Without a Hitch

by Andrew Price

  Beckett placed his copy of the image on the projector. Soon the jury was comparing the digitally altered image of the Hispanic/Asian appearing Alvarez with the bald, black Beaumont.

  “This is the drivers license given to you by the man calling himself Scott Stevens, isn’t it?” Beckett asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Smith said with some embarrassment. She bit her lip.

  “You made this photocopy yourself didn’t you, when you opened the file?”

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  “Does that look like Mr. Beaumont to you?”

  Smith set down her copy. “No sir, it doesn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no reason to be sorry, Ms. Smith. Trials are about finding the truth. Let’s just make sure we get this right. They’re not even the same race, are they?”

  “No sir, it doesn’t appear that way. . . not at all,” she added.

  “Is it possible you were mistaken when you told this jury that Mr. Beaumont was the man who opened the Stevens account?”

  “I. . . uh, I think I was wrong. I’m very sorry.”

  “Then it wasn’t Beaumont that opened the account?”

  “No sir, it wasn’t.” She looked at Beaumont and blushed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “Thank you, Ms. Smith.” Beckett returned to his seat.

  Judge Sutherlin stopped the proceedings early the first day because he needed to handle three minor matters on his docket. This gave Eddie Pierce extra time to find and browbeat Paul Webb. Webb stood with his back against the bookcase in Pierce’s office. Pierce stood in the middle of the room with his arms folded and a nasty frown on his lips.

  “Listen to me, Officer. If you don’t testify, this case will die. That monster will escape. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  “No sir, I don’t want any of this on my conscience,” Webb replied.

  “Good, we can agree then. You need to testify.”

  “I will not get on the stand and lie,” Webb said defiantly.

  Pierce moved closer. “Son, I don’t know what your problem is and I don’t care, but you filed a police report, and I expect you to stand by that report. Now can I count on you or can I not count on you?”

  Webb didn’t respond.

  Pierce glared at him. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. In my thirty years in this office, I’ve never heard of an officer doing what you are doing now.” Pierce jabbed his finger into Webb’s chest. “You need to talk to your friends, talk to your fellow officers, go pray, whatever, and get over this. You filed a police report and if you don’t stand by that, there will be repercussions. Now get out of my office!”

  Webb left without a word.

  Pierce called Morales into his office. “I don’t care what you need to do, make sure that guy testifies.”

  Meanwhile, Corbin and Beckett sat in Beckett’s office eating Chinese take out. “I’ll bet Eddie Pierce is kicking himself for trying to make an example of Beaumont,” Corbin laughed.

  “I wouldn’t be too confident just yet,” Beckett cautioned.

  “What do you mean?” Corbin kept his face in the food container, but his eyes watched Beckett closely.

  “This case depends on Webb.”

  “I can’t see that. You made Russell look like a liar and Smith recanted. Right now the jury’s thinking Pierce set the whole thing up. Not to mention, Sutherlin sounds like he may dismiss the case. All their evidence, what little there is, is tainted by the illegal search.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Beckett said abruptly. “Webb is all that matters. If he doesn’t show up, we win. If he does. . . all bets are off.”

  Corbin didn’t follow up on Beckett’s comment.

  Corbin rubbed the cold, steel gun against his forehead. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “What?” Alvarez asked.

  “Beckett destroyed their witnesses. The jury is ready to string up Eddie Pierce and personally escort Beaumont to the exit, but Beckett’s obsessed with the idea they’re going to convict. I don’t understand his thinking. He claims the only thing that matters is Webb.” Corbin tapped the gun against his forehead several times. “I think he’s lost his mind. I think he wants to turn himself in.”

  “He wants to be a martyr,” Alvarez agreed. He was angry and didn’t bother hiding it.

  “Yes.”

  “I fucking warned you!” Alvarez spat out. “All you did was put off the inevitable and make this a thousand times more difficult. You need to act now.”

