Because the story is out, she said. Because the story is out, Dennis confirmed. These things don't happen in a vacuum. Public attention changes the timeline. When do they want to meet?
10:00. She looked at the time. It was 7:52. I'll be there. Victoria.
Dennis paused. This is the part where it gets harder before it gets easier. You know that. I know. Pullman has lawyers, he said.
Good ones. Expensive ones. They're going to look at everything you've ever done, every case you've ever been adjacent to every professional decision you've made in 11 years. They're going to look for something to use. Let them look, she said.
You're not worried. I'm appropriately worried, she said. I'm just not going to let the appropriate worry change what I do. Dennis was quiet for a moment. Then your mother was a public defender.
Yes. She ever worry every day? Victoria said she just didn't let it become the reason. She heard Dennis exhale on the other end the particular exhale of someone who has received an answer that made them feel better about the road ahead. 10:00 he said, "I'll meet you there."
The district attorney's office occupied four floors of a building three blocks from the courthouse. And it had none of the theatrical weight of a courtroom. It was functional, slightly too warm, with the institutional carpet pattern of an office that prioritized durability over aesthetics. The woman who met Victoria in the lobby was 48 years old, dark-haired, and moved through the building with the efficiency of someone who had been navigating this specific space for a long time. Her name was Patricia Kelner.
She was the chief deputy district attorney, and she had been on the Pullman situation since the previous afternoon. She shook Victoria's hand with the directness of someone who does not have time for a preamble and also genuinely does not prefer it. Ms. Hayes, she said, I've read your testimony twice. I've read Stein's. I've reviewed the server logs.
I want to talk to you about what you know, what you observed, and what you're prepared to say under oath in a criminal proceeding that will be significantly more adversarial than what you experienced yesterday. All right, Victoria said. Are you prepared for that? Yes. Kelner looked at her for a moment, not assessing she had already done the assessment, Victoria could tell before she walked into the lobby.
She was confirming something she had already concluded. Good. Kelner said, "Come with me." The meeting lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. Victoria described everything.
The chain of custody irregularities, the document hash discrepancy, the timeline of access events, the specific clinical inconsistencies. She had identified between Pullman's stated account and his injury pattern. She described the conversation with Stein. She described what Marcus had told her about Pullman's business activities and the nature of what Ethan had witnessed. She described it all without editorializing without speculation beyond what the evidence directly supported with the same clinical clarity she had brought to the witness stand.
Kelner listened with the focused attention of someone who is simultaneously processing information and building a structure from it. She asked precise questions when she needed clarification and did not ask questions when she didn't. Dennis sat beside Victoria and said very little. He was there as her attorney for the purpose of this meeting, a role he had offered and she had accepted. And he was doing the job of that role with the same efficiency he had brought to everything else in the last 24 hours.
At the 2-hour mark, Kelner set down her pen. Do she said, "You believe he'll cooperate when he understands the full scope of his exposure?" Victoria said, "Yes, he's not a man who built his career around risk. He made one very large mistake for someone he trusted, and he's going to want to put as much distance between himself and that mistake as quickly as possible." "That's consistent with what we're seeing," Kelner said.
His attorney contacted my office this morning at 8:30. Victoria said nothing. He's cooperating. Kelner said fully. Dennis looked up from his notepad now.
Notepad. He's confirmed that Pullman approached him 7 weeks after the incident on Crestston Avenue. Kelner said Pullman told him the medical records created a problem. He described what he needed changed. He indicated Cho's word is implied that it would be worth Cho's while financially and that Pullman had the ability to make professional difficulties for Cho if he declined.
Victoria said he coerced him. Cho's characterization is that he felt he had no choice. Kelner said the facts will be presented to a jury and they'll determine how much weight to give that characterization. But the core of his statement that Pullman directed the modification of the records is documented. And with the server logs as corroboration, we have a foundation.
What's the charge? Dennis asked. Obstruction of justice tampering with evidence, suborning perjury and extortion, Kelner said. The Cresten incident itself, the assault on Ethan Cole, generates its own charge structure given the context of what Cole had witnessed. Witness intimidation, Victoria said, among others, Kelner said.
She looked at Victoria directly. You are going to be the foundation witness in this case. Everything that made yesterday possible is what this prosecution will be built on. I need to know you understand what that means in practical terms. It means the next year is difficult, Victoria said.
At minimum, Kelner said, it means Pullman's attorneys will challenge everything. It means your professional record will be examined. It means your personal history will be examined. It means the night of the warehouse fire, which I've now read about in this morning's article and which I imagine you did not expect to become publicly relevant, will be relevant. Victoria was quiet for a moment.
I understand that, she said. Are you prepared for it? She thought about the question, not about the answer she knew the answer, but about what the question actually cost to ask. Because Kelner was not asking out of doubt. She was asking because she needed to know this witness was solid and that meant knowing the witness had looked at the hard parts clearly and chosen to stand in them anyway.
I've been in rooms where the truth needed protecting. Victoria said yesterday was one of them. Whatever comes next is another. The form changes. The work doesn't.