by Brad Parks
Then he announced his first witness.
“Your Honor, I’d like to call Ben Barrick to the stand.”
Of all the names I might have been expecting to come out of Mr. Honeywell’s mouth, Ben’s was near the last. Mr. Honeywell had mentioned in that note to me that he had been in communication with Ben, but it had never occurred to me that meant he was coming back to Staunton.
Ben appeared in the back of the courtroom, escorted by the deputy who had gone to fetch him. Why wasn’t he in Philadelphia or Elizabeth or wherever it was he was making his new life? And what did he possibly have to say to the court that would matter?
My feelings toward him were in a tangle. He had run out on me. His only communications since then had been that lame text and that cryptic voicemail. Our marriage was clearly over.
And yet.
Here he was. Testifying on my behalf. And he was still my Ben, the sexy guy with the V-shaped torso who flirted with me in Starbucks, the man who had laughed with me during some of the best times of my life and held me during some of the worst. I couldn’t turn off those memories.
As he approached the witness stand, he looked like the same old Ben, wearing his professor clothes and Malcolm X glasses. I thought maybe some spell would have been broken by his betrayal. But no. I still missed him terribly and was just happy to have him there.
In his left hand, he carried a leather folder. He raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth and nothing but, then had a seat in the witness box.
“Mr. Barrick, what is your relationship to the defendant?”
“We’ve been married for nine months.”
“Before you married, how long were you in a relationship with her?”
“Four years.”
“And you live with her?”
“Until she was incarcerated, yes.”
“In all that time together, and now living with her, have you ever known the defendant to use or sell drugs?”
“No, sir. Absolutely not. When she was pregnant with our son, she didn’t even use aspirin.”
Our son.
“So when the Sheriff’s Office went into your house and brought nearly half a kilo of cocaine out of your house, you were . . . Well, tell the court, what was your reaction?”
“I was dumbfounded, thunderstruck, pick whatever word you like. I knew those drugs weren’t hers. It simply wasn’t possible.”
“Were they yours?”
“No, sir. Absolutely not.”
“Do you have a criminal record or any history of drug use?”
“No, sir.”
“So, given your certainty the drugs didn’t belong to your wife, what was your next step?”
“I tried to be logical about it. If they didn’t belong to Melanie, whose were they? And how did they get there? I guess you could say I was compelled to find out.”
“So you performed your own investigation, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you trained as an investigator?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Up until recently, I was a PhD candidate in history. While my inquiries tended to be more focused on the past than the present, the skills overlap.”
“I see,” Mr. Honeywell said. “Can you please tell the court about your investigation into the cocaine that was found in your house?”
“It focused on finding the source of the drugs. I believed that if I could trace the drugs back to the source, I could learn how they had ended up taped in our air-conditioning duct. I couldn’t get my hands on the drugs themselves, of course. But I did have a picture of them, thanks to the commonwealth’s attorney, Mr. Dansby. He posed in front of them for the newspaper. I was able to purchase a digital copy of that photo from The News Leader and enlarge it.”
He withdrew a few copies of a photo from his leather folder.
“This is Defense Exhibit One, Your Honor,” Mr. Honeywell said. “We’ve got copies for everyone.”
The bailiff shared the photos with the judge and Amy Kaye.
“As you can see, some of the cocaine has been bagged for individual sale and comes with a stamp marking its brand,” Ben said. “This particular mark is a dragon with a crown on its head, and the words ‘DRAGON KING’ are emblazoned underneath.”
“Why is this significant?”
“That was my first avenue of investigation. I was able to talk to some local cocaine users. They were people who naturally wouldn’t give me their names, but they told me Dragon King was the brand sold by Mookie Myers. They said it was an excellent brand, one they enjoyed very much and missed now that it was no longer available.”
“No longer available? For how long?”
“Since Mr. Myers was sent away, apparently,” Ben said. “I asked if they knew where Mr. Myers had gotten it from. Most did not. But one person I was able to get friendly with, and who took pity on me because he knew my wife had been locked up, told me Mr. Myers had intimated it came from a dealer who went by the name of Gotham, and that Gotham was based somewhere in New Jersey, perhaps Camden.”
Camden. The first hotel in that credit card bill that so enraged me had been in Camden.
“I see,” Mr. Honeywell said. “And what did you do with this information?”
“I traveled to New Jersey. I went undercover and assumed the lifestyle of a would-be drug dealer and I inquired about Gotham. I spent several days in Camden, New Jersey, until I was able to ascertain that Gotham was based in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I then traveled to Elizabeth, where I succeeded in making contact with a man who identified himself as Gotham.”
“And how did you do this?” Mr. Honeywell asked.
“Again, by posing as a person who was interested in becoming a business associate of Gotham. I had a certain amount of money I was able to show around. That helped.”
I thought of Ben, his jazz records, our Vitamix. He had obviously liquidated every possession he had of value and emptied his bank account. That was yet another reason he used the credit card. He was trying to preserve as much cash as he could.
