"Hey Flynn!" said Marie as she threw her keys onto her kitchen counter and sighed. "How are you?"
"I'm good. S-sorry, I let myself in again, I hope you don't mind."
"No problem, you're gonna be living here soon anyway. And I saw your car in the driveway, so it's not like it was a surprise. What are you doing?"
"Just some readings for class. In college, they call them…readings."
Marie laughed. "And because you're a freshman you're still reading them? We'll see how long that lasts."
"No, I'm... I find it really interesting and I love being in college, so. I al-almost didn't get to do it."
"Yeah. Good for you."
"So how are things?"
"Oh my god. This court case is the most tedious thing ever in the entire world."
"Really? Like, boring?"
"Oh, it is so boring! Actually lots of really interesting things happened to us, I mean they were horrible but they were interesting, and if they would just let me talk about those and explain them that would be fine, but they keep being really finicky about all the little details, and they question you on everything – 'Oh, why did you say that that way, you didn't say that before, oh hey what did you say before, how about we go back and check the record!' They've got these little people who type everything down, right, for the court record. Transcript! Transcript, that's what it's called. Today, they paused proceedings three times to go back and check what was written in the transcript from five minutes before. Why people don't remember what was said five minutes ago... Jesus, just let me talk, let me explain it - I thought the whole reason they wanted me to go there was they wanted me to tell them things, but noooooo!"
"S-so you were…in the witness box today?"
"Yeah, and yesterday, for like five minutes before they cut me off and then adjourned the entire afternoon. And apparently they want me tomorrow too, which means I'm still not allowed to talk to your mom. I'm glad you're here. I was going crazy on my own last night."
"Why aren't you allowed to talk to…Mom?"
"Well apparently there's no rule against it - I'm not sure why there isn't, though, I mean people could totally be changing their evidence if they're just talking to each other in between times and saying, 'Oh no, you should have said that instead!' But apparently there isn't actually a rule against it, but her lawyer told me that it's basically in her interest that I don't talk to her because then if she did have any influence on what I then said the following day, the Prosecution could pick up on that and throw my testimony out and accuse her of trying to manipulate justice or something. Could get messy messy. I tell you what though, they better get done with me tomorrow because the next day is Holly's birthday party, and I'm not missing Holly's birthday party, that's not negotiable, and your mom is not missing it either! I mean unless they convict her tonight, which is very unlikely because they draw everything out for such a long time! At this rate, we'll be lucky if we get done by Christmas."
"Wow. So wh-what were they asking you about?"
"Oh." Marie rolled her eyes. "The worst day of my life. We were talking about the day your uncle died, which was the worst day of my life, but now, to me it actually feels boring, because we kept on rehashing over the same bit of it over and over again; so ok you went to the car wash to talk to Skyler and Flynn, ok, wait a minute, rewind, what did you say at the start, wait rewind, what did you say ten minutes ago, what did Skyler say, what did you say, what did she do, wait rewind again..." Marie went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. "You want some?"
"Sure."
She poured two glasses, still shaking her head. "Don't tell your mom I'm giving you wine."
"Definitely not."
Marie and Flynn laughed.
...
"Mrs Schrader," said Kim, as she stepped up to the witness box the following morning to begin her cross examination. "When did you first realise that something was not right with your sister? That something was upsetting her?"
Marie sighed. "Ooh. That's a tough one because it went on for such a long time. First there was the whole Walt having cancer thing. That upset her, well it upset all of us, but obviously in a much more simple way than what happened later. So she had seemed kind of stressed for some time, but I thought it was just because of that. I first realised that something more was going on when she abruptly and without warning kicked him out of the house."
"When was this?"
"I remember Holly was really tiny, maybe two months? And she's almost 3 now, so. Almost 3 years ago."
"Did Skyler tell you why she was breaking up with Walter?"
"No, and that was what was odd. We're close, we tell each other stuff, always have. She would not tell me anything about that, no matter how much I asked. Hank said he thought Walt was having affair, but that didn't seem right to me, it seemed too simple. If that were the case, I thought she would tell me. But she just didn't tell me anything and I had no idea what it was."
"Was that the first time she'd hidden something from you?"
