The Rose Conspiracy (7 page)

He hadn't come up against Hartz in any prior cases, but Blackstone knew a few things about him. Hartz needed a cane to walk, for some unexplained reason. When the prosecutor walked, his gait was out of joint. He wore glasses that had thicker than normal lenses.

Hartz had a handsome face and a winning style of verbal delivery. He
had gained a reputation among criminal defense attorneys as a fierce legal opponent. He rarely gave any quarter, never asked for any, and almost always won his cases. He had experienced a quick rise from prosecuting misdemeanor drug offenses in the local District of Columbia prosecutor's office to handling the most complex terrorism and murder cases in the U.S. Attorney's Office. He was now the second-highest-ranking AUSA in the criminal division of that office.

His argument focused on two facts: First, that Vinnie Archmont had a history of extensive international travel, which posed a better-than-average risk of flight out of the territorial United States. And secondly, that the indictment alleged she was a member of a secret cult group, which meant that she had access to an underground network that could help her to flee from the country and then hide, rather than face trial and the possibility of a criminal sentence that could yield a death sentence.

The magistrate seemed intensely engaged in the case, and took quite a few notes, but didn't ask any questions of Hartz. The arguments were the usual stuff from an AUSA. The only thing that Blackstone found oddly missing was the intangible element, namely, the typical prosecutor's passion. Henry Hartz was either so overconfident of winning the motion to detain Vinnie without bail that he was sleepwalking through the argument—or else, and Blackstone doubted this one, Hartz really didn't care, down deep, whether Vinnie got released or not.

When it was Blackstone's turn at the podium, he was concise and to the point.

“Regarding the prosecution's argument,” Blackstone began, “about my client's history of extensive international travel, and how that makes her a flight risk—well, there is a simple remedy for that. Your Honor, simply require her to produce her passport to the court clerk for safekeeping. That will ensure her remaining in the jurisdiction of the United States until trial.”

Then Blackstone stepped away from the podium to drive home his second point. His arms were crossed over his chest, like a professor ready to lecture his class.

“And as for the absurd allegations about my client's membership is some secret society, I simply draw the Court's attention to the fact that Mr. Hartz has failed to file any evidentiary proof to support that. None
whatsoever. I think it was De Tocqueville who once said that, in contrast to Europe, ‘In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.' Apparently Mr. Hartz, on behalf of the government, believes that if he cannot prove the conspiracy of a secret society, then he is perfectly free to simply invent them. Let Mr. Hartz try his hand at fiction writing if he wants to do that. But Your Honor, let's save the courtroom for
facts.
”

Magistrate Boyer had only one question. And it said it all.

“Professor Blackstone, how quickly can your client produce her passport?”

“If she is released today,” he replied with a smile, “we can have it filed with the clerk by tomorrow.”

“So ordered,” the magistrate said. “Mr. Hartz, your motion for detainer of the defendant is denied. Mr. Blackstone, I will order the U.S. marshal to release your client upon the posting of a 10 percent bond on the bail amount of $1 million.”

“It has already been posted,” Blackstone said with a smile.

The magistrate nodded and gaveled the proceedings to a close.

Vinnie was so happy she was nearly in tears. She hugged Blackstone clumsily, unable to fully embrace him because of her handcuffs.

As Henry Hartz hobbled past Blackstone and Vinnie, leaning on his cane with one hand and holding his thick brown case folder with the other, the federal prosecutor was harboring a strange smile.

“Enjoy this insignificant little victory today,” he said to Blackstone. “It won't last long. There's some bad news coming your way tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Blackstone asked. “Like what? That you're enrolling in my criminal law class next fall so you can learn how to be a prosecutor?”

But Hartz's smile was spreading slightly into a grin.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will be filing my formal notice to the court that I will, in fact, be seeking the death penalty against your client, Vinnie Archmont.”

“The AUSAs I've dealt with from your office,” Blackstone shot back, “usually give defense counsel the courtesy of a conference before filing the death penalty notice.”

“I'm all out of courtesy, Blackstone,” he retorted. And then he threw a stony glance at Vinnie, and continued walking to the courtroom door.

Vinnie had heard it all.

She grabbed onto Blackstone's sleeve.

Blackstone held on to her and looked into her face. He could see the look of terror in her eyes.

CHAPTER 10

V
innie, who had just run the emotional gamut from joy to misery in a matter of minutes, was being led away by the two U.S. marshals.

Blackstone's last words to her in the courtroom were, “I'll file your passport with the court clerk, and you'll be out of here in twelve hours, tops.” Then he packed up his file, stuffed it in his brown-leather satchel, and turned to walk to the courtroom doors in the back.

In the second-to-last row there was a man still seated in a courtroom bench, waiting for Blackstone.

“Tully,” Blackstone said with a smile as he approached the man. “Great to see you. You got my message, I see?”

