The Associate

by Rachel Sinclair

  I decided not to mention Sargis, because I had no idea if I was going to call him or not. While he was on my witness list, therefore I reserved the right to call him to the stand, I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to call him. Therefore, I thought that it was best that I didn’t mention him in my opening statement.

  “So, you see, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “My client was one of many individuals who might or might not have had the reason to murder Ms. McMason. The prosecutor in this case will try to convince you that Mr. Gregorian was the one. But I’m here to tell you that the evidence against Mr. Gregorian is flimsy at best, and that there were several other individuals who had even more reason to want Ms. McMason dead.” I nodded my head. “Thank you very much, and again, I value your service.”

  At that, I took a seat next to Erik, who put his arm around me and squeezed. “Good job,” he whispered. “I think you got ‘em.”

  I thought differently, but I didn’t say as much. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “At any rate, we gave the jury something to chew on.”

  Everybody took a break, and then we all came back in. It was 2 PM, and the prosecutor was ready to call his first witnesses. The first person he called was Gregory Barter, their expert on the car and the brakes. He droned on and on about how it was that he was able to ascertain that the brakes were tampered with. I didn’t care. I knew that Nick had to call this dude on, otherwise the jury might have come to the conclusion that Shelly died simply because of a tragic accident.

  I didn’t object to this testimony, nor did I try to cross him. There was no reason to. Our expert also ascertained that the brakes were tampered with, so it wasn’t like we had a dueling expert. Not only that, but our expert, Nick Savolo, determined that there was nothing else that was wrong with the car.

  After he gave his testimony, Judge Clarion asked me if I had any questions for the witness.

  “No, your honor,” I said, standing up.”

  “Counselor, you may call your next witness,” Judge Clarion said, addressing Nick.

  “State calls Officer O’Reilly,” he said, continuing the dog and pony show. I had told Nick that I was prepared to stipulate that Shelly was murdered. I didn’t know why Nick had to go through the rigamarole of showing that Shelly’s death wasn’t accidental, but, apparently, he found it necessary.

  I doodled on my yellow pad while Officer O’Reilly talked about arriving at the scene and interviewing the witnesses after the accident. He couldn’t go into just what the witnesses told him, but he could talk about the condition of the body and how the body had to be cut out of the car. Personally, I found his entire testimony to be more prejudicial than probative – Shelly died, she was murdered, nobody disputed that, yet the prosecutor got to go ahead and show pictures of the death scene. If the person was murdered, pictures of her death shouldn’t be deemed relevant, in my opinion. All that it did was gross out the jury and make them hate the defendant, whoever the defendant happened to be – in this case, as Nick dramatically got out his death photos, the person that the jury was glaring at was Erik.

  “Can you tell me how Ms. McMason died?” Nick asked, as I heard an audible sob coming from the back of the room. I looked over and saw Emma McMason, Shelly’s mother, crying into a wad of Kleenex, and I had to stifle a roll of the eyes.

  “Objection,” I said. “I stipulate that Ms. McMason’s car crash was a murder. I fail to see how dragging this officer out to emphasize that fact, along with showing these death photos, aids the jury in this case. As I see it, this entire testimony is highly prejudicial and I frankly do not see the relevance in it.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “Move along, counselor.”

  Nick nodded his head. “I have nothing further for this witness.”

  “Counselor,” Judge Clarion said to me. “Do you have anything for this witness?”

  “No, your honor,” I said, standing up.

  “The witness is excused.”

  Then came Lena Williams. She was the editor for the Kansas City Star, and she was the one who was in charge of Shelly’s assignment. Her testimony was important, because she could establish that Shelly was going to publish a story about Erik’s operation, therefore she was the one who was going to establish Erik’s motive for killing Shelly.

  I was going to have to try to break her down.

  Nick did a good job with Lena, as far as establishing Shelly’s work assignment. She testified that she had given Shelly the assignment, and that Shelly had reported back to her on a weekly basis. She ended her direct testimony by stating that Shelly was, indeed, about to go ahead and publish her findings from Erik’s organization at the time that she was murdered.

  I had to admit, she was good.

  Still, it was my job to try to break her down.

  I walked up to her, clearing my throat. “Ms. Williams,” I said. “Good afternoon.”

  She nodded her head politely. “Good afternoon.”

  “Now,” I began. “You just testified on direct examination that you are an editor at the Kansas City Star. Is that correct?’

  “Yes.”

  “And that you are, in fact, the editor who was in charge of Ms. McMason’s expose of my client’s activities, is that also correct?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t going to give me an inch. She was just going to answer my questions with a “yes” or “no” answer and that was that. I was going to have to draw her out a bit more.

