The Fall (24 page)

Juhle liked to pretend that nothing surprised him, and he almost pulled it off except for a quick squint of his tired eyes. “That was fast,” he said. “You’re working with Hardy’s team?”

Hunt grinned. “As far as I know, I
am
Hardy’s team,” he said. “I had an interview with Anlya Paulson’s brother yesterday, and he mentioned both Honor and Royce. Imagine my surprise when the Beck—that’s Ms. Hardy to you—called me this morning and told me what had happened to Honor and what she told your guys.”

“Not my guys,” Juhle corrected him. “A patrol officer who happened to be there. But she got it pretty right.”

“I understand that Honor named Utlee as her killer and said he’d also killed Anlya.”

“That’s
apparently what she said.”

“You haven’t been able to locate Utlee yet?”

Juhle shrugged. “It’s been a matter of hours, Wyatt. We’ll find him soon enough.”

“I’m sure you will. Maybe more quickly if I throw you a bone or two.”

Juhle sat back, breaking a smile. “Are you going to make me beg?”

“It’s tempting, but maybe you can just owe me.”

“All right. For what?”

“After I saw Max yesterday, I went over to the McAllister Street home where Anlya lived. And Honor. Do you know anything about what was going on there with her? With either of them?”

“We’re working on that, too.”

“I’m sure you are, but to save you a little time . . .” Hunt cracked a peanut and began outlining what he had discovered. “So the bottom line,” he concluded, “is that these two, Honor and Royce, they put together an escort service with some of the girls there, pretty darn lucrative, and Anlya evidently was getting in the way of their business development, and at some point it looks like Utlee decided she had to go.”

“Did he tell anybody that?”

“Not that I’ve heard, no. Although right after Anlya got killed, Honor was furious for a while, and the general opinion was because Royce hadn’t had to do that. He’d put himself in jeopardy for no reason.”

“He really did kill Anlya?”

“Well, she thought he did, at least. Which is what you’ve got, right?”

“Right. But Wes Farrell tells me that’s hearsay and you guys can’t use it.”

“That’s what I hear, too, though The Beck’s going to argue against that. Meanwhile, you need to find Utlee, and I’d like to have him in custody to talk to, and the word is you don’t have an address on him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Spies everywhere. But don’t worry about that. The good news is that one of the girls at McAllister Street yesterday gave me an address where Honor and Royce had moved in together. And if they drop by, your guys might find some evidence of, say, a fight or a meeting or a hookup or
something he might have had with Anlya Paulson on the night she got killed. You might even find Utlee himself crashed out there, and wouldn’t that be nice for both of us?”

Hunt pushed a piece of paper with an address written on it across the desk. Juhle reached for his telephone.

A
S SOON AS
she’d gotten off the phone with her father that morning, Rebecca had assigned Allie to start working on a motion to admit the deathbed statement of Honor Wilson in this case. As a backup, since she had to consider that the motion might be denied, Rebecca got her laptop out on the kitchen table and started her own motion for a mistrial and dismissal of all charges against her client.

She knew absolutely, with the new evidence, that the judge would have to give her time to investigate the possibility that Royce Utlee had killed Anlya Paulson. Failure to do so would be virtually an automatic reversal on appeal. But she was more than a little concerned about how Greg would handle the idea of sitting in jail for six months, only to begin the trial again.

He would flatly not accept it.

Even the suggestion that they needed to waive time at the beginning of the trial to give her the opportunity to prepare had met with resistance and some surprising, even startling, displays of real anger from her client.

“No fucking way! No way!”

“Greg, just wait. Let me—”

“I’m not waiting. I’m not listening. There’s nothing you can say that will convince me.
I’m not staying in this hellhole one second longer than I need to, and now you’re trying to tell me you’ll need at least a few months. Months! Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what it’s like in here?”

“Yes, but if we’re not prepared—”

“Well, get prepared. What the hell am I paying you for?”

Eventually, she had allowed him to persuade her that going forward quickly would be more of a disadvantage to the prosecution than to the defense, but it had been damned ugly.

She was afraid the argument about a mistrial would be worse. She knew that the choice ultimately was hers, as his attorney, and given this break in the case, she did not see how she could fail to ask for a mistrial, whether he wanted her to or not.

