The article’s author explains a convoluted business deal David had been working on before he began his “temporary leave of absence” to “address his present personal difficulties.” The deal involved Kimozuma Unryu, a Japanese shipping company, along with Yokahama Tokai, a Japanese manufacturer of sophisticated navigation equipment, and the Chinese steel giant Angong Steel. The way David had negotiated it, HWI would purchase navigation equipment from Yokahama Tokai and steel from Angong Steel and use both in the building of a fleet of container ships that HWI would assemble in Philadelphia, in partnership with the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard. Yokahama would buy the ships. It was to have been a two-decade, multi-billion-dollar deal that, in David’s words, “would have added three thousand jobs in Philadelphia, forever.” Continuing, the article outlines two other similarly complicated deals that would have added thousands more jobs to the local community.
“The linchpin of all of these deals,” the article concludes, “was David Hanson himself. Although technically employed in HWI’s legal department as general counsel, Mr. Hanson was the executive within the company who had forged the personal relationships on which all the Asian deals were built. According to sources at HWI, until Mr. Hanson returns, these deals will remain on hold. ‘Which is why,’ Mr. Hanson says, ‘I have pushed so hard for a quick trial date on my own matter, to ensure these deals are consummated and the jobs are brought to Philadelphia.’”
I drop the paper back onto the pile. How many more stories have David and Marcie Hanson planted to appear between now and the time of David’s trial? Will their plotting be limited to stories in the news, or will it involve more grandiose gestures as we get closer to the courthouse steps?
Of course, the Hansons’ plans are not the only thing I have to contend with. Now Devlin Walker is trying to get me booted from the case. And nothing could be worse for anyone on our side than that.
25
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26
At 1:00 p.m. sharp, Angie buzzes me in my office to tell me that David and Marcie Hanson are here to discuss Devlin’s attempt to cut me out of the case. I ask Angie to bring them back. The first thing David says to me when Angie leads them into my office is, “Did you see the article?” I wait for him and Marcie to sit before I respond.
“Yes,” I answer coolly. “And it was a bad idea. If it ever comes out that you were the one behind the story, that you planted it to prejudice the jury pool, the press itself will hang you.”
“Nothing’s going to come out,” Marcie says. “There’s no way to trace the story to David, or to me.”
“There’s always a way,” I say. “But we really don’t have time to be arguing this. Right now we have to get ready for this hearing.”
“Hey, just put me on the stand,” David says, “and I’ll deny I was the one who called you. With your testimony that should be enough, shouldn’t it?”
“But I can’t put you on the stand, David, because that would subject you to cross-examination. And the first thing Devlin Walker will ask is where you were at the time of the murders. You’d have to disclose your alibi, tell the court where you really were.”
David leans into my desk. “I don’t need an alibi to create reasonable doubt. I’ve reviewed the so-called evidence over and over in my mind. They don’t have enough to convict. There’s no evidence of motive. None whatsoever. Because I had no motive to kill Jennifer,” he adds quickly. “And with that video safely tucked away, they have no evidence that I was at the house anywhere near the time she was killed.”
“And your attempt to clean up the murder scene?” I ask. “And running away when the cops showed up?”
“I did all that out of panic,” he says. “I was worried that my affair with Jennifer would be revealed and that the scandal would derail HWI’s deals with Japan and China.”
“The deals that would have created so many jobs here,” Marcie adds, smiling. “At least, that’s what I read in the paper.”
I sigh. There’s no getting through to these two. All the initial terror David had displayed when he was first arraigned has vanished. He is now fully—and foolishly—confident that he will be acquitted at trial.
By two o’clock, we’re all in Courtroom 1007 on the tenth floor of the Criminal Justice Center. David sits next to me at the counsel table, Marcie right behind us. At the prosecution table, Devlin is accompanied by ADA Christina Wesley, a short, thick woman whose face remains locked in a perpetual frown. The courtroom is nothing like the vast, grand courtrooms in the movies. It is a small space: spectators’ benches, counsel tables, jury box, court reporter’s box, deputies’ and law clerks’ desks crammed into a sixty-by-forty-foot room. It’s the courthouse equivalent of an office cubicle. A close, cramped space when populated only by parties and lawyers, it’s positively claustrophobic when packed with spectators. Like today.
The Honorable William Henry sits on the bench, his robe hanging loosely over his shoulders. He’s not happy about the prosecution’s motion, and he’s clearly livid about the circus of reporters in his courtroom.
“Mr. Walker,” Henry starts in on Devlin, “are you really serious about this? You really think defense counsel helped Mr. Hanson cover up the crime?”
“If there’s another explanation,” Walker responds, “the people are ready to hear it.”
This is my cue to shoot to my feet.
“The state has already heard it,” I exclaim. “Back at the end of August, Detectives Tredesco and Cook came to my office asking about the calls. I told them then, and I’m telling the court now, that those calls were placed to me by Jennifer Yamura herself. And I have in the courtroom with me Mrs. Angela Toscano, my secretary, who took the first call, and who can testify that it was Jennifer Yamura and not Mr. Hanson on the other end.” At the mention of her name, Angie stands. “I also have present in the courtroom my brother and the firm’s investigator, Mr. Thomas McFarland, who was present when I took the first call and to whom I described the call once it was over.” Tommy is standing now, too. My heart has been breaking for him since his grave-site confession. As soon as the Hanson case is over, I’m going to sit down with him and throw open the floodgates of my guilt and shame at having abandoned him.
Judge Henry looks from Tommy to Angie to Devlin Walker. “If these two witnesses take the stand and testify, as defense counsel has represented they will, will that be enough for you?”
Devlin hesitates, so the judge waves him off and tells me to call my witnesses and be done with this. So I call Angie to the stand and then Tommy. Devlin’s questioning of each is cursory. With Angie, he simply makes a point of confirming what I’ve already told the judge, that Angie took only the first call. When Tommy takes the stand, he tells the court he was in my office for the first call, and that afterward, I told him it had been Jennifer Yamura on the line. There had been no mention of David Hanson, and I didn’t seem the least bit upset after I’d hung up. Devlin limits his cross-examination to two questions, the first one establishing that Tommy is indeed my own brother, the second one establishing that Tommy is a convicted felon. Judge Henry rolls his eyes at the first question and looks visibly annoyed with Devlin over the second.