PART OF THAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" Morris yelled, standing up as if he was ready run and take a swipe at Elijah. The bailiff quickly ran and restrained Morris as the courtroom quickly went into an uproar.
"Enough!" yelled Justice Richardson. "Sit down Mr. Morris or I'll have you cited for contempt. As for you Mr. Deville, you will confine your questioning to areas that you can substantiate with proof. Is that clear?"
"Crystal clear Your Honor," Elijah responded. After a short pause, he continued.
"Wow Mr. Morris, you have quite the temper. I certainly wouldn't want to be on the other end of a punch that you threw," Elijah stated with a smile.
"Your Honor," Samantha said with a whine in her voice.
"Mr. Deville, this is your last warning. Continue your examination now, or this witness will be excused," the judge said.
"Sorry Your Honor, it won't happen again," Elijah said. He then turned to the witness and moved on with his questioning. "Mr. Morris, earlier you stated that you had once worked at IBM as a computer programmer. Were you any good?"
"I was one of their best," Morris said.
"Then why did you leave?"
"I got bored with the job. I couldn't stand sitting day in and day out writing code. It was driving me crazy! That, along with the fact that my father was beginning to lay down the law with me saying that unless I started participating in the family business that I would be disinherited. Not wanting to become a criminal, I fled as far away from him as I could get. Soon after that, I realized that coming to Canada would be my safest bet, so I legally changed my name and moved up here. I got a job as a ride inspector and eventually worked my way up to the lead inspector. Not bad for a gangster's son in my opinion."
"No not bad at all. In fact, that part is quite commendable. But the point I was driving at was that you knew the ins and outs of the computer program that ran the Colossus, did you not?" Elijah asked.
"Of course. It was my job to know. Although I did not write the program itself, I had to supervise the code being written for inspection and safety to insure that the computer would be able to inspect and diagnose all problems associated with the ride. The computer wouldn't eliminate the need for daily inspections, but it would assist us in finding problems quickly in the event of an unexpected breakdown," Morris responded.
"So you not only knew what was coded into the program, but you could manipulate the program and thus activate or deactivate certain inspection parts if needed."
"I don't like what you're insinuating Mr. Deville," Morris said while frowning.
"I'm not insinuating anything Mr. Morris, what I'm simply stating is that a computer programmer in your position would theoretically be able to deactivate certain parts of a program so that it wouldn't detect a serious problem."
"Theoretically that's possible, but I didn't do it."
"Sure you did. You were the last person to handle the final update of the program, the one that was installed the day before the murder. We already have entered into evidence the sabotaged disk containing code that shut down the diagnostic portions of the program on the day of the murder. You had the program last, and according to the other programmers, you examined it for over two hours before you handed it to Kevin Craig to install. That gave you ample time to disable those portions of the program so that it appeared to do the diagnostics but in reality did absolutely nothing."
"That's a lie Mr. Deville and you can't prove a word of it. I did not sabotage that disk, and I did not torch that ride. Now, I'm going to tell you for the third time, I could not have torched that ride, for I was at home watching a baseball game on television."
"Oh I believe that part Mr. Morris. I do believe you watched the baseball game that night, and what an epic 18 inning ball game that was. It didn't end until almost 1 AM. You see you're forgetting one thing: I never said that you torched the ride; I said you changed the computer program in order to allow the person who torched the ride to get away with it. Since you have never met my client, I know that you weren't working with him; the question is who were you working with? The answer to that will come in a few moments. As for you Mr. Morris, if I were you, I would be hoping that the Toronto Police Department are a bunch of inept fools, for that's the only hope you have of staying out of jail." Elijah was beginning to sit down, when he returned to the podium and said, "I wouldn't count on it though. No further questions Your Honor."
"Cross-examine Ms. Howard?" the judge asked.
"No, Your Honor," Samantha said.
"In that case, the defense calls Audrey Taylor to the stand." The court room gallery seemed so shocked that Audrey was being called, that they all began to whisper quietly to the person beside them. After Audrey was sworn in, the gallery quieted down and Elijah then began asking his questions.
"Mrs. Taylor, the gallery seems surprised that I called you to testify just now, are you surprised?"
"I am stunned Mr. Deville. I loved my husband and I certainly didn't kill him," Audrey said. Amused by her answer, Elijah said, "I'm sure that's what you'd want everyone to believe, but we both know different."
"What you think you know and what the actual truth is Mr. Deville, I'm sure are worlds apart."
