‘So we meet again,’ Nate Garrigan said. I couldn’t see him but I knew Nate well enough to hear the sardonic glint in his eye.
‘It’s our third case together, Nate. You’re not the cavalry coming over the hill. I’m asking you to investigate for me, not rescue me from a high tower.’
I was in my office, finally. It was a nicer office than the one I’d been assigned when I first arrived at Seaton, Taylor, largely because I’d scored with a few cases, some of which involved no violence at all. Well, not physical violence. Now I was head of the criminal justice division and I got a window. Not a big window, but a window. People in law firms value such things. This whole private practice thing had taken some getting used to, but I was starting to get a taste for it.
‘You need to know what really happened with this Reeves guy and you want me to find out, right?’ Nate was savoring his moment. I liked the guy with his ex-cop gruffness and blunt charm, but he wanted to always have the upper hand and sometimes there’s just no hand.
‘Without any major melodrama, if you can make that happen,’ I told him.
‘I’m the very picture of discretion. Just one thing—’
‘Patrick’s not involved this time,’ I said, cutting him off.
‘How did you know I was going to ask?’ It’s not that Nate and Patrick don’t get along. Well, yes it is, but it’s not because they dislike each other; it’s because Patrick often thinks he’s being helpful when in fact he’s setting you back a couple of eons with his enthusiasm.
‘I’m psychic. The thing is, he might end up being a witness in this trial, although I think it’s unlikely. He was working on the movie where this stuntman was killed.’
A sound came through the phone. At first blush it seemed to be a beluga whale dying of old age, but it turned out to be Nate groaning. ‘How is that not involved?’ he asked.
‘It’s not involved because he wasn’t there when it happened. He won’t have anything to do with the investigation. As a possible witness – although again, he hasn’t been subpoenaed and isn’t even mentioned in the police report – he knows he can’t have any involvement in my work because that could compromise my case and he definitely doesn’t want to do that.’
‘My god, you’re dating him,’ Nate said. ‘I saw it coming but it was like a train wreck that you just can’t get out of the way of.’
‘Don’t end sentences on prepositions,’ I said, and hung up.
I had worked with Nate enough to know that once I sent him the information I had (which I did immediately after disconnecting the phone), he wouldn’t need me to tell him what to investigate. He’d know I needed expert witnesses on the kinds of cables used to ‘fly’ actors and what sort of implements would be both available on a film set and capable of cutting through those cables. He’d know I needed to find witnesses who might have seen Robert Reeves not being on the set when the cables were cut, preferably some who would have seen a person other than my client involved in the task, although that was almost certainly asking for too much. And Nate would know that if he found people who had motives other than James Drake shtupping Reeves’s wife, that would be a big help. Character witnesses, given Reeves’s normal disposition, would probably be few and far between, but that didn’t mean nonexistent. Nate would look for them too.
I had about an hour to review the added discovery that Renfro, as good as his word, had sent over. His witness list included Burke Henderson, the stunt coordinator Reeves had said was incompetent and a cause of Drake’s death, and Penny Kanter, Reeves’s assistant. That last one was curious. Did Penny know something that was going to damn her boss? I could imagine what working for Reeves was like, and the possibility didn’t sound entirely implausible.
There was also the head of a studio’s computer effects department, which I thought was odd. The scene in which Jim Drake died was not computer generated, so the use of CGI or computer-generated imagery would not have been necessary. One of the tasks ahead of me was figuring out why CGI might be relevant to the case against Robert Reeves.
Another was figuring out whether or not I thought my client had actually arranged for a stuntman in his employ to die horribly.
He arrived at my office with some fanfare, preceded by his assistant, Penny Kanter, who announced his coming as if he were a head of state at a fancy-dress ball in 1887. Janine McKenzie, our receptionist, looked a little panicky at the fuss when Penny shouted out, ‘Robert Reeves is here!’ Maybe Penny expected us to throw rose petals in her boss’s path or something. At least she hadn’t said that Robert Reeves had arrived, because the alliteration might have been just a tad over the top.
Reeves himself, head held just a little too high and chest puffed out just a little too much, looked like a cartoon rooster on a cardboard bucket of fried chicken. He strode into the reception area, no doubt awaiting a sash declaring him Client of the Year, and looked a little miffed at receiving none. I was watching from my office, which is adjacent to the reception area, and immediately called Janine to tell her that Reeves should wait a minute before being admitted. Let him sit and read magazines like everyone else. We even stock Variety.
