Trial. Edward stood near the front of the large courtroom feeling his trial personality descend on him. All trial lawyers have them. A lot get more aggressive than they’d ever be in real life even when playing a competitive sport. Some get folksy, harking back to rural childhoods they hadn’t had. Edward’s trial personality wasn’t that different from his real one. He talked a little more slowly than in everyday life, sat a little more languidly, while his mind moved much faster. His language became more precise. He wasn’t ready to be fitted for a white wig, but he was a more formal version of himself.
He’d chosen his favorite gray pinstripe this morning, the first day of testimony. Veronica Salazar favored gray pinstripe too, a skirt suit in which she looked almost as good as she had in the peach-colored robe. It showed off her long legs and neck. They could have been Barbie and Ken Trial Lawyers.
One of the first things to do in preparing for trial is to learn as much as you can about your opponent. In this case Edward didn’t know much. He’d never tried a case against Veronica, never even been working in the same building when she was a prosecutor. Her reputation was for charging hard, skirting the line of the rules and sometimes crossing over, for treating juries respectfully rather than courting them, for hiding evidence or dumping it on the defense at the last minute, right before trial.
Prosecutors have a constitutional duty to turn over to the defense any evidence in their possession that tends to prove the defendant’s innocence. This includes evidence that could discredit State’s witnesses. In Texas, after an innocent man spent twenty-five years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, partly because the prosecutor had kept some evidence from the defense, the legislature had made this protection even stronger, passing laws requiring prosecutors to turn over nearly everything to the defense, without even making a decision as to whether it was relevant.
There’d been no evidence dump in this case. Veronica hadn’t given him anything more since the medical report on Diana Greene. Both their trial folders were unusually slim. Veronica had let him go through all of hers. Sometimes it seemed she hadn’t worked too hard to get ready for this trial. But then, she didn’t have to. It was very straightforward.
They’d picked a jury the first day, Edward trying to keep as many African-Americans on the panel as possible, Veronica trying to get most of them removed for cause: prejudice against the State, for example. She’d been largely successful, but there were still four African-Americans on the final jury. Unfortunately, they’d gotten there by being very conservative in their answers and those might actually reflect their beliefs. Sometimes old prejudices didn’t work, such as black people favoring black defendants. Which was a damned shame, those old prejudices not working. They were so easy to use.
The rest of the jury was a mix of ethnicities, genders, and ages. As usual, Edward had been a little surprised to see the twelve take their seats, see the twelve they’d allowed to become the jury. While he’d been going over the jury list they’d become just words to him. The twelve living, breathing human beings were surprising.
Donald sat beside Edward wearing a black suit, white shirt, no tie. He looked fine, but there was still nothing to be done about his size. Veronica had directed the jury’s attention to him during her opening statement, and that seemed unfair. Donald looked menacing just by existing.
Edward said to him, ‘Not your first rodeo, right? How you feeling, man?’
Donald gave him a straight look. ‘Not happy to be back in the rodeo. Man.’
Edward acknowledged all the freight of that short speech with a nod. ‘But you know what to do, right?’
Donald nodded. He looked at Edward straight again and beamed, a huge happy smile.
‘Jesus. Please don’t do that. You have such big shiny teeth.’
The smile fell off Donald’s face immediately. It would not reappear in this trial.
Judge Roberts sat on his high bench very watchfully. He knew Edward Hall had been a good trial lawyer, but also knew how long he’d been out of practice. The judge didn’t want a conviction from his court being reversed for ineffective assistance of counsel. He’d intervene if necessary.
So he had a dilemma hours later when Edward made a bad blunder before the first day of testimony was over.
But before then: ‘State, call your first witness,’ the judge said blandly.
Deep breaths all around. The whole courtroom seemed to shrink then expand as everyone inhaled deeply and let it out.
‘Sterling Greene,’ Veronica said from her feet.