"Well we'll see Mrs. Taylor, but for the moment we'll leave that part, for I have a few other questions. Before you were a banker, what was your job?"
"I was a bookkeeper for Dan's Machine Shop located in Oakville," Audrey replied.
"And before that?"
"I was a welder for the same business. My father was a welder there, and it helped pay my bills through university."
"So would you consider yourself an expert using an acetylene torch?" Elijah asked.
"Well certainly not an expert, but I have experience using an acetylene torch if that is what you're asking," Audrey responded.
"That is precisely what I'm asking Mrs. Taylor. Now a few moments ago, you said that you loved your husband. Does that mean that you were completely faithful to him for the duration of your marriage?"
"Daniel has already told me that you know of our affair, but that doesn't change the fact that I loved my husband. Scott knew that he wasn't paying enough attention to me, so after a week of being angry at me, he consented to me seeing Daniel if that's what both of us wanted. We weren't going to get divorced, but it did add another layer of strain to our already tumultuous marriage."
"Without getting into the graphic details, when did the affair start, and how often did you meet."
"The affair started in December of 2008 and has continued right up until now. In fact, just yesterday Daniel asked me to marry him."
"Congratulations, Mrs. Taylor," Elijah responded, "but please answer the last part of my question, how often did you meet?"
"We usually met on Tuesday nights at a motel near my house, though sometimes we met at my house. Tuesday was the night that Katie had soccer practice that a neighbour would take her to, and Scott had his weekly poker game with his friends," Audrey explained.
"OK, and do you know my client, Elliot Ravenwood?"
"Absolutely, Elliot and Pamela were close friends of the family. In fact that is why I recommended to our bank manager that Elliot be allowed to set up a bank account for the new business he was starting."
"About that business Mrs. Taylor, the thing is, Mr. Granger had never personally met Mr. Ravenwood before this account was set up so it would be easy for you and Mr. Morris to deceive him. With his background in costume design, Mr. Morris disguised himself as Elliot Ravenwood, and it was he who opened up the account.
"You'll have to ask him, for I know nothing about it," Audrey replied.
"Sure you do," Elijah said, "After all, you just testified that you not only knew Elliot Ravenwood, but you recommended to your boss that he be able to set up an account. You were present when the business papers were signed as this would reflect well on your account referrals record. You certainly would have noticed, as the bank's security guard told me t
hat he did, that the man who signed the paperwork had a small tattoo on his left wrist. My client does not have a tattoo on his left wrist, but your fiancé, Daniel Morris, does."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Audrey replied.
"If only that was true Mrs. Taylor, if only that was true. These DVDs though, tell a different story. Your Honor at this time I would wish to enter into evidence 8 days worth of bank surveillance videos and have them marked Defense Exhibit C for identification. I would also at this time wish to show portions of these tapes to the court." The clerk marked the tapes as requested while a television and DVD player was wheeled into the courtroom. After a few minutes of setup, Elijah cued up the tapes to the desired sections.
"What you're about to see on these tapes Mrs. Taylor is that in fact Daniel Morris, disguised as Elliot Ravenwood, was a frequent visitor of yours," Elijah said. Elijah then proceeded to show the court 3 of the videos, fast forwarding to the portions of the tape where 'Elliot Ravenwood' visited the cash cage.
Elijah paused for a moment, and then continued. "Look, the man in all of these videos has the same tattoo that the bank security guard remembers. This man also has the same tattoo that we saw today on the wrist of Daniel Morris. How do you explain not knowing that it was him?"
"I wasn't in the cash cage, for I'm not the central teller. Obviously, Daniel came up to Ashley Mortland, so why don't you question her instead of harassing me?" Audrey retorted.
"That was you in the cash cage all right," Elijah said. "You see I always wondered why this man always came to the bank at around 10:00 AM. What was going on at 10 o'clock everyday? As I went through the bank records, I found out what was going on: cash deliveries. Between 9:30 and 10:30 every morning, Ashley Mortland wasn't at the business wicket because she was in the basement with Mr. Granger, signing and observing the delivery and removal of money from the bank's vaults. Since Mr. Granger testified that only trained personnel would be allowed to work at the business wicket that meant that you were the only person on duty, who could have been the teller at that time on this tape. You knew you'd be there and Daniel Morris knew you'd be there because both of you set up the embezzlement scheme together. Together you found out how to launder the money right under the bank's nose."