  They sat in silence for several seconds.

  “Do you have a plan?” Alvarez finally asked.

  “I have a plan,” Corbin said coldly.

  Chapter 40

  Trial started promptly at 9:00 am the following morning. Much to Beckett’s chagrin, Beaumont showed up in a maroon suit. The suit had a hat, but Beckett grabbed it from Beaumont’s head and stuffed it into a briefcase. This caused Beaumont to take verbal shots at Beckett for wearing the same gray suit as the day before, though he did change his striped blue tie for a mauve paisley tie. Corbin stayed out of the argument.

  Pierce spent the morning introducing two people whose identities were stolen. Both were locals. Under Pierce’s guidance, they told sob stories about the time, expense and emotional trauma it cost them to deal with this issue. Pierce got them to lay it on thick. . . too thick, and the jury stopped listening. When jurors stop listening, they put down their notepads and their eyes wander around the room. All but one of the jurors reached that phase within minutes. Pierce also called Officer Sanchez to testify about the chain of custody for the gun. Sanchez explained how he took the gun from Russell and placed it into the evidence locker, where it was tagged to be produced at trial. The jury didn’t care.

  After lunch, Pierce called Natasha Freet.

  Freet stared at Beaumont. The jury waited for her answer. They already knew she worked at First Regional Bank as a teller. They knew she didn’t like her job or her boss. They also knew she wasn’t a very nice person. What they did not know was whether or not she could identify Beaumont.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” she finally said in her thick Philadelphia accent. It sounded like she was popping gum when she spoke, even though she spit her gum out when she reached the witness box.

  “Are you sure?” Pierce asked.

  “Like I say, that’s him. He was wearin’ this nasty red shirt and black pants when I seen him, but that’s him,” said Freet, who wore a hot pink mini-dress that was too small for her midriff and gold hoop earrings over four inches in diameter.

  “This was the man,” Pierce pointed toward Beaumont, “who asked you on June 14th of last year how to open an account?”

  “Yeah,” she said impatiently.

  “You remember him specifically? No one showed you any photos of him to jog your memory?”

  “They showed me like photos, but I remembered him before they showed me them.”

  “What happened after he spoke to you?”

  “Who? The cop or him?” she pointed an excessively long, silver fingernail at Beaumont.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” Pierce replied.

  She shifted to the edge of her seat. “He wanted to know where to like open an account. So I pointed him to account services, and he like went.”

  “Did he open an account?”

  “Objection,” Beckett said calmly.

  “Sustained,” Sutherlin responded without looking up.

  “Yeah, he did,” Freet added after Sutherlin spoke. The smug look on her face told everyone in the courtroom she knew she was not supposed to speak.

  Judge Sutherlin slapped down his file. He glared at Freet. “When I sustain an objection, you will not answer the question, do you understand me!”

  Freet looked away from Sutherlin before shrugging her shoulders and snarling her lips.

  Sutherlin then addressed the jury: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you will disregard the witnesses’ last comment.” He picked up his file and leaned back in his chair again.
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  “Ms. Freet, how long would you say Mr. Beaumont stayed with the account services people, if you know?” Pierce asked.

  “I’d say like maybe half a hour. I kept seeing him sitting there, fillin’ out papers and stuff.”

  “Who would have opened the account for him, if you know?”

  “Mindy Wright. She was like the account services lady.”

  “I’m going to show you a video, Ms. Freet.” Pierce motioned to Morales, who slid a videotape into the projector. “Can you explain to the jury what this video is?”

  “Yeah. It’s like the security tape from June 14th.” She began playing with one of her nails.

  “That’s right,” Pierce replied. “This is a security video from June 14th from First Regional Bank.”

  Beckett had previously stipulated to the authenticity of the tape so Pierce didn’t need to call a security person from the bank to verify what the tape was or explain how it was made. This allowed Pierce to treat the tape as a settled fact. Stipulation is customary when there aren’t any disputes regarding the validity of certain evidence.

