Unfit to Practice (27 page)

20

“I
N THE MATTER OF
R
EILLY,
” Judge Hugo Brock said in a soft voice. He had climbed the stairs to his seat with grave eyes downcast, without a word to his clerk. Decorum above all, Nina thought. He's the type who worries about losing control in the courtroom. How will he handle Jack?

More to the point, how will Jack handle Judge Hugo Brock? She had asked Jack this very question. His answer was, “Don't worry. Hugo beats the alternatives.”

The huge digital clock on the judge's dais ticked off the seconds before the momentous switch to 9:30
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.
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. In this moment before the hearing began, close together in the tense, windowless room, they all sat at attention, ignoring one another. The judge's clerk, a girlish-looking woman with festive auburn hair and a midcalf-length blue skirt slit demurely up to her knees, paid no attention to anyone. Black headphones covering her ears, she stared at her computer, with them corporeally only. She might even be working on some other matter, transcribing the words of some other poor practitioner who had suffered in this very chair the previous week.

So defendants felt like this! Nina glanced at Gayle Nolan, the chief trial counsel. Jack called her Pit Bull Nolan, more or less an admission that he considered her competent. In navy wool, glasses low on her nose, her hair in a gray pageboy, she had a haggard expression. Retirement could not be far away, assuming that the state bar still gave its staff retirement benefits. The big money no longer rolled in from California's attorneys, but the criticism of the whole disciplinary system got louder every year.

Now, from the hot seat, Nina began to see why. Salaried employees of the not-very-large entity, Gayle Nolan and Hugo Brock were coworkers. Their motivations should be radically different, exemplifying the enormous gap between judicial and enforcement branches, but in the end these two both represented the goals of the California State Bar.

And what were those goals? The president of the state bar had said in a speech Nina attended, “At the state bar, public protection is our number-one priority.”

This seemed a perversion to many California lawyers, who thought the state bar dues they paid each year should go to an organization with the number-one priority of supporting and encouraging them. When had the focus become weeding out the bad apples in the profession? Whatever happened to stabilizing the wobbly apples and protecting the ripe apples? How could the judge and the prosecutor work out of the same small, half-crippled system and not walk in lockstep?

As Nina whizzed through these thoughts, Gayle Nolan glanced back at her through designer glasses so enormous, so thick, so encrusted with decoration that the face behind them blurred. A blessing.

Her own eyes were bothering her, so she put on her horn-rims. With surgical fussiness, Jack wiped his glasses on his handkerchief, allowing not one mote of fuzz. Every single person in that courtroom was viewing the world through a layer of polymer or glass.

She looked down and discovered she was wringing her hands. She made an effort to sit still and betray nothing. Whatever she did, look scared or look calm, she felt that she looked guilty. Such are the thoughts of a defendant.

“Let's start by, uh, clarifying the order of proof. I understand we have a change in the usual presentation, Counsel,” Judge Brock said.

Gayle Nolan stood up. “Yes, we do, Your Honor. As you know, this is a bifurcated hearing, with the first part presenting the culpability portion and the second part, mitigation. Right now we are just dealing with culpability. We have three sets of complaints here in three matters. Mr. McIntyre and I have agreed to put on each of the matters separately. I will put on the prosecution witnesses for Count One and Mr. McIntyre will cross-examine each witness and we will complete all the proof for that count before moving on to Count Two. If that is all right with the court.”

“So we will look at the Brandy Taylor matter first?”

“Right.”

“Actually,” Jack said, moving in to make his first impression, “we agreed to start with Officer Scholl, the officer who took the police report involving the stolen files. Her testimony relates to all the cases.”

“I was getting to that,” Nolan said. “That's right, we will begin with Officer Scholl.” She clamped down on the words, as determined as a basketball player getting the ball back for her team.

“Sorry,” Jack said. “Didn't mean to step on your toes within the first two minutes.” He smiled, but the judge and the prosecutor stuck to their poker faces.

