Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales (30 page)

ALISTAIR LEONARD MAY HAVE STARTED
things off a little rocky for Franklin Sherman, but as the day wore on, the pieces of the prosecution’s puzzle started falling into place. A computer technician testified about the information found on Elias King’s hard drive. Elias’s computer, the tech said, had been used to set up several offshore companies and accounts, and just as Alistair Leonard had said, much of the work had been done during office hours. A financial expert tied those companies to stock trades that occurred just before news of mergers or acquisitions went public. A lab tech testified that the only fingerprints on Elias King’s computer belonged to King. And the coroner testified to the cause of Erica Jensen’s death—asphyxiation. She had been drugged with GHB, and then the life had been choked out of her. Several hours later, her body had been dumped into the Intracoastal Waterway.

By the time Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell Taylor took the stand late Tuesday afternoon, it had already been a good day for the prosecution.

Mitchell answered the General’s questions with short, clipped sentences. He was big on “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs.” He recounted his investigation into the insider trading allegations, including a phone call he had received a few weeks into the investigation, while he was preparing his case for the federal grand jury.

“Did you record the call?” Sherman asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that legal in Virginia?”

“Yes, sir. As long as one party consents. And I was the consenting party.”

“Do you record all your calls?”

“No, sir. But this one was transferred from the front desk because the caller had asked for the attorney in charge of the insider trading investigation at Kilgore and Strobel. We had kept very tight reins on the investigation, and because the caller wouldn’t give her name, my instincts told me to record the call.”

Landon knew the prosecution planned to bring in a voice identification expert later in the case who would testify that the voice belonged to Erica Jensen. Elias had already listened to the call several times and agreed that the voice was Erica’s.

“Permission to play the call, Your Honor?” Sherman asked.

Deegan granted the request, and the jury leaned forward, knowing they would soon be hearing the voice of the victim.

“Mitchell Taylor.”

“I’ve got some information about the insider trading case you’re investigating. I’m willing to testify if you give me immunity.”

“Who is this?”

“I’d rather not say over the phone.”

“What type of information?”

“We need to meet in person. I’ll explain everything then.”

“How do I know you’re legit? You need to give me something I can check out.”

There was a long pause in the recording. Then Erica’s voice said,
“Quarrels International Business Company. Johnson IBC. Rayfield IBC. Rajan Holding Company.”

There was more silence on the line as Mitchell Taylor seemed to consider the information. Erica had just listed the names of several offshore companies that had been set up from Elias King’s computer, as well as the holding company that was the majority owner in each of the others. It was information that should have been known only by Elias King, Alistair Leonard, and the FBI agents involved.

“How soon can you meet?”
Mitchell asked.

“Tomorrow at 9 a.m. Show up at the short-term parking lot at the Norfolk International Airport. I’ll need your cell phone number.”

“That’s not the way it works. I need you to come to my office at the federal building.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Taylor.”

“Wait! Are you coming tomorrow?”

“No. That’s not the way it works. I’m calling the shots, not you. I have something you need.”

“My cell number is 635-3197. I’ll see you at the airport.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Taylor.”

The phone went dead and Franklin Sherman gave the jury a few moments to digest the call. He eventually turned back to Mitchell Taylor.

“Did you show up the next morning at the airport?”

“Yes.”

“And did the caller ever arrive?”

“No. It was the morning after Erica Jensen’s death.”

“That’s all the questions I have.”

IT HAPPENED JUST AS LANDON STOOD—
a Harry McNaughten flashback.

“Remember this,” Harry had said. “Unless you’re watching
Perry Mason
, the purpose of cross-examination is not always to prove that the witness is lying. In fact, the best cross-examination is when you help the other side’s witness tell the truth. That’s when you’ve really done something.”

Landon stood there for a fleeting moment, facing Mitchell Taylor. He had a five-page outline of questions, but he put his pad down on the counsel table and decided to go off-script.

“Who knew about this meeting between you and Erica Jensen?”

“Myself. My boss. Two of the FBI agents working the case.”

“Which one of you told Mr. King about that meeting?”

“None of us.”

“And you know that how?”

“We investigated it after Ms. Jensen’s death.”

