“Your Honor, as Mr. Finley well knows, Mr. McGinnis told Detective Gonzalez that the defendant threatened physical harm to his wife if she took his sons away. The people want that testimony to come directly from Mr. McGinnis, and the hearsay rule does not bar it. It’s an admission by the defendant and against his interest.”
Finley looked down. He wanted to say something. He didn’t. He was just too inexperienced. It sound like what he had learned in law school.
Judge Lilly shook her head. “Step back, counsel. Objection overruled. Go ahead, Ms. Ortega.”
“Tell the court what Mr. Duran said, Mr. McGinnis.”
“Um, well, he said if Kim tried to take his sons away from him … um, took his sons away … he’d kill her.”
A.D.A. Ortega was surprised. That was more than he had told Detective Gonzalez. She pounced.
“Were those his exact words, Mr. McGinnis, that he’d kill her if she even ‘tried’ to take his sons away?”
“Uh.” McGinnis looked at Skip. “Sorry, Skip, but that’s what you said, man.”
Skip leaned forward with his hands on the table and glared at McGinnis ready to leap. “You’re a liar.”
The bailiff stepped forward and the Judge Lilly banged the gavel. “Enough. Mr. Finley, control your defendant.”
“Nothing further, your Honor. Your witness, Mr. Finley.”
Finley rose and decided on a shot in the dark. Never a good move by a trial attorney who doesn’t know where the shot will land.
“You aren’t on the best of terms with your cousin Skip, are you, Mr. McGinnis?”
“What do you mean?” Tears started to well up in McGinnis’s eyes. “He’s been a little brother to me my whole life. I mean, he’s my best friend now. He …” He covered his face and broke down.
Ashen-faced, having buried his client even deeper, Finley read through his motes for a few seconds—furiously and futilely thinking.
“No further questions, your Honor.”
The judge said, “You’re excused, sir.”
McGinnis left his seat and shuffled out of the courtroom wiping tears away.
* * *
The local media milked every salacious and brutal ratings-worthy detail gleaned from the daily testimony. Ultimately, it was a wife beating gone horribly wrong.
Skip’s mother Esther was in court faithfully and tearfully every day. His father was not.
Gary attended intermittently, as did many of the local lawyers. While Gary was at the trial, he had Vicky fill out boilerplate discovery and cookie-cutter motions—to be billed later at his hourly rate. His own guilt made him bury himself at the far back of the courtroom. He listened carefully to the key prosecution witnesses, including Detective Gonzalez, Ortega’s final witness.
Gonzalez had adopted the damning interpretation of Kim’s message to Gary that Vicky had given him; Kim was going to tell him off about something not that she was going to actually tell him something. His deep baritone voice and authoritative presence played well with the jury.
As the detective testified, Skip sank further and further into his chair. He lost all hope of an acquittal. Gary also sank in his seat, but for another reason. Gary did not want his personage to be noticed by Gonzales or distract him during his damning testimony.
And, it didn’t because Gonzalez never noticed Gary. But, more than that, he had never suspected him, even then.
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Copyrighted Material
Chapter 18
The trial’s notoriety grew so that soon, all of San Berdoo’s gaggle of gossips had an opinion. It sold well to the happily and unhappily married, the divorced, and the singles who had so far dodged either of those bullets. The news coverage, only local, was an in-depth condemnation of Skip and pandered to the carnival of human voyeurism at its basest.
The she-wolf, A.D.A. Ortega, had molded her witness testimony into a storyline that led to the end of Skip’s life as he knew it. She had proven murder beyond a reasonable doubt by methodically developing her brilliantly selected, skewed facts.
Facts establishing that Skip was a woman-hating, angry male who had battered and killed his wife. Facts that showed he had no alibi. Facts that, to Gary’s relief, did not expose his liaisons with Kim or put his name on the record. His office was referenced generically to show Kim was in the process of filing for a divorce. Gary was safe—barring some cataclysmic revelation by the defense. Neither he nor Vicky had been asked or subpoenaed to testify.
After Detective Gonzales completed his testimony and left, the A.D.A. asked, “A moment, your honor?”
Ortega conferred with her female second chair Carmela Davis, a much younger A.D.A., who had whispered, elbowed, and jotted notes at the prosecution table every hour of every minute of every day.
“The prosecution rests.”
The she-judge turned to the defense table.
“We’ll take a fifteen-minute break before the defense presents its case.”
“All rise.”
The bailiff stood sentinel as Judge Lilly left the bench.
* * *
“You gotta let me tell my side.” Skip whispered to Finley.
“That man-eating bitch lied. They all lied.”
“No. She’ll rip you apart.”
“That’s a load of crap!”
The bailiff stepped forward with her hand on her gun as Finley sat Skip back down in his chair.
“If you lose your temper like that in front of the jury, you’re done for.”
“I’m done for anyway. I see the way they look at me. I’m a murderer.”
If the shoe fits, Finley thought to himself, but said, “That’s not true. Besides, don’t forget we haven’t put on our case yet. We’ll reevaluate you taking the stand later.”
Finley was just placating Skip. He knew Skip was being destroyed.
