Irrefutable Evidence

by Melissa F. Miller

  But no. Her flight departed in one hundred and fourteen minutes. She had just enough time to drive to the airport, park in the cheapest, furthest lot (the only one Mid-Atlantic would reimburse her for), clear security, and scarf down an overpriced, underflavored sandwich before boarding the plane for the short trip to Pittsburgh via Philadelphia.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. She exited the elevator car and scanned the dimly lit garage. She dug out her car keys and trudged toward her car. It was easy to spot. It gleamed proudly, shining out from the rows of dusty, mud-splattered vehicles. Laura loved her little car. It wasn’t the fanciest or most expensive model, but it was hers. The first major purchase of her adult life had been the sporty red car. In just three more payments, she’d own it outright.

  That thought lifted her spirits. She was smiling to herself when she reached the driver’s side. As she unlocked her door, her smile faded.

  “What the …?”

  She stared at the letters scratched into the paint not believing what she saw. She blinked, half expecting the vandalism to disappear when she reopened her eyes. It didn’t, of course.

  SNITCHES DIE

  The words themselves, as offensive as they were, weren’t nearly as disturbing as the sight of the deep gouges they caused. The red paint was scraped away entirely, revealing the metal underneath.

  She didn’t have time to stand there and gape at it. She had a plane to catch. Her hands shook with anger as she navigated through the garage and out into the early rush hour traffic. She wove through the traffic and joined the ribbon of cars streaming out of the city.

  With one part of her brain, she ran repeated calculations of her current speed and the remaining distance, estimating her arrival time more precisely than any GPS device could. With the other, she worried. The upcoming deposition and the cost of repairing the damage to her car cycled through her mind in a loop. She worried about whether to report the property crime to the overtaxed police force and whether she should file a claim and risk the increase in her premium that was likely to result. She fretted that she’d be distracted by the issue tomorrow and would fall into a trap set by Sasha McCandless and say the wrong thing. Her mind was buzzing with anxious thoughts. The only thing she didn’t worry about was the one thing she should have been concerned about—the message that someone had gone to great lengths to impress upon her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Laura Yim was unusually nervous. In Sasha’s experience virtually every deponent was nervous at the beginning of a deposition, unless he or she happened to be an inveterate liar—or a sociopath. Yim appeared to be neither, as she was positively vibrating with fitful energy. She watched Yim’s leg bounce under the table in a jittery rhythm. The claims adjuster brought to mind a hummingbird. Or a rabbit. She was skittish and in constant motion.

  Her attorney, on the other hand, was making a big show of being utterly unconcerned. He was straight out of central casting with a name to match—Phillip Chadwick, III, Esquire. He’d taken a folded copy of the New York Times out of his dark leather briefcase and was scanning the headlines while the court reporter set up her machine.

  Sasha smiled reassuringly at Attorney Chadwick’s client.

  “Did you come in this morning, Ms. Yim?”

  Yim cut her eyes toward her counsel, clearly uncertain as to whether she was permitted to engage in small talk. He didn’t bother to look up from his newspaper. Sasha gave the woman an encouraging nod.

  After one more sidelong glance at Chadwick, Yim responded. “No. Last night.”

  “Oh, well, if you get a chance when we’re finished, you should head over to Market Square downtown. There are all sorts of holiday festivities going on.”

  Aside from Christmas music, Sasha loved nothing more than the decorations that festooned Pittsburgh’s downtown beginning in late November. The holiday season was the one time of year when she almost regretted not renting office space downtown.

  “Really? I’ll have to check it out,” Yim said with what appeared to be genuine interest.

  Chadwick finally glanced up and rolled his eyes.

  “She’s not here as a tourist, Ms. McCandless.” He snapped his newspaper closed and returned it to his briefcase.

  Sasha didn’t react to the scolding. Instead, she waited until he pulled out his iPhone and started scrolling through his messages. Then she gave his client a sympathetic shrug as if to say ‘what’s his problem?’

  Yim tried to suppress a grin.

  “Okay, I’m all set. Sorry about the delay,” the court reporter announced, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “The software wasn’t cooperating.”

  “Ah, technology,” Sasha said.

  Yim and the court reporter chuckled. Chadwick muttered something under his breath, still focused on his emails.

  The court reporter waited, fingers poised over her keys.

  “Are you ready, counselor?” Sasha asked pointedly.

  Chadwick looked up distractedly. “What? Yes, yes, let’s get on with it.”

  She turned to Yim and prepared to launch into the preliminaries. Plenty of lawyers viewed the initial deposition questions as a warmup or, worse, a nuisance. Not Sasha. She used the introductory, housekeeping questions about name, address, education, and the like to size up the witness and gauge her demeanor. She paid close attention, not to the answers, but to the way the deponent answered them.

  Yim was rolling along, clearly still ill at ease, but managing to respond to the background questions with no difficulty. Then Sasha asked, “Is there any reason you can’t testify truthfully today?”