I couldn’t hear his reaction because the glass in my office door’s window is quite thick, but I could see Reeves’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare. Which should tell you something because I was at least twenty feet away. A nostril really has to work hard to be seen flaring from that distance.
I waited until the second he sat down to buzz Janine and tell her to let my client in. Snarky? Maybe. But there was a point to be made and I was just the lawyer to make it.
Reeves seemed to be sniffing the air as he entered my office, wondering if it was safe to breathe in this space. ‘Ms Moss,’ he said before I could make a sound, ‘I don’t like being kept waiting.’
‘Neither does anyone else, Robert. Sit down, won’t you?’ I looked over at Penny, who was attempting to enter behind her boss. ‘Can you wait outside, please?’ I said to her. ‘I need for this conference to be confidential.’
Penny did what came instinctively to her, which was to look at her boss for direction. He was a director, after all. His eyebrows rose to the point that I thought they might hover over his forehead and he said, ‘Anything you say to me you can say in front of Penny.’
Usually this sort of contest would have required the presence of at least part of another man but I wasn’t giving in. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then both of you can wait outside until you want to come in here and talk to your attorney, Robert. I’m sure Janine will be able to schedule you an appointment sometime next week.’ I sat down and opened a file on my computer. Reeves and Penny couldn’t see the screen so I opened a game called MacBrickout, which is somewhat simple but oddly addictive.
Before I could start the game I heard Reeves sigh. ‘Fine,’ he said, dragging it out to an indeterminate number of syllables. ‘Penny, please wait in the reception area. I’ll let you know when you can come back in here.’
‘No, I’ll let you know,’ I said. ‘And the answer is that you can come back in here when I have questions I need to ask you.’
Penny glanced again in Reeves’s direction, saw his face, and left the office without another word. I closed the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling glass wall next to the door.
Reeves fixed his gaze on me. ‘Was that display necessary?’ he asked.
‘As a matter of fact, it was. I need you to understand – really understand – that you’re here seeking legal representation and that I’m the person who can provide it. You’re in a very serious situation here, Robert, but you’ve been acting like it’s a parking ticket. If you don’t take my advice, answer my questions and do what I tell you to do, you can spend a large percentage of what’s left of your life in a very unpleasant environment with bars on the doors and windows. Do you get that?’
His mouth curled. ‘And because of that you have to act rudely to my assistant?’
‘No. I didn’t have to act rudely to your assistant, and in fact, I didn’t. I require that our conferences be private and confidential. You may rest assured that I will record every session so you won’t have to worry about accuracy, but I don’t want anyone, not even your most trusted assistant, to hear what’s said in this room. It’s too easy for that information to show up in court being used against you. So I’ll ask again. Do you get what I’m telling you?’
He waved a hand. ‘Sure, sure. I get it. You think Penny will turn state’s evidence on me and send me to jail. But here’s the thing: I didn’t kill Jim Drake, no matter what lies you’ve heard about him and my wife Tracy. So Penny wouldn’t hear anything in here that could prove damaging because there’s no such thing to be heard.’
I knew he was completely wrong about that and could have continued the debate for the foreseeable future, but there is no point with some people, and Reeves was most of them. ‘Let’s get a few facts straight. I’m going to question you in the same way Assistant District Attorney Renfro will question you in court should we be foolish enough to let you testify, which we won’t. Is that clear?’
‘Not really.’
‘Great. First, were you the director of the film Desert Siege, on whose set this murder took place?’
‘You know I was.’ Reeves was a busy man and didn’t have time for this nonsense.
‘But the jury needs to hear it. Answer the question and answer it in as few words as possible. Don’t embellish, don’t explain and don’t justify. Just answer. Were you the director on Desert Siege when James Drake was killed?’
‘Yes, I was and am the director of Desert Siege.’
‘Just say yes. Let’s try this again. Were you the director on the day James Drake died doing a stunt for Desert Siege?’
‘It was a perfectly safe—’
I cut him off. ‘Were you the director of Desert Siege?’
Teeth so clenched you couldn’t fit the remnants of a word through them. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s it. That’s good. Keep doing that. Now. Were you present the day that James Drake died?’
Now there was just a touch of trembling from pent-up frustration in his head and neck, but the word came through as though spat. ‘Yes.’
