several ways in which it could have been made infinitely safer, including the possibility that it might have been done digitally and therefore would pose no threat to the victim at all. He had access to the cables holding Mr Drake at the very point where they were severed, including times when no one was on the set but him. We have witnesses who tell us the accused had mentioned despising the victim before he was killed. There are no other people of whom all those facts are true. So you tell me: Why do you think, other than listening to the word of a man facing a lifetime in prison, that your client did not murder James Drake?’

  At that moment I was very glad I had personally filed a request for an adjournment with Judge Franklin that very morning. I was going to need as much time as I could get.

  ‘Because my client had no motive. He barely knew James Drake and didn’t have any reason to want to see him dead.’ Beat that, Trench. ‘You and I both know he’s a big jerk, but that doesn’t make him guilty of murder.’

  In a bad movie, Trench would have picked up a paper clip from his desk and unbent it to show that he was a man of great complexity and possibly sinister intent. In real life, however, his desk was so neat that a paper clip would by comparison have looked like someone had dumped toxic waste on Trench’s blotter and caused an emergency call to people in hazmat suits. He just sat there and looked at me.

  ‘Perhaps you’d best have another conference with your client,’ he suggested in that soft, consistently modulated voice. ‘Mr Reeves appears to have left a few details out of the story he told you.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked. Sometimes with men you have to set them up in order to get the information you need. (Although, to be fair, they’d probably use the same trick on their male friends when they have some enjoyable information to share.)

  ‘Like the fact that James Drake was having an affair with Robert Reeves’s new wife,’ Trench answered. ‘That provides a decent amount of motive, wouldn’t you say?’

  The key here was to avoid looking like I’d just been blindsided and stunned. ‘My client says that was just a rumor and that his marriage is completely happy,’ I said. I was sure that’s what Reeves would have said if I had realized that was a question I should have been asking.

  ‘It is a rumor that was substantiated by three other witnesses, including Reeves’s new wife,’ Trench said. He was polite enough not to point out that he knew I had been lying.

  The best defense, despite the popular football saying, is often to pivot and change the subject. ‘The incident report filed at the time doesn’t list the implement you think Reeves used to sever the cables,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you have it at the time? Why am I not seeing it listed in any of the paperwork I have?’

  Any slight sense of smug enjoyment Trench had been exhibiting was immediately gone. He straightened up even more in his seat, making me wonder if the last electric chair used to execute prisoners had been installed in Trench’s office. But I knew California had never used the electric chair. So it was simply a sign that perhaps the lieutenant was … what? Embarrassed? Had the LAPD screwed up this investigation?

  ‘The cables were severed and we aren’t sure how that was done yet,’ he said. Trench was avoiding eye contact. ‘As of yet the precise implement, which was used to cut through the cables almost to the point that they were severed before the stunt performer was hoisted up, has not yet been recovered.’

  I rewound the conversation in my mind. ‘But you said my client had access to the implement.’

  ‘He did. As the director he had access to every piece of equipment on the set.’

  ‘My client is a man of many …’ What was a polite way of saying ‘lies’? ‘… layers.’ That wasn’t really the same thing.

  ‘You are arguing this case with considerably less passion than the previous two, Ms Moss. Is it possible you’re not as certain about your client’s innocence this time?’

  ‘You’re being cagey, Lieutenant, and you’re not a cagey guy. It bothers you that you can’t produce, or even completely identify, the thing that you say caused James Drake’s death, and yet you’re hanging the charges on the idea that only Robert Reeves could have sawn through those cables. You know perfectly well how flimsy that reasoning is.’

  Trench did make eye contact now. ‘As an attorney, Ms Moss, you are certainly aware that the police do not bring charges. The district attorney does. And this district attorney took the evidence to a grand jury, which brought an indictment. I suggest you take any criticisms you have of the process to that office and not mine.’

  ‘James Drake has been dead for more than six months,’ I said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a really great chance that you guys will stumble on the weapon now. The set was struck a long time ago. You can be pretty sure it’s not there anymore.’

  ‘Thank you for pointing that out to me, Ms Moss. Now if you don’t mind, I have other cases to investigate.’

  ‘So you were lying about the kittens in trees?’

  ‘Goodbye, Ms Moss.’ Trench literally showed me the door, but that was unnecessary. I already knew where it was.

