Without a Hitch (26 page)
Paul Webb sat on
a wooden bench outside the courtroom. He was here to handle a series of
traffic violations. As he looked over his notes, Hillary Morales walked up to
him. Webb didn’t like Morales as she was rarely pleasant with him. She was
particularly unlikable today.
“Officer Webb,”
she said abruptly.
“Assistant District
Attorney,” Webb acknowledged her.
“I understand
you met with Washington Beaumont’s attorneys.” She set the file she was
holding down on the bench next to Webb and positioned herself so he couldn’t
stand up without bumping into her.
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did,”
she responded humorlessly.
Webb shook his
head. “I don’t know who told you that? I haven’t met with anyone.”
“You forget, I’m
the one who told you about the request for a meeting, and I personally gave you
Beckett’s cell phone number.” She left no doubt this was an accusation.
“I am aware of
that, but I never called him,” Webb lied.
“You never
contacted him?” She frowned and folded her arms. She looked down and began
kicking the heel of her boot against the tile floor, causing a sharp noise to echo
throughout the already-noisy hallway. She waited for him to respond.
Webb looked
around to see who could hear them. The hallway was full of attorneys engaged
in their own conversations. He looked Morales straight in the eyes and spoke
loudly enough for everyone in the hallway to hear: “You told me I had no
obligation to meet with the defense attorney. You made it clear I was not to
call him and tell him what I witnessed.”
It is unethical
for attorneys to discourage witnesses from talking to opposing counsel. When
Webb spoke, several of the attorneys gathered in the hallway looked his way.
Morales’ face burned
bright red. “I did no such thing,” she hissed. She leaned in close to him, grabbing
the back of the bench for support. “I’m telling you, Webb, I want to know what
he told you and what you told him, or there’s going to be hell to pay. Do you understand
me?!”
“I told you, I
never met with him.”
“I don’t believe
you,” she spat out menacingly.
He let out a
half-laugh. “I don’t care. I never met with any of ’em.”
“Then why did
Russell tell me you did?”
“I wouldn’t know.
Ask Russell.”
“Don’t play
games with me, Webb! If you’re holding out on me—”
Webb rose from
the bench, causing Morales to step backward awkwardly. “Lady, playing games
with you is the last thing I want to do. I can’t even stand talking to you.”
As he walked away, down the hallway toward the courtroom, he called back over
his shoulder: “You tell Russell, if he has a problem with me, he should come
after me himself. Don’t send his fuckin’ lawyer.”
Corbin stood in
the doorway of Beckett’s office. Beckett was on the phone, but was on hold.
“Did you call
Saitoo?” Corbin asked.
“No, we can’t
use him or his witnesses,” Beckett replied, rolling his eyes.
“That doesn’t
give us much of a defense, does it?”
There was a
voice on the line. Beckett jerked straight up in his chair. “Yes, hello. I’m
trying to reach Loretta Shapiro.”
“Ms. Shapiro is
out of the office. Can I help you?”
“I hope so. My
name is Evan Beckett. I’m an attorney. I’m trying to find out about an old
investigation performed by your office.”
“Our
investigations are confidential,” replied the woman.
“I’m aware of
that. I can also send over a subpoena if need be, but before I waste
everyone’s time, I just want to make sure my information is right. . . I know
how busy you all are,” Beckett added, trying to smooth the conversation.
After a pause,
the woman said: “What’s the name?”
“The mother
would be CarrieFey Benz, but I doubt she was even investigated, to tell the
truth.”
“Benz? Yeah, it
looks like she was investigated.”
“Does it say who
got the investigation started?”
“No, this
computer doesn’t do that. I’d have to pull the file.”
“Can you do
that?” Beckett asked hopefully.
“I’ll need the
subpoena first,” she replied.
Beckett agreed
and the women told him where to send it and what details to include to get the
right file. He grinned at Corbin. “Did you hear that? It looks like
CarrieFey Benz
was
investigated. That’s another one Beaumont might be
telling the truth about.”
“We’ll see.
Let’s wait until we see the report.”
The following
morning, Corbin and Beckett sat on the bench outside the judge’s chamber.
Hillary Morales stood silently at the other end of the hallway. None of them
knew why Judge Sutherlin had summoned them. Finally, they were called into the
office.
“Good morning,
counselors,” Judge Sutherlin said, glancing over the top of his glasses. “I’ve
been looking over the motions to dismiss filed by the defense, and I need more
information. Counselor, have you had a chance to review the defendant’s
motions?” he asked Morales.
“Yes, Your Honor,”
she replied.
The judge pushed
his glasses further up his nose and flipped through the file on his desk. “Ms.
Morales, I don’t see how you’re going to prove these accounts were stolen in
the first place.”
Morales looked
stunned. She clutched her pen so tightly that it bent under the pressure,
causing blue ink to leak out onto her blood-red pantsuit.
The judge
continued: “I don’t see any witnesses on your list who can say their
identities were stolen. Where are the people whose identities were used?
