Fatal Conceit (51 page)

Karp led her through the events in Orvin. “I was scared to death,” Blair testified. “I didn't know where to go. But then for some reason an email Sam sent me while I was in the shower popped into my head. It was a line from
The Last of the Mohicans
: ‘No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.' And the numbers, 121078, which is my birthday. That's when I knew he sent it for a reason, and I had to get to the Loon Lake cabin.” As the jury sat in rapt attention, Blair explained how Allen's safe was hidden behind a false front in the bookcase, and then what she'd found in the safe.

Once again Karp got the sense of leading the jury through the pages of a detective novel in which the things they'd all read earlier were now fitting together, filling out and completing the story. The arrival of Stupenagel and Marlene. The doors being kicked in by Baum and his partner. Digging her own grave and the shoot-out.

“After the events that night at Loon Lake, did you and I talk at some length?” Karp asked.

“Yes, for several hours, and I told you everything I just said,” Blair replied.

“And did I ask you to place a call to Connie Rae Lee and say that you wanted to give someone in authority your laptop so that you would be safe?”

“Yes. She told me I would be met by Lindsey and that he would take care of me.”

Karp walked over to the defense table and pointed. “You're talking about the defendant, Tucker Lindsey, the man sitting here? Had you ever met him before?”

“Yes, that's him. And yes, I met him at the same dinner party where I was introduced to Sam at Fauhomme's house on Long Island.”

When Karp pointed at Lindsey, the defendant had not raised his head but continued writing on a legal pad as if he was not even
in the same room. Shaking his head, Karp turned back to the witness stand, where he continued questioning Blair about the events at the theater until at last he reached the point where he intended to play the recording: the recording of Sam Allen's murder.

Throughout it all, Blair had held up amazingly well. But now she sat with her head down, exhausted and on the edge of more tears. However, she wasn't the only woman in the courtroom who dreaded this moment. Turning toward the gallery, Karp nodded at a gray-haired woman dressed in a dark dress who sat stoically between two grim-faced young men.

He'd talked to Sam Allen's wife, Martha Allen, in his office before the trial and told her some of what he expected would come out during the testimony. “I want you to know so that you're prepared if you are going to attend,” he'd said.

She'd listened to his explanation with grace and dignity before speaking. “When all of this started to come out, I won't say that it didn't hurt,” she told him. “Of course I was aware that Sam and I had grown apart. But it was one of those things where it was just easier to ignore than do anything about it. I loved him very much, and I know that in his way he loved me, too. We had a good life and raised two fine boys to be exceptional young men.”

She was silent for a moment before adding, “You know, I don't blame that young woman or even my husband, though I wish he'd said something sooner. I know Sam, and living a lie had to eat at him, even if he was just waiting for our youngest to get out of high school before he asked for a divorce. He was quite a catch, and she must have been something herself to keep up with him. But she couldn't have seduced him if he wasn't ready to be seduced, so I hope they both found some happiness before . . .”

At that point, she had bowed her head and started to cry quietly. Karp handed her a tissue. “Can I get you something?” he asked.

“No, no, thank you,” she'd replied as she pulled herself together. “It's okay. I'm okay. I really am. I'm a little tired of having the media camped out on my front lawn and reading about how I
let myself go and the tabloid headlines about Sam and the girl . . . Jenna. So the tears come and go, but I have some fine memories and my sons to sustain me.”

“Will you be attending the trial?”

Allen had picked up her head. The tears disappeared and her eyes narrowed into angry slits. “Of course, I'll be there, Mr. Karp,” she said tightly. “I'll be there for Sam and for our sons. I want to hear for myself if those two sons of bitches had anything to do with his death, and if they did, I hope you fry them.”

