TWENTY-FIVE
Are you ready?” Dana asked.
Seated beside her in a freshly pressed uniform, Corey nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
Dana smiled to herself. He must be nervous, she thought. He hadn’t called her that in months. She stood up and smoothed the skirt of her jade green suit.
“At this time, the defense calls Corey Dean Latham,” she said in a clear voice.
The defendant rose, stepped out from behind the table that had shielded him for so many weeks, and made his way deliberately to the witness stand.
From the first row of spectator seats, Barbara Latham watched her son, so bright, so confident, so proud. It reminded her of the first time Corey had ridden his two-wheeler without help, the ceremony when he made Eagle Scout, the evening that he got up on a stage and became Hamlet, the day he graduated from Annapolis. The milestones of a mother’s life, she thought.
Evelyn Biggs had been in court every single day of the trial. Now she squeezed Barbara’s hand, and gave her a reassuring smile. Tom Sheridan was there, too, sharing the first row with Barbara and Evelyn, intending to lend whatever support he could to them all.
Across the aisle, the Hill House section was packed with survivors who had waited nine months to hear from the man accused of bombing their clinic and murdering their friends and loved ones.
Frances Stocker had been studying Corey Latham since the beginning of the trial. She wanted more than anything for the police to have gotten it right. She wanted him to be guilty. She wanted his conviction to erase the image of Grace Pauley from her nightmares. But as the days and weeks went by, the psychologist was finding it harder and harder to believe that the young man who now sat in the witness box was capable of such evil. She hoped his testimony would tell her he was.
Ruth Zelkin had never seen the defendant. She had spent her days in court listening to other people talk about him. Now she moved as far forward in her seat as she could, not to miss a word he said.
Joseph Heradia had made a point of being here today. He no longer knew whether Corey Latham was guilty or not, and he was anxious to hear what the young man had to say for himself.
Betsy Toth Umanski sat in her wheelchair. She, too, was waiting to hear from the man that the police were certain had denied her the ability to bear children.
Marilyn Korba was seated in the first row. Painful though she knew it would be to actually hear the voice of her husband’s killer, she had been unable to stay away.
Joe Romanadis would not have missed this day for anything. He was confident he would know whether this man had murdered his wife and his unborn triplets just by looking in his eyes and listening to his voice.
In the third row, Helen Gamble and Raymond Kiley sat together, holding hands. They hoped Corey Latham was guilty and would be convicted so they could at least have some closure, if not peace. But neither one of them was very sure anymore.
“Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Abraham Bendali asked.
“I swear,” Corey said firmly. “So help me God.”
“State your name.”
“Corey Dean Latham, lieutenant, j.g., United States Navy.”
“Be seated.”
“All right, Corey,” Dana began, “you’ve been sitting in this courtroom throughout this trial. You’ve listened to all the testimony that’s been presented. What do you think?”
“All those people killed, all those others hurt,” he said. “I think it was a terrible thing that happened.”
“And how do you feel about the state’s efforts to prove that you were responsible for all those deaths and injuries?”
“Sick and scared,” he replied.
“Why sick?”
“Because I was raised to believe in the sanctity of life, and anyone who knows me knows that.”
“And why scared?”
“Because the jury doesn’t know me, and after listening to all that testimony, I couldn’t blame them if they wanted me to be guilty.”
“Corey, why don’t you tell the jury something about yourself, about how you came to be who you are,” Dana invited.
“Sure,” he said with a boyish smile, and turned to the jury. “I was born and raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa. If you’ve never been there, it’s an awfully pretty little town, with really nice people. I can’t think of a better place to grow up in, but the truth is, not very much ever goes on there. I have two older sisters. They’re both married now, with kids. My dad is a professor at the local college, and my mom—she’s sitting right over there—is on a leave of absence from her job at a preschool.”
He looked over at Barbara and smiled warmly at her, and Dana was pleased to note that every single juror followed his glance.
“I guess you could say I was a pretty normal kid. To be honest, I think I was too scared of the minister at our church to get involved in anything bad. He has these eyes, you see, that all us kids were positive could look right into you, and I always thought he would know immediately if I did something I wasn’t supposed to do, and he’d tell God, and then I’d really be in trouble.”
Several of the jurors smiled at that. Dana almost smiled herself, thinking of her childhood priest.
“Anyway, much as I love Iowa, by the time I got to high school, I was just itching to see what the rest of the world was like,” Corey continued. “And there were these recruiters who would come to the school and tell us all about the travel benefits associated with military service. You know, join the Navy, see the world. Now, you folks probably wouldn’t understand, being from here and all, but in Iowa, well, there’s not exactly a lot of ocean nearby. And the idea of sailing around the world sounded like a great adventure to me. So I decided I wanted to go to Annapolis, and I managed to get accepted. I have to tell you, I struggled my first term. Life away from home was a big change for me. But then I adapted, and six years later, here I am. I haven’t seen much more than a lot of deep water so far, but I have hopes.” He frowned then, as though remembering. “Well, I did have, anyway,” he said, “until all this happened.”
