Talon Winter Legal Thrillers Box Set

by Stephen Penner

  “In short,” Talon said, “his story now isn’t really any different from what the rest of us have, or want, anyway. It’s the American Dream. It’s what makes this country great.”

  She’d give the jurors a beat to feel good about themselves. But only a beat.

  “Or at least, that’s what we want to tell ourselves. But while that chapter may look like it’s happy and idyllic, there were a lot of chapters before that. A lot of chapters the rest of us don’t have to read, let alone live.”

  Several of the jurors shifted in their seats. It was about to get uncomfortable.

  “Michael moved out of the Hilltop, went to college, met Alicia. They fell in love, got married, started a family, and bought a beautiful house in the suburbs. They never looked back. Until now.”

  Talon dropped her voice a notch. “But now they have to look back.”

  She walked away from her client and took that spot on the other side of the jury box. The one that required the jurors to look away from Michael. Turn away from the Michael Jameson he was now in order to learn about the Michael Jameson he was then.

  But that wasn’t what Talon wanted to talk about. She wasn’t about to tell them about young Michael Jameson, driving his brother around to deal drugs on the Hilltop. It wasn’t about that. It was about the very act of looking back.

  “They have to look back,” Talon repeated. “Past Marcus’ high school graduation. Past Kaylee’s gymnastics tryouts. Past the last promotion and that family trip to Hawaii. Past signing the mortgage, and planning the wedding, and popping the question. Past the twenty hours Alicia was in labor with Marcus, and the emergency C-section she had with Kaylee. Past everything they’ve built, everything they stayed up late worrying about, everything they fought for to have a successful life in a culture that isn’t comfortable with too many people like them getting too successful.”

  Talon wondered if Quinlan might object, but she almost wished he would. Let the middle-aged White guy in the suit object. He stayed quiet and Talon went on.

  “Michael has to look back to the time before all that. Before that good job, when money was scarce. Before that house in U.P., when he lived up in the Hilltop. Before Marcus and Kaylee when Michael’s own dad was gone. Before Alicia, when he was just another skinny kid trying to survive both the gangs and the cops.”

  Talon returned to her spot in front of the jurors, but just a little closer than she’d been before. Not too close—not crazy, threatening close. More, ‘this is important’ close.

  “Because, let’s not forget. Things have changed a lot since then. Maybe not for your typical White kid from the Brown’s Point or Proctor neighborhoods. But a lot for your typical Black kid from the Hilltop.”

  It was Talon’s time to point the accusing finger. Directly at Quinlan. “The prosecutor isn’t just asking you to look back twenty-five years to what happened that night on Cushman Avenue. He’s asking you to forget about all the progress we’ve made since then. All the progress Michael’s made since then.”

  Talon clasped her hands and looked directly at the jurors, making eye contact with each of them as she spoke.

  “But that story, the one from twenty-five years ago…”

  The one the jury really wanted to hear.

  The one that was actually relevant and unobjectionable.

  The one she couldn’t tell the jury because it implicated her client.

  “…that story is best left in the past.”

  She took one step back and opened her hands to the jurors. “This case isn’t really about what happened to Jordan McCabe twenty-five years ago. It’s about what should happen to Michael Jameson now. The truth is, the prosecution doesn’t really know what happened that night. They certainly won’t be able to prove it. Which means, at the end of this trial, you won’t really know what happened either.”

  She looked again at her client. “You won’t really know what Michael was like back then. But you will know what he is now:

  “A father.

  “A husband.

  “A neighbor.

  “A co-worker.

  “And most importantly, not guilty of murder.

  “Thank you.”

  The silence she’d started with also enveloped her as she returned to her seat. But rather than a silence of expectation, it was a silence of reaction, as the jurors—and everyone else in the courtroom—digested what they’d just heard.

  They’d listened. That was all Talon could really have hoped for. They would view the evidence through a lens alright—the lens of Michael Jameson.

