Chapter 8: The Trial That Richard Thought He Could Win
Four months later, Richard Vance sat across a courtroom from me and still believed he was the smartest person in the room.
I could see it in the way he held his shoulders — straight, controlled, the posture of a man performing composure rather than feeling it.
His attorney, a silver-haired man named Forsythe, had built the defense around three arguments: the transfer arrangement was a private family matter, no child had actually been moved, and Richard had been acting in what he believed were the best interests of his family.
Forsythe made those arguments sound almost reasonable.
That was his gift.
The prosecution made them sound like what they were.
I sat in the gallery on the third day of testimony, the day Dr.
Harlan Voss took the stand.
He was smaller in person than I'd imagined.
Slight, with careful hands that he kept folded on the railing in front of him.
He answered every question in a flat, precise voice, the voice of a man who had decided that cooperation was the only card he had left to play.
"Dr.
Voss," the prosecutor said, "can you describe the nature of your arrangement with Richard Vance?"
"He contacted me through an intermediary in my third year of practice.
He had a client — a family — who wanted a private infant placement.
Discreet.
Outside the standard adoption framework."
"And what did that mean, in practice?"
"It meant the birth mother would not be informed until after delivery.
In some cases, not at all.
The consent documentation would be — handled separately."
"Handled separately meaning forged."
Voss didn't blink.
"Yes."
A sound moved through the gallery.
Not loud.
Just a collective shift, the sound of people absorbing something they already knew but needed to hear said plainly.
"In the case of Maya Vance," the prosecutor continued, "what was the arrangement?"
"One infant from a confirmed multiple birth.
Payment of eighty thousand dollars, transferred before delivery to confirm commitment.
The infant was to be transferred within seventy-two hours of birth to a receiving family in Geneva.
I had made the travel arrangements."
"And the receiving family — C.M.
— had they been told the nature of the arrangement?
That the birth mother had not consented?"
Voss paused for the first time.
"They were told it was a private adoption.
Expedited."
"Were they told it was not legal?"
Another pause.
"I don't know what they were told directly.
I handled the medical coordination.
The legal framing was Richard Vance's responsibility."
Forsythe was on his feet.
"Objection.
Speculation."
"Sustained." The judge made a note.
But it was already in the room.
Richard's expression hadn't changed.
He was still sitting straight, still composed, still performing the role of a man being wrongly accused.
I watched him the way you watch something that has already lost and doesn't know it yet.
On the fourth day, Grace took the stand.
She walked the court through two years of documentation — the wire transfers, the communications with Voss, the forged consent form with my name printed above a blank signature line, the trust amendments that had quietly removed Daniel as heir, the psychiatric records Richard had fabricated in preparation for a legal challenge I might have mounted.
When Forsythe cross-examined her, he tried three separate angles.
She answered each one with a document.
He sat down before he'd planned to.
On the fifth day, Forsythe made his last real attempt.
During a recess, Richard was brought to a small consultation room.
I know what happened there because Daniel told me afterward, and Daniel had been asked to wait in the adjacent room and the wall was thin.
Richard told Forsythe to offer me a deal.
Full financial settlement — the Vance estate, the trust, the properties — in exchange for my testimony being withdrawn and a statement issued that the incident had been a misunderstanding born of family stress.
Forsythe pointed out, carefully, that witness testimony in a criminal trial could not be withdrawn by the witness's choice alone, that the prosecution would continue regardless, and that the offer would likely be seen as an attempt to tamper.
Richard told him to make the offer anyway.
Forsythe made the call to Grace instead.
Grace told me about it that evening over coffee in her office.
She set her cup down and looked at me across the desk.
"He still thinks this is a negotiation," she said.
"He's always thought everything was a negotiation."
"What do you want me to tell him?"
I thought about the blank signature line.
The date three days before my due date.
The word *worth* in Richard's mouth when he talked about my son.
"Tell him no," I said.
"Tell him I'll see him in court tomorrow."
She picked her cup back up.
"Good."
The verdict came on a Thursday afternoon.
Guilty on three counts — conspiracy to commit fraud, falsification of legal documents, and one count under the federal child trafficking statute, the charge that Forsythe had fought hardest to have dismissed and failed.
Richard stood when the verdict was read.
He stood very straight, the way he always stood.
And then the composure finally cracked — not into tears, not into rage, but into something smaller and more honest.
His mouth opened slightly.
His eyes moved around the room — to Forsythe, to the jury, to the judge — looking for the exit that wasn't there.
May you like
He looked at me last.
I didn't look away.