Well, she was following DA protocol so far. The common wisdom was for the prosecution to open with its second-strongest witness and close with its strongest. Diana Greene wasn’t even in the room. Nor was she being babysat by her big sister. District Attorney Julia Lipscomb sat on the front row of the audience. Edward looked at her and she gave him a smile, which seemed out of keeping with the occasion.
Sterling Greene came down one of the side aisles and through the swinging wooden gate into the front of the courtroom. In Judge Roberts’ courtroom the well of the court was larger than average. It took Greene several seconds crossing it, striding purposefully. He wore a dark blue suit obviously tailored to him, white shirt, yellow tie. He was a big man, an inch or two over six feet, with broad shoulders. But he looked nothing like a laborer. He took the stand and stared mournfully at the prosecutor, with not a glance at the jury or the defense table.
Uh oh, Edward thought. Sterling already looked like a victim. Have to take it easy on him when Edward’s turn came.
‘Please introduce yourself to the jury.’
Given that instruction, he had no choice but to turn toward them. ‘I’m Sterling Greene,’ he said evenly, then turned back to Veronica.
‘And what do you do for a living, Mr Greene?’
‘I started out in banking, then went out on my own. I own three or four companies that do different things. Mostly construction and real estate development.’
‘Are they successful?’
He hesitated, then said simply, ‘Yes.’
‘In fact you’ve been the subject of media reports about how successful your business enterprises have been, haven’t you?’
‘A few. I don’t court them.’
‘Has that made you the target of attempted scams or other crimes?’
Edward stood for the first time. ‘Objection, Your Honor. Other crimes not connected to my client are irrelevant.’
‘The fact Mr Greene is wealthy enough to be targeted by someone like your client is certainly relevant,’ Veronica Salazar replied, looking right at Edward.
‘And now she’s testifying. I object to that as well.’
‘I sustain that objection. Jurors, please disregard that and any remarks the attorneys make. They are not evidence.’ The jurors looked at him and about half nodded.
‘As for the first objection, I can see the relevance so I’ll allow that one question but no more on the subject. And in the future, attorneys, address all remarks to the bench and not to each other.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison. Judge Roberts was known for running tight trials. He was not going to let this one get away from him so early.
‘Yes, I’ve been targeted by a few scammers,’ Sterling said shortly.
‘Tell us about the morning of April sixteenth of this year, Mr Greene. How did your day begin?’
‘The usual. I got up about six, got ready, and left my house about an hour later. My wife was still in bed.’
‘Do you have servants?’
‘Not live-in. We have a maid service that comes once a week, yard man too, but that morning Diana was alone in the house when I left.’
‘Where do you live, Mr Greene?’
‘River Oaks.’ He stared straight ahead.
Veronica let that answer sink in. Residency in the wealthiest neighborhood in Houston certainly qualified him as successful enough to be the target of a kidnap attempt. Edward could hardly say anything. He’d grown up in River Oaks and his parents still lived there.
‘Where did you go once you left your house, Mr Greene?’
‘Straight to a job site. I didn’t go to the office first that morning.’
Veronica stood. ‘Do you know the man on the far side of the other counsel table, Mr Greene? The defendant?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever seen him before?’
‘Very briefly, when police rescued my wife and he was arrested.’
There seemed something objectionable about that, but the answer was already out. Edward felt a little rusty.
‘Never before that?’ Veronica pressed. ‘He hadn’t applied to you for a job, anything like that?’
‘No.’ Sterling Greene was very thrifty with words. He’d obviously been well coached. Edward watched him closely, but Sterling wouldn’t make eye contact.
‘Tell me the next important thing that happened.’
‘I got a call from my wife, Diana, on my cell phone. I was a little surprised because she doesn’t usually call me during the day. But of course I’m always glad to hear from her.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Very little. She said my name in a little high-pitched scream, then I could tell the phone was snatched away from her and a man’s voice said, “That was to prove I have your wife. Now here’s what you have to do …”’
‘Did you write down his instructions or anything like that?’
