Chapter I I The news broke in June, while I was trying the Karinsky case in D.C. Superior Court. It arrived like a summer hailstorm, just after Judge Sam Edgerton announced the jury''s verdict. Abel Karinsky, a distant cousin of one of my partners, had gotten the best (in truth, the only) criminal lawyer at Lockyear & Harbison. He''d gotten me. Abel was not, to be sure, my usual sort of client. Yes, "Mr.
Green" hadn''t shown up, but I was used to doing my fair share of unpaid cases, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Nor was Abel unusual just because he was nasty, brutish, and short. Very few of my clients were likely to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. No, Abel Karinsky, alleged check forger, was unusual because he might well have been innocent. Not suppress-the-evidence innocent; not throw-out-the-confession innocent; not guilty-but-entrapped innocent. Abel seemed to be actually-didn''t-do-the-crime innocent. An albino moose. A triple-yolk egg.
I don''t see many of those. Abel had supposedly stolen three pension checks from a retired Metro engineer, then forged the victim''s signature, Arthur F. Hodges, before cashing the checks at a downtown pawnshop. The surveillance footage was grainy, but I could see why the cops had focused on my client. Abel had done two bids for previous forgeries. He''d been seen cruising this particular pawnshop. He had no visible means of lawful support. And Abel''s handwriting seemed a dead-on match for the endorsements on the back of the checks.
The FBI''s handwriting protocol was simple enough. The Feds started with the three stolen checks, then directed Abel to make seventy-five exemplars--to write the name Arthur F. Hodges on seventy-five little slips of paper. When a suspect has to write the same thing seventy-five times, he usually betrays some handwriting idiosyncrasies that an expert can compare to the signatures on the checks. In this case, it was the distinctive loops in the capital letters and the upward thrust in the script that supposedly fingered my client as the forger. Even so, by the time the prosecutor, a blond fellow from Harvard, called the pawnshop manager as his final witness, I figured we were about even. I''d done a decent enough cross on the FBI handwriting expert, pointing out two defendants he''d helped convict who were later exonerated. If the government''s chief witness had screwed up twice before, maybe the jury would take his testimony with a grain of salt.
The prosecutor must have been thinking along the same lines. So after establishing that the pawnshop manager had seen Abel in the vicinity a day before the incident, Harvard Man tried to turn the witness into a second handwriting expert. Someone to corroborate the Fed, whose credibility I''d tarnished on cross. "Have you seen other writings by Mr. Karinsky?" the prosecutor asked. "Yes," said the manager, "I saw his phony ID when he cashed the checks." "Do you think you''d recognize his handwriting if you saw it again?" "Oh, sure. I''d know it anywhere.
" "I show you these three pension checks, Mr. Cooperstein. You see the signature on the back, Arthur F. Hodges? Whose handwriting do you recognize that to be?" "The defendant''s," Cooperstein confidently declared. Abel slumped in his seat, defeated. "Buck up," I whispered. "It''s our turn." I started my cross by planting a few seeds--a few preliminary questions to establish that Harry Cooperstein, though doubtless a competent pawnshop manager, knew nothing about handwriting analysis.
Then came the punch line. Picking up the seventy-five exemplars, I approached the witness. "Do you recognize this stack of papers?" I began. Before venturing further, I needed to know whether the prosecutor had acquainted the pawnshop operator with the actual evidence. He hadn''t. Cooperstein had no idea what the exemplars were. "Well, Mr. Cooperstein, take a look at the signatures on these seventy-five slips of paper.
Do you see that each one is signed Arthur F. Hodges?" "Yes," Cooperstein acknowledged. "Well, here''s a pencil, Mr. Cooperstein. On these seventy-five slips of paper, I want you to put a check mark next to each Arthur F. Hodges signature that you believe Mr. Karinsky made. If you think Mr.
Karinsky is not the person who signed Mr. Hodges''s name on a particular page, just leave that page blank and go on to the next one. Fair enough?" Cooperstein got to work. After a minute or two, he''d put check marks on only three or four of the first ten pages. By then, some of the jurors, in on the joke, were eyeing me with amusement. By page thirty or so, with just half of Cooperstein''s pages bearing check marks, the jurors were openly snickering. Even His Honor, usually no fan of criminal defendants, had to suppress a smile. Cooperstein knew he''d stepped in it, but he couldn''t tell which way to pivot.
Should he: check off every signature? check off none of them? or keep splitting the difference as he''d been doing? Finally, Cooperstein made his choice: B. "This is a trick," he announced. "These signatures were crafted to look like they were made by Mr. Karinsky, but they actually weren''t. They are elegant forgeries by a master deceiver." "So there shouldn''t be a check mark on any of them--is that your testimony, Mr. Cooperstein?" "Yes," said the witness, with some well-deserved hesitation. "Okay, then.
Please erase the check marks you''ve made so far, since your testimony is that none of the signatures were made by my client." Cooperstein complied. At this point, Harvard Man was turtling for safety beneath the prosecution table. "Shall I let you in on the joke, Mr. Cooperstein?" I asked. "These seventy-five slips of paper are what the FBI calls handwriting exemplars. That means all the signatures were made by Mr. Karinsky.
" "Oh," said the witness. Glumly. "Does that cause you to doubt your prowess as a handwriting expert?" "Yes, it does," Cooperstein admitted. "Would you like to withdraw the testimony you gave the prosecutor on direct?" "I would," said Cooperstein. The jury stayed through free lunch on the government and acquitted Abel at about half past two. Which is when the courtroom imploded. The crime-beat reporters bolted from the pews, barking into their iPhones, accompanied by shouting from folks in the cheap seats. Couldn''t be on our account, I thought--acquittals are rare, sure, but Abel''s case was small potatoes.
While Judge Edgerton gaveled for quiet, I grabbed one of the press stragglers, who fed me that evening''s headline: Five months after leaving office, John Sherman Cutler, former president of the United States, had just been charged with the murder of Amanda Harper, a junior lawyer in his White House Counsel''s Office. Jesus, they charged the president. I''d been wondering about Amanda''s killer since last February, when the D.C. police had recovered her body in Rock Creek Park. According to the cops, Amanda, thirty-two years old, had been strangled and bore what seemed to be rope burns on her wrists and ankles. Not far from the victim, police recovered a small, locked briefcase with a silver, dull-edged knife wedged into its lining. Couldn''t be the president, was my first thought when the news flashed through the courtroom.
No fucking way it''s him. I''d cycled through a passel of theories since the news first broke of Amanda''s death. This one had never crossed my mind. Impossible, I thought again. Cannot be the president. As I was leaving the courtroom, I noticed, sitting conspicuously in the last row, a vaguely familiar-looking man in his early thirties. He was decades too young and much too smartly dressed to be one of the courtroom buffs who regularly attended my Superior Court trials. I was about to exit through the double doors when he grabbed my elbow.
"Rob Jacobson?" he asked. "Can I have a quick word?" We stepped into the corridor and huddled a few feet from the courtroom. "Jack needs to talk to you," he said.