The Twelve Dogs of Christmas

by David Rosenfelt

  My second call is to Laurie, asking her to contact Marcus. I want Calderone in a safe place, where I know I can find him. “Tell Marcus that Big Tiny will know where Calderone is,” I say. “We need to find him and put him in a safe place that only we know about. I don’t want Tressel getting to him, and I sure don’t want Barnett having any idea where he is. But I want to see and talk to him when Marcus has him set up somewhere.”

  I head home feeling pretty good. No, that’s too strong. I head home feeling not as bad as usual. I scored some significant points in court today, though by themselves they couldn’t carry the day. But the financial news that Sam and Hilda uncovered gives me an opening to present the case that we’re building when it’s our turn. That has the potential to be very meaningful.

  I offer to take Laurie and Ricky out to dinner, and they jump at it. We go to one of those Japanese hibachi restaurants in Fort Lee, a place we frequent for three basic reasons: (1) We all like the food; (2) Ricky loves to watch the guy cook it at the table; and (3) Laurie likes the fact that the sauce they use gets Ricky and me to eat vegetables, no mean feat. The truth is that the sauce is so good that I’d probably eat horseshit if I could dunk it in that stuff first.

  Ricky orders one of those enormous nonalcoholic drinks with all kinds of fruit on a large toothpick. They are still using Santa Claus toothpicks; they must have overordered this year.

  It’s a really nice meal and family experience, and a good time is had by all. For my part, I spend an entire hour and a half not once thinking about murders, which for me is a rarity.

  When we get home, I take Tara and Sebastian for a walk. A lot of our neighbors still have their Christmas lights up; if it was up to me, they could stay up all year. It gives the neighborhood a nice feeling, a literal glow. All of this is a continuation of my relaxed state; I’m not even dreading going through trial documents tonight.

  Laurie is in Ricky’s room putting him to bed when I get home, and she calls out to me that there’s a message on the answering machine. I press the button, and a familiar voice says, “Andy, Walter Tillman. Sorry to bother you at home, but something has come up and we need to talk. I’m still in the office.”

  Once again, there’s that “need to talk” phrase that I hate so much. It never portends anything good. When I rule the kingdom, that phrase will be abolished along with Bing Crosby, and all talk will be voluntary. So it shall be written, and so it shall come to pass.

  I call Walter back, and he gets right to the point. “I’m not sure who to blame, you or me, probably me. But we’ve heard from the prodigal son.”

  “Hank?” I ask, though I know that’s who he means.

  “The very one,” Tillman says. “Though I didn’t speak to him personally, I spoke to one Nolan Weisler, his newly hired attorney.”

  “Let me guess; they’re seeking all or part of dear old dad’s estate.”

  “You’re clairvoyant.”

  “I don’t want to jinx this,” I say. “But I think we’re going to win at trial; there’s been a recent development which I am very encouraged about. So all this might be moot.” I trust Walter, but I’m keeping Calderone and Barnett’s involvement secret all the way.

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” he says. “But it’s become a little more complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, obviously if you lose at trial, young Hank has a very good shot. But Mr. Weisler informs me that in the event of such a development, they will file a civil suit, in an attempt to assign civil responsibility for the murder. They could win a judgment for all or most of the estate if they prevail.”

  “Smart,” I say. It’s a situation similar to the O. J. Simpson case. Simpson was acquitted, but the families of the victims brought a civil action against him. That new jury found him responsible for the murders, and they won a huge financial judgment against him.

  A civil case is easier to win, since it has a different standard. You just have to demonstrate guilt based on a preponderance of the evidence, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. Additionally, the verdict does not have to be unanimous. So even if we win the current trial, it would need to be a crushing win to damage Hank’s chances in the civil suit.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” I say. “I’ll tell Pups.”

  “Good. Can you also get her to authorize some pretrial prep, so we’ll be ready if there’s a civil trial? Also, while I hate to state the obvious, by the time that suit is heard, we may be defending the estate rather than Pups.”

  He’s referring to her short life expectancy, and he’s probably right. “I’ll discuss it with her,” I say. “But much as I don’t relish the idea, I would suggest to her that I handle any civil trial or that we do so together. It would essentially be a repeat of the criminal trial, and I obviously am much better versed in the details than you are.”

  “Whatever she decides is fine with me,” Walter says, but he sounds a little miffed. He’ll just have to get over it.

  I’m over the whole thing as soon as I hang up the phone. I need to focus on tomorrow; I have a trial to win.

  Tressel calls Katie Nyland as his next witness.

  She is the neighbor, or rather the sister of a neighbor, who happened to see Pups come out of Hennessey’s house after she discovered the body.

  First, he has her reveal that she doesn’t exactly live in the neighborhood but was visiting from Oregon. Her younger sister lives next door to Hennessey’s house.

  “Please describe what happened that night,” Tressel says.

  “Nothing very unusual. We had run out of milk, and I walked to the convenience store to get it. At home, I always take a long walk after dinner, so that’s why I didn’t drive.”

  “So what took place when you returned home?”

