by Ed Gaffney
ATTORNEY REDHORSE: I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Honor, but due to the unusual circumstances which arose over this past weekend, the defense will not be further cross-examining Captain Francona. Instead, with the court’s permission, the defense would like to call a witness out of order.
A.D.A. VARICK: Objection.
THE COURT: Noting Mr. Varick’s objection, can you elaborate, Mr. Redhorse, regarding this witness?
Cliff wisely asked to have the next part of the discussion at sidebar, out of the jury’s hearing.
While that was going on inside the courtroom, I was on the other side of the wall, sitting on the bench in my cell, thinking about what I had read in the folder that Beta—or U.S. Army First Lieutenant Joshua Meadows, which I discovered was his real name—had left in the trunk of the car.
First, it cleared up the minor confusion I suffered when he mumbled those warnings to me in his sleep about being “white.” The word he had actually used was “wipe.” And although that kind of miscommunication often served as a minor amusement for me and my friends, in this case, it was far more sinister.
Because what Lieutenant Meadows had said, in his fevered, half-dream state, was, “Watch out, Tom—don’t let them wipe you.” And, “They’ll wipe you if they can.” And from one of Meadows’s entries, the definition of wipe was unambiguous.
We entered the settlement without detection, established area responsibilities, and assumed Omega formation—all entrances and exits from the area manned with heavily armed personnel. Full wipe without incident. Target eliminated: Tariq el-Haraan. Collateral damage: thirteen unaffiliated—eleven men, two women. All cremated immediately. All evidence of habitation wiped as well. Area declared clean at 0500 and team returned to base.
It shouldn’t have been as chilling as it was. After all, they had attempted to murder my father, and then me. But somehow, the cold, written report of the murders of thirteen innocent people, in order to “eliminate the target”—presumably a terrorist—seemed more monstrous, more evil.
But much more important than that, the time I had to reflect on the true nature of what the Foundation was doing forged within me an iron resolve to resist them. I understood that it was very likely going to be a suicide mission, but Amy and Erica and my father were safe. There was no more leverage that could be used against me. Everything I believed in was being attacked by an amoral and ruthless gang of outlaws, and I was not going to turn away from them.
Just then, Sarge came through the door, with the key to the cell in his hand. “Judge Lomax is letting you testify,” he said, flatly.
I knew that Sarge knew I was in danger. And I think that if he’d been making the choices, he would have forced me to stay in that car that morning, and to drive off, saving myself from the grim fate that he now saw bearing down on me.
But there was a line of tanks rolling into my country, and it was time to stand up to them.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SARGE UNLOCKED the cell door, and led me by the elbow into the courtroom. The jury was the first to see me, and even I could hear the gasp. Then the gallery started to make enough noise for Sarge to stop my march to the stand and glare them back into silence.
It was hard to blame them.
Everyone in the room saw the blood-spattered condition of my T-shirt and pants. The injury to my head was big, bright, and ugly, and the two other cuts to my face from the fire were still far from healed. The crusted, gory paper towels that had adhered to my damaged hand served as the final horror-movie touch.
Of course, what made my condition so dramatic—beyond the obvious—was that on every day of the previous week, I had come into the court in a suit and tie, showered and shaved and looking like what everyone imagined a lawyer should look like.
That Monday morning, I looked like somebody had spent the weekend trying to kill me.
I stepped up onto the platform that served as the witness stand. It was a unique experience for me—whenever I had been in a courtroom before this, I was the one asking the questions, not answering them.
I was behind a standard wooden lectern, about four feet tall, the top of which was a small platform on which the speaker could rest a book or papers, or simply his hands. There was a microphone on a gooseneck extending toward my mouth.
Cliff was sitting uneasily at the defense table, leaning on it with both hands, staring down at its surface. He looked like he was going to be sick.
Gomez sat next to Cliff, staring at me, intently. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking as this latest chapter in his own personal nightmare unfolded.
The faces in the gallery were a mix. I saw mostly shock, but there were a few smirks, as if I had somehow deserved this, or as if the real Tom Carpenter had finally been revealed to the jury.
The Judicial Broadcasting System’s camera operator was at his post, filming everything, while murmuring something into his headset. His head was turned so I couldn’t read his lips. Preston Varick was in his seat, alternating between glaring aggressively at me, and occasionally turning back to look into the gallery in the direction of Governor Hamilton.
And the jury was in a total state of confusion. They obviously had no idea what to think.
That was hardly a surprise.
Judge Lomax tried his best to defuse the situation.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when you and I stood at the beginning of the trial, in silent acknowledgment of the solemn responsibility that we were undertaking, I think that it’s safe to say that none of us expected events to develop as they have over this past week.
“However, humanity being what it is, even the best legal minds cannot anticipate every situation that might present itself in the course of a criminal trial.
“That being said, there have been occasions in the past where an attorney, for any number of reasons, must become a witness in a case in which he is involved. This does not reflect in any way, positively or negatively, on the attorney. Nor does it reflect, in any way, positively or negatively, on his client.