Without testimony from those witnesses, I need to think strongly about
dismissing this case. Are you planning on bringing any such witnesses?”
“Yes, Your Honor,
we will bring those witnesses,” Morales assured him, though she clearly had no
idea if she could keep that promise.
“I certainly
hope so.”
Corbin’s face
turned red with anger and he started to speak, but Beckett cut him off.
Beckett looked worried. “Your Honor, could we have a five minute break?”
The judge looked
at his watch. “Five minutes.”
The conference
room they normally used was occupied, so Corbin and Beckett headed to the
restroom next to the judge’s chamber. Inside, they found a clerk sitting on
the ledge smoking. The clerk had figured out how to open the window,
mercifully allowing cold outside air to offset the ultra-steamy air leaking out
of the damaged radiator.
“If you’ll
excuse us, we need to discuss something before we go back to see the judge,”
Beckett told the clerk.
The clerk tossed
the cigarette out the window, into the dumpster below, and walked out without a
word. Beckett locked the door behind the clerk, as Corbin closed the window so
their voices wouldn’t carry to any other open windows. It took him a few
seconds to figure out how the clerk managed to get the window open and reverse
it.
“That son of a
bitch!” Corbin whispered angrily. “Sutherlin just told them how to try their
case. He saw they couldn’t prove a necessary element of the crime and he just
warned them. He told them what he wants to see!”
“Calm down.”
“I am calm,”
Corbin replied tensely.
Beckett jammed
his hands into his worn navy-blue suit pants and shook his head. “I don’t care
about the heads up from the judge. That stinks, but that’s life. What I am
concerned about is the prosecutor calling people we know as witnesses.”
Corbin froze as
he grasped the meaning of Beckett’s words. To satisfy the judge’s demand for
witnesses whose identities had been stolen, Morales and Pierce would need to
call Corbin and Beckett’s coworkers from the Washington office as witnesses.
“How the hell do
we explain that?!” Beckett asked rhetorically. “This could be bad.”
“Ya think?!”
Corbin replied sarcastically. He glared at Beckett. Hate registered in his
eyes, but Beckett didn’t notice.
Beckett bit his
lip. “If they start calling people from the office to come testify, it would
take a fool not to put two and two together and start wondering how you and I
could be defending someone in another city, who just happens to be accused of
stealing their identities. No one will see that as a coincidence.”
“And once they
start asking questions, the prosecution’ll start asking questions. I told you
this was a horrible idea!” Corbin growled. He took a deep breath. “What are
our options?” he demanded. “Do we find some reason to withdraw?”
Beckett stared
at the floor.
“Shit!” Corbin
said to no one in particular. “Is there anything we can do to keep them from
testifying?” he asked himself aloud.
Beckett snapped
his fingers. “I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“We stipulate
that the accounts belong to these people.”
“How does that
help?”
“If we
stipulate, then the fact is presumed to be true and the prosecutor doesn’t need
to bring the witnesses to prove it. That means they don’t need to bring anyone
from Washington. In fact, they
can’t bring them
or we could object that
their testimony is unnecessarily cumulative.”
“Are you sure?”
Corbin asked, carefully enunciating each word.
Beckett nodded
his head. “Yes.”
“How do we know
they won’t try to bring them anyway?”
“We don’t. But
there wouldn’t be much point doing that, because they couldn’t testify. They
would just be wasting money.”
“Do you think
the prosecutor will agree?”
“I don’t know
about Pierce, but I know Morales will, if we offer it to her right now. She
looks worried. I’m betting she doesn’t want to admit to Pierce she made a huge
mistake that requires him to pay for a dozen out-of-state witnesses.”
Corbin raised
his hand as if to make a point, but stopped himself. “It’s your decision.”
Beckett approached
Morales, who sat on the wooden bench waiting for the judge to call them back
into his chamber. She was writing in a file.
“I’ve got a
proposal for you.”
“I’m listening,”
she replied curtly, without looking up.
“There’s no
reason this trial needs to last ten days just so you can go through a parade of
out-of-state witnesses who only need to say their identities were stolen.
We’re willing to stipulate that these witnesses are the real people whose
identities were stolen.”
Morales flipped
through her file trying to give the impression she was reluctant to accept the
offer, but her nervous foot tapping gave away her real mindset. “All right,
but I’m not offering anything in return,” she said, although her tone suggested
she would listen to any reasonable counteroffer.
“Done,” Beckett
said. “We’ll stipulate to all of them.”
A few moments
later, Beckett and Morales notified the judge of their agreement. He was
pleased.
It started
snowing lightly as Corbin and Beckett left the courthouse to walk back to the
office. “Why didn’t you ask for something in return?” Corbin asked. “She
would have offered something. That was pretty obvious.”
“I didn’t want
to risk it. Before she can offer anything, she’ll have to run it by Pierce,
and that gives them time to think things through. I’d rather take the deal
while it was available.”
Corbin shook his
head and stopped walking. “You know what? You’ve been going on and on about
being super moral and super ethical and how you can’t let an innocent man go
down for your crimes—”
“What’s your
point?!”