  “As I was approaching the house next door, Mr. Hennessey’s house, I saw that lady come out the front door.” She points at Pups.

  “Did you recognize her?”

  “Yes, I visit two or three times a year, so I’ve seen her a number of times. My sister even introduced us once.”

  “Did you and the defendant speak that night, Ms. Nyland?”

  “I didn’t say anything. But she did. She left the front door of the house open, and when she saw me, she said, ‘Don’t go in there.’ I certainly had no intention of going in there, so it seemed like a strange thing to say.”

  “What did she do then?”

  “She ran to her house and went inside.”

  “When you say that she ‘ran,’ do you mean she literally ran?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I went inside my sister’s house and told her what had happened. She said not to worry about it, that that woman—she called her ‘Pups’—could be strange at times. And then, right after that, there were all these sirens, and the entire street was filled with police.”

  Tressel turns her over to me, and after thanking her for making the trip back to New Jersey from Oregon in order to testify, I ask her if the street on which her sister lives is a quiet one.

  “I think so, yes,” she says. “Of course, it depends on what you’re comparing it to.”

  “Was it quiet that night? I mean, while you were walking, before the police started arriving.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “While you were walking, before you saw Ms. Boyer, did you hear anything that might have sounded like a rifle shot?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “How long would you estimate it took from the time you saw Ms. Boyer enter her house and the police arrival?”

  “It’s hard to say. I wasn’t checking my watch, but maybe seven minutes?”

  “So if I were to tell you that police records show that the police arrived on the scene four minutes after receiving the 911 call, that would mean it took three minutes for her to make the call?”

  “I suppose,” she says.

  “Could you wash and scrub your hands, change your clothes, and hide
the ones you took off in three minutes?”

  Tressel explodes out of his chair with an objection, and Chambers correctly sustains it. I’ve made my point, so I let Ms. Nyland off the stand. She hasn’t damaged us in any serious way; we had never contested the fact that Pups discovered the body, and it got some valuable timeline testimony in for us.

  Tressel’s next witness is an unusual one. He calls Juanita Torres, a court reporter who handled that function at the hearing to deal with Hennessey’s original complaint. She had been instructed to bring the transcript of that hearing with her, and Tressel has her read the part where Pups admitted she’d threatened to “cut Hennessey’s heart out and shove it down his throat.”

  After Ms. Torres are a couple of witnesses merely to establish the science. A sergeant in forensics describes in more detail than is necessary exactly how the bullets match up in the various murders, indicating that the same gun, the one in Pups’s basement, was used.

  Then an assistant coroner testifies that a bullet to the head was in fact the cause of death. That is not exactly a shocker, and I’m quite sure that Tressel only bothered with it so that he could show the jury the gory pictures.

  My questions for these witnesses are very brief and merely designed to show the jury that we remain awake. There is nothing to challenge in what they are saying, nor is there much damage being inflicted.

  It’s near the end of the day that alarm bells start to go off. One of Tressel’s assistants comes into court, and Tressel is granted a ten-minute delay to consult with her. When that is concluded, he submits to the court a revised witness list, with one name added. That name is Linda Devereux.

  I object that we have not gotten any discovery on Ms. Devereux, but Tressel fends that off by saying that she has just come forward and that, therefore, there are no documents or interviews to turn over.

  I turn to Pups and say, “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Never heard of her. Who could she be?”

  “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

  I spent last night trying to figure out who Linda Devereux is, and what she has to do with this case.

  More significantly, I had Sam and his computer trying to do the same thing. Neither of us got anywhere. So now all I can do is sit here and wait for her to take the stand; I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.

  Tressel calls her, and she enters the courtroom. She looks to be in her late forties, well dressed and very attractive. She also looks calm and poised, as if she does this every day.

  Tressel takes her through a minibiography. Born in western Pennsylvania, graduated Amherst, worked in government in DC for a while, moved to New York, where she worked in the cosmetics industry, married and divorced. She’s lived in the Bahamas for the past eighteen months.

  “Ms. Devereux, did you know Jake Boyer?”

  She nods. “I did. I knew Jake very well.”

  “Please describe your relationship,” he says.

  “We were close friends, and then we became lovers. We had an affair that lasted for a little over a year.”

  I can feel Pups tense up next to me. I can sense her anger, so I take my hand and press it on her leg, in a signal for her to calm down.

  “When you say ‘affair,’ that means you had a physical relationship?”

  “Very definitely. But it was much more than that. Jake was a very loving, caring man.”

  “How often did you see him during the time you were having this affair?”

  “Not often enough. I was living in the city, and we used to go upstate, sometimes to Pennsylvania. We’d stay in inns, bed and breakfasts, that kind of thing.”

  “And eventually you split up?”

  She nods. “We did; he broke it off. He said his wife found out and that she was furious. But he couldn’t leave her, because she had just been diagnosed with a serious disease—some name I had never heard of.”

  “But he told you she was angry?”

  “Oh, yes. He described it as out of control. But he said he deserved it, that he had hurt her badly, and that he needed to be with her as she fought this disease.”

  “What did you do when your relationship ended?”

