False Witness Read online

  Lars took the phone off mute. “Somebody will be right with you,” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he hit Mute again. “Maybe she’s a single young female who hasn’t worked a day in her life and still receives an allowance from Dad at age twenty-one,” Lars said, checking his notes. “Maybe she can’t pay the rent because all of her hard-earned allowance money goes up her nose every Friday night.”

  “Everybody’s entitled to a defense,” Isaiah retorted.

  “Good; you take her case,” Lars grunted.

  “Everybody’s entitled to a defense,” Isaiah said. “But not everybody’s entitled to a defense from me. Only the lucky ones.”

  Jamie rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to take the bait.

  Lars cussed and picked up the phone, making no effort to sound interested as he garnered more details about the case. Isaiah pulled a plastic chair in front of Jamie’s desk.

  “Are we cool?” he asked. Jamie could tell that the charm was in full throttle—concern pooling deep in the brown eyes, a serious tone in his voice. This was Isaiah Haywood, the former University of Georgia starting cornerback. Class cutup. Ladies’ man. Defender of society’s underdogs in every case they ever dissected in law school.

  By halfway through his first semester, Isaiah had already hit on almost every decent-looking girl in his class, including Jamie. “Might as well start at the top,” he told her, though she knew he had already flirted with at least three of her classmates. She gracefully rebuffed him, but they later became friends. Jamie, the would-be prosecutor. Isaiah, the heir apparent to Johnnie Cochran.

  “We’re cool,” Jamie replied. “But I still think you owe Farnsworth an apology.”

  Isaiah scrunched his face as only he could do. “You can’t be serious. Maybe I overreacted a little, but an apology?” Isaiah shifted in his seat, dramatizing how uncomfortable he was just thinking about it. “I mean, if Casper wants to listen to his own drummer, that’s cool. But he should have told me he was going to do that before class, and I would have called the whole thing off. Once he lets the rest of us hang out there like that, dangling in the wind, just so he can get another book award—”

  “That’s not fair and you know it,” Jamie interrupted. Isaiah gave her a wounded look, but she wasn’t buying it. “Maybe he felt a sense of responsibility. And you, more than anyone, ought to appreciate a person who takes a stand against the crowd.”

  “The man scares me,” Isaiah said.

  “Wellington?”

  “Yeah. That mentality. Abide by the rules. Placate the system. Defend the status quo. Card-carrying member of the Republican Taliban.”

  It was a diversionary tactic, Jamie knew. Isaiah could argue endlessly about political issues. Two years ago, during con law class, a debate between Isaiah and Jamie on the issue of capital punishment had established her reputation as a budding prosecutor. And a person not to be messed with.

  Isaiah had waxed eloquent about the discriminatory nature of the procedures and the mechanics of death. “Modern-day lynchings,” he called them, citing statistics about the disproportionate number of black men on death row. “All we’ve done is trade a rope for a needle.”

  The class was quiet as Jamie raised her hand to respond. Slowly, in hushed tones, she told the story of her own mother’s murder. The night she came home as a sixteen-year-old girl to find her mother dead, her father bleeding from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. She painted the scene in graphic detail, then quietly ticked off a list of the intruder’s prior convictions. “Don’t tell me that man deserves to live,” she said. The class sat in stunned silence. Not even Isaiah challenged her statement.

  After class, he sought her out. “I’m against the death penalty because I think it’s discriminatory,” he said. “But I’m sorry if I sounded insensitive toward the victims.”

  She had not seen that side of her classmate before. “We’re okay,” she said. “Just don’t change the law until we put this scum away.”

  They shook on it—a touching of closed fists that was as good as a notarized contract. He walked away with her respect.

  Which was why she wanted to at least be honest with him now. “I would have done the same thing Wellington did,” she said. “Snead just didn’t get that far.”