Finley defense case consisted of calling a few of Skip’s co-workers. All of them could testified, whether it was true or false, that they had never seen Skip yell at Kim or hurt her. Ortega didn’t bother to cross-examine them.
The jury was patently unimpressed.
* * *
At the end of the defense case, Finley and Skip did not reevaluate. It would have been pointless. Skip never asked to take the stand again. He was afraid. Afraid of the woman in the black robe’s gavel banging—always banging. Afraid of the butch female bailiff with evil eyes and her hand on a gun—always a gun.
If those bitches didn’t have the gavel and the gun he’d take them down, Skip thought.
But they did, and he was terrified. Terrified even more of that lying bitch A.D.A. and what her mouth would do to him if he took the stand. He wanted to get at that mouth in a room alone for five minutes. He’d shut it up with his fist like he had Kim’s so many times. Ortega would be in a sniveling heap along with her female sidekick.
Ortega and Finley made their closing arguments Friday morning. They were both brief. Ortega’s because she could be, Finley’s because he had little to say.
Judge Lilly charged the jury before noon, and they began their deliberations after the lunch break.
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Copyrighted Material
Chapter 19
During the defense case, Gary had been happily overlooked again and his world stayed intact. He went back to his office and waited for the jury’s inevitable finding of guilt. Guilt that would imprison Skip for life and, if Gary was really lucky, without the possibility of parole. Too bad it wasn’t a first-degree murder prosecution with the death penalty on the table. But that ship had sailed.
* * *
Skip would lose any appeal of his conviction and sentencing. Ninety-nine percent of criminal appeals fail in total. A few find the prisoner deserved a measly few more days of “good time” credits for behaving—a pittance compared to their sentences. The irony was—what else could they do but behave?
On appeal, Skip was doomed to be in the one percent. Doomed because of the thoroughness of the lies, the female viper Ort
ega and her assistant Davis had presented to prove up their case-in-chief.
Even incompetence of counsel would have no traction on appeal. The threshold for competence was low, and Skip’s public defender Finley had done enough to meet it.
The ever-present appellate catchall argument, that all errors combined denied the defendant his Constitutional due process rights, would fail too. There were rarely enough such errors, and Skip’s trial was no different. After all, any collection of small errors would amount to nothing given that “criminals belonged in prison.”
Skip’s ace-in-the-hole that the witnesses were all liars? Loser argument. The prisons were packed with the innocent and the guilty who all called witnesses liars and asked appellate courts to reweigh the sufficiency of the evidence. That was a nonstarter. Even a “mere scintilla” of evidence was enough to support the conviction. Credibility and weighing the evidence was the jury’s domain.
* * *
Gary believed that Skip would spend his life in prison, out of touch with Gary’s world. Skip’s living in the “Netherworld” condemned him to only an attenuated contact with the outside.
Gary would freely and happily inhabit a Skip-free domain—a domain spanning over thirty years in which he had remarkably gotten away with serial sexual abuse and two kills. The kills? Justified because he was protecting his reputation, his livelihood, his position, and the hobbies that made his days worth living. He was chomping at the bit to refocus on his pursuit of Eliana, who had absented herself from his fiefdom, but not his battle plan. There was the continuing irritant of Mary, as well. He had discovered that killing and sex gave him almost the same high. Mary was now in his crosshairs.
For once he regretted that they didn’t have a dog. He chuckled to himself as he remembered the prosecution of a former Bakersfield lawyer who was convicted of manslaughter. He claimed the family dog attacked him and he got his gun to kill it. The problem? He had shot his wife right between the eyes instead of the dog.
At his desk, Gary started to plan a foolproof way of disposing of Mary—like Zaida. After all, he was becoming an expert at both committing murder and covering it up.
* * *
Vicky tapped on Gary’s door and came in. “It’s Wednesday. Did you forget? Your lunch?”
“Uh, no.” Gary shuffled a file and started out. “Hold down the fort.”
At his weekly collegial lunch, Gary’s professional intimates pumped him for insight into Skip’s trial. Gary was careful—so careful.
Over coffee and pie, the complaints concerning Payne invading their domain ricocheted around the table. Then, the inquiry turned to dark humor about Gary’s clients biting the dust one after another. Gary was again careful—beyond careful.
These men were outsiders in Gary’s life—everyone was, his wife included. His real life was feeding his addictions—compartmentalization and justification were his strong suits. That was Gary’s refined habit and skill—as with every sociopath.
He looked around the table and wondered how well he really knew these men. They were circumspect, but Gary had seen signs of their own appetites and secret proclivities over the years. Had one of them elevated himself to killing, too? Gary wondered.
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Copyrighted Material
Chapter 20
At four-thirty p.m. that same Friday, Gary got a courtesy call from the she-judge’s female clerk, well oiled by Gary’s charming, ingratiating demeanor over his years in court. The jury was back—the verdict in. Gary rushed to the courthouse. He wanted the deal sealed.
* * *
In the courtroom, Skip sat frightened at the defense table—downwind of the black-robed estrogen on the bench.
Under his Sunday church suit, Skip’s heart roared—beating faster and harder— harder and faster—beyond bursting. The thumping surge raged just as it had the many times Kim made him beat her. His knee twitched up and down. His middle fingers tapped the chair.
