Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  “He went with you willingly?”

  “He wasn’t happy about it.”

  That was good strategy, I thought. John Q. had rehearsed that with Jerome. Admit to a few small damaging details, they’ll believe you on the big ones.

  “That’s understandable,” John Q. said. “Go on.”

  “We convinced him it would be the right thing to do, to come talk with us.”

  “Did you use force to convince him to come with you?” John Q. asked cagily, anticipating my cross.

  Jerome shook his head. “No, we did not. We didn’t want to pound sense into him, we wanted to talk it into him.”

  “Then what happened?” John Q. asked as if he were truly interested in finding out. “How did Juarez get hurt so badly?”

  Jerome shut his eyes for a moment, rubbed his temples as if he had a terrible headache.

  “He pulled a gun on us.”

  “He what?” John Q. asked, glancing at the jurors as he did.

  “He pulled a gun on us,” Jerome said again, louder.

  “That must have been frightening. None of you were in law enforcement yet, were you? You and your brothers.”

  “No, we were just kids. Of course it scared us. Some guy from east L.A., you already know he’s a criminal, he pulls a gun? You figure he’s going to kill you.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  Jerome shrugged, the easy shrug of a man who does a hard job and doesn’t like to brag about it. “We disarmed him.”

  “You managed to get his weapon away from him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “We beat him up. He pulled a gun on us, for crying out loud,” he said defensively. “What were we supposed to do, let him go his merry way?”

  John Q. paused before asking his next series of questions. Walking up to the witness box, standing right next to Jerome, he said, “Your sister has testified that you forced her to get an abortion.”

  Jerome shook his head firmly. “That isn’t true. We didn’t force her.”

  “She didn’t get an abortion?”

  “Abortion is a sin. My family is antiabortion. That goes against our strongest core beliefs. Only God can decide that.”

  “Are you telling this court that your sister did not have an abortion?” John Q. asked again.

  Jerome buried his head in his hands. When he looked up, he whispered, “She had one.”

  “But you didn’t make her?”

  Jerome’s voice was choking. “No. She decided to do it on her own. We tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. She didn’t want to have any part of his life, especially his child.”

  I watched Jerome, writhing in fake agony. At that particular moment I wanted to kill him myself. There are lies, and then there are unforgivable lies. This was an unforgivable lie. Thank God Diane Richards wasn’t here in the courtroom to hear this.

  “And that’s it?” John Q. placed a comforting hand on his client’s shoulder.

  “That’s it. After that, we figured we’d done what we could, Diane could do whatever she wanted. She chose to come home, thank God. But it was her free choice, I swear it.”

  Judge McBee gave us a ten-minute piss break. John Q. was loitering by himself in an out-of-the-way hallway outside the courtroom. No one else was around. I ambled over to him. He looked up, gave me an old pro’s smile.

  “You’re going to hell, you know that, don’t you?” I said, smiling back at him.

  “We’re all going to hell, Luke. Whatever hell is.”

  “Lying is a sin, John Q. You’ve got this good Irish-Catholic boy up there lying his brains out.”

  “That’s for the jury to judge. Isn’t that what you’ve been preaching? Let lawyers try cases, let juries decide them?”

  I wagged a finger at him. For some reason, I was feeling good about this, my knowing Jerome was lying through his teeth, John Q. knowing I knew. It made me feel better, as I regarded my own doubts. I still had them, but Jerome was such an arrogant prick I was going to be happy to see him get shafted. And he was going to be.

  “You asked him if he killed Juarez, and he said no. You know the obligation of a lawyer to disclose the truth, if he knows his client’s lying. Especially about murder.”

  John Q. looked away for a moment, then turned back to me. “The man swears to me that he didn’t do it, Luke. I have to believe him, he’s my client.” He paused. “And you know what? I think I do.”

  “You’re the only one who does, then.”

  “We’ll see what the jury has to say about that,” he gravel-voiced his soft reply. “You never know what’s going to happen in that cramped little room, once we pros leave it to the amateurs.” One more smile. “That’s the beauty of the system, isn’t it. The sheer and terrifying unpredictability.”

  John Q. was almost finished. “There’s one last section we have to cover. An important one.”

  Jerome, looking refreshed, nodded, almost eagerly.

  “You went to college and got your degree in criminology.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And then you joined the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “I was on the Chicago police force first for a few years. Then I joined up.”

  “You moved up the ranks quickly.”

  A self-deprecating shrug. “I worked hard. You work hard, you get rewarded.”

  “At some point you began tracking a large drug ring. Juarez’s drug ring.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “When you got involved investigating this terrible drug ring, did you know that Juarez was the leader? That your sister’s former boyfriend was, in fact, the same man?”

  Jerome shook his head. “No, I did not.”

  “You were just going after a vicious drug lord.”

  “That’s my job. That’s our job, all of us in the agency.”

  “At what point did you realize Juarez was that same person?”

  Jerome looked up at the ceiling, as if in deep thought. “I don’t recall.”

  “A few weeks later? A few months?”

  “Oh, no. It was years later. Several years later.”

  “At that point, when you discovered the connection, did you think you should take yourself off the case? Hand it over to another agent?”

