Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘All of the evidence points to your client,’ he says.

‘All of the evidence that you’ve produced,’ I tell him, ‘because you haven’t bothered to look for any evidence that would exonerate her, that might point to the real killer. Isn’t that true?’

I’m busy planting the seeds of my case in the jury box — thoughts of another killer. It’s one of the problems with their case. They have backed into probable cause for Laurel’s arrest after the fact, finding the compact, and the rug, and Mrs. Miller’s crippled identification. At the time of the APB they had none of these. No doubt with half an effort we might have knocked over the initial arrest, though they could have cured any defect in a short time. It was better to leave it alone and use it here to bloody Lama.

‘We’ve been fair and open-minded,’ he says. ‘We’ve conducted a professional investigation.’

‘You call this professional?’

‘I do,’ he says.

‘Is it professional to issue an order to arrest my client based solely on Jack Vega’s suspicions?’

He doesn’t answer, but looks at me, straightens his tie, then wipes his upper lip with the sleeve of his coat. A better response than I could have hoped for, all in body English.

‘I’m waiting for an answer,’ I tell him.

‘I gave you one. It was a professional investigation.’

‘A moment ago you said that Mr. Vega told you that Laurel Vega hated his new wife. That she was jealous. The stuff you expect in a divorce. Those were your words. What did you mean by that?’

Everything above the shoulders is bobbing and weaving like one of those dogs on a dashboard with its head on a spring, Lama trying to say it without words.

‘You know,’ he says.

‘No, I don’t know. What did you mean?’

‘I mean a bad divorce. The two women didn’t like each other.’

‘And you know about this stuff?’

‘Thirty years in law enforcement, you know a lot about a lot of things.’

‘I suppose you handled a lot of domestic calls over the years, back in your squad car days?’ I say.

‘My share,’ he says.

‘Then you know about women in divorces?’ I ask him.

‘You bet. Like to scratch your eyes out,’ he says.

With the gender factor of this jury, I can hear Cassidy sucking air at the table, Jimmy about to step in it.

‘So women can be violent in a divorce?’ I say.

Suddenly he sees where I’m going, leading him to the pit of political heresy, a reversal of the doctrine that women are the victims in domestic violence. Jimmy’s eyes visit the jury box and come back wary.

‘Men do it too,’ he says. ‘They smack ’em around sometimes … the ladies,’ he says. ‘So we’d have to step in and stop it.’ Jimmy to the rescue.

‘Ah, so it can be violent all the way around?’ I say.

‘Sure. Absolutely,’ he says.

‘Well, did it ever occur to you that Mr. Vega might have had his own reasons for wanting to shower suspicion on his former wife?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it’s a bad divorce, one involving a lot of bitterness. Did it ever occur to you that Mr. Vega might have had his own reasons to shower hostility on his former wife? To make accusations against her without evidence? That would be a natural thing in a bad divorce — wouldn’t it?’

‘We had no reason to hold suspicions that he might be misleading us,’ he says.

‘But you were willing enough to form every kind of suspicion against his former wife. To the point of branding her a murderer?’

‘There was evidence,’ he says.

‘All of which I contend is suspect, and all of which I would remind you was acquired after the fact of her arrest. What else did Mr. Vega tell you that night?’

‘He was upset. We didn’t want to press him,’ he says.

‘You didn’t want to press him! You didn’t want to press him!’ I do this on an uptilt with my voice, gaining an octave, looking at him with incredulous eyes.

‘I see. So it was easier to arrest my client, to issue an all-points bulletin calling her armed and dangerous, to subject her to the hazards of deadly force, arrest under the pointed guns of nervous officers — it was easier to do this than it was to investigate the facts, to find out exactly what lay behind Jack Vega’s accusations against his former wife?’

‘In hindsight,’ he says, ‘we probably would have done it differently.’

With this I can see Cassidy cringe.

‘I’ll bet you would have,’ I say.

The first rule of cross. Once he steps in it, leave him there. From the beginning I have suspected that there was something else that motivated Laurel’s arrest, something that caused Lama to fall into his own pit of seething vipers on this thing: his hatred of me and his early acquired knowledge that Laurel was, after all, my kin.

In the afternoon, Morgan Cassidy is licking her wounds. Lama has left her with a deficit: his ham-handed acquiescence in the notion that he arrested Laurel without sufficient evidence. Cassidy is now left to wonder whether Jimmy’s words might become the capstone of a later appeal should Laurel be convicted.

Lama’s testimony has painted a clear image in the jury’s mind of a slovenly investigation, of cops not interested in the details, not willing to sift for facts, on a myopic crusade to convict Laurel before there was any real evidence of her guilt.

In a way I view Cassidy as more dangerous because of this; her contortions in trial offer up all the anxiety of tracking a wounded tiger in the bush.

Colin Demming is everything Jimmy Lama is not. He is young, good-looking, articulate, and bright. While civies are usually worn to court, today the officer wears the uniform of the Reno Police Department. Demming is a patrolman in that force, and the man who initially took Laurel into custody at the laundromat on Virginia Street.

Ordinarily I would expect Cassidy to put Demming on the stand, extract what she needs from him, and get him down quickly. But Morgan has found another line of attack, and Demming is the perfect weapon: a cop not connected with an inept investigation.

Cassidy takes her time going over the details of the arrest, how Demming and the other officers were called to the laundromat when a woman spotted Laurel’s picture in a paper and called dispatch. How Demming checked for a warrant and found one in Laurel’s name. It was issued based on the eyewitness testimony of Mrs. Miller and her review of the single picture shown to her by Lama the night of the murder. I have now discovered where this came from. Laurel tells me that Jack pilfered it from some of Danny’s personal belongings, items left by the kid at Jack’s house on one of his visits. This was apparently a source of considerable friction between Danny and his father — that the boy’s picture of his mother had been used to launch a manhunt for her.

Morgan asks Demming what happened after the cops all assembled at the laundromat.

‘Two other units arrived, backup. One of them covered the rear of the building, while I and three other officers went in the front.’

‘What did you find inside?’

‘We observed a woman, at one of the commercial laundry units near the back. There were several other patrons. We asked them to step outside.’

‘So the suspect didn’t see you when you entered the premises?’

‘No. She was turned around when we entered. There was a lot of noise from the equipment — washers and dryers. I approached her and had to tap her on the shoulder before she noticed that I was standing there. I told her not to move. To place her hands against the laundry unit, to step back with her feet and to spread them wide. Then I asked her for some identification. She said she’d have to get her purse. I told her to stay where she was and one of the other officers got it.’