First degree (20 page)

"There have been happier days in defenseland," I say.

He nods and throws a light verbal jab. "Maybe you should let Kevin take over."

"That would help," I counter. "But what we really need is a bozo like you to cross-examine."

We both realize that this banter is halfhearted at best, and he inquires as to how Laurie is doing. He's been a great friend and supporter to her, which she and I will both appreciate pretty much forever. I tell him that she's doing okay and is stronger than I am. Both statements are basically true.

Across the room, having just finished his lunch, is Nick Sabonis. Nick and I haven't talked since he was on the stand, though our paths have crossed on a couple of occasions. My sense is that Nick has not forgiven me for implying that he could possibly be the mysterious lieutenant that Celia Dorsey spoke about.

"I'll be right back," Pete says, standing. "I've got to talk to Nick."

I'm not sure why it hits me this time, but it does, right between the eyes.

"What did you say?" I ask, though I know exactly what he said.

"I said I've got to talk to Nick."

"Call him over here," I say. "Please."

I'm sure that Pete, Kevin, and Marcus can all hear the strange tone in my voice, but I'm not concerned; my focus is totally on Pete and Nick.

"Hey, Nick," Pete calls out, waving. "Come here a second, will ya?"

Nick looks over, a little tentatively, obviously not wanting to be drawn into an uncomfortable situation with the enemy, meaning us.

But my mind is already elsewhere, and I turn to Kevin, just about dragging him out of his chair. "Come on, we need to talk."

On the way to the phones, I tell Kevin what I've just come to understand. We call Captain Reid, who characteristically comes to the phone immediately.

I get right to the point. "Captain Reid, we need a list of every Special Forces lieutenant who was in Vietnam at the same time as Dorsey, Stynes, and Murdoch."

He doesn't burst out laughing, which I take as a good sign. After a few moments he says, "It'll take the better part of an hour."

I thought he was going to say week, so I'm thrilled. "Can you fax it to me at the courthouse?"

"Give me the number."

I do, and the list arrives an hour and five minutes later. It's five pages, and on page two is the name that is going to blow this wide open.

I'VE NEVER CONDUCTED
A STAKEOUT BE
fore, and I'm not sure this would qualify as one. I've got the obligatory donuts and coffee, but I don't have a radio to say "ten-four" into. I just sit in my car outside the FBI regional office, downing donuts and listening to an Eagles CD, while remaining ready to hunch down to avoid being seen.

I'm listening to "Life in the Fast Lane" for the fourth time when Agent Cindy Spodek comes out at about six-forty-five. She walks to her parking space and drives away. I let her move out a little, then I smoothly start following her without being detected. You would think I've done this all my life. Ten-four.

She leads me across the George Washington Bridge, up the Palisades Interstate Parkway, and into Rockland County. Rockland is on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River but is a part of New York State. It's not much farther from Manhattan than northern New Jersey or Westchester County, but almost as nice and much less expensive.

My fervent hope is that Agent Spodek is heading home, and not out to dinner or a book club or a rifle range or whatever it is that FBI agents do at night. This stakeout thing is tiring, and I'm very anxious to talk to her.

She gets off the highway and drives into a small town called Pomona. It's a residential area, and since she may be nearing home, I start following her a little more closely. It would be beyond annoying to lose her now.

After a few more minutes she pulls into the driveway of a one-story redwood home. Kids play on the street, but none pay attention to her arrival. I realize I have no idea if she has kids or whether she's married or single. For my own limited purposes, I'd rather she lives alone, since I don't want her to have to consider other people when she hears my request.

I park on the street directly in front of her house, and she's looking in my direction when I get out of the car. I think I see a flash of panic in her eyes, or maybe it's anger, or maybe it's an eyelash. I'm not that good an eye reader.

She strides directly toward me. "What the hell are you doing here? I don't want you near my house."

She thinks that will intimidate me; she's unaware that women have been saying stuff like that to me my whole life. "I was hoping we could continue our conversation," I say.

"What conversation is that?" she challenges.

"The one about Terry Murdoch."

