The Ex(60)

Chapter 17


THE MARCH TOWARD a criminal trial is slow but never steady—fast and frenetic at the beginning, followed by a long period that would feel almost normal if not for the pending charges, followed by the ramp-up toward trial.

Three weeks after we confirmed that someone had hired Sharon Lawson to pose as “Madeline,” the frantic stage was coming to a close. The July Fourth holiday had come and gone, and we had spent the weekend at the office, hoping to come up with some theory that might persuade or cajole or embarrass the district attorney into dismissing the case against Jack before we all hunkered down for what would be a long, slow fight.

The larger of the two conference rooms in the Ellison & Randall law firm was devoted completely to Jack’s defense. The entire table, the sideboard, and half of the chairs were blanketed by boxes, files, and documents. Two mobile whiteboards were covered with multiple colors of ink.

I could not hear myself over all of the competing voices.

“We have to pare this down. We need a clear narrative.” That was Don. Don was all about narrative.

“Seriously, Olivia. I’ve looked at this shit fifty times and have no idea what we’re missing.” Einer, sitting on the floor, surrounded by documents.

Jack—conferencing in via speakerphone—was saying, “I don’t know if I’m comfortable dragging the other victims into this.”

“Fuck Gothamist.” That was Charlotte, who was obsessed with online coverage of the case. “They’re accusing me of using the Room to spread pro-Jack propaganda. It’s not propaganda if it’s true.”

Einer held up a high five for Charlotte, which she returned. “You tell ’em, Martina Navratilova.” A month of antagonistic banter, and somehow Charlotte was fonder of Einer than she’d ever been of me.

“Quiet, I can’t think.” I was determined to send everyone home in the next hour. Charlotte, unaccustomed to being shushed, shot me a glare. I turned to her first. “Can you back off a little on the Room posts? The last thing Jack needs is a backlash from other media sites.”

She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue, either.

“Einer, I promise you, there is something in those boxes that’s worth finding.” I had been pushing Scott Temple to provide discovery earlier than was technically required. In response, he had shipped over seventeen large boxes of documents to our offices two days earlier. We had quickly figured out that six of them were duplicates of documents the police had seized from Jack’s home office, including all of his materials regarding the civil case against Malcolm Neeley. But the others went well beyond the obvious discovery I would typically expect. In addition to the usual witness statements, the medical examiner’s findings, and crime scene photographs, the prosecution had included hundreds of pages of records like phone logs, credit card and banking statements, and other documents with no clear connection to the case.

Chances are, Temple was f*cking with me for nagging him for early discovery. But my gut told me there was another side to the story.

If I had to guess, there was Brady material there—evidence that would help our case, which he was required to turn over—but he’d buried it among several boxes of paper to make me work for it. I told Einer to keep digging.

“Olivia, I swear to you, I’ve looked at everything. My eyes can’t make something magically appear if it’s not there.”

“Yes, actually, they can. Get some index cards and put the name of every document on a separate card. Rearrange them in different patterns—first by type of document. Then by the people the documents connect to—Jack, Neeley, the other victims. Look at everything in a new way. Now, on to narrative: Jack and Don, you seem to be arguing about the message I should be sending to the DA’s office.”

“Our story is too complicated.” Don gestured toward the ink-covered whiteboards. “Keep it simple: tee up Sharon Lawson and the Madeline e-mails to show that the same person hired Sharon for the missed moment and then sent Jack to the waterfront that morning as a sacrificial lamb. That’s all you need to do. It’s intriguing. It plants the seed that there’s another side to the story, and shifts the burden back to the state to figure out who’s behind that e-mail address. Everything else—it might be Max, it might be another co-plaintiff, it might be related to Malcolm’s hedge fund, maybe the other victims had enemies—it’s all speculative, and way too complicated.”

Through the speakerphone, Jack was saying, “Hello?” And “Can you hear me?” like a sheepish schoolboy at the back of the classroom, fighting to be heard over the gunner in the front row. “Plus I’m really not comfortable pointing the finger at these other people. I mean, they can’t all be guilty. Some of those co-plaintiffs have been totally on my side since all this happened. And then dragging the other two victims through the mud—”

“No one’s dragging anyone through the mud,” I said.

“Well, okay, but pointing out that one of them was homeless and one had a drug conviction—it’s just . . . so unseemly.”

I flashed back to all the times that Jack would lecture me for being so impatient when lines were long, service was slow, or any number of things didn’t happen on what he called “Olivia time.”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake,” I snapped. “You can’t afford to be the nice guy right now. What happened to telling me to do whatever I needed to keep you out of prison, Jack? Murder defendants don’t get to be polite.”