"What you just said is absolutely not true and I can prove it. Show the last tape to me if you please," Audrey said. Elijah went along and backed the DVD up to the last transaction. "You see Mr. Deville, did you count how much money was handed out. It was 6 stacks of 20 dollar bills which totals $12,000. Now I've sat through this trial from the beginning and I know for a fact that the embezzled money was withdrawn in the amount of $11,164.29. Although Daniel might have fooled me, and been the man at this point of the security footage, these transactions must not have been the ones in question because if you check my records, when I'm in the cash cage, I am never out any money," Audrey said smugly. The courtroom was all a buzz when they thought that Elijah had been outsmarted. Even Samantha had an amused look on her face.
"You know Mrs. Taylor," Elijah said, "even the investigator that I hired to look into this case had missed this one. It is true, that you are never out any money, not even a penny. The question is not whether this was the actual transaction, because it was. The real question is did you actually hand out any money?"
"I don't quite understand. The tape shows that $12,000.00 in cash was handed out."
"Does it? You see our eyes have a bad habit of fooling our brain into thinking we saw something happen when in fact it did not," Elijah said as everyone in the courtroom looked befuddled. "You see, since Canadian Twenty Dollar Bills are green, and since we saw that the money handed out in the bank was green, we therefore assumed that the money handed out were stacks of Canadian Twenty Dollar Bills. Upon a closer examination this couldn't be farther from the truth. What you actually handed out was not 6 stacks of Canadian Twenty Dollar Bills totaling $12,000.00, but 6 stacks of Monopoly Twenty Dollar Bills totaling absolutely nothing. You were very clever in disguising the large 20 in the center by putting the bank strap around it, but as an avid fan of the game of Monopoly it was quite elementary to uncover your deception.
After handing out the fake money, it became necessary to deposit the real money withdrawn from the "Just in Time Supplies' business account, into accounts owned by you and Daniel Morris. Your account was registered under Audrey Hastert, your maiden name, while Daniel Morris' account was under the name Dennis Morse, his birth name. How you accomplished this without being noticed, is a little more complex. First, you needed access to other teller's personal ID cards and passwords so that you could deposit the stolen money into your accounts using their names as having completed the transaction. You used a magnetic strip collector to do this. Next, you needed a way to remove the almost $12,000 from the cash cage. How you accomplished this was very sneaky. You see that large purse you're carrying. That purse is also found on the videos and could easily carry a large amount of money without attracting attention. Lastly, you needed Daniel's expertise of computers in order to accomplish this last part. Daniel Morris, on your instructions, created a computer program that would allow you to create deposit transactions before the time that they were supposed to have occurred. You always preprogrammed the deposits before the bank opened, I assume because it's the only point of the day you had the time. These slips would then print out at your printer during the course of the day and nothing would seem out of place. You would then privately, while on break add these slips to the plastic envelopes of the embezzled money and hand it back with all of your deposits.
Now ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you might be asking why they went to all of this trouble to conceal the money. Why didn't she just hand it out in the beginning? The problem was if she had done it this way, then it would have been harder to deposit the money into their own accounts without raising suspicion. It would have definitely been slower. Since they were planning to deal with hundreds of thousands of dollars, doing it a slower way simply would not have been feasible. Their only other option was to keep the money in the bank and have Audrey deposit the money by executing this complex scheme."
Elijah, finishing his soliloquy to the jury, turned back to Audrey and said, "So, how did I do, Mrs. Taylor?"
"Everything you just said is a lie. None of it's true. You have no proof," Audrey said defiantly.
"I never make unsubstantiated claims in court," Elijah said. "I now would like to show the court more video evidence that shows what I have just been stating is true." Elijah started and stopped the tape about a dozen times, showing that transaction slips printed at Audrey Taylor's wicket when no deposits or withdrawals were being made. The tape also showed that she collected these slips until her break, at which time she took them with her. "This stack of records, are the computer printouts of all of the deposits seen on those video tapes. I ask that they be marked Defense Exhibit D," Elijah said as the clerk took and labeled the evidence. "As you can see, these deposits match the deposits found on these two bank statements, one owned by you, and one owned by Mr. Morris. I ask the court to label these two statements Defense Exhibits E and F." Elijah paused for a moment to catch his breath while the clerk labeled the evidence.
