Chapter 7 - The Deposition of Ashley Cole
The federal detention facility in Englewood, Colorado, sat behind two layers of electrified razor wire, its precast concrete walls reflecting the blinding, mid-winter glare of the noon sun.
In the second-floor deposition suite, the air smelled of floor wax and stale coffee from the vending machines in the legal lobby.
Ashley sat on the far side of the laminate table.
She did not wear Dior.
She wore a two-piece jumpsuit of unironed khaki cotton with BOP-ENGLEWOOD stenciled in black across the left breast. Her blonde hair had grown out half an inch at the roots, dark and greasy, pulled back with a blue plastic elastic band that the guards had inspected for wire. She had no makeup; her skin was pale, gray around the jawline, her lips cracked from the dry, filtered air of the cellblock.
Her court-appointed attorney, a young federal public defender named Miller with ink stains on his cuffs, sat beside her with six legal pads spread across his briefcase.
I sat across from them.
I had placed my ash cane on the table between us, the black rubber tip pointing directly at the center of her chest.
Beside me sat Arthur Pendelton, the sixty-year-old senior partner of Pendelton & Vance, who had represented my father since the year I was born.
"We are on the record," Pendelton said, his voice level, nodding toward the court reporter whose machine clicked softly in the corner of the room. "Deposition of Ashley Cole, witness for the government in the matter of United States v. Michael Carter, Case Number 26-CR-4081."
Ashley did not look at Pendelton.
Her eyes were locked on my face. She looked at the faint, pink ridge of the scar that ran from my temple down to my earlobe; she looked at the heavy gold watch on my wrist—my father’s watch, the one Michael had worn to our rehearsal dinner.
"You look different," Ashley whispered.
"I look like a woman who didn't die on your schedule, Ashley," I said.
Miller, her attorney, tapped her wrist. "Stick to the proffer questions, Ashley. Don't engage in personal colloquy."
Pendelton opened a blue folder.
"Ms. Cole," Pendelton began. "Directing your attention to the morning of October 14th. Did you accompany the defendant, Michael Carter, to the regional office of Vance-Carter Logistics in Estes Park?"
"Yes," Ashley said, her voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation ducts.
"Louder for the microphone, please," the court reporter said without looking up from her keys.
"Yes," Ashley said, clearing her throat. "We took the secondary car. The Range Rover."
"And what was your understanding of the purpose of that trip?"
Ashley looked down at her hands. Her fingernails were short, unpolished, bitten down to the quick.
"Michael told me that Sarah had found the accounts," she murmured. "He said she had hired a forensic auditor from Denver to look at the fuel tax credits from the third quarter. He said if she made it to the board meeting on the nineteenth, she would have him removed as managing partner and the loans would default."
"And what did he propose to do about that?"
"He said we had to take her to the park," Ashley said. Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the pale dust on her cheeks, but they were not the tears of remorse. They were the thin, oily tears of a secondary conspirator who had realized that her seven-year sentence was not going to be served in a minimum-security camp. "He said there was a spot past the Many Parks Curve where the ice was bad. He said she liked the gray jays... the birds. He said he would tell her to step onto the rock to feed them from her hand."
"And did you object?" Pendelton asked, his fountain pen hovering above his pad.
"I asked him about the baby," Ashley choked out.
"And what did he say?"
Ashley lifted her head. Her face was contorted into an ugly, twitching mask of terror that seemed to age her ten years in the harsh fluorescent light.
"He said... he said the baby was the leverage," Ashley sobbed, her fingers knotting into the rough cotton of her orange jumpsuit. "He said a dead wife is a tragedy, but a dead wife with a dead child is an insurance category that no claims board in this country will audit. He said they would pay the policy within fourteen days just to keep the story off the front page of the Denver Post."
I leaned forward.
The cane shifted on the laminate table, the black rubber tip tapping once, twice against the wood.
"And the four million from Wyoming, Ashley?" I asked.
Miller jumped. "Objection! That is outside the scope of the federal indictment—"
"Overrule yourself, counselor," I said, my voice dropping so low that Miller stopped with his mouth half-open. "Your client is currently facing twenty-four years under the sentencing guidelines for conspiracy to commit murder. If she doesn't answer the question about the Cody reservoir, I will personally file the state capital murder complaints in Park County, Wyoming, before your dinner break."
Ashley began to tremble. Her whole torso shook, her hands coming up to cover her face, her shoulders heaving against the back of the metal chair.
"He... he showed me the house," she wept into her palms. "He showed me the house in Big Sky. He said the money from the first one bought the land. He said the money from Sarah would build the lodge. He had the architectural drawings in the back of the car, Sarah! We were looking at the bathroom tiles while you were walking to the cliff!"
I sat back in my chair.
I looked at the young woman across the table.
She was twenty-seven years old. She had an art degree. She had spent two years typing my meeting notes and ordering my father’s compression socks from the medical supply company in Boulder.
And she had looked at bathroom tile samples while my boots were sliding across the rime ice at eleven thousand feet.
"Pendelton," I said, rising from the table, leaning on my cane as the carbon-fiber brace locked into place around my knee.
"Yes, Sarah?"
"We're done here," I said.
I looked down at Ashley one last time.
"Tell the prosecutor we won't sign the sentencing recommendation," I told Miller. "She gets the maximum under the guidelines. Twenty-four years. And she serves it in the federal facility in Aliceville, Alabama."
May you like
I turned toward the steel security door.
"The summers in Alabama are very long, Ashley," I said as the guard hit the buzzer to release the latch. "You'll have plenty of time to think about the tile."
