False Witness Read online

  She started getting concerned about ten minutes later, when Hoffman had still not returned and the case being tried was wrapping up. Jamie packed her coursework into her soft leather briefcase and flashed a nervous look toward the back door. She noticed that the Asian American man accused by Hoffman was no longer sitting in the courtroom.

  “Closing arguments?” Judge Chalmers asked the litigants.

  “The prosecution rests on its evidence.”

  Jamie felt her muscles tighten. She wasn’t the nervous type, but the prospect of standing in front of Chalmers without her client wasn’t doing much for her appetite.

  “Defense?” Chalmers asked.

  “I do think there’s an important point of law for the court to consider,” the young female lawyer said drily. She picked up a case from her counsel table and started rambling on about its holding.

  Take your time.

  “Excuse me,” Jamie said. She slid past the two young men on the outside of her row one more time. She walked out the back door and into the hallway, looking left and right, then walked around the corner to the men’s bathroom.

  Hoffman had disappeared.

  She stopped the first guy who emerged from the bathroom, a wiry middle-aged guy with dark, leathery skin and bulging eyes. “Excuse me,” she said. He stopped and eyed her curiously. “Was there a guy in there in his late thirties, blond hair, medium build, tall—about six-three?”

  “No, ma’am.” It felt strange being called ma’am by a guy old enough to be her dad. Maybe it was her lawyer uniform.

  “Are you sure?”

  He smirked. “You mean, did I check in the stalls?”

  Jamie shifted her weight. This was ridiculous. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I don’t make it a practice to check out the stalls every time I take a leak,” he said, enjoying himself way too much. “But unless he’s standing on the toilet, he ain’t in there.”

  “Thanks.” She checked her watch. Glanced both ways. What’s wrong with Hoffman? She was tempted to go in the bathroom and check herself but decided to take the weasel’s word for it. Maybe Hoffman had somehow slipped back into the courtroom.

  After one more check around the hallways, Jamie reentered the courtroom and stationed herself along the rear wall. Hoffman still had not returned.

  Three minutes later, with her client still AWOL, Jamie heard Chalmers call her case. She walked to the front of the courtroom and explained the situation, asking for a brief continuance. “Perhaps you could drop us down one or two cases,” she suggested.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jamie noticed the prosecutor dip her head as if she couldn’t bear to watch the court’s reaction. The bailiff gave Jamie a look of pity. But Jamie held her chin high. It was, after all, a reasonable request. And it wasn’t even remotely her fault.

  “Is there anything else you would like the court to do in order to accommodate your schedule?” Chalmers said, deriding her with his eyes. “Perhaps we could provide you with a cup of Starbucks as you wait.”

  Jamie felt the anger rising but, like a good trial attorney, beat it back. Why did some judges believe it was their duty to be so condescending? “It’s not an unreasonable request, Your Honor. I’m sure there’s some sort of emergency or Mr. Hoffman would have returned immediately.”

  “No doubt.” Chalmers leaned forward and frowned. “Is this your first time in my court—” he checked his docket sheet—“Ms. Brock?”

  “No, Your Honor, I’ve been here a couple of times before.”

  “Then you should know the procedure. If your client doesn’t show for a preliminary hearing, you have two choices: stipulate to probable cause and allow the case to be set for trial—which, by the way, I would highly recommend—or insist on the formality of the preliminary hearing, and I’ll continue the case but in the meantime issue a bench warrant so we can hold your client in jail until the hearing is held.”

  Granted, Jamie was new to defending felons. But this whole proceeding, and especially Chalmer’s judgmental attitude, struck her as being disrespectful of the notion of justice. That, more than anything else, offended her.

  “Does that mean my request is denied?” Jamie asked.

  Chalmers lowered his chin, deepened his frown, and at the same time gave her a bewildered look over the top of his glasses. It was, Jamie thought, the type of look Chalmers probably gave his dog right after he discovered a yellow puddle on the kitchen floor, just before he kicked the poor little mutt.

  If the judge even had a dog.