“You did? So what did your investigation reveal about how Mr. King allegedly found out about that meeting?”

“Mr. King must have found out from Ms. Jensen. Perhaps he overheard something. Perhaps he saw something on her computer. We don’t know precisely how he found out.”

“You don’t know
precisely
?” Landon asked, his voice rising with incredulity. “Isn’t it fair to say that you have no idea how my client allegedly found out about the meeting?”

“We don’t know; that’s correct.”

“But you know it didn’t come from your office.”

“Correct.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“C’mon,” Sherman said, rising. “He’s already answered that question.”

“Move on,” said Judge Deegan, though she looked a little amused.

“Based on your recorded phone conversation, it sounds to me like Ms. Jensen was pretty careful about whom she told. Would you agree with that?”

“She was careful when she talked to me.”

“And would you agree that if Mr. King didn’t know about the meeting, then stopping that meeting certainly couldn’t have been his motivation for allegedly killing Erica Jensen, could it?”

“He must have found out somehow. The evidence points to him as the killer. And the timing of the meeting is too coincidental.”

“Sounds like you don’t believe in coincidences,” Landon said.

“Most prosecutors and investigators don’t.”

“Then what would you call the fact that some random driver just happened to be cresting the high-rise bridge in the wee hours of the morning at the exact same time that Erica Jensen’s body was being dumped into the Intracoastal Waterway?”

Mitchell hesitated and Landon did a mental fist pump. The jurors stared at the witness.

“I’d call it stupid on the part of your client,” Mitchell Taylor said.

The man was smart. But he had apparently never learned that sometimes you just had to take your lumps and not dig a deeper hole.

“My point exactly,” Landon said. “So I’ve got a follow-up question. In all your years working at the U.S. Attorney’s office—the same place where my client previously worked for years as a prosecutor—have you ever heard even one person call Elias King stupid?”

Landon knew the answer even before Mitchell spoke. Elias King had lots of enemies. Drug lords. Defense lawyers. White-collar criminals. He had undoubtedly been called a lot of derogatory names. But
nobody
thought he was stupid.

Landon hoped Mitchell would try to fight him on this, too. If the witness said yes, Landon would ask for names and subpoena them as witnesses. He would quiz Mitchell about Elias King’s well-documented intellect—his law school class rank, his brilliant trial briefs, his Columbo-esque way of figuring out crimes.

But none of that was necessary. “I’ve never heard Elias King called stupid,” Mitchell admitted.

“Didn’t think so,” Landon said, and took his seat.

AS THE PARTIES LEFT CIRCUIT COURT
on Tuesday afternoon, a solitary figure stood at the back corner of the J&DR building, hat low on his forehead, sunglasses covering his eyes. He watched from a distance as Franklin Sherman stopped on the steps of the circuit court building, holding forth for the media. He watched Elias King and his team brush aside the media, walk three-abreast down the sidewalk bordering the quad, and disappear around the front of the J&DR building.

They were creatures of habit—football players and a former prosecutor. People in these professions practiced the same techniques, over and over, until they perfected them. They wore the same lucky socks. They parked in the same parking lot. They took the same path to court every morning.

Habits make you predictable. Habits allow the enemy to plan.

He would have a clean shot tomorrow morning, away from the media and the other litigants crowded in front of the circuit court building. The length of the quad was about fifty yards, and the defense team would be
walking down the sidewalk next to the quad by themselves, in his direct line of sight, half a football field away.

He wanted to avoid any collateral damage. He had a job to do. He would do it and be gone before anyone knew what had happened.

///

When Landon and Billy returned to the McNaughten and Clay offices, Landon’s family was waiting for them. Maddie ran up to them and crashed into Landon for a hug. Simba came sliding over as well, tail wagging, panting, licking everyone in sight.
Par-tay!
In his excitement, he dribbled on the floor.

Kerri emerged from the conference room and asked how court went. After Landon gave her a quick recap of the day’s events, she asked Billy if he could keep an eye on Maddie and Simba.

“There’s somebody in the conference room who needs to talk with you,” Kerri said to Landon.

He followed her back and was introduced to Sean Phoenix. The two men sized each other up and exchanged firm handshakes.
What is he doing here?
Landon wondered.

