“No, I told you that he called me that evening, desperate and needing a fix. That’s why I sent Sharita over there.”
Harper shook her head. “That makes zero sense. Zero sense. If he called you in a desperate way, and you then personally delivered the Oxycontin to him, he would have welcomed you with open arms. That is, if the story was the way that you testified it was – that he called you desperately that evening. You certainly wouldn’t have had to have paid Ms. Vance $50,000 to deliver those drugs, isn’t that right?”
He sighed, obviously thinking of a different excuse. “Okay, okay,” he finally said. “I paid her all that money because I knew that she owed the Las Vegas Hilton $50,000 and she came to me, crying. She told me that the Las Vegas Hilton was threatening her with legal action and that she was afraid that she was going to be charged criminally about it. So, I felt sorry for her, and I gave her that money. That was the real reason why I gave it to her.” He smiled at the jury, thinking that he came up with a good story. He was being altruistic, you see. She needed him and he came through for her.
“Okay,” Harper said, turning to the jury with an amused look on her face. “So, you did that for her from the goodness of your heart. Can you tell the court what your relationship was with Ms. Vance?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how close are you with Ms. Vance?”
He took a deep breath. He didn’t know what Sharita had said on the stand about the nature of his relationship with her. “I-“
“Isn’t it true that you barely know Ms. Vance?”
“No, that’s not true. She’s one of our pharmaceutical reps. Of course I know her.”
Harper nodded her head. “Oh, I see. So, if any one of your pharmaceutical reps came to you, crying, because he or she needed thousands of dollars to get out of a jam, you’re just going to cut a check to that person, right?”
“No, of course not. If I did that, I would go broke in no time,” he said.
“Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? Yet, here comes Ms. Vance, just one of your pharmaceutical reps, with a sob story about a gambling debt, and you just go ahead and cut her a check just for altruistic reasons. Is that what your testimony is?”
He was a cornered animal and he knew it. Harper was doing a masterful job of boxing him into a room with no doors. “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “I guess she caught me at a generous time.”
“A generous time?” Harper said in a wondrous voice. “You just got a desperate phone call from your brother, or so you say, and you were feeling generous at that moment?”
He nodded his head. “And I do have a weakness for beautiful women,” he said with a smile. He suddenly decided to use his sexual harassment claims to his benefit. “That’s why all those women sued me.”
“Oh? I thought you said earlier that those women who sued you were out to get you.”
“Well, I guess I said that because I was embarrassed, but the truth is, if a beautiful woman comes to me and asks me for something, I’m a sucker every time. Ms. Vance knew my weakness, and took advantage of it, I’m afraid.”
Oh, he was good. He was really making lemonade out of lemons, that one was. He was taking his sexual harassment suits to show that he really might have given Sharita $50,000 out of the goodness of his heart.
But Harper was better. “So, if any random beautiful woman comes to you and asks for thousands of dollars to help her get out of a jam that she created, you’re just going to open up your checkbook?” She looked over at the jury. “Take note of this, ladies of the jury. If you’re attractive, this guy’s going to automatically give you money.”
At that, the men and women of the jury laughed nervously.
Kevin stood up. “Objection, mischaracterization of testimony.”
“Sustained,” Judge Watkins said, glaring at Harper. “You know better, counselor.”
“I’m sorry, your honor, I couldn’t resist.” She made her point, though, and she knew it.
She turned back to Robert. “Sorry for the commentary, but the question was valid. If any random beautiful woman came to you, asking for tens of thousands of dollars, you’re going to open your wallet and say ‘have at it?’” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said.
“Yet you did that for Ms. Vance,” she said. “Why?”
“She needed the money and I needed a favor. That’s it.”
“And you couldn’t deliver the drugs to him directly because?” Harper asked.
“I was busy that night.”
“Busy doing what?” Harper asked.
“Just busy.”
“But you took the time out to meet with Ms. Vance, hear her story, and give her that money. Wouldn’t it have just taken less time to just drive over to Dr. Dunham’s office yourself and give him that Oxycontin sample?” Harper asked.
“I guess.”
“So, that’s a yes?” Harper asked.
“Yes.” Robert was defeated. He wasn’t even going to try to come up with story number 1,118.
“Admit it,” Harper said. “You took those Oxycontin pills in that Oxycontin bottle you gave to Ms. Vance, you replaced those pills with high-grade heroin, and you gave them to Ms. Vance to deliver that night. You knew that Ms. Vance was exposing herself to high risk in doing what she did, which was the reason why you paid her so much money to deliver the drugs. Admit it.”
He wasn’t going to admit it, but that wasn’t the point in asking that question. Harper was just going to get the theory of the case out there and see how he answered.
He started to laugh nervously. “And where am I going to find high-grade heroin?” he asked. “I don’t know anybody who would have access to something like that.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Harper said. “I wanted you to admit that you replaced the Oxycontin pills that Ms. Vance delivered with high-grade heroin.”
“And that was my answer. I don’t know a soul who would have access to high-grade heroin. So, no, I didn’t do that.”
