Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  A: “Yes, almost instantaneously. You have to remember, it was dark out, and the moon was obscured by clouds. He made it into the woods, almost immediately.”

  Q: “Did you hear the gunshot?”

  A: “From the bullet that killed Juarez?”

  Q: “Yes.”

  A: “Yes, I heard it.”

  Q: “But you didn’t see the shooting.”

  A: “No, sir. I did not. I don’t think anyone did.”

  Q: “Except the killer himself.”

  I was waiting for John Q. to object to that—I would have, it was speculative. But he knew now how Judge McBee felt about Tom Miller. John Q. wanted this over. He stayed in his seat, quiet.

  A: “Except the actual killer, that would be correct.”

  Q: “Go back a few minutes from when you saw the dead body of Reynaldo Juarez, Sheriff Miller, to the time when you heard Agent Jerome yelling and saw Juarez fleeing. Did you see the others chase after Juarez?”

  A: “Of course. That’s what I said.”

  Q: “Yes, you did. Do you recall if any particular agent was leading the pack? Or was it pretty much every man for himself?”

  A: “It was every man for himself. The whole thing was a mess, we were lucky no one else was shot in the confusion, there could have been a terrible cross fire—like what happened during the raid on the compound,” Miller said pointedly. “But to answer your question—there was one agent who was ahead of the others.”

  Q: “How far ahead?”

  A: “Twenty yards at the beginning, I’d say. It could have been more.”

  I was finished. Strolling over to the jury box, I leaned on the railing, so that when Miller answered my next question, he’d be looking directly at the jurors, and they at him.

  Q: “Can you identify that agent for the jury?”

  A: “Yes. It was Agent Jerome. He was ahead of the rest of us.”

  A good lawyer knows when the best thing he can do with a witness is get him off the stand as quickly as possible. John Q.’s a good lawyer. He had a few points to make first.

  “Before the raid began on the drug compound, Agent Jerome gave some instructions. Do you recall that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Miller answered.

  “He stipulated that Reynaldo Juarez was to be taken alive, didn’t he? The entire reason for this was to capture him, not to kill him. Do you recall him saying that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Under no circumstances was Juarez to be killed,” John Q. repeated. “He said it was their supreme objective, on orders directly from the attorney general. Is that true? Captured, not killed.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “He was very forceful about that. That Juarez not be killed.”

  “Yes,” Miller acknowledged. “He said he wanted to take Juarez alive. That the raid would be a bust if he were killed.”

  “You saw the prisoner running away when he escaped, Sheriff Miller. Did you have a good view of him?”

  Miller nodded. “Yes, I saw him. I wouldn’t say my view was particularly good, under the circumstances. But I did see him.”

  “Did he have a gun—Juarez? Was he armed?”

  Miller thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. But I couldn’t swear to it.”

  Kate and I reconnoitered in my office at the end of the day. Nora was nowhere in sight. For that I was grateful, and relieved. She hadn’t been in court, either. Perhaps she had taken my admonitions to heart. I hoped.

  “How’d you do?” Kate asked.

  “Good. Miller’s my kind of witness.”

  “A dagger to the heart, huh?”

  “Dead center.” I grinned.

  “Well, I was busy, too.” She pulled out her notepad. “The Nevada casinos are not behind the purchase. They don’t want to have anything to do with Indian gambling, except to get rid of it whenever and wherever they can.”

  “Okay, we figured that. Any other sources? What about other tribes?”

  “There are rich tribes, and there are poor tribes. Not much in between. The rich tribes are rich because they have mineral rights and get money from the royalties, or because they have gambling. The tribes with money I’ve checked on are the ones whose money comes from gambling.”

  “That sounds like the right approach.”

  “Thank you,” she said sarcastically. “I checked with about two dozen tribes that have gambling on their reservations, both in California and other states. Some of these tribes are making an amazing amount of money. You wouldn’t believe how much. Hundreds of millions of dollars. If this tribe could tap into one-tenth of that, they’d be sitting pretty.”

  “Anyway…”

  “I’m getting there, hold your horses.” She closed her notebook. “None of these tribes have been contacted by the White Horse Nation.”

  “None?”

  “Not a one.”

  That was a surprise.

  “Oh, and by the way, the BIA isn’t funding it, either. The tribe gave them a check for a hundred fifty K recently, as a deposit on the purchase. The rest is due six months from then, and the guy I talked to in the regional office in Sacramento felt they were going to come up with the money.”

  “Where are they getting it, then?” I asked as another thought came to me. “Buying the property is only the tip of the iceberg. They’d have to build a casino, outfit it, the whole schmear. That’s got to be millions. Maybe tens of millions.”

  “Well, here’s a rumor that might be interesting.”

  I waited.

  “Juarez’s operation might have been tunneling money to the tribe. Which is what you thought. But so far that’s only a rumor.”

  That rocked me. “That would be a hell of a parlay. Drug running and gambling. A great way to launder money.”

  “You bet.”

  My mind was spinning. “Follow through on this connection. Maybe there’s something there.”

