Chapter 103: A Memo I Never Wrote
I gave Sabrina the only sentence the rules allowed me.
I cannot talk to you about your testimony, I said. Whatever you say in that room, say it because it is true.
Then I hung up and stood in the dark hallway for a long time.
In the morning I told Adaeze everything, word for word, and let her decide whether I had done it right.
You did, she said. One more sentence and you would have been a story in their next filing.
The deposition was set for a Thursday.
The conference room smelled of old coffee and new money.
I went.
As the defendant, I had the right to sit in.
I wanted her to see my face when she decided who she was.
Sabrina came in ten minutes early, in a navy suit I did not recognize, hair pinned, night-school tired.
She looked at me once. I gave her nothing. There was nothing legal I could give.
Their lead counsel smiled as if the witness had arrived gift-wrapped.
Ms. Cross, he began. Let us talk about how Ms. Hale recruited you.
She did not recruit me, Sabrina said. I went to her. Through my own lawyer.
He blinked and recalibrated. Did she pay you for the documents you provided?
No. I asked her to. She refused.
A job, then. A promise. Protection.
She told me she does not hire people like me, Sabrina said. Her exact words, in her kitchen. I cried in my car afterward, if you want that in the record too.
The court reporter's fingers never paused. Mine tightened around my pen.
The documents, their counsel pressed. She told you what to take.
She told me to bring only what was lawfully mine, Sabrina said.
My own emails. Records I had signed. Her lawyers verified everything through channels so clean they bored my attorney.
Where did she tell you to hide the payments, Ms. Cross?
There were no payments. There was no plan. There was one woman in a kitchen who told me to get a lawyer and grow up.
He tried twice more, through two different doors, and twice more the doors were walls.
Then Adaeze took her turn. She had three questions.
Ms. Cross, has anyone offered you anything in connection with your testimony in this case?
The air in the room changed.
Yes, Sabrina said.
A woman from a research firm. She said my loans could go away if my memory told the right story.
Did you accept?
I told her to leave my campus, Sabrina said. Then I wrote down her plate number, because that is what night school is for.
Their counsel asked for a break. It was granted. Nobody on their side looked at anybody else.
When they came back, the lead counsel asked the question they had subpoenaed her for.
Did Ms. Hale use you to destroy Grant Wexler?
Sabrina looked at me then, for the first time since she sat down.
She never asked me to hurt him, she said. The only thing she ever asked about my evidence was whether it was real.
It was real, she added. That is why you are all so angry.
The court reporter did not look up. Professionals never do.
Only the court reporter's keys kept moving.
Their side had bought a witness and been sold a mirror.
Then their junior leaned in, whispered, and slid a folder across the table.
One more item, the lead counsel said, suddenly cheerful. A supplemental production. We received it last week.
Adaeze opened it, read for ten seconds, and her face went to stone.
In the corridor she handed it to me without a word.
A trust memo. My letterhead. My name at the bottom.
An order, in writing, to make an example of Grant Wexler.
I had never seen it before in my life.