Trial Junkies (A Thriller) (29 page)

Harding looked confused. "I beg your pardon?"

Waverly gestured to Ronnie again. "When did you first meet my client?"

"I've never met her," Harding said. "We've never even been in the same room together until now."

Waverly frowned. "I don't understand. Detective Meyer testified that the majority of the phone calls came from the Dumont Hotel, directly across the street from your office."

"So they tell me."

"Yet in all that time, Ms. Baldacci never once crossed the street to try to speak to Ms. Keating in person?"

"Not that I'm aware of, no."

"So let me get this straight," Waverly said. "Are you claiming, under oath, that you've never met or spoken to my client face to face? In the flesh, so to speak?"

Harding stiffened, a quiet hostility creeping into her eyes, as if she thought her integrity were being impugned. "Not a claim, it's the truth."

Waverly nodded, then said, "So tell me this, Ms. Harding. If you've never seen or spoken to my client before today, how could you possibly know that the person on the telephone was Veronica Baldacci?"

Murmurs rumbled through the courtroom, Hutch and his friends exchanging looks. Waverly had played this one perfectly.

But Harding had an answer. "Because she identified herself, that's how."

"Oh? In what way?"

"She said, 'This is Ronnie Baldacci, put me through to Jenny.'"

"Really? Exactly like that?"

Harding shrugged. "More or less. Sometimes she said, 'This is Ronnie Baldacci, don't transfer me to that other clueless bitch, let me talk to Jenny.' This was usually accompanied by a several expletives."

"So you're saying she identified herself every time she called?"

"I can't swear to it, but it certainly seemed that way. Believe me, I got awfully tired of hearing the name."

Scattered laughter rang out but quickly died when Judge O'Donnell shot his gaze toward the gallery.

Waverly said, "Doesn't it seem strange to you that someone who was desperate to have her calls put through to Ms. Keating would always state her name, even after she'd repeatedly been denied?"

"I wouldn't know, but that's what she did."

"If you were making such calls yourself, wouldn't you resort to some type of subterfuge to get through?"

"Objection, Your Honor. The witness's opinion in that regard is irrelevant to these proceedings."

"Sustained. Move it along, counsel."

Waverly nodded to him. "Sorry, Your Honor. Ms. Harding, did you ever speak to your boss about these calls?"

"To Jenny? Yes, of course."

"And what did she say?"

Harding sighed. "She told me to keep transferring them to the family law department. It was a bit frustrating, to say the least. I just wanted to be rid of them. I was tired of dealing with it and I thought she should speak to Ms. Baldacci and make it clear that she should no longer try to contact her."

"So she never took
any
of the calls?"

"Not that I know of, other than that first one, when I was out sick."

Waverly paused. "So let me understand this. The one person who knew Ronnie Baldacci and could positively identify her voice had never taken any of the calls you handled. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Harding said.

"Yet when this caller identified
herself
as Ronnie Baldacci, you assumed she was telling the truth. Is that right?"

"Yes," Harding said, looking impatient now. "Why wouldn't I?"

"No reason you shouldn't. But if I were to call you up and identify myself as Martha Stewart, would you believe that as well?"

Laughter in the courtroom. Even the judge joined in this time.

"Of course not," Harding said. "That's ridiculous."

"Why?"

"Because I know you're not her. I know what you sound..." She caught herself, her expression shifting, growing uncertain.

"Yes, Ms. Harding? Please continue."

Abernathy jumped to the rescue. "Objection. I've been fairly tolerant until now, but this game is getting tedious. These questions have been asked and answered numerous times already."

"I tend to agree," the Judge said. "Ms. Waverly, either find a new angle or wrap it up."

"Just a couple more, Your Honor, and I'll be done with this witness."

"Make it quick."

Waverly thanked him, then said, "Ms. Harding, you've testified quite adamantly that you've never met my client face to face. That you've never been in a room together before today."

Harding sighed again. "That's right."

"So, please, tell the jury this," Waverly said. "In light of that testimony, how could someone who continually claimed to be Ronnie Baldacci possibly know to use such a hateful slur as uppity black bitch?"

— 43 —

I
T WASN'T A
slam dunk, Hutch thought, but it was close.

Waverly had succeeded in sowing the seeds of doubt about who had made those phone calls, and had even introduced the possibility that Ronnie had somehow been set up. It didn't quite play into the theme of police corruption—they couldn't have framed her beforehand, after all—but that didn't matter. Anything that raised red flags in the minds of the jurors was good for the defense.

Waverly and Harding went back and forth a while longer, Harding theorizing that something in her voice must have tipped the caller to her ethnicity. But that wouldn't wash. All during her testimony, she had spoken in a flat, colorless accent that might be classified as business neutral or "General American," as Hutch's old dialect coach would call it. And he saw more than one juror closing her eyes to test out Harding's theory.

All and all, it had been a good day for Ronnie so far, but the biggest hurdle was yet to come: dealing with that damn bloody sweatshirt. And Tom had been right. People had been convicted with far less evidence.

If you talked to the folks at the Innocence Project—a non-profit devoted to disputing wrongful convictions—they'd tell you that such convictions aren't all that rare. Right here in Illinois, for example, three men had been sentenced to at least eighty years in prison each for the rape and murder of a fourteen year old girl, even after DNA evidence—recovered by the Illinois State Crime Lab—had clearly shown that none of them were guilty.