Martha Allen hadn't missed a day, sitting in the seats reserved for her and her sons in the first row behind the prosecution table. When Jenna Blair was called to the stand, she'd listened intently but without any apparent emotion while ignoring the stares and whispers from the media and spectators in the gallery. There was only one part of the trial that she didn't want to see or hear—the recording from Blair's computer of her husband's murder. So at a signal from Karp, she got up and walked out of the courtroom.

Karp watched her leave and then addressed Judge Hart. “If it please the court, I now intend to play a recording from the witness's laptop computer, People's Exhibit 29,” he said.

Faust jumped to her feet. “I object,” she exclaimed. “This recording is not on the people's evidence list, and we were not given a copy, in violation of the rules of evidence.”

“Mr. Karp, how do you respond?” Hart asked.

Karp sternly replied, “Your Honor, the defense was not given a copy of the recording because they already are in possession of the original.” He turned just in time to watch four sets of jaws at the defense table drop simultaneously.

The judge looked bemused. “Care to explain?”

“Sure, Your Honor,” Karp replied. “Miss Blair's computer was loaded by a computer technician from my office with a GPS tracking device in its software. The device was activated when the laptop was opened at the apartment of Connie Rae Lee approximately one hour after the defendant Lindsey seized it. The computer
remained there for several days and was then transported to Arlington, Virginia, where it was placed in a safe-deposit box registered to the defendant Rod Fauhomme at a branch of the Bank of Virginia. Several months ago, the computer was again moved and currently resides at the law offices of Caulkin, Burrows, and McInish on Fifth Avenue. I believe that the defense has had plenty of time to view what's on the recording.”

“Counsel?” Hart asked, looking over at the defense table.

Faust and Caulkin put their heads together and whispered fervently. “I'll withdraw my objection,” Faust said with a smile. “We were planning on putting the computer and the recording into evidence when we presented our case anyway.”

Although Faust thought she was being cagey, Karp knew what she was up to and why the change of heart. Taken out of context, the webcam conversation between Allen and Blair could be interpreted as Blair having said something at Loon Lake that he wanted to discuss. Such as a blackmail threat. And that she'd known the murder was being recorded and had watched out of some sick desire.

In fact, he'd anticipated this reaction from the defense and was prepared to put it all into context. But more than just the dry facts went into building a case. Jurors in part judge the validity of testimony based on their assessment of a witness's demeanor. It was why Huff's testimony was so powerful—not just his recounting of the events, but his tearful, moving acknowledgment that the men who died trying to save him “deserved better than my silence.” And that was why Karp told Blair that instead of playing the recording of Allen's death before or after she was on the stand, he would play it during, so that the jury could
see
the truth about her relationship with Sam Allen.

Although he knew it had to be tearing her heart out, Blair did her best to watch the recording. She bit her lip when Baum entered the room and patted her unconscious lover's cheek and said, “Sleepy, old man?” And covered her mouth, but not her eyes,
when he took a syringe from a small case he carried in his jacket pocket and then tilted the general's head back and forced his jaws open. A small cry escaped her lips, echoed by others from members of the jury and those in the gallery, as the killer injected the poison. But still she watched as the man she loved was dragged from his chair and disappeared from the camera's view.

Baum moved back into the camera's view and sat down at the computer and typed, and Blair's hand dropped from her mouth. Then, when the killer smiled, not realizing he'd been recorded, and took out his cell phone, punched in a number, and said, “It's done,” her eyes hardened and she stared with hatred at the two defendants, who studiously kept their eyes on the television screen.

When it was over, Karp asked her a few questions before turning her over to the defense. Faust rose, and as he'd predicted, she spent two hours attacking Blair's character and trying to paint a demeaning image of her. She was a whore. A blackmailer. A murderess. She'd concocted her story to fit what the district attorney wanted to hear to escape punishment by pointing at “two innocent men” as the killers.

Karp had intervened with objections when necessary, buying Blair small moments of reprieve from the relentless and remorseless assault. But for the most part he let Faust wear herself out like a boxer who spends too much of his energy in the earlier rounds only to have nothing left at the final bell. And when Faust with a sneer finally was done, there was not a sympathetic face among the jurors for her clients. Only contempt.

