Nothing But the Truth (26 page)

“Jeff, can we do this somewhere else?” Brett pointed at the boxes lying nearby. “You don’t want your witness tripping over evidence and ruining her favorite suit, do you?”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I guess it is a little crowded in here. Tell you what, it’s a nonjury week.” He referred to certain prescheduled times during the year when no jury trials were scheduled in order to allow the court to take care of administrative matters. “The jury room should be free. I’ll ask the bailiff.”

Brett stood. She didn’t want to be stuck in the room alone with Paulson again. “No, you eat your sandwich. I’ll check on the room. Be right back.”

Brett exited the workroom and nearly ran into Jake Simmons in the entryway to the courtroom. “Hi Jake, how’re you doing?”

“I’m fine, considering.”

Brett could tell by his tone that fine was a relative term. “What’s up?”

“Seems like lately everything you want me to look into has me going up against a brick wall.”

“Is that so?”

“I don’t like brick walls.”

Brett knew him well enough to know he wasn’t frustrated with her, but rather with his own inability to gather information. She waited.

“That girl, Ann Rawlings?”

Brett nodded for him to continue.

“She’s in a lot of trouble. I don’t mean legal trouble.”

“Care to share?”

“Yes.” He inclined his head toward the DA workroom doors. “But not right here. Actually, I think it would be best if we went to see her together.”

“I don’t know if I can break away to get to the jail this afternoon.” Brett had an idea. “Gloria owes me a favor. Maybe I can get her to bring Ann over this afternoon. The judge is at a conference so nothing’s going on. We should have the holdover all to ourselves.”

“I’ll be nearby. Just give me a shout and I’ll stop back over whenever you’re ready.” Jake left without another word. Brett was beyond curious about what had him so concerned, but she knew if it was something time sensitive he would have told her. He was a man of few words and probably just figured it would be easier to reveal whatever he had learned to both Brett and Ann together rather than repeat the story twice. She shook her head and went to check on the jury room.

*

Ryan looked at her watch. Again. Brett was meeting with Jeff, and she desperately wanted to be there. Not because of the case.

These feelings were so out of character, but Ryan was starting to slow down long enough to try them on and see if she could make them fit comfortably. She hadn’t reached comfort yet, but rather a heady mix of angst and craving.

She looked at the papers on her desk and willed herself to focus. Despite their agreement to wait till after the trial to engage in anything personal, Ryan had called Brett the day before, mere hours after they had parted on Saturday night. Ostensibly, it had been a professional call. They discussed the ethical issues about Brett being called as a state’s witness by a prosecutor who wanted to get in her pants. The situation gave Brett more pause than it did Ryan, and Ryan tried to see Brett’s point of view.

“If I were a defense attorney, I’d want to know the prosecutor had shared an intimate lip lock with a state’s witness.”

“I suppose I can see that, but there are a lot of things Edwards’s attorney would like to know that I’m not legally or ethically required to tell him.”

“It doesn’t feel right.”

Ryan felt her defenses click into place. “Are you saying you plan to tell him?”

“No. Frankly, it’s your duty to disclose if there’s anything that needs to be disclosed.”

“I can tell you right now, I’m not telling him anything.”

Brett’s voice was a balm to her rising anger. “Hey, sweetheart, don’t be angry. I just want to talk it through to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”

Ryan was silent while she absorbed Brett words.
Sweetheart?
It was the kind of casual endearment she had heard Brett use with others, but directed at her it felt more than casual. It felt loving. She sighed. Perhaps this little exercise was necessary after all. “Okay, let’s talk it through.”

“Thanks. Now for starters, under what circumstances would you feel you needed to disclose a relationship between a prosecutor and a witness?”

Ryan thought for a moment. “Definitely if they were married. Maybe even living together.”

“The DA’s office has rules about whether a prosecutor can work on a case with a defense attorney if they are related or are in a relationship, right?”

“Right, but when they aren’t in a legally defined relationship, the rules are kind of gray. Basically, if the relationship is such that your obligations to your partner might outweigh your duty to prosecute the case, then you shouldn’t work on the case.”

“I’ve looked at this and I think that’s the rule that applies to this situation as well.”

“Then we have nothing to disclose.”

Brett sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I certainly don’t feel obligated to say something that isn’t true out of some obligation to you.”

No, you shouldn’t feel obligated to me at all.
Ryan had left the obvious unspoken. No, Brett had no obligations toward her at all. And, although they had decided to wait until the trial was over to explore any possibilities for something personal, she didn’t hold out any hope the removal of their self-imposed barrier would have any effect on whether they could have a chance at more.

*

Brett sat close to Jeff and as far away from Paulson as she could get. They had reviewed everything she knew, which wasn’t much, several times, but Paulson kept interjecting questions and asking Brett to repeat what she knew.

“The first communication I received was by e-mail.” Brett handed over a piece of paper. “Here’s a copy. As you can see, there’s no signature.”

“How many times did he e-mail you?”

Brett chose her words carefully. “Whoever it was e-mailed me four times.”

“We’re going to need to work on how you phrase your answers,” Jeff said, “‘Whoever it was’?”

“Ah, that’s the point I’ve been trying to get across. I think you’re going to have trouble getting my testimony in at all, at least with regard to these e-mails and phone calls.”

“How do you figure?”

“What I have to say isn’t relevant. I don’t know who was sending me e-mails or who was calling me. And the content of those e-mails and phone calls is hearsay.”

