Undertow

by Sydney Bauer

  The defence knew that the prosecution probably won the major points on day one, but felt that under the circumstances, they had kept things under control. They guessed that Kemp would be used to back up Jones’ comments regarding the lack of referral to the conversation – but Kemp was the driver of the coastguard vessel so there was no way Scaturro could justify suggesting he should have been in the loop regarding the conversation. As such, they were not too sure where this was going but sat at the ready to object.

  Scaturro began by asking Kemp to tell the court about his job, knowing it would be the quickest way to put him at ease.

  ‘And you have been with the US Coastguard for . . . ?’

  ‘Twenty years, Ma’am, the first few in Hawaii, the next two down in Florida, and the last fifteen in Gloucester.’

  ‘Twenty years – amazing. You must have attended hundreds of untoward water and boating incidents in your time.’

  ‘Yes Ma’am, in fact we worked through the so-called “Perfect Storm” of 1991. They made a movie about it, starring that fella who started out on ER.’

  ‘Ah, yes they did, Mr Kemp.’

  Scaturro looked up to see jurors one and two, Melissa Proctor and Roslyn Jones, look at each other and whisper ‘George Clooney’ before suppressing their grins and refocusing on the witness.

  ‘That’s right, George Clooney,’ echoed Scaturro with a smile, looking at the pair and sharing in their girls’ club before moving on. ‘And, given your extensive experience, you must have also garnered an ability to, shall we say, assess a situation, read between the lines?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘Then tell us Mr Kemp, after receiving the first distress call from Teesha Martin, what was the first thing that went through your mind?’

  ‘Alcohol.’

  ‘You needed a drink, Mr Kemp?’ Scaturro threw this in for a little light relief; she could see Kemp relaxing and wanted to help him on his way.

  ‘No Ma’am,’ he said with a half smile. ‘But I could sure use one about now.’

  This brought a peal of laughter from the entire room, and a welcome reprieve from the tension.

  ‘Fair enough Mr Kemp, but back to 4 May.’

  ‘Yes . . . ah . . . alcohol use is a key associated risk factor, noted in forty to fifty per cent of drownings. And even more common when it comes to young people – particularly teenagers.’

  ‘And you were right, Mr Kemp. Christina Haynes had been drinking.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Scaturro paused here, walking in slow circles around the front of the room and nodding her head just a little. She was taking her time with this one and David sensed it was because she wanted the jury to like this man. Likeability often translated to believability and Kemp obviously had something important to say.

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,’ David whispered to Arthur.

  ‘Me too,’ answered his boss.

  ‘So, you got the distress call,’ Scaturro finally went on, ‘informed the paramedics and arranged for them to meet you on your vessel moored at Gloucester Marina, would that be right Mr Kemp?’

  ‘That’s right. There is a paramedic unit based at the Gloucester Fire Department. They were only a couple of minutes away.’

  ‘So the time you took the distress call to the time you reached The Cruisader – what was it – almost to the point where the Annisquam meets Ipswich Bay would be . . . ?’

  ‘No more than fifteen minutes, maybe less.’

  ‘All right. What were you doing in that fifteen minutes Mr Kemp?’

  ‘Maintaining radio contact with Miss Martin, rechecking their location, trying to get as much detail as possible so that the paramedics would be well informed prior to their arrival.’

  ‘I see. Now Mr Kemp, you are no doubt aware of the two contrasting theories being presented by the prosecution and the defence in this matter, and the debate over the alleged conversation.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The State maintains Miss Haynes was unconscious when Mrs Martin saw her from the cruiser whilst the defence allege Miss Haynes instructed Mrs Martin to desert her.’

  ‘Objection,’ David was up. ‘Your Honour, Ms Scaturro is not only trying to put words in the witness’s mouth, she is trying to re-write our stance on the case.’

  ‘He’s right, Ms Scaturro. Sustained.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Your Honour. The defence maintain Christina Haynes suggested Mrs Martin leave her in the water.’ It wasn’t much better but a second objection would have appeared cantankerous.