  “Something with Jerome?”

  “Somebody gave him half a million dollars. It wasn’t for his good looks.”

  “Do you think they could all be connected?”

  “I don’t know what to think. And to be honest, I don’t want to start turning over stones I don’t have to turn over. I’ve got a good case. I don’t want to muddy the waters.”

  The ballistics expert was one of the state’s top people. John Q. and I had stipulated in advance to his expertise. He testified that the bullet that had killed Juarez could not be traced to any particular weapon, because the casings had been stripped when it had slammed into the tree. All he could say for sure was that it was 9mm., a full-metal jacket, and that it was the bullet that had killed Juarez—DNA taken from blood traces on it matched Juarez’s.

  Winston Kim was a hostile witness. He was testifying under subpoena, which meant I could question him more aggressively than is normally allowed. (He was slated to be a friendly witness for the defense, so John Q. stipulated in advance that he wouldn’t be cross-examining him.)

  “Agent Kim,” I started out, “you are the man in charge of the DEA’s investigation into the killing of Reynaldo Juarez?”

  “I am the agent in charge, yes.”

  He wasn’t going to be a good witness for me, so I wanted to get him on and off.

  “Did Agent Jerome violate departmental procedures when he authorized the raid on that compound? Wasn’t he supposed to be breaking up a drug deal, and capturing the people involved in the process?”

  “Yes,” Kim said reluctantly. He was scrupulously avoiding looking at Jerome. Jerome wasn’t looking at him, either. There was no love lost between them—Jerome had disgraced the agency—but Kim didn’t want to help me, either. We had tramped his investigation, and that made him look bad.

  “He shouldn’t have gone in there the way he did, should he?”

  “I can’t answer that categorically. I wasn’t there.”

  “Going by the reports, if you had been there, would you have gone in?”

  “I can’t
say. Judgments are made in the field. They’re made fast. You go with the best information you have.”

  “Then why was Agent Jerome transferred to a lesser position? Isn’t he being punished?”

  “Punished isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “Banished? Gotten out of the way? Don’t bother answering that question.” I moved on. “Going strictly by the book, taking the human factor out of play, meaning emotion or sentiment towards the defendant, were Agent Jerome’s actions on that night grounds for discipline?”

  “We don’t make decisions strictly by the book. These are human beings, not robots.”

  “Grounds for dismissal? Again, by the written rules under which you operate.”

  Again, with reluctance: “Possibly.”

  “So he did screw up.”

  “He didn’t follow the exact directions he was given. But he was the leader in the field, it was his call. He captured a man who had been on our ten-most-wanted list,” Kim said in Jerome’s defense. “That was important to us.”

  His agency suspends the man internally, but defends him to the world externally. The bureaucracy at its worst.

  “Are DEA agents issued ammunition, Agent Kim?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “They don’t have to buy it. It’s provided for them, free of charge.”

  “Yes.”

  I glanced at my notes. “The ammunition of choice for automatic weapons in such a situation as this one was are 147-grain hydroshocks. Federal hollow points. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Under these circumstances, would an agent use a full-metal-jacket-type bullet?”

  “No.”

  “Would an agent ever use a full-metal-jacket bullet?”

  Kim nodded. “For his own personal use, perhaps.”

  “His own personal use? Like shooting somebody when he isn’t on the job? Like what, moonlighting?”

  “For target practice,” Kim answered angrily, stung by my accusation. “Range qualifying, that sort of thing.”

  “But you would provide that ammunition to him for those purposes, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kim admitted. “We would.”

  My next witness, Neil Cohen, had been Jerome’s personal trainer in L.A. A tall man in his late twenties, he wore his long hair in a ponytail, sported hoop earrings in both ears, and was built along the lean, sinewy lines of a championship beach volleyballer, rather than having the bulkiness of a weight lifter.

  “How many days did you work out with Mr. Jerome?” I asked.

  “Six days a week, unless he was unavailable.”

  “How long a session?”

  “Two hours. Sometimes more. If we went on a long ride, or a long run, it could go as long as four hours.”

  “That’s a lot of working out.”

  “He was dedicated.”

  “Sterling Jerome was in good shape.”

  “Good shape?” Cohen scoffed at that description. “He was in awesome shape.”

  “Was he training for something specific, or did he just want to be in great shape?”

  “Both. He was a physical-fitness freak, like me, and we were training for the Ironman.”

  “That’s a triathlon?”

  Cohen nodded. “In Hawaii. It’s the Super Bowl of triathlons.”

  “What does it cover?”

  “It starts out with a two-and-a-half-mile ocean swim—no wet suits, fins, or anything artificial that can help—then that’s followed by a hundred-and-twelve-mile bike ride, finishing off with a marathon.”

  “You run twenty-six and a quarter miles after the swim and the bicycling. One directly after the other. No breaks in between.”

  “None. You power through, all the way.”

  “That must be grueling.”

