Word had evidently spread quickly, and by the time Hardy was back next to Maya at his table in the bullpen, there wasn’t a seat to be had in the gallery. A line stretched out through the door that led from the hallway into the courtroom, and Hardy was more than a little surprised to see Abe Glitsky standing in it, just inside the door, having come down to check out the show. He gave Hardy an infinitesimal nod.
Because they were scheduled to appear as witnesses and could not remain in the courtroom, Schiff and Bracco had both abandoned their earlier front-row seats in favor of a couple of reporters, who were among the number of people questioning both Harlen Fisk and Kathy West in what appeared to be a virtual impromptu press conference. Indeed, the gallery was fairly humming on all sides, so much so that the bailiff’s ringing call to order as Braun reentered the room and ascended to the bench went largely unheeded.
Hardy, up front, heard it and turned, but the noise behind him continued and, if anything, increased. Until Braun, standing, used her gavel, at first once, gently. And getting no response, then with a more imperious and forceful Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Order!” she called out. “Order in this court!”
Until gradually, finally, the place grew silent.
Braun waited until the last whisper had died, then put her gavel down and, still standing, leaned forward onto her hands, scowling down at the crowd. “This is a court of law,” she began, her voice strained with emotion. “There is no place in it for bedlam. I would ask those of you who have seats now to please take them, and for those of you standing along the sides, find a seat or I will be obliged to ask you to leave.”
After giving the gallery time to comply Braun finally took her seat. “Thank you. The court,” she went on, “recognizes Her Honor, the mayor of San Francisco, Kathy West, as well as City Supervisor Harlen Fisk, and welcomes them both to these proceedings.” In a convincing display of graciousness the judge nodded through a tight smile, then turned immediately to the prosecution table.
“Mr. Stier, are the People ready to begin their case?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Hardy, the defense?”
“Ready, Your Honor.”
“All right, then. Mr. Stier, you may begin.”
20
For all of his low-affect demeanor and appearance, Stier’s public persona projected the first hint of the enigmatic Paulie-a real authority that seemed based on equal parts confidence in who he was and the certainty of his position. He spoke in a normal, conversational tone with few oratorical flourishes, but his down-home sincerity created a simple eloquence that rang with conviction.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” He was standing just in front of and sideways to Hardy and Maya, facing the jury box. As he began, he held his hands in a relaxed manner down and slightly out in front of him, reminiscent of a shortstop in the ready position, from time to time bringing them up, clasping them for emphasis, or sometimes pointing a finger from one of them for clarity or effect.
“The evidence and facts in this case are fairly simple, straightforward, and unambiguous. They concern a significant drug-dealing operation and long-standing relationships among three individuals that for some unknown reason suddenly went bad, with tragic, in fact fatal, results for two of them. And they point to an inescapable conclusion-that the defendant in this case, Maya Townshend”-and here he turned and pointed a finger directly at her-“willfully murdered her accomplice in her marijuana business, Dylan Vogler, and then several days later she willfully murdered another former accomplice in the marijuana business, Levon Preslee.
“Here’s how we know this.
“At nine forty-seven on the night of October twenty-sixth of last year, a young man who is one of the two victims in this case, Dylan Vogler, the manager of a coffee shop called Bay Beans West on Haight Street here in the city, placed a phone call to his employer, the defendant Maya Townshend. We don’t know precisely what he told her during that phone call, but whatever the message, it was important enough that Defendant first lied to the police about ever having received the call, and only when caught in the lie did she admit that it was enough to convince her to get up before dawn the next morning and drive to Bay Beans West.”
Hardy squirmed. Maya had not been caught in a lie but had admitted her deception to the police on her own, on his advice. He made a note to make the point later through Bracco or Schiff. But for the moment the accusation rang unchallenged in front of the jury.
Stier went on. “Less than one hour later, by the time it was just starting to get light, Mr. Vogler was dead, shot once in the chest at point blank range in the alley that runs behind Bay Beans West. There was no sign of a struggle. Police investigators discovered a gun in the alley from which one shot had recently been fired. One bullet was recovered. One shell casing was recovered. Both matched the gun. This gun belonged to Defendant. It was registered to her and her fingerprints were on it, as they were on cartridges inside the gun.
“So why did Defendant do it?
“They had been business partners for nearly ten years. Why did Defendant wake up on this particular Saturday morning and decide that she was going to have to kill Mr. Vogler? We may never know the precise reason. But we do know with certainty about the life of crime they were leading together, a life where violent death, even at the hands of partners and associates, is as common as this city’s morning fog in June.”
Stier smiled politely at his homespun witticism but didn’t pause. “At the time of his death,” he continued, “Mr. Vogler was wearing a backpack into which he’d packed fifty Ziploc snack bags, each containing a few grams to up to half an ounce of high-grade marijuana that he grew himself in his attic. It seems that Mr. Vogler used Bay Beans West, the coffee shop owned by Defendant and managed by himself, as a cover for a thriving marijuana business, a business whose books and accounting ledgers will show operated with the complete cooperation and collusion of Defendant.”
Maya was beginning to fidget and Hardy reached over and put a hand on her arm, squeezing gently. Everything Stier was saying was old news to both of them by now, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t disconcerting hearing it laid out in a smoothly flowing narrative. And he didn’t want a member of the jury to pick up on Maya’s discomfort, which any one of them might construe as guilt.
For his own part Hardy wore a practiced expression of barely disguised disgust at this reading of the purported “facts.” Without lapsing into anything like true theatricality he let his head, as though of its own accord, shake back and forth ever so slightly whenever he sensed a juror checking him for his reaction.
Stier went on. “But Defendant wasn’t done yet. Her drug business went back a long way, and it would take more than one murder to keep it secure. Unfortunately, the murder of Dylan Vogler aroused the suspicion of another of her confederates named Levon Preslee. Until his death Mr. Preslee worked as a fund-raising executive at the American Conservatory Theater. Like Defendant and Mr. Vogler, he had attended the University of San Francisco in the nineteen nineties. While they were students there, several witnesses will testify that the three of them-Defendant and the two victims, Mr. Vogler and Mr. Preslee-first got involved together in a marijuana distribution business. Eventually, the law caught up to Mr. Vogler and Mr. Preslee and they were both convicted of robbery in connection with a dope deal gone bad and sentenced to prison.”
Hardy had fought vigorously to keep Vogler and Preslee’s prior marijuana dealings and the robbery away from the jury. There was no evidence, he’d argued, that connected Maya to that in any way. As with almost every other motion he had tried to make, Braun had brushed him aside: “Goes to the relationship among the parties,” she’d said, as though that either made sense or had something to do with the legal ruling.