Corrupt Practices (45 page)

“Let’s move on to something else,” I say. “You were on vacation from May 22, 2011, to June 15, 2011, weren’t you?”

He blinks his eyes several times, waiting for Frantz to object. But as obstructionist as Frantz was at McCarthy’s deposition on this subject, he can’t now object to this seemingly innocuous question without suggesting that McCarthy has something to hide.

“I don’t remember the exact dates, but that sounds about right.”

“You traveled to Europe, didn’t you?”

McCarthy glances at Frantz, a big mistake because a trial witness should never look to his lawyer for help. I just hope some of the jurors notice.

“I was in Europe,” McCarthy says.

“What cities did you visit?”

“Objection,” Frantz says. “Irrelevant. I don’t see how—”

“It’s an obvious foundational question,” Judge Schadlow says. “Overruled.”

“It also invades his privacy,” Frantz says.

Schadlow takes off her reading glasses and tosses them on the bench. “Are you serious, Mr. Frantz? Where he spent his vacation a year ago hardly invades his privacy. I assume he was in public much of the time. Flew on a commercial jet? Landed in a public airport? Overruled.”

“What cities did you visit on your vacation?” I ask.

He grimaces, trying to control his nervous tick. He looks up at the ceiling. “Paris, Helsinki. Some other cities. I saw the sights.”

“Let me try and refresh your recollection about those other cities.” I move to the podium and use the laptop to project one of the documents that Harriet gave me. “Is this a copy of your itinerary for your 2011 European trip?”

“Where did you get that?”

“I get to ask the questions, sir, not you. Please answer mine.”

McCarthy again looks over at Frantz, his appeal for help now blatant.

Frantz pretends not to see McCarthy looking at him, but Nick Weir pops up. “Your Honor, for the record, Mr. Stern never produced a copy of this document to us, so we object to its use with this witness.”

“If I understand Mr. Weir correctly,” I say, “he’s complaining that I didn’t give him a copy of his own client’s trip itinerary. I would have thought that if Mr. Weir wanted a copy of this document so badly, he could have asked Mr. McCarthy for it. The real question is why Mr. Weir and Mr. Frantz withheld the itinerary from me after I repeatedly asked for it in discovery.”

“May we have a sidebar?” Frantz says. “I’d like to explain to the Court—”

“Did you refuse to produce the itinerary to Mr. Stern?” the judge says.

“We objected to its production and he never moved to compel,” Frantz says. “So he can’t now—”

“Stop talking, counsel. I haven’t been on the bench all that long, but one thing I’ve made clear is that I don’t tolerate lawyers who play discovery games. Your objection is overruled.” She turns to McCarthy. “You’ll answer all questions about your trip. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” he mumbles.

“Is this a copy of your itinerary, sir?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Prepared under your direction?”

“Yeah.”

“On Sunday, May 22, 2011, you traveled to Bratislava, Slovakia?”

He looks at the judge. “For the record, I want to state that this question invades my personal privacy.”

“Answer the question, Mr. McCarthy,” the judge says. “Did you or did you not travel to Bratislava on May 22, 2011?”

“I did.”

“On Wednesday, May 25, you were in Sofia, Bulgaria?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“On Friday, May 27, you arrived in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova?”

“It’s an invasion of privacy. But the answer is yes.”

Through further questioning, I get him to admit that he arrived in Helsinki, Finland, and Paris, France, on the dates indicated. Ordinarily, it would be a monotonous examination, but the jurors now know that something is up. When I finish with the list, I ask, “When you took this trip in 2011, did you conduct any business for the Church of the Sanctified Assembly?”

“I’m constantly carrying out the Assembly’s mission, just as I do for all my clients.”

“But were you in Europe specifically on Assembly business? And I want you to be very sure of your answer.”

“No. That’s why I told you it was a vacation, not a business trip.”

It’s just the answer I wanted.

