Trial by Fury (12 page)

“I got what I needed for now,” Theo said, making a conscious effort not to let her eyes drift downward toward Celia’s exposed leg. “I’ve also talked with several of Hayley’s friends. I think we’ll be ready to file soon. Just a few loose ends.” She updated Celia on the case so far. “I stopped by because, well…we’re putting together a strong case, but I want to make sure you’re clear that it’s not a sure thing—not by a long shot. We’re going to make a helluva lot of noise when this goes public. First is a press conference in front of the entrance to Harwood University, timed so it hits the evening news cycle. Then if all goes as planned, I’ll spend a couple of days in our teleconferencing studio doing all the news shows. This will be a major story because the players are well known. You can expect to see it in all the papers, all the talk shows, practically everywhere.”

“You don’t have to sell me on it, Theo. I’ve seen you in action. Teresa Gonzalez. Loretta Collingwood.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. If we’re lucky, the press conference alone will be enough to get someone to file criminal charges against the players involved—either the DA or the DOJ. The board of trustees will go into damage control. And I can all but guarantee you there’ll be a Title IX investigation too. Those things have serious teeth. You end up with rape crisis centers and compliance officers scrutinizing every single reported case.”

“Which is exactly what Harwood needs.”

“Right.” And that was the disconnect for Theo—the best outcome wasn’t necessarily a judgment in a civil trial. “But the way it’s all coming together, I honestly don’t know if we’ll have enough evidence to convince a judge to let us bring the wrongful death suit to trial. I just felt like I needed to be honest with you about that.”

“I’m not worried about your honesty, Theo.” Celia patted her hand, a familiar gesture Theo found charming. “Besides, it’s what happens in the end that matters, isn’t it? Like you said, this is going to stir things up. I just hope Gupton and Tuttle don’t weasel their way out of this. If they covered it up, somebody ought to file charges against them too.”

Theo savored Celia’s touch, almost taking her hand. Yielding to that urge would only confirm her concerns about stopping by in the first place. Theirs was supposed to be a professional relationship.

She shifted and put her hands in her pockets. “I want those two to face the music as much as you do, and anyone else at Harwood who had a hand in this. But it’s a tough case to make if you’re the prosecutor…legally speaking, that is. What they did was reprehensible, but it didn’t break the law. And keep in mind, Harwood’s going to do everything in its power to get the entire case thrown out. Even if we get to court, Hayley’s uncle doesn’t give us a whole lot of leverage. He won’t garner much sympathy from a judge or jury because he didn’t have a close relationship with her. They’ll be reluctant to give him a large award for pain and suffering. The defendants know that, so they’ll push us to settle for peanuts just to get this story off the front page.”

“Such bastards.” In a matter of moments, her gentle face had turned to an angry scowl.

“We’ve got one thing in our favor though. No matter what else happens, the facts as we know them will come out the moment we file. From a PR perspective, this will be a nightmare for Harwood. Think Sandusky at Penn State. Gupton could be pressured to step down. Tuttle could lose his seat on the board. Is that justice? No, but it’s better than nothing.”

Celia walked toward the window and folded her arms as she looked out. “They traded a woman’s life for a goddamn basketball trophy.”

A pithy line, which Theo committed to memory so she could work it into her comments at the press conference, minus the swearing. “We aren’t conceding anything. I’m only trying to manage your expectations.”

She answered without turning around. “I get it, Theo. It boils my blood how apathetic people are about this. Not just here—everywhere. Men do whatever they want, don’t they? It’s been like that since the beginning of time. People cover their ears so they can pretend it doesn’t happen. That way they don’t have to feel responsible, so they don’t have to do anything about it.”

After a thoughtful silence, Theo replied, “That’s exactly why our firm exists, Celia. I promise you we’ll take it right into their teeth.”

“I know you will.” She smiled weakly and returned to her seat. “I appreciate what you’re doing. Not just for Hayley, for all of us. You make a difference, Theo.”

Between the two of them, Celia was the real hero. It took a lot of courage to stand up to power, especially to those who controlled her livelihood. The fact that she’d done so to win justice for someone else made her someone Theo couldn’t stop thinking about.

