The Last Plea Bargain (34 page)

78

Tate walked to the middle of the courtroom and stroked his chin, eyeing the witness. Rafael shifted in his seat and changed the position of his legs, right over left.

“Good morning, Mr. Rivera,” Tate said. Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

“'Sup,” Rivera shot back.

“You understand that because you're testifying against me today, the attorney-client privilege no longer covers our communications, don't you?”

Rivera shrugged. “Fine by me.”

“And that I can ask you questions about things you asked me to do while I represented you?”

“If you say so.”

“It's not me saying so; it's the rules of ethics.”

“Whatever.”

“Isn't it true, Mr. Rivera, that you asked me to approach Judge Cynthia Snowden and bribe her to dismiss this drug charge against you?”

I glanced at Masterson, who appeared too relaxed for my liking. I decided that, even though it would break every rule of courtroom etiquette, I needed to be ready to object myself if Tate mentioned my dad.

For his part, Rivera scoffed at the question as if it were the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “Maybe in your dreams. In reality, nothing like that happened.”

“Do you deny telling me that some of your gang members had bribed Judge Snowden in the past?”

“Wait!” Judge Brown said. He glared at Tate, then shot an equally perturbed glance at Masterson. “Approach!”

I joined Tate and Masterson at Judge Brown's bench.

“What's this all about?” the judge hissed. “A three-time convicted felon trashing the integrity of a well-respected member of the bench?” Before Tate could answer, he turned to Masterson. “And why aren't you objecting?”

Caleb Tate quickly explained his reasons for asking the question. I could tell Judge Brown didn't like it, but there was no way he could prevent Tate from asking. It went straight to Rivera's bias. Once Brown figured it out, Masterson didn't need to explain why he wasn't objecting.

“You're on a very short leash here, Mr. Tate,” Brown said. “I don't like unfounded accusations like this against another member of the judiciary.”

“I understand that,” Tate said. “But I'm not the one who put this guy on the stand.”

“A very short leash, Mr. Tate.”

After our conference, Tate returned to the well of the courtroom and asked the question again.

“I never said that,” Rivera claimed.

“Do you deny threatening me when I told you that I wouldn't do such a thing and that you should never suggest it again?”

“Another ridiculous question. None of this happened.”

“Isn't it true, Mr. Rivera, that you threatened to go to the prosecutors and testify against me in this case because I wouldn't approach Judge Snowden?” Caleb Tate was raising his voice now, the first showing of real emotion and anger in this case. He jabbed his finger in the air, and I couldn't understand why Masterson didn't object. “Isn't it true that you said you had something the prosecutors would
have to
believe? That you would watch them put a needle in my arm someday?”

“Mr. Tate!” Judge Brown interjected. “That's three questions. Let him answer the first one.”

Masterson cast me a glance.
See, it's better if you let the judge intervene.

“Those are three lies,” Rivera said. “Not questions.”

Caleb Tate just stood there for a moment, nodding. He went back to his conference table and grabbed a handheld digital recorder. He gave Bill Masterson a transcript and handed one to the clerk so the court could follow along.

I felt my stomach drop to my feet.
He had a tape?

This time it was Caleb Tate who was smiling. “You called me back after that first threat to give me one more chance. Do you remember that?”

Rivera eyed him warily. In all our conversations, in all my endless questioning about these events, Rivera had never mentioned a telephone call. But I could tell that his mind was reeling now, trying to recall exactly what he had said.

“You do recall that, don't you?” Caleb Tate taunted. “Or do you need to be reminded?”

I could tell by Rivera's body language that he remembered the call. The only question left was how stupid he had been—how much he had said and how much he had left unsaid.

“Judge, it appears that the witness may need his recollection refreshed,” Tate said.

Finally Masterson was on his feet. “We object, Your Honor. The defense hasn't authenticated this tape yet. We've never heard it. We don't even know if it's Mr. Rivera's voice.”

Judge Brown was studying the transcript and looked at Masterson over the top of his glasses. “Let's take a short recess,” he said.

A few minutes later, with the jury out of the box, Judge Brown asked Caleb Tate to play the tape. I followed along on Masterson's copy of the transcript, my heart sinking lower with each word.

Rivera:
You've got twenty-four hours; then I'm talking.

Tate:
Be my guest, Rafael. Then you can have a drug charge and a charge for lying to the prosecutors. They'll never believe a three-time convicted thug like you.

Rivera:
People talk. I know things I'm not supposed to know. They'll believe me.

Tate:
Like what?

Rivera:
You've got twenty-four hours.

Tate:
If you go to the DA, I'm no longer your lawyer. I'm free to tell them everything you've ever told me. Maybe they can add a charge for attempted bribery.

Rivera:
[Laughter] What makes you think they'd believe a thug like you?

[End of call]

After the recording was played, Masterson rose slowly to his feet. Like me, he was trying to process this at warp speed. It seemed to confirm what Tate was saying. But there was nothing on the tape that could explicitly give us grounds to renege on Rafael's deal. The tape was too ambiguous to support a charge of lying to us.

