The Associate

by Rachel Sinclair

  I turned around and saw a slight young man ambling towards the witness stand. He was around 5’6” and probably didn’t weigh much more than 120 lbs. His hair was black and curly, his eyes were just as black and his skin was olive. He was dressed down, in blue jeans and a light-blue button down shirt, with sneakers on his feet.

  He glanced at me when he passed by the table, and stared hard at Erik. I caught him trying to intimidate Erik with his glare, so I stared right back at him. He glanced at me again, and then went to the witness stand and sat down.

  “What was that?” I asked Erik.

  “What was what?”

  “That stare-down he just gave you as he passed by you just now. You didn’t catch that?”

  Erik shrugged. “Ara hates me, of course. He wants to be the boss. He wants me out of the way. I told you that.”

  I shook my head and glanced over at Harper. Her gaze was fixated on Ara, so she didn’t even notice me trying to get her attention.

  “Okay,” I finally said to Erik. “I hope that’s all it is. If I find out something new on the stand, something that you didn’t tell me, I won’t be happy.” It was bad enough that I found out that Ara was going to testify that Erik and Shelly had a lover’s quarrel right in front of him. It was worse that Erik didn’t seem all that surprised about this when I told him about it.

  If was I blindsided by yet something else, I was going to have to take my client to the woodshed.

  Ara was sworn in, and the prosecutor asked him the preliminary questions about his name and whether he swore to tell the truth. He affirmed the oath and then stared more daggers at Erik. I looked at Erik and saw that he was giving Ara the exact same look that Ara was giving him, and I was irritated.

  If you know something, you better goddamned tell me, I wrote on a piece of paper.

  Erik said nothing but just shook his head and continued to stare.

  As for me, I had to concentrate on what was being said, so I turned my attention away from Erik and towards the weasel at the witness stand.

  “And how do you know the defendant?” Nick was asking him.

  “He’s my brother,” he said. “My half-brother.”

  I bit my lower lip and shook my head. Half-brother. And you didn’t think that this was a piece of information that we needed to know?

  I stood up. “Your honor, I would like to request a short recess to confer with my client.”

  Judge Clarion looked over at Nick, who was looking at me like the cat that ate the canary. “Mr. Wright, do you have any objections?”

  “None.”

  “Okay, then,” Judge Clarion said. “I think that we all need a break anyways, and this witness hasn’t been testifying long.” He looked at the clock. “I’ll dismiss the jury for a short recess, and let’s all meet back here at 2:30.” It was currently 2:10.

  The Judge got off the bench and disappeared into his chambers.

  As for me, I tapped Erik on the shoulder. “Come with me,” I said. “We need to go into the witness room and talk.”

  Harper and I got up and Erik followed along behind.

  We got to a witness room at the far end of the hall. There was nothing in that room but a long table and several chairs. Like all witness rooms in this courthouse, the paint was a putrid beige with peeling paint and the legs of the table were metal. This was definitely a no-frills room, designed for one purpose – to kill one’s client. It was a place where you could take your client to the proverbial woodshed, as I was planning on doing right at that moment.

  I sat down and gestured to Erik to do the same. He quietly obeyed.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you think to tell me that Ara Abayan was your half-brother?”

  Erik shrugged. “I didn’t think that it was relevant.”

  “It might be relevant. It might not be. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s a fact that you didn’t disclose. I’m just wondering what other facts you haven’t disclosed.”

  Erik glared at me. “No. Why do you keep asking me these questions?”

  “Because you keep lying to me, that’s why.”

  “I’m not lying to you. I just haven’t told you certain things. That’s not really lying.”

  “That’s a distinction without a difference,” Harper chimed in. “And you’re smart enough to know that. Now, this is strike two, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “What was strike one?”

  “Strike one is that Ara is going to testify that you were having an affair with Shelly and that you and Shelly were having a lover’s quarrel right in front of him.” Harper took a breath. “Now, cross-examining Ara is going to be more difficult than it was going to be before.”

  “What do you mean? Why is cross examining going to be more difficult than before?”

  “Because,” I said. “I was going to make him look bad, because it was going to be difficult to believe that you and Shelly would have a lover’s quarrel in front of one of your colleagues. But he’s not just a colleague. He’s your brother. People have fights all the time in front of their family members. Not so much in front of their co-workers. I’m still going to cross-examine him on that same point, but it is going to lose its punch.”

  “Not only that,” Harper said, “but we’re going to have a hard time convincing the jury that your own brother would lie about you on the stand. Unless we have the time to draw some kind of Cain and Abel analogy, that is.”

  I stood up. “The thing is, we didn’t prepare for this witness as if he was your brother. We prepared for him as if he was some kind of unrelated witness. Unrelated to you, that is. Why didn’t you tell us? I don’t understand that. Why?”

  Erik shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I didn’t tell you because nobody is supposed to know. He wasn’t supposed to say anything about that, either. Our father is going to be extremely angry with him. Hopefully he won’t be as angry with me.”