"Well not the first time ever, I mean we don't tell each other everything all the time, but it was the first significant thing, yes. Kicking Walt out of the house was a pretty significant thing, and actually she needed my help with it because she wanted to stay with me for a bit and have my support and have Hank help Walt carry his things out. So we were involved. And she wouldn't tell us why."
"How did Walt seem at that time?"
"I didn't see him very much then. But one thing he did do was abruptly move back into the house without Skyler's permission. Skyler called the police and I think maybe she almost told them then, almost, but she couldn't bring herself to. So he was there without her permission for a while, and then eventually he left, but he was still sort of around. Like he would be there for family stuff - actually Hank got badly injured quite soon after that and so we were in a family crisis and Walt was there then. So they, they split up but he never actually went away."
"How was she around him in that time?"
"She would look at him with this weird look on her face, it was kind of… trepidation. And guardedness."
"Were you worried about her?"
"A little, because I knew she was going through some stuff, but so was I so I didn't really have time to think about it very much. And she's always been good at putting up a facade of being ok, and I'm probably guilty of not really checking. At that time. Hank was in the hospital and I was going through enough myself and I just didn't really think about it. I really became worried about her later on, when she was running the car wash. One day I visited her at lunch time and we were talking in her office - I was telling her something, I can't remember what it was now - and she seemed to be kind of absent, like she wasn't really paying attention to what I was saying, and then suddenly she stood up and went to the window and lit a cigarette. Which really surprised me because I hadn't seen her smoke in I guess about 17 years at that point. And she was inside in an office and there are laws against that, so I was really surprised, and I started saying to her hey what are you doing, you can't smoke, this is an office, Holly's just over there, what are you doing? And she was standing at the window not reacting to anything I was saying for about a minute, and then suddenly she just exploded, and she was yelling, 'Shut up shut up shut up!' over and over. To me, you know. She was telling me to shut up but not in a way that was actually engaging - she wasn't arguing with me, she wasn't responding to anything I had said. I did respond when she told me to shut up and I did shut up. But she just kept saying it and saying it and saying it, like a cracked record, and she'd lost it - she was screaming, she was not in control. And then she started crying. And it was pretty clear that that was not because I had been going on at her about smoking - something else was going on. And I asked her what it was, and she just couldn't really speak. She was crying and gasping and saying, 'I'm sorry, I can't,' and various other half sentences that didn't make any sense. She literally broke down. She ceased to function. She couldn't focus on anything I was saying or anything that she had to do at the car wash, so I just took her home and put her to bed, because she was really not ok. And I was really worried and she wouldn't tell me what was wrong, so I waited until Walt got home and I talked to him about it. And he told me some lie that was designed to make me feel as uncomfortable as possible so that I would leave. I had said to him, 'I am not leaving!', and less than five minutes later I was leaving because he had just figured out a way to explain it all away and make me want to get out of his hair! He was a magician with how he did that, he could just manipulate people into doing anything he wanted. And you didn't even realise it was happening."
"So you said you waited for him to get home, so he was back living in the house by then?"
"Yes."
"So they had got back together?"
"Yes, but the other thing that was weird was that she didn't tell me when that happened. Like usually if you got back together with the love of your life you'd tell your sister, right? And I know he'd never really left anyway, he was always sort of around, so it wasn't like he wasn't around and then he was around again. But they weren't living together, and then suddenly they were again, but they didn't say so. And it wasn't like they acted like they'd got back together either, they didn't seem any closer; if anything they seemed further apart and she seemed more guarded and wary of him. And she didn't tell me they'd got back together, so I didn't actually realise it had happened until Flynn told me. And then I asked Skyler and she just said, 'Yeah, he's moved back in,' and then changed the subject and wouldn't say anything more about it. And then not long after that the screaming in her office thing happened."
"Did anything else happen that made you think something was really wrong?"
"Yeah. Oh yeah, there was one thing in particular that made it crystal clear how distressed she was. And how desperate."
"Tell us about it."
