Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  Angie, however, leaned over the rail with her own agenda. ‘Why?’ she hissed at me.

  I couldn’t speak without being heard by others so I wrote, ‘He was lying’, on a piece of scrap paper and passed it discreetly to her. She read it and nodded: Yes, she’d thought so too.

  Patrick, ever the overseer, clearly asked Angie to see the note and looked mildly surprised by what it said. Angie whispered to him and he sat back, probably not completely satisfied with the answer but certainly not shaken in his trust for me because I was (in his mind) the best lawyer who ever walked the earth except perhaps Perry Mason. Who never actually walked the earth.

  Michael Bryan, I noticed, had been impassive through the whole process. There was a strange air about him that indicated he might still be trying to decide which side he was rooting for in this trial.

  I leaned over to Cynthia. ‘He’s seen you in movies and thinks you need to be taken down a peg or two. Can’t have that on the jury.’

  She blinked twice. ‘How do you know?’ she asked in a whisper.

  ‘I slipped two Helen Mirren movies and a superhero film into the list and he never even blinked,’ I explained. ‘He was ready to say he’d never seen you in anything, no matter what, because he wanted to get the best of you.’

  ‘I was wondering about that,’ she said. ‘I never played Queen Elizabeth.’

  Jury selection went on another four hours with Valencia challenging three potential jurors who were watching Cynthia’s HBO miniseries and smiled. I dismissed two on more conventional grounds, given that one of them said she thought movie stars were treated too preferentially by society (which they are), and another was upset with his ex-wife over the terms of his divorce. The judge immediately dismissed one who said she’d seen coverage of the murder, including pictures of the body (which were not supposed to be released and were probably fake) on the internet.

  When we had twelve jurors and two alternates everyone could agree upon, Hawthorne declared the day over, banged her gavel and sent us all home. Well, she sent Cynthia home. Patrick went back to whatever shooting schedule had been arranged around his attendance at the trial (‘luckily it’s all night scenes’), Angie in tow.

  Emily stopped me just before she went charging after Patrick. ‘Patrick says he’s in love with you now,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not,’ I assured her. ‘He just thinks he is.’

  ‘Are you the reason he broke our engagement?’

  ‘Go show a house,’ I told her. She glowered some more and hurried after Patrick and Angie.

  I packed up my stuff so Jon and I could take my car – he wasn’t driving yet – back to our office.

  On the way there I got a call from Nate. Because during Patrick’s trial my car had been … incapacitated, and Patrick had made sure Bluetooth was installed in my Hyundai when he was having it essentially rebuilt from scratch, I could talk to the investigator without taking my hands off the wheel. Technology is a wonderful thing, when it works.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked him.

  ‘I have some security video you’re going to want to see,’ he said. Nate greets people with the facts. He never buries the lead. He should have been a newspaper.

  ‘Security video from where?’ I asked.

  ‘The house across the street from Wendy Bryan’s,’ Nate answered. I could hear the smirk in his voice. He wanted to show me how smart he was, and if it helped my case, I was happy to let him.

  ‘From the night of the murder?’ Of course from the night of the murder. What would security footage from a random Tuesday do for Cynthia’s case? ‘What does footage from across the street show us?’

  Nate was ready to drop the bomb and he did it well. ‘It shows a municipal car parked right in front, across the street from Wendy’s,’ he said.

  So, somebody from the Department of Public Works lived near Wendy. An unlikely zip code for a civil employee, to be sure, but maybe the person had married well. ‘So what?’ I said, delivering the straight line as was clearly intended.

  ‘So sitting in the driver’s seat of that car on the night Cynthia Bryan was killed, but before the nine-one-one call was made, was Detective Lieutenant K.C. Trench.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘If you wish to interview me regarding the case, I am at your disposal,’ Trench said. ‘But I am under no obligation to tell you any facts about what I saw outside of the context of your defense.’