  ‘I realise that,’ said Kemp.

  ‘Given you were there on the day Mr Kemp, and involved with the incident first hand, did you and do you still have an informed personal take on how the situation developed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I believe that Miss Haynes was most likely unconscious when discovered by Mrs Martin.’

  This blatant statement sent a wave of contention through the courtroom and Stein was forced to call for order. Scaturro allowed the noise to settle before asking Kemp to explain.

  ‘I believe that to be the case because that is the information I was given.’

  ‘Information? By whom Mr Kemp?’

  ‘By Teesha Martin – the daughter.’

  Another wave of disbelief. Another call for order. David felt his heart skip a beat.

  ‘Your Honour, at this point I would ask the court’s permission to play a portion of the taped distress call between Miss Layteesha Martin and Mr Kemp.’

  David immediately turned in his seat to look at Samantha Bale who was seated behind him. She had listened to the tape as part of their initial discovery and had not found anything untoward.

  Sam looked back and shrugged in disbelief, her red curls framing her now extremely worried expression.

  ‘I am going to start the tape close to the beginning, Mr Kemp. I will ask you to listen and give comment when I turn the tape off.’

  ‘All right.’

  The entire courtroom seemed to lean forward, as if posturing on the edges of their seats would improve their chances of hearing. But there was no need, the tape was loud and crisp and clear and everyone, including Rayna who fought back tears at the sound of her daughter’s voice, could hear it.

  ‘I . . . we need help, this is an emergency,’ said Teesha.

  ‘All right Miss, calm down, first tell me your name and then tell me exactly what has happened?’

  ‘My name is Teesha, Layteesha Martin, and . . . my girlfriend, we found her, in the water. She isn’t breathing. She . . .’

  ‘Where are you, Teesha?’

  Teesha explained they were on The Cruisader heading back to port and gave their coordinates before going on.

  ‘Is there an adult with you, Teesha ?’

  ‘Yes, my mom is here. She’s administering CPR, but I don’t know if it’s working.’

  ‘Are you okay driving the cruiser, honey?’

  ‘Yes . . . I have training.’

  ‘Good. Now I’ve already placed an automatic call to the paramedics who will meet me here in minutes and then I’ll head straight out to you, okay?’

  ‘0kay, but please hurry.’

  ‘We will, Teesha.’

  Kemp spent another minute or two rechecking Teesha’s exact location. During this time the paramedics had arrived at the Marina and jumped on board and Kemp raised his voice over the patrol boat’s engines which he revved up to full throttle before pulling out into the Harbor.

  ‘What is your friend’s name, Teesha?’ Kemp went on, keeping Teesha focused.

  ‘Christina Haynes.’

  ‘And how old is Christina, Teesha?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Has Christina been drinking, Teesha?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . not that much. God, I don’t believe this.’

  ‘It’s okay, Teesha, stay with me honey. Stay close to the radio. We are on our way.’

  ‘Okay.’

/>   ‘What happened to Christina, Teesha?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. We were on an outboard and we putted into Essex Bay and our boat capsized and Chrissie swam out to get my mom and . . .’

  ‘Your mom was on the cruiser?’

  ‘Yes. But then the next thing we know, Christina is unconscious and Mom comes to get us and we can’t find her and then we do and . . . and . . . we drag her on board and we try to . . .’

  Teesha’s voice faltered. It was obvious she was fighting back tears and the entire courtroom sat silent, stunned with the reality of it all. Kemp checked her location again and told them they were minutes away.

  ‘It’s all right, honey, we’re almost there . . . in fact, we can see you now, can you see us Teesha? Look south, honey, towards the mouth of the river.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Thank God.’

  ‘Okay honey, we’re gonna pull alongside as soon as we reach you, so start to slow down a little, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  And then Scaturro turned off the tape.

  It was a disaster. There it was plain and clear . . . a sequence of events in Teesha’s own words.