"Yeah, so I tried to talk to her a few times after the yelling in the office incident, but she wouldn't say anything, and that particular thing didn't happen again. So then it was just in the background for a couple of weeks until Walt's birthday. And on his birthday that year we all had dinner on the patio furniture outside: me and Hank and Walt and Skyler and Flynn. Skyler took Holly to bed early, and Flynn left at about 8 to go to a friend's house. Skyler had been pretty quiet for most of the night - I had noticed that and I'd been watching her. She responded when Flynn said he was leaving and she spoke to him, and that was about the only thing she said for at least an hour. Then right after Flynn left, Walt started talking about his cancer; he was talking about how it'd been a year since he was diagnosed because he'd been diagnosed the day after his birthday the previous year. And he was talking, just rambling really, about how far he had come and thanking Skyler for helping him and he was just going on and on about it for a few minutes, and Skyler wasn't even at the table anymore. She'd got up right at the start of his speech and started wandering around by the pool. She had her back to us, and I was trying to figure out what she was doing - I was watching her but listening to Walt, who didn't seem to even notice that she'd gotten up from the table or that she was withdrawn or that anything could be wrong with her at all. And he just kept talking. Then Skyler started dipping her foot into the pool. And I thought the water must be freezing, so I said that to her, I said isn't that cold, and then the next second she dived all the way into the pool. And when I say all the way in, I don't mean she'd just gone swimming, I mean she had dived right to the bottom. One moment she was standing out of the pool and the next she was gone, I couldn't even see her, and I jumped to my feet and then I could see her way down the bottom, not moving at all. She was just like a rock on the bottom. Her skirt was kind of floating around her but her body didn't seem to be moving at all."
"She was fully clothed?"
"Yeah."
"And she hadn't given any indication that she wanted to go swimming, or…?"
"No, she was just wandering around, withdrawn from our conversation, and she was standing at the edge of the pool, and she suddenly jumped all the way in. And my heart was in my throat - it was the most harrowing thing I had ever seen at that point - and I was just screaming, is she gonna come up, Skyler, come up! … and she wasn't."
"She wasn't coming up?"
"No. She wasn't even moving!"
"So what happened?"
"Yeah well, this is really harrowing too, because Walt jumped in there to pull her out, because it became obvious that she wasn't gonna come up on her own. So he jumped in, and she was just fighting him. He pulled her to the surface, and she was screaming and writhing and just trying to get away from him as much as she could. And he was just grabbing her, he wouldn't let her go. She was at the surface at that point, she was kicking and breathing - he didn't need to save her life anymore, but he still had his arms around her and he wouldn't let her go - she was flailing her arms out and he was grabbing them and pulling them back in. And he pulled her down to the shallow end to the steps, and at that point I found my voice and yelled at him to let her go. And I did have to yell before he would hear me and listen. So then he let her go and I put my arm around her and walked her around to the bedroom - there was a patio door on the bedroom which wasn't far from the pool. So we went in there and I got her out of her wet clothes and things and she just… For at least ten minutes, she didn't say a word. She wasn't completely frozen; she was responding to my touch, like when I was pulling her out of her wet clothes she would move her arms and whatever so I could get them off, but her face was kind of frozen with this harrowing vacant expression."
Marie stopped. Her eyes closed and her hand went over her mouth.
"Had you known her to do anything like that before?"
"No." Marie shook her head.
"Did she have any history of mental illness?"
"No. Not then. She definitely has a mental illness now, but she refuses to get therapy so I don't know what it is. When she was yelling in the office, which was a couple weeks before that, that was the first time I saw it. But since then, plenty of times, all because of Walt and what he did."
"So getting back to that particular night. You helped Skyler out of her wet clothes. Then what happened?"
"I was trying to ask her what was wrong, and she wasn't saying. But she said that she was having trouble with Walt and I said, 'Yes, I can see that.' And she said that they needed time alone to work on their marriage, and she asked me if Hank and I would take the kids for a little while. I was surprised - that was the last thing I was expecting her to say. I know how much she dotes on the kids and I didn't think she would be happy to not have them in her house, but she was seriously asking me for that and she had this look of… despair. And I couldn't say no to that. So Hank and I took the kids for three months. What we didn't know was that actually the reason she wanted them out of the house was that their father was a methamphetamine kingpin and she didn't think it was safe for them. She didn't think she was safe either, but she was willing to sacrifice herself for the kids."
"What happened after that?"
"We had the kids for three months. Skyler and Walt would visit them separately. When Skyler came I would ask her how she was and how things were going with Walt, and she wouldn't really answer. She'd say that they were still working on it or she didn't want to talk about it, or…"
"How well did you know Walt?"
