A vigorous head nod.
“But no one else. None of his own gang.”
“Not necessarily,” Jerome replied carefully.
I gave him an incredulous look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It was chaotic out there. Dark. We didn’t know the terrain as well as I would have liked. Someone could have snuck into the trailer where we were holding him and released him.”
I stepped back, looked at the grand jurors with a now-I’ve-heard-it-all expression on my face. “You serious?”
“It’s far-fetched,” he admitted, “but that was a strange and crazy night. Many things happened, that were so different from what usually happens, that I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
“But following that line, wouldn’t it be much more logical to assume that a DEA agent unlocked those handcuffs rather than one of Juarez’s gang members sneaking past three or four dozen agents, getting into a guarded trailer, releasing Juarez, then getting away? Listen to yourself, man,” I said derisively, “you sound ridiculous.”
He reddened again—humiliation was unbearable to him. But he couldn’t do anything to stop me, not in here.
“I said it was far-fetched, okay?”
I threw down a trump card. “So you’re admitting it was one of your agents who did it.”
“Not at all.”
“Then how did he get loose?”
He slumped in his chair. “The only thing I can think is, the cuffs weren’t secure after all.”
“That’s…incredible,” I finally said. This was a new one on me.
“I know.”
“Deliberately?”
“I think…accidentally.”
“He was never secured properly?”
“That’s the only conclusion I can come to.”
“That’s a damaging conclusion.”
“I know it is.” He turned to the jurors. “We’re human. We make mistakes.”
“That’s a lalapalooza.”
He had no comeback for that.
I waited a moment to let that sink in—they hadn’t only disobeyed orders. They were the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. Unless Juarez had deliberately been released, which is what happened; these guys don’t make mistakes like that.
“Let’s change subjects. You’re a good shot, aren’t you, Agent Jerome?”
“Pretty good,” he said modestly.
I looked at one of my notes. “You have excellent marks on the range.”
“Like I said, I do okay.”
“You like to shoot?”
“It’s part of my job.”
“You go out to the range, what, once a month?”
“About that much.”
“These are scheduled? It’s part of being proficient?”
He nodded. “It’s a requirement of the job.”
“And when you go out to the range and fire your weapon…do you use your own weapon when you go to the range?” I interrupted my own train of thought.
“Yes. You want to make sure your weapons are in good working order.”
“Right. Now when you go to the range, who supplies the ammunition? Do you bring your own?”
“No. It’s given to us.”
“The agency does that.”
“Yes.”
“So you don’t buy your ammunition.”
“No.”
“What kind of ammunition do you fire at the range, Agent? Whatever they have on hand?”
“We fire the ammunition we would use in the field, if it were to ever come to that. You want the range work to approximate what could happen in the real world as closely as possible.”
“And those would be hollow-point bullets?”
“Yes. We always use hollow points.”
“In the field and on the range.”
“Yes.”
I walked over to my table, picked up the testimony of Harrison, the gun shop owner, and the sales receipt he’d given me. Crossing back to Jerome, I handed the receipt to him. “What is this?”
He read it over. “A receipt for bullets for a nine-millimeter automatic pistol.”
“Is that the caliber of bullet you use in your personal weapon?”
“Yes. That’s standard in the department.”
“What kind of bullets are these?”
He looked at the receipt again. “These would be full-metal jackets.”
“That’s a different kind of bullet from what you use?”
“Yes.”
I took the receipt from him. “You purchased these bullets for your weapon.” I handed the receipt back to him, pointing out his name over the line “purchaser.”
He stared at it, realizing the implications. “Yes. I bought them.”
“A few days before your botched raid on the compound.”
Very slowly: “The raid was successful. We nailed our quarry. The aftermath was the problem. But the raid itself was successful.”
“You consider losing three men a successful raid?” I asked, my voice rising.
“We’re in a war against drugs,” he answered, equally heated. “There are casualties in a war. That’s regrettable. No one is more unhappy than I am that those men died. I sent them to their deaths, I take responsibility for that, and it’ll be with me until the end of my life. But our raid was successful. We captured one of the most despicable criminals this country has produced.”
