The Blunt family had received a significant settlement from the county. Seven figures, I’d heard. The county had had no choice but to settle for boku bucks. By then, Church was completely off the rails, and no one had any idea what he’d say at trial. Whatever it was, though, county officials were fairly certain they didn’t want it said in such a public forum. Reportedly, there was even pressure from the governor to ‘clean up this chicken-shitting mess’. The story hadn’t caught fire nationally – and wouldn’t until The Prosecutor came out. Because quite frankly, an innocent black man dying at the hands of a southern state simply wasn’t national news in the world ours had become.
‘Has he seen the family since then?’ I said.
‘Two of the boys have forgiven him, and he spends time with them.’ She looked away, muttered, ‘More time than I spent with my son.’
‘And the other two?’
‘The other two children – the younger two – swear they will never forgive him. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying. Half of every dollar Nick earns in the law goes to the Roderick J. Blunt Foundation, a charity aimed at stamping out the death penalty and eradicating racial injustice in the American judicial system.’
‘He might have picked a more reasonable goal,’ I said, ‘like maybe putting the first man on Jupiter.’
That one earned me a chuckle, and I liked Marissa Linden for a moment.
Just a moment.
Then her face became cold and she spoke again.
‘What were you doing at Breakers last night?’ she said.
I’d been thinking about how I would handle this very subject all day, yet somehow had no reply ready, at least not for Marissa, because I never thought I’d get hit with that question from this direction.
‘Ethan told you?’ I said.
‘Nick and I saw the surveillance footage this morning before the arraignment.’
‘Shit,’ I tried not to say aloud.
She said, ‘You do realize that if prosecutors can demonstrate you had a relationship with the defendant outside of attorney–client, they can call you to testify, don’t you? That they can most likely get their hands on half of the footage you’ve shot? Even if they can’t introduce it in their case-in-chief at trial, they’ll be able to use the footage to impeach our witnesses. What are you going to do then, when you’re called to testify, Riley? Are you going to sink Nick’s client, or are you going to perjure yourself and risk prison?’
‘I won’t see him like that again.’
I knew from her look that my word meant less than nothing.
‘Nick was fuming when he saw it,’ she said. ‘You’re lucky you’re even getting a second chance.’
She turned toward the sliding glass door.
‘Thank you,’ I called after her as she was walking away.
At that moment, she turned on her heel but only halfway, and raised her voice, presumably so the camera would clearly catch what she had to say. ‘Don’t thank me, Riley. I told Nick you were in way over your fucking head and had to go. Professional documentarians observe and shoot. We don’t become part of the show.’
‘Thoroughness,’ Church declared to those of us around the conference table, ‘that’s the difference; it’s the Church difference; it’s why you, Nate Dogg, are shelling out the big bucks; it’s why you, E-man, hired me and haven’t fired me; and it’s why you, Riles, recommended me in the first place.’
His speech moved more rapidly than my thoughts, which sent my eyes to his coffee; only it wasn’t coffee, it was water again. In fact, in the weeks since he’d arrived, I wasn’t sure I’d seen him swallow a single sip of joe. He certainly hadn’t opined on the minute differences in flavor and texture of his favorite roasts as he had in The Prosecutor – and Hawaii had some damn fine coffee. If his hand had been going anywhere near his nose, I’d have suspected speed or blow, but I’d never seen him so much as sniffle.
‘So,’ Church said, ‘what does that mean in this case? It means we have the emergence of an actual defense, an itsy-bitsy foundation, which we can grow brick by brick by brick between now and trial.’
In my peripheral, I could have sworn Marissa was giving me the stink eye.
‘Can we skip the prelude?’ Nate said.
Nate Dogg was becoming less and less amused with Church’s antics, which was making Ethan edgy too.
Church went on as if Nate had never spoken, a technique, I concede, I badly wanted to add to my own repertoire.
