Christian was right. His computer hacking skills certainly were coming in handy.
So the upshot was that Calista had agreed to go ahead and testify on my behalf.
Chapter 39
The first witness I decided to go ahead and call for my case in chief was Arnold Garcia. Arnold was the voice coach for Sophia Delgado. I was going to use him to establish that Sophia Delgado had taken the place of Aria. I was also going to use Lauren for that same purpose, of course, but, with her mental problems, I knew that it was going to be an uphill battle for her to be believable. So I needed an insurance policy, and Arnold Garcia was it.
Arnold Garcia was around 50 years old, short and squat with a balding head. He seemed like a happy guy, however, and every time I spoke with him he was always jolly, smiling, and ready with a kind word and a good joke. He was a Mexican immigrant, although he been in this country for the past 40 years. He had been brought here when he was only 10 years old. He was very good at what he did, and he told me that he generally just worked with immigrants from other countries to get their American accent correct. He knew that it was important to many of the immigrants who were here that they not have an accent, and he worked with them to lose it. However, he also had done some work with some actors and actresses in Hollywood, helping them adopt a certain accent or voice when they portrayed somebody from a different country, or when they were portraying somebody who was real. For instance, he had worked with an actor who was portraying JFK in a small made-for-Netflix film. He worked with that actor to get the JFK voice down pat. That was important, because JFK’s voice was so familiar to everybody, if that actor didn’t nail it, everybody would know.
I was happy that Arnold was willing to testify for me. After all, this entire thing threatened to bring him down as well. He was involved with covering up a murder. I wasn’t sure that he knew that he was complicit in covering up a murder, but he had to suspect that there was something amiss when Jacob asked him to coach this new imposter to sound exactly like his dead daughter.
I called him to the stand, he raised his right hand, he took the oath, and I got to work.
“Can you please state your name for the record,” I said.
He got closer to the microphone. “Arnold Raul Garcia,” he said.
“And Mr. Garcia, can you please explain to the court who you are, and what you do for a living?”
He cleared his throat. I had to admit that he looked nervous, but I didn’t blame him. Most people were nervous, especially when they were not used to doing something like this. “I am a voice coach. My practice is focused upon helping immigrants lose their accent. But I have been known to work in the past with actresses and actors from Hollywood and the stage. I’ve trained actors and actresses to speak in a certain accent, and I’ve also trained actors and actresses who were working on a biopic on a particular person to get the voice of that particular person correct. So, for instance, I worked with actresses and actors who were portraying such figures such as Marilyn Monroe or JFK, helping them imitate the voice of Marilyn Monroe or JFK perfectly.”
I nodded my head. “And, were you approached by Jacob Whitmore, seven years ago?”
“Yes.”
“And why did he approach you?”
“He told me that he had a young girl who is living with him, her name was Sophia Delgado, and that he needed this young girl to sound exactly like his deceased daughter, Aria Whitmore.”
“And why did he tell you that he needed that?”
Arnold cleared his throat again, and he looked nervous. “He told me that he had a wife who was having a lot of problems after his daughter had passed away. He told me that his wife was in a mental institution because of it, and that he didn’t know what to do to bring his wife back to him. So he said that he found a girl who looked just like his deceased daughter, and that he wanted this new girl to sound just like his deceased daughter. He told me that he wanted the new daughter to replace the old daughter, and so he wanted the new daughter to be as similar to his deceased daughter as possible.”
I knew that that was the reasoning that Jacob had given to Arnold, and I also had a strong suspicion that Arnold knew that that story was bullshit. Nonetheless, I also understood that Jacob Whitmore paid him a pretty penny. As in, six figures or more, just for working with this one client. Arnold never told me exactly the amount that Jacob had paid him, but I knew that it had to be a lot. For that amount of money, Arnold probably decided that it was in his best interest to be willfully blind. Not that I necessarily blamed him. After all, he wasn’t complicit in the actual crime. He was complicit in the cover-up, but what can you do?
“So, he told you that he had this girl by the name of Sophia Delgado, and he wanted you to work with her to make sure that she sounded just like his daughter, Aria. Is that right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“And where did you work with her?” I asked him.
“She was down in Mexico. She was living in a hacienda in Tijuana, and I moved in with her for a period of six months. She told me that she had previously been in America. She came to America with a fellow by the name of Julian Rodriguez. But she told me that Jacob owned this hacienda, and that he wanted her to stay there while I worked with her on her voice.”
“And was she a good student?” I asked him.
“A very good student. She was very musically inclined. She had perfect pitch. She could identify a note just by hearing it. So it was not difficult at all to train her to sound exactly like Aria Whitmore. I mean, it was somewhat challenging at first, just because she had a thick accent, having come from Mexico. So, I first had to work with her on losing the accent. And once I worked with her on losing her accent, I was able to work with her on getting just the right pitch and tone that made her sound just like Aria Whitmore.”
