Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

I nodded and looked down at my notes for a moment before continuing.

“Then why did you ask your father if he had given her name to Mr. Moya?”

“Because I didn’t understand at first. I thought maybe it was possible that he had acted out of vengeance or something like that.”

“Do you think that now?”

“No, because I understand. He needed her alive in order to win the habeas. We needed her.”

I hoped the alternative to the scenario I had just explored was obvious to the jurors. At the moment, I was being subtle about it. I wanted them to come to the understanding on their own, and then I would reinforce it with further testimony. When people think they have discovered or earned a certain knowledge on their own, they are more apt to hold on to it.

I glanced at Mallory Gladwell in the jury box and saw her writing in one of the notebooks each juror is given. It looked to me like my alpha juror had gotten the subtlety.

I looked back at Fulgoni. It would have been the perfect moment to finish, but I had Fulgoni on the stand and under oath. I decided not to miss any chance of hammering home the basic theory of the defense.

“Mr. Fulgoni, I am trying to get a fix on the timing of your habeas petition involving Hector Moya. You filed the case and subpoenaed Gloria Dayton in early November, correct?”

“Yes.”

“She was then murdered on the night of November eleventh going into the twelfth, right?”

“I don’t know the exact dates.”

“It’s okay, I do. By the morning of November twelfth Gloria was dead, and yet it was another five months before anything happened on the habeas, correct?”

“Like I said, I don’t know the dates. I think that is right.”

“Why did you wait until April of this year to get things going on the case and to subpoena DEA Agent James Marco among others? What caused the delay until then, Mr. Fulgoni?”

Fulgoni shook his head like he didn’t know the answer.

“I was just…strategizing the case. Sometimes the law moves slowly, you know?”

“Was it because you realized that if Hector Moya actually needed Gloria Dayton alive, there might be someone else out there who needed her dead?”

“No, I don’t think that’s—”

“Were you afraid, Mr. Fulgoni, that you had opened a can of worms with your habeas petition and that you yourself might be in danger?”

“No, I was never afraid.”

“Were you ever threatened by someone in law enforcement to stall or shut the Moya case down?”

“No, never.”

“How did Agent Marco react to being subpoenaed in April?”

“I don’t actually know. I wasn’t there.”

“Has he ever fulfilled the subpoena and sat for a deposition with you?”

“Uh, no, not yet.”

“Has he personally threatened you if you continue the habeas case?”

“No, he has not.”

I stared at Fulgoni for a long moment. He now looked like a scared little boy who would lie his way out of anything if he could.

Now was the time. I looked up at the judge and said I had no further questions.

32

Forsythe kept Fulgoni on the stand for a full ninety minutes of hardball cross-examination. If I had made the young lawyer look foolish at times, then the prosecutor made him look downright incompetent. Forsythe clearly had a mission to accomplish with his cross and that was the total destruction of Fulgoni’s credibility. I had used young Sly to get several salient points on the record. Forsythe’s only hope of undermining those points with the jury was to undermine their source. He had to leave it so the jurors would dismiss Fulgoni’s testimony in its entirety.

He came close to mission accomplished by the end of the ninety minutes. Fulgoni looked wrung out. His clothes seemed somehow wilted, his posture was slumped, and he was answering questions monosyllabically, agreeing to almost anything the prosecutor suggested in the form of a question. It was the Stockholm syndrome—he was trying to please his captor.

I tried to intervene and help where I could with objections. But Forsythe deftly kept his questioning inside the lines, and one after the other the objections went down overruled.

Finally, at four fifteen, it was over. Fulgoni was excused and he left the witness stand like a man who never wanted to set foot in a courtroom again, despite being a lawyer. I stepped back to the rail and whispered to Cisco in the first row, telling him to make sure young Sly didn’t leave. I still needed to talk to him.

The judge sent the jury home and adjourned court for the day. She invited Forsythe and me back to her chambers to work on the order to appear that would hopefully bring James Marco to court. I told Lorna that drawing up the order would not take too long and she should go down and get her car out of the underground parking garage where she left it every morning.

I caught up to Forsythe in the hallway behind the courtroom that led to the judge’s chambers.

“Nice job on Fulgoni,” I said. “At least now he has some courtroom experience.”

Forsythe turned and waited for me.

“Me? You were the one who started it—and he was your witness.”

“A sacrifice to the gods. It had to be done.”

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of this Moya angle but it’s not going to fly, Mick.”

“We’ll see.”

“And what’s with all the names on the new list? I’ve got kids I’d like to spend time with tonight.”

“Give it to Lankford. He has the time. I think he ate his kids.”

Forsythe was laughing as we entered the chambers. The judge was already at her desk, turned to the computer terminal on the side.

“Gentlemen, let’s get this done so we can beat some traffic.”

Fifteen minutes later I left through the courtroom. The judge had issued the order to appear. The sheriff’s department would be charged with delivering it to the DEA’s office the next morning. It ordered the DEA to show cause as to why Agent James Marco should not appear in court by ten a.m. Wednesday. That meant either Marco or a lawyer for the DEA would need to show up. If that didn’t work, then Judge Leggoe would issue a bench warrant for Marco’s arrest and things would really get interesting.

I found Cisco and young Sly sharing a bench in the hallway. One of Moya’s men was on his own bench across the hall. The other had trailed Lorna as she went down to get the car.

I walked over to Cisco and Fulgoni and told young Sly that I knew it had been a rough day but that I greatly appreciated the help he had given my client’s case. I told him I was still looking forward to working with him on the habeas case in federal court.

“I was right about you, Haller,” he said.

“Yeah, when was that?” I asked.

“When I said you were an asshole.”

He stood up to leave.

“I nailed it.”

Cisco and I watched him stride to the elevator bank. The good thing about working late into the day in the courthouse was that the elevator crowds thinned out and the wait wasn’t so bad. Fulgoni caught a ride quickly and was gone.

“Nice guy,” Cisco said.

“You should meet his father,” I said. “Even nicer.”

“I shouldn’t speak ill, though. A guy like that, I’ll probably end up working for him someday,” Cisco said.

“You’re probably right.”

I handed him my copy of the judge’s order. Cisco unfolded the document and looked it over.

“Somebody up there at Roybal will probably use this to wipe his ass with.”

“Probably, but it’s all part of the game. Just in case, we need to be ready for Marco on Wednesday.”

“Right.”

We stood up and started heading toward the elevators. Moya’s man followed.

“You going to the loft?” I asked Cisco.