‘… and from everything that Ethan’s told us, and everything that Riles has said of her, and in light of the fact that Lau gave a press conference to essentially throw the victim’s goodness in our faces, and since our super sleuth Jesse hasn’t found so much as an unpaid parking ticket, we know we can’t put Piper Kingsley on trial the way any decent defense attorney would hope to. We can’t besmirch her, we know that, it can’t be done. And what her virtue further suggests is that this young woman probably didn’t have many enemies on the island, am I right, E-book?’
‘None that I know of,’ Ethan said quietly. Even if I hadn’t known their ages, the family dynamics I’d witnessed over the weeks left no question as to who was the older brother. Ethan practically looked for Nate’s approval following every answer he gave.
‘Then …’ Church said, ‘what about those closest to her? We’ll leave E-sops off the table for the moment. Who else?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘She didn’t have any enemies on-island, but she didn’t have any close friends either. Every time she made one, they’d eventually move to Japan or the mainland or head back to Australia.’
Hawaii was a mecca for transients.
‘Aye,’ Church said, with an inevitable Aussie accent. ‘Australia. The land Down Under. The Lucky Country. Land of Plenty. The Outback. Oz. Terra Australis Incognita, as it was first posited in antiquity.’
Nate slammed his hand down on the conference table. ‘Get on with it.’
What followed was a weird, heavy silence as Church stared Nate down across the table.
Church finally broke the quiet.
‘Your presence here is unnecessary, N-Dogg. Your check for this portion of the defense has already cleared. I won’t need another until two weeks before trial.’ Church waved his fingers as though Nate were a tray of smelly cheese he’d decided to pass on. ‘Why don’t you move along, so that the adults can discuss the intricacies of the criminal case that will decide your little brother’s fate for the next sixty or seventy years.’
Nate rose from the table, visibly restrained himself from responding, then marched across the endless room to the door, and left.
Ethan stood.
‘Sit,’ Church said.
Ethan sat.
‘Zane Kingsley,’ Church continued. ‘Piper’s father. What do you know about him, Ethan?’
‘Not much. Piper didn’t really talk about him. They were estranged.’
Church looked at me. ‘But not when you knew her a few years ago, right, Riles?’
‘No, she definitely had a relationship with him back then. A good one, I thought, from the number of photos she had of him on her walls.’
‘There were none when I moved in,’ Ethan said.
‘So something happened between then and now,’ Church thought aloud. ‘Riles, what did Piper tell you about her dad?’
‘That he was …’ I thought back, embarrassed I didn’t remember much. ‘Only that they were there for each other when her mother died. She said she and her dad didn’t really have a close relationship until her mom’s death.’
‘How long ago did her mom die?’
‘Just a few years before I met her. We met in New York not long after my own parents died. I think it was something that connected us.’
‘How did she describe her father?’
‘Pretty much the way we saw him on TV,’ I said. ‘Passionate, powerful. Rigid.’
‘He has a temper,’ Church suggested.
‘A short fuse is what Piper called it.’
<
br /> ‘She tell you what he did for a living?’
‘Not that I remember. I just know they had a lot of money while Piper was growing up. She said she was one of those spoiled little brats she despised seeing prance around Honolulu’s private schools on her way to work every day.’
Ethan said, ‘She never told me what her dad did for a living either.’
‘Well, that’s not surprising,’ Church said. ‘Because Jesse hacked into the system of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization – which is essentially the Aussie FBI. And Zane Kingsley was, at least at one time, a confidential informant in a wide-ranging investigation into the Melbourne underworld.’
In the editing room, I rewind the footage of Church’s revelation about Zane Kingsley.
‘… a confidential informant in a wide-ranging investigation into the Melbourne underworld.’
I have already deleted my reaction. Deleted Brody’s. The only one that matters is Ethan’s. And once again, from him there’s no reaction at all.
‘So what does this mean?’ Ethan asks on film.