Kerri closed the conference-room doors and everybody had a seat. “Landon, you know that Cipher Inc. has been conducting their own investigation into the deaths of Harry, Brent, and Rachel,” Kerri explained. “As part of that investigation, they also looked into Erica Jensen’s death because frankly, they had some concerns about Elias King.”

Landon gave Kerri the eye and was pretty sure she got his message.
Why didn’t you tell me about this? We should have talked about this alone.

“Sean called me today with some information they’ve uncovered,” Kerri said quickly, almost apologetically. “I wanted you to know about it as soon as you got out of court.”

“I asked if I could come down and explain it myself,” Sean said, his gaze level, his face showing no emotion. “Very few people in our orga
nization even know that we’ve been looking at this. So I didn’t want to send somebody else and bring them into the loop. But also, I’m very grateful for what this firm has done for me and our company in the past. I wanted to return the favor.”

Landon still suspected there was more to it than that, but he decided not to push the point. He could talk to Kerri later. They always tried to avoid airing their differences in front of people.

“We don’t know for sure who killed Erica Jensen, but we have a pretty good theory,” Sean said. He spoke as if the police investigation and murder trial were irrelevant—the only thing that mattered was what the great Sean Phoenix concluded.

“The police locked onto Elias King early, which caused them to have a form of tunnel vision. They didn’t search for things that might implicate other suspects.” He shoved a small pile of documents toward Landon. “Like, for example, a locator search on Julia King’s cell phone.”

Sean’s gaze was steady and unnerving as he waited for Landon to react. Landon picked up the documents and casually leafed through them.

“As you may know, Verizon keeps data generated by its cell towers for up to a year,” Sean continued. “By triangulating text messages and phone calls to and from a person’s phone, you can roughly track their location even if they don’t have a GPS device programmed in. We did that with Julia’s phone.”

Landon wondered how Sean had obtained this information without a subpoena, but that seemed beside the point. Apparently Cipher Inc. could get whatever it wanted.

Without time to study the documents in detail, Landon couldn’t make much sense of what he was looking at. But he could see where this was headed. “She went there that night?” he guessed.

“Yes. Julia King went to Erica’s apartment the night of the murder.”

Landon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Julia had lied to him and to the police. Most likely, Elias knew about her visit and lied as well.

“The police ran a locator search on Elias’s phone that night, didn’t they?” Landon asked, trying to remember.

“They did. If he went to Erica’s apartment, he didn’t take his phone.” Sean glanced at Kerri. It was obvious the two of them had already reasoned through the possibilities.

“We know Julia found out about the affair on Sunday night,” Sean continued. “Maybe she stewed on it for a day and on Monday night went to the apartment to confront Erica. Let’s say she freaked out and dropped the GHB in Erica’s drink and strangled her that night. Maybe she told her husband. He cleans up the apartment, wipes down the fingerprints, and disposes of the body. In his haste, he makes a few uncharacteristic mistakes.

“But there’s another theory, one you might not like quite so well. Perhaps Julia goes there on Monday night and confronts Erica. Maybe Erica is already angry because Elias has decided not to leave Julia. Maybe Elias had originally promised Erica he was going to get a divorce but now he’s backing out. So Erica tells Julia that her husband is not the man either of them thought he was. She tells Julia about the insider trading. She says she’s going to the Feds. Maybe Julia runs home and confronts Elias about the insider trading allegations. You can guess the rest.”

Landon nodded. Sean was right; the meeting between Julia and Erica could cut both ways. At worst, it would give the prosecution a way to plug one of the weaknesses in their case—how had Elias found out that Erica was going to the Feds?

There were still a lot of unanswered questions. The date rape drug demonstrated premeditation. Julia didn’t seem capable of cold-blooded, premeditated murder. And if Elias didn’t find out that Erica was going to the Feds until that night, where would he get the date rape drug so quickly? And why would Elias dump a body off the high-rise bridge?

After twenty minutes of discussion, there was only one thing that everybody agreed on. Elias and Julia King had been lying to their lawyers from day one.

“What are you going to do?” Kerri eventually asked.

Landon gathered up the documents. “Have a little talk with Elias King.”