“Funny.” Jameson brought his hands together. The joints popped like gunshots. Cracking his knuckles was only one of his many annoying habits. Next to him, Scerbak stopped grinning and took an interest in the financial statements.
Scerbak’s gut mashed against the edge of Leary’s desk as he leaned forward to read the spreadsheets and tables. “Who’s Rushford?”
“Michael Rushford. I think he may have been involved in the Dillard murders.”
Jameson’s eyes widened and he laughed. “Jesus, Leary, who needs defense attorneys when we have you trying to disprove your own cases?”
“I’m just being thorough.” Leary rubbed his face. He certainly was not trying to disprove his own case. He believed Ramsey was guilty. He’d been there when Kristen Dillard had burst into tears the moment she’d seen his face at the lineup. But if evidence existed that exonerated Ramsey and implicated someone else, it was Leary’s responsibility to find it. If he shirked that duty and Ramsey was wrongfully executed, then the man’s blood would be on Leary’s hands.
“Why don’t you give me some space to work?”
Jameson and Scerbak exchanged a glance. Neither of them was a bad guy—Leary had enjoyed beers with both of them on occasion, and had even joined Scerbak’s family for dinner once—but they were both uncannily skilled at making pests of themselves.
Jameson took one of the spreadsheets from Leary’s desk and squinted at it. “Looks boring. You want some help?”
Leary looked up. “Yeah, if you have time to spare. Some help would be great.”
Jameson dragged a chair to Leary’s desk. Scerbak did the same. It didn’t take long for both men to fall silent as they squinted at the papers. Leary wasn’t surprised. The documents were confusing, with a lot of information jammed into tables with little context. It took all of Leary’s concentration just to get a general sense of their meaning. He was parsing the entries on one spreadsheet when his phone rang. The noise jarred him backward and he almost knocked Scerbak off the chair beside him.
Leary picked up the receiver and heard the voice of a young woman. “Are you the detective in charge of the Dillard killings?”
“Why don’t you tell me who you are first?” Wary of the press, Leary half-expected his caller to identify herself as an aspiring journalist, or worse, a blogger.
“Rachel Pugh.”
His eyes turned to the next document in his pile. It was a bank statement from fourteen months ago. “And why are you calling, Ms. Pugh?”
“I saw him.”
Leary ran his finger down the lists of deductions and deposits, trying to maintain his focus. “Who did you see?”
“Frank Ramsey.”
Nothing on the statement looked suspicious, so he put it on the pile of reviewed documents and pulled the next sheet in front of him. “Ms. Pugh, I’m kind of busy—”
“I saw him run out of their house. It was the night of the murders. A lot of times I jog after dark. I don’t like to—but by the time I’m finished with school and work, it’s usually dark out. I saw him come out from behind the Dillard house and run onto the street. He ran under a street-lamp. He was pulling off his gloves with his teeth.”
Leary shoved the financial records out of his way and found a blank sheet of paper. “Where are you?”
“Right now I’m at work. Starbucks.”
Jameson and Scerbak stopped reading and watched him scrawl an address. “When can we meet?”
“Whenever you have time, I guess.”
Leary looked at his watch. “How about in ten minutes?”
Leary found the Starbucks and asked for Rachel Pugh. A girl who looked about seventeen untied her apron and walked around the counter. She pointed to a cluster of tables—mostly vacant at 4:07 PM—and they sat down.
“Why didn’t you come forward with this information two years ago?”
Leary studied the girl’s face as she looked at her hands. She wore very little makeup, kept her hair in a ponytail. After a few seconds, she said, “My father told me I should stay out of it.”
“He was afraid for you?”
Rachel nodded. “I was scared, too.”
Leary touched his chin, thinking fast. A second eyewitness, corroborating Kristen Dillard’s testimony, would practically guarantee a conviction. But he had to make sure she was for real and not a pretender. There were always people—even innocent-looking teenagers like Rachel—who sought attention by going to the police with invented stories.
“You look about the same age as Kristen Dillard. Did you know her?”
“We weren’t close.” She looked up from her hands and met Leary’s eyes. “We had some classes together, friends in common.”
Listening to her now for inconsistencies in the story she’d told him over the phone, and watching her body language for signs of deception, he said, “Tell me again about what you saw.”
“I was jogging.”
“What was the date?”
She gave him the date of the murders.
“What was the time?”
“I got home from work at seven, said hi to my parents, did homework for an hour. So it was around eight.”
“You didn’t eat dinner?”
She shook her head. “I like to jog first, eat after. It’s better for my stomach and my parents don’t mind.”
“What did you see?”
“I was running along Overlook Lane—that’s what Kristen’s street is called, even though it doesn’t overlook anything—and before I passed her house, a man ran out from behind it. At first I thought it might be Kristen’s father, but I knew he was a scientist and even in the dark this guy didn’t look like a scientist. I could see he was big and muscular, like he worked out a lot. I slowed down because I always try to avoid strangers when I’m jogging alone.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. If he did, he didn’t try to talk to me or anything. He ran to the street, then started running up the street. When he ran underneath a street-lamp, I saw his face. He had short black hair, a square jaw. He put one of his hands near his mouth and used his teeth to pull off his glove as he ran.”
