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“You already made that turn. Yesterday, in open court, when you linked Shaky’s bodyguard to my client and completely distanced him from yours.”
“Those are helpful facts for Imani. You can’t expect me to just ignore them.”
“I get that. I was angry at you in the courtroom, but I really do understand. But today’s attack on Shaky over the sale of EML Records and music piracy is different. Somebody put that idea in his head.”
“And bysomebody, you mean me?” asked Jack.
“Something is going on behind the scenes,” said Ellis. “It’s clear enough where Owens is going with this new theory, and one thing is crystal clear. He’s going after Shaky, nother.”
The use of a pronoun in such cramped quarters only emphasized how angry Ellis was—too angry even to say her name.
“Listen to me!” said Imani, and then she looked straight at her ex-husband. “If I wanted to paint a target on your back, Jack would have told the prosecutor that Tyler McCormick was stalking me.”
Her words left the tiny room silent. It was as if they had all suddenly realized that they’d lost sight of the forest for the trees.
“Imani makes a good point,” said Jack. “It was a relief to me when Owens laid out the rough sex theory in his opening statement. Getting rid of a stalker is a much stronger motive to commit murder and make it look like something it wasn’t by disposing of the body in such a bizarre way.”
“Except that we didn’t kill him because he was stalking Imani,” said Shaky.
Jack had heard the denials from his client, but this one left him a little confused. Shaky’s lawyer seemed to appreciate the need for clarification.
“I think what Shaky meant is that he and Imani didn’t kill Tyler McCormick. Period. For any reason. He wasn’t suggesting that they killed him for some other reason.”
“I get it,” said Jack.
“Good,” said Ellis. “It’s an important point.”
Imani checked her watch. “We have five minutes to get back in the courtroom. What have we accomplished? Nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say nothing,” said Shaky. “We know the prosecutor has dumped the lovers’ triangle theory. Instead, he’s bringing in music piracy.”
“He hasn’t dropped anything,” said Jack. “There’s no reason two motives can’t be in play at the same time.”
“I don’t see how the two relate here,” said Shaky.
Jack’s response was to the group, but he directed it mostly to Shaky. “You have to remember there are two separate crimes and two different questions. First question: Why did Mr. McCormick end up dead? Owens’s answer is that the victim was having sex with your wife in ways that you probably never did. That’s enough to make any man angry. If that man is already at the end of his rope, about to lose a hundred million dollars in the sale of EML Records, maybe he snapped. He killed the guy and put his body on a post so the fish can eat it.”
“Do you think that’s what today’s testimony is about?” asked Imani. “Shaky snapped?”
“It could be. But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” asked Shaky.
“The prosecutor’s last question is key. He isn’t painting a picture of a desperate husband who snapped. That last question implied that Shaky had a very clearheaded motive to dosomethingto stop piracy.”
Shaky scoffed. “How the hell would killing Tyler McCormick stop piracy?”
“Maybe that’s not the right question,” said Jack. “A better question might be how would putting a dead body on a piling in the bay stop piracy.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jack,” Imani said.
“The second crime in the indictment is mutilation of a corpse. That raises a separate question: Why did the body end up chained to a concrete piling? The narrative so far is that you staged the body to make it look like the work of a bizarre serial killer or a cult. To make the crime look like something it wasn’t. But maybe the point was to make the victim look exactly likewhohe was.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Imani.
“Is it possible that Tyler McCormick was operating a piracy website?” asked Jack.
“Oh, yeah,” said Shaky, sarcastic. “He’s another Vladimir Kava. In fact, after Imani and I strangled him, we thought about just hanging him off the side of his superyacht, but we went with the concrete piling.”