  I turned to the jury and then turned to face her again. “Isn’t it true that the story was not going to be published in the Kansas City Star for another six months after Ms. McMason was killed?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “Any story has to go through a process of editing and fact-finding and verification. That’s true with any story.”

  “So, then, it’s not true what the prosecutor said when he claimed to the jury that Shelly McMason was close to publishing her findings at the time of her death.”

  She straightened up her back. “Yes, but you have to understand. She was getting to the end of her assignment when she was killed. The story wasn’t going to break until we went through all the proper channels. But that doesn’t mean that Shelly wasn’t in danger at that time, because she obviously was.”

  I paced around. “Did Shelly tell you that she was at all nervous about publishing her findings?”

  She shook her head. “No. She never told me that.”

  “So, she never thought that somebody in the Gregorian clan might want to kill her?”

  “No, she never told me that.”

  “So, it is safe to say that Shelly wasn’t even aware that somebody in the Gregorian clan might have found out about her?”

  “I believe that’s true. All that I know is that Shelly never said a word to me about anybody finding out about what she was really doing for the Gregorian clan.”

  I started to pace, thinking that I might be getting somewhere. “So, Shelly wasn’t aware that somebody might be trying to kill her, and her articles about the Gregorian clan were not due to be published for an additional six months. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And, in all actuality, the story wasn’t killed in the end. Is that right?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re still going to run the story. Correct?”

  “Of course. Just because Shelly was killed doesn’t mean that the story was also killed.”

  I grinned. I had her on the run, only she didn’t quite know it yet. “Just because Shelly was killed doesn’t mean that the story was also killed. So, Shelly’s death didn’t make a difference in whether the story ran or not, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” she said, nodding her head. “We have her notes and the rough draft for her feature. Now the story is in the hands of the fact-finders and the researchers. The people who double-check all of her sources and meticulously ensure that nothing that is printed is false or slanderous in any way.”
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  “And, really, the fact that Shelly died in a such a spectacular way is a actually a boon to the newspaper, is that right?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Shelly’s death and the publicity surrounding it is going to get more eyes on the story, isn’t that right?” I felt as if I was getting into my groove, and, considering the fact that this was my first trial in quite a long time, it felt wonderful.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “And your paper is going to actually play up the fact that Shelly died getting the story, isn’t that right?”

  “In what way?”

  “You’re going to contact the local media about this story when it breaks, and you’re going to tell the media that Shelly died getting the story. Shelly, a pretty blonde sorority girl, died getting the story. That’s a pretty big deal. I would imagine that will be a selling point for your newspaper.”

  “I don’t like to think of it that way.”

  “Oh, but you do have to think of that way, isn’t that correct? You’re working for a business, a business that runs on publicity. Shelly’s death has been gold for your business, am I right about that?”

  “Well…”

  I went over to my newspaper clippings on Shelly’s death. “I would like for you to review what has been marked as Defendant’s Exhibit A,” I said. “Are these newspaper headlines that your paper has run about Shelly’s death?”

  She looked at them closely. “Yes, yes they are.”

  “And there are five different headlines about her death, am I correct?”

  She looked at all the headlines and counted. “Yes. Five different headlines.”

  “And these headlines are all in the front section of the newspaper, is that correct? Not the Metro Section, not the Entertainment Section, not the Sports Section, but the front section. Isn’t that right?”

  She nodded her head. “It would seem so.”

  “So, five different times, your paper has run a screaming headline about Shelly’s death. Is that safe to say?”

  “I wouldn’t call them screaming headlines, no.”

  “You don’t call one-inch letters above the fold, all caps, to be screaming?”

  “No.” She crossed her arms. I could tell that she was getting defensive, but I didn’t care. I was going to press on. That was my job.

  “I would say that it looks to me, as a lay person, that your paper is really milking Shelly’s death along for ratings. Or the newspaper equivalent of ratings.”

  “Objection,” Nick said, standing up. “Counselor is using prejudicial language. Nobody is saying that the newspaper is milking Shelly’s death but Mr. Harrington.”

  “Overruled,” Judge Clarion said. “You may proceed, counselor.”

  I cleared my throat. “So, your newspaper has run five different articles, all of them with headlines in large capital letters above the fold, about Shelly’s death. Is it safe to say that, when you publish Shelly’s expose of the Gregorian clan that you’re going to revisit how Shelly died?”

  “Are you accusing us of having her killed?” she asked, her arms folded in front of her. “To sensationalize her articles about the Gregorian clan?”

  Truth be told, I hadn’t even thought about that. But she opened the door to this line of inquiry, so…. “Did you have her killed?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Shelly was one of our most respected reporters.”

  “Most respected reporters? She was brand-new. She was hired in January and was assigned this investigation in May of this year. Five months she worked for your paper before you gave her this dangerous assignment. Isn’t it true that, at the time that Shelly was working on her assignment, she was one of your most junior members?”