Theo had temporarily traded the sofa and chairs in her office for a small conference table. She needed a workspace, and all the common areas were now taken up with the wage theft case. As Kendra hit her stride, the interruptions grew less frequent, allowing Theo and her team of two to focus almost exclusively on Hayley Burkhart.

They were building quite a library of evidence for their case. Jalinda had catalogued the messages between Hayley and Michael, cross-referencing them with the known timeline and the relevant social media posts of everyone linked to the basketball team or Hayley’s sorority. To that list, they added the recollections of the women who talked with Hayley after the assault.

Hank was working his sources to identify anyone in the DA’s office who might be friendly to the idea of pursuing criminal charges. The last thing they wanted was an assistant DA who would give the illusion of a serious investigation, but then follow the campus police’s lead and declare the sex was consensual.

Jalinda sat at the far end of the table arranging documents for their afternoon meeting while Theo scanned the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
for updates on the Harwood players. Frazier and Caldwell were splashed across the front page in living color in a feature touting their promising NBA careers. The draft was two weeks away, after which both players were set to become multimillionaires. Rich, privileged rapists.

“Any more news on the whereabouts of the rape kit?” Theo asked hopefully.

“None that I know of, but Hank was supposed to check in with his friend again. Maybe it turned up.”

If Hank didn’t get his hands on it soon, the results could be moot in a court of law. It was bad enough the chain of custody was now suspect, since someone could have tampered with it while it was unaccounted for. Even if it suddenly appeared in the police’s evidence locker, any proof that Hayley had been drugged would be gone if the biological samples suffered chemical breakdown because they hadn’t been properly refrigerated.

The “maybes” were piling up too fast for Theo’s comfort. Chief among them was the precarious relationship between Donald Lipscomb and his great-niece.

She flipped through several photographs Lipscomb had sent to prove their familial bond. The most recent was a Christmas gathering at his sister’s house when Hayley was twelve. His only documented tie to the family, it seemed, was his conservatorship for Belinda, for which he was paid a modest administrative fee each year. Hayley’s trust, the one her grandmother had set aside for college, had reverted to the state for her mother’s care.

“Pain and suffering,” she mumbled. That was their first avenue for recovery, so they’d have to prove Lipscomb was emotionally distraught over Hayley’s death. She was, after all, his last living relative.

From a business standpoint, Constantine and Associates didn’t stand to collect much unless they went to trial and won substantial damages or disgorgement. But could a jury be convinced to award that much money to someone like Lipscomb? That was a question she tried not to think about. If the case had required more time and resources, it would have been difficult to proceed, no matter how much Theo wanted to win for both Hayley and Celia.

“Is there anyone else we need to interview?” she asked.

Wordlessly, Jalinda produced an interview log with names and addresses.

All were checked off except one—Jordan Cooke, the sorority girl who reportedly had experienced a similar assault. Now that spring semester had ended, she was traveling for the summer with her mother in Europe.

“Lunch is here if you’re interested,” Penny said. She rolled in a cart with a small tray of salads, sandwiches and sodas, a standing order from the café downstairs for anyone too busy to step out.

Hank followed on her heels and wasted no time helping himself to a corned beef on rye. Before sitting, he slid a thumb drive across the table.

“Check it out, Jalinda,” Theo said. “Hell has frozen over. Hank Maloney just handed me something related to a computer.”

He was notoriously anti-technology, favoring legwork and phones over computers. “It’s not mine. Came from my son Mark. I asked him to help me out. He found something you need to see.”

After taking a bite of a tuna wrap, she inserted the thumb drive into the USB port on her laptop. It opened to three numbered video files. “What have we got here?”

“Listen to the first one. It’s our cameraman.”

The clip in question contained a snippet of the rape video.
“Get out the way, man.”
It was said to D’Anthony Caldwell, who’d lunged into the camera’s line of sight to say he had next.

