False Witness (32 page)

“I loved you, Bobby. I’ll probably have a hard time learning not to love you. It’s because of that I’ll still give you the option of resigning by nine Monday morning. Then, I will immediately get a dismissal of the charges against David Cohen. I will prepare the case against McDonald. Your name will not come into this in any way. Otherwise, Bobby, I will nail you to the wall publicly, professionally and personally.”

He looked frozen and he straggled to keep his voice under control. It was as terrible as a whispered threat in the dark of night. “It’s going to be your head, Lynne. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I have more of the killer instinct than you can even begin to imagine.”

“That’s good, Bobby. You’re going to need every ounce of killer force you can get. Because you’re going to have a tough time hacking it in prison. Your ass is just too damn cute. They’ll fight over you inside the big gray walls, my beautiful Bobby. They won’t offer you deals or grace periods. They’ll just wreck you right down to your toes. It makes me very sad to think about that. Such a loss; such a waste.
Now get the hell out of my life, Bobby Jones.”

I
WAS IN MY
office at my desk on Monday morning, waiting for Bobby Jones. I did not know until later about his arrangement with Glori Nichols, about what they had worked out and decided on and set in motion for that Monday morning. I did not know that he had contacted Jim McDonald’s probation officer and arranged for McDonald to be picked up and brought for arraignment into Manhattan Criminal Court at exactly 9:30
A.M.
on Monday.

The timing was important. A media event requires careful attention to split-second planning. I did not know that Bobby Jones had persuaded Sanderalee Dawson to accompany him to Criminal Court that morning for a face-to-face identification of Jim McDonald as he was being arraigned for parole violation.

Normally, a prisoner is taken from the precinct where he is booked to the back entrance—the prisoner’s entrance—to the Criminal Court building. But not this time. Glori Nichols had vetoed that. She wanted the confrontation to be “accidental,” in an outdoor setting so that she’d be free to catch Sanderalee’s immediate reaction upon seeing the man who had ruined her life and caused damage to so many others.

Two detectives, following their instructions without question, escorted Jim McDonald from their unmarked car up to the front steps of the Criminal Court building.

It was a cold damp gray morning, wet and windy. Sanderalee was bundled deep into her high-collared coat, her scarf wrapped around her face, her dark glasses completing the coverup. She went unnoticed by passersby as Bobby walked along beside her, carefully timing their movements.

I was not there. I learned most of the details later, after the event. I was at my desk, waiting for Bobby Jones. My hand knocked over the container and the remainder of my lukewarm coffee spread in a stain on the desk blotter when I first heard shouting outside my office.

I vaguely remember, as you remember parts of a dream, running down the stairs and shoving and pushing my way through the revolving door, shouldering people aside, coming upon the scene. I remember hearing noises, excited, frightened, shocked voices, cries of pain, fear. Above all else, I remember hearing Glori Nichols’ voice, sharp, alert, excited yet totally controlled. She was directing her crew: instructing them to close in on the scene, focus a tight shot, follow the action precisely.

They did a good job, Glori Nichols and her crew. I was able to put it all together, in sequence, later that night on the six o’clock and again on the eleven o’clock news.

It started with a good clear shot of Bobby Jones emerging from his car, crossing around to the passenger’s side. He leaned over and helped a mysterious woman emerge, bundled against the cold, her face hidden. The camera work was terrific: surreptitious, unsuspected, undetected, clear and sharp.

The voice-over—Glori Nichols’ voice—told us what we already knew. “Chief Investigator Bobby Jones helps Sanderalee Dawson from the car. This is the first time she’s been out in public since the attack on her. They start to walk toward the Criminal Court building. They stop. He says something to her. As he talks, he seems to be adjusting the collar of her coat, reassuring her. He lightly touches her left arm; the sling is hidden by her coat. He is glancing around; she seems reluctant and he seems to be reassuring her and ...”

“Now!
Watch the three men just off to the right, who’ve gotten out of that car. They are coming up the steps toward Jones and Sanderalee. Keep your eyes on them. They pass close by; Sanderalee pulls away from Jones and she calls out something. The three men stop and turn.
There. That’s him.
That’s McDonald, the man in the middle, between the two detectives. Now, watch closely, this happens very quickly, watch Sanderalee’s right hand, going into the pocket of her coat and ...”

