by Alan Sears
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Four months later
IT HAD TAKEN weeks of planning, studying, rehearsing, and preparations by the entire staff to get John ready for his trip to Italy, but at last he was about to leave for what would surely be the biggest and most important speaking opportunity of his life. He was going to make a presentation to a room full of distinguished international scholars, diplomats, policymakers, and political leaders from across the globe.
Andrea pulled the plans together and made the arrangements for travel, accommodations, and entertainment, including a day trip to the Uffizi Palace and galleries, and a boat ride and candlelight dinner on the Arno River. The itinerary pleased John. He was delighted to be getting away from Washington for a while, and it would be a special pleasure to have the three team members who had been most helpful to him—Paul, Reneé, and Andrea—along on the journey. It was a bonus for all of them.
John read over his presentation several times and was satisfied that it would meet all the expectations of the host committee. It was academic without being ponderous, informative without boasting, and even had dashes of humor sprinkled here and there. The speech chronicled John’s efforts from his arrival in Washington as part of the attorney general’s honors program in 2009 and showed how the legal environment in his country had changed so positively for equality over such a short time. He designed it to be an optimistic presentation, focusing on enforcement issues and the implementation process, which were at the heart of transformative justice. With minor changes, his paper survived the review processes at the White House, the Department of State, and the DOJ, and he felt certain it would open new doors for DTED and for him.
To make sure his wardrobe was complete and that all the travel details were in order, John decided to return to his home and take an extra day to get ready for the trip. With his wife far away, the house had once again become a refuge for him. He suggested that Reneé X and Paul Atoms take the day off as well. Andrea would need to go in on Monday to monitor his calls, but he was sure she wouldn’t mind. For his team leaders, however, a three-day weekend would be helpful. They would have the rest of the week in the office and plenty of time to take care of last-minute business before heading to the airport Saturday morning.
However, the news John received when he arrived at the office on Tuesday was not good. Joel Thevis met him at the fifth floor elevators and he looked nervous. He avoided John’s eyes. “It’s not going to work.”
“You’re an attorney, Joel. Be specific. What’s not going to work?”
“The Preston case. Chock full of holes. I’ve been over all the indictments, and I’ve gone back over the procedures several times, from the FBI 302s all the way down the line, and the charges won’t hold water. They’ll never stick in a court of law.” He took a deep breath. “We made major blunders.”
John nodded politely at the men and women from other departments who were still getting off the elevators, then seized his lead attorney by the arm and led him to his private office. He shoved Joel over the threshold and closed the door behind him. “Are you telling me you’ve screwed up this case? Are you telling me you’ve failed on the most important prosecution this Division has undertaken? Are you—”
“Stop!” Joel shouted. “Please stop.” Moving quickly to the other side of the table and away from John’s grasp, he said, “Out of a hundred and nineteen charges against Rev. Preston, I believe we can get convictions on no more than fifteen, maybe sixteen.” He held out his hand with several sheets of paper dangling from his fingers. “Here. See for yourself. It’s full of holes.”
Someone tapped on the door.
“Come in!”
Andrea opened the door and slipped in. Reneé and Paul followed.
“John?” Andrea said. “Is everything okay?”
“Does it sound like everything is okay?” He raised a hand as if directing himself to slow down. He inhaled, loosened his tie, walked to the corner window, and stared at the traffic in the street. A long moment later, he said, “Sit down. All of you. Joel, you can stand. Our lead attorney has just been telling me that we’ve screwed up the Preston case, and can’t get convictions on…what was it, Joel, a hundred counts?”
“One hundred and three of the original hundred and nineteen are flawed.”
Paul and Reneé looked at each other and said almost simultaneously, “Are you kidding?”
Looking down, Joel shook his head. “I wish.”
“Has this been verified?” Paul asked.
“I’ve checked it,” Joel said. “I had a friend, who is the leading brief writer for the Court of Appeals on evidentiary issues, look at it, and he agrees. We can make the case and probably win on perhaps fifteen counts, but most of the rest are full of prosecutorial errors. They’re dismissals in the making. There was just too much energy in this case, and people got carried away.”
“Carried away? Professionals got carried away? By what, Joel? What could cause a screw-up of this magnitude?”
“Chaos. Zeal. Weariness of technicians. Maybe a dozen other factors.”
“I’m not following,” Paul said. “What happened?”
Joel rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s involved and a little complicated.”
John’s tone turned menacing. “We deal with complicated issues every day, Joel. It’s what we do. Perhaps you could see your way clear to give us a bullet list of the problems. If that’s not too much trouble.”
