Marine One (33 page)

The judge took off her reading glasses and tossed them aside. "Mr. Nolan-"

The court reporter looked up. "Is this on the record, Your Honor?"

"It most certainly is." Then the judge turned to me. "Mr. Nolan. What are you doing subpoenaing your own associate to testify in a trial? What is going on here?"

"Your Honor, there has been subterfuge and fraud by Mr. Braden Randall on behalf of Mr. Hackett. I suggest that we put Mr. Randall on the stand and ask him about it. Hence the subpoena."

"Mr. Hackett?" the judge asked, looking at him.

Hackett had regained his composure. "Your Honor, Mr. Nolan is obviously delusional. His case is lost. This is a desperate attempt to take the jury's attention off the facts. I would ask that the court ignore this side show. Let's complete Dr. Bradley's testimony and submit this case to the jury to let them decide what happened. Frankly, all we've determined so far today is that Mr. Nolan's own expert has confirmed my theory, that a tip weight that was improperly mounted fractured and caused this helicopter to crash. I'm surprised that Mr. Nolan hasn't just stipulated to a judgment at this point. Why we need to inquire into Mr. Randall's secret motives, I can only imagine. But I can tell you that it's not relevant to this case."

Damn he was good. "Your Honor, I simply ask that you allow me to examine Mr. Randall for fifteen minutes, then you determine whether this is relevant to the conduct of this case or not. Mr. Hackett has objected to Dr. Bradley's testimony. You asked why I hadn't disclosed certain information to counsel prior to now, and this is why."

The judge was unhappy the case had taken this turn, but she knew she had to sort it out. "Take the stand, Mr. Randall."

Braden stood up and inched down the row, trying not to step on the others. His face was white. He walked slowly to the stand, turned, and faced the gallery as the journalists in the front row quickly and confidently drew their new favorite. After taking the oath, he sat in the witness stand and adjusted the microphone. Rachel handed me the exhibits for his examination.

The clerk said to him, "Please state your full name and spell your last name for the record."

He did.

I said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Randall."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Nolan."

"You just took the oath before this court, which carries with it the penalties of perjury for making a knowing misstatement, do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yet when the clerk asked you to state your name,
after
you took the oath, what you told her was false. Correct?"

"That's my name."

"That's the name that you go by. But that's not the name on your birth certificate. Is it?"

"No, sir."

There was a hum behind me as I continued, "Your actual name is Jonathan Dercks, correct?"

He looked surprised. "Yes, sir, that's my given name."

"Yet when you applied to me for a job, you lied to me and told me your name was what you just told the clerk, correct?"

"Yes, I've had some problems with my old girlfriend, who has been stalking me. I have gone by-"

"What's her name?"

"I'd really rather not say."

"You now have testified under oath that the reason that you lied to me was because you'd been stalked by a female. What is her name?"

"Ah, I don't remember."

"You don't remember? How is that possible, that you don't remember the name of a former girlfriend who is stalking you?"

"There is… I am just sort of flustered right now."

"You have never obtained a restraining order against this female in any court in this country, have you?"

"No."

"Never applied for one, have you?"

"No."

"Your Honor, I'd like to mark as the exhibit next in order the resume that was submitted to me by Mr. Dercks when he applied for a position with my firm."

I walked to the front and handed him a copy of the resume. "It says here you graduated from Columbia Law School. That's correct, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"But your name on your diploma is Dercks, not Randall, right?"

"Yes."

"And you list here all the places that you have been previously employed in the practice of law, right?"

"Yes."

"They're accurate?"

"Yes."

"It's accurate but it's incomplete, right?"

Braden glanced down again at the paper. "I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Well, you failed to list Mr. Hackett's law firm as your place of employment for over two years. And therefore the resume that you gave me when you asked me for a job is incomplete, right?"

"Would you ask that again?"

I shook my head. "Did you or did you not work for Mr. Hackett's law firm for over two years?"

"Yes."

Several people behind me gasped audibly. "Why did you leave that information off your resume, Mr. Randall?"