Sanderalee Dawson moved so quickly it was hard to follow her action without the helpful voice-over. And it was shown in instant replay and in slowed-down time so that we would miss nothing. Sanderalee’s right hand comes from her coat pocket, she moves quickly into the group of three men. You hear the muffled shots: one—two—then see the scuffle. McDonald falls, pulling the detective to whom he’s handcuffed down with him. Again, there, focus in close, slow down, two shots, McDonald falls, slowly, slowly, catch the surprised anguish on his face.

Bobby Jones struggles with Sanderalee. They seem almost to be embracing.

The last shot is hardly heard but we see the effect of a body-contact shot; a small-caliber bullet enters Bobby Jones, his hands fly up and press hard against his chest, holding the wound, seemingly trying to stanch the sudden flow of blood that we see spurting between his fingers.

Almost before Bobby Jones falls, the other detective with McDonald has a grip on Sanderalee’s wrist, has disarmed her, is holding her. She isn’t struggling. She’s just standing there, immobile, silent as a statue. The scarf drifts away from her face and the cameraman goes for an extreme closeup.

This part of the narrative was added at the studio: it is carefully enunciated. Glori Nichols’ voice is solemn, her words awesome. “There she is, Sanderalee Dawson, there she is as he has made her, this man, this McDonald, who lies, now, dead at her feet. No more hiding. She doesn’t even seem to care. She’s unaware of the camera or the policeman holding her. She seems lost, gone, unconcerned, unaware of what is happening all around her.”

The ambulance arrives and now the camera has caught me: I am kneeling beside Bobby Jones, I am holding his head against my body trying to protect him from the camera, from Glori Nichols’ insistent narration, from the ambulance attendants who decide to let me get into the ambulance with him, to let me kneel beside him, to hold him, to hold on to him. Glori Nichols’ last shot was of Sanderalee Dawson entering the ambulance; doors slam closed; ambulance pulls away, siren howling.

Bobby lay motionless on the stretcher and I put one hand over his, felt the warm blood from the center of his body, helped him apply pressure, helped him hold himself together. I put my face against his cheek, felt his breath, warm, felt the coolness of the morning on his lips, felt a gentle pressure returning my kiss, traced the slight smile from the corners of his mouth, my mouth tasting his, familiar taste. I touched his golden hair with my fingertips and then I whispered into his ear.

“Bobby, Bobby. Oh God, you dope. You goddamn dummy, why did you set this up? Why did you let this happen to you? This never should have happened. Don’t you know we could have worked it out? Oh, damn you, Bobby, I never would have done any of those things I said Saturday, you know I wouldn’t have, oh God, Bobby.”

He said something softly; it sounded like my name. His eyes were filled with pain; he blinked as though surprised to find himself on this stretcher with me holding him.

Sanderalee began to moan. It was the long drawn-out cry of an injured and frightened animal. I pressed my face close to Bobby to protect him from the sound of her anguish. I felt him shudder in reaction to her terrible cries. I covered his face with mine. I heard him whisper something. I told him it would be all right, that it would all work out. I told him that nothing was important, none of it.

“I love you Bobby, oh God Bobby I love you so much that’s all that matters and I won’t even be mad at you later on when you can defend yourself. Yes, I will be mad at you I am mad at you I am furious with you. You should not have let this happen to you but it’ll all be okay, we’ll work it all out together it’ll be okay Bobby. Just know I love you and we’ll be fine both of us we’ll be okay.”

When we arrived at the hospital there was so much commotion. So many people. Camera crews: how had they gotten there so fast? Voices. Attendants, doctors, people who were taking over. A sharp voice, commanding, in charge.

“Take the girl, damn it, hold her down on the stretcher. Get her to Emergency. No, take her first.
The guy will wait. He’s DOA.”

Somewhere, during the ride to the hospital, I had lost him.

Somewhere, at some point, he had died and I hadn’t even realized it.

