“The arraignment? My client is still in the hospital.”
“Not as of four o’clock today. She’s getting out, and the justice system is chomping at the bit to have a shot at her.”
“Who’s got the case?”
“Judge Harrison Chambers.”
“Shit.” Judge Harrison Chambers is a hard-ass, old-time jurist. I think he decided to be a judge at the age of zero, probably because of his name. It’s like the old Seinfeld joke about the fact that naming a child Jeeves pretty much ensures that he’s going to be a butler rather than an auto mechanic.
There’s never a shortage of dirty jokes about what happens when Judge Harrison Chambers invites you back to his chambers.
“Your bad luck,” she says, “He’s retiring in six months. You should have told your client to wait before she killed the guy.”
There’s no sense in telling Rita about the alleged nature of the charge or the whole “innocent until proved guilty” thing; she’s only kidding with me. “Who’s the prosecutor?” I ask.
“Dan Tressel.”
“The new kid?” Tressel is maybe thirty-three and new to the prosecutor’s office. He’s rumored to be ambitious, which is no great sin, unless he tries to make the climb by stepping on defense attorneys.
Rita laughs. “Yeah, he’s stopping by briefly on the way to the governor’s mansion.”
I get off the phone with Rita and place a call to Dan Tressel, who keeps me waiting for five minutes before coming to the phone. Finally, “Tressel here.”
“Andy Carpenter here,” is me, responding in kind.
“What is this in reference to?” he says.
He’s pretending he doesn’t know me or why I am calling. It’s an attempt for him to show superiority, and to get me feeling humiliated and angry. He thinks it will establish a relationship between us that will help him at trial.
If he thinks he’ll get me angry and looking for revenge, he doesn’t know Andy Carpenter. I will remain calm and unruffled as I rip his stinking heart out and feed it to the jury. “I’m calling about getting discovery material on the Martha Boyer case.”
“Oh, right,” he says, as if he’s handed a murder trial every day, and this one slipped his mind. Then, “The arraignment is tomorrow.”
Prosecutors legally don’t have to start handing over discovery material until two things happen. One is the defense attorney’s requesting it, a formality I’m attempting to go through now. The other is for the arraignment to be concluded. “I thought I’d give us a head start.”
“Good thought, but let’s stick to the rules,” he says.
“Wow, you’re really intimidating,” I say. “It’s going to take all my courage just to show up tomorrow.”
“See you at the arraignment,” he says, and hangs up.
I hang up as well, having accomplished absolutely nothing. So if I’m going to spend my time doing nothing productive, I might as well do it with a beer in my hand.
I head to Charlie’s, the sports bar that I used to go to almost every night. Since Laurie and I married and adopted Ricky, I’ve become a family man and reduced my Charlie’s attendance to two or three times a week. You can’t say I haven’t matured.
Speaking of people who haven’t matured, Pete Stanton and Vince Sanders are already at our regular table when I arrive. It’s a big night; the Giants are playing the Eagles on Thursday-night football, and every one of the thirty televisions has the pregame show on.
Vince is the editor of the local newspaper, and I would think he could get credentials to go to the game as a reporter, but he’d never consider it. This restaurant, at this table, is where he always wants to be. I’m sure that it must say in his will that when he dies, his ashes are to be spread throughout Charlie’s. I probably won’t be ordering any food here that week.
Pete would also never miss a football game at Charlie’s. If I were going to commit a murder in Paterson, I’d do it during a game, because the ranking homicide captain wouldn’t show up on the scene until the game was decided.
“Where have you been?” Vince asks. “The game’s about to start. We held up on ordering because we thought we might have to pay the check.”
“God forbid.”
Vince calls out to the waitress. “He’s here,” he says. “Start bringing the beer and burgers.”
Pete has nothing to say; he’s too focused on the opening kickoff. I’m a football nut, but Pete makes me look normal. He won’t open his mouth until halftime, except to ingest beer and food, and occasionally yell profanities at the refs and “Make a play!” at the Giants. He thinks it would never enter their mind to make a play unless he screamed it to them from Charlie’s.
The Giants are up by two touchdowns at the half, so we’re all in a pretty good mood and will remain so until and unless the Giants start blowing it in the third quarter.
“So did you find the real killer yet, counselor?” Pete asks. “Maybe a Colombian drug gang?” It’s a decades-old reference to an attempt O. J. Simpson’s lawyers made to point to someone other than their client.
“That process starts tomorrow,” I say. “And, once again, it will culminate in my total destruction of you on the witness stand.”
He laughs, knowing as I do that our previous witness-stand battles have been fairly even matches. “Not me; Luther Crenshaw is your man, and he’ll eat you alive. Is your client healthy enough to go on trial? Or is her plan to die before the jury starts deliberating?”
“You wouldn’t want to get in the ring with her,” I say. “Besides, I’ll get the damn thing dismissed before it sees the inside of a courtroom.”
He laughs again, this time even harder. “You obviously haven’t started getting discovery yet.”
“No, Tressel is holding out until the arraignment.”
