“Right then, a guy matching the lookout darted out from behind a Dumpster, and I started chasing him in my car. I told her to call 911, and I threw the phone down so I could drive. Hell, she might’ve even hung up on me before that. I dunno, I was in the middle of a chase. That was it, the last time I heard from her.
“I didn’t think he would kill her!” Green looked at Anna hopefully, as if by coming clean he would be absolved of his prior mistakes. “I wanted to tell you, but how could I? I’d be suspended for having a relationship with her. But I never lied to anyone or refused to answer questions. I honestly didn’t think it would be a problem for this case. Her calling me doesn’t change what Davis did to her.”
“Did you get the guy?” Jack asked quietly from the other side of the little room.
“Which guy?”
“The Circle B robber. The one you were looking for.”
“Uh—no.”
“Did you radio in your location?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you make a report of your chase?”
“No.”
“Is there anything whatsoever to support your story?”
“What—what do you mean?”
McGee cut in, his deep bass voice vibrating in Anna’s chest. “Brad, I do believe the man’s trying to find out if you killed Laprea Johnson.”
Green stared at him, then looked to Jack, who was glaring back furiously, and Anna, who shook her head. She couldn’t help him—and she didn’t want to. Green’s face melted into an expression of naked terror.
Green stood up shakily. “No, I—I think I do need a lawyer.”
He waited for someone to contradict him, but he was met with complete silence. He fled from the room.
34
As they sat in the little witness room, surveying the smoldering wreckage of the prosecution’s case, Jack and Anna both understood that the murder case against D’marco Davis was over.
As a witness, Green was destroyed. He was dishonest and possibly guilty of obstruction of justice, a man who would protect himself and his own career rather than come clean. If he was willing to hide things from the prosecutors—his own teammates—how could the jurors trust him? And Green wasn’t just a dishonest witness. He was quite probably a biased one, too. He and the defendant were potential romantic rivals, which meant he had a reason to want to get revenge on D’marco. The prosecution could never rely on his testimony. Of course, they had a duty to disclose all of this to the defense. If they were to put Green on the stand as a witness, he would be destroyed on cross-examination.
And Jack had just told the jury what a good, neutral guy Green was. There was no do-over. Jack would lose all kinds of credibility with the jury.
It wasn’t just that the prosecution could no longer use Green in their case. Green now was D’marco’s case. Anna remembered D’marco’s insistence, when he was at her house, that a cop had killed Laprea. That story, absurd at the time, took on a new significance now that they knew that Laprea had been involved with a cop. A dishonest cop who didn’t want to be bothered by a woman from Anacostia. A cop who wouldn’t be happy with an illegitimate child who might jeopardize his career and his wallet. It was certainly enough to make the jury wonder if Green killed Laprea—and, frankly, it was making Anna wonder as well.
Anna still thought D’marco was the more likely killer. But did she believe it beyond a reasonable doubt?
A prosecutor has to be sure. Before she asks twelve people to send a man to prison, a prosecutor has to know that the man she is sending away is guilty of the crime. If she has doubts, she has no business asking the jury to convict.
The murder case was done. Both Jack and Anna knew it.
“Do you still need me here?” McGee asked.
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What do you have, Tavon, a pedicure appointment?”
“I’m going to talk to the lieutenant,” McGee said. “I have Green’s gun, but they’ll have to take his badge and do the administrative stuff.”
“Good.” Jack nodded. “Then do me a favor and write up Green’s statement. Keep in mind that defense attorneys, Internal Affairs, and the media will be poring over your report for years to come. Shit, I should have asked you to take notes.”
“I’ve got you covered, Chief.”
McGee pulled a small, spiral-bound notebook from his suit pocket. He flipped it open with a smile, showing off several pages of his neat round writing. He’d discreetly taken down Green’s statement nearly verbatim.
“McGee, you’re great!” Anna exclaimed.
McGee looked at her impassively. “Humph,” he said, and walked out. Apparently, she was not yet back on his good side.
