Chapter 111: The Journal
Grover Lisle testified on the second morning by video link from Mesa, Arizona.
He was sixty-eight, against a beige wall, with a lawyer off camera whose knee you could see.
He had surrendered his licence in 2021 with three complaints pending, none of which were mine.
The DA had given him use immunity in the Halloway matter. It did not cover perjury, and the judge told him so twice.
The exhibit was his notarial journal. A bound book, numbered entries, required by statute.
Renata had produced a photocopy in the conference room. That copy was not admissible.
Brandt subpoenaed the original from Lisle's former partner, who had it in a garage in Ravensport.
The original came in on the first morning by custodian affidavit and nobody objected.
Entry 1146. Dated the thirteenth. A deed of trust for a couple in Halcott.
Entry 1147. Dated the fourteenth. Document: Statement. Signer: C. A. Mercer. Identification: driver's licence.
Entry 1148. Dated the fourteenth. A power of attorney for a man named Ferris Dowd.
Entry 1149. Dated the fifteenth. Two deeds.
The collision occurred at 22:33 on the fifteenth.
That is the whole of it. That is what I had been carrying since a March afternoon two years earlier.
A bound book with printed line numbers cannot be backfilled without a gap, an erasure or a break in the ink.
Brandt had a document examiner ready and Slack never gave her the fight.
Instead Slack tried the only thing available, which was to make 1147 mean something other than what it says.
Lisle testified that the statement was prepared in advance at the family's request.
He said it was a draft, acknowledged in anticipation of a matter that was expected to arise.
The judge stopped him there. Judge Reyner is seventy-one and does not talk much and he stopped him personally.
“Mr Lisle. On the fourteenth, what matter was expected to arise?”
Lisle said he did not recall.
“Mr Lisle, you notarised a statement in which a woman accepted responsibility for a collision. On the fourteenth. What collision?”
Lisle said he had no independent recollection of the circumstances.
“Did you make an error in your journal?”
“I do not believe I made an error in the journal.”
“Are your journal dates reliable?”
“They are, your Honour. That is the purpose of the journal.”
Slack sat very still through all of that and did not stand up.
Then Reyner asked one more, and it was the question I had been unable to make anybody ask for six years.
“Who instructed you to prepare it?”
Lisle's lawyer's knee moved. Lisle asked for a short recess.
He got fifteen minutes. When he came back he asserted the privilege against self-incrimination on that question and the judge accepted it.
But you cannot unring a recess. Everyone in that room had watched a man leave the screen rather than say a name.
Renata Halloway was called after lunch and invoked before the second question.
She did it politely, standing, in a navy coat, with Vasch beside her, and it took ninety seconds.
I watched her do it and she looked at me once on the way out.
Dean testified on the afternoon of the second day, in a suit, with his lawyer at the rail.
He said the eleven steps. He said them in the same order as the proffer and he did not look at me at any point.
Slack cross-examined him for fifty minutes and did it well.
He established that Dean had a signed agreement, that the agreement required truthful testimony, that his exposure had gone from years to months.
He got Dean to agree he was, in a plain sense, being paid for what he was saying.
Then Slack asked why anybody should believe him.
Dean said, “Because I said it before they offered me anything,” which was not true, and Slack had the dates, and he used them.
By the end of that hour Dean was worth considerably less than he had been at the start of it.
That is what a purchased witness is worth, and Brandt had told me so in September.
On the third morning we called Bendix, who authenticated the disc in eleven minutes and was excused.
Then Brandt read the endorsement into the record over an objection, on the question of motive to procure a confession.
Slack fought hard and lost in part. Reyner let in Endorsement 3 and the underwriting note and kept out the commission statement.
The commission never went in. The judge said it went to the character of a non-party and had no probative value on the petition.
That was the correct ruling and I hated it and I still think it was correct.
Evidence closed at 12:40 on the sixth of February.
Reyner said he would take it under advisement and issue a written order. He gave no date.
Then he stood, and everybody stood, and it was over, and it had taken two and a half days.
Outside, on the steps, Brandt lit a cigarette, which I had not known she did, and said one sentence.
“Now we wait, and I can't tell you how long, and anybody who tells you they can is selling something.”