  “It means,” Chalmers said slowly, “that you have two choices. Choice A: you waive the preliminary hearing on behalf of your client. We go directly to trial and everybody’s happy. Choice B: you play it stubborn. I issue a bench warrant. Your client gets arrested. And Ms. Simms, the prosecuting attorney assigned to handle the case, gives me a date about thirty days out for the preliminary hearing. Nobody’s happy, except a few of the boys at jail who are always excited about new company.

  “Now—” Chalmers gazed around the courtroom, mugging for the crowd—“what will it be? Choice A—everybody’s happy?” He gave Jamie an exaggerated smile. “Or choice B—nobody’s happy except a few of the nastier boys in our county jail?”

  “Choice A,” Jamie said without smiling back.

  “Excellent choice,” Chalmers said, generating a few snickers from the spectators. He turned to his clerk. “Call the next case. And have Ms. Brock sign the waiver of probable cause hearing on behalf of her client.”

  Jamie glared at Chalmers for a moment before approaching the clerk. She would wring Hoffman’s neck when she found him. Then she would figure out a way to win his case. Chalmers’s attitude had really started the competitive juices flowing.

  36

  Saturday, March 29

  By 9:00 a.m., Jamie was in her gray Toyota 4Runner, her three-year-old black Lab panting in the passenger seat, heading toward their favorite spot on the planet. It was a perfect spring day, one of a handful that Jamie could expect each year in Atlanta before the serious heat arrived. The forecast called for a cloudless sky with temperatures topping out in the upper seventies. A light, muggy breeze meandered in from the southwest, but it wasn’t strong enough to kick up any serious waves on Lake Lanier.

  “You ready for a paddle, Snowball?” she asked. The black Lab’s enormous tail thumped against the passenger door, his long tongue lapping up the cool air from the AC vent. He nudged closer to Jamie’s lap, the excitement dancing in his eyes.

  He snuck a Shaquille O’Neal–size paw on the middle console. When Jamie glared at him, Snowball diverted his gaze, feigning interest in the front windshield.

  “Stay in Snowball’s seat,” Jamie encouraged. He withdrew his paw, but the tail didn’t slow. “Lie down.”

  Snowball compromised, sitting erect as his head swiveled, taking in the sights and smells of the field trip. Jamie rewarded him by reaching over and scratching his chest.

  As she relaxed, her mind wandered to David Hoffman. She had called him five times without success. Cell phone. Home phone. She had left three messages.

  It was the strangest thing. She had actually grown to like the man based on the few minutes they had spent together this week. He seemed to be one of those guys who operated on the shadowy edge of the law, seeing what he could get away with. But he was also a charmer, and to be honest, she was impressed by the audacity of a guy who tried to repo somebody’s car with the owner sitting on the hood.

  A car cut her off and she hit the brakes hard, sending Snowball sprawling into the dash. Somehow, her clumsy companion scrambled back to his lookout perch. She reached over and rubbed his head.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  His brown eyes were smiling, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He was with his master, on his way to the lake, with his Frisbee in the backseat.

  Life didn’t get any better than this.

  After two broken hearts, Jamie had traded in college boyfriends for a hyper black
Lab puppy, swearing off men until she completed law school. It was one of the best deals she had ever made.

  In a prior life, before the demands of law school consumed her, Jamie Brock, future prosecuting attorney, had been Jamie Brock, Olympic hopeful. She had always been a fair athlete, but her Lone Ranger mentality kept her from enjoying most traditional team sports. She discovered a love for kayaking as a high school sophomore stalking a senior boy who was a dedicated member of the Lanier Canoe and Kayak Club. Using her dad’s money and connections, Jamie bought her own kayak and started training competitively. As a teenager, the same wiry build that caused boys to pass over her in favor of classmates with better curves served her well in the world of kayaking.