“I can’t stand that little shithead,” Pete says. “He almost makes me root for you.”
“They have a murder weapon?” I ask.
He nods. “Freshly fired and recovered from your client’s basement. And that’s not the worst part. Or, from my point of view, the best part.”
That’s pretty bad; if there’s something worse than that, I can’t imagine right now what it would be. “What’s the worst part?” I ask.
“You’ll find out.”
“Come on, I’ll get the discovery tomorrow,” I say. “How can it hurt to tell me now?”
He thinks for a moment. “If you tell anyone it came from me, I’ll strangle you.”
“Fair enough.”
“You remember when her husband and that gangbanger got gunned down in front of that restaurant? Like eighteen months ago?”
“Of course.”
He smiles, relishing the moment.
“Same gun,” he says.
The news is so stunning that I do something unprecedented … I leave Charlie’s before the Giants game is over.
I stay until mid–third quarter, but the need to get home and do some research is too great. By the time the fourth quarter starts, with the Giants now ahead by three touchdowns, I’m by my computer.
I go online to check out the details of the shooting in which Jake Boyer died a year and a half ago. Laurie remembers it better than I do, and the newspaper stories confirm her recollections.
Jake Boyer was having dinner with a man named David Barnett, identified in the stories as a business associate. It doesn’t say what the business was, and I actually have no idea what Jake Boyer did for a living. They were leaving the restaurant and had reached their car when a vehicle drove up and fired five shots. Two of them hit and killed Boyer, and a third hit and killed Raymond “Little Tiny” Parker, a local gang member. The fourth and fifth bullets hit a Chevrolet Malibu, which apparently was treated at the scene and released.
Both the police and the writer of every article I am able to find believed that the target was Parker, misnamed Little Tiny because he was six foot four, 250 pounds. Everyone felt that Boyer and Barnett were unfortunate bystanders, Boyer bein
g by far the more unfortunate of the two.
Despite pleas for people to call in with information, the cops came up empty. There were follow-up stories, decreasing in frequency, for a couple of months, but the story petered out from lack of new information. I’m quite sure the case was never solved, because if it was, then there would have been a media reaction.
I’ve never really talked to Pups about it, though I did attend the funeral and, of course, express my condolences. I don’t think that there was the slightest hint, then or since, that she might have done the shooting or that Jake was the actual target.
But if the same gun that killed Jake Boyer and Little Tiny Parker also killed Hennessey, and if that gun was found in Pups’s basement, then there is no doubt she is in the police crosshairs for all the killings.
I still know very little about this case, but I know it just got a hell of a lot harder.
I don’t have a great night’s sleep, and I actually watch the last half of the Giants game on DVR at three in the morning. I do it with the sound off, since Laurie doesn’t seem to be sharing my insomnia. It ends with one of those rare events, a Giants wire-to-wire win.
The arraignment is at ten AM, but I’ve arranged to have Pups brought there an hour early so that we can discuss what is going to take place in court. I don’t think she’s ever been arrested or arraigned before, but there just may be a lot I don’t know about Pups. For all I know, she could have been tried for war crimes at The Hague.
When she’s brought into the anteroom, she’s in a wheelchair, and her wrists are handcuffed to the arms of the chair. Nevertheless, she looks better than the last time I saw her; her face has considerably more color to it. And I can tell by the look in her eyes that her feistiness is back.
I’m not going to talk to her about the gun or about her dead husband. Part of the reason is my promise to Pete that I wouldn’t say anything, but it’s more that this just isn’t the time or place. When I get the discovery and can read the details, I’ll have a long conversation with Pups about the case and about the gun.
So for now I confine our conversation to the arraignment itself. Very little will happen of great significance; the charges will be presented, and she will have a chance to plead. If she pleads not guilty, a trial date will probably be set.
After I set the ground rules, I ask, “Have you thought about what you would like your plea to be?”
“Are you kidding? Not guilty.”
“OK; when they ask you, just say it firmly. And just those two words; don’t editorialize. You’re going to hate the prosecutor, but no mouthing off at him. That’s exactly what he would want you to do.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now for the ground rules. If I’m going to be your lawyer, then I’m in charge. You do exactly what I say; we can discuss things, but ultimately I will call the shots.”
She looks hesitant, so I say, “The alternative is to find another lawyer who will let you make decisions, and if that’s what you want, then I can recommend some people.”
“OK,” she says, but with obvious reluctance. “You’re in charge. Except for one thing; you have to give me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“A fast trial. As soon as possible.”
“That is not in your best interest,” I say.
She nods. “I believe you. But I have to have it. If you can’t give that to me, then I really do need to find another lawyer. But it’s you I want.”
I nod. “OK. I can live with that.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
“One more thing. You tell me the truth. Always. Every time. If you don’t, it will bite you in the ass.”
“I always tell the truth, to you and everybody else.”
I believe that; I’ve always known it about her. So I let it drop, and we head in for the hearing.
“Showtime,” I say.
Judge Chambers’s reputation is well deserved.
