Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (30 page)

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Chapter Twenty-Eight

April 4, 1:30 p.m.

I
t was time. And the time had arrived much sooner than Trask had expected. The Department had certified the case for a capital sentencing hearing if a conviction was returned on the homicides. That had not been a surprise. What
had
surprised him was the speed with which the trial date had approached. Burns was his usual crafty self and had pushed the case forward, asserting Moreno’s right to a speedy trial instead of asking for the usual barrage of delays.

The old fox knows that the government’s case actually gets
better
with additional time to
prepare; it’s just a myth that a delay always benefits the defense.

Trask paced back and forth in the witness room. At least Gray was doing one thing correctly, saving the confession—the coffin nail—for the close of the case. That’s why Trask was testifying last. Gray had used Lynn to testify about the attacks on them in their home, saving Trask to describe the events at the hospital after Moreno’s arrest.

Start strong, finish strong, and bury any weaknesses in the middle…trial advocacy 101.
The jury’ll convict him of the homicides, and the judge will then surprise them by telling them that
they now have to consider the death penalty or life without release. A bifurcated, or two-part trial.
Guilt phase followed by sentencing phase. That’s where the challenge will be for you, Gray old man.

Trask wasn’t really nervous. He’d been a witness in a couple of other cases, courts-martial to be precise. He’d also prepared hundreds of witnesses for trial before and had mentally split his own personality in order to coach himself while getting ready for this moment.
But it’s J. T. Burns. I know I could handle him if I
were trying the case, but Gray’s sitting in that chair, not me.

He’d forced himself to separate as much as possible from the task force, leaving them to the tender mercies of G. Gary Gray for the past couple of months. He’d had to do it. It was Gray’s case, and if he was to have any chance of prosecuting it successfully, Gray would have to be comfortable with it, massage it, mold it into something he knew. Trask’s continued presence would have been too much of a distraction.

He had, nevertheless, been given a nightly update by Lynn regarding Gray’s management ability and techniques, usually laced with language that would make a veteran sailor retreat. Trask was somewhat surprised that Gray had survived to see the beginning of the trial. He was convinced that several of the investigators on the task force had been considering the commission of their own perfect crime.

Since Trask was a fact witness in the case, he had been prohibited from watching any of the trial. He had been getting summaries from Barry Doroz, who had been allowed to remain at counsel table with Gray as the government’s case agent. He had been told several times by Bear that he could have done a better job, but that the proof was going in with few problems. Trask remembered the Reid case.
Burns is no “springbutt” as Lassiter had called them. He won’t be attacking every
little thing just because he can. And if he isn’t attacking anything yet, he’s saving his ammo for what
he thinks he
can
attack successfully. That target might be painted on me.

The knock on the door startled him, even though he’d expected it. Tim Wisnewski had been acting as the witness manager for the trial team.

“They’re ready for you, sluggo. Go get ’em.”

“Yeah. Thanks, coach,” Trask said as he grabbed his suit coat and buttoned it. “If I’m not out in an hour, call the police or something.”

The huge oak doors leading into the courtroom of United States District Judge Waymon Dean closed behind him. Trask walked down the aisle separating the two sides of the peanut gallery, the section of the courtroom reserved for spectators and the press. It was full. A sound feed had actually been provided into a second, empty courtroom so the overflow who had not been admitted to the day’s proceedings could hear the trial in progress. It was audio only. Cameras weren’t allowed in federal court. Trask pushed through the low, swinging double doors into the well of the courtroom, raised his hand and took the oath, then climbed the four steps to the chair in the witness stand.

Gray smiled at him from the podium in the center of the courtroom.

“Please state your name and your place of employment.”

“Jeffrey Trask. I’m an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.”

Gray, to his credit, let Trask tell the story of Moreno’s confession with few interruptions, only breaking up the narrative with questions as required by the Federal Rules of Evidence. Narratives weren’t actually supposed to happen; lawyers were supposed to ask questions, and witnesses were supposed to answer them. Another legal fiction.

Trask noticed that Burns appeared to be bored with the whole tale. Moreno, seated beside Burns at the defense table, had been well coached. The malevolent stare from the hospital room was disguised for the court proceedings. Only once or twice did the defendant’s single, functioning eye look up at Trask, and then it quickly retreated to the papers on the table.

There was a fifteen-minute break following the direct examination. Trask headed for the men’s room for a final pit stop before cross. Burns was there when he entered.

“Hello, Jeff.”

“J. T.”

“New role for you?”

“I’ve done it before, actually.”

“Good. This should be fun, then. See you shortly.”

Yes, you will. I just wish you weren’t so confident about it. What do you have cooking in
that head of yours?

Trask walked back to the witness room and found the half-full can of Diet Coke he’d left there. Wisniewski was reading a newspaper.

“How’d direct go?”

“Not bad. Got the story told.”

“Ready for cross?”

“I have no idea. I’m ready for what the cross
should
be, but it’s Burns, so who knows.”

“You’ll be fine. No sweat.”

Yeah.
Trask walked back toward the courtroom.
That’s what my boxing coach at
the Academy told me before I got in the ring with the golden gloves champ of California. He just
forgot to tell me who my opponent was.

The jury filed back in. Judge Dean gave them his grandfatherly smile, then nodded toward Burns.

“Cross-examination. Mr. Trask, you are reminded you are still under oath.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Burns took the long way to the podium, walking behind his client to the far end of the defense table and around that. This gave him the chance to give Moreno a reassuring pat on the back en route.