Joel’s face hardened. “Okay, here it is: First, let me remind you of our original goal—”
Paul interrupted. “We don’t need a reminder, Joel—”
“Shut up, Paul,” Joel snapped. “I have to take it from John, but I will not tolerate it from the likes of you.”
Paul started to rise but John spoke first. “Just get to it, Joel.”
Joel sighed. “We wanted to try Pat Preston in D.C. We stood a much better chance of winning with the venue in our backyard.”
“And we had grounds to do so since his broadcasts came into D.C. via the Internet.” John took a seat at the table.
“Well, yes and no, John. That assumption was the first mistake. Let me explain how Preston and his church worked their media.
“First, the church has two morning services. The earlier service is broadcast live on local television over a local station. A delayed version of the service is broadcast every Sunday evening on Nashville radio. During every service they take up an offering. I guess that doesn’t make very good television, so each week during the offering the cameras do a cutaway to Preston. Remember, this is live. Preston used the time to invite viewers to join them in person at the next service. Sometimes he would promo a special church activity. All of that went out in real time. Is everyone with me so far?”
The others nodded.
“Okay. Between services Preston did what is called ‘live-to-tape.’ It’s an industry term meant to blur the line between live and recorded material. Basically, it’s a recording that’s billed as live. Anyway, Preston did these in his office between services. Mostly he promoted materials like books, or downloadable MP3s, and more. Of course, he always asked for money.”
“Don’t they all,” Andrea said.
Joel ignored her. “The second service would be recorded and stored at an offsite location.”
“Offsite?” Reneé asked.
“The video feed was sent to a video studio downtown. There are two organizations here. One is the church; the other is a media ministry run by the church. Turns out, this is not uncommon.”
John massaged his forehead. He could see where this was going. He let Joel continue uninterrupted.
“On Mondays, an employee of the media ministry goes to the studio—off church property, mind you—and edits the two services. The editor pulls the best parts from the first and second service and mixes them. He would also insert Preston’s taped appeal and add multimedia elements to the program.”
“Multimedia?” John said.
; “The Internet broadcast often contained links users could click on to get more info about things said in the sermon. The thing to note here is that this is not the old style ‘shoot-the-service’ approach where a church sets up a few cameras and records the sermons for playback later. Preston’s church and media ministry is pretty sophisticated.”
Joel began to pace. “The mixed tape—it’s not really tape these days, but you know what I mean—would broadcast on local cable the following Saturday and Sunday for Internet viewing. The Nashville live broadcast was never used nationally. That means a service conducted on, say June 5th, would go live in Nashville. The edited version of the June 5th service would go national the following week—June 12th—and would be labeled as the June 5th service.”
“I know it’s because I’m not a prosecuting attorney,” Andrea said, “but I don’t understand.”
Joel glanced at John who had begun leafing through the documents Joel had given him. After a moment, Joel said, “Our people didn’t realize that some of the material produced by Preston was local only.”
“What difference does it make if only part of the seized material came into D.C.?” Reneé said. “It came in here so we should have no venue issues.”
John moaned and buried his face in his hands. “This couldn’t be worse.” He raised his head and looked at the others. “What Joel is getting at is this: The material we took to the grand jury was taken from the local broadcast only, not the Internet and national broadcasts.”
“The techs and researchers,” Joel said, “didn’t realize there was a difference. The local, live sermon broadcast bore the same date as the one that went out over the Internet and national broadcast the next week. The evidence we took to the grand jury is not the same as what came into D.C. To make matters worse, we only took video material from the church and the onsite office of its media ministry. We seized everything: every computer, relevant files. What we didn’t know was that other material was stored in an offsite studio.”
“Wait,” Paul said. “You said the national stuff is a mix of the two services, so it contains the same material.”
Joel nodded, “That’s not what we presented. We didn’t gather all the video and we didn’t compare the local feed with the national feed—we built everything on the thinking it was the same material that came into D.C.”
“Preston’s attorney is going to get a hold of this little fact, this first-office-agent-type error—and challenge the indictment.”
“Can’t we go back to the grand jury and show them the right material?” Reneé leaned over the table.