  Jerome nodded slowly. “I thought about it. I gave it a lot of thought.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “By then, it didn’t matter,” Jerome answered. “My focus was on who he was, then, not who he had been. And I had compiled a huge dossier, I had contacts working for me I’d spent years cultivating. You can’t hand something that big and important over to a fresh team. You’d lose years of momentum. We couldn’t afford that.”

  “So your going after Reynaldo Juarez for as long and as hard as you did wasn’t about revenge?”

  “No, sir,” Jerome answered forcefully. “It was about justice.” He paused. “But it confirmed the truth of my family’s feelings from twenty years earlier. Juarez was an evil, corrupt, dangerous criminal. My sister should get down on her knees every night and say a prayer thanking her family that we cared enough about her to take care of her, when she was too blind to take care of herself.”

  It was late in the day, so Judge McBee recessed court until the following morning. I went back to the office to begin preparing my cross-examination. Jerome’s attempts to right his ship, which had already been three-fourths underwater, hadn’t done much for him, despite John Q.’s attempts to put a positive spin on his actions. Either everyone in the world was engaged in a great conspiracy against him, or he was lying through his teeth. If he’d killed Juarez during a misguided raid, and that was all there was to it, the jury might have let him off—a mercy verdict, because Juarez was evil. But when revenge, premeditation, and killing for money were factored in, he didn’t stand a chance.

  Aside from the events in the courtroom, I was on an emotional roller coaster. If I hadn’t found out all this new stuff, I
would have lit up a victory cigar. I still could, because no one else knew, only me, Kate, and Riva. But because of this fresh information, my impending win—I was going to win, I had no doubts about that now—was leaving a sour taste in my mouth. All the evidence pointed to Jerome as the killer. It’s what hadn’t been placed into evidence that was disturbing me, more and more. The smoke was blacker and thicker, but I still hadn’t found a fire.

  I reread bits and pieces of all the material I’d accumulated since the first time I’d come up to Blue River to meet with Nora. It was a mess, because it was complicated, and because the two elements that would have tidied everything up—witness and weapon—didn’t exist.

  Thinking back to the trip to the compound the night before with Kate, I again read the autopsy report: shot at close range through temple, high-caliber 9mm automatic, full-metal-jacket bullet, no ballistics. The killer could still be Jerome—he had the weapon and the bullets. He could have caught up to Juarez and assassinated him in cold blood before any of the others reached the scene—his prowess as a runner bolstered that scenario. His dodging and lying on the stand had reinforced that possibility for me—if he could lie so brazenly about his own sister’s abortion, and about the kidnapping and beating he and his brothers had given Juarez, he could certainly have faked his dismay upon finding Juarez’s body that night.

  All the stuff with Miller and Nora and Juarez and the Indian tribe bothered me greatly; but it was still possible that they weren’t related to this killing.

  The other possibility, of course, which is what I believed in my gut now, was that they were. But how, precisely? What real evidence was there?

  So far, I hadn’t found it.

  Again, I read the autopsy report. Nothing new jumped off the page. Something about it, though, was tickling the back of my brain. It was trying to speak to me. But what was it trying to tell me?

  I couldn’t come up with anything, so I put the folders back in the file cabinets and went home.

  Jerome might have been able to put on a show of looking comfortable yesterday, but he couldn’t pull it off today. He was clearly nervous—he’d shot his wad during his examination by John Q. There was nowhere to go now but down, and he knew it.

  “Agent Jerome,” I began.

  He looked at me sullenly.

  I stood still at the podium, arms folded across my chest, staring at him. I did this long enough that he started fidgeting, looking from me to John Q., to the back of the room, around the room. I could feel Judge McBee watching me, waiting for me to get on with it.

  After what was to Jerome an interminable wait, I leaned over the lectern toward him. “How many DEA agents were on the scene that night?”

  “Sixty-two, counting myself.”

  “Isn’t that a large force for a drug bust?”

  “Not for one this size,” he answered. “This was going to be one of the biggest takedowns in the history of the department. You can’t have enough men on an assignment like that.”

  “Would it be correct to say that your group was ample for the assignment?”

  “There were enough of us to do the job.”

  “The job being to intercept a huge shipment of drugs and arrest the people involved.”

  “The orders were to…” He caught himself.

  I walked over to the evidence table and picked up a document. Showing it to Judge McBee, who nodded, I crossed to the witness stand and handed it to Jerome.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  He looked at it. “Yes.”

  I took it from him, walked it over to John Q., who gave it a quick glance and waved it away. Taking it with me to the lectern, I said to the jury, “This is the federal warrant that was issued for that arrest. It’s been stipulated to by all parties, meaning we all agree it’s what it says it is.”

  I turned back to Jerome. “This warrant is to seize drugs, isn’t it?”

  “To seize drugs and arrest the dealers.”

  I looked at it again. “But it doesn’t say to arrest the purported dealers if there aren’t any drugs, does it? How can you prove they’re drug dealers if they aren’t dealing drugs?”

  He stared at me, his lips, chalk white, tightly pressed together.