  FIVE

  Calls to the numbers I had for Robert Reeves went straight to voicemail and were not returned for the rest of the day.
When I finally got his assistant, a young woman (naturally) named Penny, on the phone, she informed me that, ‘Mr Reeves is in a meeting about his next project and can’t be called out.’ I suggested that his next project might be postponed until Mr Reeves was released from his lifetime sentence in jail and she didn’t miss a beat, saying she’d be sure he got back to me as soon as he possibly could.

  ‘You won’t hear from him if it’s up to him,’ Patrick told me that night. ‘I’ve worked with Reeves and, even among directors, he’s the most arrogant man I’ve ever met.’

  I was in the office of Patrick’s production company, Dunwoody Inc. (named for Patrick of course, since that was his name before he and various managers, agents and studio executives decided ‘McNabb’ was the ticket to success. And now he had great success, so who am I to argue?), which was closer to a private apartment than a real place of business. There was an office and a reception area, and Patrick had a corner of the place, located on the studio lot that his television series Torn was currently calling home, which served as his business office. But if you exited that room through the wrong door (or the right one, depending on one’s perspective), you’d find yourself in a very well-appointed apartment including a working kitchen, a home theater, a bedroom – because Patrick would often sleep here during the series production schedule – and a dining room, where we were currently having a glass of wine in anticipation of pizza. All good things in life come from pizza.

  Angie, having officially completed her day as Patrick’s executive assistant, was having a beer and sitting across from me. She liked to beam at Patrick and me since she was living under the delusion that she was the reason we were together now. She, and if you’re reading this, Angie, I apologize, wasn’t.

  ‘When did you work with Reeves?’ I asked him. This was the first time I’d seen Patrick in person since taking the Reeves case, which for the official record I had tried to pawn off on Jon Irvin but the client absolutely refused to accept anyone but me as his attorney.

  ‘You really don’t pay attention to the movies, do you?’ he said, smiling and shaking his head at my oddity.

  ‘She doesn’t know her Spielberg from her Michael Bay,’ Angie volunteered. My best friend, ladies and gentlemen.

  Patrick stood up because we had finished the bottle of wine and the next one was in a fridge across the room. ‘Robert Reeves directed Desert Siege, love,’ he said to me. ‘So that means I was working with him nine or ten months ago.’

  Nine months … wait. ‘So hang on. You were working with Robert Reeves nine months ago? The movie that James Drake died on was the one I don’t want to go to the premiere of?’

  ‘See? She can do math,’ Angie said. She might not have been on her first beer.

  I shook that off. ‘So you were on the set when the stuntman fell off the crane into a ravine and died?’ I said to Patrick.

  He uncorked the new bottle and poured me some, despite my having not asked. Still, I wanted the wine, so why should I argue? ‘No, no,’ Patrick said. ‘I wasn’t even on set that week, I don’t think. I had finished my location work on the movie in Tunisia for the most part, and did only indoor scenes on an actual soundstage after that. I was probably back on the set of Torn by then.’

  ‘But you know Robert Reeves. Did you know James Drake?’

  Patrick sat down and relaxed into his chair. He thought we were just discussing an interesting coincidence, while I was finding what might easily be a reason to remove myself from the case entirely. This was a brewing conflict of interest if the man I was dating was the star of the movie being filmed when the murder – if that’s what it was – happened.

  ‘Jimmy? Oh yeah, I knew Jimmy. A tragedy that he died, truly. He was a big rough-and-tumble kind of guy, but very sensitive when you got to know him.’ Swell. I could ask the man who wanted me to move in with him to be a character witness for the victim at a murder trial in which I was representing the man accused of the crime, who had been his director on that very movie. This day was getting better and better.

  I put down my wine glass and wished I’d stopped at one glass. I needed to think clearly. ‘I have to get myself off this case,’ I said. I hadn’t meant to say it, but that was the second glass of wine talking.

  ‘Why?’ Angie asked. ‘If this Reeves guy didn’t do it, don’t you want to defend him?’ Angie lives in the world of filmed entertainment, where lawyers take cases because they have a sacred duty to defend the innocent and uncover the truth. Patrick, who used to play a lawyer on television and now was playing a private detective with multiple personality disorder, tends to see things the same way. They both have jobs they do for money, but they think I work for a higher purpose.