  It was a hackneyed question. With only one exception, she’d never heard anyone answer with anything but ‘no, no reason.’ The outlier had been a retired sales representative for a chocolate company embroiled in an unfair trade practices suit. He’d looked straight at her and said, “My brain’s like Swiss cheese, sweetheart. I can’t remember a dang thing—including how I got here today.” That had proved to be a very short deposition.

  Yim didn’t do anything quite so dramatic. She hesitated—just a short pause, but it was long enough to raise Sasha’s antenna. Then Yim glanced at her attorney before she said, “Uh, no.”

  “Are you sure?” Sasha asked quietly.

  Chadwick jerked his head toward his client. Yim chewed on her lower lip for a moment then blurted, “I’m distracted.”

  Chadwick closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side as if he were a parent pushed to his breaking point.

  She waited several seconds to see if Yim would continue. When she didn’t, Sasha said, “What’s distracting you?”

  “My car was vandalized yesterday afternoon.”

  Chadwick opened his eyes, and he furrowed his brow.

  “Let’s go off the record.”

  “Of course,” Sasha agreed.

  The soft clacking stopped and the court reporter’s fingers paused mid-air over her machine’s keys.

  “Now, what’s going on, Laura?” he asked in a measured voice.

  “When I left your office yesterday, someone had scratched a message into the door of my car.” Her voice quavered.

  “What? Were you parked in the garage?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they write?”

  “Snitches die.”

  Sasha’s pulse rocketed but she kept her face blank.

  “Snitches? I guess there’s some drug activity in nearby neighborhoods, but the dealers usually steer clear of the business district,” Chadwick mused. “Must have been a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing.”

  “I guess,” Yim agreed.

  Sasha forced herself to remain silent.

  “Did you report it?”

  “No, I figured there’s no point.”

  “Well, you ought to. That parking garage ought to have security cameras. They might have caught the person.”

  “Maybe.” Having voiced her concern, Yim now seemed reluctant to talk about it any further.

>   For her part, Sasha was trying not to scream at both the witness and her attorney that the words scratched into Yim’s car were anything but random. It was a clear warning that if she knew about the insurance fraud, she’d better keep it to herself. On the one hand, based on Yim’s demeanor, Sasha was pretty sure the insurance adjuster hadn’t yet connected the dots that showed the ugly picture of what was going on at Mid-Atlantic. On the other hand, whoever had decided to gouge ‘snitches die’ into the paint on Yim’s car obviously didn’t think so. And that meant Yim was in danger, regardless of whether she knew anything about the arson-for-profit scheme. And that meant she needed to clue Yim in. Didn’t it?

  Do not say anything, she told herself. The existence of the arson ring had no impact on the Maravaches’ claims. As Will had said, the rules of professional responsibility didn’t require her to report her suspicions. But by the same token, because her client wouldn’t be harmed if she did voice her concerns, the rules didn’t forbid her from telling Laura Yim or her attorney about the crime.

  Regardless of whatever speech Chadwick may or may not have given Yim, he didn’t truly represent her—not personally, not in any way that mattered. His real client was Mid-Atlantic Fire & Casualty. And that meant if Sasha tipped him off as to the crimes being committed, he’d run back to the insurance company and share the news the first chance he got. No, she couldn’t say anything in front of Chadwick.

  But Yim might be in danger. Did she owe Laura Yim a duty to warn her?

  Not really, she decided. But that position left her feeling a little too weasley—and altogether too attorney-like—for her liking.

  Despite her unease, she bit down on the inside of her lip to keep from speaking. Gently lead Yim to draw her own conclusion. She’s not an idiot. Once she recognizes the pattern in the data, she’ll understand the significance of the message that destroyed her paint job. As unsatisfying as that decision felt, it was the only way forward. She folded her hands in front of her and waited while Chadwick attempted to reassure his skittish witness.

  He glanced over at her. “Can we take a break?”

  “Of course.”

  “No,” Yim declared. “I’m fine, really. Let’s just get on with it.”

  The court reporter looked at Sasha. Sasha looked at Chadwick. He shrugged and said, “If she says she’s good to go, let’s get the party started.”

  “Works for me.” Sasha gave Yim her broadest, most encouraging smile and launched back into her background questions.

  For all Yim’s hesitance and anxiety, she made a good witness. She took the time after each question to consider her answer before responding. She used clear, declarative sentences that would make sense and look coherent if Sasha ever quoted the transcript in a brief. Perhaps most helpful of all, Laura Yim didn’t seem to be allergic to the truth. She didn’t shade or couch her answers. She didn’t argue ridiculous technicalities or deliberately misunderstand what was being asked.

  As a bonus, her counsel kept his objections short. Either it wasn’t Chadwick’s style to riddle a record with bombastic, rambling speaking objections or—more likely, he viewed insurance coverage work as necessary drudgery that financed whatever practice area he actually cared about. And that suited Sasha just fine.

  She rolled along, walking Yim through the Maravaches’ claim point by point. After establishing that the Maravaches paid their premiums faithfully and provided the requisite notice of loss after the fire, Sasha got to the meat of the issue.

  “Did you take the fire inspector’s report into account in denying the claim?”

  “Of course.” Yim didn’t elaborate. Point to Chadwick for witness preparation.