“Fine,” Judge Brock said. “Are we ready, then?”

“Ready,” Nolan said.

“Ready, Your Honor.” Jack patted Nina's hand.

“Call Officer Jean Scholl.” Officer Scholl hustled in. “Raise your right hand.” She swore to be truthful, then launched into a minor complaint about having to take the whole day off to be in San Francisco for this hearing. The uniform accentuated her strong build and handsome unadorned face. Setting her clipboard in her lap, she gave Nolan, who was standing, her full attention.

“Good morning. I'm Gayle Nolan, I represent the State Bar of California.”

“Good morning,” Scholl said.

Over the previous several months, Paul had uncovered some more interesting details about Officer Scholl. Early in her career, she had worked with Kevin Cruz. On one occasion, Scholl had been along for the ride when Kevin Cruz busted a group of three young men for cocaine possession with intent to sell. The bust netted Kevin his first and only promotion, but rumors flew.

The three young men were honors students from UC Davis up for a weekend of skiing. None had ever been arrested for drugs before. One was in the middle of writing a senior thesis on the effects of illegal drugs on brain function. One had already inherited more family money than an oil baron, and therefore had little to gain and a lot to lose from selling drugs. Nevertheless, they had all been convicted, thanks to the testimony of Cruz and Scholl.

Scholl was as biased as they come, and maybe more. Nina leaned forward and tried to catch her mood, which was all too easy.

“You are a patrol officer with the South Lake Tahoe Police Department?”

“For the last eight years I've worked with the Patrol Watch Unit. Lately, I've also been working in conjunction with the Detective Unit, assisting on burglaries and robberies and undertaking some traffic-case investigations. It's a small department so I get involved in several types of police work.”

“On or about September seventh of last year, were you called to the scene of a reported auto theft?”

The officer consulted her clipboard. “The call came in at seven-fifty
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. Officer Dave Matthias and I responded and arrived at 96 Kulow Street, a single-family residence in the Pioneer Tract, at eight-twenty-four
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.”

“And were you met at the scene by anyone?”

“By the defendant there. Ms. Reilly.”

“You already knew Ms. Reilly?”

“She's an attorney who does—did—a lot of criminal-defense work. Trying to get her clients out of things. I had her in traffic court several times.”

“You testify regularly in the South Lake Tahoe court, where the defendant practices law?”

“Just about every week. She's only been around a couple of years, but she picked up quite a few defendants. She started showing up as defense counsel in some of the big felonies up at the lake, which surprised and upset some of the local attorneys, I can tell you. She pushed hard for the high-profile cases, getting her name in the paper to promote her business. Quite a few of my colleagues came into contact with her.”

All of a sudden, the humdrum opening questions and answers had flown into unfamiliar realms. Police officers always tried for at least a semblance of objectivity. She had never heard Scholl get opinionated like this. Jack wasn't moving, so she shifted in her chair. He had warned her not to expect the usual rules of court.

“You had several chances to observe the defendant at work?”

“Right.”

“How would you describe her work?” Jack sat like a fleck of lint. They should be talking about the Bronco, not about how this cop liked being cross-examined by Nina in court!

She nudged him. Jack leaned over. “They can't do this,” she said. He held up a hand to shush her and turned his attention back to Scholl.

“Well, I felt that she wasn't—I guess you would say, systematic. She rushed in at the last minute. She showed up late once or twice, as a matter of fact. She would try anything to get her clients off. Tricks. She had a reputation.”

“Jack!”

He gave Nina a nod, nothing more.

“A reputation in the police department?”

“Yes.”

“And can you describe that reputation?”

“Everyone said she would do just about anything to get her clients off. She attacked the officers in court, gave us a hard time and made us go over each and every detail hoping to find something wrong. She was—well, fly-by-night, always looking for some jazzy way to slip by the facts.”

