The Victim (47 page)

Bryan leaned sideways and asked, “Are we still the most hated men in the courtroom?”

Anton whispered out of the side of his mouth, “No, just you.”

CHAPTER 49

Mandy Guerrero sat splay-legged on the carpeted floor of his office, sifting through the contents of an open cardboard box. Yessenia had led him to the door at the end of the hallway of Jack’s suite that, for all intents and purposes, remained locked. When opened, stacks of cardboard boxes filled the room, nearly floor to ceiling, encompassing nearly all of the twenty-by-twenty space save for a small maze of a walkway. Each box was labeled with a square of paper taped to the side indicating the client’s name, the date of conviction, the court, and the charges. In comparison to all of the cases Jack had handled over the years, the boxes in his storage closet represented a relatively small number. Like any diligent attorney, he was meticulous in the retention of cases that had resulted in guilty verdicts or pleas that could later be the subject of an appeal or post-conviction motion.

The Osvaldo Garcia box was so heavy the bottom seam had to be reinforced with three layers of packing tape. Even as Mandy carried it down the hall to his office, he had to arch his back and bend his knees. The bottom of the box sagged.

Mandy was still with the Miami Beach Police Department back when Osvaldo Garcia was tried and convicted in the District of Arizona, but he had to give credit to the prior investigator. The case was thoroughly prepared, although a significant amount of the box’s bulk consisted of competency evaluations and psychologists’ reports. A good two-thirds of the case prep had been about mitigation for the penalty phase.

Mandy felt he owed it to Anton to get to the bottom of things. He still wrestled with the guilt he felt about betraying him. Had he not gotten involved with Daniella, she would have never gotten to Quincy Arrington. If it weren’t for Anton’s grace under fire, he would be dead.

Mandy stared up at Tony Montana, wearing his signature tuxedo, sucking on a cigar, the iconic image encased in a black lacquer frame on his wall. A bit of a cliche, yes, but he was somewhat of a Cuban folk hero.

Most former police officers who had gone into private investigation hung their badges on their walls, encased in Plexiglass. The terms and conditions of Mandy’s resignation wouldn’t permit him to keep his. On a small bookcase he kept a few framed photos of himself in his uniform, but mainly for the benefit of the prospective clients who came into his office, wanting to hire a former cop.

He dug deep into the box, moving around the inch-thick reports and competency restoration treatment plans until he found it at the bottom: A CD in an envelope. The markings on the disc were written in Sharpie.
Defendant statement, 03/16/03, File # 307B-MM-034492, SA Ray Laurie
. SA stood for Special Agent.

Mandy got up and sat at his desk, most of its space consumed by his iMac’s twenty-one-and-a-half-inch screen. He inserted the disc and tried to run it but a message appeared telling him that it wasn’t compatible with his software. Not surprising. The technological leap from 2003 to 2014 could be measured in light years. Mandy toggled with some converter software and within ten minutes, he was able to reformat the video file into something his iMac could handle.

A black box emerged on the screen followed by the soft crackling of a speaker. A high-angled image appeared of a disheveled man seated at a table, a cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling off the end. A pack of Marlboro Reds were on the table along with an open can of Coke. He used a styrofoam cup as an ashtray. The agents taking the statement had gone to great lengths to ensure that he was comfortable, plying him with cigarettes and soda.

His free fingers were rapidly drumming the tabletop. Mandy couldn’t see any handcuffs or leg restraints. The feds had been smart, giving Ozzie Garcia the impression that he was free to leave, thereby negating any defense claims that his confession was forced.

The camera was a wide-angled lens mounted to the corner of the eight-by-eight room. Smaller than a prison cell. There were no windows, just cinderblock slathered with overlapping coats of white paint. The room was so small that Ozzie’s back was nearly touching the wall. For whatever reason, a bulky copy machine occupied the far corner, cutting into the available space. The time and date stamp showed that it was March 16, 2003. The time was 3:37 p.m.

It was the first time Mandy had ever gotten a look at Osvaldo Garcia. It was worse than he’d imagined. He was in his early thirties, but he could have passed for fifty. Garcia’s hair was long and bushy, falling to his shoulders in ashen clumps. His eyes were cold and devoid of life, like the windows of an abandoned home. They were ringed with circles so black they looked like bruises. Crusted sores marred his forehead and sunken cheeks. A week’s worth of growth dusted his jaw, overwrought with premature gray. Twigs clung to the shoulders and long sleeves of his flannel shirt.

Two special agents entered the frame, sidestepping into the room in order to fit. They were similarly dressed in slacks and tucked-in white button-down shirts, black semiautomatic handguns holstered on their belts. One was a little younger than the other, his stomach a bit flatter. He had closely cropped brown hair, regimental almost, like a military crewcut—probably a former Marine himself, brought along to help establish a connection with the suspect.

Mandy guessed that the older agent was Ray Laurie. He had the bearing of an ex-college lineman. He had a thick neck and Popeye forearms exposed by rolled-up sleeves. He had a graying mustache and looked like a monk with his male-pattern baldness.

Mandy was right. The older agent took the lead, introducing himself as Ray Laurie. He slapped what Mandy presumed was a Miranda waiver down on the table. Mandy raised the volume, trying to make out what they were saying. The audio was poor, likely picked up by a speaker mounted to the camera. Nowadays, they would use a digital recorder.