So Ronnie was far from being out of the proverbial woods. And to Hutch's mind, it all came down to the man across the aisle from him.

Frederick Langer.

Was he, as Hutch had suggested earlier, the one who made those phone calls to Jenny's office? Not to
frame
Ronnie, but in a twisted, misguided effort to help her with her custody case?

Was it possible for a man to convincingly disguise his voice as a woman's?

Hutch knew very well that it was. Especially over the phone. One of his friends in L.A. was so good at it that he'd spent the months between his acting gigs working for a sex call hotline.

"A gig's a gig," he'd told Hutch, then slipped into a sultry falsetto that would fool just about anyone who wasn't staring him straight in the face. "These poor idiots already have a picture in their mind of what I look like, honey, so it's an easy sale. And the money's fantastic."

Hutch had never actually heard Langer speak, other than those weird, high-pitched mewling sounds, but for his money, anything was possible. And it took everything he had to keep himself from crossing the aisle and...

And what?

Considering what the bastard had done to Jenny, making him fully understand her pain seemed like a reasonable conclusion to this saga.

One that Hutch would relish for the rest of his life.

— 44 —

"W
E'RE STILL IN
the library," Monica said, her voice strangled by a bad cell connection. "This boy really likes his books."

Just an hour earlier, after a concerted effort on re-direct to repair the damage done to Harding's testimony, Abernathy had called a couple more witnesses from Jenny's law firm. Neither of them had met or spoken to Ronnie, or could verify that she had made the phone calls, but both had claimed that Jenny had been upset about the situation. Was even worried about her physical safety.

This was a new twist that would have been a bombshell, had it been true.

On Waverly's expert cross-examination, however, it became clear that Jenny—being Jenny—was worried more about
Ronnie's
welfare than her own, and the safety issue had merely been witness speculation. Or flat-out invention.

Hutch was guessing the latter.

Much to Abernathy's frustration, both witnesses quickly backtracked under Waverly's grilling, and in the end, their testimony was little more than a feeble attempt to bolster Harding's.

When court was adjourned for the day, Nathaniel Keating gave Hutch a look that said their business was far from over, but Hutch had decided that, short of sending out a hit squad, there wasn't much Keating could do to him. Not without winding up in court himself—assuming he got caught.

Now, as promised,
Operation Creep
was in motion, each of them taking part as time, work and family obligations would allow. Monica and Tom had volunteered for the first shift, and had followed Frederick Langer to the public library.

"What section is he in?" Hutch asked.

He was calling from his living room as Ronnie helped her mother and son get settled into the apartment. Lola Baldacci didn't seem pleased to be here, especially after she saw that only one bed had been slept in, but any remarks had been reserved for Ronnie's ears, not Hutch's.

Not surprisingly, Christopher was a little shy, but Hutch had at least provoked a smile from the boy when he showed him an old coin trick his father had taught him. When Hutch produced a quarter from Christopher's ear, the boy giggled and said, "Do it again."

So Hutch once again made the coin disappear and reappear from the other ear, then took Christopher's hand and dropped the quarter on his palm.

"Put that in your piggy bank," Hutch said, and the boy's eyes lit up in surprise and delight.

There was a rustling sound on the line and Hutch heard Monica say to Tom, "What section is he in?" Then, to Hutch: "Science and Medicine."

"Surprise, surprise."

"No kidding. Why couldn't this jerk be a normal pervert like the guys who visit my chat site?"

"I assume you're aware that we've all checked it out at one time or another."

"Exactly. Like I said—normal. I mean, all guys are perverts, but I shudder to even
think
about the kind of websites
this
weirdo goes to. Necrophiliacs-R-Us?"

"Ugh," Hutch said, remembering the photos in that book. "Let me know when he leaves the place, and as soon as I'm done here, I'll take over."

"Roger," she told him, then hung up.

T
HEY WERE NEARING
the end of dinner when Hutch got the call.

Lola had insisted on cooking and took over the kitchen, recruiting Christopher as her sous chef, the two falling into what was obviously a standard routine. The boy dutifully fetched ingredients from the pantry and refrigerator as Lola directed him like a stern but loving drill sergeant.

"That used to be my job," Ronnie said to Hutch. "But I think Chris enjoys it a lot more than I ever did. Those two are nearly inseparable."

When Lola and Chris were done, they had rustled up an impromptu chicken and capers pasta dish that had Hutch wondering why Lola didn't own a restaurant.

"With dishes like this," he told her, "you'd make a fortune."

"Money isn't everything, young man. You should remember that. Spend a little time in a poor man's shoes and you might learn to appreciate the life God gave you and not waste your precious days on earth worshipping the almighty dollar."

Hutch smiled stiffly. "I'll keep that in mind."

Lola had remained distant during the meal, and despite Hutch's efforts at conversation, it was obvious she didn't approve of him. He wasn't quite sure why, although the unmade bed in his room probably had something to do with it. Ronnie's mother struck him as a conservative religious woman who frowned on any activities that weren't church vetted and approved. Especially when they involved her daughter.

And apparently Hutch's money was another black mark against him. According to Ronnie, her mother had spent her life working in factories, most of it on the assembly line at the local Pepsi bottling plant. So her resentment toward a rich boy with very little talent, who had gotten even richer through luck and happenstance, was completely understandable.