  The battle was joined.

  Finally, Judge Kirchner broke the silence.

  “Mr. Quinlan,” she boomed. “Call your first witness.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Instead of Quinlan, McDaniels stood up to announce, “The State calls Joanne McCabe-Johnson to the stand.”

  Jordy McCabe’s mother.

  Talon wasn’t surprised. The prosecution didn’t have to tell her the exact order of their witnesses, but they did have to provide a complete list prior to trial. Joanne McCabe-Johnson’s name was buried almost exactly in the middle of the alphabetical list of witnesses whom the State intended to call. She’d seen the name and knew she might be first.

  Every good murder story starts with a body. And someone to identify it.

  Joanne McCabe-Johnson walked into the courtroom and up to Judge Kirchner to be sworn in. She looked to be in her early 60s, with soft gray curls and plastic-rimmed glasses hanging from her neck on a beaded chain. Her gait was slow and deliberate as she made her way to the witness stand. Once she had fully settled into the chair and looked up, McDaniels began.

  “Could you please state your name for the record?”

  She did. Her voice was smooth and strong.

  McDaniels nodded in acknowledgment of the response. A common tick of trial attorneys. “Did you know Jordan McCabe?”

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson nodded as well. “Yes, I did.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “He was my son.” The answer was delivered simply. No tears. No catch in the throat. Just, He was my son. The words were weighty enough on their own.

  She didn’t have any information about the murder. She didn’t see what happened, how, or by whom. She really was there just to identify the body. That, and to tug on the jurors’ heartstrings. A murder charge required at least some proof that an actual, living breathing human being had been killed. A conviction required the jury to care.

  McDaniels took a respectful moment to allow the response to sink in, then fetched an 8” x 11” photograph from her table. Per the court rules, she showed it to Talon first, who nodded, then gave it to the witness.

  “I’m handing you what’s previously been marked as State’s Exhibit Number One,” McDaniels said for the record. “Do you recognize the person in this photograph?”

  Now there was a catch in her voice. “Yes,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson answered. “That’s Jordy.”

  “How old was he in this photograph?” McDaniels followed up.

  “Seventeen,” came the response. “That was his yearbook photo from his junior year at Stadium High School.”

  McDaniels looked up to the judge. “The State moves to admit Exhibit Number One, Your Honor.”

  Kirchner looked to Talon. “Any objection?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Talon answered.

  “Exhibit Number One is admitted,” Judge Kirchner declared.

  “The State moves to publish, Your Honor,” McDaniels continued the exhibit dance.

  Talon wanted to object, of course. The last thing she wanted was for the jury to see a smiling school photo of the young man gunned down on that fateful night twenty-five years earlier. One of the last things she wanted, anyway. But it was relevant, and it was coming in, so there was no reason to make the jury think it bothered her. “No objection,” she offered.

  McDaniels stepped over to the projector tucked between the counsel tables and a few button pushes lat
er, the photo of an awkward and innocent-looking seventeen-year-old Jordan McCabe was blown up on the wall opposite the jury box.

  “That’s your son, Jordan?” McDaniels confirmed.

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson took a moment. She smiled a terrible, painful smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then McDaniels grabbed a second photograph off her table. The one that really mattered. Again, she showed it to Talon. Again, Talon nodded and wished she could object but knew she couldn’t. Not successfully anyway.

  Get on with it, she thought.

  “I’m going to show you another photograph,” McDaniels warned Mrs. McCabe-Johnson. “I’m sorry.”

  That last bit was probably objectionable. But when the jury was in the room, objections were strategic. Objecting to kindness wasn’t good strategy.

  “Do you recognize the young man in that photograph?” McDaniels asked.

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson looked at the photo. She grimaced slightly, but otherwise maintained her composure. She looked away as she answered, “Yes.”