“Which glove? His right or left?”
“He used his teeth to pull off his right glove, then he pulled off his left glove with his right hand.”
“Did you see what he did with his gloves?”
“He stuffed them in the pockets of his jacket.”
“Did you see any blood?”
Rachel shook her head. “But it was dark, like I said.”
“How do you know the man you saw was Frank Ramsey?”
“I saw his picture on the Internet after he was arrested. It was him.”
Leary watched cars pass outside. Through the window, he could hear the faint hum of their engines. He wanted to believe her story, but he knew that she could have learned all of her details from TV reports and news articles.
“You don’t believe me.” She looked frustrated, but also relieved.
“Do me a favor, Rachel. Close your eyes.” Smiling sheepishly, she did as he asked. “Good. Now think back to that moment when the man passed underneath the street-lamp. Can you see him in your mind’s eye?”
“Yes.”
“You see his black hair? His square jaw?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Now this is very important. I want you to look at the man’s right hand.”
“He’s pulling his glove off with his teeth.”
“That’s right. But I want you to look at his wrist. Is he wearing a watch on his right wrist?”
She nodded. Even with her eyes closed, she looked excited. “Yes. There’s a watch.”
“And is that watch silver in color, with a metal band? A Swiss watch made specifically for firefighters?”
The corners of Rachel’s mouth turned downward in a frown. She was quiet for a moment. “No, I don’t remember it looking like that. I think—what I think I saw was one of those ugly, clunky rubber watches.”
“You can open your eyes now.”
He looked away from her, at the other employees behind the counter. Kristen Dillard had described to him in detail the watch worn by her assailant. Her eyes had fixed on it while the man was raping her mother, and—as some kind of defense mechanism, Leary assumed—her mind had studied the watch as if every detail of its manufacture were crucial.
The watch Kristen had seen was a black Chase-Durer Blackhawk Mach 3 Alarm Chronograph. Designed for pilots. Sturdy, coated in rubber, ugly.
Leary had withheld information about the watch from the media.
“You haven’t talked to Kristen Dillard about the attack, have you?”
The suggestion surprised her. “No. I haven’t even seen Kristen since it happened. I mean, I’ve seen her on TV, but not in person. I didn’t want to see her. I felt guilty, like because I had seen him and kept quiet I was part of it.”
He believed her. “I’d like you to take a ride with me.”
“Where?”
“Police Headquarters.”
“I don’t get off work for another three hours.” Chewing her lip, she turned to look at a balding man eying them from behind the counter.
“I’ll talk to your manager.”
“I ... I don’t know.”
Leary put his elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “Rachel, you called me because you want to do the right thing. Don’t change your mind now.”
She looked down at her hands again, but only for a moment. Then her eyes met his. “Let’s go.”
39
Jessie received Leary’s call on her way into the courthouse lobby. “I hope you’re calling with good news,” she said, clamping the phone between her ear and shoulder as she approached security.
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
He sounded unusually happy, not the Mark Leary she’d become accustomed to. For some reason, that made her nervous. “Well?”
“I’ve got a new witness for you. A new eyewitness.”
“You’re kidding.” She stopped walking and leaned close to the wall as Goldhammer and some of his underlings hurried past her. She watched them walk through the metal detector leading to the elevator bank. “But the prosecution has already rested its case.”
“Can’t you un-rest it?”
It was possible, but it wouldn’t be easy. She—or, more accurately, Elliot—would need to make some pretty compelling arguments to Judge Spatt. “Who’s the witness?”
“Her name is Rachel Pugh. She can put Ramsey at the scene on the night of the murder.”
Jessie felt her heart rate increase. “Are you sure?”
“She’s for real, Jessie. I just took her statement. I haven’t done anything official yet—I thought it would be safer to keep her a secret for the moment. She’s a little shaken up by the whole interview process, but her statement is solid. I’m about to drive her home. Then I’ll call you back.”
“Wait. Where was this Rachel Pugh the first time we tried this case?”
“She was afraid. She’s a kid—the jury will understand. What matters is she knows details about the crime that were never released to the media. You need to get her on the stand.”
“That won’t be easy.”
Leary laughed. “Am I speaking to Jessie Black? Maybe I called the wrong number.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’m no longer prosecuting the case. Warren’s nephew has taken over.”
Leary continued to laugh. She waited for him to realize she was serious. “What?”
A new witness, she thought. A chance to put this case to rest, finally, forever. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll get her on the stand.”
Jessie ended the call and stood frozen for a moment, staring at her phone. A second witness. After all this time. It was just the break they needed.
“Something wrong?”
She jumped and turned to find Jack Ackerman standing behind her. “How long have you been standing there?”
He made a show of looking at her ass. “Not long enough.”
“This is not the time, Jack.”
“When would be the time? You haven’t returned my calls in days.”
It took her brain a moment to let go of Leary’s phone call and focus on Jack. “I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry.”
