I slid a two-page document across the polished table to him. He glanced at it but didn’t really look at it.
“What is it?”
“That is a motion for a continuance. Jerry drew it up but hadn’t filed it. But it seems clear that he wanted to delay the trial. The coding on the motion indicates he printed it out Monday—just a few hours before he was killed.”
Elliot shook his head and shoved the document back across the table.
“No, we talked about it and he agreed with me to move forward on schedule.”
“That was Monday?”
“Yes, Monday. The last time I talked to him.”
I nodded. That covered one of the questions I had. Vincent kept billing records in each of his files, and I had noted in the Elliot file that he had billed an hour on the day of his murder.
“Was that a conference at his office or yours?”
“It was a phone call. Monday afternoon. He’d left a message earlier and I called him back. Nina can get you the exact time if you need it.”
“He has it down here at three. He talked to you about a delay?”
“That’s right but I told him no delay.”
Vincent had billed an hour. I wondered how long he and Elliot had sparred over the delay.
“Why did he want a continuance?” I asked.
“He just wanted more time to prepare and maybe pad his bill. I told him we were ready, like I’m telling you. We are ready!”
I sort of laughed and shook my head.
“The thing is, you’re not the lawyer here, Walter. I am. And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I’m not seeing much here in terms of a defense strategy. I think that’s why Jerry wanted to delay the trial. He didn’t have a case.”
“No, it’s the prosecution that doesn’t have the case.”
I was growing tired of Elliot and his insistence on calling the legal shots.
“Let me explain how this works,” I said wearily. “And forgive me if you know all of this, Walter. It’s going to be a two-part trial, okay? The prosecutor goes first and he lays out his case. We get a chance to attack it as he goes. Then we get our shot and that’s when we put up our evidence and alternate theories of the crime.”
“Okay.”
“And what I can tell from my study of the files is that Jerry Vincent was relying more on the prosecution’s case than on a defense case. There are—”
“How so?”
“What I’m saying is that he’s locked and loaded on the prosecution side. He has counter witnesses and cross-examination plans ready for everything the prosecution is going to put forward. But I’m missing something on the defense side of the equation. We’ve got no alibi, no alternate suspects, no alternate theories, nothing. At least nothing in the file. And that’s what I mean when I say we have no case. Did he ever discuss with you how he planned to roll out the defense?”
“No. We were going to have that conversation but then he got killed. He told me that he was working all of that out. He said he had the magic bullet and the less I knew, the better. He was going to tell me when we got closer to trial but he never did. He never got the chance.”
I knew the term. The “magic bullet” was your get-out-of-jail-and-go-home card. It was the witness or piece of evidence that you had in your back pocket that was going to either knock all the evidence down like dominoes or firmly and permanently fix reasonable doubt in the mind of every juror on the panel. If Vincent had a magic bullet, he hadn’t noted it in the case file. And if he had a magic bullet, why was he talking about a delay on Monday?
“You have no idea what this magic bullet was?” I asked Elliot.
“Just what he told me, that he found something that was going to blow the state out of the water.”
“That doesn’t make sense if on Monday he was talking about delaying the trial.”
Elliot shrugged.
“I told you, he just wanted more time to be prepared. Probably more time to charge me more money. But I told him, when we make a movie, we pick a date, and that movie comes out on that date no matter what. I told him we were going to trial without delay.”
I nodded my head at Elliot’s no-delay mantra. But my mind was on Vincent’s missing laptop. Was the magic bullet in there? Had he saved his plan on the computer and not put it into the hard file? Was the magic bullet the reason for his murder? Had his discovery been so sensitive or dangerous that someone had killed him for it?
I decided to move on with Elliot while I had him in front of me.
“Well, Walter, I don’t have the magic bullet. But if Jerry could find it, then so can I. I will.”
I checked my watch and tried to give the outward appearance that I was not troubled by not knowing what was assuredly the key element in the case.
“Okay. Let’s talk about an alternate theory.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that the state has its theory and we should have ours. The state’s theory is that you were upset over your wife’s infidelity and what it would cost you to divorce her. So you went out to Malibu and killed both your wife and her lover. You then got rid of the murder weapon in some way—either hid it or threw it into the ocean—and then called nine-one-one to report that you had discovered the murders. That theory gives them all they need. Motive and opportunity. But to back it up they have the GSR and almost nothing else.”
“GSR?”
“Gunshot residue. Their evidentiary case—what little there is—firmly rests on it.”
“That test was a false positive!” Elliot said forcefully. “I never shot any weapon. And Jerry told me he was bringing in the top expert in the country to knock it all down. A woman from John Jay in New York. She’ll testify that the sheriff’s lab procedures were sloppy and lax, prone to come up with the false positive.”
I nodded. I liked the fervor of his denial. It could be useful if he testified.
“Yes, Dr. Arslanian—we still have her coming in,” I said. “But she’s no magic bullet, Walter. The prosecution will counter with their own expert saying exactly the opposite—that the lab is well run and that all procedures were followed. At best, the GSR will be a wash. The prosecution will still be leaning heavily on motive and opportunity.”