  “One element is dependent on the other, isn’t it? No drugs, no evidence of dealing. No evidence of dealing, no arrest. That’s why the warrant required the drugs be present before you could raid the place, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head, but he didn’t reply. I looked at the bench.

  “Answer the question,” Judge McBee ordered Jerome.

  “Technically, that’s correct,” Jerome gave it up.

  “Technically?” I echoed. “Technically? There’s no such thing as technically when it comes to warrants, Mr. Jerome. What does that mean—if it’s only technically, it really doesn’t count? You don’t have to obey it?”

  “You have to abide by the conditions in a warrant,” he grudgingly agreed.

  “Whether you like them or not. Whether you agree with them or not.”

  He nodded, muttered, “Yes.”

  “But you don’t always abide by the provisions in your warrants, do you, Agent Jerome? Sometimes you decide to make your own decisions, with or without the warrant.”

  “I obey the law as much…” He caught himself.

  “As much as you can? As much as you want to?”

  “I do the best I can, under the circumstances.”

  I shook my head in disgust. Partly it was for show, for the jury, but I truly felt it. This man believed he was above the law.

  “You violated a warrant. That is a crime. You are a law officer, you are aware of that, are you not?” I hammered him.

  “I…what was I supposed to do, let him go free?” he blurted out.

  I stepped back and smiled. Gotcha, pal! “So you admit you violated that warrant.”

  “There were extenuating circumstances,” he said doggedly.

  “There were? What were they?”

  “Juarez was in there.”

  “So?”

  “I couldn’t let him get away. I’ve already explained that.”

  “Who said anything about letting him go? Did I say anything about letting him go?”

  He looked at me. He wasn’t following fast enough. He’d used too many brain cells spinning yesterday’s lies.

  I answered for him. “You had over sixty agents at that compound. There were no more than a dozen men inside, you knew that for a fact. Sixty crack DEA agents surrounding twelve drug dealers. Those are pretty good odds, aren’t they, sixty crack DEA agents versus twelve druggies?”

  He breathed in and out deeply, his eyes closed.

  “Are you being at one with yourself, Agent Jerome?” I asked caustically.

  His eyes popped open. He was gripping the arms of the chair, hard. I thought of a pit bull at the end of a chain, straining to break loose. The pit bull inside Jerome was dying to come at me. Only the surroundings, the public forum, prevented it.

  “The odds,” I repeated. “Sixty against twelve, plus the advantage of surprise. Aren’t those damn good odds? Or are twelve trapped drug dealers more powerful than sixty DEA samurai?”

  “The odds were in our favor,” he reluctantly admitted.

  “They sure were.” Leaning forward, I asked, “So why go in at all? You don’t have a warrant, given the changes in the circumstances, and you have the place surrounded. Why not wait them out? Where could they go? Where could they hide?”

  I looked over at the jury box. One juror in the back row leaned over and whispered something to her companion. In the freezer, I’m sure she was saying. Both smiled before turning their attention back to Jerome.

  “I couldn’t take the chance,” he said.

  “Five to one against them, you’ve got the place completely surrounded, and you couldn’t take the chance this one man might elude you? That doesn’t speak well for your operation, Agent Jerome. Or your opinion of yourself and of your men.”

&nbs
p; “Objection.” John Q. lumbered wearily to his feet. “He’s browbeating the witness. Your Honor.”

  I put a hand up, signifying I’d back off, even as McBee said, “Sustained.”

  I looked at the notes I’d made during Jerome’s direct testimony. “You stated that the purported phone call or calls to the compound could not have been made by your snitch, Lopez, because he was in your sight the entire time. Yes?”

  “Yes.” He nodded tightly.

  ”You were coordinating this raid, correct? You were in charge of everything. You had the big picture in your head, you were the axle, all the spokes were revolving around you.”

  “I was the leader, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yes.” A glance at the notes again. “ ‘Lopez was by my side the entire time.’ That’s your direct quote.”

  “He was.”

  I pursed my lips, looked up at the ceiling, looked at the jurors, shook my head again. “You’re in charge of sixty men, you’re about to raid a drug compound where the man you’ve been stalking for ten years is hiding out—twenty, really, ever since the incident at Stanford—and yet you’re attentive enough to Lopez, whose work was done by then, that you never left him out of your sight. Not for a minute, not for thirty seconds, which is all it would have taken for him to make a call. He was never out of your sight for even thirty seconds. Is that what you are swearing to, Mr. Jerome? You are swearing, under oath, that with all this going on, you never took your eyes off Lopez for thirty seconds? You’re swearing to that?”

  Now it was his turn to gaze upward, but in supplication, not disgust.

  “To the best of my recollection, he was always…right there.”

  I glanced at the jurors. They were shaking their heads.

  “Okay,” I continued, “let’s talk about the raid itself. How many of your men were killed on that raid?”

  “Three,” he said softly, almost inaudibly.

  “Three,” I repeated. “Three good men. They were good men, weren’t they?”

  “They were excellent men.”

  “Do you feel responsible for their deaths, Agent Jerome? Since you were the one who led the charge of the light brigade? In violation of your warrant, I have to add.”

  He nodded. This was becoming excruciating to him. “In some ways,” he acknowledged meekly.