  This seemed to rock Isaiah back. The king of quick comebacks actually took a minute to process it. “Serious?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Yeah, but you’re hot. Any woman with legs like yours is entitled to hang the rest of us out to dry.” Isaiah smiled, flashing the pearly whites that had melted the hearts of so many female members of the Bulldog Nation. He had apparently decided the Wellington issue wasn’t worth losing a friendship over.

  With anyone else Jamie might have been appalled at such sexist comments. But two years ago she had learned that Isaiah would be Isaiah no matter what. “Sounds chauvinistic to me,” she said.

  “Not really. I would have been just as mad if an ugly female student dissed my plan. I discriminate based on ugliness, not whether somebody is a man or a woman.”

  “Mature.”

  “But the two of us. Are we okay?”

  “We’re okay.”

  “Great. Then let’s make it my place tonight. We could hang out in Buckhead for a while first, just so everybody knows we signed a truce.”

  “Not that okay.”

  34

  Jamie’s 2:00 p.m. appointment, a gentleman named David Hoffman, came strolling in nearly twenty minutes late and settled on one of the plastic seats in front of Jamie’s desk. Despite Jamie’s hints, he offered no apologies or excuses for his tardiness.

  She handed him a clipboard with a long form designed to see if he qualified for legal aid. The rest of the world had digitized, but legal aid still believed in hard copies with real signatures. Jamie had to help half the clients fill it out.

  Hoffman frowned at the paperwork. The man was slender, perhaps late thirties, with thin blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a ruggedly handsome face that looked like it had seen a barroom brawl or two. He had a small crook at the bridge of his nose and a slight scar above the right eye.

  His demeanor was not what Jamie had come to expect from her legal aid clients. Nor did he dress the part. Jeans, yes. But the polo shirt betrayed a more prosperous lifestyle. Plus, how many of her clients carried the latest version of a BlackBerry on their hip?

  He smiled at her—dimples and all. Quite a flirt for a guy wearing a wedding ring. “Do I really need to fill this out?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You don’t have, like, a short version? An EZ form?”

  “No.”

  He sighed, apparently surprised that the dimples hadn’t worked their magic. He spent another few seconds surveying the form. “What’s the right answer?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How much can I say that I make and still have you guys represent me for free?”

  Jamie frowned at him. She had enough legitimate clients—folks who truly needed her help. The last thing she needed was a scam artist. “Why don’t you just answer the questions honestly, and we’ll take it from there?”

  “By the book,” he said. “Good to see you people do things the right way around here. I need a lawyer who handles things by the book.”

  Finally, David Hoffman stopped talking and started filling out the form.

  Hoffman claimed only twelve thousand dollars in income the previous year, safely within the legal aid qualifications, and Jamie asked if he could bring his tax returns to their next meeting. Legal aid wasn’t supposed to be used by middle-class Americans trying to save money on legal bills.

  At Hoffman’s request, they moved across the hall to the conference room. His legal matter was apparently too confidential for the prying ears of Lars Schrader. Jamie moved some boxes from the seats to the floor and pushed papers and files away from a small part of the conference room table.

  She opened Hoffman’s new file—a manila folder containing Ho
ffman’s form and little else—and jotted a few headers on a legal pad.

  “Now, Mr. Hoffman, what kind of legal problem do you have?”

  Hoffman pulled a few folded pieces of paper from his back pocket and handed them to Jamie. She read the summons carefully and decided that she might not need those income tax returns after all.

  The summons required Hoffman to attend Fulton County Court the following Friday to answer charges of impersonating a police officer and breach of the peace. Class 5 felonies—far more interesting than the typical misdemeanor diet of legal aid students. Under the rules of the clinic, Jamie could handle Class 5 felonies only if she had the approval of the clinic’s supervisor—Professor Snead. As for Snead, Jamie knew he wouldn’t care. He would sign off on anything; he just didn’t want to be bothered with actually having to appear in court.

  “These are pretty serious charges,” Jamie said, feeling like a real lawyer. “What happened?”

