Standard company communications? Yes. Did you ever speak with anyone in Meridian's security department about the specific findings before they were formally reported? Ryan hesitated. Emily watched him calculate.
I may have had informal conversations, he said. It was a significant event for the company. Did any of those informal conversations include discussions with Daniel Cho? The silence this time was different. It had texture.
It had weight. Victor Slade stood up in the gallery. Mr. Mitchell, I'd advise you, sir. Judge Watkins said sharply. You are not counsel of record in this proceeding.
Sit down. Slate sat. Ryan Mitchell looked at Emily Carter. Emily Carter looked back at Ryan Mitchell. And Marcus Walker, watching from the defense table, understood exactly what was happening, had seen it before in his life in different rooms, in different circumstances.
The specific moment when a person who has been holding a story together realizes the story has more holes than hands. I'd like to invoke my fifth amendment right, Ryan Mitchell said, not to answer questions that may tend to incriminate me. The courtroom erupted. Not loudly, it was a courtroom. People contained themselves, but the eruption was real.
The murmurings, the shifting, the jury members looking at each other with the wideeyed communicating of people who have just watched something they expected to go one way go decisively another. Judge Watkins called for order. Rain sat down heavily. Gerald exhaled beside Marcus a long controlled breath. Emily returned to the defense table.
She sat down. She picked up her pen. She wrote two words on her legal pad and turned it so Marcus could see. It read, "Not yet." And Marcus, who had learned long ago that the most dangerous moments were the ones right before something was won, because that was when you were most tempted to stop being careful, nodded once.
Not yet, but close. Ryan Mitchell stepped down from the stand. He walked past the defense table without looking at either Marcus or Emily. And his face held a very particular expression. The expression of a man who has just watched the story he built begin to come apart at the seams.
Thread by thread, pulled loose by the careful hands of someone who had been working at it for 6 weeks in silence. Emily watched him leave. Then she looked at her legal pad. Then she looked at the door through which Daniel Cho had not yet walked, but would. Because Emily Carter had not asked for the environmental monitoring records and spent six weeks building this case and walked into that courtroom and said, "Dad, I'm here just to get Ryan Mitchell to take the fifth."
She had done all of that to find the truth, and the truth was still one witness away from being completely, irrevocably, undeniably told. Daniel Cho did not come willingly. Emily had filed the witness subpoena 48 hours earlier and the process server had found show at his apartment on the east side of Phoenix at 7 in the morning. A detail the server included in his return filing with the flat professional neutrality of someone accustomed to delivering documents people didn't want to receive. Cho had accepted the subpoena without speaking.
He had closed the door and then according to the process server's notes, he had called someone within 30 seconds. The server heard the phone being dialed through the door. Emily was reasonably certain she knew who he had called. She thought about that phone call all through the morning session. Reigns presenting his closing summary of the digital forensics evidence with the careful efficiency of a man building a wall he knew had already been breached, trying to shore it up with the materials he had left.
She thought about the 30 seconds between Cho receiving that subpoena and reaching for his phone. The specific urgency of it, the reflex. People who call their employer the moment they receive a legal subpoena are people who believe their employer can fix the problem. People who believe that are people who know the employer created the problem. At 11:15, Cho's own attorney, a woman named Patricia Reeves, who had the clipped efficiency of someone who primarily handled employment in civil matters and was visibly unhappy about being in a criminal courtroom, filed a motion to quash the subpoena on grounds that Chose testimony could be self-inccriminating.
Judge Watkins heard the motion in chambers at noon. Emily argued for 20 minutes. The core of her argument was simple. Chose potential self-inccrimination. It did not arise from anything Emily intended to ask him.
It arose from what he had done. The subpoena was lawful. The testimony was relevant. His right against self-inccrimination protected him from answering specific questions. It did not protect him from appearing on the stand.
He can invoke the fifth on any question he chooses, Emily said. But he cannot use that right as a shield to avoid the stand entirely when his appearance itself is material to the defense. Judge Watkins looked at Patricia Reeves. Reeves argued that the line of questioning Emily intended would inevitably require Cho to either incriminate himself or commit perjury, and that placing a witness in that position was itself prejuditial. Your honor, Emily said, the prosecution placed my client in precisely that position 9 months ago, except my client is innocent.
If Mr. Cho finds himself facing a similar dilemma on the witness stand that is a consequence of his own actions, not mine. The judge was quiet for a moment. Motion denied. She said, "Mr. Cho will testify. Miss Carter, you will confine your questioning to matters directly relevant to the evidence in this case.
If Mr. Cho invokes his fifth amendment right, I will instruct the jury appropriately. We resume at 1:30." Daniel Cho was 31 years old and built like someone who had spent years in physical security work. Broad shoulders, closecropped hair, the particular bearing of a person accustomed to occupying space with authority. He walked to the stand with the careful deliberateness of someone who had been coached by his lawyer in the 90 minutes since the motion was denied.
And he sat down and folded his hands and looked straight ahead. He did not look at Marcus. He did not look at Emily. He looked at the middle distance with the fixed quality of a man who has decided that the safest position is absolute stillness. Emily approached with the climate log in her hand and two additional documents under her arm.
Mr. Cho, she said, you were employed as a security supervisor at Meridian Technologies from 14 months ago until approximately 3 weeks ago. Is that correct? Yes. Cho said your responsibilities included oversight of the facility's access control systems, badge management, camera monitoring, and coordination with the building's external security vendors, among other things, yes. As part of those responsibilities, did you have access to employee badge records?