  We were seated, except Jon who insisted on standing, in Trench’s immaculate if impersonal office, all business. I had no idea if Trench was married, if he had children, if he liked to golf, surf, play chess or poker. I couldn’t have told you what baseball team he rooted for, or even if he’d ever seen a baseball game. I knew absolutely nothing about Lieutenant Trench. Part of the reason that was true was that his office, where I’d mostly seen him in our short history, was absolutely devoid of any personal mementos, photographs or souvenirs. For all I knew this was a prop office Trench used for visitors. Maybe he had a real one somewhere that showed him in the company of strippers, drug dealers, dominatrixes and/or his loving wife of twenty-three years. Anything was possible. But right now I was livid with him and couldn’t properly articulate why.

  ‘You’ve been walking around with knowledge of my case for months and you’ve seen me a number of times since this happened,’ I said through lightly clenched teeth. ‘You didn’t mention once that you were present at the scene of the crime while it was happening.’

  ‘It is not within my responsibilities to report everything I see to the defense attorney,’ he said with no inflection whatsoever. ‘You should have contacted me.’

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself on a beach. Oddly, despite living in a city that was famous for its beaches, I was thinking of sitting on a beach chair in Belmar, New Jersey. I took two breaths. It was almost possible to smell the salt air. Then I started to picture Patrick and I didn’t need to imagine him with me on a beach in Belmar, so I opened my eyes again.

  ‘Your name appears on none of my records or the witness list,’ I told him. ‘Now, why do you suppose that happened?’

  ‘I would imagine it is because I was not questioned by Deputy District Attorney Valencia until this morning, and that would mean he hasn’t had time yet to revise his witness list and get the judge’s approval,’ Trench said. He might just as well have been saying it was going to be cloudy tomorrow with a thirty percent chance of rain.

  I sighed. ‘Don’t make me pull teeth, Lieutenant. We’ve known each other a while now. What did you see and why didn’t you mention it until today?’

  ‘Ms Moss,’ Trench said with a pained look on his face, ‘I can’t say I am an eyewitness to the crime and I will testify to that. I did see Ms Sutton enter the home. She was, for the record, not carrying a TeeVee award with her upon her entrance. I did not hear or see anything that would have alerted me to a brutal murder being committed. Do you think I would have stayed in my car if I’d been aware of that?’

  That question had occurred to me. ‘No. I don’t think you would have. But I don’t understand why you didn’t mention this until today. And you’ve been very careful not to answer that question.’

  Trench didn’t move a facial muscle. ‘When I saw the report of the murder, I realized I’d been there just before it happened. I hadn’t seen the crime occur, and the person I saw enter the house had already been arrested and charged. Frankly, I didn’t see how I could testify in court to anything other than what had already been established. And it is borne out by the security video taken from the street, so you tell me.’

  Jon and I exchanged a glance because we were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ I said, ‘why were you there?’

  ‘At Wendy Bryan’s house the night she was murdered?’ That was stalling if ever I heard it.

  Jersey girls don’t take kindly to people being coy. ‘No, why were you at the Staples Center the night LeBron hit a triple triple.’ Sarcasm doesn’t make
up for the fact that I don’t understand anything about basketball. ‘Yes. Why were you at Wendy Bryan’s house that night? What were you investigating? You’re a homicide detective from Los Angeles and the homicide, which took place in Santa Monica, didn’t happen, by your account, until after you left. What were you doing in that part of town?’

  ‘Ms Moss, you are not a member of the Los Angeles Police Department and you certainly do not outrank me. So I will keep my motivations to myself for the time being.’

  ‘I’ll ask you about it on the stand,’ I warned him.

  ‘And I will give you the same answer. My presence there that night is relevant to your case only to highlight the coincidence that I have outlined, and to prove that Cynthia Sutton was there at the approximate time of the killing, which I do not believe you’re going to dispute.’ Trench sat straight up in his chair. He rarely leaned back on it and did not appear to have the capability to relax. It was like his entire mind and body had been starched.

  ‘You’re sure it was Cynthia?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and I ran the license plate on her car. It was her.’ Trench likes to run license plates. For him it’s a form of recreation. Everybody has their thing.