“Listen, I have this dinner thing I need to go to on Friday night, for one of my clients. I don’t want to go alone. Will you come with me?”
She shook her head, exasperated. “Jack, in case you haven’t noticed, this thing we have between us? It blew up in my face, big time. I am in full damage control mode right now, trying to save this case, Kristen, my career, everything. So, no, I do not want to go to a dinner function with you on Friday night. Okay? I need to find Elliot. I’ll call you when I can.”
“What about us? You said you’re trying to save everything. Does that include us?”
It wasn’t easy turning her back on him, but she did. She walked away, leaving him standing alone in the courthouse lobby.
Judge Spatt’s courtroom thrummed with anticipation, but not because anyone in it had forewarning about the bomb the prosecution was about to drop about its surprise witness. It was the presence of Dr. Katherine Moscow—seated in the first row of the gallery and clearly intended by Goldhammer to be the first witness for the defense—that had created the stir of excitement. In the world of criminal law, at least, Moscow had become a celebrity. In the last few years, her name had appeared in the news with more frequency than Goldhammer’s. While he was merely a defense lawyer that liked to get his picture in the paper, she was real news—a rogue psychologist whose theories threatened to upset people’s most basic beliefs about the reliability of memory.
Her beauty didn’t hurt either. Every eye in the courtroom seemed drawn to her. She pretended not to notice the attention—or maybe, after being stared at for her whole life, she really didn’t notice it anymore. Even Judge Spatt, whose range of facial expression had always seemed to Jessie to be limited to varying degrees of boredom and annoyance, looked at her with his lips slightly parted, as if he might at any moment begin to drool. The perfect witness.
Jessie chewed her lip. She knew they could beat Moscow, but it wouldn’t be easy.
Spatt tapped his gavel, silencing the room. “Mr. Goldhammer, is the defense ready to proceed with its first witness?”
Goldhammer stood up. He glanced at Moscow, then turned to the judge. “We are, Your Honor.”
“All right. Let’s bring the jury in.”
“Excuse me.” Elliot stood up. His nervousness was evident—Jessie could see it from her seat near the back of the gallery—but his voice carried clearly. “Your Honor, the Commonwealth requests permission to reopen its case.”
“For what reason?”
Elliot fired an uneasy glance at the gallery. “Sidebar, Your Honor?”
The judge beckoned Elliot and Goldhammer to approach him. Jessie hesitated for a moment, then breached protocol and crossed the courtroom to join them. No one objected. Elliot and Goldhammer were already huddled over the judge’s podium, speaking softly to avoid being heard by the gallery.
“The Commonwealth wishes to call an additional witness to introduce direct evidence on the issue of the defendant’s whereabouts on the night of the crimes,” Elliot was saying.
“Who is this witness?” Spatt said.
Elliot pitched his voice lower. “The witness is a minor and we would like to keep the witness’s identity confidential for the moment. The information will be made available to the defense once an appropriate protective order is in place.”
“This is offensive!” Goldhammer sputtered. “Offensive! Your Honor, Mr. Ramsey is entitled to a fair trial. There are rules that must be followed.”
“Yes, and as I’ve told you before, I am familiar with them.” The judge’s voice was like ice, and Goldhammer retreated slightly.
Elliot said, “Under Pennsylvania law, a trial court has the discretion to
reopen a case for either side prior to the entry of final judgment.” He paused, probably trying to remember case names. “Your Honor, please.”
“Please what?” Spatt’s face snapped in Elliot’s direction. “Am I here to do you favors?”
Elliot’s face flushed. “Your Honor—”
“My answer is no,” Spatt said. “You may not call your magical mystery witness.”
“Your Honor?” Jessie said. The three men seemed to notice her presence for the first time. Spatt’s eyes widened. “May I speak?” she said.
“Absolutely not!”
“Your Honor, if you will not permit us to reopen our case-in-chief, please allow us to present a rebuttal witness after the defense has rested its case.”
“Mr. Williams already told the court that this witness—whoever it is—would introduce direct evidence,” Goldhammer said. “That’s not proper testimony for rebuttal.”
“It is if the testimony was not available during the prosecution’s case-in-chief,” Jessie said. She held her breath. No judge had ever held her in contempt of court, but if any was likely to be the first, it was Spatt.
Instead of berating her, he stared into space, thoughtful. He looked at Goldhammer, then at Elliot. “The parties will brief these issues—in writing, please—and I will decide whether or not the testimony of this minor is proper. Fair?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Goldhammer’s voice was a grumble.
Elliot thanked him and looked relieved to back away from the bench, another battle behind him.
Jessie crept backward, past the bar of the court, and reentered the gallery where she hoped to disappear. Before she could sit, Spatt’s eyes caught her.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable at the prosecution table, Ms. Black?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Several people in the gallery—including Kate Moscow—turned to stare at her.
“Maybe you’d prefer my seat?” Spatt said.
A murmur of laughter moved through the gallery. Jessie felt her cheeks redden. “No thank you, Your Honor. I’m fine back here.”
[Jessie Black 01.0] Burnout Page 19