This time I'm pretty sure the eye flash is panic, but she doesn't back down. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Now, please, I--"

I interrupt. "Did you know that Terry Murdoch is dead? Someone killed him to stop him from talking to me."

She sags slightly and closes her eyes. "Oh, God ..."

"Can I come in?" I ask.

She doesn't answer, just nods in resignation, turns, and walks toward the front door. I follow her inside. Chalk up another successful stakeout for the good guys.

We're no sooner in the house than she asks me, "How did you figure it out?"

I don't want to tell her the truth--that I wasn't even absolutely positive I was right until I saw her reaction to the news about Murdoch's death. So I simply say, "Dorsey's wife said he called someone 'Lieutenant' I assumed it was someone within the police department, until I realized Dorsey was a lieutenant himself, and people of the same rank don't talk that way."

I pause for a moment, preparing to drop the bomb. "It had to have been Dorsey's commanding officer in the army, the special unit he was in with Murdoch and Cahill. It turns out that your boss Hobbs was a lieutenant in Vietnam at the same time as Dorsey, which makes him the logical choice. Also, the 911 call referred to Garcia as the 'perpetrator.' It's a word you might use."

She doesn't react with any surprise at all; she's been living with this truth for a long time. "You can't prove it. Nobody can."

"I don't have to prove it," I say. "I just have to shine a light on it."

"I can't help you," she says.

"You're the only one that
can
help me. And you've already tried to. But now it has to be out in the open. No more phone calls, no more masking your voice."

She smiles at my naivete. "Do you have any idea what it would be like to come out publicly against a man like Damn Hobbs? Do you know what they would do to me?"

I nod. "Laurie Collins faced the same decision with Dorsey two years ago. She knew it would be bad, and it's been worse than she could have imagined. It may well ruin her life. But she'd do it again ten times over."

She speaks quietly, as if she's really talking to herself. I have a feeling this is a conversation she's had with herself quite a few times. "I've wanted to be an FBI agent my entire life."

I shake my head. "I don't know you, but I'd bet you didn't want it like this. I don't think you can live with it like this, knowing what you know ..."

"I'm telling you, I have no proof that your client is innocent. I have no information about her at all."

"I know that." I sense that she is weakening, and I am going to stay here and beg and plead and persuade until she caves. It is realistically the only chance Laurie has to stay out of prison. "I just want the information you have about Hobbs."

She nods. "I've got plenty of that."

I'm definitely making progress, and I want to be extra careful what I say so I don't blow it. "Would you tell me about it?"

She sighs her defeat. "Are you hungry? This is going to be a long night."

"The longer the better," I say. "Besides, I had four stakeout donuts in the car."

"What is a stakeout donut?"

This woman is an FBI agent? J. Edgar would snap his garters if he could hear this. "It's a technical term," I say. "You wouldn't understand."

The next three hours are the most exciting I've ever spent, with a woman with my clothes on. Cindy has made a study of Hobbs from her vantage point as his subordinate/punching bag, and she has the goods on him.

From his high-level perch in the FBI, he has essentially been providing protection for his elite army squad, which has come together for some domestic work. There were at least four men under Hobbs, probably more, though it will take investigatory work to find any others.

All were involved in different types of criminal activity, still under Hobbs's command. But his blanket of protection was not total. Dorsey, for instance, drew too much attention to himself, and Hobbs couldn't keep him out of trouble without exposing himself. Murdoch had the bad luck of having his counterfeit plates found by the fire department, and it became public so quickly that Hobbs was powerless to intervene.

For all intents and purposes, Cindy can prove what Hobbs has been up to, but with some glaring gaps, the main one being the Dorsey murder. She believes that Hobbs either murdered Dorsey himself or more likely sent Cahill to do it, but the evidence simply does not exist to get Laurie off the hook.

By the time I leave her house at eleven o'clock, I've got a plan formulated. I call Kevin and bring him up to date, then I give him a list of subpoenas to start serving. I also tell him to call Captain Reid and ask for some special help. For us to have any chance to pull this off, we've got to start now.