A little theatre, J. T.?

“Good afternoon, Mr. Trask.”

“Mr. Burns.”

“We’ve met, haven’t we?”

Trask couldn’t resist smiling in response to the question. “Yes, sir, I’d say that was an understatement.”

There were chuckles from the jury box.

Good.
Trask smiled back at them.
A point for me. At least I didn’t get shut out.

Burns was smiling back at Trask. “Some very high-profile cases, wouldn’t you say?”

“I think that’s a fair assessment.”
Where are you going with this, J. T.?

“Why do you think we keep meeting like this?”

What? Why aren’t you objecting to that one, Gray?
Trask saw that the prosecutor was writing notes on a tablet.
Wonderful. Clueless and emphasizing all this for the jury. If you’re
writing, they think it must be important.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Burns, what was your question?”
Maybe if I get him to repeat it,
Gray, you’ll hear it the second time.

“I was asking, Mr. Trask, why you and I keep meeting in these important cases?”

Still no objection, although completely irrelevant, so I have to answer it.
“I can only assume, that it is because the court feels confident in appointing you to represent defendants in challenging matters.”
How’s that, J. T.? “Challenging” means when
your client is guilty is hell.

Burns shot him a wry look and smiled. “Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Trask. I hope that you are correct, and may I suggest that your own abilities are why your office appoints you to cases of considerable magnitude as well?”

It suddenly hit Trask like a punch from that golden gloves champion—the punch that had knocked him into the next county.
He’s picked his battle on the ground
that he knows he can defend. We’re already in the sentencing hearing, before the jury’s returned a
guilty verdict!

“I can’t speak for my superiors, Mr. Burns.”
Earth to Gray, object on the grounds
that the question calls for speculation, you moron. Nope, he doesn’t get it. Thinks this is all chummy
preliminary stuff.

“Oh, I think it’s safe to say that you are a rising star in your office. Otherwise, you would not be trusted to handle major investigations like this one, don’t you agree?”

Gray, you’re a potted plant. No objection again? How do I answer this without looking like
an asshole? “No, Mr. Burns, I’m just mean and they want to see me fail, or get attacked, or killed.”
Let’s try this.
“Your assessment is very kind, Mr. Burns.”

“Oh, I think it is entirely merited, Mr. Trask. After all, you
are
the one who took my expert apart in the now famous case of the United States v. Demetrius Reid, are you not?”

“We had evidence that did that, Mr. Burns.”

“I think you are being very modest, but so be it. At any rate, you would have to agree that your office—the people in your office—may feel like they have a very personal stake in the outcome of this matter, would you not? Especially after you and your wife were personally attacked?”

Gray? Oh for heaven’s sake.
“Mr. Burns, you are aware that it is because I was an intended victim that our entire office was disqualified from prosecuting the case, and that’s why Mr. Gray is handling this trial.”

“That is essentially a Department of Justice rule, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It is also a Department of Justice policy that an attorney should never interrogate a defendant without a witness being present, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But you did that in this case?”

“Only after I knew I would be disqualified from trying the matter because of attempts on my life and on the life of my wife. The reason we have witnesses at interrogations is so we are not disqualified from trying a case. I already knew I would be disqualified. In addition, as I explained on direct examination, I had multiple witnesses monitoring my contact with Mr. Moreno over a sound feed from his room to the nurse’s station.”

“And why couldn’t someone else—one of your agents or detectives—why couldn’t one of them have conducted this interrogation?”

“They could have.”
And the way this is going, maybe they should have.

“But they didn’t.”

“No.”

“And is that because your Department also believes that you have superior investigative skills?”

“Objection, Your Honor!” Gray exclaimed.

He lives,
Trask thought.

“And the basis for your objection, Mr. Gray?” Judge Dean asked.

“I…withdraw my objection.”

You’re kidding me. No, you’re killing me.

The judge shrugged. “Answer the question, Mr. Trask.”

“I do my best, Mr. Burns. What others think of my efforts I can’t say.”

“It was you, after all, Mr. Trask, and not one of your agents or detectives, who found that critical piece of evidence, that proverbial smoking gun in the Reid case, wasn’t it?”

Trask waited a moment before answering, staring at Gray, who was writing notes to himself again.
Relevance, you idiot, relevance.
He looked up at the judge. Their eyes met, and Trask knew he understood, but Waymon Dean was old school. He let the lawyers try their cases. No objection meant no objection, regardless of the rules of evidence. The evidence was coming in; the question had to be answered.

“Yes, I found the evidence that proved Mr. Reid was not insane.”

“Thank you, Mr. Trask. I’d like to take you back for a moment to the instant in which you saw your wife bound—and as you described it on direct examination—you thought lifeless, on the floor of your home. If you had seen her attacker standing over her, and you had been armed, what would you have done?”

Again, no objection. Oh well, cat’s out of the bag now. To object would be to emphasize it even
more, and now I’m back in the election of 1988.
Trask looked at the judge again. Dean just nodded. Trask turned back to Burns.

“At that time, and under those circumstances, Mister Burns, I would have shot that man dead.”

Burns walked slowly back to his table before turning to face the judge. “No more questions.”

Gray finally stood. “The prosecution rests.”

Burns was on his feet immediately. “As does the defense, Your Honor.”

April 5, 10:00 a.m.