  “The fire inspector determined the fire was accidental, though, correct?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh?” Sasha rifled through her pile of documents and passed a copy of the report to Yim, one to her lawyer, and a third to the court reporter. “I’ve pre-marked this document as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 6. Do you recognize this?”

  “Yes.”

  “This document is titled ‘Fire Origin and Cause Report dated August 2, 2014 for the Premises Located at 1400 Smallman Extension.’ Did I read that correctly?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s the fire investigation report for the building where Steel City Roasters was located, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The document is signed by Nathaniel J. Herschman, correct?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Please read aloud the section titled ‘Conclusions.’”

  Yim cleared her throat. “Conclusions: this inspector found no evidence of incendiary activity. The blaze appears to have started within the left front room, occupied by Steel City Roasters, but the exact point of origin could not be determined and cause could not be determined. It is my professional opinion that the fire was accidental in nature.”

  “I’ll repeat my question: didn’t the fire inspector determine the fire to be accidental?”

  “Again, not exactly.”

  “What’s your basis for saying that?”

  “Look, the inspector’s actual conclusion was that he couldn’t tell where the fire started, other than somewhere in Steel City Roaster’s space, and that he couldn’t tell the cause. That’s not a conclusion that the fire was accidental; it’s a conclusion that the cause is undetermined. That last bit, the part about his opinion being that it was an accident—that’s … well, for insurance purposes, that’s nice and all, but it’s hardly conclusory.”

  Sasha cocked her head and regarded the claims adjustor. Yim looked back at her unblinkingly.

  “So, to paraphrase, you, as a claims adjustor, didn’t feel comfortable or justified in relying on the fire inspector’s professional opinion because he didn’t articulate an evidentiary basis for it. Is that a fair statement?”

  Yim beamed at her. “That’s more than fair. That’s exactly it. The inspector could have, but didn’t, write a thorough report to support that opinion. In the absence of such a report, I had to rely on the actual facts: the fire started in Steel City’s space and then proceeded to blaze out of control, gutting an entire block-long brick building.”

  A shadow of concern crossed Chadwick’s face. His witness was warming to her subject. She was going beyond yes and no answers and explaining her reasoning. Any trial attorney knew that’s where the danger lay. Sasha had to spring before Chadwick reeled his client back in.

  “Can you explain why everyone else who considered the same evidence did rely on the inspector’s opinion, including your colleague Mr. Moraine?”

  Yim’s nostrils flared. “I can’t venture a guess as to what Mr. Moraine might have been thinking.”

  “But he did approve the claims for his clients who were located in the building, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your department supervisor signed off on them, correct?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what makes the Maravaches’ claim different?”

  “Every claim is different. It would be an oversimplification to apply cookie cutter criteria to a claim. By way of example, the fire started in the Maravaches’ space, a locked space that only they had access to.”

  “Well, the landlord had access, too, presumably.”

  Yim gave her a steady look but didn’t speak.

  “Ms. Yim?”

  “That’s not a question,” Chadwick interjected.

  Sasha faked a smile. “My apologies. I’ll rephrase. Did the landlord have access to all of the commercial tenants’ spaces?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, the landlord had access to the entire building, correct?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And the landlord is also a Mid-Atlantic insured, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “His claim was paid, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, every single cl
aim associated with the fire was paid, except for the Maravaches’ claim. True or false?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And while the fire started in Steel City Roasters’ shop, that’s not the only difference between the Maravaches and the other insureds, is it?”

  “No, another difference is that Steel City Roasters was seriously undercapitalized. Also, the landlord had recently raised Steel City Roasters’ rent, but, as I understand it, all the other tenants were grandfathered into leases that provided for rent caps.”

  Sasha had to admit that Yim was good. Those were two terrible facts for her client. But it wasn’t Sasha’s first time at the rodeo. “Sure, but that’s not the material difference between Steel City Roasters’ and the others, is it?”

  For the first time, Yim’s confidence faltered. “I … I’m not sure what you mean,” she said finally.

  “What I mean is, isn’t it true that every other insured’s claim was handled by Mr. Moraine and not you?”

  “Um, to be honest, I don’t know that off the top of my head. I’d have to look at my files back at the office.”

  “That’s okay. I have documents here that will show it. In fact, the documents Mid-Atlantic produced in discovery establish that every single property damage claim in the past ten years that arose out of a fire where Inspector Herschman handled the fire inspection, Frank Abruzzi or Ben Dolman was the insurance broker, Mr. Moraine was the adjuster, and Anthony DiPanni was the supervisor was paid—every single one was paid. Is that a coincidence, Ms. Yim?”

  Yim’s face clouded. She furrowed her brow. Then her eyes widened. It was as if she were a novice acting student being told to convey first disbelief and then dawning realization. Chadwick, who was barely paying attention, didn’t notice his client’s reaction but managed to object to the form of the question.

  Sasha locked eyes with Yim for several long seconds before saying, “I’ll withdraw it. I think I’ve done everything I need to here. Let’s wrap this up. I’m dying for my pre-lunch coffee.” She gestured with her empty Jake’s Coffee Shop mug.