Mandy’s eyes grew tired as the interview dragged on. The questions were certainly thorough. Ray Laurie was a trained agent and he wasn’t about to jeopardize a murder investigation over a Miranda issue. The agents were patient with Garcia, lighting one cigarette after the other for him as he practically finished the pack. During the first three hours, they had brought him four more Cokes.

Mandy yawned, reaching occasionally for the little ceramic cup of Cuban coffee he had made earlier. It had gone cold but he needed the caffeine. The runtime on the video was seven hours, fourteen minutes. As an act of contrition, he pledged to watch the entire thing.

At five hours, thirty-seven minutes into the video Mandy’s languid head snapped to attention. His eyes grew wide and he dragged back the toolbar, replaying the scene again. And again.

The copy machine.

“
Holy shit,” he said.

He finally realized what it was doing in the interview room.

CHAPTER 50

The rows of benches in the gallery were filled with young assistant state attorneys, mostly county court ASAs and a few Cs who had finished prepping the next day’s calendars. At first count Anton had fifteen. Whenever a senior prosecutor was in trial, the State Attorney’s Training Department sent out
All ASA
emails encouraging the less-experienced attorneys to go watch the veterans. Looking over his shoulder from the defense table, Anton saw the county court ASA against whom he had tried the Orlando Rivera DUI. The two shared a subtle nod of acknowledgement.

Officer Marco Villarreal, the victim of the resisting with violence count, sat in the witness box, answering the questions that Sylvia’s second chair, Melissa Rhodes, was asking. Anton followed along with the arrest affidavit and offense incident report, noting any inconsistency between what Villarreal had written down two months earlier and what he was testifying to in court. He was an officer in his mid-thirties with thick, heavily gelled black hair that shined under the courtroom lights. He wasn’t impressively built. The Miami Police officer had narrow shoulders and a sunken chest that made his uniform appear loose on him. In dealing with a charge involving violence against a cop, it was better for the defense if the officer was a hulking steroid freak. But this officer was so slight he made Bryan seem big by comparison.

“
Can you describe the specific actions of the defendant the moment you entered Ms. Avery’s apartment?” Melissa asked.

Experienced in testifying, Villarreal angled his body toward the jury box so he was speaking to them, not the prosecutor.

“
The building’s security personnel had gone in just a moment before I did. I was the first officer to enter the apartment. When I stepped inside I observed the defendant with his back against the refrigerator. The two security officers were reaching out, as if trying to grab his hands. He was screaming and he kept slapping their hands away.”

“
Officer Villarreal, do you see the defendant here in court today?”

“
Yes, I do.”

“
Could you please point to him and identify him by an article of clothing.”

Villarreal extended his arm, pointing at Bryan. “He’s the gentleman with the short brown hair seated at the table to my left. He’s wearing a white shirt and a gray and black sport coat.”

“
Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant.”

“
The record will so reflect,” Judge Morales said.

Villarreal went on to testify that as two other officers went to apprehend Bryan, he screamed and tensed his wrists, struggling as they tried to jerk his arms behind his back to cuff him. With the aid of the security guards, they managed to get Bryan to the ground. He then writhed free and popped up to his feet. Villarreal testified that he used a leg-sweep maneuver to take him down.

Anton looked at the pink scar along Bryan’s hairline. He now had a lasting reminder of the face-plant on the kitchen floor that resulted in six stitches.

As Bryan was taken to the ground, the officer testified, he thrashed his legs wildly, making contact with Villarreal’s ankle. That contact—albeit minor—was the legally sufficient basis for the resisting with violence count.

Melissa stepped away from the podium, hunching over the prosecution table to confer with Sylvia. Satisfied that all necessary points had been made, Melissa advised the court that she had no further questions.

“
Cross?”

“
Yes, Your Honor.” Anton stood, carrying his legal pad and a few reports with him to the podium.

“
Officer Villarreal, I couldn’t help but notice your uniform.”

The Officer’s face scrunched in confusion, he looked and smoothed out his shirt, making sure everything was in order. “Uh…okay.”

“
There’s a little silver pin on the right side of your uniform, opposite your badge. It’s three tiny letters. Says D, R, E. Can you tell the jury what those three letters mean?”

“
Oh. DRE stands for drug recognition expert.”

“
What does a DRE do?”

“
Well, I’m asked to assist officers if they believe a subject is impaired by drugs. Usually DUI officers who can’t register a breath reading will ask me to evaluate a subject to see if any controlled substances may be causing the impairment.”

Anton nodded, feigning fascination. “Wow. An
expert
, eh? You must have to go through quite a bit of training to achieve that designation.”

Villarreal testified that he had to complete a seventy-two-hour course that covered everything from measuring vital signs to recognition and detection of the symptoms of impairment by a variety of drugs. He added that he was certified in administering standard field sobriety exercises. He had also completed the requisite twelve drug evaluations under the supervision of a senior DRE instructor.

“
Do you have to undergo any follow-up training?”

“
Yes. A DRE certification is good for two years, so in order to stay current we have to undergo at least four evaluations within two years. We also have to complete eight hours of recertification training during that period.”

Anton took his time flushing out the answers that would later come back to haunt this witness. Sylvia objected to relevance but Morales allowed it, keenly sensing how this cross-exam played into the defense’s theory of involuntary intoxication. Anton walked the witness through another ten minutes of preliminary questions, the officer explaining how he could tell the difference between someone under the influence of amphetamines and someone under the influence of barbiturates. Anton then had the witness explain the twelve-step drug evaluation process to the jury. When Anton saw jurors starting to stare into space, he realized that he had belabored the point enough.