“Where were you when you got that call?” I asked.
“In my car, out on the road.”
“Could you see him?”
“No.”
“What did he-”
Terry slammed her palm down on the table. “That’s it.” She leaned forward and spoke directly into Averly’s face. “If you answer one more question, you can go find yourself another lawyer!”
Averly shot her an angry look, but he obediently clamped his jaws together.
“Fine,” I said. “Jack, you plead guilty to accessory after the fact and I’ll agree to time served. That means you’re out of here as soon as you enter the plea.”
“A hell of an offer,” Bailey added.
Averly gave me a little smile. “Don’t you kind of have to reduce my charges to accessory now? I mean, how could I be a killer if I’m getting a call in my car?”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not an accomplice. The law doesn’t require you to be present to qualify as an aider and abettor-which means you’re held equally as liable as the killer. So, no, I don’t ‘kind of have to’ reduce the charges. And you can always reject this deal and take your chances with a jury.”
I stared him down, thinking, “Don’t play poker with me, pal.” I might not be thrilled with my case against him for murder, but he might not be thrilled with the result if he trusted his fate to twelve strangers. And unlike Averly, if I lost, I wouldn’t be facing a lifetime in the slammer.
“How long do I have to think about this?”
I looked at my watch. “Two minutes. I can make this case without your testimony, Jack. Take it or leave it, but if I walk out of here without an answer, the deal’s off the table.”
He nodded and stared at a point above my head. When he looked back at me, he had a superior little smile.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not taking your deal.”
53
Terry stayed behind to talk to Averly. We headed out to Bailey’s car.
“You know, I always had a lot of respect for Terry,” Bailey said. “So I don’t want to believe she’d encourage her client to give up a sweetheart deal just to avoid representing a snitch-or worse, to cozy up to Mr. Big. But I just can’t believe a guy who’s never done prison time and isn’t a gangbanger would turn down a ‘no time’ deal like this.”
“And I doubt there’s a Hollywood Production Assistant prison gang to offer protection for their homies.”
Bailey chuckled. “No, not last I checked.”
“So prison time should be scaring the bejeezus out of this guy.” Even if Terry told him we’d never get him for anything more than accessory, that could still mean around a year in prison, even with good time, work time. That’s a long time for a virgin like Averly. On the other hand, if the incentive was right…“Averly’s young-he’s what? Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-three.”
“He strikes me as ambitious in a sleazy kind of way. The young part makes him silly enough to think he can handle a short-term stint in prison-”
“Which is really crazy for a soft little cherry like him-”
“And the ambitious part thinks this’ll move him to the front of the line when it’s time for Ian to hand out his ‘I love you’s.’”
“Then you don’t think Terry pushed him?”
“No. The bummer is, now I’m stuck going to trial against that barracuda.”
Bailey grinned. “It’ll be the best show in town.”
We reviewed what was left to be done for Averly’s preliminary hearing. Thankfully, since we had only a few days left, it wasn’t much.
Bailey pulled to the curb in front of the courthouse. “I’ll go back over Averly’s and Powers’s phone records and see what kind of activity they had before the kidnapping-”
“And I want to make sure we’ve got all of the bank records for both of them, any safe-deposit boxes-I know we didn’t find any in California, but we should check out of state. That ransom money’s got to be somewhere.”
Bailey tapped the steering wheel as she stared at the afternoon crowds. “You know, it’s possible Averly stashed the ransom money in New York.”
“Yeah, that should be an easy search. Somewhere in New York.” Bailey shook her head, and I turned my thoughts to a more immediate issue. “I was planning to add accessory charges to Averly’s counts and take him to prelim on everything. But now I’m starting to think we should dismiss the murder counts.”
“And just go after him as an accessory? Why? Why not wait until after the prelim?”
“Given the evidence we have now, there’s a real possibility the prelim judge will dump our murder charges anyway and only hold him on the accessory counts. If that happens, it’ll look like we were overreaching-”
Bailey nodded slowly. “True. And even if we got to keep the murder counts, I’m not all that excited about our chances with a jury-”
“No.” I didn’t believe we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Averly knowingly aided and abetted the murders. If I didn’t believe it, then I couldn’t ethically put those counts into a jury’s hands. “And it might take some wind out of Terry’s sails. Now that she has the phone records, she’ll want to rent a Goodyear blimp to holler about how Averly’s been falsely accused. If we beat her to the punch and dismiss the murder counts, it might take out some of the sting.”
“What do you want to bet she’s calling the clerk to set a bail review hearing even as we speak?”
I looked at my phone, half expecting it to ring with that news right now. “No bet.”
Averly, like Ian, was being held without bail because double homicide is a capital crime that prohibits bail as long as the proof is evident or the presumption of guilt great. But with the new evidence that showed Averly probably wasn’t personally involved in either murder, Terry would have a good shot at convincing a judge that he was at best an accessory, not an accomplice to murder, and therefore entitled to bail.
“So we may as well get out in front of it and drop the murder charges before she can make us look any worse.”
“That’s the way I see it,” I said. “I’ll call the clerk and get us set for a re-arraignment.” But Terry would probably still insist on keeping our preliminary hearing date, so the new charges wouldn’t buy us any more time. “Did we get any of that surveillance footage from LAX?”
We’d asked for footage of the day of the kidnapping for all gates with flights to JFK or LaGuardia airports to see if we could spot Averly.
“It wasn’t in as of this morning. But we don’t need it for prelim, do we?”
“No. I just want to make sure we keep after them so we have it in time to show the jury. Terry’s not going to waive any time in this case, so we’ll be in trial within sixty days after the preliminary hearing.”
Just saying the words made my stomach knot. There were still a few loose ends that needed tidying, but we were pretty much as ready as we were going to be. What plagued me were the unanswered questions. Not only how everyone ended up on Boney Mountain, but also how Ian and Averly found out about the kidnapping to begin with. As to the latter question, I probably already had my answer. Now that I knew how close Russell and Ian were, I felt sure that Russell told Ian. The problem was, with Russell my staunch enemy, I had no way to prove it. Even if there were phone calls between them at the relevant time, there was no way to prove what Russell had told him.
The grim look on Bailey’s face told me she was well aware of what we were up against.
“Well, one step at a time,” I said. “First, let’s get through this preliminary hearing on Averly.”
I headed up to the office and printed out the new complaint, charging Averly with two counts of being an accessory after the fact. Judge Daglian’s clerk, Manny Washburn, called to tell me that we could do the re-arraignment at nine a.m. sharp tomorrow. “But don’t be late,” he warned. “He’s squeezing you in before his regular calendar.”