•  •  •

A
LLIE WASN’T DONE
with her motion by the time court got called into session, but Rebecca immediately told the judge about the new evidence and the motions that were coming. Bakhtiari wasn’t going to keep witnesses waiting, so he decided to start the morning where they’d left off yesterday, her cross-examination of Fred Liu.

After Hardy’s brief tutorial in his office, as well as the full night’s sleep that had restored her confidence and her spirits, Rebecca actually looked forward to the cross-examination and, by the end of it, felt that she’d succeeded in casting doubt on whether Greg and Anlya had a romantic relationship.

Of course, the DNA evidence was coming up, and that would be challenging to refute, to say the least, but as her father had pointed out, that was another day.

Meanwhile, since both Officer McDougal and Allie (with her motion) had arrived in the courtroom during Liu’s cross, no sooner had Rebecca dismissed him and returned to the defense table than Bakhtiari excused the jury. When they had all filed out, the judge kept things moving along. “The first thing let’s do is find out what we’re talking about here. Counsel,” he said to Rebecca, “what’s your motion?”

Rebecca handed Allie’s papers to the judge. “Your Honor,” she said, “the defense wants to call Officer Janine McDougal and play a tape recording she made of a woman named Honor Wilson as she lay on her deathbed last night. On that tape, she identifies a person named Royce Utlee as the killer of Anlya Paulson. Clearly, this deathbed statement is strong if not incontrovertible evidence that Royce Utlee committed the murder for which my client stands accused.”

One of the Liam Goodman contingent in the gallery called out, “Here we go!” and it took almost a full minute for the uproar to subside. Bakhtiari looked down from the bench. “I will tolerate no more outbursts of this kind from the members of the gallery. If there is another demonstration of this type, I will clear the courtroom.” Still glaring, he directed
his attention to the prosecutor. “Mr. Braden? I believe you were about to respond to defense counsel’s statement.”

“Your Honor,” Braden said. “The People object. The evidence that Ms. Hardy wants to elicit from this officer is inadmissible as hearsay and lacks foundation that the witness spoke from personal knowledge. We have no idea why Ms. Wilson thought that Royce Utlee committed this crime, or even if she thought it at all. Her accusation of this Royce Utlee would serve to do nothing but confuse the jury and ask them to indulge in baseless speculation.”

“Your Honor,” Rebecca said, “it is a critical dying declaration that the jury needs to hear.”

Bakhtiari came back to Braden. “A dying declaration is admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule in murder cases, Mr. Braden.”

“Yes, Your Honor, but a dying declaration has to be about the cause and circumstances surrounding the death. What Ms. Wilson said about her own homicide might be admissible, but what she said about the death of Anlya Paulson is not. Plus, Your Honor, it lacks foundation. We have no way of knowing if Ms. Wilson spoke from personal knowledge. Even if she were alive, Ms. Wilson’s testimony would not be admissible until she could tell the jury how she knew what she claimed to know.”

Rebecca had an answer to that. “Your Honor, in
Chambers
v.
Mississippi
, the United States Supreme Court said that technical rules of evidence could not be used to prevent a defendant from presenting clearly exculpatory evidence to a jury. Nothing could be more exculpatory in this case than a dying statement that someone else committed this murder.”

Bakhtiari glanced down at the papers in his hand. “I’m going to call a short recess while I consider this motion in my chambers.”

He started to rise, but Rebecca spoke up again. “Your Honor, if I may.”

“Yes?”

She turned and strode back to the table where Allie sat next to Greg. Dismas had a morning meeting with the client he’d been working on last night and hadn’t made it to the courtroom today. Though she appreciated his help and support, Rebecca thought that this was just as well. It was time she took control and made this case her own.

Not trusting herself to give her client even the most cursory glance, she gathered the pages she’d prepared and brought them back up to the bench. “Your Honor,
in the event that you rule Officer McDougal’s evidence inadmissible, I’ve prepared another motion requesting a mistrial.”

“Your Honor!” Braden’s exasperation overflowed. “This is why there is an evidence code. Officer McDougal’s evidence is clearly inadmissible on the face of it, and your ruling on it as such can’t provide any grounds for a mistrial.”

