Hispanic woman who seemed to be staring especially hard at them.
“Mr. Schiftmann?” the man asked as he approached. Everything around them seemed to quiet. Taylor heard traffic noise in the distance and thought she heard the whirring of video cameras.
Michael nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you Mr. Michael Schiftmann?”
Again, Michael’s head went up and down. “Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Detective Gilley of the Metro Nashville Police Department’s Murder Squad. I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Gilley turned and motioned to one of the uniforms, who approached Michael with a pair of open handcuffs. The officer stepped up to Michael, gently took him by the elbow, and pulled one hand behind his back. Michael let go of Taylor’s hand with his left and held it behind him.
“Are the handcuffs necessary?” Michael asked.
“Yes, sir, it’s standard procedure,” Gilley answered. “Mr.
Schiftmann, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to an attorney …”
As the detective droned on, Taylor felt the world start to spin. She fought to hold on. She looked over at Talmadge, who stood next to his client, stone-faced, serious. He looked over at her, nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and winked.
“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?” Gilley asked.
“Yes.”
“Then come with me, sir.”
Michael turned and faced Taylor. “You okay?”
Taylor took a deep breath and held it for just a moment, trying to clear her head, to get oxygen to her brain. “Yes, I’m fine. You take care, and I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Michael leaned over, kissed her quickly. As if he were going off to work or a dentist’s appointment or to run a casual errand …
“We’ll call on the mobile when we know the time for the arraignment,” Talmadge said as he got in step behind Michael and the officers.
Taylor was left alone in the middle of the pack. She suddenly felt frightened, isolated.
“May I ask you a question, please?” someone shouted.
A microphone on a long boom pole suddenly appeared in front of her face. She felt someone grab her elbow and jerked around, startled.
It was Carey. She had a firm grip on Taylor’s arm. “C’mon,”
she said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
CHAPTER 29
The DA’s press conference and the arrest warrant had been the first skirmish. They fired a few shots, just to test the enemy’s resolve. Talmadge fired back with just enough force to show that he wasn’t going to be pushed around when he openly announced Michael Schiftmann was looking forward to his day in court.
The arraignment was the first big battle. District Attorney Collier demanded no bail. Talmadge countered with a demand for release-on-recognizance. Collier countered again with an eight-figure bail request. Talmadge fired back with a demand for minimal bail.
In the end, Criminal Court Judge Harry Forsythe settled on a million-and-a-half bail. Michael put up one hundred thousand dollars and the deed to his Palm Beach condo.
Forsythe also, as Steinberg predicted, confiscated Michael’s passport.
Then they went home.
Two days later, the New York City police executed a search warrant requiring Michael to provide DNA samples for forensic purposes. An enraged Michael wanted to fight the search warrant, but Abe Steinberg convinced him there was no point. In Steinberg’s office, a medical technician pulled a dozen hairs from Michael’s head, swabbed the inside of his mouth with a cotton swab, and did a blood draw. The evidence was collected and secured, then shipped off to the lab at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in Nashville.
Meanwhile, in Nashville, Talmadge filed a motion for discovery. Thirty days later, a large file was delivered to his office. He went through the file sheet by sheet, paragraph by paragraph, then caught the next plane to New York.
Abe Steinberg met him in the lobby and shook hands with his old friend and protege. “How are you, Wes?” he asked, laying his left hand on Talmadge’s shoulder.
“Good, Abe, good.”
“How was the flight?”
Talmadge smiled. “Food’s pretty good on first-class, even these days.”
Steinberg smiled back at him. “C’mon, our boy’s back in my office already.”
Talmadge followed as Steinberg led the way down the hall. “How’s he holding up?” he asked.
Steinberg shrugged. “Hard to tell. I’ve seen better, but then again, I’ve seen worse.”
The two walked down a long hallway to a suite of offices occupied by the most senior partners in the firm. Steinberg stopped as they entered the suite and faced Talmadge.
“Before we go in,” he said, “I want to know. What’s it look like?”
“Well, as Spencer Tracy once said of Katharine Hepburn,
‘There ain’t much meat on her, but what there is is
Steinberg stared for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The two entered Steinberg’s office. Michael rose from the sofa as they walked in. Steinberg walked around and sat at his desk, with Talmadge taking one of the chairs as Michael sat back down.
“Good morning, Mr. Schiftmann,” Talmadge said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Michael answered nervously, “and please, it’s Michael.”
Talmadge nodded. “Okay, Michael.”
“Wes has the material the Davidson County district attorney’s office returned to us in reply to the discovery motions,” Steinberg said. “By law, the prosecution is obliged to provide a defendant with all the evidence against him or any exculpatory evidence prior to any trial or consideration. Our job at this point is to evaluate the evidence and to figure out how to best answer it in order to place in the minds of the jurors reasonable doubt.”
“If we can do that, then there’s every reason to expect a favorable verdict if this ever does, in fact, go to trial,” Talmadge added.
“Is there a chance we can head this off before trial?” Michael asked. “Can we make this go away without a trial?”
Talmadge leaned back on the sofa. “Well, that’s problematic. Of course, we’ll try. The list of motions that we’ll file during this phase of the process reads almost twenty typed pages. We’ll challenge everything from the jurisdiction of the court to the makeup of the grand jury. We’ll move to suppress everything they throw at us. But in the real world, unless there’s been some incredible screwup on the part of the DA, you don’t get very far most of the time.
“And in one sense, the district attorney has taken an incredible chance by announcing that he’s going to seek the death penalty. He’s essentially bet the rent money on the outcome of this. Now, I know Bob Collier pretty well, and he’s not a blowhard and he’s not a grandstander. The fact that he’s even going for the death penalty means he thinks he’s got a good case. And as a rule, if you’re defending a capital case and it actually goes to trial, you’re in trouble before it even starts.”
Michael stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back up quickly. “That’s as a rule. But let’s talk specifics.”