John let Joel answer. “Yes we can, but there are three problems. First, that grand jury served well past what most grand juries do and has been dismissed. It means we’d be starting over with a new panel. We have no guarantee they would hand down an indictment on the same charges, especially after this kind of screw-up. Second is time. Remember we spent over four months on the original presentation, there’s over thirty hours of video to review alone. Third is—”
“Embarrassment,” John interjected. “Preston’s attorney is going to kick up a lot of dust and media coverage. This is going to make us look like imbeciles. If word of this spreads to the AG, to Congress, to the press, then our job is going to get a lot more difficult. Everything we do in the future will be scrutinized; everything we’ve done in the past will be subject to review.”
John rose from his seat and cursed loudly. A second later he threw the stack of papers cross the room. “Why in God’s name are we just now finding this out, Joel?” Pointing to the others, he yelled, “You see the four people in this room? Saturday morning at eleven o’clock, we’re going to be on a plane headed to Rome, and we won’t be back here for at least a week. Do I have to cancel my trip?”
“No,” Joel shot back. “I’ll handle it while you’re gone. I’ll go over—”
“Don’t give me that,” John snapped. “If it’s as screwed up as you claim, we will have to start from scratch, and that’s impossible. The damage has already been done.”
“All the same, John,” Joel said, “let me—”
“Stop! Just stop. We need to think this through. Give me a list of the charges you say are still okay, and then tell Bob Maas and Sandra Evans to get their butts in here. Andrea, get me some coffee, and let’s see what I can come up with. Now, the rest of you get out. I need time to think.”
The office cleared quickly.
John was not going to miss the trip to Florence. It was too big, too important, too large a show to walk away from, even if this case against Pat Preston fell apart completely. One way or the other, he was determined not to let that happen. Pat’s case was going to be a game-changer, and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip through his fingers.
Over the next forty-eight hours, John’s office looked more like Union Station than an executive suite. Staffers, lawyers, technical experts, DTED, and IRS agents were coming and going in all directions. They were tearing apart every case and every count they had spent the last four months building, looking for some way, any way, to salvage what they could. They reexamined critical evidence, poring over the interrogation reports, going back in several cases to the original investigators to see what they could learn from their after-action reports. Even though John feared that none of it was working, he refused to give up.
By Thursday afternoon, John had to admit that his case against Pat Preston—as presented to the original grand jury—was on the verge of collapse. He received a detailed report explaining what went wrong. In the effort to regroup and compare notes one more time before he had to put everything on hold, John called his team together for one more meeting in his office. The workday had already ended and the secretarial staff had gone home. The cleaning crew would be coming soon but none of the key players considered leaving. John had made clear the gravity of the situation, and no one wanted to be the first to test John’s patience.
“Months of work and prestige down the toilet,” John said as everyone took seats. “At this point, I don’t know whether to shout or just fire the lot of you. How could this happen? We’ve lost our most important case, tremendous momentum, our reputation, and we haven’t even gone to trial. We look like fools.”
Seconds ticked by at a glacial pace. No one spoke. John wasn’t asking for feedback; he was venting. Paul Atoms, the foot soldier who had gone after these charges on the ground, broke the silence. “John, we can’t give up. A hundred and nineteen counts on one guy is a lot. But we don’t need that many, do we? If Joel says we can nail him on fifteen counts, then we have fifteen good reasons not to give up.”
Over the next hour and a half, others contributed to the conversation in one way or another, but John’s mood didn’t change. He didn’t blow up. He didn’t react. He didn’t try to lead the conversation in any particular direction. Instead, he listened and scribbled notes on the legal pad in front of him.
Andrea spoke. “I’m making notes, but I need to step out for a minute, if you don’t mind. I’m getting a text that looks important. If it’s okay, I’d like to make a quick phone call to follow up.”
John nodded toward the door and Andrea picked up her notebook and left the room. Ten minutes later, while the team was debating whether or not to bring in one of the FCC lawyers who was apparently responsible for several serious blunders in the Preston case, Andrea pushed open the office door. “John, you need to take this call.”
“An office call this late?”
“It’s no secret this group keeps late hours.” She paused. “John, I think it’s important.”
Everyone started to gather their pens and papers, preparing to leave, but John stopped them. “No, just stay here. I’ll take the call in Paul’s office.”
When John returned to the office fifteen minutes later, it was obvious to everyone that the news wasn’t going to be good. He walked to the end of the table where he had been sitting, bent forward, placed both hands on the back of his chair, and said, “We�
�ve got a leak.”
Joel almost choked. “A leak? How do you know that?”
“That call was from someone I know very well: Matt Branson, my one-time classmate, who resigned from DOJ and immediately volunteered to take Preston’s case. Our opponent. The defense. He knows.”
