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This time, Jack wasn’t a lawyer for an inmate. Paxton had refused to talk to the defense, which was his right. Jack’s only option was tosubpoena him to appear for deposition and force him to answer questions under oath.
The deposition was in a windowless conference room in the attorney visitation center. At 1:00 p.m., the secure doors unlocked, and two corrections officers brought the prisoner inside. Jack and the prosecutor were opposite each other on the long sides of a rectangular table in the center of the room. The guards unshackled the witness, ankles and wrists, and seated him at the short end of the table to Jack’s right. The court reporter sat close enough to the witness to hear his testimony, but a little farther away than she might otherwise have positioned herself for the deposition of a less dangerous man.
Paxton was six-feet-four and two hundred and fifty pounds of badass. His pecs and biceps bulged beneath his prison jumpsuit. Jack surmised that he spent his “free time” evenly divided between lifting weights and intimidating other inmates.
The witness was sworn, and Jack asked the questions.
“Mr. Paxton, what crime are you currently serving time for?”
“Armed robbery.”
“What was your sentence?”
“Twenty years.”
“How much time have you served so far?”
“Five years, eight months, and twelve days. But who’s counting?”
“I’m guessing you are,” said Jack. “Which leads to my next question: How much time did the state attorney promise to shave off your sentence in exchange for your testimony?”
“Objection,” said the prosecutor, grumbling. “Let me just state clearly on the record that there have been no promises made to Mr. Paxton for his cooperation in this matter. Any reduction in his sentence is completely in the hands of the parole board.”
Objections at depositions were literally “for the record,” as there was no judge or magistrate to make a ruling. Jack moved on.
“Mr. Paxton, when is your next hearing before the parole board?”
“Four months and two days. But again, who’s counting?”
“Sounds like the timing of your cooperation in this case works out quite nicely, doesn’t it.”
“Objection,” said the prosecutor.
“Timing is everything, they say.”
Jack left it at that, then turned to the substance of the witness’s testimony. “Mr. Paxton, I read the transcript of your testimony to the grand jury. I understand that you once worked as a bodyguard for Mr. Shaky Nichols.”
“Right. For two years.”
“Was Mr. Nichols married to Imani Nichols during that time?”
“Yup.”
“I can understand why a celebrity like Imani needed a bodyguard. But why did Mr. Nichols have a bodyguard?”
He chuckled. “Shaky fancies himself a pretty important guy. It was like a competition between those two. If Imani had a bodyguard, Shaky needed one, too.”
“While you were Mr. Nichols’s bodyguard, did you have any contact with the victim in this case, Tyler McCormick?”
“Not while he was alive.”
The answer was not unexpected, but Jack still found it unsettling. “When did you first hear the name Tyler McCormick?”
“Not sure. Best I can remember, Shaky just called him ‘the body.’”
“And what did you understand ‘the body’ to mean?”
“A dead guy.”
