“Mr. Abrams, I take it no objections if we adjourn?” asked the judge.
“No, Your Honour,” replied Joe.
“Of course, you don’t. The court will now take a recess for one hour—court adjourned,” the judge said.
Joe’s mind must have been all over the place—I know mine was. It all sounded very bad, but after seeing and hearing all the evidence, I was formulating plans on what to do about the charges to beat the case legally.
“So Joe, what do you think?” I asked.
“Well, it does look bad. I have to be straight with you, Dom, some of the evidence is a bit unsettling. However, now that we have a list of all the evidence, I think we have a good chance of beating most of the charges. I will need time to go through it all, but don’t worry, I will be sure to keep you in the loop as things progress. This only means I’ll have to work harder than I ever did on any case, but beating this case is not impossible. I need to scan and forward these files to Fredric back at the office. We also need one of your IT guys in the head office to go over the data footprints to see if what the prosecutors are claiming is true. I know it probably is, but it wouldn’t hurt to try,” said Joe.
“I’ll do you one better, forward them to Alex. He will forward the data to a new tech guru we recently, put on retainer—the kid is brilliant. He will be able to tell us everything we need to know about the data, and if we’re lucky, he might be able to tell us how to resolve the problem,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll do that now. This is obviously going to go into evidence. We don’t have enough time to prove its authenticity, and the judge knows that. The only confidence we have in this matter is that you would never leave this sort of footprint on office comms. You never carry out shady business online or on your mobile device. It’s either the data is fake, or someone had access to your office comms and planted the footprint. Either way, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” said Joe.
We went back to court just after midday. Joe informed the court he had reviewed the file and that he was happy for it to be entered into evidence. The judge announced the trial date, and surprisingly, it wasn’t for another three months. This would give Joe more than enough time to prepare for the case, and it gave me time to wrap up urgent business matters.
Chapter 15
You’re the Man Now
Where: Carabella Cemetery, North Walnut Grove, Miami
When: 1430 hours, Friday, February 3, 2012
Currency: US dollar
A significant number of people showed up to Guillermo’s funeral, and it made Anna happy to see so many people had cared about her late husband. She didn’t realize the extent of the impact he had made within the local community. He formed close relationships with a few of the families and other businessmen, and they all respected him. After the burial, everyone went over to Anna and her children to offer their condolences, they all had nice things to say about Guillermo. Six unfamiliar men approached the family after everyone else had their opportunity to speak with them. One of the men took Anna’s hand and introduced himself.
“Mrs. Dominguez, please accept my condolences. My name is Hector Gallegos, consider me a member of the family. I am here to assure you that your husband’s murder is being taken seriously. We are doing everything we can to find out who did it so we can bring them to justice. Please accept this token gesture. This should cover the funeral costs,” Hector said.
“I appreciate your kind gesture, Mr. Gallegos,” Anna replied.
Hector Gallegos was the head of the drug dealers in North Walnut Grove, Pearl Gables, and White Palms. He was very much aware of how smoothly things ran at Guillermo’s restaurant. There were never any complaints about him failing to distribute drugs to the respective dealers in the associated districts. No one ever accused Guillermo of shaving drugs off the consignments, and his restaurant was the safest front the cartel had in North Walnut Grove. It was family friendly and had an impressive customer base. It was in the cartel’s best interest to protect their investment, and Hector wasn’t going to stop until they found the killer and got rid of whoever it was. In his mind, this would give the family a sense of justice, as well as eliminate the traitor. A win-win. As far as the cartel was concerned, Guillermo was a stand-up guy, and they couldn’t understand why anyone would kill him. Hector was sure that it was an inside job, but he didn’t know who was responsible.
Edwardo hadn’t said a word about Zorro Loco to the cops. There was a code everyone in his neighbourhood stood by—no snitching. He told the police that on the night of the murder, he had forgotten his backpack and went back to the restaurant to retrieve it. He said it was when he got back that he found his father dead on the kitchen floor. This obviously wasn’t true; he knew that telling the truth might lead to other questions. When the police asked him if he had heard gunshots, he said that he heard shots from the living room at home, but that he didn’t realize the shots had come from the restaurant. They didn’t question Edwardo for too long, because they didn’t think he had motive to kill his father. Edwardo did tell his mother and sister that