“What motive? I loved her and I didn’t even know about Rilz. I thought he was a faggot.”
I held my hands up in a slow-it-down gesture.
“Look, do yourself a favor, Walter, and don’t call him that. In court or anywhere else. If it is appropriate to reference his sexual orientation, you say you thought he was gay. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, the prosecution will simply say that you did know Johan Rilz was your wife’s lover, and they’ll trot out evidence and testimony that will indicate that a divorce forced by your wife’s infidelity would cost you in excess of a hundred million dollars and possibly dilute your control of the studio. They plant all of that in the jury’s minds and you start having a pretty good motivation for murder.”
“And it’s all bullshit.”
“And I’ll be able to potshot the hell out of it at trial. A lot of their positives can be turned into negatives. It will be a dance, Walter. We’ll trade punches. We’ll try to distort and destroy but ultimately they’ll land more punches than we can block and that’s why we’re the underdog and why it’s always good for the defense to float an alternate theory. We give the jury a plausible explanation for why these two people were killed. We throw suspicion away from you and at somebody else.”
“Like the one-armed man in The Fugitive?”
I shook my head.
“Not exactly.”
I remembered the movie and the television show before it. In both cases, there actually was a one-armed man. I was talking about a smoke screen, an alternate theory concocted by the defense because I wasn’t buying into Elliot’s “I-am-innocent rap”—at least not yet.
There was a buzzing sound and Elliot took a phone out of his pocket and looked at the sc
reen.
“Walter, we have work here,” I said.
He didn’t take the call and reluctantly put the phone away. I continued.
“Okay, during the prosecution phase we are going to use cross-examination to make one thing crystal clear to the jury. That is, that once that GSR test came back positive on you, then—”
“False positive!”
“Whatever. The point is, once they had what they believed was a positive indication that you had very recently fired a weapon, all bets were off. A wide-open investigation became very tightly focused on one thing. You. It went from what they call a full-field investigation to a full investigation of you. So, what happened is that they left a lot of stones unturned. For example, Rilz had only been in this country four years. Not a single investigator went to Germany to check on his background and whether he had any enemies back there who wanted him dead. That’s just one thing. They didn’t thoroughly background the guy in L.A. either. This was a man who was allowed entry into the homes and lives of some of the wealthiest women in this city. Excuse my bluntness, but was he banging other married clients, or just your wife? Were there other important and powerful men he could have angered, or just you?”
Elliot didn’t respond to the crude questions. I had asked them that way on purpose, to see if it got a rise out of him or any reaction that contradicted his statements of loving his wife. But he showed no reaction either way.
“You see what I’m getting at, Walter? The focus, from almost the very start, was on you. When it’s the defense’s turn, we’re going to put it on Rilz. And from that we’ll grow doubts like stalks in a cornfield.”
Elliot nodded thoughtfully as he looked down at his reflection in the polished tabletop.
“But this can’t be the magic bullet Jerry told you about,” I said. “And there are risks in going after Rilz.”
Elliot raised his eyes to mine.
“Because the prosecutor knows this was a deficiency when the investigators brought in the case. He’s had five months to anticipate that we might go this way, and if he is good, as I am sure he is, then he’s been quietly getting ready for us to go in this direction.”
“Wouldn’t that come out in the discovery material?”
“Not always. There is an art to discovery. Most of the time it’s what is not in the discovery file that is important and that you have to watch out for. Jeffrey Golantz is a seasoned pro. He knows just what he has to put in and what he can keep for himself.”
“You know Golantz? You’ve gone to trial against him before?”
“I don’t know him and have never gone up against him. It’s his reputation I know. He’s never lost at trial. He’s something like twenty-seven and oh.”
I checked my watch. The time had passed quickly and I needed to keep things moving if I was going to pick my daughter up on time.
“Okay,” I said. “There are a couple other things we need to cover. Let’s talk about whether you testify.”
“That’s not a question. That’s a given. I want to clear my name. The jury will want me to say I did not do this.”
“I knew you were going to say that and I appreciate the fervor I see in your denials. But your testimony has to be more than that. It has to offer an explanation and that’s where we can get into trouble.”
“I don’t care.”
“Did you kill your wife and her lover?”
“No!”
“Then why did you go out there to the house?”
“I was suspicious. If she was there with somebody, I was going to confront her and throw him out on his ass.”
“You expect this jury to believe that a man who runs a billion-dollar movie studio took the afternoon off to drive out to Malibu to spy on his wife?”
“No, I’m no spy. I had suspicions and went out there to see for myself.”
“And to confront her with a gun?”
Elliot opened his mouth to speak but then hesitated and didn’t respond.
“You see, Walter?” I said. “You get up there and you open yourself up to anything—most of it not good.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t care. It’s a given. Guilty guys don’t testify. Everybody knows it. I’m testifying that I did not do this.”