She found herself alone in the witness room with Jack. He looked more exhausted than she’d ever seen him. She glimpsed his isolation, the loneliness of being at the top of the food chain. If something like this happened in one of her cases, she would have called back to the office to talk to a supervisor who could advise her on how to handle it. But the buck stopped with Jack; there was no one he could look to for cover. She wanted to put her arm around his shoulders and rub his back. Of course, she didn’t dare.
“I have to disclose all of this,” Jack said, more to himself than to Anna. “And talk to Rose and Ernie Jones.”
“Right,” Anna murmured. As the victim’s surviving family, Rose had the right to be informed and consulted about major developments in the case. Ernie Jones, who was a victim of one of D’marco Davis’s assaults, had the same right.
As if on cue, the door swung open, and Rose, Ernie, and their lunch group filed in. Rose and Ernie were chatting easily as they sat down. Anna looked at her watch: 12:50. The lunch break was almost over.
“Ms. Johnson, Mr. Jones,” Jack said formally. Rose and Ernie stopped talking. “May I have a moment with you alone?”
“Course,” Rose said.
The rest of the crowd filed back out, murmuring about what was going on. Rose and Ernie looked at Jack quizzically. Jack quickly told them what was going on, and what the prosecution might have to do at this point. Ernie nodded sagely; Rose looked shell-shocked. Both agreed that whatever Jack thought best was okay with them. Anna squeezed Rose’s arm before following Jack out of the room. In the hallway, Anna saw the case advocate.
“Can you go in there and be with Ms. Johnson?” Anna asked the advocate. “I think she could use some support.”
The advocate nodded and walked into the room where Rose was waiting. Anna knew Rose would be in good hands.
Anna followed Jack back into the courtroom, although she wasn’t sure she was invited. The courtroom was filled with spectators again, but it wasn’t as crowded as it had been for opening statements. Nick was standing at the defense table, looking through some papers. Jack strode up to him.
“We have to see the judge. In chambers.”
Nick looked at Jack and then at Anna, who was standing a few feet behind the Homicide chief. “What about?” he asked warily.
“I’ll tell you in there, on the record.”
Jack approached the courtroom clerk and whispered a few sentences.
A few minutes later, Anna was sitting with Jack, Nick, and D’marco in chairs in front of Judge Spiegel’s desk, like four children brought into a principal’s office to discuss their detention. A marshal stood by the wall behind D’marco. A court reporter sat by the judge’s desk, her hands poised over the keys of her stenographic machine, ready to take down the conversation when the judge came in.
Anna tried to ignore the fact that Nick and Jack were sitting on either side of her. She could see both men in her peripheral vision. She hadn’t been this close to either in months. She glanced around the office to keep herself from looking at them.
Judge Spiegel’s chambers had wide windows overlooking the appeals court across the street. The office was decorated with watercolor paintings, a colorful kilim, and the usual ego wall covered with diplomas, certificates, and plaques. A single frame
d photograph of a little white terrier sat on the judge’s credenza. That lonely picture made Anna feel sorry for the judge, and consider her more human and vulnerable than she had before.
The judge strode in and sat behind her desk. She wore a bright yellow sweater set; the robe was reserved for inside the courtroom. The cheerful informality of her attire was offset by the reproof in her voice.
“This is highly irregular, Mr. Bailey. I hope you have a good reason for requesting this hearing. A courtroom full of people and fourteen sworn jurors are waiting for the trial to resume at the time I told them it would.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Jack said. “What I need to discuss involves a likely grand jury investigation of an MPD officer, which cannot be discussed in public at this time. I need to disclose for the record some information I just learned.” Although he spoke to the judge, Jack carefully articulated every word for the court reporter, whose fingers were flying over the keys of her stenographic machine. “After we broke for lunch, AUSA Anna Curtis approached me with paternity test results just received from the FBI. The test results show that Officer Bradley Green was the father of the unborn child Laprea Johnson was carrying when she was killed. Ms. Curtis, Detective Tavon McGee, and I then confronted Officer Green during the lunch hour. Officer Green confirmed that he had a romantic relationship with the victim, and he made additional disclosures. Detective McGee will be memorializing that conversation in a police report, and a copy of that report will be provided to the Court and defense counsel as soon as it is finished, no later than tomorrow morning.”