“Judge, you can't let him introduce something like this without even authenticating the voices.”

“I'm entitled to play the tape and ask the witness whether that's his voice,” Tate shot back. “That's how you authenticate these things.”

Judge Brown turned to Rivera. “Is that your voice?”

Rivera glanced at me, and I glared back. He looked to the judge. “Sounds like it.”

Brown took off his glasses, rubbed his temple, and turned to Masterson. “I don't have any choice in the matter. The tape's coming in.”

After the jury settled back in the box, Caleb Tate played the tape. I couldn't bear to watch the jurors' reactions. Tate then asked Rivera again whether it was his voice on the tape.

“Sounds like it,” Rivera repeated.

“Does that refresh your memory about threatening me?” Tate asked.

Maybe Rivera would be smart enough to talk his way around this. Maybe he would make up something that would sound innocuous. But the guy was obviously dumb enough to threaten his lawyer in a phone call, so I tried to keep my hopes in check.

“That had nothing to do with Judge Snowden,” Rivera said. “I was talking about something else you were supposed to do. Filing some kind of pleading or something. I was just messin' with ya.”

“So let me get this straight,” Tate said, his voice mocking. “You were saying I had twenty-four hours to file some kind of pleading or you were going to go to the prosecutors to cut a deal based on some information that somebody told you about my case?”

“Somethin' like that.”

Tate motioned to the jurors. “And you expect these people to believe that?”

Masterson was on his feet. “Objection.”

“Sustained.”

“In that tape, you said that you knew things you weren't supposed to know. That ‘people talk.' Were you referring to knowledge about the trace amounts of morphine found in the fingernail testing?”

“All I know is that I had given you morphine just like you asked. That's who talked. You talked.”

Tate smiled broadly, and I could tell it was making Rivera mad. “Let me make sure I understand. You're saying that in this telephone call with me, when you said that ‘people talk,' you really meant that
I
talk?”

“I don't remember.”

“I see. Well, let me ask you this—when you decided to talk to the DA, whom did you approach first?”

“The lead detective on the case.”

“Would that have been Detective Tyler Finnegan?” Tate asked.

Rivera shrugged. “If you say so.”

“And after you met with Detective Finnegan, then the two of you together met with Ms. Brock—isn't that right?”

“Yeah. I already said that when Mr. Masterson was asking me questions.”

“Are you saying under oath, at the risk of your sterling reputation, that Detective Finnegan didn't feed you a little information about the case before that meeting with Ms. Brock?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about giving you information about the morphine and about a six-month time frame for supplying the drugs.”

“That didn't happen.”

“So when you said on that phone call that ‘people talk,' you were not referring to Detective Finnegan?”

“No. I wasn't talking about him.”

“You're sure about that?”

“One hundred percent.”

79

Rafael Rivera's testimony had been an unmitigated disaster, but Bill Masterson insisted on eating lunch at the same place we had all week. “You don't change your routine,” he whispered to me. “They'll think we panicked.”

“They would be right,” I whispered back.

I followed Masterson out of the courtroom, and the usual reporters were waiting on the courthouse steps. They flung questions at Masterson, but he shrugged them aside, the way he had every other day.

“What are you going to do now?” one of them asked.

“Eat lunch.”

“No. I mean about the testimony of Rafael Rivera.”

Masterson stopped for a moment and looked at the cameras. “This office will conduct an investigation of Rivera and see if his testimony should lead to any charges. However, the case against Caleb Tate does not hinge on Rivera's testimony. Where Tate got the drugs is not the issue. As Dr. O'Leary said, the drugs in Rikki Tate's blood and stomach were so great that it was clear she died from an intentional poisoning, not an accidental overdose.”

“Then why did you put Rivera on the stand?”

“Don't you guys ever eat lunch?” Masterson asked. He started walking away, and I fell in behind. “As you can tell, I don't miss many lunches myself.”

When we got to our secluded table in the back of a local Alpharetta diner, his mood darkened. He talked about whether we should nol-pros the case. He couldn't believe Caleb Tate had a tape.

“Maybe LA can pull our fat out of the fire,” Masterson said. “He's pretty slick.”

I didn't see how LA could undo Rivera's damage, but I kept my thoughts to myself. At least we would have the weekend to regroup.

“He didn't mention your dad,” Masterson said between bites. “Didn't have to. He probably just wants to keep that hanging over our heads. Figures he'll give us one last chance to nol-pros before he drags your dad into it.”

“Now that he's proven Rivera's threat by the tape, how is my dad's success rate in front of Snowden even relevant?”

“Probably isn't. But that doesn't mean he won't throw it out there anyway. Drop it like a nuclear bomb and let Judge Brown sustain our objection. Then let the press take the story from there.”

I picked at my food as we discussed how to salvage the remnants of our case. I had seen witnesses tank before but never quite so spectacularly. Masterson didn't seem to be as distraught as me. “Eat something,” he said as he wolfed down a sandwich. “You won't make it through this afternoon if you don't.”