"He was my brother-in-law for 18 years, so... pretty well."
"How would you describe him?"
"Incredibly intelligent. Quite withdrawn. Very proud. Uncompromising. If he put his foot down on something, that was it, he wouldn't be moved. And he was very very manipulative, and that was something that wasn't always noticeable because he was so good at it you didn't realise he was doing it to you. But it was just as a way of getting his own way. He had the intelligence to be able to read exactly how the other person thought and what they wanted and what would motivate them, so in order to get them to do what he wanted them to do he could figure out exactly what to say, and they would be putty in his hands."
"And how much do you think he was manipulating Skyler?"
"Oh." Marie sighed. "Skyler destroyed herself for him. He made her give up every principle she had ever had. I know that she didn't want to do it because of how she was during it and how she is now. During it, she was incredibly stressed, she was frightened, she didn't seem able to talk. She was closed off and withdrawn, which is not like her at all. Now, and for the last 18 months since Hank died and it all came out, she is a shell of what she used to be. She blames herself for everything that happened, the way she interacts with me has changed completely - she used to be kind of sassy, independent, chatty, and she used to argue with me. You've probably noticed that I'm fairly, you know, talkative myself, and she used to tell me to shut up, and argue with me and we'd fight and then make up and whatever. Now, she barely says anything at all. She will talk about the children and that's about it. She's withdrawn, she's depressed, she never smiles. She is a shell of what she used to be. And it's because all Walt's shit blew up and my husband died because of it and she found out after about all the people that Walt had killed and all the other horrible things he did that she didn't even know about. And she blames herself even though none of that was her fault.
"So that's how I know that she didn't want to do it, because of her conscience. She never got anything out of it. While it was happening she was afraid, and now she's devastated and wracked with guilt. She won't stop apologising to me, and… she hates herself. She told me that. She hates herself. And she used to be confident, energetic, happy, motivated, positive… and he rubbed it out of her."
...
Flynn found the book his tutor had recommended on the history of computer programming and marvelled that a book about such a very specific thing existed. He took it to a small sofa next to the study tables and sat down. Looking from left to right, he sneakily put his feet up on the coffee table in front of the sofa and leaned back. The table was covered in newspapers and magazines for the students' perusal. His foot accidentally dislodged a stack of them, and he quickly leaned forward again and picked them all up with an embarrassed look on his face. He picked up his book again, and then his eye fell on that day's edition of the Albuquerque Journal, which was sitting on the table. "WHITES BLACKMAILED BROTHER-IN-LAW," the headline said. Flynn frowned.
...
"No further questions, Your Honour," said Kim, and she turned away from Marie and began to move back towards her seat.
"Oh, wait," said Marie. "Don't you want to ask me if I blame Skyler for Hank's death?"
Kim turned and looked at her.
"It's just that I was cut off yesterday when I was asked that. I wanna go on the record and say that I don't."
Kim smiled. "Mrs Schrader, I didn't ask you that because it is not remotely relevant. All the crimes that my client's husband either committed directly or influenced, and all the hurt that he caused to others, are not relevant to this trial. The defendant is on trial for one thing, money laundering. She did that under coercion from him, so what he did to her is very relevant, but what he did to others, not at all. She's not on trial for what he did. She did not control what he did. And any time the Prosecution makes loaded comments or leading questions implying that my client is to blame for anything Walter White did, I will object, because I do not believe it is acceptable to lay blame on her for his actions solely because she is still alive and he is not, and -"
"Objection!" Prosecutor Martin stood. "Opinion!"
"Sustained," said the judge.
Kim smiled. "Sorry. No further questions, Your Honour."
"Prosecutor Martin, do you have any further questions for the witness?" asked the judge.
"I do, Your Honour." Prosecutor Martin stood up. "Mrs Schrader, you described two instances in which your sister appeared to lose control of herself, of her wits, once when she started yelling at you in her office at the car wash where she was laundering money, and once when she suddenly leapt to the bottom of her backyard pool fully clothed."
"Yes."
"Did she receive any psychological treatment after either of these incidents?"
"Walt told me that she did, but he was lying."
"She didn't?"
"No."
"Did she seem sane afterwards?"
"Sane? Yes. She was not alright, but she was lucid."