Jack handed copies of the paternity report to the judge and defense attorney. As Judge Spiegel read it, she pursed her lips so hard that they disappeared from her now ashen face. Anna remembered the close relationship the judge was reputed to have with Green.
Anna looked away from the judge and found Nick gazing at her with surprised wonder. D’marco was grinning at her like a kid seeing Santa Claus. It was not a look Anna had ever hoped to elicit from a defendant.
Finally, the judge looked up from the paperwork and peered over her reading glasses. “How do you want to proceed at this point?” Anna detected a tremor in the judge’s voice.
“I’d like to ask for a little more time, Your Honor,” Jack replied. “I need a few days to investigate this issue and decide whether to go forward with the murder charge. I’m asking the Court to postpone the case until Monday.”
“No sir.” The judge shook her head. “You’ve had seven months to investigate this, and I’ve cleared my calendar, this week, for this trial. There’s a jury that came back to this courthouse at one o’clock to hear your first witness. I’ll give you until two p.m. Then you need to put on your first witness or dismiss the case.”
“Can I persuade the Court to at least break the case until tomorrow morning?”
“Two o’clock, Counselor.”
The slight downturn at the corner of Jack’s mouth was his only visible reaction to the dilemma this created for him. The trial had started, which in legal terms meant jeopardy had attached. If he dismissed the case now, the Double Jeopardy Clause would prevent the government from ever bringing these charges against D’marco again. It would be like a full acquittal. And yet going forward with the case in its present state was not an option.
“All right then, I’d like to offer the defendant a plea,” Jack said evenly. “The government will dismiss the murder charge if the defendant will plead guilty to the rest of the counts.”
“Not a chance,” Nick replied. “You know you’re not getting murder now, and you’ll be lucky if the taint of this doesn’t destroy all your other charges. Let’s go to trial with your star witness cop as the father of the victim’s baby. I’d love to see that jury’s verdict.”
“I can drop the APO,” Jack conceded. Green was the victim of the Assault on a Police Officer charge, from the day D’marco almost ran him over with the stolen Corolla behind Rose’s house. “But he’s gonna eat the UUV.” Not that it mattered. Every felon in D.C. had an Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle charge. “And he pleads to the Aggravated Assault on Laprea Johnson, and the Assault on Ernie Jones. I don’t need Green for either of those. Jones saw your client hitting Laprea, cracking her cheekbone, before he clocked Jones. Jones is squeaky clean, and he’s here today. I can make the Agg. Assault on his testimony alone.”
Jack didn’t mention the escape and assault on Anna. That was a separate case being handled by a different defense attorney.
“I’ll take it,” D’marco spoke up. “But only if it’s a C plea.”
Anna almost laughed. D’marco knew the system better than some attorneys. An agreement pursuant to Rule 11(e)(1)(C) was a type of plea deal that allowed the prosecution and defense to agree to the amount of prison time the defendant would serve, cutting the judge out of the sentencing process. D’marco suspected that Judge Spiegel would slam him if given a chance.
“Fine,” Jack said. “Eight years.”
“Two,” D’marco countered, enjoying speaking for himself.
“Six and a half, and that’s final.”
“Done.” D’marco smiled like a man who’d just won a round on Deal or No Deal.
“If you do a C plea, I’ll accept it,” Judge Spiegel warned, “but I’m going to sentencing right now. I’m not sitting through the fiction of a presentencing report, briefing, and arguments in a case where my hands are tied.”
Nick leaned over and whispered briefly with D’marco. When they both sat back, Nick nodded to the judge.
“That’s agreeable to the defense,” Nick said.
“And to the government,” said Jack.
A few minutes later, they were walking back into the courtroom. The spectators stood up and quieted down when the judge’s door opened. Judge Spiegel strode up the few steps to her seat, while the lawyers filed over to their tables. Anna began to walk past the lawyers’ tables toward the audience, but Jack motioned for her to stand next to him.
