Sudden Death

by David Rosenfelt

  I’m nervous as hell, but I can’t help smiling at how he puts it. “You find that unconventional, Your Honor?”

  “That’s not quite the word I would use.”

  “Your Honor, in the interests of justice, I want the jury to see the entire truth. I believe that this truth will also enable me to create a reasonable doubt as to my client’s guilt.”

  Harrison turns to Dylan, who seems stunned by the direction this session has taken. “Mr. Campbell?”

  Dylan is in a quandary. On the one hand, he would be thrilled to see the specter of Quintana and drugs out of the picture; on the other hand, he totally doesn’t trust me. This seems perfect for him, but he’s smart enough to know that if I want something, he shouldn’t.

  Conflicted as he is, he decides on the one surefire approach: No matter what I want to do, he doesn’t want to give me the time to do it. “Your Honor, Mr. Carpenter is entitled to present whatever defense he wishes, but I see no reason for the trial to be delayed so that he can go on a fishing expedition to support a new strategy. Having said that, I assume his new witnesses would not be on the current witness list. Therefore, the state would reserve the right to request our own continuance, should we need time to prepare for our cross-examinations.”

  Harrison turns to me. “How long a continuance are you requesting?”

  Earlier in this session I used the words “in the interests of justice” because Judge Harrison is obliged to rule according to those interests, even if those rulings aren’t necessarily based on accepted court procedure. In a death penalty case the “interests of justice” principle becomes even more crucial. “To properly further the interests of justice, Your Honor, I would request one week.”

  Dylan almost chokes. “Your Honor, we have a jury out there, and—”

  Harrison cuts him off. “The trial is continued for two days. Court will resume at nine o’clock on Wednesday.”

  I’m a little disappointed in the ruling; I was hoping for three days. But it should be enough time if we don’t waste any of it. I ask Judge Harrison to seal this proceeding for the time being, and for him to order that neither Dylan nor I reveal the substance of it, at least for now. Dylan argues, but I throw in another “interests of justice” argument, and Harrison agrees.

  I head to a meeting in my office to finalize our plans, and if the radio news reports I hear on the way are a true indication, the media are going crazy over the just announced continuance. All that Judge Harrison has revealed is that it was requested by the defense, and as I near my office, I can see the media hordes outside waiting for me.

  I call ahead and switch the meeting to my house, since I can more easily get in and out without having to deal with the press. They are there in force, but I come in the back way and then hold a thirty-second press conference on the porch.

  “As you know, Judge Harrison has issued a gag order,” I say. “Gagged people by definition have no comment.”

  Not being gagged themselves, reporters continue to bombard me with questions, but I briefly and disingenuously profess frustration at not being able to answer, and head back inside. Before long Kevin, Laurie, Sam, and Willie have made it through and join me in the den.

  Willie calls me aside and tells me that Marcus has set things up as scheduled, and it gives me a pit in my stomach the size of Norway. To put it out of my mind and focus on the matter at hand takes a mental discipline that I’m not sure I have.

  I can feel the different dynamic in this meeting compared to our previous ones. Until now we’ve been floundering, unsure where to go and how to get there. Now we have a viable plan, and our task is simply to execute it.

  Kevin and I go over the meetings we need to have tomorrow with our witnesses, and Sam reassures me that he has recruited a friend highly competent and capable of setting our trap for Pollard.

  To that end I call the Pollards, and Teri answers. I ask her to have Bobby pick up the other line. Laurie, Kevin, and Sam sit silently in the room as I wait, knowing that this conversation must go well for us to have a chance.

  Bobby picks up, and I tell him that he is to testify Wednesday, though I’m not sure at what time. I’ll want him at the courthouse at nine A.M.

  “No problem,” he says. “How come the trial was delayed?”

  “The judge won’t let us talk about it, but it’s nothing for you to be concerned about,” I lie. “Your testimony will go forward as scheduled.”

  “It’s nothing bad for Kenny?” Teri asks.

  “Definitely not. It could even turn out to be good.”

  “Great,” she says.

  I take a deep breath; here comes the hard part. “Teri, with the way the media are all over everything that happens, this trial is as much about public relations as anything else. Maybe more.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” she says. “The things they say about Kenny, it makes my blood boil.”

  “Me too,” I say. “That’s why I want you in a TV studio on Wednesday doing interviews when Bobby finishes testifying. The other side is going to have people out there saying Bobby is wrong; we need you saying he’s right.”

  “Whatever you need, but I was hoping to be there to support Bobby.”

  I hate manipulating her, but I have no choice. I can’t have her at the courthouse, able to tell Bobby about the witnesses preceding his own testimony. “I’m sure Bobby wants you where you can most help Kenny. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

  “Absolutely,” he says, and she agrees.

  “Bobby, do you need me to send someone to pick you up, or can you make it to court by yourself? I can get you through the back entrance, so you won’t have to go through any of the crowds.”

  “I can drive,” he says, and the trap is set.

