Try Try Again Page 23

  Jill, to be polite, took a glass of something but didn’t drink.

  After a while being comfortable in the warm water, their conversation eased, and the women were no longer looking at each other as some evil separated-at-birth succubus.

  “Let’s look at the show,” Hub said, “right where Jill started winning. Season one and then season two.

  Hub waved his waterproof float-remote. “On screen!” he said dramatically. Three virtual screens descended from the ceiling and hovered over the pool side by side.

  “I set this up a few days ago in case we decided to take a close look today,” he said, “and I looked at the episodes but didn’t get very far in figuring things out. Episode four of season one is on the left, season two on the right. The screen in the middle is the real-show-time statistical monitor of how many agonists are doing which character and how they’re doing, and so on. It’s synced right now to season one but we can sync it to season two later, if we want to.

  “Let’s look at season one first,” he said, “beginning in the middle of the commercial that precedes Charley’s startle or whatever we want to call it – epiphany, moment of truth,…”

  “Jockey-shorts-pinch?” said Jill, still smarting from Liv’s verbal assault. Hub and Liv ignored her comment.

  Season one began in the middle of a ChronoSwiss watch commercial. Two minutes later the screen went black for just an instant. When the picture came back the three could see Charley’s stricken face in motion, eyes wide, elbows forward and shoulders hunched, as if he were about to rise from the defense table. Hub stopped the tape.

  “Do you remember this, Liv?” Hub asked.

  “Just barely,” said Liv.

  Hub resumed the tape. Now Liv was glancing over at Charley with a slight frown, head ducking toward him just a little.

  Jill and Hub looked at Liv. “…I guess … I guess I remember, I thought Charley was going to stand up,” Liv said, “that he had some kind of problem. That wouldn’t be proper at this point in the trial. But then, he didn’t get up.”

  “Now,” Hub said, “what did you think of his face at the time – how he looked? Seems perturbed to me, like he just had a jolt.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Liv. “Maybe I wasn’t looking at his face at all. In any case, I just don’t remember.”

  “Now I’m going to back the tapes up to just at the end of the commercial again,” said Hub, “and let it roll from there. Watch the data on the middle screen. Remember it’s set for season one.”

  Hub let four minutes of tape go by. “Now what did you see?”

  “Not much,” said Jill. Just a bunch of numbers that didn’t change much.”

  “Right,” said Hub, “That’s the point. The number of Very Wells, Wells, Averages, and Poors stayed pretty level, although agonists playing Charley had a few seconds of trouble. Now let’s look at the numbers in season two.”

  He backed up the tape again to the commercial, British Foods in season two, and again he played forward four minutes. “Watch that middle screen,” he said.

  After a minute, Liv said “the average scores went down at the end of the commercial.”

  “That’s right; that’s what I was getting at. Agonists playing every character fell off – they’d practiced on season-one timing and suddenly it was different in season two because WizWhiz had deleted about a second and a half.”

  “Wouldn’t that slip in scores be true everywhere WizWhiz made a cut?” asked Jill.

  “Yes, and it was. But in those other cuts, no one did what Jill did here – adjust to the change and stay with the show. “Now let’s look at Jill’s performance curve when Charley’s startle began, and watch the middle screen. I’m isolating on Jill’s numbers, now.”

  The tape rolled forward. “What did you see?”

  Jill looked at the other two. “I guess my performance fell off.”

  “Right!” said Hub, “It did. But everybody else’s performance fell off more, or wasn’t very good in the first place. For the next hundred fourteen point five seconds, no one’s performance was better than Jill’s, although from T-slice to T-slice many agonists scored as high as she did, at the top of the Very Well quadrant. So now we’re not looking at how you won, Jill, but how the other agonists lost.”

  Jill brightened. “That’s proof, isn’t it? I didn’t cheat. Everybody did poorly for two minutes, but I did less poorly than anyone else.”

  “Right again!” said Hub. “So the show is safe and I’m safe and Jill’s safe. And Liv never was in trouble.”