Another thing also made sense: why he had left his professor clothing behind in Staunton. He knew he wouldn’t be needing it, with what he had to do. Slightly aged hip-hop clothing would have served him well.
“So you were able to convince people in New Jersey you were the real thing?”
“I did. I realize this is a delicate subject, Mr. Honeywell, but race is a very powerful thing in this country. I have no doubt I was able to gain entree into this world because of my skin color, because I claimed to know Mr. Myers, and mostly because I know how to talk the language.”
“Talk the language?”
“Yes. My appearance and speech patterns in this courtroom notwithstanding, I grew up poor and black in Alabama, and I certainly know how to speak that way. I also know how to present myself in a courtroom. My people call what I’m doing right now ‘talking white.’ I believe psychologists call it ‘code switching.’
“The point of all this is that I had no trouble passing myself off as a country boy from Virginia who was coming to the big city to get hooked up. I found the drug dealers I interacted with to be less sophisticated and, I suppose you could say, more guileless than what you might be led to believe from television. It took a week or so of hanging around, but I had a relatively easy time infiltrating its ranks and convincing its leadership I was legitimate.”
“I see. So you succeeded in making contact with Gotham?”
“I did,” Ben said, adjusting his glasses.
By this point, I was deeply engrossed in the story. Just the picture of my academic husband acting like some wannabe drug kingpin was almost too incredible to believe. And yet I knew he possessed both the intelligence and, obviously, the will.
The will to clear his wife. The woman he loved.
I had already silently f
orgiven him for leaving me. He thought I was in jail this whole time. That’s why he didn’t leave a note for me. It was why the voicemail had included the line “I hope you get this someday.” It was why the text had begun with “I know I won’t hear back from you.”
He wasn’t aware Marcus had bailed me out and therefore didn’t think he could contact me. And, of course, I had been too angry—and hurt—to reach out to him. By the time he reported what he had discovered to Mr. Honeywell, who could have told him I made bail, I had already been put back in jail for Coduri’s murder.
“And what happened when you met with Gotham?” Mr. Honeywell continued.
“He confirmed for me that Mookie Myers was one of his associates. He said Mr. Myers used to drive up to Elizabeth to purchase product from him, and he expressed remorse that Mr. Myers was now incarcerated. He asked me if I wanted to take over for Mr. Myers. I asked Gotham about Dragon King, because I assumed Dragon King had been his invention. But he said he knew nothing about that. He said that must have been Mr. Myers’s doing. I used that as an excuse to leave Gotham’s company without buying any drugs. I told him I was only interested in Dragon King.”
“What did you do next?”
“I returned to Virginia, where I visited Mr. Myers at the Haynesville Correctional Center. I told him that I believed someone was framing my wife for drug possession and he told me he was sorry to hear that, but that he had his own problems. Then I told him she was alleged to be selling the Dragon King brand.”
“How did Mr. Myers react to that?”
“He became very animated and upset. I think he took a lot of pride in Dragon King. He told me he designed the stamp himself, and that there was only one of them in existence. Back when he had been in business, he guarded it very fiercely. He knew his customers had come to value the brand and that other dealers might try to imitate it. I showed him the picture that we now refer to as Defense Exhibit One. He was very agitated that someone else would be, in effect, taking credit for his work.”
“Did Mr. Myers tell you anything else?”
“Not really. He was too angry and our discussion basically ended on that note. Then I came back home and was able to talk to you, and you were able to tell me about how the Mookie Myers drugs were discovered to have gone missing from the evidence lockup.”
“And what conclusion did we reach at that point?”
“Well, it seemed pretty obvious that the drugs from the lockup with the one-of-a-kind stamp were the same drugs and stamp that showed up in my house. Someone must have taken them from the evidence lockup.”
“And who might have done that?”
Ben maintained his fair, even tone. “I don’t know.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Amy Kaye didn’t know either.
But as Ben Barrick’s direct testimony neared its end, she realized she had a way to find out.
Start with what now seemed clear: The missing drugs from the evidence lockup really were the same drugs that had been found at Melanie Barrick’s house. What had seemed like nothing more than a wild, shot-in-the-dark defense theory now appeared to have the imprimatur of truth. Ben Barrick’s testimony had been unimpeachable enough to convince her of that.
Not that it meant his wife was innocent. It merely meant there was someone else involved. And—shockingly, Amy realized—it was the same man she had been stalking for three years now.
It fit the facts as she understood them: A member of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office who raped women in Augusta County—and only Augusta County—found a way to steal drugs from the evidence lockup.
The defense was trying to convince the judge that the deputy had planted the drugs in Melanie Barrick’s home, then walked away from them. But that simply didn’t jibe with Amy. What would the deputy have to gain from that? Nothing.
No, the deputy was looking to cash out on what he had stolen. Knowing he couldn’t sell the drugs himself, wasn’t it possible he looked for someone else to do the selling? He was well acquainted with Melanie Barrick, having stalked her for weeks before he raped her. He would know she was the least likely person to come to law enforcement’s attention. An educated white woman. A mom.
And—he had probably figured this out already, as Amy had when she subpoenaed Barrick’s bank records—she was flat broke. And therefore desperate.