“So you were able to obtain voice samples for Aria, right?”
“Right. Apparently when Aria was 13, she started a video log on YouTube. You know how they do, talking to the camera about their lives. So I had about a year’s worth of video logs for her. It wasn’t difficult at all for Sophia to match her voice.”
“So, how long did it take for Sophia to perfectly match Aria’s voice?”
“Not long at all. After about two months, I felt that she was matching Aria’s voice completely. However, the contract I had with Jacob was for six months, so I just stayed on at the hacienda with Sophia for the rest of that time. I was working with her even after she perfected the voice, just for reinforcement purposes.”
I knew exactly the reason why Jacob wanted this guy to take his time. The cover story was that Aria was in an accident in Mexico. She was allegedly in a coma in a Mexican hospital. That was the one thing that I found out - Jacob was able to cover his tracks perfectly in that regard. I found medical records for “Aria” during that period of time, down in Mexico. Aria was allegedly in a car wreck in Tijuana. At least that was the cover story that Jacob had given to Aria’s teachers and their neighbors and people who knew her well. And then Jacob proceeded to go ahead and pay the hospital down in Tijuana to doctor up some medical records for her. He also apparently had paid the cops down there to falsify a police report showing that she was in a car accident. He had all of his ducks lined up in a row, and he even drove his wife literally crazy, so that she would forget what had happened to her own daughter. And even if she did remember what had happened, her having a break with reality was perfect for his cover story. If she started telling people that Aria was really dead, no one would ever believe her.
He had it all figured out. However, I was one step ahead of him. I not only had Arnold to testify about how he helped cover up the murder, but I also had Julian Rodriguez who knew the truth, and, of course, Lauren. Julian did not want to testify, he was afraid of Jacob, but he was under subpoena. I thought better about calling him, however. I knew that he was so afraid of Jacob that he probably was going to lie.
As for the motive for killing Sophia, I had Calista.
She was going to testify, but after Lauren.
I asked Arnold a few more questions, and then Brent cross-examined him, and then he was on his way. Lauren was next on my list. She was going to testify about what she knew. And I knew that the prosecutor was going to cross-examine her stringently. Much more stringently than he did Arnold. After all, with Arnold, there wasn’t really much he could really ask him. But with Lauren, it was going to be a field day. After all, she was literally insane. Granted, at the moment, she was lucid again. The Bridges Recovery center was all that she needed to get straight. She’d been in there for the past three months, and the change in her was remarkable. She had gained back the 30 pounds that she apparently had lost when she got on the streets, and her hair was back the way it should be – full and lush. She looked 20 years younger, because she had given up smoking and drinking, and she was on meds that were tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until the doctors found just the right combination that made her schizophrenia go into remission for the moment. She really benefited from the lifestyle at that place – the yoga, the acupuncture, the nutritious food, the exercise, all of it. I was proud to say that she had blossomed. She had even found a job.
If she stayed on her meds, then there was a possibility that she would be able to have a somewhat normal life. And she needed to get a job, because she wanted to live in this city, and rents were sky high. And I wanted, more than anything, for her to be able to have a home of her own. I really wanted her to be off the streets.
Lauren took the stand. I had to admit, that the way that she was dressed – in a light cream suit, with a colorful top and scarf around her neck, combined with a pair of matching pumps, I could see the woman that she was before all of this happened. It helped that she was much better, with her skin and hair, and the lifestyle. But, at the moment, she had the elegant bearing that I imagined that she did before. She looked like a rich woman. I knew that appearance was everything, and I hoped that she would be able to make such an impression on the jury that they would believe her.
She raised her right hand, was sworn in, and I got to work.
“Please state your name for the record,” I said to her.
“Lauren Whitmore.”
“And you are the former wife of Jacob Whitmore, the father of the victim in this case, is that correct?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“Now, I would like to just get this out of the way. You have had problems with mental illness, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. I definitely have. I suffered from late onset schizophrenia. That means that I did not have any kind of symptoms of schizophrenia until I was 35 years old. And then, at the age of 35, I had a mental breakdown. There are many reasons for that, but I spent six months in a mental institution.”
“Now you stated that there were reasons for your mental breakdown. Can you tell the court what those reasons were?”
“Yes. My daughter, Aria, was murdered at the age of 14. I do not know who killed her, but I know that she was murdered. I found her, in her bedroom, and she had been hit on the head by a large rock. It was a rock that she got from a gift shop in a museum.”
“And after your daughter was murdered, what happened to you?”
“I couldn’t handle it. My mother always had problems with her mental state. I found out when I was an adult that she was a schizophrenic. And I’ve since read articles about how stress can bring on serious mental illnesses that a person might always have, lurking, and not made manifest. And then, when a person suffers from extreme stress, that illness does become manifest. That’s what my psychiatrist has told me.”
“And when you say you couldn’t handle it, what do you mean?”