“Stop that,” Finley snapped.
“What?”
“Sit still.”
Skip did as ordered mumbling, “Fuck you.”
* * *
It had proven to be a short, unremarkable trial, particularly as murder trials go, and the charade was at an end.
After closing arguments and their charge from the judge, the jurors retired to the jury room. They started their deliberations, had a leisurely lunch, and then took a final vote. The process had barely taken two and a half hours.
* * *
As the jury of seven women and five men filed back in, the courtroom broke into uncontrolled chatter—the solemnity of the anticipated pronouncement shattered. The jurors sat, each one to a man and woman averting their eyes away from Skip—glancing toward the judge, the floor, anywhere else.
Skip studied the jury. From television catch-the-criminal dramas, Skip knew fast and no eye contact meant guilty.
Skip whispered, “It’s too quick. It’s guilty.”
Finley didn’t look at Skip either. “Quick doesn’t mean anything.”
Skip grabbed the arm of the son-of-a-bitch assigned to railroad him into a life behind bars—for Skip a worse end than the needle—had that been an option in his charges.
“No one will look at me. Not even you, you prick. I’m already a ghost.”
“Settle down.” Finely wrenched his arm free.
“They’re going to screw me.” Skip regretted caving in to the skinny, know-it-all Finley and agreeing to fewer defense witnesses and not taking the stand himself.
“We don’t know that,” Finley lied.
Skip’s head swiveled to find his mother. Instead, he eyed a second newly ensconced male sheriff—weight-trained, armed, and bullet-proofed at the door. Skip’s eyes volleyed from the armed human blockade to his mother Esther.
“I didn’t do it,” Skip called to her.
His mother’s shaking lips couldn’t move, even to smile. She nodded. She had been there every day, alone. Work was his father’s excuse for desertion now as it had been Skip’s whole life—save for his father’s drunken after-dinner beltings. Beltings were his fatherly nightly entertainment, masquerading as guidance. With the needless punishment for nothing; Skip learned to act out with impunity because he would get the beltings anyway.
“Let’s have order. Order!” Judge Lilly hammered her gavel on the sound block and pinned her eyes on Finley. “Keep your client quiet, counsel.”
* * *
Finley turned to Skip. “Stay calm. If it’s a guilty verdict, she’ll be the one sentencing you.”
“If. What a laugh.”
“Keep it up and they’ll cuff you.”
Skip was instantly cowed—head down like a beaten dog. He had been cuffed and uncuffed and shackled and unshackled for months. In jail, he had been schooled on the consequences of not keeping his head down during his brutal acculturation into his caged life of gratuitous and sadistic humiliation, fear, control, and shaming.
Judge Lilly echoed through the courtroom. “Quiet in the gallery or I will clear the courtroom.”
The judge nodded at her bailiff.
The butch bailiff, overbuilt from substance-boosted workouts and puffed with her bullet-proof vest, stepped forward—hand on gun.
“Order,” the bailiff boomed.
The courtroom stilled.
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Copyrighted Material
Chapter 21
The only sound in the silenced courtroom was the Judge Lilly’s paper-flipping through Skip’s file at her bench.
The bitch is making me wait, clanged through Skip’s head as he now avoided looking at the jury, the judge, and especially the judge’s butch bailiff.
Suspended in time, he studied the people-packed gallery. His eyes followed a tall, young man in a suit who entered carrying a lawyer’s briefcase. The suit edged along to a rear middle seat—the last one empty. His coat sheened expensively—better than Skip’s Sunday best. He was fit, energetic, and sported a meticulously maintained tan.
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The suit too a seat and looked at the clock on the left wall—a clock Skip had watched throughout the trial. It had a variable speed of its own that had ticked Skip’s life away slowly at first and then begrudgingly fast.
* * *
The suit, Kurt Townsend, was a player, a lawyer, and an impatient one. He had a post-Skip courtroom drama of his own. He wanted Skip’s verdict done and his case heard. Kurt had a motion to dismiss to argue, a motion that could get rid of a hard case for Payne senior partner Joe Greenberg. Joe trusted him to get the job done. Kurt had a reputation for winning—winning the unwinnable. He was always over prepared and took every advantage, just short of the unethical—a deadly combination when coupled with his sharp mind, good looks, and magnetic demeanor.
Kurt caught Skip’s stare—their blue eyes melding with a generational pull.
Skip turned back around in shame—the suit was a winner, a man on his way up, like Skip had been before he had knocked up Kim years before.
The men’s career trajectories, albeit blue collar verse white, had been comparable—until Skip’s plummeted with Kim’s pregnancy. The suit was not the kind of guy who would have knocked up his girlfriend and derailed his life, but then neither was Skip—shit happens.
Kurt didn’t give the man at the defense table a thought. He was busy sizing up the judge for his oral argument: her mood, focus, and receptivity. He had analyzed her background and now analyzed her.
The last thing Kurt wanted was to be in San Bernardino at all—the red-headed stepchild of the east L.A. sprawl. Even worse would be to lose so that he would have to come back for other motions or even a trial.
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