“In this case, such a situation has arisen. Circumstances have dictated that Attorney Carpenter become a witness at this trial. Accordingly, he will no longer be representing Mr. Gomez. That duty has fallen to Mr. Redhorse.
“One further word. In no way are you to sympathize with Mr. Carpenter on account of his injuries, nor should you hold Mr. Carpenter’s appearance against him, or against the defendant. It is urgent that he testify in this case immediately, which is why he has not yet had time to have his injuries properly addressed. How he came to be in his current condition is not relevant to this trial.”
I could have quibbled with that last statement, but all in all, I thought that Judge Lomax was making the best of a very bad situation.
The clerk came over to me with a Bible. I gingerly put my gunshot hand with the hideous-looking bandage on it, raised my right hand, and swore to tell the truth. Then Cliff stood up, and asked the first question he’d ever uttered in a criminal trial.
The first time I tried a case, I was flat awful. I was defending a young man in Mesa District Court who had been accused of assault and battery—specifically, of breaking a young woman’s nose in a bar fight. The defense was mistaken identity—a plausible one, as it was admitted by all that the bar was crowded, and that many different people on the scene, including the victim, were intoxicated. My client, Max Oesteroost, swore convincingly that the only reason he was anywhere near the fight was to attempt to break up the ruckus.
There were only three witnesses at the trial: the victim, the bartender, and Max. My questioning of each was a master class in hesitation, stammering, and overall insecurity.
I was trying so hard to ask my questions correctly, and I was so concerned that my client was factually guilty and that the truth might accidentally pop up in the middle of my question, that I could barely put two words together.
Although it is true that there are many complicated and difficult rules of evidence to contend with in crimina
l trials, the simple fact is that in general, the effective questioning of a witness shouldn’t be that hard. The whole point of the trial, especially in a criminal case, is to give the jury the facts they need to use to decide whether the defendant is guilty.
But I could see that Cliff was terrified. Why wouldn’t he be? He was deathly afraid of public speaking, and he was making his first courtroom appearance ever in the middle of the biggest murder trial in Arizona history, on national television. And oh, yeah, he wasn’t even a criminal lawyer. If lives hadn’t been hanging in the balance, I would have found it damn funny.
Cliff may have been scared to death, but he was game. We’d spent as much time as we could preparing. If you could call hurriedly reading through and jotting down questions about some of the most inflammatory material in history “preparing.”
“Would you state your name and your occupation for the record, please?”
“My name is Thomas Carpenter. I am a criminal defense attorney. Until very recently, I was the defendant’s attorney in this trial.”
“Thank you. And can you tell us what happened to you after the trial was recessed this past Friday?”
“Yes. As I was driving home, I received a phone call from a man who told me that he was going to kill my father because I’d brought forward evidence that Esteban Cruz was not the person who detonated the Denver Tunnel Bomb.”
There was an audible gasp from my left, and I turned around to see the bank teller, Juror Number 14, holding her hand in front of her mouth.
“My dad lives with me up on Payson’s Ridge,” I explained. “He’s been partially paralyzed since he suffered a stroke four years ago.”
Cliff looked like he was getting a little more relaxed. “What did you do when you got this threat?”
“I raced home to find the house on fire. Luckily, I was able to get my father out of there before he got hurt. Well, actually, I injured his shoulder as I was carrying him down the basement stairs, but considering everything, we got away in pretty good shape. Except for a few scratches and burns.”
Varick stood up. “Your Honor, I object. This has absolutely no relevance to the case against Mr. Gomez.”
Judge Lomax turned to Cliff. “Mr. Redhorse?” Suddenly, the sweat was back on Cliff’s forehead. Obviously, Varick was correct, if you looked simply at the incident on Friday as an isolated event. Technically, an attempt to intimidate me had no bearing on whether Juan Gomez planned the Denver Tunnel Bombing. The only way to show that the threat against my father had any relevance to the Gomez trial was to put it into the context of the entire set of facts which we had learned from Beta—Joshua Meadows.
Unfortunately, that kind of argument is a lot easier to make when you’re writing it down, with unlimited time. Cliff was standing there, on the spot, wondering what to say.
Judge Lomax spoke again. “Mr. Redhorse? Can you establish relevance?”
Cliff cleared his throat. “I think so, Your Honor. I mean, yes, Your Honor. It’s just that, um, there’s a lot of facts that need to be, um, Mr. Carpenter needs to testify to. When he does, then, uh, then it will be relevant. I mean it’s relevant now. It will just be, I mean, you know, Your Honor will be able to tell that it’s relevant. After that.”
All I can say on Cliff’s behalf is that speaking in court, especially your first time, is much harder than they make it look on television.
Judge Lomax didn’t seem to hold my friend’s inexperience against him, though. “For the moment, I am going to overrule the objection, and allow a limited amount of further inquiry on the topic. But if relevance is not established very soon, I will entertain another objection and I will strike the testimony.”
A more experienced litigator would have heard the judge’s words as a warning to get right to the main course, and forget about the appetizer and the soup. But Cliff was so committed to the strategy that we had discussed—a chronological description of everything that had happened to me over the weekend—that he plunged forward as if there had been no objection at all.