‘It means we have some digging to do,’ Church says. ‘But it also means you were not the only person with a motive to murder Piper. Any enemy of Zane Kingsley is an enemy of his daughter. We find enough evidence to support Zane’s ties with Australia’s underworld, and we have what’s known in the business as “reasonable doubt”.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Ethan asks. ‘Go to Australia?’
Church says, ‘Tahoma is already there.’
I stop the footage. Fast forward through the parts where Church and Jesse give some ad nauseam analysis of the physical evidence.
The beer bottles with Ethan’s prints.
A foreign footprint near the back fence.
Piper’s blood in the upstairs bathroom.
And something new …
I play the footage.
Church says, ‘A slight smear of blood on a tree roughly fifty feet behind Piper’s property.’
Onscreen, my eyes shoot to Brody, but he’s smart enough to disguise any reaction. He plays it cool, even as Church opens a folder and takes out a photograph of the tree in question. I, like the complete idiot I am, gasp audibly at the photograph of our perch on the night of the murder.
Onscreen, everyone is looking at me. And then they’re not.
‘So this tiny smear of blood may help us?’ Ethan asks as he squints at the prints.
‘Depends on whose blood it is,’ Church says. ‘But it’s something.’
I pause the footage. Going through my mind at the time were two conflicting narratives. The most frightening of which was: what if law enforcement for some reason has the pit-sniffer’s DNA in their database? The kinder was: what if they don’t; what if the unknown blood evidence and foreign footprint combined to win Ethan an acquittal? If that were the case, I would be more than just a key player in my own movie; keeping silent would undoubtedly make me a criminal.
I play the footage, watch myself glance at my arm as though the blood were still there. With the rain, though, the blood wasn’t even on my arm when I got home that night, I was sure of it. The blood on the tree in the photo was unquestionably left by yours truly. I’d even knocked into it when that mosquito flew a kamikaze mission down my throat.
Clearly exhausted, Ethan pushes himself out of his chair and paces around the table like a wounded animal.
‘I think we need to adjourn,’ he finally says. ‘This is really taking a toll.’
Church nods. ‘There’s just one more piece of physical evidence I want to address before you leave this evening.’
At his seat, Ethan finally stops, sits, says, ‘Before we go any further, Nick, I have to tell you that I’m uncomfortable with this angle involving Piper’s dad.’
‘You never even knew him,’ Church says, perplexed.
‘Still, it’s her family, you know? Family comes first. Always.’
Church is as expressionless as I’d ever see him. ‘Then you’re really going to fucking hate what I have to say next.’
TWENTY-TWO
I’m not a big fan of monogamy. Some people say that’s more a guy trait than a girl’s, but those people are sexist, and I’m not a big fan of sexism either. Was I surprised that Piper hadn’t been monogamous with Ethan? No, not from what I knew of her. From the few times we hung out, I knew Piper to be a free spirit, nice but a bit naughty too, a girl who liked guys and wasn’t afraid to go to bed on the first date. Was I shocked by whom she was fucking? Yeah. Not because I thought highly of him, or of injury lawyers in general, for that matter. I’d dated one back in New York, for six days, seven nights. On the seventh morning, he’d nailed my then-best-friend Ally, who was visiting from Portland – in my bed – while I was sitting through a three-hour lecture on Digital Imagery and Visualization.
In the editing room early the next morning, I return to footage I’ve already cut. The scene now runs seamlessly, beginning to end, with dead-on shots from all four cameras. In my existential outline, this scene constitutes the midpoint of my our film. At the midpoint, the documentarian typically introduces something like dramatic conflict, which is to say, not necessarily two alpha males clawing at each other’s throats. We don’t need, as in fiction, to witness our hero’s metaphorical death setting up a later rebirth, and this need not be the point from which ‘nothing will ever be the same’. We don’t need the players to go abruptly from reactive to active; we don’t need anything nearly as dramatic as all that.
But if you have the footage …
I press PLAY.
Onscreen, there I am, standing with Brody just a few feet away in the main room, where the scene took place.
‘I got rid of Nate for a reason,’ Church says, with a severity not often seen from him.