Frantz does his best to rehabilitate McCarthy, but the duplicative testimony about how he helped the FBI catch Rich falls flat. We take a recess, after which I sit alone at the defense table, waiting for the judge to retake the bench. When she does, I say, “The defense calls Grace Trimble.”

No one gasps. That rarely happens in a real courtroom. But the significance of my calling Grace to the stand isn’t lost on those in the room. There’s the
click-clacking
of the journalists’ keyboards, the murmurs from the less-restrained spectators, the rustling of jurors’ notepads. Frantz stands to object, but thinks better of it. Grace is on our witness list. He doesn’t want to incur Schadlow’s wrath a second time in thirty minutes.

On cue, Lovely walks in, followed by Grace, wearing one of Lovely’s gray business suits and a white blouse that we bought for her at Macy’s. The jacket hangs off her shoulders, and the skirt falls to mid-calf. But she looks presentable.

Since I found her yesterday, she’s become ever more depressed. She’s also going through drug withdrawal. Over my strenuous objection, Lovely insisted on spending last night at my condo, sleeping in the living room not far from the door so she could make sure Grace didn’t bolt—or, as Lovely put it, try to kill me again. Lovely basically had Grace trapped in my spare bedroom.

When Grace raises her right hand to take the oath, her arm quivers. As soon as she sits down, I ask, “Ms. Trimble, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an attorney. Currently unemployed.” She shifts her knees from side to side. Her forehead is already glistening with perspiration.

“Could you please speak up, Ms. Trimble?” the judge says.

“Yes. I said I’m a lawyer.” Her voice isn’t much louder than before.

I start with questions about her stellar credentials. She’s always enjoyed boasting about her accomplishments. But after describing her Supreme Court clerkship and her successful cases at the law firm, she says wistfully, “But that was a long time ago.”

“What’s your area of expertise?”

“Constitutional law. Corporate finance. Business law. I tried to be a music lawyer early in my career, but that didn’t work out so well.” She reaches over for the pitcher of water on the judge’s bench next to her. When she pours, her hands are so shaky that some of the water misses the cup. She doesn’t seem to notice that she’s spilled on her skirt. She gulps the water down.

“Why did you stop practicing law?” I ask.

“I suffer from bipolar disorder. I cycle through different mood swings, ranging from mania to depression. Throughout my adult life, I’ve also suffered from drug addiction and alcoholism. Right now, I’m having a problem with methamphetamine. Crystal meth.”

“When was the last time you used crystal meth?”

In all innocence, Grace says, “What day is this?”

There’s laughter in the courtroom. The only one who doesn’t smile is Grace. I tell her it’s Monday.

“Saturday night,” she says. “I’ve been drug free for about thirty-six hours. I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms right now.”

“Will you describe those symptoms?”

“I’m anxious. I crave the drug. I’m cycling into a depression. I’m hot and sweaty. Excuse me.” She reaches over and pours herself another glass of water.

“Is there some reason that you wanted us to know about your illness and your drug problem, Ms. Trimble?”

“Yes. I don’t want any misconceptions about who I am. I’m here to tell the truth—all of it.”

I next elicit testimony about her personal and professional relationship with Rich Baxter and her excommunication from the Assembly. She describes how she and Rich kept in touch even though Assembly tenets prohibited him from having contact with her. She talks about how her fear of the Assembly caused her to use the alias Sandra Casey. She testifies that the only person she told about the name change was Rich.

“At some point in the summer or fall of 2011, did Mr. Baxter contact you?”

“Yes. He said that he’d discovered some fishy transactions involving Assembly money. He told me he’d stumbled on a DVD containing some notes that Harmon Cherry wrote. According to Rich, the notes reflected some kind of wrongdoing involving Assembly accounts. He said he thought maybe Harmon hadn’t committed suicide after all, that Harmon was murdered. He asked for my help. I didn’t want to at first, but he pleaded with me, so I agreed.” Beads of sweat run down her forehead. She’s perspiring so badly that the clerk gets up and hands her a box of Kleenex. Grace takes a tissue out and uses it to dab at her face and neck.