"I don't really know. I certainly didn't intend to. It was prepared by a professional headhunter that I had used before. They must have forgotten to put that on. I don't know."

I stared at him in disbelief. "So the fact that you worked for my opponent on the very case you were applying to me about, it's your claim that was left off your resume by a
headhunter?"

"Yes, I think so."

"That's a remarkable coincidence. Don't you agree?"

"It's unfortunate."

"Sir, you are the one who handed me your resume. I did not receive it from a headhunter."

"I don't recall if I did or not."

"You knew I wouldn't hire you to work for me if I'd known you worked for my opponent for two years, right?"

"I don't really know what you would have done."

I approached Braden, handed him a document, and handed a copy of it to Hackett. "Let me show you what's been marked as our next exhibit in order. It's an article about a case that Mr. Hackett's law firm won three years after you had left his employ. Do you see this?"

"Yes."

"Coincidentally, you worked at the law firm on the other side of Mr. Hackett in that case too. You did work there then, didn't you? It's on your resume."

"Yes, I did."

"And you were helping Mr. Hackett at that time and in fact you sent him confidential and privileged information about the case, didn't you?"

Braden swallowed. "No," he said quietly.

"Well, surely when at
that
law firm you told them of your prior employment with Mr. Hackett's firm, right? Because that's the place where you went to work immediately after leaving Mr. Hackett's employ."

"I'm sure I did."

"Well, that's very interesting. Because I called the chairman of recruiting of that firm on the way over here this afternoon and asked him about you-under your old name of course-and he remembered you very well. He was sad to see you go. When I asked him whether you had been-"

Hackett stood up. "This is hearsay and we are running very far afield, Your Honor. This is a complete waste of the court's time. I move that we suspend this interrogation and continue with something more fruitful. This case is not about resume peccadilloes." Hackett sat back down.

The judge wasn't having any of it. "Mr. Hackett, do you not understand the implications of this inquiry? Let me cut to the chase. Did this young man work for your law firm?"

"It's possible, Your Honor. But frankly I don't remember. I'm sorry to say I go through a lot of associates, some of whom I remember and some of whom I don't. Obviously he didn't stick, and where he went after that, I have no idea."

"Overruled. You may continue."

"So, Mr. Dercks, I have a copy of the resume that you submitted to that firm. Please let me show it to you." I advanced and gave him a copy of the faxed resume, as well as a copy to Hackett. I turned again to Braden.

"Do you see it?"

"Yes, I do."

"Is this the resume you submitted to their firm?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well, I'll represent to you that it's the one that's in their file that they claim you submitted to them, and I'll bring them down here to say so if it's important."

"It's probably mine."

"Do you note how Mr. Hackett's firm is absent from this resume?"

"Yes, I see that."

"Headhunter?"

"I'm not sure. I quit referring to it at some point. It must have been because it was a plaintiff's firm."

"So now it's because you were afraid they might not hire you if they knew you had worked for Mr. Hackett's firm, is that right?"

"Right."

"Well, I will also represent to you, sir, that I checked when that case was filed. The one that came down with that big judgment for Mr. Hackett's client when you were working for the other side. It was filed two months before you went to work for them. Are you aware of that?"

"No. I wasn't aware of that."

"So that's a surprise to you? You're learning here for the first time that the biggest case that firm had ever lost was the one against the firm you used to work for? That's your testimony?"

"Yes."

"Well, sir, I decided to check on the next firm that you worked at. And I got a copy of your resume from them. And once again, you didn't tell them that you'd worked for Mr. Hackett's firm. Does that surprise you?"

"I guess not."

"And surprisingly again, that firm lost a big case to Mr. Hackett's law firm, and sure enough, they appeared in that lawsuit three months before you went to work there. Were you aware of that?"

"No."

"Sir, do you understand you're under oath? And that if you knowingly make a false statement you can be punished under the penalties of perjury and put in prison?"

"Yes, sir."