“I’m not even going to try to prove that, because it would be impossible to prove a negative,” Harper said. “I don’t know who you know and don’t know, but I will note that you are a very wealthy man with connections, and one of those connections might just be a drug dealer who would have access to high-grade heroin.”
Kevin stood up. “Motion to strike that question, it calls for speculation, it’s prejudicial and it has zero basis in fact.”
“Sustained,” Judge Watkins said. “Ms. Ross, one more stunt like that, and I’ll call a mistrial. Fair warning.”
Harper nodded. She almost crossed a line that would be a basis for a mistrial, and she knew it. She was risking it, but she apparently wanted the jury to know what her thoughts were. “I’m sorry, your honor.”
She finally took a deep breath. “I have nothing further for this witness.”
At that, she sat down, and Kevin stood up. For the next hour, he tried gamely to rehabilitate Robert with soft-ball questions, but, in the end, it seemed that this witness helped our case much more than that of the state.
By the time Kevin was done with Robert, it was time to call Sally Wallace, Dr. Dunham’s office manager.
I looked over at Mom. “I think we got this,” I said. “Harper was conducting a master class on how to corner a witness.”
Mom looked over at Harper and smiled. “I told you I trusted Harper.”
I called Sally to the stand, and she approached, raised her hand, I got to work.
“Could you please state your name for the record?” I asked her.
“Sally Wallace.”
“And you were the office manager for Dr. Dunham, isn’t that true?”
“Right. I am.”
“And what was your understanding about Dr. Dunham and his philosophy of treating pain?”
“He was against prescribing drugs to combat pain. No drugs of any kind. He treated patients with natural methods only,” she said.
“What was the method
that he used to treat his patients, then, for pain?” I asked her.
“He used a special technique, one that he invented. It was very effective, too. He had patients clamoring to see him.”
“And what was this special technique, then?” I asked.
“He was able to do a combination of radio waves and sonar waves to pinpoint the overactive nerves that are the cause of a lot of pain in patients. That gave a lot of relief to patients who were having chronic pain.”
“And was he getting a lot of attention for this method?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, he was. He not only had doctors calling him up, 100s a day, wanting to learn his method, but he also was getting attention nationwide. I was fielding calls from The Doctors, the daytime television show with those doctors giving advice, and from magazines everywhere. Time Magazine was going to do a front-page profile on him and his method, along with all kinds of health magazines like Prevention and magazines like that. He was going to blow up huge for sure. But he died before he could really get going.”
“And he was going to train other doctors, then, in his method?”
“Yes. We were very excited. He was really a pioneer. He was going to make his method national, though, because he was going to train doctors around the country on how they could use his method, too.”
I asked her some more questions, for about another hour, and then Kevin stood up and cross-examined her. When Sally finally got off the stand, it was time to go home.
Mom was going to take the stand the next day, and I was going to have Harper conduct her examination. It was going to be almost anti-climactic, in my opinion, because Sharita and Robert did themselves so much damage. It helped that they were really bad criminals. If they were better at covering their tracks, Harper and I would have had a lot of issues.
“Okay, Mom,” I said. “Tomorrow, it’s showtime.”
She nodded her head, but she looked nervous.
“Damien,” she said. “I need to talk to you and Harper before I take the stand tomorrow. I need to talk to you both. I don’t want to lie on the stand, Damien, so I gotta talk to you both.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, of course you have to talk to us.”
“No, I mean, I gotta talk to you both. Let’s go back to my place, because I gotta roll a joint before I talk to you guys.”
Oh, boy. This did not sound good.
Little did I know just how not good it was going to turn out to be.
Chapter 33
We got back to Mom’s home, and, just like she said, she rolled a joint the first thing and took a long drag. “Sorry, Damien, I’m nervous, and this calms me down like nothing else.”
I looked over at Harper and shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what she was about to tell me.
“Mom, you’re making me nervous,” I said. “Out with it.”
“Wait, wait,” she said. “I gotta let this stuff kick in.” She waved the air in an effort to dispel the smoke that hung in her home.
“Olivia,” Harper said. “What’s going on?”
Mom shook her head. “I can’t continue lying. I’m scared, Damien. I talked to Peg, she lives on the other block, and I told her what’s going on. She said that if I lied on the stand, I could get in trouble. She said that her son lied on the stand and he got put in jail for it, and had to pay a fine. She told me that I can’t lie under oath.”
I was getting annoyed. “Mom, with all due respect, of course you know that you can’t lie under oath. I told you that. I told you that a hundred times. And, it’s a crime to lie under oath - a Class A felony. That doesn’t mean jail, it means prison. Minimum 10 years in prison, to be exact.”
She gave me a look. “Well, Damien, I had to hear it from my friend. And she told me that I can get in real trouble.”
“So,” I said. “Go ahead, then, tell me what’s on your mind.”
“That blood pressure medicine wasn’t blood pressure medicine, it was pure heroin,” Mom blurted out. “There, I said it.”
