The Great Divide (40 page)

When they were in close, Marcus said, “I move that the video be admitted as evidence, Your Honor.”

Logan retaliated with the swiftness of hard preparation. “Objection. The witness Hao Lin clearly stated she could not hear what was being said. It might be the one time Miss Hao, or whatever her name really is, told us the full truth the entire time she was on the stand.”

“That was uncalled for.”

Logan ignored him. “By Miss Hao’s own testimony she heard nothing, Your Honor. All she could say was that she saw a video being made. And we stipulate that even this is highly questionable testimony. The witness repeatedly perjured herself.”

“That is not true.”

“She admitted under cross that she would say anything, do anything to stay in this country. This video was critical to her own case.”

“That does not in any way make the witness a liar, Your Honor.”

“No, but it certainly offers a motive.” Logan did not let up, nor release his grip on the edge of the judge’s bench. “Miss Hao has every reason to want this video to be true. It backs up her own request for political asylum. She said as much herself.”

Marcus countered, “Miss Hao showed herself to be both intelligent and reliable, Your Honor. Her testimony stands as a valid and direct tie-in between Gloria Hall, the factory, and this video.”

Logan shook his head like a bull tossing flies. “This is inherently unreliable testimony, Your Honor. The woman was obviously lying to advance her own cause. We have shown this witness, someone the plaintiff actually brought from jail to testify, to be both a liar and a fraud.”

Judge Nicols pondered a long moment. Marcus felt the air clog until he could not draw another free breath. Finally she decided, “I am going to credit the witness as having given this court a reliable testimony. You may enter the video as evidence.”

Marcus fled before she could change her mind. The trek back across the floor was lengthened by having to stare into the afflicted gazes of Alma and Austin Hall. The previous day had cut deeply. Marcus forced his lungs to unlock. Today would scarcely be better. They had been warned, and they had insisted on remaining. There was nothing else he could do. “Plaintiff calls Maureen Folley to the stand.”

The woman certainly lived up to the Charlie Hayes’ description of the night before—short and stocky and possessing all the charm of a tenpenny nail. As she gave her name to the bailiff and affirmed the oath, she also revealed the flat, toneless voice of a big-city taxi dispatcher. Marcus sorted his handwritten notes, and gave Charlie a short nod. She was perfect.

Marcus rose to his feet and began. “Mrs. Folley, you are a full professor of visual arts at North Carolina State University, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“And your specialty is digital imaging, is that not correct?”

“Yes.”

“Objection!” Logan’s alarm was clearly genuine. “Your Honor, plaintiff has been granted permission to show the video, not render it!”

Judge Nicols did not even permit Marcus to respond. “Overruled.”

“Mrs. Folley, you have testified in a number of trials regarding the authenticity of videotapes, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“What can you tell us about the video we are about to see?”

“That it is all of one piece. It has not been spliced.” She turned to the jury and continued. “Amateur video recorders will scar a tape just like the grooves carved into a bullet exiting the barrel of a gun. This entire tape was shot by the same camera, and in one continuous session.”

“Objection!” Logan pressed against his table, as though needing this barrier to keep himself from racing forward and grabbing Marcus by the neck. “This is unproven, unsubstantiated, theoretical!”

“Overruled. You will have your turn on cross. Proceed.”

“Please continue, Mrs. Folley.”

“I have done a microscopic search of the tape. As I said, the camera ran continuously. What you see was done in one take.”

“Objection! It is just as possible that the tape was spliced together from a series of takes, just done on a machine that scarred it like a camera!”

Judge Nicols rounded on him. “I will not warn you again.”

“But Your Honor, really, this is—”

“Sit.” She held him fast with her gaze. “Proceed, Mr. Glenwood.”

“Before we go further with this testimony, Your Honor, I’d like to show the original tape.”

“Very well.”

Marcus helped the bailiff roll forward the metal stand bearing four televisions, angled so that at least one screen was visible to everyone—judge and defense and jury and the packed audience chamber. A tape machine rested upon a shelf beneath the screens. Marcus walked back to his desk and took the videotape from its packet, his movements slow, making good theater of the process. When the bailiff had turned on the machine, Marcus inserted the tape and pushed the play button.