“Can you give the court any specific example of this irresponsibility?”

“Objection,” Jack said, finally jumping up like his nimble namesake. About time. None of this would have been admissible in the courts Nina knew. Jack had entered the game late, but he would put a stop to this ridiculous character-bashing.

“Counsel should rephrase that,” was all Jack said, and sat down. Nina gave him an incredulous stare.

“I'll decide that,” Judge Brock said. To Nolan, he said, “The word ‘irresponsibility' calls for a conclusion. So I'll sustain that objection.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Nolan kowtowed. “Did you observe how Ms. Reilly related to her clients?” Boggled as a kid in a toy store by the myriad possibilities for character assassination that appeared available to her, Nolan seemed to have forgotten her question about the specific acts of irresponsibility she'd been trying to learn about a second earlier.

“You bet I did,” Officer Scholl said. “She was much more friendly with them than the other attorneys, I thought. She's a toucher. There were physical intimacies. She would hug them, set a hand on their shoulders right in the middle of the hearing. I saw her put an arm around one of her clients. She acted more like a friend than a person in a business relationship.”

Nina's mouth dropped open. Now she knew exactly what Scholl had been thinking during those long days in court when she picked at Scholl's police reports, looking for ways out for her clients. Now she understood the broader picture. She had won against Officer Scholl, and Officer Scholl did not forgive or forget. Nina no longer harbored doubts about whether Scholl had it in her to frame Nina and run her out of town. Scholl detested her.

Nolan cleared her throat. “So the defendant called you to her home. What did she tell you?”

“That her vehicle, a Ford Bronco, had been stolen during the night.”

“Could you summarize her statement to you?”

“She said she drove home from her office in the rain the night before about six
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M
. and ran inside. She had not been able to locate her key earlier in the day, so she used a spare one. Later that night she remembered that she had some important files out in her car but she was sleepy so she went to bed instead of going out to retrieve them. Around seven the next morning she discovered the vehicle and its contents were gone.”

“Okay, let me back up a little. She said she lost her key?”

“Yes.”

“And that whole evening she knew that she had left it somewhere. Meanwhile, the vehicle sat outside unguarded and unprotected—”

“We're leading just a little bit here,” Jack said.

“I withdraw that question. What exactly did the defendant say about what she did for the time period between six
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. and seven
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. with regard to locking her truck or removing the key from the ignition?”

“She claimed she locked the truck with her spare key. Is that what you mean? She said she knew the truck was out there and her key was gone and her files were in the back in the briefcase but she basically couldn't be bothered.”

“She knew the main key was missing by then? In the hands of absolutely anyone?”

Officer Scholl had the character at least to glance down at her report on that one. “Well, she claimed she didn't think about that.”

“All right. Now, she mentioned some important files had been left in the Bronco.”

“Yes. She was very insistent about us finding the files. They were in a burgundy leather briefcase, she said. She cared more about the files than the stolen vehicle.”

“And what did she tell you about these files?”

“She described them as client files, which had labels and names. She said the files held confidential information. Different information in each file. And what she called client-intake forms.”

“And did she give you the names of the clients?”

“No, she wouldn't give us the names. She stated that the names were confidential. She wouldn't say what the cases were about or if there was anything in the cases that might make somebody want to get at the files. I warned her that that would hinder our investigation but she wouldn't budge.”

“And was the failure of the defendant to provide information about the files a hindrance to your work?”

“I asked right away, could the thief be after the files? She said she didn't see how. I said, how can we find out if you won't give us any details? I had to leave it at that.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“That her son had an ongoing friendship with an individual named Nicole Zack, who stayed at the house now and then. Nicole Zack is known to local law enforcement. She has had several arrests as a juvenile and a conviction for shoplifting. She was arrested for murder last year, which is how the defendant got to know her. She got her off.”

“The defendant in this instance had a close relationship with her client?”

“Obviously. Close enough that they hang out together at night at her house.”