  Jill smiled broadly but Liv was frowning.

  “What’s the matter, Liv?” Hub asked.

  “OK,” said Liv hesitantly. “So you two are off the hook, and the producer too, and WizWhiz, and the network, and the show. But – I keep thinking of Charley’s letter to me, the one he wrote the day, I guess, before he was killed a year and a half ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I turned the letter over to Brent and he filed it somewhere. Not that it had to be kept secret, just that almost everything in it was moot when Charley died, volunteering some information and promising to ‘tell all’ if his daughter were protected. There was the information that ‘George’ was George’s last name not his first name, lived somewhere in Maryland. Searching FBI and other databases turned up one man who might be our guy, but he was untraceable.

  “At the time, I didn’t think to wonder what moved Charley to turn informer when for months he’d said either nothing or nonsense. But now I think it might be connected to that startle: something came up in that trial he didn’t expect, something that put the murder in a new light.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, but we need to look at the tape from before the commercial, not only after it. I think Chief Gardner was on the stand then. He’d been testifying for a while, and Brent looked like he was about to say “Your witness.” I think something was going on, and it had nothing to do with Jill’s three million dollars.”

  Jill was still annoyed. “So you’ve decided not to confiscate my money?” Hub and Liv responded with a moment of embarrassed silence.

  Liv spoke up. “So should we look at season one, or season two maybe for this Gardner testimony?”

  “There were no season-two cuts during Gardner’s testimony,” Hub said. “We wouldn’t have cut in the middle of a witness’ turn in the box anyway – so it doesn’t matter. But let’s go with season one, and now we won’t need the datascreen anymore.”

  Hub swiped some tiles on his remote. “Here it is,” he said, “from the moment when Chief Gardner steps into the witness box, until just before the commercial break. That’s ChronoSwiss in season one, British Foods in season two. I’m going to fast forward over a few sections as we come to them, just to speed things up. Anytime you want it slowed down, just say so. This is your friend Brent Nielsen, Liv, ruining your case. Here it is.”

  The tape rolled. Prosecutor Nielsen was saying, “Officer Gardner, everyone appreciates your courage and resourcefulness that day, and your valiant bravery in having sustained a wound in the service of justice.”

  “What a suckup!” Liv interjected, laughing, “and he’s my new Congressman!” The others nodded.

  “We’re going to review the events,” Neilson continued on the tape, “surrounding this crime from your point of view – a privileged point of view because you were not only close to the victim and the shooter, but because your training, experience, and expertise makes you a more reliable witness than the ordinary citizen.”

  Hub stopped the tape. “Couldn’t you have objected there, Liv?” he asked.

  “I did, and it was sustained. But Gardner wasn’t going to add much to what other witnesses had already said.”

  Hub inched forward on the tape, pausing to see if either Jill or Liz had anything to say. Gardner was testifying, “Thank you. You’re right. I’m trained to see things ordinary citizens might miss.”

  This time, Jill laughed. “What an asshol
e!’” she said.

  Hub said, “I’m going to skip around here until we get to Gardner’s confusion or uncertainty about those shots: how many, who shot, and so on. That seems to be what set Charlie off, and that startle that’s now made Jill a millionaire.”

  He swiped a few tiles. Neilson was saying, “Now please describe what Congressman Barnes did when he got to the bottom of the steps, and what you did.”

  And Gardner said, “I guess – I mean, as I remember he raised his hands over his head and put them together, you know, like a boxer? And shook them. Then he turned left. His assistants – I guess they were his assistants, had formed a line between the deceased and his campaign bus. Kinda like a rope line, only there weren’t no rope.”

  Hub stopped the tape. “So,” he said, “Charley could tell exactly where Barnes was going to go to get back to that bus.” He turned the tape back on. Nielsen was saying, “Now where were you in relation to him right then?”

  Gardner responded, “Ah, I was right behind him, maybe five feet, scanning the crowd y’know, like I’m s’posed to.”

