False Witness

by Randy Singer

  Jacobsen was right. The gun recoiled against her when she fired it, causing her to jerk the shot upward. He showed her how to sight the gun in, the proper grip, and the best stance for accuracy—a shooter’s crouch, arms straight out in front, both hands on the grip. They started at ten yards, then twenty, and eventually thirty-five. Though Jamie was a natural athlete, her would-be assailant really didn’t have much to worry about if he stayed at least thirty-five yards away.

  Two hours passed quickly. When she left, Jamie was no expert, but neither did the gun feel like a complete stranger in her hands. She thanked Drew Jacobsen profusely.

  “I hope you never have to use it outside a shooting range,” he said.

  The thought of it made her shudder.

  When Jamie climbed into her 4Runner and picked up her phone, she noticed three calls from Isaiah Haywood. She called him back without checking his messages.

  “We’ve got to talk,” he said.

  His serious tone made Jamie realize how much her world had changed in three short days. Isaiah undoubtedly wanted to talk about a new strategy for crim pro class. Just last week, the biggest issue in her life had been whether to pass if called on by Professor Snead. Now she was being stalked by professional criminals and learning how to kill a person, if necessary.

  “What about?” she asked.

  “I can’t say over the phone.”

  She didn’t have time for this. “Look, Isaiah, if you’re calling about crim pro class, I’m actually pretty busy right now—”

  “It’s about David Hoffman,” Isaiah interrupted.

  Her blood went cold. She lowered her voice. “What about him?”

  “We’ve got to meet,” Isaiah insisted. “I really don’t want to talk about this on a cell phone.”

  Now he really had her worried. If Isaiah knew something about Hoffman, it could trigger all kinds of chaos. Jacobsen would want to know. Dmitri might come back after her. This was not good—she just wanted Hoffman out of her life.

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “Someplace a young, hip African American would never be noticed,” he said.

  She reeled off the names of a few Buckhead bars, but Isaiah rejected them.

  “I was thinking the Waffle House just off exit 6 on Route 400 North,” Isaiah said.

  It made Jamie smile. At least Isaiah hadn’t lost his confident cynicism. “In this traffic, it’ll take me forty-five minutes to get there,” she said.

  “No problem,” Isaiah said. “I’ll get a table. You can’t miss me. I’ll be the only black guy there without an apron on.”

  43

  At the restaurant, Jamie argued that they needed to bring Snead into the loop immediately. Isaiah, halfway through a plate of sticky blueberry pancakes, disagreed. “Snead won’t let us take the case,” he argued. “Plus, he’s an A1 jerk.” He forked another small mountain of pancakes into his mouth—Jamie’s chance to respond.

  “We can’t do this without him. We’re not even lawyers yet.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Isaiah said, sliding the pancakes into a cheek. “Stacie Hoffman’s right. I’m not really acting like a lawyer. More like a messenger boy. Besides—” he paused, chewing and swallowing—“if the feds go for it, they’ll know we’re not lawyers. It won’t be like we’re scamming anybody.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.” Jamie had a bad feeling about this, and she had learned to trust her budding legal instincts. She was already skirting the edge of the law—the concealed handgun sitting in her backpack. Why complicate matters?

  “Maybe this is why they came to me,” Isaiah continued, slicing off another pile of pancakes dripping with syrup. “They can’t afford to play this one by the rules.”

  They argued about it for a few more minutes, and then Isaiah lowered his voice and checked around as if the FBI might have surveillance cameras inside the Waffle House. “I’ve done some research on Snead,” he confided. “Why do you think a dude who’s making a couple million a year filing tort cases in L.A. would give that up and move to the A-T-L to teach?”

  “I don’t know. Quality of life, maybe.”

  “Or maybe,” Isaiah said, emphasizing the point with his fork, “there are four criminal cases presently on appeal that Snead handled at the trial level where an appellate lawyer is claiming ineffective assistance of counsel.”

