David Ellis - The Wrong Man

He was in a conference room with Shauna. I stopped in to say hello. I liked this guy. He had a boyish face but was bookish, too, with his glasses and trim beard and precise manner of speech. He had a sense of humor and self-deprecation that would make him credible but not arrogant to a jury. Most important, he could break down technical testimony into something that was accessible to lay jurors. A good expert is a teacher, and he spent most of his time teaching grad students.

“Good to see you again, Doctor.”

He was on his cell phone but quickly got off. He extended a hand. “Hello again, Mr. Kolarich.”

“Might as well call me Jason.”

“I understand the court has entered a ruling on my testimony.”

“The insanity defense is out, yes. But we have some other ideas for you. Shauna will explain.” I rubbed my hands together, experiencing an adrenaline dump as I plotted the beginning of our defense. “So I think you’ll be our first witness, Doctor. That’s my current thought. The trial starts next Wednesday, December first. You’ll be first after the prosecution rests. So it will be probably early the following week-probably about that next Tuesday or Wednesday-that we’ll need you.”

Dr. Baraniq was wagging a finger at me. “I do want you to recall, I have an obligation that following Tuesday after the trial begins. I mentioned that to you.”

That stopped me. I’d forgotten. “Something you can’t break,” I recalled.

“A religious obligation.”

Shit. It was possible, depending on what we could turn up in the meantime, that Dr. Baraniq would be one of only two witnesses, and I needed him to go first. The order mattered to me. If the prosecution rested by Tuesday, or even midday Tuesday, I needed Dr. Baraniq ready.

“I’m sorry, but I thought I reminded you,” he said again.

Apparently my frustration was evident. I flapped my arms. “Well, if you can’t do Tuesday, you can’t do Tuesday.”

Once again-shit. But it reminded me of something. I excused myself and pulled Shauna out of the room with me. We huddled in the hallway.

“He told us about this commitment back when we first met with him, Jason. But I think it should work out just-”

“I don’t care about that,” I said. “So listen. I want you to find a way to get his religion in.”

She drew back. “You want him to testify that he’s Muslim?”

“Yes, I do. It adds to his credibility.”

She didn’t get that. “First of all,” she countered, “it has nothing to do with anything. And second of all, if anything, we might get someone on the jury who doesn’t like Muslims. You may have noticed, there are some bigots in the city. You and I grew up with some of them.”

She was right about that. But she was missing the point. I shook my head. “Anyone who doesn’t like Muslims will love an American soldier fighting in Iraq like Tom. They’ll want to help him. So I’m not worried about that. But more than anything, it shows the strength of the doctor’s convictions. Why would a Muslim who clearly takes his religion seriously want to go out of his way to help one of the soldiers who was occupying a Muslim country?”

Shauna thought about that. “So he must feel very strongly about what he’s saying. That’s your point?”

“That’s my point.”

“And my point is it’s condescending to the jury. It’s insulting. It might look that way to the jury. If we overplay that hand-”

“Then don’t overplay it. He’s your witness, Shauna. Do it smoothly. Hell, use the Tuesday thing as an excuse. Ask him why he couldn’t be with us on Tuesday and he can tell you why. Or find a way to bring it in subtly.”

She played this over and came back with the same reaction. “I don’t like it.”

“We need to do it.”

“Jason!” Marie was standing in the hallway.

“I’m against this,” said Shauna. “I don’t want to do it.”

I leaned in to her, so Marie couldn’t hear me. “Shauna, I don’t have time for a lecture on political correctness or stereotypes or making this world a better place, okay? I have a guy with his life on the line. This is a fucking murder trial. So man up and get it done. If you can’t, I’ll take the witness and do it myself.”

“Man up?”

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t have time to hear it. And regardless of what I’d just said, Shauna was going to take this witness, not me. And I knew her well enough to know that she was going to do only what she wanted to do.

“What, Marie?” I said, walking away from Shauna.

“You have a phone call,” she said. “Someone named Sasha?”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“She said she was Lorenzo Fowler’s girlfriend,” Marie said. “And it’s urgent.”

I took the call in my office. “This is Jason Kolarich,” I said.

“Mr. Kolarich.” It was a woman’s voice, thick with an Eastern European accent. Russian or something like that. Mee-ster Kolareech.

“My name is Sasha Maldonov. Do you know who I am?”

I only knew what Marie had told me. “You knew Lorenzo Fowler.”

“Yes. I loved him. When he was… When they shot him, he’d come from my apartment.”

I didn’t know that. The police wouldn’t tell me what Lorenzo had been doing on West Arondale the night he was murdered.

“Go on,” I said.

“I am in danger. I know this. I cannot stay at my home. They think that Lorenzo told me things. Things I… should not know.” There was background traffic noise on her end of the phone. She was on a cell phone or a pay phone, if pay phones even exist anymore.

“Did he?” I asked, my pulse kicking up.

She paused. “Can you… protect me?”

“I’ll protect you,” I promised, which was a bit reckless of me. “Tell me what you know.”

“I know many things. Lorenzo knew I would not tell. He knew I would keep his secrets. But now…” Another, longer pause followed. Car horns honking.

“You’re afraid they want to kill you for the same reason they killed Lorenzo,” I gathered. “So the best thing for you to do is testify for me. Once it’s said publicly, there’s no reason to kill you.”

Clearly, she’d come to the same conclusion. “Can we meet?” she asked.

“Yes. Anytime,” I said. “Right away.”

Another pause. I had a moment of pause myself. I had to be sure this woman was legit. “Prove to me you’re who you say you are,” I said.

“Prove this to you? Lorenzo told you about me, no?”

“No,” I said.

“Ah. Well…”

“Why are you calling me?” I asked.

“Because Lorenzo went to you. He did not want to speak with the usual lawyers that he was given. He wanted someone who was not connected to the… family.”

That was true enough. “What did we discuss?”

“He told you… that he could provide the identity of someone. He wanted protection.”

“Whose identity?” I asked.

Another pause. “Not over… the phone,” she said.

I suppose I couldn’t blame her. And I didn’t want to push her too hard. I didn’t know where she was, and she could hang up this phone and disappear forever. It was a delicate dance, and I was getting desperate. She needed me, but I needed her more.

“Gin Rummy,” she said. “He told you he had proof.”

I closed my eyes. Lorenzo Fowler had said those very words to me-he had proof.

“Are you now satisfied?” she asked me.

“Tell me where you are,” I said eagerly. “I’ll leave right now.”

Traffic was light on my side of the commercial district, given the unofficial holiday of the day after Thanksgiving, plus it was just after four in the afternoon. The sun was close to setting, but among skyscrapers in the city, it was, for all practical purposes, nightfall already. I steered clear of the east and north sides, where the stores were presumably swollen with early Christmas shoppers. I didn’t like to think about Christmas. It reminded me too much of my wife and daughter.