Just before paying, Masterson swung the conversation back around to my dad. “It's one thing to jeopardize your dad's reputation if we've got a chance to win the case,” he said. “It's another thing to do so if our case is basically toast anyway.”

“I don't think my dad's reputation should be the deciding factor,” I protested.

“That's very noble of you,” Masterson said. “But I liked your dad. And I'm the one who gets to decide whether we sacrifice his reputation for what's left of our case. Fortunately, now that Rivera is off the stand, Tate won't be able to raise the issue of Judge Snowden's susceptibility to bribes until he starts putting on his own witnesses. Let's get through the rest of the afternoon, and then we'll talk.”

“Okay,” I said, grateful that the case was hanging on, if only by a thread.

80

LA took the stand looking dapper and decidedly Hollywood. He smiled widely for the ladies on the jury, and just the sight of him lifted my spirits. Witnesses aren't allowed to hear the other testimony in the case, and so as far as LA knew, everything was still on track.

I walked him through the investigation, and he testified with confidence and precision. I found myself ashamed that I had been doubting his loyalties throughout the case.

LA did a beautiful job putting the pieces of the puzzle together—the links to the Van Wyck case, the dramatically increased levels of drugs in Rikki's bloodstream starting shortly after Tate's research of that case, Tate's financial distress, the life insurance policy, the marital difficulties, Rikki's conversion to Christianity, and her determination to become something other than Caleb Tate's trophy wife.

I then asked him if he was aware that Caleb Tate had called Dr. Aaron Gillespie about four months prior to Rikki's death, informing Gillespie that his wife was addicted to painkillers and asking for Gillespie's help.

“Yes. We learned that during our investigation.”

“Doesn't that show that Caleb Tate wasn't poisoning his wife?” I asked.

LA nodded as if to say,
Excellent question
. “On the contrary, it sets up the perfect alibi. Think it through,” LA suggested. “If Caleb Tate was secretly slipping a few pills now and then into his wife's food, she would deny she had an addiction problem if Dr. Gillespie asked her. Or maybe Tate discovered a few painkillers and saw it as his opportunity to call Dr. Gillespie and establish an alibi. That way, when he gave her a massive overdose, he would be able to point to this phone call as proof of his innocence, proof that he tried to stop her from taking the pills.”

I noticed that some of the younger female jurors were nodding along. I couldn't blame them. LA could be very persuasive.

“What about the absence of fingerprints on the pill bottles?”

“Well, Ms. Brock, the defendant is smart enough to know that there's going to be an autopsy. That means the authorities are going to find OxyContin and codeine in his wife's blood. He has to account for that somehow. So he slips the pills in her food, watches her die, then puts her hands on the pill bottles. He's probably wearing gloves the whole time. As soon as he does that, he calls 911, and the show is on.”

Next, I walked LA through the timing of the fingernail testing. I established the fact that when Rivera first came to us and told us about the morphine, nobody other than LA, the DA's office, the medical examiner, and the toxicologists knew about the morphine. “What did that tell you about Rafael Rivera?” I asked.

I thought this would draw an objection, but Tate let it pass. That worried me.

“He was telling the truth about supplying the drugs to the defendant.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself. I had been working on the phrasing of this next question since Rivera left the stand earlier that day. I was hoping that LA would pick up on my vibes.

“What if, during the course of your investigation, you had learned that Rafael Rivera had threatened the defendant? What if you found out that Rivera asked the defendant to bribe a judge and that, when the defendant refused, Rivera came to us with this evidence about supplying the defendant with drugs? What would that have done to your investigation?”

LA twisted his face into a
who cares
frown. “It wouldn't have done anything. We already knew Rivera was a convicted felon. Would he try to get his lawyer to bribe a judge before coming to us? Probably. Everybody knows that you're tough on plea bargains. There was no guarantee he could get a good deal from you. So if he could get out of jail by bribing a judge, he'd try that first.

“But that doesn't mean he lied to us. What Rivera told us was confirmed by the scientific evidence. The fact that he knew about the morphine before it was physically possible for him to know proves that he was telling the truth about supplying the drugs.”

I wanted to kiss the man. Honestly, I had been wanting to kiss him for a long time. But the answer was so smooth, and so believable, that it almost felt like he had been listening to every word Rivera had said earlier that day. Had he been? I really didn't want to know.

But I knew that I would never forget that moment in the case. The tape, which had seemed so devastating before lunch, now seemed like an afterthought. In a few short sentences, LA had brought things back into perspective. Some couples find out that they have chemistry on the dance floor. For me, it was this exchange in the courtroom.

“No further questions for this witness. At least not right now,” I said.
Maybe later. Maybe at my place.

My heels clicked across the floor, and I sat down at counsel table. “Nice work,” Masterson said under his breath.

Unlike with prior witnesses, Caleb Tate did not spring up to confront the witness. I assumed for a minute that he had been stunned by the turn of events. In the euphoria, I had forgotten a cardinal rule that I had been taught by my trial advocacy professor.

Never assume anything at trial.

And another rule, this one harped on by my brother, the preacher.

Pride cometh before a fall.