‘I didn’t even hear them the first time. I was stunned. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.’ Sterling showed emotion for the first time, his eyes widening and his hands clutching each other. ‘I had to ask him to repeat himself. That seemed to make him mad.’
‘What did he tell you to do?’
Over the course of the next several minutes Sterling recounted hours spent scrambling to try to get the half a million dollars the kidnapper demanded, vainly trying to convince bankers his wife was being held hostage and that the bankers should give a damn about that, making a thousand phone calls, even to friends, rushing around the affluent parts of the city.
‘How long had he given you?’
‘Till five o’clock. After calling me about two p.m.’
‘Did you get the money together?’
‘Half a million dollars in that short a time?’ Sterling made a small scoffing sound. ‘Not even close. Nobody has that kind of—’
This time Edward shot to his feet. ‘Objection, Your Honor, speculation. Mr Greene has no way of knowing the access many other people might have to ready cash.’
Judge Roberts did something unusual in a trial judge. He sat and thought for a few seconds before ruling. ‘Sustained. Just stick to what’s relevant to this witness, counsel.’
Veronica was on her feet too. ‘Certainly, Your Honor. As the court could tell, I wasn’t trying to elicit that answer.’
‘Now I object to counsel testifying, Your Honor.’
This time Judge Roberts only made a little brushing away gesture with his hand, meaning a trial judge’s favorite ruling. Move on. Edward let it go. It was a very small matter.
‘But you managed to get some money together, Mr Greene?’
‘Yes. Roughly two hundred thousand dollars. A little more.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I took it to the house where he’d told me to leave the money, with a note explaining I just couldn’t get it all given such short notice, begging him for more time and not to hurt my wife.’
‘Were you terrified?’
Edward stood again. ‘Objection, Your Honor. Leading and irrelevant.’ Edward shook his head as he said it, over what an objectionable question it was.
‘Sustained.’
‘Did you go inside that house, have any contact with your wife or the defendant at all?’
‘No.’
‘What did you do then, Mr Greene?’
‘I called my wife’s cell phone, more than once, but he wouldn’t answer. So I called police.’
‘Did you want to do that?’
‘No. I wanted to do exactly what he’d said. But I hadn’t managed to get all the money. Time was going by and I was terrified he was going to hurt Diana. I didn’t feel I had any choice.’
So Sterling had managed to insert that he’d been terrified, after Veronica had made that suggestion to him, essentially a stage direction. Neither of them shot Edward a look of triumph. In fact Sterling hadn’t looked at Edward at all since he’d taken the witness stand.
‘What did you do after that?’
‘Just cooperated with police. I insisted on going along when they went to the house where Diana was being held. I stayed there until she finally came running out.’
‘Was she injured?’
‘Not that I could tell. Just scared to death. I did have to take her for a medical exam right away. Mainly for trying to collect evidence, police said.’
Edward made a note of that. That information would get to the jury one way or another anyway. Edward wanted it to, in fact.
‘Mr Greene, did you see the kidnapper come out of the house and get arrested?’
‘Yes, I did. I was holding my wife so tight. She was trembling when she saw him again.’
‘Could you identify him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he in the courtroom now?’
‘Yes, he is. He’s the large African-American gentleman sitting at the defense table.’
Edward had come to believe over the last years in America that people who were careful to say ‘African-American gentleman’ harbored racism in their hearts they were trying to conceal. Someone who could more casually toss off ‘black dude’ probably didn’t give a damn about the guy’s race. Sterling Greene had done nothing to contradict Edward’s theory.
Veronica Salazar stood up. ‘Your Honor, I’d like to ask the defendant be instructed to speak, enough to attempt an identification of his voice.’
Edward rose too, slowly, thinking furiously. There was nothing objectionable about this request. A defendant cannot be forced to testify, contrary to his constitutional right to remain silent. But he could be used as an exhibit, as it were. A defendant could be ordered to give a handwriting sample, fingerprints, DNA. He could be asked to display a tattoo on his ass if it was relevant. Still …
‘I object to that, Your Honor,’ Edward said. ‘There’s no evidence Mr Greene is an expert in voice identification. By his own testimony he only heard the supposed kidnapper say a few words. There’s no way—’
‘That’s an argument you can make to the jury, Mr Hall. It goes to the weight to be given his testimony. I’ll allow it for whatever weight jurors choose to give it.’