  Hoffman was a good storyteller, and he seemed to relish this tale. He was in the repo business, he explained, and got into some trouble with a car owner about two weeks ago. Seems that Hoffman was preparing to tow away a practically new Buick Lucerne when the owner, a sixty-three-year-old man with a history of two bypass surgeries, spotted Hoffman and came running out of the house, cursing loudly.

  Hoffman tried to tell the irate man that he just wanted to peaceably repo the vehicle, but the man danced around, calling Hoffman names and threatening lawsuits. Hoffman admitted that he might have flashed a fake deputy sheriff’s ID, but the old man still wouldn’t calm down. Eventually, Hoffman got the car hooked up to his wrecker, at which point the man climbed on the hood of his car and refused to get off.

  “What did you do?” Jamie asked.

  “I drove away.”

  “And what happened?”

  “The old geezer slid off the front of his car and grabbed his heart after he hit the ground. Last time I saw him he was in the back of an ambulance.”

  As always, Jamie had a hard time listening to these types of stories and not judging her clients. Especially cases like this one, where the client really had no legitimate defense.

  “Where did you get the fake ID?” Jamie asked.

  Hoffman made a face. “Is that really relevant?”

  He had a point. “I guess not. But so far, I haven’t heard a good defense.”

  “I’m repossessing the guy’s car under authority from the bank. How can that be a crime?”

  “Did he ask you to stop?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Under the law, you’re only entitled to repossess a car if you can do so without a breach of the peace. If the owner tells you to stop, you have to stop.”

  “I didn’t breach the peace,” Hoffman protested. “He was cursing at me. I just did my job and tried to get out of there.”

  “Was he sitting on his car when you tried to get out of there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you know that?”

  “Yes. Probably.”

  “And did you intentionally pull away in an abrupt manner in order to knock him off the car?”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Hoffman asked.

  It’s a fair question, Jamie thought.

  35

  Friday, March 28

  Jamie shifted in her seat in the packed courtroom at Fulton County Court, Criminal Division. She recrossed her legs—right over left, trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden benches. David Hoffman’s preliminary hearing was scheduled toward the end of the day’s docket; first, she had been forced to sit through several other routine cases, including the painful exercise of watching Isaiah Haywood defend a man facing his second possession charge.

  Haywood, resplendent in a shimmering gray pin-striped suit, cuff-linked shirt, and pink tie, pulled out all the stops in his lengthy cross-examination of the arresting officer. As Isaiah grilled the man on his disciplinary record, the judge stifled a few yawns, looked conspicuously at his watch, and reminded Isaiah that it was a crowded docket.

  When it came time for closing arguments, Isaiah alienated the judge again, insisting that he needed more than the three minutes the judge had allotted. Not a good strategy, Jamie thought, in a case where the judge will render a verdict without the jury.

  “All right,” a frustrated Judge Chalmers said. “Five minutes. No more.”

  “Judge, this man is facing a serious criminal charge. With respect, I think due process requires that I be given more than five minutes. I can understand that, for the court, it might get tedious hearing these same cases day after day. But for my client, this is his life.”

  But Judge Chalmers held firm. After arguing with Isaiah for at least five minutes about the length of time for the closing argument, the judge held to his five-minute limitation and “not a second more.”

  “Note my objection,” Isaiah fumed.

  “So noted.”

  David Hoffman, sitting next to Jamie, leaned closer. “If anything happens to you, I want him as my lawyer.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  The next ten minutes proved her point. The prosecutor waived her closing—“We’ll rest on our evidence”—while Isaiah launched into a passionate argument attacking the credibility of the undercover police officer. The court ruled immediately.