  McDaniels took the photograph back and again asked the judge to admit and publish it. Again, Talon didn’t object, and a few moments later the screen that covered the wall was filled, not with the smiling face of a high school junior, but the bloody crime scene of a long-ago murder.

  It was a medium-wide shot of Cushman Avenue, houses in the background, crime scene tape everywhere, and a body in the foreground. There was no sheet over it. It was Jordy McCabe, dead and sprawled out for all the world—and the jury—to see.

  McDaniels asked a few more questions. A little background on Jordy, He went to Stadium High School. He liked watching sports and hanging out with his friends. He played videogames and tinkered with computers. Not surprisingly, no mention of gang affiliations or drug dealing.

  McDaniels thanked Mrs. McCabe-Johnson and sat down. It was Talon’s turn.

  She had a few options.

  The easy thing to do was nothing. No questions. She was the victim’s mother after all; it was hard to imagine a more sympathetic witness. Thank her for coming and sit down again. After all, she hadn’t really done any damage. The fact that her son had been murdered wasn’t really at issue. The question was, who did it? Or rather, could the State prove Michael Jameson did it?

  The lazy thing to do was to go after her. The stereotypical attack cross-examination. You didn’t see what happened, did you? Your son was dealing drugs, wasn’t he? Your son probably shot first, didn’t he? Answer the question!

  But the smart thing to do was to use the witness—every witness—to support her own case theory. Her story.

  Talon stood up and offered an understated nod to the witness. “Good morning, Mrs. McCabe-Johnson,” she began.

  As Mrs. McCabe-Johnson returned the greeting cautiously, Talon stepped out from behind her counsel table and took a very specific spot at the bar: not too far away to seem sheepish, but not too close to seem aggressive. Confident, but not attacking. You don’t attack the dead boy’s mother.

  “Your son’s birthday was March eleventh, right?” she confirmed. Easy enough to read from the police reports, or the death certificate. “How old would he have been this year?”

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson thought for a moment. “Forty-two.”

  “So he was seventeen when he died, correct?”

  “Right,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson answered, her voice and expression guarded against the woman representing her son’s killer. Well, alleged killer anyway.

  “You mentioned during direct examination,” Talon continued, “that he was interested in computers?”

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson frowned slightly. “Yes. He was always tinkering on them.”

  “Was he taking them apart too?” Talon asked. She wasn’t quite leaning on the bar, but she had assumed a conversational affect. “Or just the on-screen stuff.”

  “No, he definitely was taking them apart,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson remembered with a faint smile. “He had circuit boards and whatever else those things are called all over his room. He’d get old parts from the computer repair shop and was always wiring them up together to make some new super computer or something. I didn’t really understand it, to be honest.”

  “But Jordy understood it, huh?” Talon followed up.

  “I think so,” she replied with a stronger smile and a shrug. “It seemed like he was always working on something or another.”

  “That’s a good field,” Talon said. “Was he interested in doing computer programming or something in the computer field for a living?”

  “I was hoping he would,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson answered. “Something that could help him be successful.”

  “That’s what every mother wants, right?” Talon asked. Not, ‘So he could get out of the Hilltop.’ You don’t insult where the dead boy’s mother raised him. “For her child to be successful.”

  “Or happy,” she countered. “I wanted him to be happy. Being successful can help with that.”

  Talon nodded. “Easier to be happy if your bills are paid, huh?”

  She knew that well enough herself. And she knew most, if not all, of the jurors did too. Just a small moment of bonding. She was going to need them to trust her when she finally got up in front of them again for closing argument.

  “I suppose so,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson answered. “But we got by, and we were happy.”

  Oops. Don’t insult the dead boy’s mother’s financial situation. Time to move forward.

  “So, Jordy was interested in computers, and he would have been forty-two this year,” Talon recounted. “Do you ever think about what his life might have been like if he were still alive?”

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson smiled sadly. “Every day.”

  Talon acknowledged the sadness with another simple nod. “Tell me.”