  ‘Well, this has been a completely frustrating conversation,’ I said as I stood up and grabbed my bag.

  ‘A pleasure as always,’ Trench said. I bought a bottle of water from a vending machine in the lobby to get over the dryness in his voice.

  Jon and I were back in my car and on the way to our office in five minutes, which in LA is something just short of a miracle. ‘There’s an awful lot going on in this case that we don’t know about and that bothers me,’ Jon said while I sweated out a left turn.

  ‘I know.’ Los Angeles is a really nice city. Someday it ought to put in a transportation system so people can get around to see it. ‘We’re done for the day. I’m going to drop you off at the office and go see Nate Garrigan. There must be things we haven’t looked into, not the least of which is what Trench was doing at Wendy’s house the night she died.’

  ‘Don’t drop me off,’ Jon said. ‘Let’s go see Nate.’

  I knew he’d say that and I was sure he wouldn’t listen to any arguments about how he must be tired, so I had already plugged Nate’s address into my GPS. ‘Call him,’ I said.

  Nate Garrigan lived in Sherman Oaks, which took about forty minutes from Trench’s office. I’d been to Nate’s home office before, but it had been a while so I didn’t remember which house was his by sight. Luckily Google Maps knew for certain, so Jon and I approached the mother/daughter home (the daughter part was the office Nate had set up) with a good deal of confidence.

  Nate had told Jon on the phone that he was out but would probably beat us back to his place. It wasn’t a surprise, then, when he opened the separate door on his office suite and ushered us in out of the heat, which we’d been sweltering in for close to a minute.

  ‘I was going to call you,’ he told me. ‘I’ve got a few details to fill in. But there’s nothing yet that’s going to be a slam dunk in the courtroom tomorrow.’

  ‘We just saw Trench,’ I informed him, and his face changed to show interest.

  ‘What was he doing there that night?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s the question we were hoping you could answer,’ I told him. ‘Trench is Trench. He’s never going to tell us everything he knows because he sees us as the adversary. But he also knows something is up – that’s got to be why he was sitting in his car that night – and he wants us to be aware he knows. He’s probably got four investigations going on now that we don’t know about.’

  ‘Actually, I think I have a decent idea that’s just beginning to fit,’ Nate said. ‘Because I located our old pal Leopold.’

  ‘Leopold Kolensky? Wendy’s financial manager?’ Jon asked. I was glad Jon was there. I could never remember the name Kolensky.

  ‘That’s the guy,’ Nate told us. ‘It took some doing but he is now located in Glendale.’

  ‘Glendale?’ I asked. ‘Can we go see him?’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t expect much information. Leopold’s in Forest Lawn. He’s dead.’

  Well, that was certainly a downer, especially for Leopold. ‘Dead?’ I said. I was a little stunned. Don’t judge.

  ‘Yup. Cardiac arrest. A week before Wendy Bryan was killed.’ There was less of a grin on Nate’s face now because we were heading for questions he couldn’t answer.

  ‘Are we sure it was cardiac arrest?’ Jon asked. It was an appropriate question. This was a big coincidence, and when I’m trying a case, I hate even small coincidences.

  ‘That’s what it says on the death certificate,’ Nate said, shrugging. ‘He died in his sleep one night. Lived alone since his wife died four years ago.’

  I looked at his face. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ I said.

  Nate nodded. ‘The night he died, our pal Leopold had dinner with a client.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Jon said, ‘Wendy Bryan.’

  Again Nate nodded. ‘At her house.’

  THIRTY

  Patrick McNabb was never far away while Cynthia’s trial was ongoing. On those rare days when it seemed he actually needed to be on set filming Torn, he made sure his presence was felt by having Angie sit directly behind me at the defense table. I didn’t mind having my best friend watch and offer tips, but it was a little intimidating coming from Patrick’s executive assistant.

  Emily, it should be noted, showed up only on days Patrick was in attendance, and not all of them.