Veronica slid a note across to Edward. It turned out to be a short script. I have your wife, the note read. Here’s what you have to do if you don’t want me to kill her.
Edward shot her a Fuck off look. He’d be damned if he’d have his client re-enact the crime with Veronica as the director. He leaned over and whispered to Donald.
Donald cleared his throat and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Greene. I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances.’
He’d whitened his voice a little but still sounded like himself. Veronica gave her witness a questioning look.
‘Yes, that sounds like the voice I heard on the phone,’ Sterling said simply, not trying to over-sell it.
‘And again, you’d never had any contact with this man before that day?’
‘No.’
Interesting how Veronica wanted to emphasize that point.
‘Did you ever get your two hundred thousand dollars back, Mr Greene?’
‘No. He must have had an accomplice—’
‘Object to speculation,’ Edward said quickly.
Looking down at her notes instead of the witness, Veronica casually said, ‘What did your wife convey to you about her kidnapping, Mr Greene?’
Edward shot up. ‘Object to hearsay, Your Honor.’ He spread his arms in a What the hell? gesture.
‘Sustained.’
Veronica stared at her opposing counsel as if amazed. ‘Of course I didn’t mean to elicit hearsay. Let me rephrase. What did you personally observe about your wife, Mr Greene? Her mental state?’
‘She was trembling. Obviously terrified. It took all evening to calm her down. Later she told me he—’
‘Objection.’ Greene stopped and the judge didn’t even bother to rule.
Veronica gave Edward an irritated glance and said, ‘I’ll pass the witness to “defense counsel”.’
Edward heard the air quotes in her voice. He stood and said, ‘Your Honor, may we have the jury removed for a minute while I make a motion?’
The judge looked at Edward curiously, obviously hoping for more, but when Edward remained silent the judge simply turned to the jury and said, ‘Please excuse us briefly.’
The bailiff took them off to the jury room and the lawyers approached the bench, walking shoulder to shoulder. In front of the judge, Edward said, ‘Your Honor, I’d like a motion in limine that the prosecutor not refer in any way in front of the jury to the fact that I’m not – you know …’
‘A real lawyer?’ Veronica said, turning to him with folded arms.
Edward stepped closer, almost nose to nose, and said, ‘I am going to lawyer the shit out of this case.’
‘Counsel?’ Judge Roberts said, like a kindergarten teacher. ‘Address the bench, please.’
As Edward started to turn in that direction, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Then he and Veronica were facing the judge, who said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, counsel. What has Ms Salazar done …’
‘The way she said “defense counsel” just then, Your Honor, making it sound ironic. She was doing it during jury selection too, always saying the defendant was represented by me, calling me by name rather than saying “attorney”.’
‘My God.’ Veronica turned back to him. ‘Defensive much, Edward? Your Honor, let’s settle this now. I won’t do anything to suggest to this jury the defendant is being represented by a disgraced former lawyer pretending to be one again for one last trial.’ She raised her brows at Edward. ‘OK?’ Drawing out the word as if speaking to the mentally deficient.
My God, she must have been more pissed than Edward thought at his turning her down the other day in her house. He just stared at her.
‘OK?’ the judge said simply.
The two lawyers turned, glaring at each other, and walked back to their respective tables. With the jury returned to the room, Edward said to the witness, ‘Where was the job site where you received the ransom call, Mr Greene?’
Sterling blinked as if being recalled from a long-ago memory. ‘Uh, let me think. I believe it was the one we’re doing out the Gulf Freeway. Just the other side of Pasadena.’
‘And you said that was about two p.m.?’
‘Something like that. I didn’t make a note of the time.’
‘Wouldn’t your phone show?’