“Not necessarily,” Jeff responded.

“How do you plan to prove what was said was said by Ross Edwards?”

Paulson interjected. “Why does he have to? Seems pretty clear from the phone and e-mail records he was communicating with you.”

“You can’t offer a statement that was made out of court into evidence at trial. There are some exceptions to that rule, and one of them is that the statement was made by the defendant, but the state has the burden of proving the statements were made by Edwards. If you have the very e-mail he sent me from his computer, you might get there with the e-mails, but the phone calls were where most of the details were conveyed. If I were the defense attorney, I’d be objecting all over the place that you can’t prove that my unknown caller was Ross Edwards.”

“Then I guess we’re lucky Luke is trying this case, not you,” Jeff said.

“If he asks to talk to me, I’m going to sit down with him. Tell him everything I know.”

“I’d expect you to. I don’t want to interfere with his ability to review the evidence. Once we tell him what it is.” He grinned. “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t feel compelled to give him legal advice.”

“Ross Edwards isn’t my client. Despite what you may think, I don’t feel like I need to defend the world. Just the people who come to me for help. Ross Edwards is not one of those people. I’ll tell the truth. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Perfect.” Jeff picked up his list of questions. “I’m confident Judge Langston will give us a fair hearing on the hearsay issue. We’ll establish that based on the timing and circumstances of the phone calls you received in combination with Edwards’s phone records, your testimony is probative and relevant. You don’t need to worry about how we plan to get the evidence admitted. Just tell the truth and we’ll take it from there.”

Jeff sounded extremely confident, but Brett had a sinking feeling nothing about this case was going to be as easy as he thought.

The first thing Brett noticed was Ann Rawlings wasn’t doing well. Her carefully manicured nails were chipped and her hair was limp and dull. Brett wondered if her psyche was in worse shape as well and whether her condition might render her more willing to talk about her case.

“Ann, this is Jake Simmons. He’s an investigator who works for me. I asked him to join us here today.”

“I don’t understand.”

Brett was hopeful. At least she said something. “I reviewed the police report and I have some questions.”

Ann sighed. “I can’t tell you much.”

 “Can’t or won’t?” Jake asked.

Ann’s jaw was set and she averted her eyes. Brett took her turn at getting her to cooperate. “We’re here to help you. Jake works for me, so anything you tell either him or me is protected by attorney-client privilege.”
Your secret’s safe with me.

“You don’t understand.”

“We might understand better than you think.”

Jake had pulled Brett aside before they entered the holdover to meet with Ann. He laid out the basic facts. The location where Ann had been arrested was a luxury townhome, now vacant, but still furnished. The upscale North Dallas location of the townhome was an unusual location for a prostitution arrest. Even more unusual was a vice sting conducted in the wealthy neighborhood. The ownership of the building was a tightly woven and well layered secret, but after calling in some favors, Jake had managed to trace at least a partial interest back to the top law enforcement official in Dallas, Leonard Duncan.

Brett didn’t have a clue what to do with that piece of information. Her only inclination was to dig deeper, but her instincts told her to do so could be perilous. She decided to start with her client and find out what she could, but she knew whatever she found, the implications ranged far beyond this particular case. The notes from the police report rang alarm bells in her head.
Wild sex party.
If her beginning suspicions were true, that the DA was somehow involved with this case, Brett wondered why that particular statement had made it into the final report.

She started with a direct approach. “Ann, I need to know who you were working for.”

“I don’t know.”

Brett noted her demeanor and decided she was telling the truth, in some respect, at least. “But you have some ideas?”

Ann nodded.

“Can you tell how your, um, arrangement came to be?”

Silence.

Jake assumed a fatherly role. He hunched down and placed his hand on Ann’s knee. “You seem like a real sweet young lady. I don’t know how you got in this mess, but I’m here to tell you what I know. This lady,” he jerked a thumb in Brett’s direction, “She’s the best there is. If anyone can help you out of the mess you’re in, she can.” He paused and gazed into Ann’s eyes, neither one of them blinking. “You wanna know how I know?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “My daughter, my only daughter, she got herself into serious trouble. I raised her to know right from wrong. She had everything she could possibly want or need, but she fell in with a bad crowd. Next thing you know, she was wearing a jumpsuit like you’re wearing, sitting in a federal prison, looking at the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars.” He glanced at Brett again, then back to Ann. “Ms. Logan saved her life. If you give her a chance, she can save yours.”

Brett watched the interaction between them. While she wouldn’t have made such grand promises on her own, she wondered if Jake’s words would open the vault of information Ann had locked down tight.

“It was supposed to be a modeling job.”

Brett held back a sigh at the clichéd non sequitur. She nodded for Ann to continue.

“They provided us with clothes. They took pictures of us. At first, it seemed like a great opportunity.”

Brett wanted to know who the “they” was, but she also wanted to keep Ann talking so she started with more subtle questions. “Did it appear that anyone lived in the townhome, or was it just a studio?”

“I don’t think anyone lived there. The first time I was there, the photographer had a professional setup. He took what he said were going to be our portfolio shots.”

“And later?”

“Later things changed. The photos they took were spontaneous, action shots.”

Brett took the hint. “You were working then?”

“I went there because it was a good paying modeling job.” Ann’s voice rose slightly as she showed emotion about her situation for the first time since Brett had met her. Brett already had a pretty good idea about how it had all gone down, but she still wanted to hear, in Ann’s own words, how she’d been persuaded to sell her body.