I
DID FOR HIM
in death what I would not do for him in life: I lied. I changed the sequence of events. I gave him full credit for the investigation that led to Jim McDonald and told Jameson that Bobby had come to me immediately after he had taken the statement from Sanderalee Dawson. As the sign-in sheet showed, he had been in and out visiting with her; talking with her; getting a strong feeling that she wanted to retract her accusation against Dr. David Cohen. She kept referring to the man she had known previously and when Bobby Jones presented her with the results of his investigation, with all the material he had been collecting, she gave him the statement he had immediately brought to me Saturday night, and she agreed to a face-to-face identification of Jim McDonald.

No one would refute my statement. Alan Greco was in Europe on assignment; Bobby Jones was dead; Glori Nichols contacted me and asked for exclusive coverage of the funeral and followup. I asked her if she understood the words “collusion” and “obstruction.” She changed her mind about any further conversation with me and wished me good luck. Sanderalee Dawson was lost in another world that the psychiatrists at Bellevue had thirty days to penetrate before they shipped her away as criminally insane, a double murder to her credit.

Jameson arranged for a special session with the Grand Jury and I got the dismissal of all charges against Dr. David Cohen. David Cohen wisely refused any public comment; his attorney spoke for him in terms ominous to the City of New York.

The remaining questions were easily answered. Sanderalee Dawson had gotten the .22-caliber revolver from one of her early visiting PLO friends and had kept it concealed among her nightgowns. It was small and unobtrusive besides being deadly at close range. The Public Relations people were going at the situation around the clock: preparing announcements along the same lines that both Lucy Capella and Bobby Jones had suggested. We would turn it into a public revelation of how the District Attorney’s office worked for protection of the innocent as well as for apprehension and conviction of the guilty.

Bobby’s father and brother flew in from Lincoln, Nebraska, as soon as his body was released by the coroner and they took him home Wednesday night.

On Thursday night, Jameson Whitney Hale and I, along with four others from the Squad, flew into Lincoln, Nebraska, spent the night at their best hotel and the morning at Bobby’s funeral. We then returned to spend a respectable amount of time with his family.

There was something of him in all of his family: his mother’s clear, bright blue eyes, his father’s square jaw, his brother’s bright yellow hair, his sister’s fair pale skin. And all the family children looked like him: little Bobby-Jones-Americans. You could almost see his life story in stages, just by looking at the various relatives.

There had been a lot of flowers and I heard his mother tell someone, a niece I think, that it would be so nice if she’d collect all the flowers later, and see they were delivered to the children’s ward at the hospital: remove the cards first, of course, so we’ll know whom to thank. Weren’t they kind, weren’t they thoughtful, all his friends and colleagues from New York.

It was strange to hear him called Michael. His parents and members of his family called him Michael, but all of his old school friends, his pals, called him Bobby and his father told us not to worry about that. He was Bobby and he was Michael. He was buried next to his Bobby grandparents.

There had been no special glance, no special knowledge shared, with anyone in his family: I was Michael Bobby’s boss. His uncle, a State Attorney General, went out of his way to speak with me about my job, about Michael’s job, about the role of women in law enforcement. We were two professionals comparing notes about crime in a changing world. Both Jameson and I told him how well his nephew had performed; what an incredibly fine job his last investigation had been. He was very pleased and told us he’d tell Michael’s parents all about it when the right time came.

Flying home, I sat next to Jameson Whitney Hale. He surprised all of us by picking up the entire tab for our flight and the hotel. I didn’t know if this was from his personal funds or from petty cash. He and I were in first class, the others flew tourist.

Jameson told me that he thought my plan was a good one: I was going to fly down to Eleuthera for about five or six days. He agreed that I was very lucky to have such good friends. Harley and Jhavi had owned their villa—a neat six-room house by the sea—for a couple of years. I’d been there briefly, twice. I knew some people down there, so I wouldn’t be lonely, should I want company. Or intruded upon if I wanted to be alone.

“Take a little time, a little distance before you make any decisions, Lynne. Before we work out what the future should be. There’s no rush, no hurry. I’ll be working things out, getting a handle on our best approach and when you come back, rested a little and with a nice suntan, we’ll talk.”