“Do you know why Mr. Baxter turned to you for help?”

“Because he trusted me. Because I’m good at that kind of analytical thinking and he isn’t . . . wasn’t.”

“Before we talk about that, Ms. Trimble, let’s get something out of the way. Did you know that when Rich Baxter was arrested at the apartment in Silver Lake, he was found with a false passport and a quantity of crystal meth?”

“Yes.”

“Who acquired the false passport?”

“I did.” She goes on to describe how she stole Markowitz’s identity and obtained the false passport without Rich’s knowledge, and how she convinced Rich to use the false name to rent the Silver Lake apartment. She describes how she became so frightened of the embezzler that she disguised herself as three different women, intentionally dressing provocatively to divert attention from her real purpose. She admits that the drugs found in the apartment were hers and that Rich wanted her to go into rehab, preferably at an Assembly decontamination center, but even at a mainstream facility. She says that the cash found in the apartment belonged to Rich, but it was for her in case she decided to run. All the while, she squirms in her chair and compulsively wipes her face and neck with the Kleenex. I begin to fear that the jurors will focus not on her words, but on her fidgeting.

“Did you ever see Rich Baxter using drugs?” I ask.

“He never took drugs.”

“Then why was he losing weight?”

“He was working days at his law office and nights at Silver Lake trying to find out who was diverting Assembly money. He was also trying to spend time with his family. He was afraid that what happened to Harmon would happen to him. That’s why he rented the Silver Lake place, to protect his family. So he wasn’t sleeping and he wasn’t eating.”

“You mentioned some notes that Harmon Cherry prepared. What happened to them?”

“Someone stole the DVD containing them from the Silver Lake apartment. But I later found the original notes at Harmon’s beach house, where I’ve been hiding out for a while.” She gulps down the rest of the water in her cup and pours herself some more.

“With the court’s permission, I’d like to have Harmon Cherry’s notes projected on the courtroom monitors.”

“Objection,” Frantz says. “We’ve never seen this document before.”

“I only got a copy of it yesterday,” I say. “And I e-mailed it to both Mr. Frantz and Mr. Weir yesterday afternoon at four forty-five.”

“Your Honor, I never got—” Frantz stops talking when Weir touches his arm and whispers something, and I know what. Lovely told me that every Sunday afternoon at three thirty, Frantz’s IT department shuts down its computer system for maintenance. Any e-mail sent during that time resides in a central server and doesn’t get distributed until Monday morning. It’s an antiquated system that the younger lawyers at the firm have complained about for years. But that’s Frantz’s problem, not mine. We served the document properly—even though we waited until after three thirty to do it.

When Frantz withdraws his objection, Lovely projects the relevant portion of Harmon’s notes on the courtroom monitor:

For 4-27-10 mtg—

CSA
→
TCO
→film fin→ laundry Bnk of Buttonwillow→

EU bnk→offshore→disb

CL, EC, PY, VE, BG, FI, FR, MD, SK

CPA

“Are these the notes that you were referring to, Ms. Trimble?”

“There are also several other pages of financial calculations. But these are the important lines.”

“Can you tell us what this means?”

Frantz objects on hearsay grounds, but we’re ready to counter that with a short legal brief that Lovely put together last night. We’re offering the notes, not for the truth of what Harmon said—that would be hearsay—but to show what Rich Baxter’s state of mind was when he began his investigation, and also to prove that Rich was telling the truth when he said that he’d found the notes. The judge skims through Lovely’s legal memo and lets me proceed with my questioning.

“First of all, Ms. Trimble, Mr. Cherry’s notes are dated April 27, 2010. What does that mean to you?”

“It was the day Harmon died. So the notes were prepared for a meeting he was going to have on the very day he was shot.”

“What, to your knowledge, do the next lines mean?”