I lowered my voice and slowed down. "Sir, isn't it true that after you left Mr. Hackett's employ you got hired by the firms representing Hackett's opponents, and they all lost their cases to Mr. Hackett?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"He gave you a cut of those cases, didn't he? You got part of the money."

'No."

"Do you deny helping Mr. Hackett win those cases against those firms that you worked for?"

"I do."

I turned toward Rachel, who was carefully watching, and I nodded to her. She knew what I wanted her to do and typed an e-mail message onto her BlackBerry and hit send. If things had gone according to plan, Ralph was standing out in the hallway with Justin, who would receive that e-mail message on his BlackBerry. I turned to Braden again and paused. "You're quite good with computers, aren't you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Nothing special."

"Even though your resume that you sent to me says you majored in history, isn't it true, sir, that your undergraduate major was actually computer science?"

Braden stared, without answering. I continued, "Because I have your transcript. An official copy. You see an employer is entitled to get that. So I got it. Actually Mr. Byrd got it for me and left it for me. You know him. You met him. My investigator who was murdered. Well, he didn't like you. He was suspicious and checked you out. Your transcript says that your major was computer science. Do you deny it?"

"No, I don't."

"Yet on the resume that you submitted to me, it says you majored in history and it makes no mention of computer science. Right?"

"I don't like computers anymore, and I didn't want to get pigeonholed into doing intellectual-property litigation. When firms would see that I was a computer-science major, they would want me to do technical cases."

"So that's why you lied to me about that, because of my flourishing intellectual-property practice. Is that your testimony?"

He smiled, appreciating the irony even in his desperate condition. "No."

"No, because I don't have an intellectual-property practice, and you know that. Right?"

"Yes, it was just habit by then."

I heard the door open behind me and I saw Braden's face. I could tell by the look on his face that it was Ralph, my IT expert, and he was carrying Braden's laptop. I continued, "Sir, in fact you're so good at computers that you know how to create a tunnel through a server, correct?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"You know how to prepare a tunnel which takes all incoming and outgoing e-mail traffic, Web access, and even internal e-mail traffic within a firm like mine and copies it and transmits those copies to a destination e-mail address. You know how to do that, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Sir, are you familiar with the federal wiretap laws?"

"Vaguely."

"Are you aware that it's a felony to put an illegal bugging device in someone's office?"

He shrugged but was beginning to perspire slightly. "I would assume so."

I turned to Ralph and nodded to him. He tossed me a small device, which I caught, then I turned back to Braden. "Sir, this is a bug that was found underneath the desk in my office. You put it there, didn't you?"

"No. I didn't."

"I asked Ralph to bring in your laptop, sir. He is the one who discovered the tunnel through our server that was copying every e-mail sent to or from my law firm and forwarding it to an e-mail address which appears to be a random number. And he's prepared to open up your laptop right here and show us how you did it. Isn't it true, Mr. Dercks, that you are the one who put the bug in my office and sent all my e-mails, memos, even voice mails which are captured by our e-mail system, to your real boss, Tom Hackett?"

Braden looked at Hackett, which was a dead giveaway. Everyone in the courtroom saw it. He hesitated, then said to everyone's surprise. "I would like to invoke my Fifth Amendment privileges at this point."

I looked surprised. "Fifth Amendment privilege? Are you saying that you're afraid that testimony that you might now give here could be used against you in court in a criminal action where you would be the defendant?"

"I really think it would be best for me not to answer any more questions. I would like to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege."

I nodded and looked at the judge. "Your Honor, I don't have any further questions."

She looked at Hackett. "Any questions, Mr. Hackett?"

He stood up, having renewed his self-confidence. "I don't have any questions of this young man, Your Honor. I have no idea what this is about. He's asserting things that are patently untrue. I have never received anything from him regarding Mr. Nolan's trial preparation or trial strategy. If he is sending e-mails and bugging people's offices, he certainly isn't sending it to me. I don't know how this is even relevant to this case." His voice was confident as was his demeanor, but something in his tone, something in his voice, betrayed fear.