Betrayal

'Because you don't remember doing it?'

'Everett. Listen. I can't believe I beat him with a poker, then shot him in the head, and have no memory of it. I would remember that.'

Washburn sighed. 'Well, as you say, we've been all through it. But we could say you went back to talk to him after the fight and he attacked you. You were weak from the earlier beating and you had no choice but to grab the poker…'

Evan was holding up his hand. '…and execute him with a point-blank shot to the head. I didn't do that. That is not who I am.'

'Yes, and that may not be the point.' He tipped up his coffee and swallowed. 'There's absolutely nothing about those days that you remember?'

'You don't think I've tried? You don't think I want to remember any little thing?'

'Maybe you were drunk the whole time?' Washburn rubbed his palms on his pants legs. 'I want you to think about this carefully, Evan. If that's what happened, at least that gives the jurors something more to think about.'

'If I change my story now, then I'm a liar before, though, right?'

'No. If you just remembered, it's come back to you in the stress of the trial.'

'Damn conveniently. They'll see through that in a heartbeat.'

'Okay. Suppose it happened that you were home the whole time, suffering from the beating, drinking to kill the pain. You never left the apartment.'

'And how does that help me? They'd still have to believe me.'

'No.' Washburn shook his head. 'They don't have to believe you. One of them has to believe you. It's a lot better to say 'I didn't do it' than 'I don't remember, but I probably didn't do it.' There's a real difference there.'

Evan took a couple of breaths. 'I thought it was about the evidence. Not what I say. What the evidence says.'

'That's the problem,' Washburn said. 'The evidence, my friend, makes a very good case that you did it.' Just at that moment, the bailiff appeared, and Washburn punched his client on the thigh. 'Drink your coffee,' he said. 'We're up.'

27

After the months of buildup, the endless coaching and strategy sessions, the arguments, disagreements, accords, and prognostications, Evan Scholler's time on the witness stand was really quite brief. Washburn saw no point in having his client go over again all of the reasons he might have had to loathe the victim. That had all been well-established by earlier witnesses. There were really only a couple of lines of inquiry that Washburn thought stood any chance of traction with the jury, if only because they provided an alternative theory to the case, and he got right to them.

'Evan,' he said, 'why did you break into Mr. Nolan's home?'

'First, let me say that that was wrong. There's no excuse, I shouldn't have done that. I should have advised the homicide detail of my suspicions about Mr. Nolan.'

Mills got to her feet. 'Your Honor, nonresponsive.'

'Sustained.' Tollson's glare went from Washburn over to Evan. He spoke to the defendant. 'Mr. Scholler. Please only answer the questions that the attorneys put to you. You're not here to make speeches.'

'Yes, Your Honor. Sorry.'

'All right, Mr. Washburn, go ahead, and carefully, please.'

Washburn posed the question again, and Evan responded. 'Because I had found out about the Khalil murders from the paper, and then more about them from Lieutenant Spinoza. I had gone on a mission with Mr. Nolan when we were in Baghdad together, and he'd used frag grenades at that time. Then, knowing that Mr. Khalil was of Iraqi descent, and knowing what Mr. Nolan did for a living, it occurred to me that he might have had something to do with those murders.'

'Why didn't you simply, as you say, go to homicide?'

'Because I might have been wrong, which would have made me look stupid both to the lieutenant and to Tara, and I couldn't have that.'

'Why was that?'

'Well, one, I was a policeman myself. Two, I was hoping to reconnect with Tara.'

'All right. So you broke into Mr. Nolan's home?'

'I did let myself in, yes.'

'Trying to find evidence that Mr. Nolan had been involved in the Khalil murders?'

'That's right.'

'Didn't you think that was a bit far-fetched?'

'Not at all. I'd seen Mr. Nolan kill other people.'

Mills raised her voice. 'Objection.'

'Your Honor,' Washburn responded. 'Mr. Nolan was a security officer. Sometimes his job was to kill people. Mr. Scholler knew him in that setting in Iraq. There is nothing pejorative about it.'

Tollson put his glasses back on. 'Objection overruled.'

'All right,' Washburn continued. 'Now, when you went into Mr. Nolan's home, Evan, did you find anything which in your opinion might have been connected to the Khalil murders?'

'Yes.'

Evan ran through his actions and motivations in a straightforward manner-the frag grenades, touching the gun both in the backpack and in the bed's headboard, the computer files. As Washburn had coached him, he kept bringing his narrative back to the jury, and particularly-without being too obvious-to Mrs. Ellersby, three over from the left in the second row.

'So you copied the photographic computer file?'

'Yes.'

'Presumably, now, you had your proof, or at least some possible proof, of a connection between Mr. Nolan and the Khalil murders. What did you do next?'

'Well, I didn't want to take away any of the proof, so that it would still be there when the FBI searched the house-'

Mills pushed her chair back with a resonant squeal and said under her breath, 'Give me a break.'

Tollson banged his gavel with some force. 'If I thought you'd done that on purpose, Ms. Miille, I'd hold you in contempt right now. There will be no histrionics in this courtroom! You will live to regret the next outburst of any sort and I'm admonishing the jury to disregard your unprofessional comment.' Then, to Evan, 'Go ahead, Mr. Scholler.'

Evan let out a long breath, for the moment apparently, and perhaps actually, unable to remember where he'd been in his testimony.

Washburn took advantage of the moment. 'I'm sorry, Your Honor, my client seems to have blacked out for a second.'

'Oh, Christ!' Mills whispered.

Bam! Bam!

'That's it, Ms. Miille, you're in contempt. We'll talk about what the sanction is going to be outside the presence of the jury.' His mouth set in a hard line, Tollson pointed to both attorneys. 'This ends here, I'm warning you. Mr. Washburn, does your client need a minute to compose himself?'

'Evan?' Washburn asked. 'Are you all right?'

'Fine.'

'All right,' Tollson said, 'let's have the reporter read back the last question, please.'

The question got Evan back to where he was saying that he didn't want to take away any of the proof, so that the FBI would find it when they searched the house. 'So I decided to make a copy of the photo file on the