“I mean that I went into an alternate reality. But, it was more like a twilight. I mean, I was with the real world, I could interact with my husband, my friends, all of that. But, at the same time, I saw my daughter out in the yard. That’s where she would visit me. Out in the yard, on the swing that we have out there. We have a swing that’s like a porch swing, and is on our back gazebo. And she would sit there with me for hours, her head on my shoulder. I would even see my mother, even though she’s been in a mental situation for years. But she would be out there with me too.”
“And what was your husband’s solution to these issues that you were having?”
“He gave me LSD. He gave me an article that stated that LSD was used to treat patients with mental problems. I didn’t really read the article. I just read the headline. So I agreed to let him give me this drug. If I would have read the article, I would’ve seen that LSD was being used to treat patients with depression, and that it was being used in micro doses, not large doses. He was my husband, and I believed everything he said, so I went ahead and let him give me large doses of LSD every day.”
“For how long did you take this LSD?” I asked her.
“For two weeks. For two weeks, I was taking large doses of LSD, and I was losing touch with reality more and more. And then, one day, I guess I completely lost touch with reality. Had a psychotic break. I had entered into a completely different reality than the one that was real. I was living in a completely different space. I really didn’t recognize anybody in my life, except for Aria. She was always with me. And that was when I went into the mental institution.”
“And for how long were you in a mental institution?”
“Six months.”
“And what happened after you were discharged from the mental institution?”
“When I got out of the mental institution, I got on a bus, and I went home.”
“What happened when you went home?”
“I saw a girl who looked like Aria. She looked very similar to Aria. She sounded exactly like her. But I knew that it wasn’t her. I asked a neighbor about it, because I thought that I was imagining the entire thing. And the neighbor told me that Aria had been in a car accident in Mexico, and that she had had plastic surgery, and that was the reason why she looked a little bit different. Apparently, nobody questioned the story. Not her teachers, not her friends, nobody. Also, this new girl, she was a piano prodigy. A musical prodigy. My daughter, she didn’t have musicality at all, so I was curious about that. Everybody was marveling about the fact that she had come out of this coma with these amazing abilities. And nobody really questioned that, either, because it had been known to happen. People have been known to come out of a coma with abilities that they had never had before. So everybody was going along with the story, I guess that nobody really thought that Jacob was lying about this, but I thought that he was. But I had to admit, because I had so many problems with my perception of reality, I thought that maybe I had imagined that Aria was killed. I didn’t know, I was very confused.”
“What happened when Jacob saw that you were there at the house?”
“He told me to leave. He told me that he had a restraining order against me, and that I couldn’t be there. So, I just left. I didn’t have any kind of will to fight. And I’ve been living on the streets ever since.” And then she shook her head. “I mean, I’m not living on the streets anymore. I managed to get a job. It’s just a small job, working at a nursing home. But it’s enough for me to be able to rent a room from a nice couple over in Sunset Cliffs. I mean, I don’t make a lot of money, and I can’t really drive Uber or Lyft or any of that, because of my background, so almost every penny I make goes to rent and food. But I am off the streets.”
My heart soared when she said that. That was all I really wanted for her.
I asked her a few more questions, and then it was time for Brent to cross examine.
And he immediately tore into her.
“Now, Ms. Whitmore, you admitted on direct examination that you did not really believe your eyes when you saw that there was a new girl who taken the place of Aria, isn’t that correct?” he demanded.
“Right. That’s right. I really didn’t believe that there was a new girl there.”
“And you admit that during that period of time that
you were having issues with your mental balance. Isn’t that right?”
“ Right. That’s exactly what I said.”
“Now isn’t it possible that you imagined the entire thing? Is it possible that you imagined that Aria was murdered, maybe you had a nightmare or something like that, or maybe your schizophrenia, which you admitted was late onset schizophrenia, was made manifest with no triggering event, and so you lost touch with reality and you only thought that your daughter was murdered?”
“ You mean, is it possible that my schizophrenia was not brought about by my daughter being murdered, but that it just randomly happened, and that made me imagine that my daughter was murdered?”
“Exactly. I know that I worded that question awkwardly, but that’s what I’m getting at. Is that possible?”
“Yes. That is possible.”
“So, you admit that it is possible that you imagined the entire thing? You just imagined that your daughter was killed by a large rock, and you just imagined that she was replaced by somebody new?”
“Yes. That is possible. But I don’t think so. I’ve come across some information, that made me know exactly why it was that my husband would’ve killed Aria in the first place.”
My ears perked up. Christian had gotten ahold of that 23 and Me test result, so I knew why Jacob had killed Aria. I wasn’t able to get these records on my own, however. I could not put them into evidence, because they were obtained illegally. When I asked the judge if I could go ahead and subpoena the records, he refused. Which was unfortunate, because I thought that maybe he would allow me that, since he was so liberal about everything else.
Presumption of Guilt Page 22