  “Do you see yourself on the tape?”

  Freet stopped picking at her nail and looked up at the screen. “Yeah, I’m on the left at the second window.”

  “Do you see a time code?”

  “Yeah, it says like 1:10 pm, June 14th.”

  Corbin and Beckett looked at the video. There, in the background, sat Alvarez filling out paperwork at the account services desk.

  “Do you see Mr. Beaumont?”

  “Yeah. He’s kind’a hard to make out, but he’s the second one in line.” The image didn’t look much like Beaumont, especially as the man had hair. But the video was also grainy, which made identification difficult.

  “You’re absolutely sure that’s Beaumont?” Pierce asked theatrically.

  “Yeah, I remember him. Then they showed me the photos and I pointed him right out. Then the cops like showed me the video and I pointed him out there too.” Freet went back to picking at her nail.

  “Let’s move the video forward,” Pierce said to Morales.

  As the jury watched, the man approached Freet’s window. They spoke briefly before he went to account services. The video continued to run for several more minutes as he sat down at the account services desk with a woman, who was presumably Mindy Wright, filled out some paperwork, and left.

  Pierce leaned against the podium on his left arm. His right hand was still thrust into its permanent place in his pocket. “You’re 100% sure that was Mr. Beaumont?”

  “Absolutely.”

  All eyes turned to Beaumont.

  Beckett looked almost bored when he approached the podium. “I’ve just got a couple quick questions, Ms. Freet,” he said, placing his notes on the podium.

  Freet visibly stiffened in her chair. Clearly, she viewed Beckett as the enemy.

  “What color was Mr. Beaumont’s hair. . . it’s difficult to tell from the video.”

  “Black.”

  “Can you describe it? Was it thick, thin, was he wearing a wig?”

  Freet smirked and let out a derisive laugh. “No, he wasn’t wearing no wig. It was black and kind’a like thinning.”

  “He doesn’t have hair today—”

  “No, he must’a shaved it off,” Freet interrupted him.

  “Did Mr. Beaumont give you anything to open the account?”

  “Why would he give me somethin’?”

  “You tell me?”

  “No, he didn’t give me nothin’. He just asked where he could open an account, and I told him. He did’n give me nothin’.” She scrunched her lips at Beckett. Several members of the jury shook their heads at her hostility.

  Beckett started to leave the podium, but stopped. “One more thing, Ms. Freet. Do you think you could tell the difference between Mr. Beaumont’s natural hair and a wig?”

  “Yeah, I could tell easy. That was his real hair. There ain’t no way that was no wig.”

  “Nothing further, Your Honor,” Beckett said to the surprise of many in the courtroom.

  Pierce called Mindy Wright next. Wright looked like Maggie Smith, only she was tall and thin, almost stork-like, and she wore an overly-ruffled blouse that gave the impression of being a bib. Like Smith, she was very pleasant and did her best to be helpful. She had no recollection of opening the account and could not identify Beaumont, but she did confirm that someone using the name Jason Hammerlin opened an account at First Regional Bank on June 14th, though she couldn’t state the time the account was opened, nor could she identify Beaumont from the videotape. She also confirmed that the documents she was shown by Pierce were copies of the account documents that would have been provided to Hammerlin when he opened the account. She did not keep a photocopy of Hammerlin’s drivers license.

  Wright was equally pleasant and helpful with Beckett. Beckett, in turn, was pleasant with her. “Ms. Wright, when you open an account for someone, do they usually give you money to put into the account?”

  “Usually. Sometimes they give us a check,” she replied.

  “But they always give you something?”

  “Oh yes. We can’t open an account with a zero balance.”

  “How much did Mr. Hammerlin give you?” Beckett asked.

  Wright looked through the paperwork Pierce gave her earlier. “It looks like he gave me $100 in cash as an initial deposit.” She took one more look over the documents. “Right, it had to be cash or I would have put down a check number.”