The words hung in the air as I realized the ramifications of what she just told me. All at once, I realized that I had lied to the jury about what I planned on proving. I was wrong that this whole case was an elaborate set-up and that the prosecutors and cops were dirty. Nobody planted drugs to frame my mother. Nobody had to. My mother lied to me, again, and to say that I was pissed was an understatement.
She started to ramble on. “I didn’t do the junk, though, I don’t do it. It belongs to Annie Shaw, she lives around the corner, and her son Jimmy’s on the junk. Annie found it in her house, Jimmy was in rehab, so she gave it to me so that Jimmy won’t find it and fall off the wagon.”
Harper was surprisingly non-plussed about Mom’s confession. “Okay, Olivia, so you actually possessed heroin when the cops came in and you put it into that Nifedipine bottle. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah, but I was just holding it for Annie.”
“And why didn’t Annie flush it down the toilet?” Harper asked.
“Well, see, Annie knows high-grade stuff when she sees it. She knows when something is worth a lot of money. Guess she did her research on junk, because her son’s a junkie. A recovering junkie now, I guess. But Annie knows that the stuff that she gave me had a good street value, thousands of dollars. And she thought that she might be able to sell it if she got hard-up for money.”
Harper nodded her head, following Mom’s whole wacked-out scenario. “And so Annie didn’t want to destroy it, and she didn’t want it around her house, because she was afraid that her son would find it, so she gave it to you for safe-keeping, then?”
“Yeah. That’s what happened. Listen, Annie was there for me when I needed her before. She was dating this one guy, a cop named Dinkleman, and I got a DUI this one time, and she convinced Dinkleman to help those charges get dropped. I owe her my life, because if I got another DUI, I’d be sent down the river, the big house. My license was suspended at that time, and it would have been my third DUI, so you do the math. Annie helped me get that dropped. I owe her my life.”
“Mom,” I said, “why did you let the cops search your medicine cabinet if you knew that you had heroin?”
She shook her head. “I forgot I had heroin in there. I forgot about Annie giving me her son’s drugs. In fact, I totally forgot that I had Annie’s drugs in there until she came to me a few months ago and asked me about them. She needed money, so she wanted to sell the junk. That’s when I remembered that I had her drugs, and I knew that the cops found them when they searched my place.”
“So, when you first told me that you didn’t have drugs, you were telling the truth, to the best of your knowledge?” Harper asked her.
“I guess so,” Mom said. “I mean, yeah, when it all first happened, I really did think that the cops planted some junk in my medicine cabinet. It wasn’t until Annie asked me about it that I knew that the pigs really did find junk in that Nifedipine bottle.”
“Yet, you didn’t tell Harper and me when you remembered about the drugs?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I got scared.”
“Welp, I guess we’re screwed,” Harper said. “We could have called Annie to the stand to explain away the heroin, but you never told us that there was an Annie, so we didn’t put her on our witness list.” Harper shook her head.
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t have let you call Annie to the stand. I wouldn’t want her getting into trouble.”
“Better her getting into trouble than you going to prison for life because you happened to be holding her heroin when the cops busted in,” Harper said. She was finally starting to get annoyed, and I didn’t blame her.
“Mom,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You mean to tell me that I lied to the jury? In my opening statement, I made a big deal about how you were framed because drugs were planted in your medicine cabinet, and now you’re telling me that you were guilty all along?”
She shook her head. “No, I never gave Tracy drugs. I never did. I swear. He shared his drugs
with me.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Bullshit. You lied to me about possessing drugs, how can I ever believe that you didn’t give drugs to Tracy? How can I ever believe that you weren’t lying all along? You probably gave Tracy those drugs and lied to me and everyone else because you didn’t know that you could be found criminally liable for doing something like that. Once you found out that you were subject to criminal liability, you came up with a cockamamie story about the cops planting drugs and your taking antibiotics, which was going to cause a false positive. For all I know, you gave Tracy heroin, you were doing it too, he died, and you lied to me when the cops came around and arrested you. How do I know that’s not the case?”
I took a deep breath, realizing that everything was making more sense in this case. All along, I wondered exactly why the cops and the state would be framing Mom. What never made sense to me was why it was that Robert Dunham, who I still thought was behind it all, would have gone through such elaborate steps to frame my mother, when he could have just let his brother die of a heroin overdose and let it all seem like a tragic accident. It never really made sense to me, but, if my mother was to be believed, which it turned out she wasn’t, that was exactly what had happened – Robert was behind an elaborate frame that went to the highest level.
Nope, no frame. Mom really did possess heroin, and Mom really did drop a dirty UA. The cops and the state had every right to charge her the way that they did.
That didn’t mean that Robert didn’t kill his brother, though. It just meant that I was going to look like a liar because of what I promised the jury that I was going to prove, and that, in turn, meant that the jury was going to take everything else I put forth with a grain of salt.
“Well, Mom, our case is going to go south now. Dammit, what were you thinking? You let me lie to the jury. Now, the jury is going to not believe anything else we’re saying. Did you not think about that, Mom?”
“Damien, don’t yell at me, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to think that I did this.”
I sighed. “But you did it, didn’t you?”
Until Proven Guilty Page 22