Sterling blinked. ‘I guess I could find that out, yeah.’
‘So you were roughly forty-five miles outside Houston.’
‘Something like that.’ Sterling looked puzzled.
‘So you rushed back to – where? – downtown area?’
A couple of people in the audience snickered, and Edward knew he’d made his point to the jury. ‘Rushing’ through Houston-area traffic at any time of day was only a theoretical concept, very rarely available in practice. ‘So you got back to town about, what, three?’
Sterling shifted his broad shoulders. ‘Sooner than that. I was barreling.’
Edward let a pause doubt that. ‘In your barreling you didn’t encounter any wrecks, road closures, ambulances, funeral processions?’
Veronica finally stood. ‘Objection, Your Honor. Relevance?’
‘Just establishing a timeline, Your Honor,’ Edward said from his seat. ‘And testing the witness’s memory.’
‘Continue,’ the judge said. ‘Briefly, please, Mr Hall.’
Edward stood as a courtesy. ‘Thank you, Your Honor.’ He dropped back into his chair. ‘So, Mr Greene?’
‘No. No traffic problems.’ His hands were knotted in front of him, looking as if they wanted to throttle something.
‘So you got back shortly after lunch time. Did you go straight to your bank?’
‘No, my office. I’d already been on the phone with two or three of my bankers. I had one of my men driving me so I’d be free to be on the phone the whole way back.’
‘Smart to think of that in such a crisis. Which man was that?’
Sterling’s gaze went to a far corner. ‘Who was it?’ he murmured.
‘You seem to have a firm grasp of the other details.’
‘Object to the sidebar,’ Veronica said, sounding disgusted.
‘Sustained.’
As she sat she directed a sneer at Edward that he refused to acknowledge. He just stared at the witness, trying to will the jury to notice how long it was taking him to respond.
‘I believe it was Hugh Ferguson, one of the foremen. Frankly I just said somebody drive me and I didn’t pay much attention to who responded. I was already on the phone.’
‘All right, so you were getting turned down by your bankers—’
‘Not all at once, they were responding gradually.’
Edward nodded. ‘No emergency loans, no lines of credit, no payroll account you could tap in an emergency?’
‘Well, some, of course. I did come up with two hundred thousand. And about half that I had in an account of my own.’
Edward stood, asked permission to approach the witness, and did, taking along a sheaf of papers. He stopped by the court reporter, got his papers marked, then stood two feet in front of the witness. That close, Sterling Greene was a physical presence, broad and radiating heat. He stared at Edward with a clear gaze that revealed very little.
‘Mr Greene, I’m handing you what’s marked Defendant’s Exhibit One. Do you recognize those papers?’
Sterling leafed through them, then looked up at Edward again, his gaze now hooded and full of heat. ‘Where did you get these?’
‘Only I get to ask the questions, Mr Greene. But I subpoenaed them.’ He stared back, emanating his power, the power of paper. ‘What are they?’
‘These are my bank records. Records of my three business accounts and one personal account.’
‘Yes,’ Edward said. ‘And they show no large withdrawals on the day in question, do they?’
‘No.’
‘They don’t show any unusual activity at all, do they?’
‘Not the business ones. My personal savings account shows I pretty much drained that account.’
‘Of about five thousand dollars, right?’
‘Roughly.’
Which wouldn’t pay the average monthly mortgage payment in River Oaks. ‘I move to admit Defendant’s Exhibit One, Your Honor.’
Veronica Salazar was already on her feet. ‘To prove what, Your Honor? By which I mean, I object to relevance.’
Edward stared at her. Are you kidding? She stared back at him with a languid hip cocked.
The silence in the courtroom told Edward he needed to explain. Judge Roberts would want something on the record regardless of how he would rule.
‘It tends to discredit the witness’s testimony, Your Honor. That he was doing his best to raise a large sum of ransom money.’
Edward handed the papers to Judge Roberts, who looked them over and gave them back. ‘Admitted.’
