29
Before the decision really had a chance to sink in, a smiling and confident Big Ugly Stier, never looking bigger nor uglier to Hardy, rose at his table and-no doubt seeking to undo some of the damage Hardy had done with Schiff yesterday-called Cheryl Biehl to the stand.
Paul Stier had discovered Biehl, née Zolotny, in much the same way that Wyatt Hunt had, by chasing down Maya’s college connections in the hope that someone who knew her both then and in the present could shed some light on the blackmail question, and hence on Maya’s purported motive for the killings. Now the former cheerleader, conservatively dressed in a tan business suit, clearly uncomfortable in the role of prosecution witness, shifted as she sat waiting for Stier to begin.
“Mrs. Biehl, how long have you known the defendant?”
“About fourteen years now.”
“And where did you meet?”
“At USF, freshman year. We were both cheerleaders.”
“And have you kept up on your friendship?”
“Yes. Until she got arrested, we usually had lunch together every couple of months or so.”
“Mrs. Biehl, did you also know the victims in this case, Dylan Vogler and Levon Preslee?”
“Yes.”
“And to your personal knowledge, did Defendant also know both of these victims when you were all in college?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever witness Defendant using marijuana with either or both of these men?”
Biehl cast an apologetic glance across to Maya and nodded to Stier. “Yes, I did.”
“And did you ever witness Defendant, either alone or with one or both of the victims, selling or distributing marijuana?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Would you characterize this as a more or less common occurrence?”
“For a while, when we were in school, yes. They were the main connection if you wanted to buy pot among our friends.”
“All three of them?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Mrs. Biehl. Moving ahead several years, in the lunches that you and Defendant had together, did she ever mention either Mr. Vogler or Mr. Preslee?”
“Yes. She mentioned both of them, Dylan quite frequently, since she still worked with him.”
“But she mentioned Levon Preslee too?”
“Right. But not really recently.”
“Do you remember the last time she mentioned Mr. Preslee?”
“About eight years ago, just after he got out of jail.”
“And by jail, Mrs. Biehl, don’t you really mean state prison?”
“Yes. Right. I thought prison and jail were the same, I guess. But, yes, it was just after he got out of prison.”
“And what were Defendant’s comments on Mr. Preslee at that time?”
“Just that he’d gotten in touch with her through Dylan. He wanted her to fix him up with a job or something.”
“What was her reaction to this request?”
“It really frustrated her.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because she said so. She said she was never going to get out from under these guys.”
“She was never going to get out from under these guys. Did she offer any explanation of what she meant by get out from under?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Biehl. Now, turning to Dylan Vogler, he was her manager at Bay Beans West, was he not?”
“That’s right.”
“And in these conversations you had with her, how did she characterize her relationship with Mr. Vogler?”
Biehl hesitated for a long moment before replying, “Unpleasant.”
“Was she more specific?”
“Well, a couple of times she told me she just wanted him out of her life and she’d offered to buy him out, but he refused.”
Stier, eyebrows raised, flagged the significance of this testimony to the jury. “She used the phrase, to buy him out?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find that strange?”
“A little bit, yes.”
“And why was that?”
“Well, because he worked for her, I wondered why she just didn’t fire him.”
“Did you ask her about that, why she didn’t simply terminate him?”
“Yes. We talked about it a couple of times.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said she couldn’t. Couldn’t fire him, I mean.”
“And why was that?”
“She wouldn’t say specifically.”
“Did she tell you in a general way?”
Another look over at Maya, then Biehl let out a wistful sigh. “She said she could never fire him because he owned her.”
“He owned her. Those were her exact words?”
“Yes. She said them more than once.”
Stier, to all appearances sobered by the enormity and surprise of this testimony-although he’d guided her directly to it-nodded to the witness, then over to the jury. “Mrs. Biehl, in the few months prior to Defendant’s arrest, did you two have lunch together again?”
“Yes, at the end of last summer.”
“And did Mr. Vogler come up again in your conversation?”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?”
“I brought him up. I told her I’d been worrying about her situation with him. I’d heard somewhere that he was selling marijuana out of the store, and I told her that whatever it was she was hiding, it would be better just to get him out of there and get it behind her. Otherwise, it was just going to go from bad to worse.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She just kind of shrugged it off and said I shouldn’t worry about it. I was right. It wasn’t a good situation, but she was going to take care of it pretty soon.”
A final repetitious riff to the jury. “She was going to take care of it pretty soon.” And then Stier was turning to Hardy. “Your witness.”
30
Biehl’s direct testimony got them to lunchtime, so there wouldn’t be any cross-examination until the afternoon session, and this suited Hardy fine. He didn’t have much of an idea of what, if anything, he was going to ask her. Her testimony had been true and probably accurate. Vogler had no doubt been blackmailing Maya. He and Preslee probably both had had their claws into her, so that she wanted to get out from under their control. The strategy he’d decided to adopt called for a steady drumbeat about the lack of physical evidence tying Maya to either of the crimes, but Biehl hadn’t offered anything he felt he could refute.
He had a voice mail from Wyatt Hunt on his cell phone, telling him that he’d be having lunch at Lou the Greek’s if Hardy wanted a report on what he’d been doing out at BBW, and suddenly-if for no other reason than he was perpetually somewhat morbidly curious about the Special-that seemed like a good idea.
So he hung back until his client and Stier and most of the crowd had dispersed from the courtroom, then snuck out, walked the two flights down to the throbbing lobby where it was too crowded for anyone to notice him. Outside, trench-coat collar up and head down in an overcast chill, he jaywalked across to Lou’s, stepped over the sleeping or dead body in the outer doorway, then descended the half-dozen ammonia-tinged steps that took him to the restaurant’s entrance proper, swinging double doors covered in red leather.
As usual at lunchtime patrons stood three deep at the bar. Each of the twenty-odd tables was taken as well. Hardy recognized several cops, Harlen Fisk at a small table alone with Cheryl Biehl, five or six of his fellow attorneys, and a couple of members of his own jury at one of the side tables; and somewhat to his surprise, at the largest table in the house, Glitsky and Treya and Debra Schiff and Darrel Bracco along with District Attorney Clarence Jackman himself, scowling and listening intently to whatever Bracco was saying. Nobody at that table looked happy enough to interrupt, and besides, Hunt was holding up a hand flagging him from one of the booths, so Hardy picked his way through the mob and the cacophonous din and slid in across from his investigator.