‘What’s this about?’ Ethan asks. He’s weary, he’s dog-tired, he’s spent.
‘It’s about pubic hair.’
‘What?’
‘The correct question isn’t “what?”. It’s “whose?”.’
‘Don’t play games with me, Nick. I—’
‘Your brother’s,’ Church spits out. ‘And it was found in Piper’s bedroom.’
Silence seems to suck all the air from the room.
Finally, Ethan asks, ‘What are you talking about?’
But, by then, he understands. We know he understands the out-and-out gravity of Church’s words from the close-ups we shot. We know he understands, because whereas a moment ago he looked like he’d just gone ten rounds with Tyson Fury, now he looks as if he’s just gone another twenty. I pause the footage right there. Zoom in on Ethan’s face. For the first time, I read total shock, a sucker punch straight to the gut. And something I had seen from him before, something easy to recognize and almost impossible to hide – I see fear.
Even though he and this moment are so far removed in time, there’s a pang in my chest every time I watch this scene.
Church says, ‘Jesse hacked into a private laboratory the prosecutor’s office uses to reinforce their own lab findings. The DNA was close enough to yours that they tested it three times, but there’s no question that it’s his.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Ethan says, as though new life were just breathed into him. ‘Jesse got this by hacking? Lau knows you hack into databases, you said so yourself.’
Church shakes his head. ‘The laboratory would never risk that kind of collusion. They have everything to lose, nothing to gain.’
Ethan’s undeterred, seemingly more convinced in the truth of his theory than where he parked his pickup this morning. ‘This is a plant, Nick. And you fell for it; you know you did. But that’s no—’
‘Ethan, we have a valid copy of the test. If we were to later produce it and it was a fake: one, Naomi Lau would be disbarred, which might hurt her chances in the next gubernatorial election; two, your conviction would be overturned; and three, every defendant Lau ever prosecuted would have a strong argument for a new trial. Not to mention how the lab’s poor
investors would feel.’
‘That’s not the way it works, Nick, and you know it. Some kid they just hired takes the rap for it, and everyone else goes on their merry little way.’
‘Their merry little …?’ Church sighs deeply, and it’s strange, it’s sobering, it’s sad to see him all-business. ‘I wouldn’t have told you this if I wasn’t absolutely sure it was true.’
Ethan actually smiles. ‘It’s a head fake, Nick, I’m telling you.’
‘Ethan, I know this isn’t easy to accept—’
‘You have unclean hands, Nick. Isn’t that what they say? The prosecution knows you can never come forward with the fake test results.’
‘Why would I not come forward if my client’s life were on the line?’ Church says, thoroughly perplexed.
‘Your bar license.’
‘My bar license, are you kidding me?’ Church puts on his angry eyebrows. ‘I’ve been trying to get rid of my law license since the day I left the prosecutor’s office. But even if I hadn’t, how can you think me so inhuman that I wouldn’t sacrifice my goddamn law license for your life?’
Ethan shakes his head, the smile history. ‘I’m leaving.’
Church grabs his arm, and for several seconds the world stops.
Then: ‘Get your hand off me, Nick.’
Hearing Ethan speak with that same deceptive calm he spoke with in the Breakers parking lot made my stomach twitch.
Church, perhaps recalling images from that grainy video himself, releases Ethan’s arm, says, ‘The tests were concluded just yesterday, and our experts will be able to test the sample themselves this coming week. The jig would be up in days, Ethan. That’s not a prosecutorial strategy, that’s a practical joke.’
Ethan deflates some, stares off toward the sliding glass door. ‘Then this is more serious than we thought. That means the cops planted physical evidence.’
With a Chevy Chase double-take, for a moment our everyday Church reappears. ‘Remind me, again, exactly how the police got their hands on your brother’s pubic hair? Is there a North American Nathan Jakes Pubic Hair Reserve I don’t know about?’
‘Wait,’ Brody says, stepping into the shot. ‘How did they have Nate’s DNA in their database?’
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