“You could’ve captured him without the loss of lives, Mr. Jerome. If you hadn’t gone cowboying out there on your lonesome. Disregarding orders is normal for you. With tragic results, as we saw in this case.”
“Fuck you.” He said it under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, which he wanted.
I wheeled on him. “What did you say?”
He glared at me. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought. You have nothing to say.”
We were into our own private war now. I regained the receipt and walked away from him, so that I was standing near the grand jury box. Them and me, together, against him, alone. “Why would you buy bullets if they’re given to you free of charge, Agent Jerome? A type of bullet that’s different from what you use.”
“I—”
“And why would you go a hundred and fifty miles away to buy them?” I pressed on, not letting him finish. “You were in Blue River. This gun shop is at the opposite end of the county.”
“I wanted to get away.”
“You wanted what?”
“This raid was about to happen. Finally. I’d spent ten years of my life chasing after Juarez. This was going to be the most important bust of my entire life. I needed to get away and clear my head. To mentally and emotionally prepare myself.”
“And buy bullets.” I didn’t try to hide my derisiveness.
“I had pent-up energy. Shooting my weapon is a way of releasing that.”
“So why didn’t you buy the kind you would use if you used your weapon?”
“When I’m shooting on my own, I prefer full-metal jackets.”
“And why is that, pray tell?”
He disregarded my sarcasm, although I knew it was enflaming him. “They’re cleaner. They give you a better feel of how accurate you are. Hollow points obliterate everything. I wanted to see if my aim was as true as it could be.”
I looked at the jurors to see if they were buying this. They looked dubious.
“You’re aware, I know, that a full-metal jacket killed Juarez, not a hollow-point bullet.”
Jerome stared hard at me. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
I turned my back on him for a good, long beat, rummaging through papers on my table, letting him hang, letting the jurors look at him. Then I turned back.
“You have brothers and sisters, don’t you, Agent Jerome?”
He gave me a strange look. Haunted, almost; certainly surprised.
“Yes.”
“One of your sisters is named Diane Jerome? Diane Jerome Richards?”
I’d blindsided him. “Yes,” he answered, his voice barely audible.
“Would you repeat your answer so everyone can hear you. You have a sister named Diane Jerome Richards, that is correct?”
“Yes.” His voice was firmer—he was trying to recover. “Diane Richards is my sister.”
“She attended Stanford University for one year. Her freshman year. Is that also correct?”
He stared straight ahead. Not looking at the jurors, not looking at me. “Yes.”
“And while she was there, she had a romantic relationship with another freshman student, is that right? A male student?”
“I…guess she did.”
“You know she did. Don’t you?”
Very slowly he answered, “Yes.”
I asked my next question while facing the grand jurors. “What was the name of the boy your sister fell in love with, Mr. Jerome?”
A deep breath, from the bottom of his gut. “Reynaldo Juarez.”
His breath was reverberated by the dozen and a half from behind me.
“Is that the same Reynaldo Juarez who was killed after the raid that you led on the compound here in Muir County?”
“Yes.”
“The same Reynaldo Juarez you had relentlessly pursued for over a decade.”
“Yes.”
“When you found out that your sister was dating Reynaldo Juarez, back there at Stanford, did you do anything about that?”
“How do you mean?” he asked cagily, trying to figure a way out.
“Did you and some of your brothers go to Stanford, kidnap Mr. Juarez, drive him to a deserted area, and beat him within an inch of his life?”
He took his time before answering. “No.”
“You didn’t?” I asked incredulously, the tone of my voice clearly telling the jurors I knew he was lying.
“We went out there to talk to him.”
“Talk to him. What about?”
“We didn’t want him seeing our sister.”
“Because he was a drug dealer? You didn’t want your sister having a love affair with a drug dealer?”
“Yes,” he answered firmly.
I took a moment to let all this sink in; we’d been moving at breakneck speed, on a subject for which the jurors hadn’t been prepped.
“How did you know he was a dealer?” I challenged him. “You weren’t with the DEA then. You were barely into your twenties, isn’t that true?”