She also had no apparent connection to the deputy. It made her the perfect accomplice.
And why would Melanie Barrick cooperate with the man who raped her?
Simple. She didn’t know it was him.
Spin it forward from there. Melanie Barrick was happily selling drugs, giving a cut to the deputy. Everyone was making money. Then along came Richard Coduri, seasoned drug snitch, informing Skip Kempe—whom Coduri had previously worked with—what was happening. Kempe investigated dutifully and found all the evidence needed to indict Melanie Barrick.
Which would seem to indicate Kempe wasn’t the guy. Just as Amy thought.
Keep spinning. Now in deep trouble, Barrick asked her partner for help. He would know that if the whole thing unraveled, it would be worse for him than for Barrick. A drug-dealing sheriff’s deputy would also face a charge of official misconduct, which could put him away for an additional eight years, if the judge decided to make the sentences consecutive.
So the deputy—a man with that Y chromosome that appeared so vividly under the state lab’s microscope—killed Coduri. Which explained the seemingly unlikely fact that the fingerprint found in Room 307 of the Howard Johnson matched the one left by the man who raped Lilly Pritchett.
And that, of course, was his most critical error: the fingerprint. Every deputy who checked in at a crime scene—and she had to imagine that was every deputy on duty—had their fingerprints on file, in case they left prints by accident. Why hadn’t Justin Herzog gotten a match when he first ran the print? Because he kept deputies’ fingerprints in a separate database.
So all she had to do to find the rapist, Coduri’s killer, and Melanie Barrick’s accomplice was to have Herzog search that database.
She was tempted to pull her phone out of her bag and send Herzog an email, but there was no way she could get away with it. Judge Robbins would lose his mind. And he was the kind of judge who just might have been curmudgeonly enough to hold her in contempt over lunch break to teach her a lesson.
So she forced herself to wait.
Meanwhile, she had a trial to continue. In some ways, her job here didn’t change. If anything, getting a conviction was now more important than ever. She could use it to leverage Melanie Barrick into testifying against her partner at the next trial.
She treaded carefully in her cross-examination of Ben Barrick. He was excellent on the stand—intelligent, authoritative, articulate. She tried once or twice to trip him up, but she could tell it was backfiring. Every question she asked just gave him an opportunity to flesh out his narrative.
But what did it add up to? Again, very little. Nothing the husband said changed the amount of cocaine that had been found in their house next to his wife’s cell phone. She knew Judge Robbins, the former prosecutor, wouldn’t forget that.
After she wrapped up with Ben Barrick, the defense put Mookie Myers on the stand. Myers quite obviously didn’t want to be there, and Honeywell was trying to worm under the convict’s skin, perhaps get him angry enough to start talking.
Myers was no dummy. He may have blabbed in prison to Ben Barrick, but he was too cagey to do so on the record in a courtroom. Anytime Honeywell got anywhere close to a matter that might hurt the prosecution—or confirm Barrick’s testimony—Myers responded with, “On the advice of my attorney, I am invoking my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.”
Good little criminal that he was, he was keeping his mouth shut.
When offered the opportunity to cross-examine the witness, Amy declined. There was no need. Myers ha
dn’t helped the defense one bit. She wanted to keep it that way.
Honeywell’s next move was to call Bobby Ray Walters, Barrick’s neighbor. He introduced a low-quality video, showing Richard Coduri driving up Melanie Barrick’s driveway at 1:01 p.m. on Monday, March 5, the day before the Sheriff’s Office raid. Then it showed him leaving sixteen minutes later.
The defense was clearly trying to intimate that Coduri was the one who planted the drugs. All it really did was further confirm Kempe’s testimony. On cross-examination, it wasn’t hard to introduce the idea that neither Walters nor anyone else knew what Coduri had done during those sixteen minutes. It was, in fact, very possible he had gone to Barrick’s house to buy drugs, just like he had told Detective Kempe.
Beyond that, Amy thought it was a huge mistake to bring Coduri anywhere near this proceeding. All it did was inflame an already fired-up judge.
Perhaps for that reason, Robbins announced a lunch break once Walters was dismissed. Amy couldn’t have asked for better timing. The whole time Robbins was chewing his tuna sandwich, he’d be thinking about poor, dead Richard Coduri.
But that, of course, was only a small part of why Amy had been eagerly anticipating a break. The moment the last wisps of Robbins’s robe disappeared from view, she pulled out her phone and tapped a message to Justin Herzog. Exhorting him to treat the matter with the caution it was due, she asked him to run Person B from the Pritchett case—and the unsub from Room 307—against employees of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office.
She marked it urgent, then hit Send.
FIFTY-EIGHT
When they brought me back out into the courtroom for the afternoon session, Ben, Teddy, and Wendy were clumped together in the third row. Ben gave me a thumbs-up. Teddy waved. Wendy smiled awkwardly.
My parents were now sitting with them. They must have been able to take a long look at my brother and make an educated guess. I could only imagine what kind of family reunion that was shaping up to be.