He’s known as a no-nonsense judge who moves things along, one who won’t tolerate a wasted moment. I don’t have very much direct experience with him, but he certainly runs the arraignment in that manner.
The charges are read, and I’m not surprised that there is no mention of the possibility of adding a charge for the second and third murders, that of Jake Boyer and Little Tiny Parker. Tressel would probably want to hold those in reserve on the off chance that if he loses this trial, the other charges would give him additional bites at the apple.
Pups is called on to enter a plea, and she doesn’t disappoint. She clearly and with determination says, “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
I request bail, though it’s just a formality. There is no chance that the request will be granted, and Judge Chambers dispenses with it quickly. He then asks the attorneys if there are any other issues to discuss.
Tressel stands. “One more, Your Honor. But it’s of a sensitive nature, so I would request that we discuss it privately, in closed session in chambers.”
I’m taken by surprise, and Chambers seems to be as well. My guess is that it has something to do with the other murders, but I don’t know why that would be relevant to these proceedings or why it couldn’t be discussed in open court. Maybe Tressel wants to have his cake and eat it too, by not charging Pups for the other murders but being allowed to introduce them as evidence at trial.
Once we’re back in chambers, the judge says to Tressel, “Let’s hear it.”
“Judge, there are special circumstances relating to the timing of the trial, and I would like to get our position on record, and learn Your Honor’s feelings about it. I assume the defense is planning to weigh in as well.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about but don’t want to say so, so I let Judge Chambers carry the ball.
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
“The defendant’s medical condition.”
“I thought that since she had already recovered sufficiently to attend this hearing, that she would be well enough to stand trial,” Chambers says. “Do you have other information that I am not aware of?”
Tressel looks over at me quickly to see if I’m going to jump in, but I’m not. “In the course of reviewing information from the hospital regarding her ability to be here today, we took note of other information that was part of the examination. Her medical history.”
“And?” the judge asks, showing some impatience.
“The defendant suffers from malignant mesothelioma. It is a terminal condition and has already resisted the conventional treatments. I am told that while there can be some symptom relief, the outcome is assured, and she has been given a prognosis of six months to a year to live.”
I try not to reveal my shock, but I would have considered it just as likely that Tressel would have said that aliens descended on the earth and murdered Hennessey.
Judge Chambers turns to me. “Mr. Carpenter, would you like to address this matter?”
There’s no sense lying. “I certainly would, Your Honor, but I’m going to need a little time. This is the first I have heard of this.”
He nods. “Very well. Then there is no sense in my making a ruling. But if the seriousness of the illness can be independently confirmed, then I can tell you I may look negatively at using the state’s resources to try and convict a person who may not live long enough to be sentenced.”
Tressel doesn’t like hearing this. “Your Honor, medical prognoses can be wrong, sometimes dramatically so. But even if this one is correct, the state of New Jersey has an interest in criminals being brought to justice, regardless of what their future holds.”
“I imagine the defense might have a different view,” the judge says, and then looks straight at me. “It is a view I expect to hear shortly.”
I nod. “You will, Your Honor.”
We head back into court. I’m still stunned by what I’ve just heard. To the extent I’ve thought about it at all, I’ve always assumed Pups’s cou
gh was insignificant, maybe even a nervous habit. I never imagined it was a symptom of a life-ending disease.
When I reach the defense table, Pups leans over to me and whispers, “What was that about?”
“I’ll tell you after court.”
Judge Chambers wraps things up by announcing that there will be a delay in setting a trial date, with the agreement of both the prosecution and defense. I can see that Pups is not happy, and now I know why she wants to rush this process. She has very little time left to enjoy life, even if she wins.
I arrange with the bailiff for an additional ten minutes with Pups back in the anteroom after the judge adjourns the hearing. He wheels her in there, and when he leaves, I turn to her and say, “You’re going to die?”
She smiles and says, “We all are, honey. We all are.”
I’m not sure what question to ask first.
The one that comes to mind is, Why the hell didn’t you tell me? but that seems a bit insensitive. Pups is dying, and I’m not sure I should make this about me.
So I just start with, “Tell me about it.”
“I have a cancer called mesothelioma; people get it from being exposed to asbestos. Not like yesterday or last month; the thing takes decades to come out. My father had a small factory that manufactured construction materials. Nobody thought about it then, but it must have been asbestos city.”
“How long have you known about it?” I ask.
“Almost two years, a little less. I was going through all kinds of treatments, but nothing worked. All it did was prolong the inevitable.”
“And you’ve been to the best doctors?”
“Oh, I should be going to doctors? I’ve been letting a nurse practitioner handle the whole thing.” She shakes her head at the idiocy of my question. “Of course I’ve been to the best doctors. You think I want to die? I went to Sloan Kettering. Once they saw normal treatments weren’t working, they tried some experimental stuff. Nothing took. Now I’m basically just dealing with the symptoms.”
I nod. “OK, well I’m sure you know how sorry I am about this. But for now, we need to talk about it as it relates to this case.”
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas Page 4