  “I was distraught and felt I needed a new start. So I moved to the Bahamas, where I met a wonderful man, and we married a year ago.”

  “How long after you moved was Jake Boyer murdered?”

  “Just about a week. A friend called and told me about it, said she had read it in the papers. What a terrible thing to happen.”

  “Did you think that Jake’s wife might have been involved?”

  She shakes her head. “No, it never entered my mind. They said it was a gang killing and that Jake was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I assumed that was true. Besides, Jake said that, as angry as his wife was, he believed she still loved him.”

  “What made you come forward now?” Tressel asks.

  “A story about this situation … this trial … was in our local paper, and I read it. At first, I wasn’t going to say anything. I mean, I have a husband and new life, but I felt I had to. If people were saying Jake’s wife might have done this, then I thought that what I knew might be important.”

  This is bad, very bad, and I have a feeling that there is still a bomb to be dropped.

  “Ms. Devereux, did Jake Boyer ever give you any gifts?”

  “Oh, yes. He was very generous.”

  “What kind of gifts?”

  “Some jewelry, and when we would meet, we’d do things like shop for antiques. Like I said, he was very generous.”

  “Did he ever give you money?”

  “Yes, I’m embarrassed to say that he did. When we broke up and I was moving to the Bahamas, I had very little money and no job waiting for me. He wanted to give me some money to help out. At first, I said no, but then I took it.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Did he give you cash?” Tressel asks. “A check?”

  “He wired the money into my account.”

  Tressel walks to the defense table and takes two sheets of paper out of his folder. He gives one to the judge and one to me. “Your Honor, if it please the court, I’d like to introduce this into evidence. It is a copy of Ms. Devereux’s bank statement, showing the wire transfer from Jake Boyer to Ms. Devereux.”

  Double kaboom.

  I have no questions for Devereux.

  Asking her anything at this point would be violating the tenet that law students learn on day 1: never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to.

  For all I know, a question of mine could prompt her to pull out a wedding album from the day she and Jake Boyer eloped. It’s just too risky; I have to get her off the stand.

  I have strong doubt that Tressel was being straight with the court in saying that he just found out about Devereux and that he put her right on the stand when he did. My suspicion is that he knew about her but kept her at arm’s length until he felt the time was right.

  For the prosecution’s case, the timing could not have been more right. Voluntary or not, Tressel finishing his case with her was a brilliant stroke, and I’m sure the jury thinks we are reeling and badly hurt. They’re right about that.

  So when Tressel turns Devereux over to me, I say that I have no questions for her, but I couch it in a complaint to Chambers that we were blindsided unfairly by not having advance notice of her testimony. I also say that we reserve the right to call her back in our case. Both statements are designed to get the jury not to view our lack of questions now as significant. It’s fairly lame, but it’s the best I can do.

  Tressel rests the prosecution’s case, and the smug smile he gives me indicates he thinks it’s resting pretty comfortably. Chambers breaks for lunch, instructing me to be ready to call my first witness when we return.

  I take Pups into an anteroom and ask her what she knows about Devereux.

  “I don’t know anything about her,” she says. “But I know ple
nty about Jake. He was the most honest man I’ve ever met, and he would never lie to me. I know many wives would say that, but it was different between Jake and me. We had a thing between us; we said that if one of us ever wanted out, that would be it, no hard feelings. We said it every year, on January first. She’s lying, Andy.”

  I nod. “OK. We’ll deal with her when the time comes.” I believe Pups, but I also believed Devereux when she was testifying. The unfortunate thing is that they could both be telling the truth. Devereux could be being honest about the affair, and Pups could honestly believe that she has to be lying.

  I let Pups go with the bailiff to get some lunch, but I stay in the room to think and prepare. The damage that Devereux inflicted is considerable, but not fatal. What it did was give Pups a motive to kill Jake, whereas none existed before.

  Walter Tillman had testified that their relationship was excellent, without a hint of discord. Devereux says otherwise. She portrays Pups as a woman horribly scorned at the worst possible time, when she was dealing with a terrible disease and a deadly prognosis.

  She has Jake saying that Pups was furious at the betrayal, shortly before he was shot and killed—killed with a gun found in Pups’s basement, a year and a half later. And she backs it all up with a bank record showing that Jake gave her fifty thousand dollars.

  This is not good.

  I can’t dwell on this. I’ll give Laurie and Sam the task of trying to find something that shakes Devereux’s credibility, and if they find anything, I’ll put her back on the stand and take her apart. If they don’t, I won’t.

  My focus has to be on presenting our case. If I can get the jury to consider that David Barnett very well might be behind the murders, then it won’t matter whether Jake was having an affair.

  My first witness is Dr. Cynthia Herrera, Pups’s oncologist at Sloan Kettering. I take her through her credentials, both education and employment. This is one impressive woman, which makes sense. You don’t get to be a top oncologist at a hospital like that by answering an ad in craigslist.

  I then have her describe Pups’s condition, malignant mesothelioma. I had cautioned her in advance to keep it as simple as possible for the jury, and though she tries to do that, she can’t quite pull it off. Her testimony starts to get very technical, and I steer her back to the lay world.