  HINCHLIFFE STADIUM is an impressive relic, a former minor-league football and baseball stadium that sits overlooking the Passaic Falls. If I remember my Paterson history correctly, these falls, third largest in the country, were discovered by either Alexander Hamilton or George Hamilton.

  The stadium now goes unused and is often rumored to be coming down. The old boy is about to have some excitement tonight. I’m standing near what used to be home plate, holding a briefcase and waiting. Within twenty minutes the shit might well be hitting the fan.

  I thought I had planned for all eventualities, yet I now realize I should have planned for the fact that there would be no lights here. Fortunately, it is a clear night, and there is a substantial amount of moonlight. Visibility will not be a big problem. But what else have I forgotten?

  I look at my watch and see that it’s ten P.M. I know what is happening at this moment. Marcus is picking up Quintana at a designated meeting place. He will determine to his satisfaction that Quintana is not armed, and they will start driving here to see me. Quintana does not know where I am, and he has promised to come alone.

  Willie Miller is nearby in his own car. He is watching to see if any of Quintana’s men follow Marcus’s car. If they do not, all is fine. If they do, then Quintana is breaking our pact and planning to kill me.

  In my briefcase is four hundred thousand dollars in cash. It is much lighter and takes up much less space than I expected. But it is a great deal of money, and it represents an amount I am willing to put at risk to ease my conscience and not feel like a murderer.

  The message was sent to Quintana that I wanted to see him personally, and I would be willing to provide the four hundred thousand he lost the night Troy Preston was killed. If he comes alone and promises not to come after me anymore, he can have the money and our relationship comes to a less-than-poignant end. If he tries to take the money and still attempts to kill me, then when I have him killed, I will consider it self-defense.

  My cell phone rings, and in the empty stadium it sounds like about two million decibels. I answer with “Yes?” and hear Willie’s voice on the other end. “They’re being followed,” he says.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, though I know the answer.

  “I’m sure,�
�� Willie says.

  I hang up the phone and call a number Petrone had given me. His designated person answers it, and I say, “Hinchliffe Stadium.”

  His answer is a simple “We’ll be there.”

  The next twenty-five minutes are the longest I have ever spent. Finally, I hear Marcus and Quintana coming from under the stands, walking toward me.

  Quintana is tall and fairly well built, though standing next to Marcus, he looks like a toothpick seedling. He has a sneer on his face, probably perpetually, and it tells me that he believes he is in control. He’s not.

  The first thing Quintana says is, “Show me the money.” Despite the seriousness of the moment, it strikes me as funny, as if Quintana is playing the movie version of the song-talking that Sam Willis does.

  I’m tempted to respond, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse,” but instead, I open the briefcase and show it to him.

  “Did you come alone?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” This guy is not much of a conversationalist.

  “So you’ll take this money and we’re even?” I ask. “You won’t come after me anymore?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  I know he’s lying, but I hand him the briefcase. He puts it under his arm and yells out something in Spanish, to the men he knows are outside the stadium. I am not supposed to know that those men are there and that their function will be to come in and kill Marcus and me. Marcus just watches all this impassively, betraying almost no interest at all.

  Suddenly, there is the sound of gunfire, the noise rattling the old stadium. Quintana reacts with surprise and concern, looking around to see what could be happening.

  “You lied to me,” I say, my voice cracking slightly with nervousness. “Your men followed you so that you could have me killed. I called for some support, which was purely an act of self-defense. I’m sorry it worked out this way, but you left me no choice.”

  Off to our left, Petrone’s men are entering the stadium. Quintana displays amazing quickness for a man his size, and I display amazing stupidity for a man any size. He grabs me before I can get out of the way and holds me in front of him so that my body is between him and the advancing gunmen.

  I’m gripped by panic; I can’t imagine Petrone’s men backing off simply because their bullets will have to pass through my body to get to Quintana. I have no doubt that Petrone has warned them that Quintana is not to escape alive, and even less doubt that they would not be willing to go back and say, “Sorry, Godfather, but we didn’t kill him. The lawyer was in the way.”

  Suddenly, a sequoia tree in the form of Marcus’s forearm lands on Quintana’s head. He goes down as if shot, and I get a quick and nauseating glimpse of the crushed side of his head and face.

  Marcus picks up the briefcase and hands it to me. “Let’s go,” he says, and we walk past Petrone’s men and out of the stadium, leaving them to attend to Quintana. Based on how he looked, and how hard Marcus hit him, they will not need their guns.

  All they’ll need is a shovel.

  JUDGE HARRISON calls court to order at nine A.M. sharp. He’s usually a few minutes late, but it’s as if this time he’s showing his determination not to allow the continuance to go on one minute longer than he had authorized.

  I’m still more than a little shaken by last night. It did not have to result in any killing; Quintana could have walked off with the money. And as it played out, I can justify in my mind that it was self-defense; had I not called Petrone’s people, I would have been killed myself.

  But the truth is that I set a process in motion knowing it could result in Quintana’s murder. Had I not done that, he would still be alive, as unpleasant as that might be for me. I’m compounding that by not revealing to the police what I know about the murders that took place at the stadium last night. As an officer of the court this has not been my finest moment.