“You’re an Eagle Scout, aren’t you, Corey?” Dana prompted.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“And you were president of your senior class in high school, is that right?”
“Yes, I was.”
“For several years, you taught Sunday school at your church, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you were twice named Outstanding Teen of Cedar Falls, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And in your graduating yearbook, what did your classmates name you?”
He seemed to be embarrassed by the question. “Well, I’m not a Catholic, you see, but they said that was just an oversight on God’s part, and they named me ’Most Likely to Become Pope.’”
“Why do you think they did that?” Dana inquired. “I think it was probably because they knew how important my faith is to me.”
“Tell us about that.”
“I’m not sure anyone can really explain his faith,” Corey said. “It’s such a personal thing. But mine is pretty much what gets me up in the morning and lets me sleep at night. It guides me every step of the way. I guess you could say it’s what gives my life its meaning. I always try to do as much good as I can, and as little harm. I pray every day, and I depend on God to show me the way.”
“And has He?”
“Well, not meaning to be disrespectful, because most of the time, He’s done just fine,” Corey replied. “But all things considered, right now, I kind of wish I’d stayed in Iowa.”
A ripple of amusement flickered across the courtroom, and Dana smiled to herself. He was pulling them in. They were listening, and in spite of themselves, they were beginning to relate to him.
“Do you think maybe God made a mistake?” she asked him.
“Oh no,” Corey said hastily, as though he were afraid he might have sounded too flippan
t. “He doesn’t make mistakes. I figure this is a test. God’s a great one for testing our faith.”
“Do you think it was a test when your wife had an abortion?”
He sighed deeply, and even from the second row of the jury box, Allison Ackerman could see the pain in his eyes.
“It must have been,” he replied. “Or why else would it have happened?”
“Were you angry when you found out?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have a pretty even temper most of the time. I’m usually slow to boil. But looking back, I think I must’ve been very angry, probably as angry as I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Did you blame Elise?”
“At first, yes,” he conceded. “I couldn’t help it. She’d killed our baby, a precious new life God had given us to love and nurture. It took me a while to understand.”
“To understand what, Corey?”
“That Elise doesn’t perceive life the same way I do. You see, I believe life begins at the moment of conception. But Elise, she thinks life begins at birth.”
“And when you understood?”
“Well then, you see, I couldn’t be angry at her anymore. I mean, if she doesn’t blame me for my beliefs, how could I justify blaming her for hers? The thing of it is, we probably didn’t know each other well enough before we got married.”
In the Hill House section, Betsy Toth Umanski began to wonder where the monster was.
“Do you think you and Elise know each other a little better now?” Dana inquired.
“Yes, I think so. At least, we got the abortion situation straightened out.”
“How do you mean?”
“We’ve decided we aren’t going to start a family until Elise is ready.”
“When you got over being angry at Elise, were you angry at the people at Hill House?”
He looked puzzled. “Why should I be?”
“Because that’s where Elise went to have her abortion.”
“Yes, but the people there didn’t come to her,” he said. “She went to them.”
“All right, Corey,” Dana asked then, “where were you on the night before the bomb went off?”
“I was at home,” he replied. “I was at home that whole evening. Elise was out with some people from her office. She came home around ten, just like she said. We watched the news, and we went to bed.”
“The prosecution has tried to imply that you may have drugged her cocoa on the way to bed. Is there any truth to that?”
He shook his head in disgust. “I had no reason to drug my wife’s cocoa,” he said.
“Did you tell the police you were home that night?”
“Of course I did. I told them I took the five-twenty ferry to work in the morning, and didn’t stay up late during the week. Elise told them, too.”
“What did they say?”
“They said she wasn’t a reliable alibi, because she was my wife, and she’d say anything to protect me, whether it was true or not.”
“So the one person who could substantiate your alibi for where you were in the middle of the night was immediately discounted by the police?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Dana said, “let’s move on now to the ’mountain of evidence’ that’s been presented in this trial. First, the trace materials that were found in your sport utility vehicle and in your garage. Let’s start with the fibers. How do you explain the police finding fibers from a duffel bag?”
“I’m in the Navy,” he replied. “I use duffel bags all the time. They’re standard military issue. I would have been surprised if there hadn’t been fibers.”
“The police also claim to have found sulfuric acid. How do you explain that?”
“I guess the same way anyone else would. I bought a new battery for my car. I kept the old one in the garage until I had time to take it to the dump. It must have been leaking.”
“Where did you buy this new battery?”
“At Bay Auto Supply in Bremerton. That’s where I buy all my auto stuff. It’s convenient to the base.”
“All right, what about the fertilizer?”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” he said. “I am guilty of buying ten pounds of fertilizer from Swanson’s Nursery. The house Elise and I were renting had a lovely little rose garden out front. Only the roses weren’t doing so well, and Elise thought maybe some fertilizer would help.”