  ‘That’s not the point. I’m dating the star of the movie where it happened. He knows the defendant. He knew the victim. That’s a clear conflict of interest, and I need to alert the judge that I have to withdraw from the case. I’m not even sure if Jon can take it, given how closely we work together.’ Scenarios ranging from the judge scolding me to my spending time in jail for contempt were racing through my brain and I wasn’t enjoying any of them.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Patrick chimed in. He was his usual relaxed, jovial self. Usually I really loved that about him. Not now. I felt like he should have realized how I felt and supported me. After all, he used to play a lawyer on TV. (Yeah, I’m a hypocrite.) ‘I’m not a witness to the crime. The police didn’t even question me because they knew I hadn’t been there for days.’

  ‘Really? Lieutenant Trench didn’t talk to you after the, I’m gonna call it, accident?’ That was very un-Trench-like.

  Angie rolled her eyes. ‘Lieutenant Trench,’ she said, and put her head down on the table. Next to three empty beer bottles.

  What were my options? First, I had to talk to Holly Wentworth. She’d need to know about this. After all, Reeves was a very well-paying client who had insisted on me and only me to defend him in court, and …

  No.

  ‘Patrick,’ I said carefully, ‘have you spoken to Robert Reeves since all this happened? At all?’

  ‘I’m sure I called him after I heard what had happened,’ he answered. ‘You know, how awful and all that. I called Jimmy’s mum, I remember that. Awfully nice woman. She was devastated, of course.’ He stared off into the middle distance, which I knew was one of his acting go-tos. He probably couldn’t remember the conversation at all and felt bad about that.

  ‘And you haven’t spoken to Reeves recently?’ I braced myself because somehow I knew what was coming.

  Patrick looked away and that was all I needed to see.

  ‘You gave him my phone number, didn’t you?’ I said. I heard my voice rising in pitch and volume. ‘Somehow you found out he didn’t like the attorney he was working with, and you parachuted in and suggested he give your girlfriend a call, right?’

  Patrick actually looked a little sheepish. ‘I thought I was doing you a favor, bringing in a new client.’

  ‘I have got to get off this case!’ I reached for my phone to call Holly just as it rang.

  Sure enough, the caller was Robert Reeves.

  ‘Seriously, you can’t interrupt me when I’m in serious negotiations for a new project,’ he began. Some people start with, ‘hello’, but this was Hollywood.

  ‘Mr Reeves, I’m trying to keep you out of jail and I have very little time and a large number of questions. I will feel free to call you whenever I see fit and I will expect you to answer me every single time because you know that I’m your best defense’ (literally) ‘against a life sentence. Are we clear on that?’

  Patrick, grinning, mimed applause. Angie kept her head on the table but, lady that she is, did not snore. I turned away from both of them because I had to be Professional Sandy right now and they weren’t helping.

  Even Reeves, who seemed to be an ego in pants – if that’s not redundant – appeared impressed. ‘Very well. What do you need from me?’ Who says very well?

  ‘I need to
know why you didn’t tell me that your wife was having an affair with James Drake at the time he was killed,’ I said.

  ‘That’s just a rumor. My marriage is very happy.’ Can I call them? This was not my first such case. I used to be a prosecutor and now I’m seeing things from the other side. But even in my family law cases, which are mostly divorces, I heard this kind of thing a lot.

  ‘Then can you explain why your wife has admitted to the affair?’ I was skating the line between providing a vigorous defense and hoping to get fired and, frankly, I would have been happy with either outcome. One more than the other, truth be told.

  There was a moment of silence, possibly in honor of the truth, after which Reeves said, ‘No she hasn’t.’

  ‘Mr Reeves,’ I said as Patrick watched and Angie’s nostrils flared a bit, ‘I have represented clients who were guilty of the charges they faced.’

  ‘I’m not …’

  ‘Hear me out. I did not have a problem defending those clients because everyone is entitled to a defense. That’s how the legal system works.’ I considered my next words carefully. ‘I defended those clients and I have represented many who were not guilty. I understand the way our courts are set up and I play my part as I should.’ Patrick especially liked the reference to playing a part; I think he still truly believes he and I have the same job.

  ‘But there’s one thing I won’t do and one type of person who I will not defend, and that is a client who lies to me,’ I went on. ‘Now. One last time: Why didn’t you tell me your wife was having an affair with James Drake?’

  Angie looked up.

  I could hear a noise on the other end of the call and it sounded like … yes, that was what I’d sounded like before I left Middlesex County and my ex-boyfriend! It was tooth-grinding. Reeves was either extremely nervous or very angry with me.