  Jamie’s prosecutorial mind-set kicked in. “That happens all the time. Felons don’t have anything else to argue, so they attack their own lawyers.”

  “And two of his previous cases actually got reversed on that basis,” Isaiah countered. He waited for Jamie’s reaction, but she gave him nothing but a poker face. “His track record as a criminal defense lawyer is abysmal. I couldn’t find a single case he won. And now he’s teaching crim pro.”

  “And you’re doing all this research because . . . ?”

  Isaiah’s syrupy smile lit up the booth and half of the Waffle House with it. “Next time he calls on me in class, he’d better be ready to man up.”

  Eventually, the two agreed to disagree about telling Snead. Jamie couldn’t go with Isaiah to meet Parcelli anyway, so it would be Isaiah’s call.

  Jamie filled Isaiah in about the men who had assaulted her at Lake Lanier. He listened intently and shoveled the rest of the pancakes down. He chased them with a swig of milk.

  As Jamie finished the story, his forehead creased with concentration. He rubbed the short stubble on top of his head. “Did you say the dude’s name was Dmitri?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s Russian.”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “Did he look Russian?”

  “I guess so. I mean, what does a Russian look like? He was a white guy with blond hair who faked an Eastern European accent when I first talked to him.”

  “Definitely not Chinese.”

  “No, Isaiah. Definitely not Chinese.”

  “But Stacie said the Chinese mob was after her. The triads.”

  “Good point.” Jamie took a drink of water. She would have to call Detective Jacobsen with this new twist. “Maybe Hoffman testified against both—the Russian mob and the Chinese mob. Maybe we’re getting caught in the middle of a mob war.”

  Isaiah’s face seemed to brighten at the prospect. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said. “Real lawyering. Mobsters everywhere. A beautiful woman as my partner.”

  “This isn’t a game, Isaiah. And you’re stuck with me, not a beautiful woman.”

  “And modest, too!” He wiped his mouth, the playfulness disappearing as he did so. “You need somebody to stay at your condo with you?”

  Jamie shook her head. “I’ve got a friend.”

  “Male or female?”

  “None of your business.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “What part of ‘none of your business’ don’t you understand?”

  “Well, I’m just sayin’—seems to me we’re partners here. And I want to make sure my girl—”

  Jamie plopped her backpack on the table, cutting him off. She unzipped the small compartment on the bottom of the back, revealing the sleek polished metal of her gun. Isaiah’s eyes went wide.

  “His name is Kimber,” Jamie said. It was melodramatic, she knew, but it got Isaiah’s attention.

  “My partner’s packin’!” Isaiah’s lips curled into the proud smile of a dad watching his daughter’s first steps. Just then, their waitress reappeared at the linoleum table, a heavyset woman, midforties, food stains dotting her white uniform. She had her hair pulled back in a clip and long fake nails polished red.

  “Is that a Kimber?” she asked Jamie.

  44

  Tuesday, April 1

  Crim pro turned unusually quiet as Professor Snead limped his way to the front of the classroom, removed his seating chart, and surveyed the room. His eyes locked on Isaiah Haywood’s empty seat, and then his stubby finger scrolled down the list of names.

  “Mr.
Haywood,” he called out.

  The class waited a few seconds. Snead called the name again.

  “He had an interview in Washington, D.C., today,” Jamie said. Even as she spoke, she wrestled with her own definition of the word interview. Questions and answers. She supposed it could cover this.

  “With what firm?” Snead asked.

  “The federal government,” Jamie responded.

  “I see.” Snead licked his lips. Made a mark on the chart. “If I recall correctly, I asked each of you at the start of the semester to make every effort to work your job interviews around my class schedule. Am I getting senile, or do some of you remember that?”

  A few students lowered their heads. Others looked disapprovingly at Snead for taking shots at Isaiah in his absence. A hissing noise emanated from behind Jamie.

  “Ms. Brock, do you recall that?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Good. Maybe I’m not as senile as I thought.”