  ‘ . . . the next thing we know, CHRISTINA IS UNCONSCIOUS AND MOM COMES TO GET US . . . and we can’t find her and then we do and . . . and . . .’

  Of course the defence knew that Teesha was confused, going into shock, rattling out details at random and they would argue this on cross, but the evidence was still extremely damaging and they knew it. A shocked Rayna looked at David who mouthed the words ‘don’t panic’ before squeezing her hand under the table.

  Scaturro re-wound the tape and replayed the relevant section before reinforcing the sequence with Kemp. ‘It is clear, isn’t it Mr Kemp? Teesha Martin says Christina was unconscious before her mother came to get them. The sequence is undeniable. “Christina is unconscious and mom comes to get us . . . ”.’

  So that by the time she handed the witness over to the defence, everyone in the courtroom was contemplating the tragic irony that the defendant’s own daughter had unwittingly sold her out.

  ‘I am sorry. I am so sorry.’

  It was late and they were now all back at the office, Nora sitting quietly on the top corner of Arthur’s couch, her hand resting softly on Samantha Bale’s shoulder. Sam obviously felt terrible, worse than terrible. She felt solely responsible for the rapid demise of their case.

  ‘I know you’ve had a lot on your plate, Sam,’ said David who, he had to admit, was finding it difficult to curb his anger. ‘But this one was . . . well, it’s a detail we couldn’t afford to miss.’

  ‘I know, I screwed up,’ Sam said, her cheeks flush, her hair seeming to taking on a life of its own. ‘I was trying to multi skill. I was listening to the tape whilst looking up phone numbers for tour operators at the Cape. But I should have . . .’

  ‘You should have realised that the tape was on the prosecution’s evidence list. And everything on that list is there for a reason. That’s why we asked you to triple check it in the first place.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sam.

  David saw the distress in the young associate’s eyes and realised there was no point in making the girl feel any worse. Besides he was actually just as angry with himself. Sam had assured him that the tape was ‘clean’. She even said it acted as a piece of evidence in the defence’s favour as it showed how Rayna and her daughter had followed rescue procedures to a ‘T’. But given her history of hiccups, he should have found the time to check it personally.

  Time, he thought, and their lack of it, was starting to prove a major liability.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘It’s okay, Sam,’ he said at last. ‘What’s done is done. We’re all under a lot of pressure.’

  Kemp’s testimony had taken up the entire day with Scaturro spending most of the morning playing and replaying that tape.

  Arthur made the cross after lunch and regained some ground by focusing on Teesha’s state of mind. She was sixteen, going into shock, terrified, confused, and had also drunk a couple of glasses of champagne herself.

  He reminded Kemp that the very nature of a ‘distress call’ meant that the caller was placed in a situation involving distress and asked him to call on his years of experience and admit such calls were often littered with small discrepancies and misnomers.

  In the end they had got Kemp to concede that the chain of events could have differed from Teesha’s specified order but it was a small concession, and the damage had been done. All they could do now was brace themselves for tomorrow’s witnesses who, they had to admit, held the potential to be even worse.

  Tomorrow they faced the double barrel of Officer Susan Leigh and Detective Paul Petri.

  ‘There’s still time, David,’ said Sara, now reading his mind. ‘We can turn this thing around.’

  But he did not answer. In fact, no one said a thing. And then Samantha Bale leant against Nora’s comforting hand and started to cry.

  40

  Officer Susan Leigh had been called a lot of things during the course of her career as a Boston Police Officer – driven, focused, determined, thorough, persistent, tough and ambitious. But never stupid, no one had ever called her stupid.

  She knew that success in any profession came down to fifty per cent hard work and fifty per cent politics. The hard work was easy, all you needed was the initiative and the energy. The politics was a little trickier as it was ever changing, creating heroes and victims along the way. And Leigh was no victim and had no intention of becoming one.

  The lay of the land had certainly shifted over the past weeks . . . hell, over the past few days.