  She visibly squirmed in her chair. “Yes,” she said. “That is true.”

  “And why would you have assigned such an important story to somebody who was just hired onto your staff? Why assign such a dangerous story to a 23-year-old who was a new graduate from journalism school? She hadn’t interned for your paper previously. Why would you give her this assignment?”

  She spoke directly into the microphone. “Her father asked us to give her an important assignment,” she said. “And her father is one of the paper’s largest benefactors.”

  Now I’m getting somewhere. “Oh, her father intervened, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Lena said, nodding her head. “Her father intervened.”

  “And did her father directly tell you that he wanted his daughter to work on this assignment?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He did.”

  “So, you were actually in contact with Andrew McMason, is that what you’re saying?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Please answer verbally,” I said. “The court reporter can’t transcribe head nodding.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I am saying.”

  “And you told Mr. McMason, then, what it is that Shelly was going to be doing? What assignment she was going to be completing?”

  “Yes. I explained it all.”

  “And he encouraged it.”

  “He did.”

  “Did he explain to you, at any time, that he was not on speaking terms with his daughter?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Oh, so he never came out and told you that he had cut Shelly off because he didn’t approve of the man who she was dating. Is that your testimony?”

  “I was unaware that he had a problem with Shelly.”

  I was getting evidence that I could tie into my theory of the case, and that was what I was aiming for. “So, he’s a father who not only called you to ask you to give Shelly a dangerous assignment but he also didn’t care that the assignment that you gave Shelly brought with it a high risk of death?”

  “I didn’t see her as having a high risk of death,” Lena said. “Not if she was trained correctly.”

  “But she wasn’t trained correctly, was she? You just threw her into this assignment, sink or swim, didn’t you?”

  “No,” she said indignantly.

  “No? Let me ask you this, Ms. Williams. Did Shelly have any kind of experience doing this type of thing? Infiltrating dangerous organizations in order to get a story. Had she ever done anything like that before?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “No. She had never infiltrated an organization in order to get a story before. That is your testimony, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  I took a deep breath. “And, in fact, Shelly had never done any kind of dangerous assignment before this. Isn’t that right?”

  “Right,” she said into her microphone.

  “Her experience, her prior experience, before coming to work for you, consisted of working for The Maneater, covering college bands and events around Columbia, Missouri, for her college newspaper. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So, prior to working for the Kansas City Star, Shelly worked for the school newspaper, and, to your knowledge, she never covered any kind of dangerous topics in Columbia, isn’t that right?”

  “Right.”

  I turned back to her. “So, it’s your testimony that the only reason why you put Shelly, a neophyte, on this major dangerous assignment is because her father asked you do so. Right?”

  She nodded her head. “Right.”

  “Not because she had the experience, and not because she was prepared and not because she was the person who was right for the job. But only because her father wanted her on this assignment. Correct?”

  “Well, she did have hacking skills,” she said. “Which set her apart from everybody else on the newspaper staff. We needed somebody for this job who had the right skills for that organization. So, that was the main reason why we sent her over to Erik’s organization.”

  “Without the proper training,” I said. “Right?”

  “Well…”

  “Well, what?”

  “That’s not true. She did
go through training.”

  “What did her training consist of?”

  “We gave her a background review of the Gregorian clan and gave her a list of things that she should never do or say.”

  I laughed out loud. “A review and a list. Seriously? That’s the training that she got from her bosses at the newspaper? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “We didn’t want her to seem too rehearsed.”

  I shook my head and opened my mouth and shut it, several times. “I can’t…” I shook my head, hoping that the jury would see how exasperated I was with this woman. Then I looked over at Nick. “Your witness.”

  Nick got to his feet, as he obviously wanted to redirect Lena. “Ms. Williams,” he said, smoothly. “Why did you give Shelly this dangerous assignment?”

  “Because I believed in her. I was impressed with her. She had excellent grades in college, and, most importantly, she had hacking skills. I needed somebody who had skills that would be valuable in that organization. Nobody else at the newspaper had these skills, just Shelly. That was why I assigned her to the Gregorian clan.”

  “And you didn’t give her that assignment just because her father asked you to, isn’t that right?”

  “Right.”

  “I have nothing further.”

  I was going to stand up and do a re-cross examination, but I thought better about it. As far as I was concerned, I drew blood on my original cross-examination of Lena. No need to beat a dead dog.

  “Counselor?” Judge Clarion asked, looking right at me.

  “I have nothing further for this witness,” I said.

  “Ms. Williams, you are excused,” Judge Clarion said, looking at her.

  She stepped down.

  “Mr. Wright, call your next witness,” Judge Clarion said.

  “The state calls Ara Abayan.”