  His finger returned to the seating chart. When his head popped up again, he was looking directly at Jamie. She peered back at him over the raised monitor of her laptop, her fingers suspended above the keys. It was the first time all semester she had not done the reading.

  “Ms. Brock,” he called out, “why don’t you tell us the issue in Commonwealth v. Gary?”

  “I’m sorry, Professor.” Her throat tightened. Never in three years of law school had she uttered these words. “I’m not prepared.”

  Snead scowled at her, the gray eyebrows lowered in condemnation, displeasure written on every wrinkle of his face. He let Jamie’s remark just hang out there, conspicuous as a neon sign on a desert highway.

  Finally he turned to Jamie’s immediate right. “Mr. Shaeffer, did you inconvenience yourself and read the case?”

  “I did.”

  “Perhaps you could help Ms. Brock out.”

  This guy needs to loosen up, Isaiah thought. He was sitting across from Agent Samuel Parcelli at the Great American Bagel Bakery just outside the metal detectors in Terminal B of Reagan National Airport. They both nursed strong coffees. Parcelli was strictly no-nonsense, with tanned skin, a marathoner’s build, and the eyes and nose of a hawk. Everything about him said he had been around the block a few times.

  When he set up the meeting over the phone, Isaiah said he represented David and Stacie Hoffman. Today, he tried to look the part. His imported beige suit, only slightly wrinkled from the plane ride, was Johnnie Cochranesque. When Parcelli asked for a card, Isaiah reached into his suit coat pocket and mumbled a lame excuse. He’d left his briefcase in Atlanta and this was a new suit. Parcelli handed Isaiah his own business card—government-issued, light brown. Boring.

  For the first few minutes, Isaiah tried to find some common ground—airplane complaints, this coffee’s terrible, nice weather, March Madness—but Parcelli wasn’t interested. Isaiah slid forward and put his forearms on the table, leaning into it. He told Parcelli that the mob had found the Hoffmans, that Isaiah’s clients suspected a leak in the marshals’ office.

  “They trust you, Mr. Parcelli. They’ll help you catch this member of the Manchurian Triad who spotted David Hoffman if you’ll agree to do two things. One, set them up with new identities. And two, personally oversee the process yourself—involving only those members of the marshals’ office that you handpick and trust.”

  Parcelli didn’t move a muscle, not so much as a twitch. Isaiah wanted to check to see if the guy was still breathing.

  The agent took a deliberate sip of coffee. “I can’t do that,” he said to Isaiah.

  “Why not?”

  “Before I answer that, you need to answer one of my questions. How do I even know you actually represent the Hoffmans?”

  “As opposed to what?” Isaiah said, trying to sound insulted. “That I’m some triad member trying to get information about their whereabouts? So I decide to sit down with an FBI agent and ask a few questions?”

  Parcelli waited again before responding. The whole pace of this conversation was driving Isaiah crazy. “You’re not licensed in Georgia,” Parcelli eventually said.

  Darn. The man had done some checking. “I didn’t say I was.”

  “What state are you licensed in?”

  Isaiah quickly ran through his options. Every lie would lead to another, a dead-end option that might lead to charges against him for misleading a government agent. For lack of a better alternative, he turned to the truth. Or at least the first cousin of the truth. “I’m a law student, representing the Hoffmans through our legal aid clinic.”

  He expected this might bring a lecture or a condescending smile. Instead, Mount Rushmore didn’t react. “I knew that,” Parcelli eventually said. “Professor Walter Snead is your supervising attorney. Jamie Brock is your classmate.”

  Unreal. Parcelli’s command of these facts surprised Isaiah. Maybe all the stories about Big Brother spying on its citizens were true. “If you know all that, you know I really do represent the Hoffmans.”

  “I know you’re not licensed to practice law,” Parcelli said.

  Isaiah shrugged as if he couldn’t be bothered by such technicalities. “Are you willing to help us or not?” he asked.

