Hardy accepted this for the time being. He would have time to find out everything he might want to know about Lori Bradford and her testimony. And in the meanwhile he had what he hoped would be the simple cross-examination of Cheryl Biehl, where he might elicit some facts about her continuing friendship with his client that might help the jury view her in a better light in the here and now.
“Ms. Biehl,” he began, “in the past eight years, have you ever witnessed Maya using or selling marijuana?”
“No.”
“When you told her that you’d heard about Dylan Vogler selling marijuana out of Bay Beans West, what did she say to you about that?”
“She said she was sure that wasn’t happening. Dylan didn’t need to do that.”
“And about her statement regarding Levon Preslee, that ‘she was never going to get out from under them.’ In spite of that comment, to the best of your recollection, did she ever mention Levon Preslee to you again?”
“No.”
“So it was just that once, right after he got out of prison?”
“That’s right.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“I don’t know exactly. It must have been seven or eight years.”
Hardy took a beat, walking back to his table. Maya, her eyes still puffy from the crying jag, nevertheless seemed to be more engaged, less burdened somehow. He gave her a subtle nod of encouragement. And, in fact, Hardy felt he had cause for a renewed sense of hope. After all, he had two brand-new and unexpected facts with which to conjure-Lori Bradford and Tess Granat-and in his experience facts had always had a way of expanding concentrically, although he couldn’t identify as yet the exact territory they were expanding into.
Now he paused.
He’d been considering trying to use Cheryl Biehl’s cross-examination as a way to give the jury some kind of a sense of the real reason that Dylan had been blackmailing Maya. Of course, this would be a very tricky strategy on a couple of levels, not the least of which because it left Maya with essentially the same motive-blackmail-to have killed her manager. But these, he considered, might both be mitigated by other considerations. In the first case, blackmail over the hit-and-run took Maya’s purported selling of dope and its attendant moral turpitude out of the equation, and this also removed any motive for her having killed Levon. Also, in the real world, and absent Maya’s confession-which would never be forthcoming-there was no chance of building a case for the hit-and-run, so that issue was moot.
But somehow the risk of pursuing any of this seemed suddenly too great. Hardy had his own responsibility under the attorney-client privilege to keep any hint of what he’d just learned to himself. He didn’t want to play any morally ambiguous games with his fragile client on this score. He was now finally her confidant and confessor, and he couldn’t betray her by not-so-subtle implications of other motivations. So all in all, though Hardy thought that getting the fundamental truth about Maya and Dylan before the jury might have its advantages, in the end he decided it was not something he could do.
He turned back to his witness. “Thank you, Mrs. Biehl,” he said. “No further questions.”
As far as witnesses went, Jansey Ticknor had opened up after they’d charged Maya back in October. In her first interviews with Bracco and Schiff she had been unforthcoming, but during the course of Paul Stier’s preparations for the preliminary hearing back in November, she had come to remember quite a bit of what she couldn’t seem to initially recall about Maya Townshend and her relationship to Dylan. Now Stier was seeing to it that she was laying as much of it as she could out for the jury. “So Mr. Vogler told you about their earlier relationship?”
Hardy objected on the grounds of hearsay, but as he thought she might, Braun overruled him.
Hearsay was one of the most flexible and confusing concepts in all of jurisprudence-sometimes allowed, sometimes not-and Braun’s interpretation today looked like she was going to be allowing Jansey’s testimony. She was buying Stier’s theory that Vogler’s statements were against his penal interest-something so unfavorable to him that he would never have said it if it wasn’t true. And this was an exception to the hearsay rule.
Braun also appeared to accept Stier’s argument that the statements were admissible for Vogler’s state of mind, an argument so arcane that even Hardy couldn’t follow it. In any event, whether it was a valid legal call or not, Braun’s decision was going to be the rule in this courtroom today, and Hardy had to live with it.
“Yes,” she said, “they had been intimate in college.”
“And since then?”
This time, in frustration, Hardy held up his hand. “Objection. Relevance.”
“Goes to motive, Your Honor,” Stier replied. If he wasn’t going to convince the jury about the blackmail, he’d take the jilted lover as a backup position.
Braun nodded in her brusque fashion and again shot Hardy down. “Overruled.”
“Since they finished college, then, Ms. Ticknor, did Mr. Vogler tell you that he’d had an intimate relationship with Defendant?”
“Yes. Up till a little before he met me.”
Hardy felt a tight grip over his forearm and Maya’s voice sharp in his ear. “That’s a damn lie!” Loud enough for all the courtroom to hear it, and maybe even the one next door.
Judge Braun slammed her gavel.
But Maya, all but inert for much of these proceedings so far, suddenly had come alive. “That’s just not true,” she said to Hardy, then turned the other way in her seat, toward the jury, and addressed them directly. “That’s not true,” she repeated.
Bam! Bam! “Mr. Hardy, control your client! Bailiffs.”
But before either of the two bailiffs could get to her, Maya had turned completely around to face her husband, sitting in the row behind her. “It’s not,” she said, “it’s not.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I believe you.” And he went to put an arm out to touch her.
But by this time the first bailiff had come up and gotten in between them, knocking Joel’s arm away, looking up at Braun for instructions. And as if in response to this escalation the entire gallery seemed to erupt at once over the steady cadence of the gavel.
When at last, after nearly a minute, a restive silence, if not true order, had been restored, Braun glared down from the bench, looking to Hardy as if she’d suddenly aged ten years. Real fright that her courtroom had so quickly gotten out of her control showed in her face, in the set of her mouth. Maybe it hadn’t happened to her in a while, but whatever the reason, she had been unprepared. As Hardy’s heart pounded in his ear, from one pulse to the next, Braun shifted from intimidated oldster to wrathful prelate. She wielded her gavel, randomly, it seemed, in the near silence, and then dropped the little hammer again, until the silence was complete.
Gathering herself, she summoned Stier and Hardy to sidebar. She spoke with an exaggerated quiet. “Mr. Hardy, any further outburst from your client such as the one we’ve just all endured, and I will order her removed from the courtroom. She can watch these proceedings on closed circuit TV if she can’t control herself. Is that about as clear as I can possibly make it?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” He could have gone on with a bit more of a floral apology but decided to leave it at that. If nothing else, his client had just achieved one of his primary objectives-humanizing herself to the jury.
Hardy went back to counsel table and squeezed Maya’s hand.
Stier, for his part, seemed to have enjoyed the blowup as well, for his own reasons. He would be happy to grant the defendant’s humanity, too, so long as it was a humanity characterized by a hot temper and a dismissive disregard of authority.
He came back to his witness. “Ms. Ticknor, how long did this intimacy between himself and the defendant go on after Mr. Vogler got out of prison?”