Fatal Convictions

91

On Saturday, Nara showed up at the office just before noon to work on her trial testimony. Before leaving Catch 31 the night before, Alex and Nara had agreed to start at ten, but that was before she had downed three vodka and tonics. She looked, Alex had to admit, like she hadn’t slept at all.

“I can’t go back to my parents’ place tonight,” she told Alex during a break in their preparation. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive my mother, but right now, I can’t handle being around her.”

They talked about Nara’s feelings for a few minutes until Nara finally got up the nerve to ask the question she had apparently intended to ask all along. “Could I stay at your place tonight, Alex?”

He hadn’t really expected that question. His heart said absolutely. He cared deeply about Nara. She was hurting. He could help.

But his head told him that this could be one of the dumbest moves he had ever made, especially in the middle of a huge trial. “Why don’t we get you a room at the Hilton and see if Shannon can stay with your mom tonight?” Alex asked.

Nara’s face reflected her disappointment. The dark eyes were downcast, but she immediately tried to recover, forcing a thin smile. “You’re right. I’m sorry I asked. I just need a little space.”***

Alex spent most of Sunday at the Virginia Beach City Jail in a small interview booth, talking to Khalid Mobassar through the sound slits at the bottom of the bulletproof glass. Khalid swore he knew nothing about the affair between Ghaniyah and Fatih Mahdi. He asked Alex how Nara was handling things, and Alex gave him the truth. The dark circles under Khalid’s eyes and the deep wrinkles on his face evidenced his grave concern.

The revelations of the last twenty-four hours seemed to have thrust Khalid into a zombielike state of mourning. His voice had no energy. Alex could hardly imagine putting him on the stand like this. The only time Khalid showed any emotion at all was when he inquired about Nara. Nevertheless, they rehearsed his testimony and practiced cross-examination for nearly six hours, until Khalid was so exhausted that his answers made little sense.

“You’ll do fine tomorrow,” Alex assured him.

Khalid gave him a lifeless look. “Even if we win the case, my family will never be the same.”

He was right about that, and Alex had no response to offer except, “I’m sorry.”

By 9 p.m., Alex, Shannon, and Ramona were still at the office preparing for the final stage of trial. Alex didn’t particularly want to go home. Misery loved company, and right now he liked being around Shannon and Ramona.

Nara had sequestered herself in the Hilton at the oceanfront, a tempting short drive from Alex’s condo, but a drive he had resisted on Saturday night and was determined to resist again tonight. Shannon had arranged for some friends of Ghaniyah to stay with her.

The temperature was hovering in the low forties with a threat of rain, but apparently Kayden Dendy didn’t bother checking weather reports. It was nearly nine thirty when the team heard his Harley pull up and stop in the parking lot outside their building. “That’s got to be Dendy,” Shannon said. “I’d recognize those mufflers anywhere.”

She went to the window and confirmed her suspicions. “Wonder what he’s doing here on a Sunday night.”

Less than a minute later, they had their answer. Shannon looked at Alex when she heard the loud knock on the reception area door. “Just what I don’t need right now,” she said.

“I’ll handle it,” Alex said.

When Alex opened the door, Kayden was there in all of his leather-clad glory, holding his gloves in his right hand. “You got a minute?” he asked.

“Actually, we’re kind of busy,” Alex said.

But Kayden took a few steps into the reception area anyway. “This’ll only take a minute. Is Shannon here?”

He found his way to the conference room, greeted Shannon, and asked if he could meet with the lawyers in private. As Ramona was leaving, Kayden had the gall to ask her if she could get him some hot chocolate.

Ramona stopped and glared at him for a second. “No,” she said, and then turned and walked away.

“I’d fire her,” Kayden said to Alex.

Alex ignored the comment.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Kayden said. He walked over and closed the door. “It won’t take long. I know you’ve got a big day tomorrow. Which, actually, is the reason I’m here.”

He looked at Alex. “Your partner has been doing a good job on the Mobassar civil case, by the way. But I will say that Max Strobel knows how to push her buttons.”

“Look,” Alex said, “we really don’t have a lot of time.”

“That’s good, ’cause neither do I.” Kayden took off his leather coat and threw it over a chair. He started pacing next to the table. “Do you know what a pen register is?”

“No.” Alex didn’t try to hide the frustration in his voice. He didn’t need this guy pontificating and taking up valuable time the night before a busy day of trial.

“Didn’t think so,” Kayden said. “A pen register is an electronic device that records all numbers dialed from a particular telephone line. Law enforcement used the devices for decades to find out what numbers somebody was calling. They could get court orders for a pen register easier than they could to tap phone lines because with a pen register, they were only getting phone numbers called and not the actual content of the conversations.”

“And this is relevant why?” Shannon asked.