“Doesn’t it go
against Beaumont’s interests to have you stipulate to something like this? Philly’s
a long way from D.C., and subpoenaing these people won’t be easy or effective.
I’ll bet only one or two of them would even show up. That means most of the
charges would have been dismissed. But
you
,” Corbin pointed at Beckett,
“
you
just stipulated to them because it served
your
interests.
You cut that deal to make
your
problem go away, and you never once
thought about the effect on Beaumont.”
“If we don’t
stipulate, then everything blows up. Is that what you want?” Beckett shot
back.
“It’s no skin
off my ass. I don’t care about Beaumont. I just want you to realize what you
did.”
“You want me to
turn myself in right now?!”
“Is that a
threat?” Corbin asked acidly.
“Get off my back,
Alex,” growled Beckett and he turned to leave, but Corbin grabbed his arm, stopping
him. Corbin started to speak, but didn’t, and Beckett jerked his arm away from
Corbin. They glared at each other in silence.
The next week
passed unpleasantly for Corbin and Beckett. They barely spoke and rarely stayed
in the same room. When they were in the same room, the tension and anger
between them hung over them like a storm cloud waiting to burst. Toward the
end of the week, however, the anger receded a bit as they began finding evidence
that helped their case.
“We may have gotten
lucky,” Corbin said, sliding into the chair at Beckett’s desk.
“What have you
got?”
“Take a look at
this.” Corbin handed Beckett a packet of documents. “This is the bank
paperwork from Penn Bancorp. The manager who opened the account is Maggie Smith.
She’s on their witness list. Like most of the banks, Penn Bancorp’s
application paperwork is about fifteen to twenty pages long, with everything
except the first page being boilerplate. But take a look around page twelve.”
Beckett flipped
to page twelve where he found a photocopy of Alvarez’s fake drivers license.
“I don’t know
how they missed it, but this will blow up on them,” Corbin said. “I think they
assumed everything after the first page was just boilerplate. I almost made
the same mistake.”
“This is good
stuff,” Beckett said, but without excitement.
“Should we ask
for more paperwork from the other banks?”
Beckett stared
at the ceiling for a couple seconds. “No, let’s not risk tipping them off.”
“I’ve also gone
through all the videos; they have some problems. There is no one who remotely
looks like Beaumont on the Penn Bancorp video. The teller from the other bank,
Natasha Freet, she’s wrong too. There is no way the guy she fingers is
Beaumont. But even more interestingly, I’m having problems putting together
how this mystery guy actually opens an account.”
“What do you
mean?”
“It looks to me
like the guy isn’t opening an account. He’s doing something else, maybe
getting a safe deposit box?”
“I’ll take a
look,” Beckett said, again without excitement, which caused Corbin to raise an
eyebrow.
“Do we need
motions on any of this?”
“No, not at this
point,” Beckett responded.
“Do you want me
to start contacting banks?”
“For what?”
“To see if they
have more paperwork that might help us?”
“No, let it go,”
Beckett said indifferently.
“Should we
interview the guy from the mailbox store where Beaumont stole the mail?”
“No, I don’t
think that will help either.”
“Something about
his tone worries me,” Corbin said, rubbing his temple with his thumb. He
stared at the gun in the open suitcase. He’d been staring at it the entire
time he spoke with Alvarez. It was a black nine-millimeter semi-automatic with
a fifteen round clip and no serial number and it gave him a sick feeling in his
stomach.
“What do you
mean?” Alvarez asked anxiously.
“We’ve found
some good evidence, the kind we can use to make Pierce look like a fool at
trial, but Beckett doesn’t seem to care. It’s strange. It’s like a
personality shift. I’m not sure what he’s thinking.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know
yet.”
“I know you want
to give him a chance, but facing seventy-five years is a game changer. You
need to do something now!” Alvarez blurted out.
Corbin remained
silent. He kept staring at the gun.
“I’m just saying—”
Corbin cut him off.
“The trial is coming up in a couple weeks. I’m pretty sure he won’t do
anything before the trial.”
“You just said
you don’t know what he’s thinking anymore,” Alvarez retorted. “Look, he’s
unstable, right? What if he killed himself? What if he left a note and then
shot himself? You could get off the case and no one would blame you. Beaumont
could go down for his crimes and we could move on with our lives?”
“Are you
finished?”
“No, I’m not.
You’re playing with fire every day you let this continue. There’s not going to
be some magic solution at the end of the day. You need to act. If you don’t,
this isn’t going to end well. You’re going to wake up one morning and find out
he’s ratted you out!” Alvarez’s voice became shrill as he spoke.
“I’m going to
say this once and not again,” Corbin replied harshly. “I will do what needs to
be done, but I will do it on my schedule, not yours.”
“No, you’re
doing it on
his
schedule.”
Corbin hung up
the phone. He had another message from Penny. He hadn’t returned her call in
a week now. He wouldn’t return her call tonight either.