Edward handed the exhibit to one of the jurors to pass among them and started back to his seat.
‘I have another account you didn’t find,’ Sterling Greene said.
Edward turned without having to fake a look of surprise. ‘I’m sure you can produce a record of that?’
Beat, beat. ‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’ Edward sat. ‘I’d like to ask you about your marriage, Mr Greene.’
Veronica was on her feet instantly. ‘Objection. Relevance. My God.’
Edward stood more casually. ‘May we approach, Your Honor?’
They did, Veronica actually bumping Edward’s shoulder in her hurry. At the bench, very softly, Edward said, ‘Judge, this is going to be the crux of the defense case, the state of’ – Edward lowered his voice even further – ‘this witness’s marriage.’
‘I cannot possibly think of how that might be a defense to anything,’ Judge Roberts said, frowning at him curiously. ‘Unless you mean … never mind. We’ll take this up later. For now the objection is sustained.’
As they turned back, momentarily facing each other, instead of a look of triumph Veronica was staring at Edward with intense curiosity. He wondered if he should have given that up so early.
As he turned away Edward glanced out into the spectator seats. Sometimes, in a big trial like this one, the lawyers had a sense of all those breathing bodies behind them radiating heat and curiosity. But they weren’t the audience. The lawyers’ audience was in the jury box. But Edward glanced up at the rows of faces turned to him and saw Linda, sitting rather far back. She was giving him a strange look. Not a crossed-arms glare, but not a look of unalloyed affection either. He shot her a quick wink and she rearranged her expression into an encouraging smile.
OK, nothing to worry about there. Edward sat and gave the witness a long look. Sterling Greene looked straight back at him, eyes as lifeless as a snake’s.
‘I’ll pass the witness, Your Honor.’
Veronica asked a few more questions of her witness, mostly reiterating what he’d already said. Edward could have objected to asked and answered – repeating testimony the jury had already heard – but didn’t bother. Let her fill time if she wanted.
When Veronica passed the witness back to him, Edward stood, said, ‘No more questions, Your Honor,’ but stayed on his feet. Judge Roberts looked at him curiously. Veronica did the same, looking up. ‘I just want to add, Your Honor, I will release this witness from the Rule. Now that he’s testified, I’m sure he’ll be curious about the rest of the trial.’
Two pairs of lawyer-eyes stared at him, the judge’s and his opponent’s. Both looked concerned. He could almost hear Veronica’s mind clicking.
There is one rule of procedure in trial work known as The Rule. It says simply anyone who is a witness in a case can’t remain in the courtroom while other witnesses are testifying. Obviously a potential witness listening to earlier witnesses can tailor his testimony to match theirs, maybe not even consciously. It was a way of testing each witness’s credibility. Even police separate witnesses and take their statements in different rooms.
To release a witness from the Rule, even after he had testified, simply wasn’t done. Veronica could still re-call Sterling Greene to testify further, after he’d heard every other witness’s version of events.
Besides, why would a defense lawyer be nice to the victim’s husband, who was essentially one of the lawyer’s opponents? It made no sense.
Judge Roberts stared at Edward, who had re-seated himself and was blandly looking at his notes. The judge wondered if he was watching ineffective assistance of counsel right before his eyes. Was that the disbarred lawyer’s plan, to be so obviously inept any conviction would be reversed?
But Judge Roberts took his oath to follow the rules seriously, including this one. ‘The rule is invoked at the behest of one of the parties,’ he said flatly, staring at Edward, who didn’t look back. ‘And a party can withdraw that invocation. Mr Greene.’ The judge turned to the witness. ‘You are free to remain in the courtroom and view the rest of the trial if you wish.’
‘Thank you, Judge.’ Greene rose quickly and walked out into the spectator seats, still not looking at either lawyer or the defendant.
But both the prosecutor and the judge were staring at Edward. So did the woman from the State Bar, sitting in the first row of spectator seats. Even Donald was looking at his lawyer. Edward almost needed armor to deflect all the stares.