“I’m getting there,” Kayden admonished her. “Section 216 of the Patriot Act expanded the definition of a pen register to include devices or programs that provide the same kind of function with regard to Internet communications. In other words, under the Patriot Act, the government can find out all the Web sites visited by a specific computer or by a router at somebody’s home if they meet the same criteria they would need for a pen register on a phone line. Here’s where it gets interesting.”

It better get interesting fast, Alex thought.

Kayden stopped pacing and leaned forward on the table. “When you guys subpoenaed the information that the federal government had on Mr. Mobassar under the Patriot Act, you asked for copies of all phone calls, text messages, and e-mails the government had monitored. But your subpoena didn’t ask for the pen register information. Am I right?”

Alex didn’t have the foggiest idea.

“I drafted the subpoena,” Shannon said. “I didn’t even know about pen registers, so I’m sure I didn’t include that in the request.”

“Well, in the civil case, Max Strobel did,” Kayden said. “And he turned that information over to Taj Deegan this weekend. And, well, I’ve been wrestlin’ all weekend with whether I should tell y’all what’s in there.”

This sounded to Alex like it was going to be more bad news. He wasn’t sure he could take anything else right now.

“I finally decided to stop by and tell you on one condition.” Kayden looked directly at Shannon. “You can’t say where you got this information.”

Shannon looked at Alex, and they both shrugged. After this big buildup, they had to know what he had. “Agreed,” Shannon said.

“When I tell you about this evidence, you’re gonna wanna dismiss your civil case against my client and Country-Fresh, Inc. But I didn’t think it was fair to have Mr. Mobassar spend the rest of his life in jail just because you got ambushed by this.”

Kayden turned back to Alex. “You are puttin’ your client on the stand tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t decided for sure,” Alex answered. He still didn’t trust this guy.

“You may not want to after you hear this.” Kayden reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded the paper and spread it on the table in front of him. “The commonwealth confiscated the computers at your client’s home, searched the hard drives, and gave you a copy of what they found. Am I right?”

“That’s right,” said Alex.

“But that only gives you the Internet search history and downloads for the computers that were actually found in your client’s home. The pen register information under the Patriot Act gives you the Internet searches for any computer using the wireless router there. So if your client buys another computer for the sole purpose of conducting searches that he doesn’t want the authorities to later find out about, those searches will still show up on the pen register information even if your client tosses that computer. Do you follow me?”

Alex nodded and braced himself for the bombshell. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Kayden tapped the paper in front of him. “This here’s a list of searches and Web sites visited during the two months prior to Ghaniyah Mobassar’s accident. I didn’t copy all of them, but I did put down all the searches and sites relating to-” he looked up at Alex and Shannon and said the next words slowly-“closed… head… injuries.”

Alex was so stunned he couldn’t speak. The color drained from Shannon’s face. “You mean…?” she managed.

“That’s right.” Kayden slid the paper across the table to Shannon. “Mr. and Mrs. Mobassar were researching closed head injuries in the two months before she had her accident. They must have bought a new computer specifically for that purpose and disposed of it afterward, because those searches don’t show up on the hard drives of the computers seized by the commonwealth. Unfortunately for the Mobassars, they didn’t know that every Internet site they visited and every search they conducted was being recorded on a pen register pursuant to the Patriot Act.”

Alex thought about the evidence in the civil case. There was no brain damage shown on the MRIs or the CT scans. Ghaniyah had definitely run the car head-on into a tree, but the major damage had been to the passenger side. She did have a nasty bump on her head and some swelling around her eyes. But was it possible she did that to herself? Could she be faking the head injuries? Had Khalid and Ghaniyah been scamming everybody?

“Taj Deegan now has this information,” Kayden said to Alex. “She didn’t have to give it to you because it’s not exculpatory. But if you put your client on the stand tomorrow, she’ll shred him with it.”

Shannon had been studying the list. She typed some of the sites into her computer and pulled them up. From the look on her face, it must have been bad.

“Why did you bring this to us?” Alex asked.

“Because the evidence won’t go away just because you now have it. I can still use it in the civil case if you decide to keep going forward. But I’ve been following Mr. Mobassar’s case the last couple of days, and even though your client might be a liar and even though he tried to rip off the insurance company, I don’t think that makes him a killer.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” Alex said.

His own view of Khalid had just taken a serious hit. Alex thought about how much he had put on the line for this client. He had resigned from his church. He had staked his reputation on this case. In Alex’s mind, he had been Atticus Finch defending an innocent man whom the rest of the world wanted to lynch. And he had been winning the admiration of his client’s beautiful daughter in the process.

But in a few short minutes, Kayden Dendy had blown that storybook fantasy into tiny little pieces. Instead, it now seemed that Khalid Mobassar was a con artist willing to risk serious injury to his wife in order to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kayden was right; that didn’t make him a murderer. But it sure made Alex feel dirty representing the man.

Alex looked at Shannon, who simply shook her head.

“Whose idea was it to take this case?” Alex asked.