  Parcelli sighed. “I’d like to. Your clients risked their lives to help us put away some very dangerous men. But I’ve got a couple of serious problems, Isaiah.”

  Parcelli opened another creamer and poured it in his coffee. “You were right—this stuff’s way too strong.” He stirred until the color turned a lighter shade of brown. “Four years ago, the Manchurian Triad captured Jessica Shealy, your client, and held her hostage. They called Clark Shealy, now known as David Hoffman, who was a bounty hunter, and offered to free his wife if Clark could find and produce an Indian mathematician who had developed a very valuable algorithm. Shealy found him and traded the man for his wife. Later, the Shealys testified against the mob and became part of the witness protection program, signing a memorandum of understanding specifying what their duties were. I’m sure you’ve reviewed that document . . .”

  Isaiah nodded but made a mental note: Ask for a copy of the memorandum of understanding.

  “It requires complete candor and disclosure of all relevant and material facts. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Shealy never told us that the mathematician, a man named Professor Moses Kumari, entrusted Shealy with the algorithm before he died.”

  It was news to Isaiah as well, and he made another note: Be more thorough on client interviews.

  “You know how we found out that your client has a copy?” Parcelli asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” Isaiah said as if he had a choice.

  “Because Mr. Hoffman recently sent a message through a mob hit man named Johnny Chin, presently serving a life term in California, that Hoffman was ready to sell the algorithm to the mob.” Parcelli waited a beat for that piece of information to sink in. “Since he’s the one who contacted the mob first, it seems a little strange for him to blame his present troubles on the marshals’ office.” Parcelli raised an eyebrow, punctuating that last point.

  Isaiah hoped his own expression wasn’t revealing how much this information caught him off guard. And shocked him. “What’s the nature of this algorithm?” he asked.

  “You might want to ask your clients that question,” Agent Parcelli suggested. “My only point is this: your clients brought this little dilemma on themselves. Until they’re ready to tell us everything they know—including giving us a copy of the algorithm—they shouldn’t expect any further protection from the federal government.”

  This suddenly felt like a movie scene—intrigue, a double cross, a secret algorithm. But in the movies, the debonair defense lawyer always had a clever comeback.

  “I’ll talk to them about it,” Isaiah said, feeling like the clueless law student he was.

  45

  Jamie arrived at the law school ten minutes early for her six thirty meeting with Isaiah. She had reserved one of the small study rooms in the
library for privacy. She waited for Isaiah in the marble-floored main lobby of the stately redbrick building that served as the home for Southeastern Law School.

  For three days now, Jamie’s life had been a living hell. She carried a loaded Kimber in her backpack, checked her rearview mirror constantly, called Chris several times a day to check on Snowball, double-checked locks before going to sleep, and then hardly slept at all. She was not the nervous type. But she had been attacked. And the cops weren’t making much progress. Even now, she scanned the law school lobby for any signs of trouble.

  Thick Persian rugs were scattered around the lobby with overstuffed leather furniture placed in a square on each one. Some first-year study sessions occupied three of the groupings, so Jamie took a seat on the fourth. She removed her federal tax book from her backpack and opened it to Wednesday’s assignment. Reading tax cases was like driving through Atlanta during rush hour—boring, frustrating, and an incubator for new curse words.

  She couldn’t help overhearing the obnoxious study group a few feet away, first-years trying to impress each other with their knowledge of tort law, as if being the top dog in a study session would somehow guarantee success on the exam. Jamie had given up on study groups after her first semester and watched her grades quickly improve. Other students swore by them.

  “Not if the plaintiff had the last clear chance to avoid the injury,” one particularly loud student said. “He can’t recover a dime if he was the one who had the last clear chance but didn’t stop in time.”

  “I don’t think that’s right,” a softer voice said. “I think it only applies to defendants.”

  “You’re wrong—check the case,” the first student bellowed. She said it with such confidence and acidity that her friend shrank back into the couch. “Why do you think they call it ‘last clear chance’? It applies to whichever person had the last chance to avoid the accident.”