  “I don’t understand?” I was confused, and getting moreso with every word he spoke. “Why does Sargis care if people know that guy out there is your half brother?”

  Erik crossed his arms and glared. “Because my mother doesn’t know about it. That’s why. My mother doesn’t know that my father had a kid with another woman while he was married to her. My mother and father are still together. They’ve been married since they were 18 years old.” He shook his head. “My father is going to cut him off at the knees. The guy below him is going to become the boss at this rate. My father will just go on down the line until he finds somebody who is loyal to him. Ara obviously isn’t that person.”

  “Who is the person who is below Ara on the hierarchy?” I asked Erik.

  “His name is Narek Bedrossian,” Erik said. “My father wants him in charge, anyhow. He would rather have Narek in charge than me.”

  “Why is that?”

  Erik opened his mouth, but the bailiff poked his head into the witness room. “Time’s up,” he said. “The jury has been seated again and Ara is already on the stand.”

  I groaned and rolled my eyes. I hated being blind-sided by clients, and, once again, I was being blind-sided. This little worm Erik wasn’t the first guy to snow me, and he wouldn’t be the last.

  I still had that question in my mind, however. Why does Sargis want Narek Bedrossian in charge of the clan instead of Erik and, apparently, Ara? This was the first I was hearing of this particular angle, and I felt like killing Erik. Before the trial began, I impressed upon him the importance of not only being thorough, but of being honest. I didn’t really expect this kid to be honest, although I wanted him to be. I did hope that he would be thorough. That would mean not lying and not omitting, period. So far, he seemed to be doing both, especially omitting.

  The three of us hustled to our seats. I caught the eye of some of the jurors and saw that they looked annoyed. Since they were the ones who were going to decide Erik’s fate, I would rather that they not be annoyed. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Ara was on the st
and, smirking at his half-brother. Erik was staring daggers at Ara. I wondered about these two. They were half-brothers, but was there some kind of drama between them? There often was in these cases – a kid born out of wedlock, the wife of the kid’s father having no clue that her husband had been fooling around. That caused all kinds of drama and strife, in my experience.

  Ara had reason to bring Erik down – he wanted Erik’s job. But did he also have his own personal reasons for bringing Erik down?

  I guess I was soon going to find that out.

  Chapter 22

  Nick resumed his direct-examination of Ara, peppering him with questions, and I was ready to object if he started to get into anything that Ara did for the organization. Any kind of criminality questions could not be asked, according to the judge, because the jury could reasonably infer that any kind of criminal activity Ara did would be the same kind of criminal activity that Erik did. After all, Ara was, temporarily, in Erik’s position at the company.

  “Now,” Nick said, and I concentrated on every word he said. After his sneakiness in the opening statement, telling the jury casually that Erik was involved in crime, I didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him. “You are the half-brother of the defendant, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Ara said, nodding his head. “I am.”

  “And, at the moment, your position with the Armenian Power network, the division that is located on the East Side, is?”

  “My position is that of leader of the Gregorian clan,” he said. “The Kansas City Division of the Gregorian clan.”

  “So, you have repeated exposure to the defendant, correct?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

  “And you’ve been around the defendant and the deceased, Ms. McMason, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “I’ve been around them separately and together.”

  “When you’ve been around them together, how do they act?”

  “They act like two people who are doing each other,” he said. “But I wouldn’t say that they were in love or nothing like that. Just sex.”

  I looked over at Erik, and he was shaking his head. He looked up at the ceiling and then back at Ara, and he shook his head again.

  “Did you get the feeling that it was just sex for both Erik and Shelly? Or did you get the impression that perhaps either Shelly wanted more out of the relationship or that Erik wanted more?”

  “Objection,” I said, standing up. “The way that this question is worded, it calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Clarion said. “Counselor, please rephrase the question.”

  “Thank you, your honor,” Nick said. “I will do just that.” Then he turned back to Ara. “Did Erik Gregorian say anything to you that would indicate that he wanted more out of the relationship than did Shelly?”

  “Yes,” Ara said.

  “And what did he say to you about that?”

  “He told me that he wanted Shelly to be his girlfriend.”

  “And was she just as interested in that?”

  “No. She wasn’t.”

  “Did Erik tell you that she wasn’t interested?”

  “Yes. Erik told me that, because he told me that he had found out that Shelly was living with this Muslim dude named Yasin Ahmadi.”

  “Yasin Ahmadi,” Nick said, as if he had never heard that name before. “So, Erik told you that Shelly was engaged to a person named Yasin Ahmadi. Did you see the two of them argue about this issue?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “When did you see them argue about Shelly’s relationship with Yasin?”

  “When I was over at Erik’s house, September 30, the day before Shelly was killed. I was paying Erik a visit when Shelly came over unannounced. They went on Erik’s porch, but I could hear what they were saying to each other, and I could hear that they were arguing about Shelly being engaged to Yasin.”

  “Was this the only time that you heard them argue?”

  “About this topic, yeah, but I head them argue about many things over the past few months. Ever since Shelly came to work for the Armenian Power, they’ve been arguing.”