‘Excellent.’ It’s good to praise the subject when they do what you want. I’m told the same works well with dogs. ‘Now, tell the court, how close were you to the crane that held Mr Drake in the air before he fell to his death?’
Reeves seemed legitimately confused. ‘How close?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes. From your position, how much distance was there between you and the crane?’
‘Probably about thirty feet,’ he said. ‘I was over in video village.’
‘What is video village, Mr Reeves?’
He gave me a look that indicated I had been dropped on my head as an infant. ‘You don’t know what video village is?’
‘You’re on the witness stand, Mr Reeves. What is video village?’
This was clearly a more comfortable Robert Reeves. Showing off how much he knew about making movies was his happy zone. ‘Video village is an area of the set where the director, the cinematographer and a few other crucial crew members gather around a monitor to watch video footage taken at exactly the same time that the main camera is rolling.’
‘What is the purpose of that when the camera filming the scene is already in use?’ I asked. Yeah, I was playing prosecutor – my old role – but I didn’t want Reeves to know that I had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. I was very sheltered before I moved to California.
‘If there are mistakes or issues that the camera picks up, we can do it again right away,’ Reeves lectured. ‘We don’t have to wait for dailies like Orson Welles did.’ He allowed himself a smug grin to think of himself in the same breath as the director of Citizen Kane.
But Patrick had told me about the concept of taking video when filming and I knew it had been invented by Jerry Lewis. Patrick is a collector of movie memorabilia and has one of Lewis’s monitors stashed away in a corner of his home. I have a fear that one night when I’m visiting, the spirit of Jerry Lewis will escape from that monitor and yell, ‘Hey Lady!’ at me at an inopportune time. If there’s such a thing as an opportune time for that.
‘So you were at least thirty feet from the crane, but I thought the camera wasn’t rolling for the rehearsal. Isn’t that right?’
Reeves was back into tight-lipped witness mode. ‘Yes.’
‘Then why were you in video village?’ Hey, use the term if it makes you sound like an insider. Loosens the witness up.
‘The video camera was pointed at the crane but we weren’t recording,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see it on the monitor but preferred not to have a recording of the rehearsal to protect my talent.’
I looked at him for a moment, wondering how his directorial ability would leave him if a tape was made of a stunt rehearsal. ‘Your talent?’ I asked.
‘Yes, both the stunt performers and the people running the crane. I knew it was a challenging stunt and I wanted to be sure it looked good.’ Not that it was safe, mind you. That it looked good.
It was time to end the fake questioning. ‘OK. That was good for today,’ I said. ‘But there are things I need to know to prepare your defense. You need to be honest about your wife’s association with James Drake.’
Reeves’s face stoned over and he looked at me like a constipated bald eagle. ‘I have told you. My wife has some mental health issues and—’
‘Yeah, and she doesn’t remember that she didn’t have an affair with Drake. I get that’s your story and I will make an appointment for your wife with a psychiatrist we’ve used before. But I need to meet her before that happens.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Reeves said with an air of haughtiness that Charles Laughton himself couldn’t have mustered.
‘Mr Reeves, don’t make me remind you that you don’t get to decide what is and is not necessary. I’m the one keeping your ass out of jail and I will in fact drop this case like the hot potato it is if you ever treat me like I’m not. Clear?’
The lockjaw expression came back and the word was practically squeezed out of his core. ‘Clear.’
‘Great. So you’re going to see to it that your wife, Tracy, is here tomorrow at eleven a.m. and you will not, under any circumstances, be sitting in during our conference. Is that clear as well?’
‘Yes.’ Dark stare. He would have been very happy if an anvil had dropped from the ceiling at that moment and landed on my head.
‘Good. Now tell me who you think had some beef against James Drake and wanted him dead.’
There was absolutely no hesitation in his reply at all. ‘Burke Henderson, the stunt coordinator,’ he said.
That was the second time he’d mentioned Henderson in our only two conversations. Either he really believed the guy was responsible or he really wanted me to believe it. Or both, I guess. ‘Why?’ I asked.
‘I hired Drake to do the stunt and Henderson wanted it,’ Reeves said.
‘That’s enough to kill him?’ It didn’t make sense.
‘It was enough because Drake really was having an affair with Henderson’s wife,’ Reeves said.
Smiling.