Nothing But the Truth (18 page)

“How old?”

Kenneth began to shift in his chair. “I dunno. Not old.” He shot a look at Paulson, then Brett. Brett could tell he was wearing thin under the pressure. She decided to act.

She waved her BlackBerry. “I hate to disrupt the flow, but I need to get in touch with my office. It’s important.” She stood and made her way to the door, indicating Kenneth should follow. He looked at Paulson again, as if for approval and waited for her nod before he followed her out of the room. Brett was glad to see the bond develop between them. She showed him to a seat in the courtroom and told him not to talk to anyone until she got back. She stepped out into the hall and punched in the numbers to her office. Before she could finish, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to face Kim Paulson’s deep blue eyes.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.”

Paulson signaled for Brett to follow her. Brett followed the detective down the hallway that led to a separate entrance to the jury room. Harwell, Jeff, and Ryan were all waiting. Brett felt a sense of dread coming on. Harwell stood and waved her into a seat. He was the first to speak.

“We need to talk.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing. What’s up?”

“I don’t know what to make of your kid,” he said.

Brett resisted the urge to point out Kenneth was not “her kid.” She was torn between feeling protective and pissed. She resolved to figure that out once she knew who to focus her feelings on—Kenneth or the prosecution team. Whatever Harwell had to say wasn’t likely to be good news. “No offense, detective, but I don’t know what to make out of what you just said. Kenneth’s answered all of your questions. He may not be the most articulate
kid
, but he seems to be genuinely interested in cooperating with all of you.” She turned to Paulson, engaging her directly. “You know him. What do you think?”

Paulson seemed to warm to the direct attention. She moved closer to Brett and offered a reassuring smile. “He certainly has been forthcoming, and he hasn’t tried to minimize his involvement. Here’s the deal: he knows many of the facts, spot on. And, if you’re any good at all, which Ms. Foster and Mr. Oates say you are, you know we’ve managed to keep a tight lid on this case. So Kenneth knowing critical facts, well, that makes him seem like a real credible witness.”

“But.” Brett knew one was coming and she wanted to deal with it head-on.

Harwell took over. “But he got a few things really wrong.”

“It’s been a while. Are you sure he  isn’t suffering from a bit of memory lapse?”

“John, aka Juan Rodriguez, is a Mexican, still wet from crossing.” He paused at Brett’s visible cringe, but not for long. “He’s five seven, and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds. That sound like a tall, skinny white guy to you?”

Brett recognized the question was rhetorical and she was glad. She didn’t really want to argue the point, especially while she was still trying to process the information volcano that had just erupted in her head. So they already have John in custody, or have at least questioned him. That fact certainly diminished the effect of any information Kenneth provided. But what was the relationship between John and Ross Edwards? Were Ryan and Jeff waiting to try John after they finished with Ross’s case, or was John a key state’s witness slated to testify at Edwards’s trial? She sat silent, processing this development.

“There’s more.”

Brett looked up at Ryan who had just spoken for the first time since she admonished Kenneth about his constitutional rights. She followed Ryan’s eyes, which were trained on the proximity between herself and Paulson, but she couldn’t read her expression. Her eyes were distant, her brow furrowed.

“Let me guess, you can’t tell me,” Brett said.

“I can, but I won’t. Your client has offered a strange mixture of fact and fiction. He knows plenty that wasn’t in the papers, but some crucial areas are way off. Will he take a polygraph?”

“I’ll talk to him about it.”

“Can you do it right now?”

Brett was confused, not by the request itself, but by the urgency. She hadn’t discussed a polygraph with Kenneth, but she knew it was a possibility. Lie detector tests weren’t admissible as evidence of either guilt or innocence, but they were routinely used by prosecutors and defense attorneys to evaluate the veracity of witnesses. Brett often sent clients who could afford a private test to have one done where their guilt or innocence turned on a simple yes or no question, but when she did, she selected the examiner, and the results of the test were her confidential, privileged work product. What Ryan was suggesting was a police polygraph, which meant the results would be there for all of them to see.

“I have to have your word you won’t bring perjury charges.”

“How could I on the basis of a non-scientific test?” Ryan offered a hint of a smile.

“I have no doubt you would find a way. I would win that fight, but I don’t want to engage. Give me your word, and I’ll talk to him about it.” Ryan nodded and Brett left to find her client.

She approached him as he emerged from the men’s restroom, and she got right to the point. “They want you to take a polygraph. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s a lie detector test.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know. They hook you up to a machine and ask you questions and decide if you’re lying or not. Who asked me to take one? That bitch prosecutor or the cop?”

Brett flinched at the epithet he used to describe Ryan, but held back a retort. To him, Ryan probably did appear cold and uncaring. She hadn’t asked a single question and kept her head buried in a file folder during most of the interview. Brett’s brief glimpses of another side of her didn’t give her the authority to refute his assessment. She knew without asking that the cop Kenneth referred to was Paulson.

She dodged his question about who had requested the polygraph, responding instead to his description of what the exam would entail. “The test is much more involved than that. Before they hook you up to a machine, the examiner talks to you for an hour or so. He or she will ask you a ton of questions, some about what happened to Mary Dinelli, some about things that don’t have anything to do with that. Then they hook you up to the machine and ask you more questions. Some of the questions will be softball questions, based on the casual conversation you had with the examiner. These are designed to determine how your body reacts when you’re telling the truth. Next, the examiner will ask you some carefully crafted, very tightly worded questions about the events surrounding Mary Dinelli’s death.”

“The cop wants me to take it? The girl?”

 “Yes.” Brett resisted the urge to school him on the difference between a girl and a grown woman.

“Okay.”

“Okay? Really? How do you plan to pass the polygraph when you don’t know the answers to the questions?”

