Steve Martini - Double Tap

“Can you tell the jury why Ms. Chapman called you personally to complain about what had happened regarding the camera in her office?”

He looks puzzled, as if he’s trying to locate the hook in the question. “I don’t know. I suppose because I was the head of the firm.”

“Isn’t it true that you were a personal friend of Ms. Chapman’s?”

“I see what you mean. Yes, we were acquainted,” he says.

“Can you tell the jury how long you had known the victim?” I go from Chapman to victim for the implications it conjures.

“I don’t know. A few years.”

“A shade more than six, to be exact? Would that be about right?”

“I suppose. What difference does it make?”

“Did you know her well?”

“We were social acquaintances. We did business together.”

“Other than providing security services for Isotenics and executive protection for Ms. Chapman, did you have any other business relations with her?”

He shakes his head. “No. That was it.”

“Did you ever travel with Ms. Chapman personally?” I ask.

“I was wondering when that was going to come up,” he says. “Yes, we traveled together once. One time.”

“And when was that?”

“About three years ago. And the press engaged in a lot of gossip that wasn’t true,” he says.

“Where did the two of you go?”

“The two of us didn’t go anywhere,” he says. “The fact of the matter is that she was generous enough to allow me to hitch a ride on her company plane because it just so happened that she was vacationing in Italy at the same time that I had a security conference in Rome. When we landed in Italy, we went our separate ways. We ended up spending one day together relaxing just before returning home and the paparazzi with their cameras got ahold of it and made a huge deal out of it. She told me that they hounded her the entire time she was there. Wouldn’t leave her alone. ‘The billionaire software queen.”’

In the piles of documents in the box on the floor at Harry’s feet are old news articles and photographs we have been collecting, mostly items out of the local society section. Several of these show Chapman over the last several years attending galas and charity functions accompanied by a number of different male friends. Several of the photos show her on the arm of Rufus.

Their difference in age and economic and social status causes me to suspect that this was nothing more than a matter of convenience for Chapman. No doubt she would have considered Rufus a safe escort for a high-profile outing in terms of gossip and speculation. That all changed when she spent ten days in a guarded villa near the town of Lucca in Tuscany. With an international software mogul staying in the neighborhood, Roman reporters descended on the place. One of the photos taken with a 900mm lens from bushes on the hillside above the villa, a grainy shot, shows Chapman sunning herself on a chaise near the pool. Next to her, decked out in swim trunks and reading the newspaper, is an austere, dapper-looking gentleman later identified as Maxwell Rufus. The picture set tongues wagging in the local San Diego press, speculation that a match was in the making. Whether it was business or pleasure was never clear. What is certain is that if there was something bubbling, it never brewed. After that, the only times the two of them were ever seen together were in groups with other people-outings similar to the dinner party that Chapman never made the night she was murdered.

I slip copies of the grainy photograph from the Italian press from under a stack of papers on the podium and have the bailiff deliver one to the judge and one to Rufus on the stand. I hand another to Templeton at his table.

I ask Rufus: “Do you recognize this photograph?”

“Yes.” He barely glances it at, then dumps it contemptuously onto the railing along the side of the witness stand.

“Is that Ms. Chapman and yourself in the photograph?”

“Yes.” Rufus isn’t even looking at me now but glancing up at the ceiling instead.

“You say the press came to the wrong conclusions based on that photograph?”

“Yes.”

“That they engaged in a lot of wild speculation that wasn’t true?”

“Absolutely.”

“Your Honor, can I have People’s exhibit twenty-six up on the screen?” This is a copy of the frozen frame from the video taken by Rufus, the picture that Templeton left lingering up on the screen for the jury at the close of the state’s direct examination of Rufus. Harry has had this single frame prepared for mounting on the visualizer so that it leaves enough room for another shot to be placed right next to it-a kind of split screen.

Gilcrest points his gavel at Templeton’s computer wizard, and a second later one of the photographs taken by Rufus during his surveillance of my client pops up on the visualizer, the shot showing Ruiz watching Chapman on the street in La Jolla, where she is talking with friends.

“Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Rufus, that people-that perhaps this jury-looking at the load of photographs that you took of Emiliano Ruiz during your so-called investigation of his activities could jump to similarly erroneous conclusions as the press did with you and the victim while you were vacationing in Italy?”

Suddenly Rufus realizes that I’m not headed where he thought I was going: implications of an affair between him and Chapman. Whether the jury will land there or not is up to them.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

“Your Honor, I ask that the photograph resting on the railing next to Mr. Rufus’s arm be marked defendant’s exhibit next in order and that it be introduced into evidence.”

“Any objection, Mr. Templeton?”

“No, Your Honor.”

I have the Italian newspaper photo put up on the visualizer for the jury to see; the other half of my split screen, a demonstration of how people can jump to the wrong conclusion by looking at pictures.

I turn back to the witness. “Did you bother to talk to Mr. Ruiz, to ask him what he was doing when he was watching Madelyn Chapman during the course of your investigation?”

“It wasn’t necessary. I had directed him to stay away from her.” The way Rufus says it makes him sound like a jealous suitor.

“I see. You were conducting an investigation to find out what he was doing, but it wasn’t necessary to talk to him about it? To find out what the real purpose of his activities was?”

“I knew what the purpose of his activities was. He was infatuated,” says Rufus.

“That’s pure speculation on your part. Your Honor, I move that the witness’s answer be stricken from the record and that the jury be instructed to disregard it.”

“So ordered,” says Gilcrest. “The jury will disregard the witness’s last statement and the witness will confine his testimony to what he knows. Do I make myself clear?” he asks.

Rufus nods.

Gilcrest verbally pulls Rufus up by the tie: “I want to hear an answer when I give a direction.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“You may proceed.” The judge waves me on.

“Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Rufus, that to this day you don’t have any idea what Mr. Ruiz was actually doing when you were photographing him watching Madelyn Chapman?”

“The pictures speak for themselves,” he says.

“I suppose they would have to since you can’t, even though you took them.”

“Objection,” says Templeton.

“The jury will disregard counsel’s comment,” says Gilcrest. The judge is having to earn his supper. “Confine yourself to questions, Mr. Madriani.”

“Sorry, Your Honor.”

“Is it not possible, Mr. Rufus, given your lack of verifiable information concerning the activities of Mr. Ruiz in those photographs and in that videotape, that the photographs you took are just as deceptive, just as erroneous, and just as misleading-”