"Did you ever consider that she might have been putting on an act?"
"No! Why would she do that?"
"Well you say that your brother-in-law was very good at manipulating people, but clearly your sister is too; you stated yesterday that she had kept the truth about hers and her husband's criminal activity from you for more than a year, and that she had constructed in intricate detail a story about gambling which you believed."
"How is that related to her jumping into the pool?"
"I'm implying that she's also skilled in manipulation."
"Look, I know my sister, ok? I know when she's not alright and I know when she's not in control. Sometimes she's pretending she's in control, I can't always pick that; in fact when she was doing the money laundering she was even pretending to herself that she was in control when she wasn't. But when she loses it, she loses it. She always tries to stay in control for as long as she can, but then sometimes she loses it, and that night, it was particularly the way she screamed that really shook me up, when Walt was pulling her out of the pool? She was just trying to get away from him, and he wouldn't let her. That was raw and it was real."
"But she was completely fine the next day."
"No, she wasn't. She had regained control, she wasn't screaming the next time I saw her, but I could tell from her eyes that she was not fine."
"Did you believe her when she told you about the gambling?"
"That is not remotely the same thing. It was a good lie she told about the gambling, ok, Skyler can tell a good lie. But she was not ok then either. She'd just broken up with her husband and she wouldn't tell me why. She was clearly very upset about it, but she wouldn't discuss it and she hid all of her feelings from me. When she explained about the gambling, it made sense as a reason for that, as a reason for why she'd been so upset and hadn't been able to discuss it. Her emotional state was real, the gambling was just a way to explain it."
"How did you feel when you found out that your sister was a liar?"
"Objection!" Kim stood. "That wasn't covered in the cross-examination."
"No it wasn't - sustained," said the judge.
...
ASAC Hoffman powered along the corridor, looking left and right. He found the room marked 'Prosecution Counsel' and charged through the door as if it wasn't there. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded.
Prosecutor Martin, who was sitting on a leather sofa having an intense discussion with Prosecutor Viney, turned.
"You just let them walk all over you!"
"Them?"
"Marie Schrader! She was supposed to be a Prosecution witness!"
"Well with respect, calling the defendant's sister as a Prosecution witness was not my idea."
"It wasn't mine."
"No, it was your boss's. And John here kept insisting that if we didn't call her as a Prosecution witness she would be called as a Defence witness, which would mean that we would only get to question her once, not twice, and would be, in his words, 'on the back foot'. However, what ended up happening was, while I opened as strongly as I could in the first examination, the cross-examination unsurprisingly asked her things that were only beneficial to the defendant and didn't even involve the law at all."
"Yeah exactly, she was just crapping on about the defendant's mental health - that is nothing to do with the law, why didn't you object?"
"A trial is not only about the law. A trial explores all things to do with a defendant's state of mind and why they committed the crime. There was nothing in the cross-examination I could object to, and while there were many things I would've loved to have said to enhance my 'she was only manipulating you' argument, I am not allowed to mention anything in the re-examination that was not covered in the cross-examination, so because the Counsel for the Defence deliberately covered almost nothing in the cross-examination, I had nothing to finish on!"
"Look, it's alright," said Viney. "It's still early days. We've got some key witnesses coming up. Wolynetz? He wants blood. And no-one can argue with the IRS. And I know Patrick Kuby is no angel, but what he's got to say is -"
"We shouldn't have called her for the Prosecution." Martin shook his head.
"Then she would've been called for the Defence," said Hoffman.
"Yeah, and then I would've got to pick her apart because I would've been in charge of the cross-examination! Then I also," he lowered his voice, "could have brought up her own criminal record. I could have taken her apart! I couldn't do that during a prosecution!"
"You couldn't have done it in the re-examination?"
"No! The re-examination can only cover things that were brought up during the cross-examination!"
"Why didn't you explain that better to us? When we were deciding to call her?"
"I recommended against it."
"But you didn't explain why!"
"And you can see why now? Well bully for me."
"Ok guys, just calm down," said Viney. "Who are we gonna do after lunch, who is going to do the most damage for the jury to mull over throughout the weekend?"
"Wolynetz."
"No, Wolynetz knows barely anything. Being angry doesn't make you more powerful or more persuasive."
"The IRS guy?"