Kenneth flinched slightly, the only sign he had something to hide. Brett pushed on. “You obviously know some critical details about this case, but there are some key facts you’ve gotten wrong. Facts you should know if you were there.”

Kenneth shrugged. “If she wants me to take a polygraph I will.”

*

When the break was over, Brett told the prosecution team they were ready to resume. She had sidestepped the issue of the polygraph, but it was obvious Paulson at least thought she planned to defer since Brett hadn’t called a halt to the meeting altogether. She wanted to play this out a bit longer before she let them know for sure Kenneth would agree to the exam. She didn’t have much confidence that he was making a good decision, but ultimately the decision was his to make. Her job was to run interference at this point. Before they had reentered the jury room, she had pulled Paulson aside and suggested she question Kenneth a bit more about the facts of the case.

Moments later, they were all seated back around the table, but the atmosphere had changed. The mood had morphed from idle anticipation to surging anxiety. Brett wasn’t a stranger to the dynamics surrounding a breaking case, no trial attorney was. The rules of discovery in Dallas County were such that she often received critical pieces of the state’s evidence in the middle of trial, which meant most of her strategy consisted of trying to anticipate the other side’s tactics. She might be used to it, but she still experienced the same gut churning angst every single time. Today was no different.

Paulson took the lead. “Kenneth, we’re setting up the polygraph now. We’ll have to leave the courthouse and take you to the station. You’re not under arrest. Do you understand?”

Kenneth nodded without looking at Brett. His developing bond with the detective was becoming more and more apparent. Brett stepped back and let Paulson fall into the role of confidant. Under her watchful eye, only good could come from the burgeoning relationship between her client and the person charged with investigating him. She would step back in when it was time for Kenneth to make the hard decisions, just as she had when it came to the discussion surrounding his decision to take the polygraph in the first place.

Paulson continued, apparently deciding to take Brett at her word before actually bothering with the trouble of the polygraph. “Kenneth, some of the things you’ve told us today have been very helpful, and we appreciate you coming forward with this information.” She paused and stared him down with a combination of concern and authority.

“But here’s the deal. Some of the things you have told us are dead wrong. We know John. He’s already talked to us about what happened.”

Kenneth didn’t meet her eyes. His hands gripped the seat of his chair and he swung his feet back and forth under the table. Paulson leaned in, her voice almost a whisper. “You don’t know John Rodriguez, do you?”

Kenneth didn’t respond.

“You weren’t at Mary Dinelli’s house the night of the fire.” It was a statement, followed by another. “Or any other night.”

Brett recognized Kenneth’s body language. She saw it often when she hung out with her young nieces and nephews who thankfully hadn’t fully developed skills of deception calculated to disguise. Kenneth was clearly squirming at having been caught.

“Someone told you to come in here and confess, didn’t they?” Paulson looked at Brett as she spoke. The expression on her face told Brett that Paulson knew her words would deliver a shock. Brett met her stare for a brief moment and then turned to Ryan. Her head was no longer in her notes. Ryan was riveted on this intense exchange, but she broke her concentration to meet Brett’s eyes.

Ryan was certain Brett had no prior knowledge of her client’s deception. No one could fake the shock she saw reflected in Brett’s expression. Certainly, Brett must have had questions about her client’s motivation for coming forward, but she wasn’t part of the scheme herself. Ryan had no doubt the force behind Kenneth’s admissions was Ross Edwards, even if the effort was well concealed to hide his involvement. She’d never met the man, but she had seen his videotaped statement to the police. That was no confession, but it was a revealing insight into the charming con who she had no doubt was responsible for snuffing out the vulnerable Mary Dinelli’s life. The way he deflected questions about Dinelli’s death, with a smug smile and hints about how the police might find the real killer, had driven Ryan crazy. Her whole team was thrumming with anticipation. If Ross was behind Kenneth’s faulty confession, then they needed to act and they needed to act fast. With solid proof of his meddling, they could convince the judge to hold his bond insufficient and take him into custody.

The key now was getting Kenneth to reveal the full story behind what brought him in today. They needed to know every detail of how Kenneth became involved with Edwards and what, if anything, Kenneth really knew about Mary Dinelli’s death. Ryan resisted the urge to jump into the interrogation. She grudgingly admitted Paulson had quickly formed a bond with the kid, but she wanted the revelations to come faster. Once they had Kenneth’s full story, they still had to draft a motion to hold Edwards’s bond insufficient and a search warrant for his home and get both documents served before he had a clue his plan was headed for disaster. She drew comfort from the fact that as long as they were in this room, Ross Edwards, wherever he was, thought his plan was working, but lingering in the back of her mind was a nagging question: why hadn’t Ross given Kenneth more detail to back up his story? Ryan let the query eat away at her for a short while before, out of necessity, she finally wrote it off to a couple of possibilities. One, Ross wasn’t a sly con, just a smarmy one. Two, Ross figured all he needed was a little reasonable doubt in the form of Kenneth Phillip’s confession in order to throw a wrench in the state’s case.

Ryan looked at Brett. Something was amiss. Her hair was no longer perfectly in place and she had a stain, probably coffee, on her sleeve, yet those details were more endearing than a source of concern. Finally, Ryan put her finger on it. The easy confidence that she had witnessed from Brett every time she had seen her during their brief acquaintance was gone. She appeared disconcerted. Ryan glanced at her watch. Five minutes wouldn’t make or break their case. She signaled to Paulson to stop her questioning and called for a short recess. Jeff and the detectives left the room, but she lingered for a moment and pulled Brett aside.

“Take a minute. Talk to him.” Ryan almost reached for her arm again. She wanted to convey more than her words only could accomplish. Understanding, compassion, comfort. She didn’t dwell on the impetus behind those desires, as unusual as that was for her.