Free The Defense: A Novel by Steve Cavanagh

wasn’t. “What can you do? The other firms had months to challenge this evidence. What can you do in one hour?” said Arturas.
    “Well, I have to do something. If we let this evidence go unchallenged, Miriam Sullivan will have your bail canceled, and you’ll be in handcuffs before Goldstein gets his ass out of the witness box. That means you don’t get the luxury of being able to jump on a plane tomorrow if this all goes to shit.”
    I could hear Arturas grinding his teeth. His lips curled up in a grimace as he began shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’d been planning this caper for a long time, and he didn’t like intangibles. But that was trial law. Stepping into a courtroom is just like going to Vegas and rolling the dice—anything can happen. Volchek continued to listen. It was his liberty at stake.
    “You don’t need me to tell you what the outcome will be if an accused goes into custody and something happens to a state’s witness. There is no way you will get out on bail until a full investigation has been done and you’ve been cleared. How long is that going to take? Two, maybe three years? Anything can happen on the inside. The state might not be able to link the bomb directly to you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t put you in a cell with a four-hundred-pound cannibal. And that’s if you can avoid the cartels’ soldiers. Yeah, your buddies in the courtroom will get to you on the inside real easy. I can take the fall if it means Amy is safe. I can live with that. Better that than the alternative. But if you go to prison—you lose.”
    Volchek exchanged glances with Arturas. He smoothed his pants and tried to swallow down a knowing grin. Despite what I’d just said to Volchek, I knew they weren’t going to leave me or Amy alive at the end of this. They didn’t want me telling the FBI about my daughter being kidnapped and my being forced to plant a bomb in the courtroom. But I needed to let Volchek and Arturas think that I had bought their bullshit story.
    “I still want to know what you can do that the other lawyers couldn’t,” said Arturas. A fair question, and I gave him a simple answer. “The other firms were trying to counter the evidence. That’s the wrong approach. It’s like football; say you’re a small, broke football team and you come up against a rich team with a great quarterback. You can’t win in a straight contest. Me, I don’t hesitate. If there’s some gifted, lightning-quick man mountain that I can’t compete with, it’s real simple—I take him out of the game. I cripple him. I tackle him so hard and so fast he isn’t going to wake up until the season’s over. It’s an old saying—sometimes you have to play the man instead of the ball. Litigation is the same; if I can’t destroy the evidence, I have to destroy the witness giving the evidence. If the jury don’t think Goldstein’s credible, it really doesn’t matter what he says. I need the Internet to dig on him. Look, it’s not like we’ve got a choice. Either help me, or I’ll hold your coat while the court security officer puts you in handcuffs. It’s that simple.”
    Volchek and Arturas nodded in agreement.
    “What will you find in an hour?” said Arturas.
    “I won’t know it until I see it.” I really didn’t know. But I had an idea where to look. I could see a smile attempting to force its way through Volchek’s lips. He looked intrigued.
    “Okay,” said Arturas, taking out his iPhone. “You tell me what to look for.”
    “He’s from the University of Wisconsin. Start with his university bio and then a list of his work. Let me see his published articles for 2000, 2004, and 2008.”
    “Why?” asked Arturas.
    “If you’re cross-examining any academic witness, you have to look at their publications for those years. Those years were the ARAE: the American Research Assessment Exercise. The more articles published by academic staff in the ARAE, the more funding comes to their