“Notice what he said. Not ‘get out
of
the way,’ just ‘get out the way.’ Now click on the second one. It’s an interview after the Tulane game with Ruben Vargas, the reserve shooting guard. He’s talking about D’Anthony Caldwell.”

“
He’s a beast. We get him the ball down low and get out the way, man.”

The third file was audio-only, looping the common line from both files over and over. The voice and inflection were indistinguishable.

“Looks like we found another name for our defendant list,” Hank said smugly.

The voice file was convincing, especially with Sarah Holcomb’s testimony that Vargas was the one handing out drinks at the after-game party. Still, they couldn’t risk having their entire case thrown out over a mistaken identity. “Probably…but I don’t particularly relish the thought of being sued for guessing wrong. Find him and talk to him. Let him hear this. Tell him we’re having our experts track the digital fingerprints of the video to identify who recorded it. See if he’ll admit to anything.”

Hank mumbled as he scribbled on his notepad, “Track the digital footprints…whatever the hell that means.”

“He’ll figure it out.” She turned to Jalinda. “Assuming we hold off on adding another defendant, could we be ready to file on Monday?”

Jalinda tipped her head from side to side as she studied her array of documents. “Yes.”

That’s why Jalinda was her favorite paralegal. She never hedged on a yes-no question, and once she gave her word, she made it happen.

Hank held up a hand while he hastily chewed and swallowed his sandwich. “What’s your hurry, chief? I thought you were waiting for that Cooke girl to get back from Europe.”

“She’s not a witness to the events, and as far as we know, she didn’t have direct contact with the victim.” She tossed the newspaper so it slid across the table. “The NBA draft is two weeks from today. I want teams to think twice about picking these bastards. Let’s get Hayley’s story front and center while they’re talking it over. We file Monday in time to make the six o’clock news, and we release the video to the networks so it goes viral. That’ll give our allegations credibility.”

The court wouldn’t appreciate her poisoning the jury pool. But then, they never did.

The decision to file on Monday meant she should call Celia and give her a heads-up. Or better yet, see her. But first, there was something she needed to take care of.

She picked up her desk phone and dialed her assistant. “Penny, get me Bill Auger.”

* * *

The brass walls of the Weller Regent Hotel’s elevator cast a near-perfect reflection that allowed Celia to check her look. For her meeting with Theo on the fortieth-floor terrace, she’d raced home from her office to change into a sleeveless gray dress with a silver chain belt that cinched her waist. Other than the occasional reception for a visiting dignitary or scholar, she attended very few events that called for anything other than business wear. This particular dress was left over from a cocktail social hosted by the faculty senate for the outgoing chair.

Seeing Theo again called for flair, especially since they were meeting in a downtown cocktail bar at happy hour. Did that signal a change in attitude about dating? If Theo insisted on keeping their relationship purely professional, Celia intended to show her what she was missing. This case wouldn’t last forever. When it ended, she wanted to be at the top of Theo’s wish list.

Stepping onto the terrace, she immediately noticed several professionally dressed women—some of them representing the profession that hung around hotel bars at happy hour. Young and smiling, teetering on four-inch heels and showing lots of skin. Not a place she thought Theo would have chosen.

“I’m meeting someone. Theodora Constantine.”

The sultry hostess, herself bound tightly in a black spandex minidress, lit up with recognition. “You must be Dr. Perone. Right this way.”

Pleased to hear her name, she followed to a nearly deserted covered area of the terrace. With every step, she grew more certain of herself, throwing her shoulders back and lifting her chin. Determined to make Theo eat her heart out.

Theo sat at a cocktail table in the corner, where a bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket of ice. Tucking away her phone at the sound of their footsteps, she stood and took in Celia’s appearance, giving away her approval with a smile. “Glad you could make it on short notice. I hope this is okay. I was afraid if we sat outside, we’d be fighting off drunken pharmaceutical salesmen.” She wore a salmon-colored skirt and matching blouse that managed to look both elegant and businesslike.

“It’s fine. Kind of reminds me of those movies where the gangsters have their own private table in the back of the ethnic restaurant.”

“A lot of those end badly for the gangsters. Should I be worried?”