"No, that's gonna take a whole day. We want a quick afternoon value-for-money witness. Someone who can blow Marie Schrader out of the water."
"Well of the three you mentioned earlier, there's only one left."
"Yeah."
"Kuby? Seriously?"
"You're right that I didn't get to ram home my point about the defendant being manipulative in the re-examination. That's not my fault, because I wasn't given anything to work with. But I can still ram home that point with Kuby. And you know what's even better about him? He didn't deal with Walter at all. It was all her. That's what I want on the jurors' minds all weekend."
...
Marie walked through the public gallery door, and looked around. The lawyers and paralegals were looking at their notes and talking to each other quietly. Skyler was sitting silently in the dock, her back hunched over and her arms on her knees. Marie realised she hadn't seen her sit up once so far.
Marie excused herself and pushed past a couple of other people to sit at the end of a row. She had a good view of Skyler. She was looking at her hands, her fingers were moving, and to Marie it looked like she was wringing them.
Judge Stephens entered, and everyone stood. She sat, and everyone sat except the Prosecutor. "The next witness I would like to call, Your Honour, is Patrick Kuby."
It took a couple of minutes for this new witness to appear, during which time Marie racked her brain to try and figure out who he was, and didn't have any luck whatsoever. When he appeared, she peered at him with great curiosity. He didn't look familiar at all. She looked at her sister. She seemed to know him. She was staring at him with wide eyes. Marie thought she saw fear.
"I swear that the testimony I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God," said the witness.
He's well spoken, thought Marie, regarding him with interest.
"Please state your full name for the record," said Prosecutor Martin.
"Patrick Brian Kuby."
"Mr Kuby, is the woman sitting there," he gestured towards Skyler, "known to you personally?"
"Yes."
"Do you know her well?"
"No, I did a job for her just one time."
Skyler let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Ted really must have kept quiet, she thought.
"How did she come to hire you for this job?"
"It came through Saul Goodman. I used to do a few odd jobs for him and for clients of his. He told me he had a client who needed someone to pretend to be from the Environmental Protection Agency, in order to convince a man the EPA were going to shut his business down."
"And why did the defendant want you to do that?"
"Because she wanted to buy the business."
"What was the name of this business?"
"A1A Car Wash."
"Did the defendant tell you about her plan to convince the business owner the EPA would shut him down, or did it come through Goodman?"
"Well Goodman asked me if I was willing to impersonate someone from the EPA - he said the job would pay $2,000 for about 2 hours' work. Turned out it was only one." He smiled. "Well, maybe an hour and a half including our meeting beforehand."
"Was that meeting with the defendant?"
"Yeah. Her and Goodman. Goodman phoned me first to ask if I would do it, I said yes, he called me down to his office and introduced me to Mrs White."
"And what did she say to you exactly?"
"The explanation of the job was kind of a tag team between her and Goodman; he likes to explain things in a dramatic fashion, to put elaboration on things, and she kept cutting him off so that she could give me a more detailed explanation."
"So which of them was running this meeting?"
"Well they were both trying to, but she was winning it hands down. She was the one who understood everything and had the whole thing planned out. She brought a whole bunch of binders and books with her which contained all the relevant environmental legislation, I mean both state and federal - she was really thorough about it. So she pointed out to me which ones she wanted me to cover, and I said, 'I'm never gonna remember that,' and she said, 'Don't worry, I'll tell you.' She gave me one of those little Bluetooth ear pieces you can use for your cell phone. She told me I had to wear that, and that she would be talking into my ear, telling me what to say to the car wash guy."
"Can you describe the binders that she showed you? Did they look like something she had prepared herself?"
"Yeah, it looked like it. There were two or three binders and a notebook. The binders had a bunch of printed pages in them, which were the legislation, but there were also handwritten notes, sometimes on separate paper and sometimes written right there onto the legislation pages. And a lot of those little post-it note markers, the page markers. They were all through it. And through the books as well, all over the place."
"Do you recall the names of any of the pieces of legislation that were in there?"
"No, I'm not sure. They were all to do with environmental protection, though. She did make me read some of them, but this was like two and a half years ago, so I don't remember what they were called."
"Tell the court what the defendant instructed you to do exactly."
