Page 53 of The Best Lawyer
He shook his head. “The woman just seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I’ve been in contact with her sister again. She hasn’t heard from her either.”
“This happened though,” Jeanie said. She pulled out her phone and opened her podcast app.
“Tallon of Justice,” Eric read over her shoulder.
“Tallon Shipley, the girl you said you met at the cemetery,” Jeanie explained. “She dropped the first two episodes of her podcast on this trial.”
“I didn’t see her in the courtroom today,” I said.
“She wasn’t there very long,” Eric said. “She slipped in the back just after Jenna Rodney took the stand. She followed Jenna out after she finished testifying. Tried to get her to go on the record. Jenna had a boyfriend with her. Big, burly guy who looked like trouble. He hustled Jenna to the elevator and fended Tallon off.”
“Good for him,” I said.
“She recorded her conversation with you at the funeral,” Jeanie said. She hit play on her phone. I heard my own voice, slightlydistorted due to the quality of the recording. It had been windy that day at the cemetery. I’d said next to nothing, but she recorded it anyway, against my express wishes. Taken out of context, I was horrified.
“I ran into the accused’s defense attorney and former sister-in-law at the victim’s funeral of all places,” Tallon said. “She was surprisingly willing to talk to me, if only briefly. When I asked her about Tom Loomis, here’s the answer I got.”
He helped break up my brother’s marriage. All I really knew is that he had money. He let Katy spend it on whatever she wanted. The first year they were together she spent it on plastic surgery. She really did become a different person around him.
“It remains to be seen whether the prosecution will call Ms. Leary’s own brother to the stand,” Tallon’s voiceover played. “How she plans to handle that will be interesting indeed. From everything I’ve been able to discern, Joe Leary was never a person of interest in the investigation of Tom Loomis’s murder. In episode two, we’ll explore what is known about Katy Leary Loomis’s early life. I’ve reached out to Joe Leary, her first husband, but he’s so far refused to take my calls. If that changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “She’s lying. I didn’t talk to her. Not like that. She recorded part of my private conversation with Eric!”
“I’ll call Joe,” Eric said. “He won’t be dumb enough to give this woman anything. But …”
“Just in case,” Jeanie and I said in unison.
“Keep listening,” I said to Jeanie. “If she’s been secretlyrecording from the courtroom itself, we might need a court order to ban her from the building.”
“Addison Quick will join in on that,” Jeanie said. “He’s not going to be happy about this either.”
“I can’t stop her from broadcasting,” I said. “But I can stop her from interfering if it gets to that.”
“What’s next?” Eric asked.
“Pretty sure Quick is going to call the medical examiner tomorrow.”
“You made a solid point about the timeline, I think,” Jeanie said. “It seems irrational that Katy would actually be frozen in place for what, an hour before Jenna got there.”
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” I said. “I was grasping and Quick is smart enough to know it. She didn’t have to be standing in one spot for an hour. Nobody can prove whether she was or wasn’t. Just because there were no bloody footprints around the room doesn’t mean Katy never moved. Quick doesn’t have to prove Jenna walked in just after the act.”
“But you got them questioning DePaul’s decision-making,” Jeanie said. “Maisy Carmichael wasn’t just some random stalker. She followed Tom from Detroit to here. DePaul never even bothered questioning anyone from the Detroit station.”
“Because it’s not her job to prove a negative,” Eric said. “I’m sorry. I get why you had to open that door. But had this been my case? I don’t know that I’d have gone much further than she did to run down that lead. There’s not even an inkling that Maisy Carmichael was anywhere near the Loomis house that day. And even if she had been, how do you explain her gaining access to the house? And we know nobody broke in.”
“We don’t have to prove she did it,” Jeanie said. “We only have to make the jury question why Sharon DePaul never even considered it.”
Eric turned his palms over in a half-hearted gesture of surrender. “I’m just saying. I’m not convinced there was anything unreasonable about Sharon’s actions.”
“Whose side are you on?” Jeanie asked.
I saw Eric draw a sharp intake of breath, ready to vehemently defend himself.
“Stop,” I interjected. “We’re all on the same side. And I don’t need yes men, Jeanie. I can’t afford tunnel vision on this one.”
“What’s your plan with the ME?” Eric asked, mercifully changing the subject.
“Same as with everyone else. None of what’s in the autopsy proves Katy’s the one who stabbed Tom. And it’s thin. This isn’t the kind of case I like to put on. Just holding Addison to his proofs isn’t going to be enough. I feel that in my bones. If I can’t give that jury a viable alternative suspect, what’s your over-under on the verdict?”