  He laughed. “It’s brutal, man.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “The winner’s time’ll be under ten hours. A good time’s twelve hours.” Cohen glanced over at Jerome, who was feigning indifference. “Sterling would’ve busted that, easy.”

  I was looking at the jury as I questioned Cohen. They were agog at this kind of physical prowess, and by extension, what it indicated about the powers of the man who possessed it. “You’d have to be in fabulous shape to even think about trying it.”

  “It’s not for the weak at heart,” Cohen agreed.

  “Or the weak in body.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Jerome was in shape for something that hard? He would have finished it?”

  “For sure,” Cohen said enthusiastically. “Without question. He might’ve placed in his age group.”

  “What’s he best at, swimming, biking, or running?”

  “He’s good at all of ’em,” Cohen said, “but running’s his main thing. He ran the half in college.”

  “He was a collegiate runner?” I wanted to make sure the jury heard this.

  “He sure was.”

  “He’s fast, then.”

  “Yeah, he’s fast on his feet. Faster at running than me over the short haul, and I’m pretty fast.”

  “So if he was chasing after somebody, the average person, even a man in pretty good shape, he’d run him down quickly.”

  “The average person? He’d run that sucker into the ground.”

  Another hostile witness was up next—Walter Dutton, Jerome’s second-in-command on the raid. My interrogation of him was brief and to the point.

  “After Reynaldo Juarez was arrested and in your custody. how many people had access to him? He was locked up in your command trailer, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you answer the first part of my question, too? How many people had access to him?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly.”

  “Every agent who was there?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Only a few of you who were in charge, and needed immediate access to him?”

  “Yes.” He waited a moment, then added, “That was how it was set up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It was a mess out there, logistically. We had wounded to attend to, the other prisoners. It wasn’t a neat package.”

  “So what’re you saying, anyone could’ve walked in there? This was one of the most wanted criminals in the country. What kind of security did you have, Agent Dutton?”

  “The best we could, under the circumstances.”

  “So to the best of your knowledge, only a few of you were allowed to be in that trailer.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  John Q. worked that one, as I knew he would.

  “Only a few of you were supposed to be inside the command post with Juarez, but practically speaking, anyone might have gotten in, isn’t that true, Agent Dutton?”

  Dutton was a much more responsive witness with his buddy’s lawyer than he’d been with me. “That’s absolutely right.”

  “Even another member of Juarez’s gang, if one of them had managed somehow to have eluded capture during the raid.”

  “Yes, that would have been possible.”

  “It was dark, it was chaotic, it was impossible to keep tabs on where everyone was, isn’t that true?”

  “It was bad.”

  “When Juarez broke out of the trailer, where was Sterling Jerome, Agent Dutton? Was he inside with the prisoner?”

  A vigorous head shake no. “He was outside, about fifteen, twenty yards away.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Talking to me and some of the others about moving the convoy.”

  “So Sterling Jerome was nowhere near that trailer when Juarez broke loose.”

  “No.”

  I faced Dutton on redirect. “Did you or any other member of your task see any suspicious person near that trailer after the arrests had been made, Agent Dutton?”

  He rearranged himself in the witness chair. “I personally didn’t.”

  “Did anyone else?” />
  “I don’t think anyone else did, either.”

  “To the best of your knowledge, were all the men who were inside the drug compound accounted for after the raid was concluded? Either apprehended, or killed in the shoot-out?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, that’s correct,” he said grudgingly.

  “Before Juarez made his escape?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

  “Do you know the identity of the last person who was inside that trailer with Juarez before he escaped?”

  “I can’t say positively,” he said, trying his best to stonewall.

  “To the best of your knowledge,” I pursued, throwing his technicality language back at him, “was it Agent Jerome?”

  He looked over at Jerome, who was watching him from the defense table. Then Dutton winced. “To the best of my knowledge, that is correct.”

  “And to the best of your knowledge, when Juarez did make his escape, who led the charge after him? Who was the leader of the pack?”

  He shook his head. “It happened too fast. I couldn’t point out any particular agent for sure.”

  “It wasn’t Agent Jerome?”

  “I wouldn’t swear to that, no.”

  “Did you chase after Juarez, Agent Dutton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see Agent Jerome during that chase?”

  “For the first part of it. Everybody got separated quick, it was dark, we were running in the trees.”

  “During the time that you did see Agent Jerome, before he disappeared from your sight, was he ahead of you or behind you?”

  “He was ahead of me.”

  “To the best of your recollection, Agent Dutton, did you see any other agent out in front of Agent Jerome?”

  He closed his eyes, trying to bring back the memory. Or hope that when he opened them, I wouldn’t be there. When after a few seconds he did open them, and answered, be had to admit that he hadn’t seen any other agent running in front of Jerome.

  “So to sum up your testimony, would it be fair to say that only a few people were allowed in that command-post trailer, and no one who shouldn’t have gotten inside ever was inside?”

  “Yes. I would have to say that’s true, from where I stood.”

  “And Agent Jerome was the last known person to be in the trailer.”

  A very muted “Yes.”