Michael Connelly - The Reversal

The judge turned her gaze to Maggie McFierce. It was her turn.

“Your Honor, this is simply a defense fabrication. The state has not once asked for a delay or opposed the defense’s request for a speedy trial. In fact, the prosecution is ready for trial. So this statement is outlandish and objectionable. The true objection on the part of the prosecution to this motion is to the idea of the defendant being allowed to disguise himself. A trial is a search for truth, and allowing him to use makeup to cover up who he really is would be an affront to the search for truth. Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Judge, may I respond?” Royce, still standing, said immediately.

Breitman paused for a moment while she wrote a few notes from Maggie’s brief.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Royce,” she finally said. “I’m going to make a ruling on this and I will allow Mr. Jessup to cover his tattoos. If he chooses to testify on his behalf, the prosecution will not address this issue with him in front of the jury.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Maggie said.

She sat down without showing any outward sign of disappointment. It was just one ruling among many others and most had gone the prosecution’s way. This loss was minor at worst.

“Okay,” the judge said. “I think we have covered everything. Anything else from counsel at this time?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Royce said as he stood again. “Defense has a new motion we would like to submit.”

He stepped away from the defense table and brought copies of the new motion first to the judge and then to us, giving Maggie and me individual copies of a one-page motion. Maggie was a fast reader, a skill she had genetically passed on to our daughter, who was reading two books a week on top of her homework.

“This is bullshit,” she whispered before I had even finished reading the title of the document.

But I caught up quickly. Royce was adding a new lawyer to the defense team and the motion was to disqualify Maggie from the prosecution because of a conflict of interest. The new lawyer’s name was David Bell.

Maggie quickly turned around to scan the spectator seats. My eyes followed and there was David Bell, sitting at the end of the second row. I knew him on sight because I had seen him with Maggie in the months after our marriage had ended. One time I had come to her apartment to pick up my daughter and Bell had opened the door.

Maggie turned back and started to stand to address the court but I put my hand on her shoulder and held her in place.

“I’m taking this,” I said.

“No, wait,” she whispered urgently. “Ask for a ten-minute recess. We need to talk about this.”

“Exactly what I was going to do.”

I stood and addressed the judge.

“Your Honor, like you, we just got this. We can take it with us and submit but we would rather argue it right now. If the court could indulge us with a brief recess, I think we would be ready to respond.”

“Fifteen minutes, Mr. Haller? I have another matter holding. I could handle it and come back to you.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

This meant we had to leave the table while another prosecutor handled his business before the judge. We pushed our files and Maggie’s laptop to the back of the table to make room, then got up and walked toward the back door of the courtroom. As we passed Bell he raised a hand to get Maggie’s attention but she ignored him and walked by.

“You want to go upstairs?” Maggie asked as we came through the double doors. She was suggesting that we go up to the DA’s office.

“There isn’t time to wait for an elevator.”

“We could take the stairs. It’s only three flights.”

We walked through the door into the building’s enclosed stairwell but then I grabbed her arm.

“This is good enough right here,” I said. “Tell me what we do about Bell.”

“That piece of shit. He’s never defended a criminal case, let alone a murder, in his life.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have made the same mistake twice.”

She looked pointedly at me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind, bad joke. Let’s just stay on point.”

She had her arms folded tightly against her chest.

“This is the most underhanded thing I’ve ever seen. Royce wants me off the case so he goes to Bell. And Bell… I can’t believe he would do something like this to me.”

“Yeah, well, he’s probably in it for a dip into the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We probably should have seen something like this coming.”

It was a defense tactic I had used myself before, but not with such obviousness. If you didn’t like the judge or the prosecutor, one way of getting them off the case was to bring someone onto your team who has a conflict of interest with them. Since the defendant is constitutionally guaranteed the defense counsel of his choice, it is usually the judge or prosecutor who must be disqualified from the trial. It was a shrewd move by Royce.

“You see what he’s doing, right?” Maggie said. “He is trying to isolate you. He knows I’m the one person you would trust as second chair and he’s trying to take that away from you. He knows that without me you are going to lose.”

“Thanks for your confidence in me.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve never prosecuted a case. I’m there to help you through it. If he gets me kicked off the table, then who are you going to have? Who would you trust?”

I nodded. She was right.

“Okay, give me the facts. How long were you with Bell?”

“With him? I wasn’t. We went out briefly seven years ago. No more than two months and if he says differently he’s a liar.”

“Is the conflict that you had the relationship or is there something else, something you did or said, something he has knowledge of that creates the conflict?”

“There’s nothing. We went out and it just didn’t take.”

“Who dropped who?”

She paused and looked down at the floor.

“He did.”

I nodded.

“Then there’s the conflict. He can claim you carry a grudge.”

“A woman scorned, is that it? This is such bullshit. You men are-”

“Hold on, Maggie. Hold on. I’m saying that is their argument. I am not agreeing. In fact, I want-”

The door to the stairwell opened and the prosecutor who took our places when we had gotten up for the recess entered and started up the steps. I checked my watch. Only eight minutes had gone by.

“She went back into chambers,” he said as he passed. “You guys are fine.”

“Thanks.”

I waited until I heard his steps on the next landing before continuing in a quiet tone with Maggie.

“Okay, how do I fight this?”

“You tell the judge that this is an obvious attempt to sabotage the prosecution. They’ve hired an attorney for the sole reason that he had a relationship with me, not because of any skill he brings to the table.”

I nodded.

“Okay. What else?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think… it was remote in time, no strong emotional attachment, no effect on professional judgment or conduct.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… and what about Bell? Does he have something or know something I have to watch out for?”

She looked at me like I was some sort of traitor.

“Maggie, I need to know so there’s no surprise on top of the surprise, okay?”

“Fine, there’s nothing. He must really be hard up if he’s taking a fee just to knock me off the case.”

“Don’t worry, two can play this game. Let’s go.”

We went back into the courtroom and as we went through the gate I nodded to the clerk so she could call the judge back from chambers. Instead of going to the prosecution table, I diverted to the defense side where Royce was sitting next to his client. David Bell was now seated at the table on the other side of Jessup. I leaned over Royce’s shoulder and whispered just loud enough that his client would hear.