  Talon waited for a moment while Mrs. McCabe-Johnson gathered her thoughts. Everyone did. That gave the jurors a chance to refocus and lean forward a bit for the answer. It also gave McDaniels a chance to object. There were several possible objections, including ‘calls for narrative’ and ‘relevance.’ But McDaniels didn’t interrupt. You don’t interrupt the dead boy’s mother. Especially when she was about to talk about her dead boy.

  “Grandkids,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson started. “I’d have grandkids. Lots of them. Jordy loved kids. He was always playing with the little kids in the neighborhood, and he loved it when his baby cousins came over on holidays. So, yeah, for starters, he’d have kids.”

  “And they’d live nearby?” Talon said. “You’d want your grandkids nearby, right?”

  “Right,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson answered. Not right next door. “A man needs his privacy from his mother. But not too far either. Tacoma area, definitely.”

  “Maybe Lakewood?” Talon suggested. “Or University Place?”

  “Yeah, somewhere like that,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson agreed. “Someplace with good schools. My grandbabies should go to good schools.”

  “So, married with kids, living nearby, with good neighborhood schools,” Talon summarized. “And maybe a job working as a computer programmer?”

  “Sure, computer programmer,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson said. “That sounds good. Or maybe a teacher. Anything really. Whatever made him happy.”

  Talon took a moment before her next question. She let her expression tighten from encouragement to discomfort. Sadness. The moment was to allow Mrs. McCabe-Johnson’s vision of her son’s future to settle into the jurors’ minds. It was any of them wanted for their own children, for themselves. Most of them had probably made it too.

  “But your son never got to do any of that, did he?” Talon asked after another moment. “That’s part of what makes this all so tragic, isn’t it? He could have had all that. He should have had the chance. But because of what happened that one terrible night, it was all taken away from him. His wife, his kids, his house nearby with the good schools. It was all taken away, wasn’t it?”

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson frowned. “Yes. It was.”

  “And that’s j
ust not right, is it?”

  “No,” Mrs. McCabe-Johnson agreed. “It’s not right.”

  Talon nodded, offering a last pained smile. “Thank you, Mrs. McCabe-Johnson. No further questions.”

  Judge Kirchner looked to the prosecution table. “Any redirect examination, Ms. McDaniels?”

  Talon had returned to her seat. She knew the answer. Redirect was to show how the defense attorney has twisted the facts with unfair and misleading questions. It wasn’t for what Talon had just done.

  “No, Your Honor,” McDaniels stood to reply. “Thank you.”

  Judge Kirchner turned to Mrs. McCabe-Johnson. “You are excused, ma’am. Thank you.”

  You thank the dead boy’s mother.

  Mrs. McCabe-Johnson returned the thanks, then made her way down from the witness stand. When she’d reached the door to the hallway, Judge Kirchner turned again to the prosecution.

  “You may call your next witness.”

  This time Quinlan stood up. “The State calls retired detective Harold Halcomb.”

  CHAPTER 32

  McDaniels fetched the witness from the hallway while Quinlan took his spot at the bar, a little farther away from the witness stand than Talon had just stood. More sheepish, even with his own witness. Or at least, that’s what Talon hoped it communicated to the jurors.

  Halcomb entered the courtroom and strode up to the judge, his right hand already raised by the time he stopped walking right in front of the bench. Judge Kirchner swore him in and a moment later he threw his large body into the witness stand.

  Retirement seemed to agree with him. He was stout, with a large belly and fat hands. Rosy cheeks and a pink, bulbous nose rested between his white moustache and what was left of his thinning white hair. He’d worn a tweed blazer over an open-collared shirt, but the sleeves were a little short anymore. Talon guessed it had been a few years since he’d had to wear a jacket anywhere, especially court. He seemed very relaxed. Especially for a murder trial.

  Quinlan started with the usual name, rank, and serial number.

  “Harold Halcomb.”