Laurie is waiting up when I get home; she would have stayed up if I didn't come home until November. She devours what I have to say and wants me to tell her exactly what we're going to do from here on in. I describe it as best I can, but a lot of it is going to be reactive, and she's just going to have to trust me.

We get to sleep at two and we're up at six-thirty. I've got to be ready to play a different role today. I've spent most of my adult life in courtrooms, but today, for the first time, I'm going to be a witness.

Kevin and I meet at the coffee shop to do a crash preparation for my testimony, since we didn't have a chance to go over it last night. What I learned from Cindy Spodek has changed our goal for my testimony. Rather than provide the crucial basis for our defense, I am in effect a setup man, helping the jury understand what they will later be presented with.

Dylan again objects to my testifying, and Hatchet shoots him down. Kevin takes me through the basics of my relationship with Laurie, from our first meeting until today. I openly admit our romantic attachment; the jury knows about it anyway, and it's better that we acknowledge it voluntarily than let Dylan appear to be exposing it.

Within fifteen minutes we're at the meat of what I'm here to say. I talk about the day that Stynes came into my office, describing my attorney-client privilege dilemma, my subsequent decision to defend Oscar, and my sending Laurie out to the stadium to retrieve what I thought were Stynes's clothes.

"Did you ever see Stynes again?" Kevin asks.

I nod, and for the first time I'm in danger of losing my focus and becoming emotional. "I asked a young man to help me find Alex Dorsey. His name was Barry Leiter, and when it was discovered that he was helping me, Stynes shot him to death in his home. The police killed Stynes on the scene, but it was too late to help Barry."

After a few more questions Kevin and I make eye contact, and I can tell that we both feel we've covered the facts that we wanted the jury to hear. He sits down and lets Dylan have a shot at me.

"Mr. Carpenter," he begins, "did anyone else hear Stynes's confession to you?"

"No."

"Had you ever met him before?"

"No, I had not."

"Was he referred to you by someone?"

"No."

"So out of the blue he came into your office and told you a story, which you are now telling the jury. A story which just happens to argue against your client's guilt. Your lover's guilt. Is that what you're telling us?"

"Yes. That's what I'm telling you."

"This is a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?"

Kevin objects as to relevancy, but Hatchet lets me answer.

"I certainly do."

"And that would be difficult if she were in prison?" he asks.

"It would. Which makes me glad the truth is on her side."

Dylan objects, and he and Kevin fight it out for a while in a bench conference. When it concludes, Dylan veers off from this area and focuses on my involvement with Oscar Garcia. His contention is that I was less than zealous in my representation of Oscar, questioning me about my inability to uncover the bank tapes in the supermarket. The clear implication is I was throwing Oscar to the wolves to make sure Laurie stayed in the clear.

Dylan asks, "If Mr. Garcia had been convicted, then Ms. Collins would likely not have been charged. Isn't that true?"

"I can't answer that. You're the one who charges people without regard to the facts, so you might want to testify after I do."

The jury laughs, which pleases me but infuriates Dylan. We spar for a little while longer, but he seems even happier to finally let me off the stand than I am to get off.

The testimony went very well. We got out the story about Stynes without having to reveal what we know about his military connection to Dorsey, even without revealing that his real name is Cahill. The less of this that comes out before Hobbs takes the stand, the better. That's if we can get Hobbs to take the stand.

Tomorrow will be the key to the entire trial, and Kevin and I go over our approach until past midnight. Marcus calls to report that the subpoenas have been served and that Hobbs was furious to receive one. Marcus served that one personally. He thought the level of Hobbs's anger was pretty funny; the fact that Hobbs might well be a Green Beret killing machine did not intimidate him. If I ever meet someone who intimidates Marcus, I am going to be very afraid of that person.

Simply put, we have to make Hobbs look bad on the stand. So bad that suspicion gets cast on him and away from Laurie. We cannot prove that he murdered anyone, but we can prove some other facts, and the trick will be to get him to perjure himself by denying those facts. It's risky; if he detects our strategy, he can just admit to the facts and explain them away with minimal embarrassment. That would be it for our defense.

Which means that would be it for Laurie.