“What kind of fertilizer did you buy?”
“I don’t know, whatever they said would work for roses. But it was all for nothing,” he added with a sigh. “Elise told me the roses are all dead. The media people trampled them.”
“Now tell us about the aspirin,” Dana prompted.
“Aspirin?” He gave a short, hard laugh. “If you’d ever served aboard a submarine, Ms. McAuliffe, you’d know that headaches are an occupational hazard. I swallow aspirin by the ton. I keep them in my pockets, in my bathroom, in the kitchen, and yes, even in the garage. I also happen to keep a bottle in the glove compartment of my car. If I’d had any idea that something as ordinary as an aspirin could get me in this much trouble, I’d have learned to live with the headaches.”
“Speaking of your car,” Dana said. “Is there any chance it could have been the one seen parked outside Hill House that night?”
“My car was parked outside my house that night,” he replied. “And the key was sitting on the top of my dresser.”
“Do you know Carl Thorson?”
“Sure, he’s my next-door neighbor.”
“Did he interrupt a loud argument between you and Elise?”
“Yes, he did,” Corey said, “and I’m very embarrassed about that. I don’t think it’s proper to involve neighbors in personal affairs.”
“Were you in Carney Toland’s auto parts store on Aurora Avenue, in December of last year, and did you purchase a car battery at that time?”
“No,” Corey replied. “As I said, I bought my battery in Bremerton.”
“And how do you explain Joshua Clune, who claimed to have seen you at Hill House on the night before the bombing?”
“I can’t explain it, except to say that the man made a mistake.”
“A lot has been made of the fact that you are a military man, trained to kill. Why would bombing an abortion clinic be any different than, say, bombing Serbia?”
“I think there’s an enormous difference,” he said. “Because one would be termed a defensive act, while the other would be termed an offensive act. The Navy protects, it doesn’t provoke. I’m not a killer, Ms. McAuliffe. I’m a defender. Would I kill to defend my country? Yes, I would, because that’s my job. But most military people, at least the ones I know, hope and pray it never comes to that.”
“In that case, I have one last question,” Dana said. “Did you plant the bomb at Hill House that was responsible for killing one hundred and seventy-six people?”
“No, I did not,” Corey Latham said emphatically. “As God is my witness, I did not kill those people.”
“He made a hell of a witness,” Mark Hoffman observed during the lunch break.
“Better than I expected,” Brian Ayres conceded grudgingly.
“McAuliffe’s good.”
Brian nodded. “She did her job. He was perfectly coached.”
“I was watching the jury,” Mark said. “He had them practically eating out of his hand. I hate to admit it, but you know, he almost had me convinced there for a bit.”
Brian sighed. “He told a good tale, and he told it well.”
There was a pause. “You don’t suppose the police screwed up, do you?” Mark wondered idly.
The prosecutor smiled a bit, because a similar thought had crossed his mind. “Well, if they did,” he said, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Proceed as planned,” Brian told him. “Go after him. See what jiggles loose in his testimony. Guilty or innocent, no one’s ever going to be able to come back at me over this.”
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br /> “Okay, tell me the truth, how’d I do?” Corey asked his attorneys.
“You did just fine,” Dana assured him.
“You had the jury all the way,” Joan added.
“I’m just glad it’s over,” he said.
“Well, don’t be too glad too soon,” Dana cautioned. “Only the easy part is over. The hard part is still to come.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Latham,” Brian began in his most engaging tone.
“Good afternoon,” Corey replied, sitting ramrod straight in the witness box.
“I have just a few things to go over with you.”
“Sure.”
“You know, I listened to your testimony this morning, very carefully, and you seem to have an answer for everything,” Brian said. “How is that?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to?” Corey replied, looking just a bit startled.
“Well, the thing is, you see, most innocent people can’t account for absolutely everything. Because people are only human, and there’s always something they have no explanation for. But there wasn’t anything you couldn’t explain.”
There was no question pending, so Corey blinked but did not respond.
“On the contrary, you were very smooth, and well rehearsed, and you were very convincing. Truth be told, as I sat there, listening, I was even inclined to believe you, myself. But you see, I’m the prosecutor, and I know better. Because I’ve got all these coincidences I don’t know what to do with, and a good prosecutor is always suspicious of coincidences. Oh, one or two maybe can be explained away. But over a dozen?”
“I can’t explain that,” Corey said.
“No, I’m sure you can’t,” Brian said with a slight smile. “All right, Mr. Latham, let’s see what we’ve really got here. We’ve got a witness who reports seeing a sport utility vehicle, consistent with the one you drive, parked in front of Hill House the night before the bombing, right?”
“’Consistent with’ doesn’t mean it was mine, does it? It just means it was similar to mine.”
“True,” Brian agreed. “But the witness also identifies a military sticker on the windshield, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but he couldn’t say what base the sticker came from.”
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