  “Under normal circumstances, I might have considered releasing your client on time served and twelve months probation,” Judge Chalmers said. “But, Mr. Haywood, since you seem so intent on preserving everything for appeal, perhaps I had better stay within the sentencing guidelines and not be quite so lenient. Mr. Radford—” the court turned to the defendant, who rose to his feet at the prompting of Isaiah—“I hereby find you guilty of possession of .5 grams of cocaine, a Class 5 felony, and I hereby sentence you to one year in jail with all but six months suspended under the usual stipulations.”

  The judge turned to the clerk, who was busy making a note of the verdict. “The defendant is to begin serving immediately and should be credited for his time already served.”

  “Request that the sentence be suspended pending our appeal,” Isaiah said.

  “Denied.”

  “Request that the defendant be allowed out on bond pending appeal.”

  “Denied.”

  Isaiah stood there, motionless, probably stunned. But not half as stunned as his client, Jamie thought.

  “Anything else, Mr. Haywood?”

  “Not until the retrial,” Isaiah said.

  “Have a nice day, Mr. Haywood.”

  The clerk called another case.

  “I think we’re up after this one,” Jamie said.

  But Hoffman wasn’t looking at her. He had seen something behind them that had apparently troubled him. He stiffened and turned to Jamie.

  “Does everybody have to go through the same metal detector we did?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Don’t look now,” Hoffman whispered, his eyes straight ahead, “but I’m pretty sure I saw a guy with a gun tucked into his waistband, just under his shirt. He’s in the third-to-last row on the other side of the courtroom.”

  Jamie tensed, her mind racing to the Fulton Courthouse shootings that had taken place several years earlier. Security had tightened considerably since then, but there were probably still a hundred ways to smuggle weapons into the courtroom.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not really. He’s sitting on the end, toward the aisle. Asian American guy. Funny right ear. Tattoos on his neck and forearms.”

  Jamie started to turn, but Hoffman put a firm hand on her arm. “Don’t look,” he said. “I think he noticed me scoping him out. Don’t draw any more attention right now.”

  Suddenly Jamie’s case didn’t seem that significant. “Can you just go up and casually mention something to the bailiff?” Hoffman asked. “Maybe he could walk back there and talk to the guy and see.”

  Considering the alternatives, it seemed like a reasonable plan to Jamie.
Attorneys would occasionally walk past the wooden rail that separated the spectator section from the well of the courtroom and whisper discreet questions to the clerk or bailiff while cases were being heard. If the man in the back of the courtroom was armed, it could be no accident. He might be a jilted husband who had gotten a raw deal in a divorce or a psychotic criminal defendant or who knew what else. The point is—you don’t sneak a gun into court unless you intend to use it.

  “Excuse me,” Jamie said as she slipped past Hoffman and a few others in her row. She walked discreetly to the front of the courtroom and past the counsel tables while the other lawyers were settling in for their next case. She approached the bailiff, an older man with a good-size paunch, leaning against a side wall. She glanced back, casually surveying the courtroom, finding the man whom Hoffman had described.

  He was staring at her.

  She took a step sideways and put her back to the man, explaining to the bailiff what Hoffman claimed he had seen. The bailiff nodded and asked Jamie to return to her seat. As she did, he followed her into the spectator section and walked back to talk with the man Jamie had identified. Before Jamie sat down, Hoffman slid out of the same row.

  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered as he passed Jamie.

  A bathroom call, she figured. Or maybe Hoffman wants to “coincidentally” walk by the gentleman as the bailiff discovers the gun.

  Jamie climbed into her seat and turned to look. The bailiff was leaning down and talking to the man, who appeared to be protesting his innocence. Hoffman walked by, without even glancing at the man, and left the courtroom. The man eventually lifted his shirt, and the bailiff appeared satisfied.

  On the way back to the front of the courtroom, the bailiff stopped at Jamie’s row. “He’s clean,” the bailiff said. “But thanks for bringing it to my attention.”

  “Sorry,” Jamie whispered.

  “No problem.”

  Satisfied, Jamie busied herself with some schoolwork, half-listening to the case at the front of the courtroom.