  “You say that the two have been arguing ever since Shelly came to work for the Armenian Power. That implies that Erik and Shelly knew one another before she came to work for the Power. Would that be fair to say?”

  “Yes. That would definitely be fair to say.”

  I hung my head and sighed. What next? What will I find out next? What else has Erik neglected to tell me? I suddenly understood just how Shelly came to work for the Gregorian clan. He blamed it on an associate named Vardan Dorian, but I suddenly knew that Vardan Dorian wasn’t the person who brought Shelly into the clan. It wasn’t Sargis, either.

  It was Erik himself.

  And I was about to find out just how Erik and Shelly really met.

  Chapter 23

  I sat there and silently steamed while Ara was on the stand. I was used to being blindsided. It was difficult to find out everything there is to know about people and their relationships, even for experienced investigators such as Tom Garrett. Garrett apparently didn’t find the link between Erik and Ara, and he didn’t figure out that Erik and Shelly knew one another before Shelly came to work for Erik. That was fine. I was going to have to have a talk with him about sharpening up his investigation skills a bit, but he wasn’t the person that I was really angry with.

  The person that I wanted to kill, right at that moment, was Erik himself. He was digging his own grave, really, by not telling me these important bits of information. Who knows? Maybe that was all a part of his plan somehow. Blind-side me every which way, put me in the blender and see what shakes out.

  I was going to have to focus, however. Focus and try to figure out how to approach this guy. I had a feeling that Erik wasn’t telling the truth about his relationship with Shelly, either. He insisted that they were just friends. Yet, he had been lying all along. What was stopping him from lying now?

  Nothing. That was what was stopping him from lying now. Nothing at all. The kid was lying with impunity. Hell, he probably did kill Shelly. It sure was looking that way.

  “Now, tell me how long Erik and Shelly knew one another.”

  “They go back several years. When Shelly was in college, she met Erik. He was down in Columbia for a football game, and the two of them met in a bar. Harpo’s Bar in Columbia, Missouri. As far as I know, though, they were only friends from that point on. Then, when Shelly moved to Kansas City, Erik invited her to come and work for the organization. He knew that she was a computer hacker, and he needed her skills.”

  “I see. So, the two of them met in Columbia several years ago. And do you know when they began a romantic relationship?”

  “I believe that their relationship became romantic when Shelly moved to Kansas City last January.”

  “And Erik never knew about Yasin, is that correct?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. He never knew that Yasin existed. Yasin was never around, anyhow. He’s in medical school, studying to be a doctor, so he was never around.”

  Nick paced back and forth while he interrogated Ara. “And did Erik ever tell you anything about a baby?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  My heart started to pound as I remembered Shelly’s stricken face in front of her video camera. The bruise on her eye, the reference to the unnamed person who hit her, and her nightmares about “the baby.”

  I drew a breath, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

  Which it did.

  “And what did Erik tell you about a baby?”

  “He told me that he got Shelly pregnant and that he forced her to have an abortion.”

  Chapter 24

  I put my thumb and forefinger and pinched the bridge of my upper nose as I stared down at the defense table. I couldn’t take much more of this. This testimony just kept getting worse and worse. And worse. Erik, for his part, was sitting there next to me, as still as a statue. H
e wasn’t writing me outraged notes, which is what I expected he would do, if he were innocent and this Ara was lying through his teeth. I had the distinct feeling, as I looked at him staring at the ceiling, that Ara wasn’t lying through his teeth. On the contrary, I had the feeling that Ara was telling the truth and my idiot client was the one who had been lying to Harper and me all this time.

  I wrote a note to Erik. Is that true? About the baby?

  No. He shook his head. It wasn’t like that. She didn’t know if I was the father or Yasin was, so she aborted the baby. She didn’t want to deal with that.

  I sighed. I was going to have to cross-examine this guy, but I was feeling completely defeated. I had clients who lied to me before, of course. That’s what criminals do. They lie. This was nothing new. But, somehow, I was outraged all the same. I looked over at Harper, and I could read, in her body language, that she was just as annoyed. She was sitting very rigidly in her chair, she kept closing her eyes and she was taking deep breaths. Like she was trying to calm down.

  Her body cues were very subtle, however, too subtle for the jury to pick up. That was one thing that we were always trained to do – never let the jury see us sweat. As defense attorneys, we are never to give away how we were feeling, especially if things were going south. As this trial was, second by second.

  “So,” Nick said, seeing that he had triumphantly drawn blood with this witness. “Erik forced Shelly to get an abortion. Do you believe that Erik killed Shelly?”

  “Objection,” I said, standing up. “Calls for a conclusion.”

  “Sustained.”

  “I have nothing further, your honor.” Nick smiled at me smugly as he sat down.

  I got to my feet and went over to Ara. “Mr. Abayan,” I began. “You just told the court that you heard my client and Ms. McMason arguing on occasion. Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Is it fair to say that people have disagreements with one another from time to time. Not just Ms. McMason and my client, but people in general. They have arguments and heated words. Is that fair to say?”