Gloria Hall reached across time and distance and spoke to the jury. Marcus listened and heard something new. The change was not merely because it was a public performance. It was the first time he had studied the tape since the previous day’s testimony. He knew now that Gloria Hall’s voice held the same dull weeping quality as Hao Lin’s.

The realization added a deeper poignancy to her crude pattern of speech. Her almost invisible form remained silhouetted against the backdrop of overbright light. Marcus risked several glances at the jury, and saw many of them squinting hard, as though seeking to penetrate
the light and study the woman more closely. Marcus turned back to the video and watched to its too-brief end.

He left the televisions where they were, creating a technical barrier in the middle of the floor. Alma’s quiet weeping merely punctuated the moment’s piercing quality. “Mrs. Folley, could you describe for the court what it means to digitally clean up a picture?”

“Objection! Your Honor, plaintiff intends to fabricate reality from what is merely theory.”

“Overruled.” Judge Nicols did not even glance his way. “Proceed.”

“Do you require the question to be repeated, Mrs. Folley?”

“No.” She addressed her response to the jury, showing her experience at courtroom testimony. She seemed utterly unfazed by the video, which was natural, as she had probably seen it a full hundred times by now. “Essentially, it is the same as taking an analog tape of old music and remastering it. The video is first digitized, and then rerendered through computer analysis. All ambient particles and, in this instance, unnecessary light are removed. The image is redrawn into tighter focus.”

Marcus realized that the majority of the jury did not understand, and that it did not matter. “But this cleaned-up version is still the same, is it not?”

“The underlying image is identical to the original, yes. Just as it is when you remaster an old jazz recording to hear the sound better.”

“All right. Your Honor, we would now like to show the remastered version of this video.”

“Objection!” Logan started across the floor.

But Nicols was having none of it. “Stay right where you are, Mr. Kendall.”

“But Your Honor—”

“This court accepts the testimony as valid, and has decided to overrule your objection.” The dark jaw jutted forward slightly. “I would advise you to reseat yourself. Now.”

Logan expelled a vast sigh of fury as he retook his seat. Marcus used this moment, when all attention was elsewhere, to reach behind the back of his table and draw forth the blown-up photograph. He held the poster-size print backward as Charlie Hayes fumbled with the easel, so that all the jury saw was the white styrofoam backing. “Mrs. Folley, would you please set up the digital video machine?”

He stood there holding the unseen photograph as the ungainly woman with her flat face and voice retrieved her bulky briefcase from beside Marcus’ chair. Charlie and he had cooked up the plan while discussing the witness the night before. As Marcus watched her feed in the wires and hook up the machine, however, he fretted that they had made a huge blunder. A more unemotional witness he had never sought to bend.

He waited until Mrs. Folley had completed her check and risen to her feet. She pointed at the central button in a vast array of dials and switches and said, “Push that and it will run.”

“Thank you. Please, if you would return to the stand.” Then he turned the photograph, and set the picture on the easel.

It was only as he turned back that he knew they had chosen wisely.

Mrs. Folley had not moved.

She stood staring at the photograph. It was the first time she had ever seen Gloria Hall anywhere except on the video. Her attention was rapt. The fact that her face revealed no emotion whatsoever did not matter. With her, the jury’s attention was drawn to study a black woman in her midtwenties, poised upon the bottom step of a well-appointed house, dressed in a fashionable cocktail gown, her head thrown back and her eyes closed with the pleasure of laughing with all her body and mind and spirit. Marcus saw a number of the jury smile in return. They had no choice. Gloria’s joy challenged one and all.

He said merely, “Mrs. Folley, could I please ask you to resume your seat upon the stand.”

The woman moved in jerky stages, a puppet hung by knotted threads. It was only when she was reseated and searching her purse for a handkerchief that she sniffed. Once. But it was enough to draw all the jury back to her and away from Gloria, enough to reveal the tears streaming down her flat, hard face.

Marcus pushed the button.