“Um, did anything significant happen to you on Sunday morning?”
It was not exactly the smoothest transition in the world, but I think it’s safe to say that we were way past worrying about style points by this time.
“Yes. I was on my way to the store, when I was attacked by at least two men in a car. They cut me off, one of them jumped into my car, threatened to shoot me, and hit me in the face with a pistol, which is when I received this injury to my forehead.”
“And did you escape?”
“Yes. I managed to get away, but then, later that evening, I was attacked again, this time by at least three individuals, one of whom shot me in the hand.” I raised up my injury and its disgusting mess of bandages.
I was shortcutting most of what had happened, hoping that Cliff would take the hint that everything now hinged upon getting to what Lieutenant Meadows had written in his folder. I wasn’t looking directly at Judge Lomax, but I was getting a strong sense that he was running out of patience.
“I see,” Cliff said. He cleared his throat. “And after that second attack, did you hear anything of interest on the radio?”
Varick had been given the perfect opening, and he took it. “Your Honor! The radio? Not only is the defense leading the witness, it hasn’t even taken the first step in establishing how these fantastical tales of assaults and shootings and fires have any relevance whatsoever to the case at bar. And now we’re about to hear testimony as to a radio broadcast? I renew my objection.”
To his credit, Judge Lomax did not immediately act. Instead, he turned to Cliff. “Counselor? How is this relevant?”
“As I mentioned before, Your Honor, there is a lot of information that ties this all together. The radio, for instance, is how Tom—Mr. Carpenter—learned that the conspiracy extended to him directly. That’s when he found out that even though he saved his father, he was being accused of killing him, as well as two other people.”
To Cliff, and me, it made perfect sense. But without any kind of context, it sounded like my Navajo friend might have accidentally walked into the wrong courtroom.
It was obvious that Judge Lomax was going to shut us down, and I couldn’t let that happen. The only way Meadows’s information was going to get to the public was through this trial. And I didn’t know any other way than through my testimony. If the judge sustained the objection, Juan Gomez wasn’t the only person in the courtroom who was going to be executed for murder. I spoke up. “Your Honor, if I might address this issue—”
But the judge cut me off. “Mr. Carpenter, please. You are a witness, and no longer the defendant’s attorney. The testimony is obviously irrelevant. The objection is sustained.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
CLIFF WAS AT a loss. He stood there, looking at me.
For my part, I was trying to think of a way to convince Judge Lomax that he was wrong. Of course, as a witness, I had no business speaking directly to the judge at all. Yet if all that needed to be said was merely a key word or two, I would have gladly just blurted them out.
But the entire thing was so twisted. Where would I even begin my explanation? With Joshua Meadows, a man who had officially died as a member of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan five years ago? Your Honor, at the beginning of this trial, I was accosted at gunpoint in the men’s room by a man who told me I needed to represent Juan Gomez without incident until he secretly fed me information, through a hidden earpiece, regarding Esteban Cruz.
And would it be any better if I began my remarks by talking about Landry? Your Honor, this all began when a sociopath in the state police in a vast conspiracy with any number of other state and federal officials attempted to intimidate me, and then attempted to murder both my father and me by burning down our house. The last time I saw him I managed to throw him through the windshield of my car.
I’d lived through it all, and yet I couldn’t think of a way to make it sound like I wasn’t mentally ill.
Judge Loma
x interrupted my thoughts. “Mr. Redhorse? Do you have any further questions for this witness?”
Poor Cliff. He was already overwhelmed, and now the clock was ticking down the final seconds. He looked completely flummoxed, although, as always, undeniably sharp. From his five-hundred-dollar suit, right down to the turquoise-and-silver wedding ring that Iris had picked out for him. The ring that was on the hand that was nervously tapping. Tapping on the blue folder that Joshua Meadows had left in the car for me.
I cleared my throat, loudly. It probably sounded like a silly ploy to get Cliff to look at me, but I didn’t care, because that’s exactly what it was. When he did, I continued my cartoonlike prompting. I tilted my head down, clownishly lowering my gaze directly to the blue folder.
Cliff may not have been a litigator, but he was no fool. He saw what I wanted him to see, picked up the folder, and hesitated.
Unlike what Hollywood would have you believe, the typical friendship between men in the real world does not include a shared history of summer camp secret signal class, upon which they can draw to communicate silently at those critical moments when all is on the line. So there was nothing I could do for Cliff from my perch on the witness stand. He was flying solo but losing altitude, and he wore the expression of a man desperate enough to pull one of the shiny levers in the cockpit without the first idea of what was going to happen.
Cliff’s actual words were “Your Honor, I’d like to offer the contents of this folder into evidence.”
Unfortunately, that request was not going to have any effect on the flight path of our particular plane. Varick, now smug, shot to his feet and confidently objected.
Judge Lomax was well aware that Varick’s objection had to be sustained. But by now, the judge also realized that while Cliff was hopelessly out of his league, Cliff and I both thought there was something terribly important to get in front of the jury. Rather than simply ruling on the objection, the judge chose to do a little piloting of his own.