“Yeah,” the man replied. “Looks like you've got a troublesome tail you now want
me
to tail.”

“Tully” Tullinger had been J.D. Blackstone's private investigator for several years, ever since his retirement from the federal government. Sixty-three years old with iron gray hair and a pencil moustache, Tully was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and was holding a white straw Panama hat in his lap, the kind with a big black band. He looked more like a bookie at a horse-racing track than a man who had previously worked at the National Security Agency.

“This guy who's been following me drives a tan Ford Taurus,” Blackstone said. “He's not very suave. I picked up that he was tailing me right away.”

“Any ideas about why he's following you?”

“I've got some guesses. But I would rather have you operate on a
blank slate. Just track him long enough to find out who he is and who he is working for.”

Tully nodded, gave Blackstone a warm handshake, and after popping his Panama hat on his head he headed out of the courtroom.

When Blackstone got back to his office he sequestered himself in the law library with the Vinnie Archmont file spread out in front of him.

Julia, his junior partner, walked in.

“How'd it go?” she asked.

“Got her released on bail,” Blackstone said.

“On a capital murder charge? Nice work.”

“Henry Hartz was on the other side. I expected more from him. You know, Genghis Khan stuff—slaughtering the livestock, burning the crops.”

“Don't underestimate him,” Julia said. “I've heard that you never, ever want to turn your back on the guy. He'll kick you in the kidneys—with steel-tipped shoes.”

“Yeah, but I can easily outmaneuver him,” Blackstone said, with that twisted smile that signaled a cynical attack of dark humor. “He walks with a cane.”

Julia shook her head at that one and added, “I know. Some kind of health issue. But he paints a very sympathetic picture to a jury.”

“I'm trying to formulate our discovery demands,” Blackstone snapped, changing the subject, “now that I've reviewed these,” Blackstone said, pointing to the pile of FBI reports that he had already received from the prosecution. “I would appreciate your thoughts on this.”

Julia sat down and scanned the FBI “302” reports on the federal investigation into the Smithsonian crime. When she was done, one thing had caught her eye.

“The physical evidence documented at the scene of the murder is interesting,” she said.

“You're getting warmer,” Blackstone said, always the law professor.

“The drinking glass on the desk left on Langley's desk? I notice it's mentioned in the 302 report—though I don't see a lab report on it anywhere.”

“That's one thing, right. For some reason they didn't finish the fingerprint analysis on the glass, I guess. Anything else?”

“The pen on Langley's desk?”

“Oh, no, now you're getting colder,” Blackstone said, with a mocking tone. “The pen was analyzed, right here,” he said, pointing to a lab report, “and it was found to have only Langley's fingerprints on it.”

Julia tossed her hair a little anxiously, took her dark-rimmed glasses off, and wiped her eyes. Then she kept them off, twirling them and resting her chin on her hand.

“Okay,” she muttered out loud. “We're talking about physical evidence.” Then a light went on.

“The notepad on his desk.”

“Excellent thought!” Blackstone shouted. “Of course, on the other hand, it was a blank pad.”

“Langley could have written something down,” she replied, “and the shooter could have removed those notes, along with the Booth diary pages?”

“I'm pretty certain that's what happened.”

“How do you know?”

“It's logical,” Blackstone replied. “Langley was the head of America's most prestigious national institution of science and history. He is a scholar himself. He had custody of the missing diary pages from the hand of John Wilkes Booth, arguably the most notorious political assassin in American history. Do you think Langley wasn't poring over those pages? And wouldn't an academic like Horace Langley have taken notes? No, the real question is
not
about his missing notepad pages. The real question is this: Does the government have evidence of exactly what it was that he was writing, just moments before somebody put two bullets into his chest?”

Then Blackstone leaned back, with his hands folded behind his head and answered his own question.

“I am betting they do. And now I am going to force them to share it with me too.”

CHAPTER 11

B
lackstone and Julia ordered some carry-out Thai food that evening, and then worked late, until almost midnight. When they were finished, Blackstone electronically served their motion for discovery on AUSA Henry Hartz and filed it with the U.S. District Court by e-mail. It was thirty-seven pages long.

Blackstone loaded a lot of unusual information requests into his written demand. Unlike civil cases, where the discovery rules allow almost unlimited inquiry into every conceivably relevant area, in criminal cases defense counsel has to operate in a legal straitjacket. The government has to disclose evidence to the defense only within certain narrow categories. But Blackstone thought he had found some loopholes.

He found that the FBI reports previously produced to him by prosecutor Hartz contained numerous redactions: words and sentences blacked out. Those were the bits of information the prosecution didn't want Blackstone to read, and which Hartz had determined were protected from disclosure. But Blackstone needed as many facts as he could gather to defend his client. He wanted it all.