This time Gloria was no longer hidden by lights. The image was vividly clear. The laughing young woman was gone. Her hair was so matted that one side of her head appeared shaved. A deep bruise painted one cheek with a nightmare bloom. Her lips were so puffed and misshapen that they snagged on each word. Her left ear was crusted with dried blood. She was battered to the point of being scarcely recognizable. The same, yet Gloria Hall no longer. The
change, heightened by the poster standing alongside the television screen, brought such gasps from the jury that Austin Hall’s own agonized moan was scarcely heard.

“Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad. I am fine. Everything is fine here. I am staying here awhile. I am working. I study hard. I am fine. I need money for my work. Send money now. Send money and I will be … fine. I am happy. Send money. I want to be left alone. But send money. A hundred thousand dollars. Send it to the Hong Kong branch of the Guangzhou Bank, account four-five-five-seven-two-two. I am happy. Send the money. Do it now.”

Marcus waited a long moment after the screen went blank to turn off the machine. He turned and gave Gloria’s parents a very long stare, as long as he dared, willing the jury to look with him. There was nothing more to be said. The realization that he was approaching the end of his line of witnesses left him neither jubilant nor drained. He was too depleted for anything except the realization that the case was no longer his. “No further questions.”

Marcus returned to his seat. Logan and Suzie Rikkers rushed forward and plucked the photograph from the easel. They stowed both behind their own table, then pushed the television stand back out of view. Each time she passed, Suzie Rikkers raked Marcus with her furious gaze. In the moment’s silence, Marcus finally understood why Logan kept bringing her forward, why the warning was being made. His rising fear was such that he did not even hear the questioning or the testimony, did not object once to Logan’s furious tirade. He remained seated and staring at his hands, seeing only the horror that now lay revealed. When Logan finally reseated himself, Judge Nicols twice had to ask for Marcus to call his next witness.

Rising to his feet was the hardest point thus far in the case. Marcus said the words because he had no choice, because the pieces were laid out and the next move foreordained, “Plaintiff requests a special hearing in chambers.”

T
HE HALLWAY from the courtroom to the judge’s private chambers was lined with old Norman Rockwell prints. The prints had followed Judge Nicols from one set of chambers to another. In her early days there had been a great deal of speculation about them—how they had been chosen to appease the white voters who might not like having a hyperintelligent, uppity black woman reigning over a courtroom. But those who knew Judge Nicols were certain she did it for herself alone.

Judge Nicols’ conference room seated eighteen at an oval table and another dozen in leather chairs around the perimeter. She did not bother to shuck her robes, nor to wait until she had seated herself to say, “All right, Mr. Glenwood. Let’s hear what this is all about.”

Marcus found it harder to ignore Suzie Rikkers now that the presence behind her presence was known. “Your Honor, we feel that the case as it currently stands requires an expansion in the number of defendants.”

Logan huffed his frustrated rage. The scalding that the video had given his case remained evident in his voice. “Your Honor, this is patently absurd. We have the two senior vice presidents of the North Carolina company currently present. This charge he’s leveling against the board is ridiculous.”

“I was speaking,” Marcus replied quietly, “of General Zhao Ren-Fan.”

The moment’s silence was not all he had expected, nor was the shocked expression on Logan’s face. Marcus turned and studied his opponent carefully, ignoring Suzie as best he could. Logan knew,
Marcus finally decided. The stupefaction was good theater, but theater just the same. The defense knew.

But Logan merely said, “What?”

“General Zhao Ren-Fan,” Marcus repeated quietly. “The man named in the corporate documents as head of the factory in China. The man our witness claimed was proprietor and chief operator of Factory 101.”

Logan turned back to the judge. “This entire case is a travesty of federal jurisprudence. This latest absurdity only shows that Mr. Glenwood will go to any and all lengths to subvert the good name of my client.” Logan tossed an exasperated glance at Marcus. “Just how is he planning to extend the court’s jurisdiction to include someone situated more than nine thousand miles away?”

Marcus’ trial sense clamored that none of this was the surprise Logan was pretending it to be. There was a carefully rehearsed quality to the man’s shock and outrage. Marcus nodded once. It was all the confirmation he needed, all he would probably ever have, that he had finally arrived at the secret they had so viciously sought to hide.