“Knows what, John?” Reneé asked.
“Everything, Reneé; he knows. He knows our case is falling apart and that we have serious procedural and evidentiary errors. He even calls it an answer to prayer.”
Joel responded first. “How can that be? There’s no way he could know that. You mean someone in this office fed him information?”
John continued dryly, “Mr. Branson said he’s heard that we’re vulnerable, and in danger of losing our case before trial. That would be a huge embarrassment. Because of what he calls “our friendship,” he wanted to call and let me know before he took the news any further.” John clinched his jaw. “Our friendship. What a load of—”
“I don’t get it, John,” Paul chimed in. “Is he trying to make a deal?”
“He said he doesn’t know everything; hasn’t discussed the details with anyone yet, not even his client, but he’ll have to share the information with the rest of the defense team. He’ll be meeting with them at noon tomorrow, and he wants to know if we’d like to quietly dismiss the case against Preston before that happens.”
Bob Maas slammed a fist down on the table, startling everyone. “Can you believe the nerve of that guy? Where does he get the audacity? He can’t manipulate us like that?”
The room bristled with comments and questions until John lifted his hand and called for quiet. “The fact is, a clean exit may be the only strategy we have left,” he said. “But he can just stew in it for a while. I don’t intend to give him the benefit of a speedy reply. Everything we’ve discussed in this room is confidential. Always has been. Always will be. I want you all to hear that. If there is a leak inside this agency, believe me, I’ll find it. In the meantime, Reneé, Paul, Andrea, and I have an appointment to keep across the pond, which means that we’ll just have to give it some time and see how this all plays out. I’ll call Branson, see if we can meet, and ask for a week, tell him all this is a big surprise and we need to check out his claims. The four of us will be here most of the day tomorrow, and we’ll try to sort out a few things before we leave. We head out on Saturday morning, but while we’re away you’re not to discuss any of this with anyone. Is that clear? I’ll decide what happens next when we get back.”
For a moment, John wondered if he should change his airline ticket to one way.
IT WAS SHORTLY before lunch on Friday when John got the news from Andrea. “John. I just got a very strange call from my friend Gina at OPR.”
“You have friends at OPR?”
“Of course. I know lots of people. I have to tell you something, John. I’m sorry. I know this is going to sound really weird—”
“Just tell me.”
“Matt Branson is dead.”
“He’s what? Dead?”
“Metro PD called OPR a half hour ago and said his body was found this morning by joggers in the water at Founders Park, in Old Town.”
“You’re kidding! My God, what happened?”
“Not sure, yet. Muggers, maybe. His billfold and watch were missing; pockets were turned inside out. But he had apparently been there all night. And...”
“And what?”
“He was shot in the back of the head.”
John closed his eyes, groaned, drifted to his desk, and sank into his chair. He said nothing, his hands pressed together, fingers interlaced as if he were in prayer. A moment later, he rocked back. “They took his wallet? Then how did they know it was Matt, if there was no ID?”
“His wife called the police during the night. She reported that he hadn’t come home. The cops put two and two together, and someone identified the body early this morning.”
“That changes everything.”
John had been furious with Matt for deserting the DOJ, for taking the Preston case, and for everything else that happened, but he never wanted this. Matt Branson had threatened their whole operation and tried to make a very embarrassing deal, but he and John had once been close.
“Can I get you anything?” Andrea inched closer.
“No, thank you.” The words came out as a whisper. He looked up and smiled at her. “I’m going to take a long lunch. I know you’re all ready for the trip tomorrow; I think I am too. But please just check through my things one more time? Make sure we’ve got extra copies of my presentation and whatever else you think we’ll need.”
“Of course, John. Don’t worry, and don’t hurry back. Anything that comes up here can wait.”
“I’ll be back to get my things later. But if I miss you, I’ll see you and the others downstairs in the garage tomorrow morning. Eight-thirty. Don’t be late.”
For the next two hours John was on autopilot. He took his coat from the closet and made his way out of the building, across 9th Street and past the National Archives to 7th Street, where he crossed over to the National Gallery of Art on the other side of Constitution. Ignoring the crowds of tourists, he made his way around to the grand entrance, passed through the security checkpoint and ascended the seemingly endless granite stairs to the fountain on the second floor, with its statue of Mercury the messenger in full stride. He turned left, down the marble hallway, and then onto the resonant wood floors of the “cabinet rooms” containing the smaller images of the Dutch Masters collection.