  Two months ago she felt sure she had put her eggs in the right basket. First of all she had been lucky enough to be on duty on said Saturday, and not just on duty, but up at Gloucester of all places, on that God-damned water safety course which turned out to be a windfall. Who would have thought?

  Then she had spent that rather intense evening at the hospital – catching a lift back to Boston with some dumb-assed cop from the Gloucester PD who had no idea what he was missing. Next, she’d arrived at Headquarters to find she was the star attraction with the Commander of the Homicide Unit and the DA, both of whom were very interested in everything she had to say. Then there had been the meetings in subsequent days with Katz almost courting her for Christ’s sake. Not that she couldn’t see through his posturing, he had his own political agenda, which was fair enough.

  But then came the chance meeting with Lieutenant Mannix, and that had got her thinking.

  She had to be careful. She could not allow herself to be used as a pawn.

  At first she had been delighted at the opportunity to ingratiate herself with a powerful US Senator. Who wouldn’t be? But the Teesha Martin shooting had confused things a little and got her thinking that maybe the prosecution were not such a sure thing after all. And Lord knows she wanted to be on the winning team.

  Not that the defence were looking very solid either, but there had been rumblings and she knew better than to ignore them.

  For starters Lieutenant Mannix was said to be pro-defence. Just a rumour, of course, but his earlier ‘advice’ suggested an aversion to the ADA and she knew he was tight with Cavanaugh. It would not do her career any good to piss off the Chief.

  Then there was the whole hate thing. The bigwigs at Boston PD were determined to stress their intolerance for racially motivated crimes. The Department’s mission statement was based on ‘neighbourhood policing’ and the guys that mattered were always going on about the Department’s desire to help ‘break down cultural barriers’. It certainly wouldn’t do her any good to be seen as having racial issues. The Deputy Commissioner was African–American, after all, and this city was obsessed with political correctness, at least at face value.

  So, the question here was how to negotiate some very clever fence sitting. Maybe feed the defence a little crumb or two. This would be difficult. There probably wasn’t any way not
to piss off the ADA as he and his boss were certainly under the impression her testimony would carry them a little further down their shiny white road to victory.

  But Leigh was a good tap dancer and when push came to shove, she knew she had to look after number one.

  ‘Number one,’ she said to focus herself as the court clerk called her name and she stood to enter the heavy cedar double doors of Court Number Nine. ‘Number one’.

  Roger Katz looked particularly pleased with himself this morning, like a prima donna on opening night, a quarterback before the Superbowl. He glowed with promise and anticipation, shaking the Senator’s hand as he took his regular seat behind the prosecution’s table, whispering words of advice in his associates’ ears. Truth be told it was making Scaturro sick to her stomach, but she allowed him this little pre-session performance if no other reason than she knew he needed to do his best work today, and Katz was always at his best when he felt like the most important person in the room.

  Officer Susan Leigh was sworn in and began by stating her rank and station in the Boston Police Department. She then confirmed she was on duty on Saturday 4 May and in Cape Ann for the newly introduced water safety course which was to be conducted at Gloucester Harbor.

  There were ten officers undertaking the course that day, two from Ipswich, six from Gloucester and two from Boston PD – Leigh and her partner Officer Thomas Wu. The morning session involved a series of lectures and video presentations given at Gloucester Police Station, and the afternoon was to consist of the ‘practical’ section which would be carried out at Gloucester Marina.

  The Coastguard’s call came in just as she and Officer Wu had got into their car to go to the Marina. They picked up the emergency transmission on their scanner and headed straight for the wharf, awaiting the arrival of The Cruisader.

  Yes, Gloucester had its own police force but it soon became apparent that the people involved were from Boston, and the identity of the victim would result in the situation requiring some ‘special handling’. No, this does not mean this case received preferential treatment just because the victim was the offspring of a public figure, but it did necessitate immediate control in order to avoid a media frenzy and any violation of the victim’s and/or the defendant’s rights.