She hesitated, wondering if Jack meant this as a conciliatory gesture or as punishment. Her fifteen minutes of infamy had finally died down. Making an appearance in this case now would be like climbing onto the Titanic a few seconds before it hit the iceberg. In fact, people would say that she was the iceberg. But if Jack wanted her next to him for this, she owed him that. She stood beside him at the prosecution table, and heard the scratch of charcoal on paper as the sketch artists started to draw a new figure on their tablets.
The judge launched into the usual script for taking a guilty plea, generating a buzz from the audience as the terms of the agreement were announced. While a midtrial plea wasn’t uncommon, dropping the murder charge at this point was a bombshell. The courtroom was buzzing with whispers by the time the judge reached the end of the colloquy and announced that she accepted the defendant’s guilty plea. Judge Spiegel then called in the jurors, told them the parties had reached a resolution, and excused them from their jury service.
Anna looked back at the audience, where Rose sat in the first row. The advocate and a friend sat on either side of her, and both women were patting Rose’s arms. Rose accepted their touch and looked stoically ahead.
“All right, Mr. Davis.” The judge peered over her glasses at D’marco. “Do you want to make a statement before I sentence you?”
Nick leaned over and whispered some advice to his client. D’marco listened, then nodded and shuffled to his feet.
“I just want to say how sorry I am for everything I done,” D’marco said. “’Specially to Laprea’s mother.” D’marco turned his back to the judge and spoke directly to Rose. “I’m sorry, Miss Rose. For real. I ain’t never been good enough to Laprea. She deserved better, I know that. But I loved her, I swear to God I did. I want to make my kids’ lives better now. I want them to know their father ain’t killed their mother. I hope, Miss Rose, I hope you think about bringin’ them to visit me in jail.” His voice was cracking. “I know I don’t even deserve that, but I’m still askin’.”
&nb
sp; Rose was sobbing softly. The advocate handed her a travel-sized package of Kleenex, and Rose dabbed her eyes. Her friends and cousins, sitting all around her, murmured and patted her, many of them crying themselves.
“Would you like to make a victim impact statement, Ms. Johnson?” the judge asked. “It’s your right.”
Rose shook her head no.
“All right. Then I’m ready to pronounce my sentence. The defendant will serve five years for the Aggravated Assault of Laprea Johnson. One hundred eighty days for the Simple Assault of Ernie Jones. One year for Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle. The sentences will run consecutively.”
Six and a half years total, with no chance of early probation. The marshal put his hand on D’marco’s elbow and escorted him out of the courtroom. For a man who’d just heard that he would spend the better part of a decade in jail, D’marco wore a peaceful, Buddha-like expression. He’d just gotten out of serving life in prison.
The judge banged her gavel and walked out of the courtroom, setting the press free to jump up and crowd to the bar.
“Mr. Bailey, why did you drop the homicide charges?”
“Is anyone else under investigation for the murder?”
“Why was Ms. Curtis at counsel table again today?”
Jack responded with “no comments” as he packed up his briefcases.
Anna squeezed past the reporters and approached Rose in the audience. Rose looked exhausted as she gathered her purse and coat.
“Ms. Johnson—” Anna started.
“No.” Rose held up her hand. “Not now.”
Rose turned and led her friends and family out of the courtroom. A line of reporters trailed behind her.
Anna swallowed hard on the lump at the back of her throat. She felt sick imagining what Rose must be feeling.
Jack was walking down the aisle, and Anna fell miserably into step next to him. As she pushed out of the courtroom doors, she glanced back at Nick. He was standing at the defense table, packing his briefcase. Their eyes met. It should have been a glorious moment for him. Murder charges against his client had been dropped; he was the victor in a highly publicized legal battle. Yet, as he watched her leave with Jack, Nick looked like a boy who’d just dropped a scoop of ice cream. Anna wondered what was going through his head. Despite the crowded courtroom, Nick looked very much alone.
Law of Attraction Page 28