  On this day, though, Patrick was present and going stag, immediately to Angie’s right, and watching with an intensity he probably had in reserve from scenes where he had to appear, you know, intense. He didn’t look happy and I didn’t blame him, but I had no time to pay attention to that. He could remind himself that he believed he was in love with me later.

  The reason Patrick wasn’t happy was the same reason I was fairly perplexed at the same time. One of the Los Angeles County medical examiners, Dr Leona Ramsey, was answering Valencia’s questions and digging me a deeper hole with each answer. I’d have to lift Cynthia out of that hole, and wasn’t sure my upper-body strength would be sufficient for the task.

  (Don’t think for a second that we’d forgotten about Leopold Kolensky. Nate had gotten a copy of the police report from the night of Leopold’s death. It was as routine as could be. The 911 call came from Leopold’s assistant who had used her key to get into the house when Leopold had not shown up at his office. The ME had determined it was a heart attack and the cops had filed it away and released the body to Leopold’s next of kin, who was a nephew. Leopold had no children. Nate was looking into the disposition of Leopold’s will, which is something you always do when you’re being suspicious. I’ll keep you informed.)

  ‘Dr Ramsey,’ Valencia was saying. He loved nothing better than to emphasize that the witness was a doctor. I’m not sure what effect that had on the jury, since I doubted any of them would have expected the medical examiner to be an air-compressor mechanic. ‘Would it have taken a person of extraordinary strength to penetrate Wendy Bryan’s rib cage with the sharp points of a TeeVee award?’

  ‘Objection,’ I said without standing up. ‘The prosecution is asking the witness to draw a conclusion.’

  ‘I am asking a medical expert to report on the type of wound sustained by the victim,’ Valencia countered.

  ‘Objection is overruled.’ Judge Hawthorne wasn’t going to give me any special consideration. It was what I’d expected, as was her ruling, but it was worth getting the objection on the record just to break up the prosecutor’s momentum. ‘Mr Valencia?’

  ‘Once again, Dr Ramsey. Did the wounds sustained by Wendy Bryan, in your medical opinion, require an unusual amount of strength to inflict?’

  ‘Well, the statuette itself was altered,’ Ramsey answered. She pointed to a video screen above her head that showed a photograph of the TeeVee with its globe pushed down and out of the
way to better emphasize the sharp wings. ‘I’d say it took a pretty strong pair of hands to bend the metal that dramatically. A person who could do that could certainly have plunged the blades of the statue into Wendy Bryan’s chest, most certainly.’

  Valencia, no doubt anticipating the question I would have asked had he not, said, ‘Is Cynthia Sutton capable of that kind of force?’

  ‘Theoretically, anyone with functioning muscles in the hands and upper body could have done so if they were motivated,’ Ramsey said, not actually answering the question.

  ‘So Cynthia Sutton, in your estimation, could have killed her mother-in-law Wendy,’ Valencia said. He wanted to make sure the jury heard Ramsey speak directly to the hypothetical he was asking.

  ‘Yes,’ Ramsey answered. She had been on the stand before and knew to answer only that which was asked. Good.

  ‘No further questions,’ Valencia said, looking especially pleased with himself. Frankly, if this was as devastating a blow as he expected to deliver to Cynthia Sutton’s case, it would be a ridiculously easy trial to win. But I knew he had more firepower yet to come. I’d seen his witness list and his discovery materials. This was just the first inning. Valencia walked back to the prosecution table and sat down.

  ‘Ms Moss?’ Judge Hawthorne made it sound like a question. It was a summons.

  I gave my client a reassuring smile – not too big, so as not to appear arrogant to the jury – and approached the witness stand. ‘Dr Ramsey, what tests have you performed on Cynthia Sutton?’

  That clearly was not the first question the medical examiner was anticipating. ‘On Cynthia Sutton?’ she asked. ‘Do you mean Wendy Bryan?’

  ‘No. I mean the defendant, Cynthia Sutton.’ For dramatic effect I moved to one side so Ramsey could ostensibly get a more direct view of Cynthia.