"I have to hand it to you Mrs. Taylor. You devised a very ingenious plan. But just like so many well laid plans this plan had one flaw: unlike Daniel, you don't know all that much about computers. Up until now, you could have easily denied what I said, without any way for me to prove otherwise. But it's that flaw that's going to get you, for what you may not have noticed is that each terminal at the bank is labeled, and each transaction can be traced to a computer terminal. For instance, the transaction number '01-23456-1032-090504 Audrey Taylor' would tell me that that the transaction took place on terminal 1, at 10:32 am on May 4,2009, by Audrey Taylor and was numbered 23456. You probably never noticed or cared how the transaction was labeled, but in this case that hurt y
ou. The transaction that I just read was the first transaction ever done over the period of this scheme. The next transaction, the one for the same amount that was supposed to have been done by another teller was labeled '01-23876-1042-090504 Janice Turnbow.' Although it appears that Ms. Turnbow completed this transaction, she couldn't have, because it was done at Terminal 1, your terminal and not at Ms. Turnbow's terminal which would have been terminal 11 that morning. You withdrew all of the money from the front company's accounts, which the tapes corroborate, and then you deposited it in smaller amounts into the two personal accounts that I just mentioned. It was you who stole this money, wasn't it?" asked Elijah.
After a short pause, Audrey answered, "Yes, Daniel and I were the ones who embezzled the money from the park, but we didn't kill him. I was in Montreal the night the ride was torched and didn't land at Pearson until 2 AM."
"You most certainly did kill your husband, and I can prove that too. Sure your charter returned at 2 AM along with some local tellers from the area, but you weren't on that plane. How do I know that you might ask? Because you drove your car, License number YVRZ 602, out of long term parking at Pearson at 5:25 PM on June 30, 2010 according to a credit card receipt you signed. You were back in Toronto at 5:00 and a 45 minute drive to the park would put you there just about the time to hear your husband and Elliot fighting about the embezzlement. Whether or not you intended to frame Elliot for the murder before that argument is immaterial, the fact is that you did frame him. You had Daniel buy the torch, having him sign Elliot's name on the receipt as he had done many times before. He then gave the torch to you and you then went and sabotaged the ride that night. It was you that Elliot heard at midnight, and, being an avid rock climber, you could have easily stood on the side of the ravine in the bushes without being seen. The next morning, you had Daniel hide the tank and bolts in Elliot's car, which was the reason that Daniel was late to work. All of that, so you could hide the fact that you were afraid that your husband might eventually find out that it was you who stole the money. You had means, motive and opportunity. You killed Scott Taylor, didn't you?"
"I did not!" Audrey exclaimed. "It is true that I landed at Pearson at 5:00 and not 2:00 AM, but I was no where near the park that night. I was at a local hotel meeting Daniel. The hotel is on Century Rd., just off of Exit 39 on Highway 407. We checked in at 5:45 PM and were both there until we checked out at 2:30 AM. Neither of us left the hotel the entire night."
"Oh come on. You have lied to this court about your involvement in the embezzlement; you have lied to this court about when you arrived back in Toronto, so why should this court believe you now, in what is an obvious attempt to save your own hide?"
"You don't have to take my word for it, just check the hotel registration, just check with the two room service bills signed by Daniel and myself, just check with the man who brought us our food that night. All will testify that we were both there that night and did not leave until 2:30 in the morning."
The courtroom was in obvious shock at the revelation, while Samantha was in obvious jubilation as she tossed her pencil on the table and leaned back in her chair. As for Elijah, his face couldn't describe the utter disbelief he felt in being dealt a major blow to proving his client innocent.
"Your Honor," Elijah said, "The defense moves for an adjournment until the scheduled time tomorrow, so that we can corroborate this witness' testimony."
"Your motion is granted. This court will stand adjourned until 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, at which time the defense will continue, if it desires to, the examination of this witness," Justice Richardson announced.
The gallery quickly filed out of the courtroom as reporters ran down the halls to the front steps to begin filing their story for the 6 PM news. Elijah walked over to Cameron and told him to go to the hotel in question and verify this newly discovered alibi. As Cameron quickly left, a disgusted Elijah slowly walked out of the courtroom. He hated surprises! Especially ones that made him look like a fool in court. Unless he could unravel this one, reality was quickly beginning to set in that he could lose this case, resulting in Elliot spending the rest of his life in prison. That situation, of letting an innocent man rot in jail, was intolerable to Elijah, but alas, as the afternoon became evening, it was something that he might be powerless to prevent.
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