“I was not yet working for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
I moved closer to him. “You had no idea of any of that at the time, did you? All you knew was that your sister was in love with a Mexican boy, isn’t that the truth of it? You didn’t want a Chicano for a possible future brother-in-law, did you. That’s why you and your brothers went to Palo Alto—to stop him from ever seeing your sister. Isn’t it, Agent Jerome!”
He was holding steady—it was a struggle, but he was managing to stand up to my fusillade. So far.
“We felt they were wrong for each other. It had nothing to do with him being Mexican. I’ve got plenty of friends who are Mexican-Americans.”
“Bully for you,” I complimented him sarcastically. “How very tolerant. So his being Mexican had nothing to do with your beating him half to death? It was simply the wrong choice for Diane, is that what you’re telling us?”
“We didn’t do that. I’ve told you that.”
“You’re under oath, Mr. Jerome. You know what the penalty for perjuring yourself before a grand jury is, don’t you? You’ve appeared before grand juries before.”
“I’m not lying.”
“What if I produced hospital records?”
“They wouldn’t say who messed him up.”
“If you didn’t beat him up, how did you know he was?”
“You’re trying to trick me,” he complained. “I’m not here as a hostile witness.”
“You’re acting hostile, as far as I’m concerned. Please answer the question.”
“I know it because you just told me. I didn’t know it otherwise.”
“Even if I produced an affidavit from your sister that says you did beat him, you and your brothers? How would you respond to that?”
“I’d have to say she was mistaken.” He was fighting hard, not giving an inch. “We never beat up on the guy.”
“But you were obsessed with him, weren’t you? You were so obsessed with him that for the rest of your life you conducted a personal vendetta against him, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You hated him so much you even took money to kill him, didn’t you?”
He almost came out of his chair. “What are you talking about?” he screamed. “I never took money from anybody. That’s outrageous!” He was fighting for self-control, and losing. “All right. I did hate him. Why shouldn’t I? The man was a cowardly bastard. He was a murderer, a drug dealer. I’m proud to hate someone like that. Everyone should be.” He was really spewing now. “So what if he had known my sister? That makes my going after the son of a bitch better, not worse.” He turned now and stared at the jurors. “Okay. I knew him, I admit it. I didn’t want my sister seeing this scumbag, I admit it. I’m glad as hell he’s dead. I’m suffering no remorse about that whatsoever. But I didn’t kill him. I had orders not to, and I obeyed them.”
“Like you obeyed the orders not to raid the compound unless the drug deal you set up went down,” I shot back.
He shook his head; but he didn’t answer.
“You wanted Juarez dead. You’d wanted him dead forever. You were in a position to make that happen—for all we know, the reason you joined the DEA was to have proximity to him. You set that raid up to look legitimate, then after you couldn’t murder him during the raid and had to take him prisoner, you snuck in and unshackled him and told him you’d give him one last chance to get out of your life, out of this country. He could take his chance and run, or you’d kill him there, on the spot. Didn’t you—Agent Jerome?”
“You’re crazy.” He turned to the jurors, beseeching them. “This is insane, all of it. I’m a federal agent, I would never do what he’s saying. I’m not a murderer!”
“And then you went after him, didn’t you? You tracked him down and you killed him with the full-metal jackets you had secretly bought a few days before, one hundred fifty miles away. Didn’t you?”
“No!”
I retreated to my table, picked up my last group of documents.
“Do you know what these are?” I asked him from twenty feet away.
“I can’t see them from here, so, no.”
I walked to him. “Can you see them now?”
He looked at the papers in my hand. “Yes, I can see them now,” he said venomously.
“Do you know what they are now?”
“No, I still don’t know what they are.” He was trying to give it back as good as I was throwing it at him.
I showed the documents to the jurors. “They’re bank statements.” Back to Jerome: “From Mr. Jerome’s bank account in Miami, Florida.”
“My what? I don’t have a bank account in Miami.”
I paused, looked at the papers in my hand. “That’s interesting.” Handing him one of the papers, I asked, “Isn’t that your Visa card number at the bottom of the page? Your Social Security number? Your birthdate?”