  By her sophomore year in college, Jamie was on the national developmental team for the five-hundred-meter K1 races. Plus, in the eyes of college boys, the athletic build and flat abs were in, while her rounded counterparts became a little too rounded after packing on the freshman fifteen. But during the summer before her senior year, Jamie picked the wrong day for a bad race, coming up one place shy during the Olympic trials, missing a spot even as an alternate. She cried herself to sleep and put her boat in storage. It would be more than a year before she brought it out to paddle just for the fun of it.

  But that was all ancient history now. It seemed like another life—Jamie as world-class kayaker and man-eating college student. She felt as if she had passed directly into middle age and now found herself packing up Snowball for a leisurely Saturday paddle on the lake, believing that two-legged males were highly overrated.

  Jamie pulled into the gravel parking lot adjacent to the boathouse, checked to make sure there were no cars coming or going, and turned Snowball loose. He darted left and right across the lot, zigzagging to the lawn next to the boathouse, stopping to slobber on familiar club members he greeted along the way and anyone else who happened to be there.

  “Snowball!” the regulars would exclaim, pretending to be happy to see him. Some would reach down to stroke his head for a few seconds before he would dart off in search of the next victim. The lake sparkled in the sunshine, canoes and kayaks dotting the sprint lanes marked by the orange buoys. Coaches stood on the dock, stopwatches in their hands, squinting at the paddlers. One dad recorded the whole thing with a video camera.

  Jamie called out to Snowball and showed him the orange Frisbee she had carried from the 4Runner. She hurled it toward a grassy area away from the dock, and Snowball broke stride.

  Like a panther, he raced across a dirt patch and flew through the grass, eye on the Frisbee as the wind changed its trajectory. As it began its descent, Snowball timed his leap perfectly, a ten out of ten on the scale of Frisbee catching, and jogged back to Jamie to collect his praise.

  “Good boy, Snowball.”

  He dropped the Frisbee at her feet and sat ramrod straight, waiting for the next throw. She rubbed his head, scratched his ears, and told him what a great Frisbee player he was. He gave her that yeah-yeah-yeah-just-throw-the-stupid-Frisbee look, but Snowball wasn’t fooling her. He lived for Jamie’s praise.

  They repeated the drill—fling, run, jump, retrieve, praise—until Snowball finally plopped down in the grass, exhausted.

  “My turn,” Jamie said. She stripped down to a pair of black spandex shorts, a sports bra, and shades, then gathered her kayak and paddle from the boathouse. Snowball followed her and stretched out on the dock, sunning himself and collecting his breath while she put the boat in the water. He would need a second wind. If he held true to form, he would jump in and swim out to Jamie just before she started her third or fourth run, requiring her to paddle back to the dock with him swimming at her side.

  The first time he had done it, Jamie had decided she couldn’t interrupt her practice for him. She sprinted off on her next timed five-hundred-meter paddle, and he tried coming after her. When she had eventually turned around, she saw his blocky black head chugging along barely above the water, panting like a freight train, looking like he might go under at any moment.

  She would get him back to the dock and demand that he stay there while she paddled away. After she’d completed two or three more sprints, Snowball would be back in the water again. Obedience was not his forte. But his loyalty and enthusiasm made it nearly impossible for Jamie to stay mad at him.

  “You stay,” she said as she paddled away.

  He rested his chin on his big paws and looked at her with pleading eyes. The water was calling his name.

  37

  Jamie did a few time trials and offered some coaching tips to the younger members. It was her first time on the water all spring and it felt great to get back at it. She skimmed across the water, propelled by smooth, quick strokes that kept the kayak gliding evenly. She rotated her entire torso with each stroke, using her abs as much as her legs, shoulders, and arms. She made the strokes look effortless, the proficient result of hours of practice under the watchful eyes of world-class trainers. Even though she had not been training, she still had more speed than most of the competitive racers.

  But she also tired easily. And after a few runs, she spent her time giving advice to a sixteen-year-old girl who reminded Jamie a lot of herself at that age. Thirty minutes later, she realized that Snowball had not yet ventured into the water to swim out and greet her.

  She paddled toward the dock and searched the banks as she approached. But Snowball wasn’t on the dock or on the shore area or swimming anywhere near the kayaking course.