There, where it had always been, and where Matt had tried to share with him his vision of the delicate but strange painting, was Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance. It was Matt’s favorite painting. In their earlier days at DOJ, he and Matt would come here during lunch. He never admitted it aloud, but he missed those times with the only person in the world with whom he could have a two-way conversation; someone who wanted nothing from him.
John studied the painting again. A brilliant shaft of light shone diagonally across the image. Matt had tried to convince John that the light was the symbolic boundary of good and evil; God and Mammon; this life and the world beyond. The image of a “painting” hung in the painting—a painting in a painting. On the back wall of the image, behind the woman centered in the picture, the artist had inserted a realistic representation of The Last Judgment. The spray of light separated the upper right portion from the lower left. In the lower left, resting on a table were golden baubles and jewels.
For Matt, this separation of light and dark had been a profound statement about life choices. There was the image of God and moral judgment on the top half, and below that the earthly trinkets and empty jeweler’s scale. The woman at the center, holding the balance, was noticeably pregnant. Was she, as Matt believed, an image of the Virgin Mary, bearing the Christ child? Or was she simply the painter’s wife, or some other wealthy Flemish woman lost in thought?
It was a riddle, an enigma. John stared at the canvas one more time, then backed away slowly and whispered, “Why, Matt? Why did you oppose me?”
Retracing his steps back to the marble hallway, John turned right again and continued down the long corridor to the stairway leading to the subterranean concourse connecting the East and West Buildings. He was surprised that so few people were in this part of the gallery at that hour. He heard the sound of his own footsteps echoing off the tiles—just one set of footsteps this time, not two. He paused briefly at the cascades and reached out one hand toward the mist from the glass-encased waterfall, but kept moving.
When he came up in the main gallery and atrium of the East Building, his eyes turned upward to the magnificent red and black mobile sculpture that hung from the skylights high overhead. The work which had barely fit the large, open space had always attracted and mesmerized him. Calder’s vision was wild and sweeping and revolutionary. It was his unrestrained passion that John loved. Matt’s spiritual journey had always been in reverse, looking backward, focusing on something lo
ng dead and gone, to a world that no longer existed, while his own journey was upward, soaring, bold, inspiring, focused on the future. This is why the Calder was his favorite.
This difference separated the two men. Both yearned for something greater, deeper, something ineffable and sublime. But how very different were their yearnings.
If only I could have broken through the ice and shared the vision with Matt. If only he would have listened to me and believed in something real and vital and dynamic—maybe he could have been saved. But that’s all finished now. Just like those two dinosaurs on the Supreme Court. He’s gone. I have to move on.
John stopped at the restroom on the way out of the gallery to wipe the dried mud he had noticed on his highly polished Michael Kors loafers.
THEY HAD COME in the early hours of the day, the sun clawing its way up a still-dark sky. There were three of them. A man in a police uniform with three stripes on his sleeve and silvered hair peaking out from the brim of his police cap. He wasn’t wearing the usual street uniform she had seen so many times before. Instead, he was clad in his Class A formal uniform. Next to him stood a portly middle-aged man in a sport coat and dark pants. She could see the badge clipped to his belt. Standing behind the two men was a third, also in a police dress uniform. There was a cross on his lapel.
Michelle had raised a hand to her mouth, moaned through her fingers, then fell to her knees. It took the three men five minutes to move her to the living room. She was no more than a rag doll in their hands.
They spoke softly. So did she, once she could speak. They told her the details of what she didn’t want to know. First, the sergeant. Then the detective had a few questions. In the end, it was the chaplain who brought the most comfort. He sat next to her and held her hand while the others talked and asked questions. Then the chaplain offered to call her church and anyone else she might need to contact. He left a card. “Call me if you need me. Any day. Any hour.”
Michelle thanked him.
They left a short time later. Michelle was glad they were gone but she hated being alone. She walked to the end of the hall and stood staring at the doors. Her eyes lingered on the door that opened to the bedroom she shared with Matt. The thought that he would never walk that hall or enter that room or climb into that bed...
She began to shake. She prayed that God would still her nerves. Michelle asked for strength, then steeled herself for the million-mile journey down the hall to another door. The door that opened to her daughter’s bedroom. Matt always peeked in on her when he got up and Ruthie always pretended to be sound asleep. If she heard the door open this morning, she’d do the same, expecting to see her daddy’s wide, loving smile.
But Mom would be standing there instead.
Tears dripping from her face.
Michelle drew a ragged breath and staggered down the hall.
It took her ten minutes to open the door to Ruthie’s room.