  There is no mention of those murders in the media, and Petrone may have chosen to keep them secret. It’s okay with me.

  Things leading up to this crucial court day have progressed as well as I could have hoped. Pollard is in an anteroom with Kevin, ostensibly to discuss his testimony, but really to keep him from hearing anything about the witnesses before him. Laurie is with Teri at a TV studio that we have rented, though she is not likely to want to do any interviews after she discovers what happened to her husband. Laurie feels as guilty about this part of it as I do, but there was no other way to handle it. We simply could not have her drive Bobby to the hearing.

  I will need to get the witnesses that precede Pollard on and off in a hurry, to reduce any chance that he will get wind of what is going on. My first witness is George Karas, whom I need to set the scene. I have him testify as to the facts surrounding the high school all-American weekend. I submit the subsequent death certificates of the various athletes as evidence, so as to support him.

  Dylan has little to do with him on cross-examination, since the facts testified to are indisputable. Additionally, Dylan has no idea where I’m going with this, so he doesn’t want to inadvertently help me. The safest and correct thing for him to do is say very little for now, which is what he does.

  Next up is Simon Barkley, a retired vice president at Hamilton Life Insurance, who ran that company’s actuarial department for seventeen years. He is also a part-time mathematics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, where he teaches a course in mathematical probabilities.

  Once I quickly have his credentials established, I go right to the heart of his testimony. “Professor Barkley, did we meet at my home yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I give you the information that Mr. Karas just gave this jury concerning the deaths of these eight young football players?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “What did I ask you to do?” I ask.

  “To calculate the probability that these deaths could have been coincidental; that is to say, they could have happened by chance, without some common factor or cause among them.”

  “And did you do so?”

  “Yes. Would you like to hear my conclusions?”

  I smile and spread my arms to include the judge, jury, and gallery. “I think we all would.”

  “Well, let me say that the key assumption under which I was operating is that these young men had little or no connection to each other in the years after this weekend. For instance, had all eight been riding in the same car and that car plunged off a mountain, clearly the fact that they all died would not be a surprise to anyone. Or if they all belonged to the same army unit and went into battle together, these multiple deaths could be explainable as well. A third such example would be if they were together when exposed to a deadly bacterium.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  “Obviously, none of those things, or any circumstances like them, are applicable here.”

  “So what are the chances that eight out of eleven men of this young age, athletes, would die in the past seven years, without there being a single factor causing all of the deaths?” I press the point. “What are the chances it is just a terrible coincidence?”

  “Approximately one in seventy-eight billion.”

  I hear a gasp from the gallery, and I pause to let the answer sink in. We’re talking DNA-like numbers here. “Just so I understand this, are you saying that the chance of these deaths being unrelated, that the members of this all-American team were just the victims of horrible coincidence, is one in seventy-eight billion? Billion with a ‘b’?”

  He confirms that, and I turn him over to Dylan, who once again has no idea which way he should go. So far I’ve been setting up evidence of serial killings, and the only suspect in those killings until now is Kenny Schilling. Dylan has no reason or inclination to screw that up.

  Once Barkley is off the stand, I ask for a sidebar conference with Judge Harrison and Dylan. As soon as we’re out of earshot of everyone, I inform the judge that Bobby Pollard will be called next and that I would like to have
him declared as a “hostile” witness. As such I would be able to ask tough, leading questions, as if it were a cross-examination.

  “On what grounds?” Harrison asks. “What would prompt his hostility?”

  “I’m going to expose him as a fake and possible murderer.”

  Dylan almost leaps in the air. “Your Honor, I really have to object to this. There has been absolutely no showing made to link Mr. Pollard to these crimes.”

  Harrison looks at me, and I say, “There’s going to be plenty of showing once I get him on the stand, Your Honor.”

  Harrison has little choice but to grant my request, though he will certainly come down on me if I don’t deliver. He allows me to treat Pollard as a hostile witness, though Dylan reiterates his futile objection.

  “The defense calls Bobby Pollard,” I say, and within moments the door to the courtroom opens. Kevin pushes Pollard’s wheelchair to the stand, and Pollard pulls himself up out of the chair and into the witness chair with his powerful arms.

  He looks confident and unworried, which means he has no idea what has preceded his testimony this morning. I start off with gentle questions about the background of his relationship with Kenny, including a brief mention of the all-star weekend. I then have him describe the nature of his injury and the circumstances in which it took place.

  “So you have no use of your legs at all?” I ask.

  He nods sadly. “That’s correct.”

  “That’s amazing,” I say. “Yet you hold a job… live a full life. How do you get around?”

  He credits his wife, Teri, with being a big help in that regard, and under prodding describes some of his daily routine, including his ability to drive a specially equipped car with hand gas and brake controls.

  Since he believes he is here to say good things about Kenny, I ask questions that let him do so. Once he finishes, I hand him the list of the offensive players on the high school all-American team. “Do you recognize these names?”

  He looks at them. I’m surprised that he’s as cool as he is; I would have expected the list to make him look worried. “I know a few of the names. Obviously Kenny and Troy and myself.”