  She pulled her kayak out of the water and started asking around. A few paddlers recalled seeing him, but not during the last fifteen minutes or so. Jamie left her boat on the dock and started calling for him. She felt a tingle of fear but didn’t let herself slide into a full-blown panic. It was not like Snowball to leave the dock area, yet there were a thousand innocent explanations. Her gut, however, was telling her something different. It was a gnawing feeling, originating from that special bond between owner and pet, that something was seriously wrong.

  After a few minutes of walking around the boathouse and parking lot, calling Snowball’s name, adrenaline and fear started taking over. Other paddlers joined in the hunt, and within ten minutes Jamie counted nearly twenty fellow members of the Lanier Canoe and Kayak Club combing the premises.

  As Jamie felt the knot tighten in the pit of her stomach, they expanded the search. A few members started paddling along the shoreline away from the dock and calling Snowball’s name. Others jumped into their vehicles and drove around in ever-broadening loops, calling for Snowball out their open windows.

  The search party peaked out after about an hour and a half, then started dwindling as paddlers had to leave. They assured Jamie that Snowball would be okay, and more than a few shared Incredible Journey stories about lost pets that found their way home. Labs had an unbelievable homing instinct, people told her.

  At half past one, a few of the female paddlers took off for a local strip mall and returned with materials to make more than fifty missing dog posters. It wasn’t until nearly three hours later, as Jamie drove from one part of the massive lake to the next, tacking her posters to trees and stop signs, that she allowed herself to truly consider the possibilities.

  Snowball loved everyone. If some stranger had coaxed Snowball into his or her truck or car, the dog would have bounded happily along, amazed at his luck in finding such an attentive new friend. Snowball was a purebred and might be worth a fair amount of money to somebody who had a female black Lab. Or maybe some guy just wanted an awesome new hunting dog, already trained and ready to go.

  Whoever had Snowball would love him. And Snowball would love them, despite their moral and ethical shortcomings. That dog was so loyal, he would probably do anything to win approval, even if his master was abusive.

  The thought of it—some thug kicking Snowball around while the poor dog wondered what he had done wrong—angered Jamie. It strengthened her resolve to stay out looking for him all night if she had to.

  It also ma
de her cry. As she tacked up the last poster, tears of anger and frustration welled in her eyes. “Snowball!” she cried out, her voice hoarse with emotion. He was just a dog—she knew that. But she wondered if life could ever be the same without him.

  38

  Jamie eventually made her way back to the boat dock, changed out of her paddling clothes, and continued her vigil under the late afternoon sun. The breeze from the lake carried a slight chill, accentuating her sense of loneliness and despair. A few stray paddlers came by for a late workout, and Jamie asked them to keep an eye out for her dog. Mostly she sat alone on the dock, occasionally calling Snowball’s name, convinced that she should sit tight at the last place they had been together.

  It was nearly five thirty when her cell phone rang with an unidentified local number.

  “Are you looking for a black Lab?” a man’s voice asked.

  Jamie’s heart leaped, then pounded against her rib cage. “Yes. Did you find him?”

  The caller hesitated, and in that brief moment of silence, a thousand scenarios shuffled through Jamie’s mind. Snowball was fine, cavorting around the lake with a female canine hottie he just couldn’t resist. Snowball was dead, hit by a truck, the bloody corpse splattered on the road. Snowball was frantic, sniffing his way back to Jamie after escaping his captors.

  “We found him down by the lake,” the man said. “We tied him up so he wouldn’t run away.”

  Thank God. “He’s okay?”

  “Sure. He is fine.”

  Relief flooded Jamie’s body. She felt herself go weak. “Thank you so much! You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “I have a dog,” the man said. “I know.”

  For the first time Jamie noticed the slightest hint of a foreign accent. “Where is he?”

  “It may be easier if we brought him to you or, maybe, if you prefer, we meet someplace,” the man replied. He asked where Jamie was located. Since this man was on the other side of the lake, they agreed to meet at a spot halfway between. He gave Jamie directions to a campground area.