He poked a finger at me with each syllable of the last sentence. I still liked his forcefulness. He was believable. Maybe he could survive on the stand.
“Well, ultimately it is your decision,” I said. “We’ll get you prepared to testify but we won’t make the decision until we get into the defense phase of the trial and we see where we stand.”
“It’s decided now. I’m testifying.”
His face began to turn a deep shade of crimson. I had to tread lightly here. I didn’t want him to testify but it was unethical for me to forbid it. It was a client decision, and if he ever claimed I took it away from him or refused to let him testify, I would have the bar swarming me like angry bees.
“Look, Walter,” I said. “You’re a powerful man. You run a studio and make movies and put millions of dollars on the line every day. I understand all of that. You are used to making decisions with nobody questioning them. But when we go into trial, I’m the boss. And while it will be you who makes this decision, I need to know that you are listening to me and considering my counsel. There’s no use going further if you don’t.”
He rubbed his hand roughly across his face. This was hard for him.
“Okay. I understand. We make a final decision on this later.”
He said it grudgingly. It was a concession he didn’t want to make. No man wants to relinquish his power to another.
“Okay, Walter,” I said. “I think that puts us on the same page.”
I checked my watch again. There were a few more things on my list and I still had some time.
“Okay, let’s move on,” I said.
“Please.”
“I want to add a couple people to the defense team. They will be ex—”
“No. I told you, the more lawyers a defendant has, the guiltier he looks. Look at Barry Bonds. Tell me people don’t think he’s guilty. He’s got more lawyers than teammates.”
“Walter, you didn’t let me finish. These are not lawyers I’m talking about, and when we go to trial, I promise it is going to be just you and me sitting at the table.”
“Then, who do you want to add?”
“A jury-selection consultant and somebody to work with you on image and testimony, all of that.”
“No jury consultant. Makes it look like you’re trying to rig things.”
“Look, the person I want to hire will be sitting out in the gallery. No one will notice her. She plays poker for a living and just reads people’s faces and looks for tells—little giveaways. That’s it.”
“No, I won’t pay for that mumbo jumbo.”
“Are you sure, Walter?”
I spent five minutes trying to convince him, telling him that picking the jury might be the most important part of the trial. I stressed that in circumstantial cases the priority had to be in picking jurors with open minds, ones who didn’t believe that just because the police or prosecution say something, it’s automatically true. I told him that I prided myself on my skills in picking a jury but that I could use the help of an expert who knew how to read faces and gestures. At the end of my plea Elliot simply shook his head.
“Mumbo jumbo. I will trust your skills.”
I studied him for a moment and decided we’d talked enough for the day. I would bring up the rest with him the next time. I had come to realize that while he was paying lip service to the idea that I was the trial boss, there was no doubt that he was firmly in charge of things.
And I couldn’t help but believe it might lead him straight to prison.
Twenty
By the time I dropped Patrick back at his car in downtown and headed to the Valley in heavy evening traffic, I knew I was going to be late and would tip off another confrontation with my ex-wife. I called t
o let her know but she didn’t pick up and I left a message. When I finally got to her apartment complex in Sherman Oaks it was almost seven forty and I found mother and daughter out at the curb, waiting. Hayley had her head down and was looking at the sidewalk. I noticed she had begun to adopt this posture whenever her parents came into close proximity of one another. It was like she was just standing on the transporter circle and waiting to be beamed far away from us.
I popped the locks as I pulled to a stop, and Maggie helped Hayley into the back with her school backpack and her overnight bag.
“Thanks for being on time,” she said in a flat voice.
“No problem,” I said, just to see if it would put the flares in her eyes. “Must be a hot date if you’re waiting out here for me.”
“No, not really. Parent-teacher conference at the school.”
That got through my defenses and hit me in the jaw.
“You should’ve told me. We could’ve gotten a babysitter and gone together.”
“I’m not a baby,” Hayley said from behind me.
“We tried that,” Maggie said from my left. “Remember? You jumped on the teacher so badly about Hayley’s math grade—the circumstance of which you knew nothing about—that they asked me to handle communications with the school.”
The incident sounded only vaguely familiar. It had been safely locked away somewhere in my oxycodone-corrupted memory banks. But I felt the burn of embarrassment on my face and neck. I didn’t have a comeback.
“I have to go,” Maggie said quickly. “Hayley, I love you. Be good for your father and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay, Mom.”
I stared out the window for a moment at my ex-wife before pulling away.
“Give ’em hell, Maggie McFierce,” I said.
I pulled away from the curb and put my window up. My daughter asked me why her mother was nicknamed Maggie McFierce.
“Because when she goes into battle, she always knows she is going to win,” I said.
“What battle?”
“Any battle.”
We drove silently down Ventura Boulevard and stopped for dinner at DuPar’s. It was my daughter’s favorite place to eat dinner because I always let her order pancakes. Somehow, the kid thought ordering breakfast for dinner was crossing some line and it made her feel rebellious and brave.