Bakhtiari frowned down at Braden. “I think, counsel, you’ve totally missed the point. Even if I rule the present statement inadmissible, I don’t see how I can deny Ms. Hardy a mistrial to give her additional time to explore the possibility that they can find evidence that this Royce Utlee might actually be the killer. Meanwhile”—he tapped his gavel—“court is in recess for twenty minutes. We will reconvene at eleven o’clock.”

•  •  •

“I
THOUGHT I’D
made it clear we weren’t taking a mistrial, no matter what. I’m not staying here another six months so we can start this all over again, and that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Starting over.”

“Yes, but with new evidence that might—”

“No! Do you hear me? No!”

“Greg. Please keep your voice down.”

“The hell with my voice, Rebecca. The jury’s not around to hear it.”

“That’s not the point. Just calm down.”

“I’m not calming down. We’re not doing a mistrial.”

“Greg. Beck. Shh. Both of you.”
At the defense table, Allie had one hand on Greg’s near arm, the other reaching over him to Rebecca.
“Easy. We’re not even there yet. Let’s wait until the judge rules on the tape’s admissibility first. The whole mistrial issue might not even come up.”

“It better fucking not.”

“Greg. Shh. Please.”

•  •  •

C
OURT DID NOT
reconvene at eleven o’clock.

Because of the unusual nature of this case, the judge had decided early on that there would be no off-the-record conversations. He didn’t want to hear later about secret discussions and backroom deals. Every communication among or between all parties, whether it be in open court, at sidebar, or in the judge’s chambers, would be taken down and made part of the formal transcript. This was why Rebecca and Braden,
who had gathered in Judge Bakhtiari’s chambers behind Department 24, were now sitting in a tense silence, waiting for Theresa Shepard, the court recorder, to get her equipment set up so that she could memorialize every word.

Rebecca couldn’t help but notice that the judge, in contrast to his generally affable demeanor in the court, seemed impatient and out of sorts, perhaps because of these unexpected delays, or maybe the gallery outburst. He sat frowning in his robes behind a huge cherrywood desk, his eyes on the papers in front of him. Occasionally he turned a page, although she had the strong impression that he wasn’t reading anymore.

Finally, Ms. Shepard cleared her throat—clearly a signal, as Bakhtiari looked over at her and then straightened in his chair. “I’ve made a decision,” he began without any preamble or fanfare. “I’m going to defer my ruling on the defense motion to admit Honor Wilson’s taped statement and also defer declaring a mistrial until the close of the prosecution’s case. I take it, Ms. Hardy, that if I rule in your favor and admit the tape, you will not at that point ask for a mistrial or more time to investigate. Correct?”

This was not unexpected, and yet Rebecca’s head went light and she closed her eyes against an acute sense of vertigo. She drew on all of her willpower to calm herself down.

But still. After an acrimonious discussion that morning with her father, who’d told her she could be accused of incompetence if she didn’t ask for a mistrial, and the much worse session she’d just had with her client, she had decided to go forward without demanding a mistrial if the judge ruled that the jury could hear the tape. “That’s correct, Your Honor,” she said. “If the tape is admitted, the defense is prepared to proceed.”

“All right.” That should have been it. He could have made these rulings out in the courtroom after the recess, but instead had called opposing counsel to his chambers. Now Bakhtiari should dismiss the attorneys back to the courtroom, and they’d get on with the trial proper. Though he’d rendered his decisions, the judge didn’t appear to be finished.

In fact, he wasn’t.

“All of that being said,” he began, “I am not unmindful of the earlier
arguments Ms. Hardy made regarding the extraordinary time pressure that Homicide inspectors were under to identify and arrest a suspect in this case. To say nothing of the unusual haste the DA’s office displayed in scheduling this trial. Let me be clear. I am not calling into question the validity of the grand jury’s decision to indict Mr. Treadway. Nevertheless, I have to comment that Officer McDougal’s testimony struck me as discordant somehow, if only because there were evidently, as a matter of simple fact, elements of the victim’s personal life that might appear to have a bearing on her death, and yet they don’t appear in the People’s narrative at all.