"In our meeting, Goodman gave me some little glass vials and showed me a plan of the site of the car wash. Mrs White pointed out four different places I should go to with the car wash owner to take samples of his wastewater. Then she gave me this white powder in a little bag, like a little zip-lock bag. It kinda looked like drugs, but it wasn't. She said I had to take the samples, then put the powder into them, close off the lids on the little vials and shake them around a bit in front of the man from the car wash. Goodman said that it would turn red, Mrs White said brown, and they kind of argued about that for a bit. Then Goodman said that it didn't matter what colour it turned, as long as I convinced the car wash guy that the colour was bad. And that it meant that his car wash was putting too many chemicals into the environment."
"So you were instructed to demonstrate this to the owner of A1A Car Wash by taking samples from his outlets, mixing an unknown powder into them and telling him that the resultant colour proved that his car wash was not meeting the environmental regulations."
"Correct. And then I had to tell him that he would have to install a whole new cleaning system to clean up his site so it wasn't polluting. And when I told him that, he already knew how much that would cost. Like, he'd already looked into it. Goodman probably sent him a fake letter from the EPA, probably a little while before that. When I got there, it wasn't a surprise to the guy - he was expecting me."
"And how did your car wash inspection go?"
"Well, I did exactly what Mrs White said. I went with the car wash owner all around the site and took different samples, mixed them up in the vials with the powder so they turned reddy brown. I told him what the EPA expected and that his filtration system wasn't up to the task. I told him it looked like his chemicals were leaching into the ground water, and that he would have to close down his business until the issue could be rectified."
"And what was the defendant doing at this point?"
"She was on the phone in my ear. She was listening to everything and sometimes telling me things I should add in. And anytime I needed to quote legislation, she read it out to me and I copied what she said."
"She read environmental legislation into your ear?"
"Yeah."
"So how would you say that the meeting with the car wash owner Mr Wolynetz went?"
"I'd say it went exactly according to Mrs White's plan."
"What happened afterwards?"
"She thanked me and took the phone earpiece and the vials back. Goodman paid me. Then that was it, I was done."
"Thank you. No further questions, Your Honour."
Kim stood up. "Mr Kuby, what's your day job?"
"My day job? I do a bit of this and that, security work and a bit of pick-up and delivery, and..."
"Who for?"
"A few different people and companies. I'm kind of a man for hire."
"Pick-up and delivery rings a bell. You were charged with picking up and delivering seven 55-gallon barrels of illicit cash for Walter White, is that correct?"
"Yeah. What can I say, I've done jobs for the whole family!"
"Your criminal record also includes three counts of misrepresentation and five counts of obtaining money by deception."
"Yep."
"You're a con man."
"Con man for hire." He pointed it Skyler. "She needed a con man to do a job to con Mr Wolynetz into selling his car wash to her."
"I have your criminal record in front of me. You did two years in Los Lunas for conning a banker into investing in a farcical start-up scheme, leading to the collapse of the bank and loss of the life savings of thousands of customers. And you did one year for conning an elderly woman into changing her will."
"Yeah well her grandson paid me to do that, so."
"The woman then died in suspicious circumstances."
"Hey that was nothing to do with me. I didn't know he was gonna do that. I would've done a lot more than one year if that had anything to do with me."
"You did one year because you cut a deal with the Prosecution to turn the woman's grandson in."
"Objection!" said Prosecutor Martin.
"Hey, where'd you get that from, that's not on public record!"
"Objection sustained," said the judge.
"Yeah, sustained!" said Kuby. "You can't accuse me of that, it could put me in danger! I have no idea what you're talking about - you're just trying to use smoke and mirrors to discount my evidence!"
"You have recently completed nine months in jail for moving Walter White's cash and aiding and abetting in his methamphetamine enterprise and his escape from the law."
"Hey, I didn't do nearly as much with the money as she did."
"I'm merely pointing out that you only served nine months for it. For aiding and abetting the escape from justice of Walter H. White. But if you don't give evidence here today, or if you say the wrong thing, you're right back inside, aren't you?"
"I'm on probation."
"I'm just pointing out that you're a con man, you're not remotely trustworthy and you have been given a reduced sentence for saying what you've said against Mrs White today. You will say anything to ensure that you, or the person or organisation who has incentivised you, will get what they want."
Kuby shrugged, and smiled.