Still, Karp left nothing to chance and moved in for the coup de grâce during redirect. But first he nodded to Fulton, who was standing in the back of the courtroom. The big detective stepped out and then returned, escorting Martha Allen, who'd said she wanted to be present during this time.

When she was settled in her seat, Karp turned back to the witness. “Miss Blair, I note you are wearing a diamond ring on your left hand; is that an engagement ring?”

Blair looked down at her hand and nodded. “It was supposed to be.”

“Who bought the ring for you?”

“Sam.”

“Did he give it to you personally?”

The young woman shook her head and wiped at her eyes. “No, he never got the chance.”

Karp left the next question hanging and walked over to the prosecution table, where he picked up a DVD. “Your Honor, this is a second recording made by General Sam Allen at the cabin on Loon Lake, made shortly after the recording already submitted into evidence as People's Exhibit 29.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Faust said.

“Yes, Miss Faust?”

“Just a moment, Your Honor,” Faust said. There was a flurry at the defense table as the two attorneys hurriedly pored over their paperwork and conferred. Then Faust spoke up. “Your Honor, we object to this as improper redirect, and we have no record of a second recording.”

“Mr. Karp?” Hart asked.

“Your Honor, as I said, this recording was made by the deceased as a personal message to Miss Blair, made on the morning of the day he was murdered, while he was still at the cabin,” Karp said. “Beginning with their opening statements, as well as the cross-examination of Miss Stupenagel, Miss Lee, and now Miss Blair, the defense has continually intimated without one scintilla of evidence that Miss Lee, Miss Blair, and Ray Baum were in league to blackmail Sam Allen and then, when that did not work, to murder him. I had not planned on offering this recording except now to correct this false narrative insinuation. Miss Faust has again implied that the conversation between Allen and Miss Blair that was recorded on her laptop is in reference to a blackmail attempt. I would ask that the jury be allowed to view this message from the general to Miss Blair so that the jurors can make up
their own minds as to the state of the relationship between the deceased and this witness.”

Judge Hart shook his head. “Miss Faust, this may be an additional consequence of your inability to adhere to my admonitions and to satisfy the fundamentals of a legal offer of proof required, given the thrust of your defense. I'll allow it; please proceed.”

The recording began with Sam Allen sitting in a chair on the front porch of the Loon Lake cabin. He was dressed in an old army sweatshirt and a beat-up Yankee ballcap. He smiled.

“Hello, my love,” he said. “It's Sunday morning here at Loon Lake. You're still asleep and I wanted to say these things before you wake.”

The general's smile faded and he looked troubled. “If you're watching this, then something has happened to me. Something drastic, because nothing short of that could keep me from you so that I could say these things when we get together after the hearings.”

Allen looked out over the lake and the call of a loon could be heard in the background. He sighed. “It has been my hope that we would have a long and loving life together. That you would get your law degree and hang that shingle in downtown Orvin and leave it to me to watch our children. I have hoped that you would never have to watch this recording, but if it has come to that, then I have some things that need to be said.”

He turned back to the camera, his eyes wet with tears. “First, I'm sorry. I believe in my heart that we were meant to meet, fall in love, and make a life together. However, I went about this the wrong way, and in doing so have disrespected my wife and you. I should have asked for a divorce before I began with you; Martha is a good woman, a fine friend, a great mother, and she deserved better from me. I can only hope that someday she will forgive me. At the same time, I need to apologize to you. I kept asking you to wait for the ‘right time,' after my son got out of high school, then after the congressional hearings, then after my confirmation hearings.”

Allen stopped talking for a moment as he stared steadily at the camera. “But in love, as with many things in life, there is no right time, there is only now. Not only should I have done right by Martha, but I should have asked you to be my wife regardless of these other issues.”