Steve Martini - Undue Influence

I show this document to Dana and she identifies it — a list of federally protected witnesses on a computer-generated form, something used by Justice and electronically sent over secure channels to field offices around the country. She asks me where I got this. I do not tell her. It came from a gracious editor at a newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky. What finally brought me to my senses was the news article read to me by Harry months before, the piece about the botched computer sale by the Department of Justice, the weak magnet used to erase the computer hard discs, and the eventual sale of these computers, still containing their highly confidential information, to the public. It was the news article that Harry hung on the bulletin board of the dayroom at the county jail, the one warning snitches to beware.

‘Your department had reason to believe that the Merlows were compromised, didn’t they?’

‘We had reason to believe that a number of relocated witnesses had been compromised.’

‘Why?’

She confirms the almost laughable folly with the computers. How Justice and the FBI tried to buy them back, even raided some homes and businesses, using warrants, to confiscate some of the equipment. I can tell this gets Harry’s ire, all the juices of the original story repackaged and concentrated. In the end the information was too far disseminated for the government to unring this particular gong. So they set about trying to relocate the witnesses, new identities on a priority basis, those believed to be most in danger first.

‘But they didn’t get to the Merlows right away, did they?’

‘No.’

‘Not until after Melanie Vega was murdered?’ I say.

‘That’s right.’

‘Ms. Colby, I want you to think very carefully. I’m going to ask you one final question, and I want you to answer clearly for the court. What did the Department of Justice discover after the murder of Melanie Vega that so upset them, that caused them to conceal this information, to withhold it from an attorney defending his client on charges in connection with that murder? Tell us,’ I say, ‘what was it that they found in those compromised computer records?’

Everything I have done, the entire foundation I have laid up to this point, has led to this question.

Dana sits poised in the box, the only person in the courtroom besides Harry and myself who knew that this moment would come.

‘They discovered…’ Her voice cracks a bit. ‘They discovered that the street address, the new street address on the computer records for Kathy Merlow, was wrong,’ she says. ‘A typographical error.’

‘Whose address was it?’

‘It belonged to Jack and Melanie Vega.’

There is a palpable roar that echoes through the courtroom, an audible wave of indignation that rolls through the public areas of this room — the thought that those charged with justice would conceal such an outrage. An innocent citizen dead, another on trial for her murder, when the barons of bureaucracy in Washington have known the truth for many months. Reporters are out of their chairs heading for the cameras in the hallway outside, visions of the lead on ‘Headline News.’

Woodruff is fanning pages of the computer document on the bench. When he finds it, he looks at me from on high, a glazed expression. His glasses fairly slide to the end of his nose before they drop off, where he catches them on the rebound off the blotter on the bench. He sinks back into the tufted leather of his chair. Melanie Vega and her child were murdered because a clerk in the bowels of the bureaucracy in Washington made a typographical error.

At this moment, the expression on Woodruff’s face is a hybrid between wonder and fury.

I can only surmise how high this thing goes. There is no doubt in my mind that Cabinet members in Washington will be ducking for cover by nightfall, an attorney general doing mea culpas, insisting that the buck stops at her desk, while she casts for underlings to throw onto the pyres of sacrifice, to appease the gods of politics. It is a scenario we have seen before, staged in other scandals.

As I look at her, drained and worn in the witness box, there is not a doubt in my mind that Dana will figure high on their list of victims. Her dreams of judicial glory are wafting on the winds, like the odors of carbonized wood in the wake of a wildfire.

Woodruff is banging his gavel on the bench, trying to bring the place back to order.

Cassidy is trying to holler some objection or a plea from her counsel table, but cannot be heard. Finally the judge’s voice breaks over the din. ‘There will be order or I will clear the room,’ he says. ‘Mr. Bailiff, have those people sit down or tell them to leave.’

It takes nearly a minute for what passes as order to be restored, a restless vapor of electricity floating just above our heads.

‘Your honor, we, the state, knew nothing about this.’

Cassidy’s protestations from the counsel table.

‘Speak for yourself,’ says Dana.

For the first time this morning I am surprised by the words that pass from Dana’s lips.

‘I cannot prove that you knew,’ Dana says. ‘But your investigator sure as hell did.’

What is clear is that Dana is not going down on this alone.

With this Cassidy is floored, looking at Lama with a face of betrayal. If it were anyone else she would not believe it, but with Jimmy’s track record to date, instinct tells Morgan not to jump to his defense too quickly.

‘Please explain that?’ I say. Dana is still my witness.

‘I mean that as liaison to the FBI in the postal bombing case, Lieutenant Lama was informed that the victim, Mrs. Reed, was a friend of Kathy Merlow, and that Mrs. Merlow was a federally protected witness.’

Suddenly there is more than a crack in the door. There is a stillness in the courtroom, the sense that even if they do not know how, a second shoe has just dropped.

‘Your honor, this was never disclosed,’ I say. ‘Exculpatory evidence critical to our case, withheld by the state,’ I tell him.

Lama has known since before we went to trial that Kathy Merlow was the target of a hired killer.

I look at Cassidy, and I know in this moment that she is as much victim in this as Laurel and I. Lama has used her in his war with me.

She is protesting that she never knew, that Lama never told her. Jimmy is out of his chair, singing a swan song, telling the court that he didn’t understand the significance, his reason that he never told anyone. He wants Woodruff to believe that this, dirt that every cop on the beat would chew on over doughnuts and coffee, a connection with their idols at the FBI, that Jimmy would keep this to himself ignorant of its consequences.

Woodruff does not buy this. The only question, he says, is whether or not there was malice in this act of concealment. The judge is now talking legal parlance, the difference between a mistrial and outright dismissal. For us the distinction is cosmic.

Cassidy is pleading for a mistrial, no hard evidence of any intentional wrong, she says. An oversight. This would give her the chance to retry Laurel, to put us to this agony one more time.

If Woodruff dismisses with the jury in the box, jeopardy would attach. Laurel would be a free woman.

‘You would subject the defendant to a second trial?’ says Woodruff. This he poses to Cassidy.

She hems and haws. ‘A question I would have to discuss with my boss,’ she tells him.

Cassidy simply wants to avoid the hammer being dropped in this way, a judge forcing her to eat crow, feathers and all.

‘One question,’ says Woodruff. ‘Knowing what you know now, would you, as a professional prosecutor, have brought charges against the defendant, Laurel Vega, in this case?’ It is the ultimate issue.