  “If you don’t mind, Ms. Wright, let’s watch the video again, as you did with Mr. Pierce. I’d like you to pay particular attention to the transaction going on and please tell the jury everything that changes hands between you and the man in the red shirt.” Beckett signaled Corbin to start the video.

  Wright narrated as she watched the video. “He must have asked me about the account, as I’m handing him account documents.” The video continued. “He’s filling out the documents. . . now he’s giving the documents to me. . . I’m looking them over. . . I’m. . . that’s odd.”

  Beckett signaled Corbin to stop the tape. “What’s odd, Ms. Wright?”

  “I put the documents in the wrong drawer.”

  “What do you mean ‘the wrong drawer’?”

  “That’s the drawer for the ATM card applications,” she said, sounding perplexed.

  “Is it possible he was applying for an ATM card?”

  “It might be?” she admitted without reservation.

  “Let’s finish the tape.” Beckett signaled Corbin.

  The man spoke briefly with Wright and left.

  Beckett signaled Corbin to stop the tape. “Ms. Wright, did the man in the red shirt give you any money to open an account?”

  “No, he didn’t.” She sounded even more perplexed.

  “Can you open an account without some sort of deposit?”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “You put the application in the drawer for ATM card applications, not where you would have put it if it was an application to open an account, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed.

  “If he was applying for an ATM card, wouldn’t he necessarily already have an account?”

  “He would have to, yes.” She began nodding, as she saw her mistake.

  “Looking back on your actions, do you still believe the man in the red shirt came to open an account?”

  “It doesn’t seem that way, no,” she conceded, before adding, almost to herself, “but then how did the police get Mr. Hammerlin’s paperwork?”

  “That’s a good question, Ms. Wright. Thank you for your time.”

  Pierce immediately took Beckett’s place at the podium. “Ms. Wright, is it possible you simply put the paperwork in the wrong drawer by mistake?”

  “I suppose it is, but I can’t explain why he didn’t give me any money to open an account.”

  “Is it possible Mr. Beaumont came back later to complete the account application, that he came back
to give you the deposit?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, though her shaking head and the hesitation in her voice left no doubt she didn’t accept this possibility.

  “Nothing further.” For the first time, Pierce looked shaken.

  “Call your next witness, counselor,” Sutherlin ordered from the bench.

  “May we approach, Your Honor?” Pierce replied. A moment later the four attorneys were at the bench. “Your Honor, we’re still waiting on Officer Webb—”

  Sutherlin cut him off. “Do you have any other witnesses?”

  “Just the handwriting expert,” Pierce replied.

  “Why can’t we hear from him?” Sutherlin asked. His frown grew more pronounced.

  “We can put him on, but he will need to testify about documents obtained by Officer Webb, and I suspect Mr. Beckett will object vociferously,” said Pierce, trying to shift the blame for his failure to produce Webb onto Beckett.

  “Mr. Pierce, you are on thin ice already. If Officer Webb does not testify in the morning, I’m leaning toward dismissing the case. . . strike that, I guarantee you, I will dismiss this case. How do you want to proceed?”

  “We’d like a continuance until tomorrow morning.”

  “The defense would object to that, Your Honor,” Beckett interjected.

  Sutherlin put his hand up to stop any further discussion. “Your objection is noted, Mr. Beckett.” Sutherlin pointed at Pierce. “I’m going to give you until the morning, Mr. Pierce. Then I expect you to finish your case in chief. Return to your seats.”

  Chapter 41

  Beckett tossed the folder onto his desk. They had returned to the Tribune Building after being dismissed. “I’m serious about this.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?!” Corbin was furious. “Evan, we’ve destroyed each of their witnesses.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Beckett said bitterly. “If Webb shows up, we lose. It’s that simple.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense?! Russell’s a liar. None of the bank witnesses put him in the banks—”