  Nielsen continued. “And where was Mr. Sullivan?”

  And Gardner said, “He came right down those steps behind me. I glanced back and saw him there.”

  “Where are we going with this,” Liv said. “I don’t see anything useful yet.”

  Hub didn’t look at her, mumbled “just wait.”

  “A man – the defendant - came toward the deceased from the side and stretched out his left hand. I thought that was funny, funny-odd I mean, maybe he was a cripple or something – disabled we’re supposed to say now, I guess, and couldn’t use his right hand. The hand I could see, the left hand that is, was shaking pretty bad. ... And then the deceased, he reached out to shake the man’s – the defendant’s – hand and I could see, having a side view of the deceased, he was a little confused about how to shake hands with a man who didn’t have the use of his right hand. ... But the deceased went ahead anyway and reached out with his right hand toward the other man’s - the defendant’s – left hand, and then the man – the defendant - pulled his right hand out of his pocket and there was a gun – he was holding a gun – it was shaking - and he pointed it at the deceased. ... I could see him real well. That guy, I mean, the defendant. He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket with his right hand and shot the deceased.”

  At that point on the tape, Liv had said, “Objection!” and Judge DuCasse had said “Sustained.”

  “What was that all about?” asked Hub.

  “Just wait,” said Liv.

  Hub resumed the tape. Gardner was saying, “OK, shot in the direction of where the deceased was, it seemed to me that that’s where the gun was pointed.”

  “So how many shots was that, and where were they going?” asked Hub.

  Jill spoke up. “That’s coming out in the testimony in just a minute. Hold on.”

  Gardner was saying, “I thought about Jerry Sullivan right behind me, that he was probably pulling his weapon out right then, and I was in the line of fire and what the hell would I do now? I’d never worked with him before and as I said, he was right behind me. So I waved my hand like this with my hurt hand I mean, so he wouldn’t fire, not only for my safety but there were a lot of people around, y’know? Citizens. Too reckless to take a shot right then.”

  Then Gardner said, “The killer – the defendant, I mean – he’d turned and started running, like I said, so he didn’t seem like an immediate threat. But I thought we could take him once he was past the crowd, away from any citizens. We could shoot him down then.”

  “But they missed, Gardner and Sullivan both missed,” said Hub.

  “Just watch,” said Liv. “I remember just then I was wondering how I could cast some doubt on Gardner’s testimony,” said Liv. “Not how I could challenge the basics of his story, but how I could make him look a little confused, unsure of what Charley did and what he himself did. But I couldn’t come up with anything. But let’s get back to the trial. Brent Nielsen is asking Gardner a critical question that has never had a definitive answer.”

  “And how many shots were fired all together? Please tell the jury, shot by shot.”

  Gardner seemed to want to count on his fingers, but didn’t. “Sure,” he said. “Now I’m not sure which shot went where or how many there were, those buildings on all sides around the parking lot, y’know, the sound really bounces around and sounds like more shots than there were, but the first shot I knew, that one hit my hand, here. When I was reaching for my weapon.”

  Hub moved ahead on the tape.

  “The second shot, you know it might have been the second or third shot or whatever because everything happened so fast, well, the second shot hit Congressman Barnes in the shoulder. He staggered back and a spurt of blood came up from his shoulder and hit him in the face.”

  “Thank you,” Nielsen said. “So what happened to the two bullets – the two we’ve been discussing so far?”

  Gardner looked concerned and licked his lips. “Later that day, we found bullet fragments, and two chipped areas in the concrete wall behind the speaker’s platform. Those fragments hadn’t been there before the rally. We’d checked the site all over very careful.”

  Nielsen nodded. “Thank you. Now let’s move on to that third shot.”

  “OK,” Gardner said. “OK, well I guess it was the third shot, y’know. Anyway, I couldn’t tell at first, but I heard the shot and then the deceased staggered back and fell, and later we found he’d been hit in the chest. That’s when we went and gave him first aid and there was a doctor showed up out of the crowd but the deceased was already dead.”

  “And there were no fragments from that bullet?”

  “The M.E. told me the bullet had fragmented in the deceased’s spinal cord after passing through his heart.”

  Judge DuCasse looked up. “Counselor?”

  And Liv said “Not in contention, your honor.”

  “What was that all about?” asked Hub, stopping the tape.

  “Nothing,” said Liv. “Small legal point. Go on.”

  “And the next shot, if there was a next shot?” Nielsen was saying.

  “We never found a bullet. Pretty much, it had to have been wild or it would of hit something we’d find.”

  “And that next shot come from where, to the best of your knowledge?”

  “Must of been the defendant, ’cause neither me or Jerry ever fired our weapons.”

  Suddenly, the picture cut to a shot of several obviously expensive wrist watches.

  “OK,” said Hub, stopping the playback. “So that’s what Gardner said, and then we get this ChronoSwiss commercial and then Gardner says some more and then Liv cross-examines him.”

  “Let’s continue on a while,” said Liv.

  Nielsen went on. “And did you immediately begin to conduct an investigation of the incident, officer?”

  Gardner: “Chief. Yeah. Part of my job and some investigators from D.C. and Harrisburg were there too within an hour or two and they pretty much took over.”

  “But wait,” Jill said, “Look: Gardner says “must have been the defendant” who took that one final shot.

  “But Gardner just supposes that, and in fact Charley didn’t,” said Liv. “He was running away. He pushed a man down but didn’t shoot him. And then he was out of sight.”

  There was an interval of knotted brows.

  “But then,…” said Hub.

  “Who fired that last shot?” asked Liv.

  “Maybe we’ll never know,” said Hub. “Does it matter? Whatever, it seems to have gone wild, since no one else was hurt.”

  “Hub,” said Jill, “can you use your magic remote to delete that commercial so we can see what Gardner said and immediately continue on to Charley’s startle? I want to see exactly where Charley begins to react, to the second. In season one, please.”

  Hub did so. He played it over three times, and they agreed Charley’s startle occurred right at the point where Gard
ner says, “’cause neither me or Jerry ever fired our weapons.”

  A moment before that, Charley’s face had shown a puzzled look at Gardner’s saying, “Must of been the defendant.”

  “But Charley didn’t fire after he started to run,” said Liv.

  “How do you know that?” said Jill, “because he said so?”

  “Because he was facing the wrong direction to shoot at anybody, since there was no one in front of him. And yes, he said so. And he had no reason to shoot anywhere at that point, or to lie about it either; it would just have slowed him down as he was trying to escape.”

  “That’s a pretty weak assumption,” said Hub. “He could have fired accidentally. He could have had his finger still on the trigger and it just happened.”

  “But then he wouldn’t have looked surprised,” Jill said. “Look. Think about this: there was a shot, maybe the fourth shot but nobody’s clear about that, and Charley assumed either Garner or Sullivan had fired at him, not that it mattered since no one was hit. But it did matter to Charley, because if he didn’t fire that shot and Gardner didn’t and Sullivan didn’t, then who did? And then, why did Charley react so strongly, just because of an unexplained shot that could have come from anywhere? A shrug would have been more typical of him.”

  The three looked at each other. “Let’s think about it,” Hub said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock, and dinner is served, courtesy of the best chef in Hollywood.” Jill and Liv stood up, Liv somewhat unsteadily, and followed Hub into a dining room fit for a small restaurant.

  “This must be the ‘très grand,’” said Liv.

  There were several courses, each with exquisitely appropriate wine pairings. Hub became the genial host, telling the women, blow by blow, how he had become rich and famous although talented, this last intended as a joke. He laughed to make sure the others were aware it was a joke.

  Liv told Jill and Hub about losing her job, being unemployed, then getting on with a small CPA firm, and then becoming instantly famous. Fortunately, she lived in a small town and most people knew her anyway, so fame hadn’t been as rough as it would have been, say, in the D.C. area. She looked at Jill.