Justin stood and pointed to the time notation on the bottom of Abe’s won-and-lost record and then to the end of the Dowling cases, where there was no comparable notation. Abe looked closely at the blank space following the end of the last Dowling case. His eyes fixed on what appeared to be some ink marks at the very bottom of the page. This is what he saw:
“What the heck are these?” he asked Justin.
“I don’t know. They look like the very tops of some numbers or letters, but there are too many to be a time notation.”
“Where do you suppose these things came from?” Abe insisted, looking at the indecipherable marks.
“Maybe from the next case,” Justin surmised.
“But if there is a next case,” Abe said, beaming, “doesn’t that mean there was more material generated by Campbell’s request?”
“Could be,” Justin admitted.
“And if that’s true,” Abe continued, “then it follows that this is not the end of the search request, and that there may well be a time notation at the end of the entire search. And if that’s true, then this search could have been requested after March 10, as Campbell said it was.”
“Maybe,” Justin acknowledged sheepishly.
“Maybe you jumped the gun, Justin. Maybe Joe didn’t lie to us a second time. Please let’s not presume our client guilty of lying again without proof. We’ve got nothing to go on.”
“Nothing except that he lied once already, and we now know that he may not have given us the whole printout. Why would he hold something back if he is as innocent as he claims?”
“I don’t know. Innocent people lie all the time, especially to their lawyers. Still, I am curious about what these notations mean. Maybe you can figure that out if you decipher those little marks at the bottom of the page.”
“I’ll try, but it won’t be easy,” Justin said, retrieving the pages from Abe and heading back around the computer room desk.
As Justin stared at the obscure marks over and over again, they began to make some sense to him. They could be the very tops of a group of words or letters that covered an entire line of print. But they were too fragmentary for him to reconstruct into the letters that would form the underlying words.
Suddenly Justin got a brainstorm. He photocopied a page from the printout and cut out enough words to form an entire alphabet on one very long line. Then he covered his “decoder” line with an index card so that only the very tops of the letters were visible. He could now compare what he was able to see in his “decoder” alphabet with the top parts of the letters that appeared at the bottom of the Dowling printout.
Instantly he was able to recognize most of the capital letters, which appeared to be “T,” “P,” “S,” “N,” “Y,” “M,” and “P,” as well as the tops of several high noncapital letters, such as “i,” “k,” and “t.” Now his job was to fill in the blanks to form a coherent series of words. It was like playing the old game of hangman or the new Wheel of Fortune. He spent about fifteen minutes puzzling over the possibilities, comparing the tops of letters, then came up with the following:
“Th_ P___1_ __ _____ St_t_ __ N__ Y____ __ M__k P_t____.” After several attempts at filling in these blanks, he deduced a logical combination of words and names: “The People of the State of New York v. Mark Peters.”
It wasn’t the only possibility, but it seemed to fit, both literally and contextually. It appeared to be the title of a New York criminal case. Justin plugged the case name into his CompuLaw search program and waited anxiously to see whether the computer would come up with a case by that name.
After several minutes words began to appear on Justin’s flickering screen. Sure enough, there was such a case. It involved a criminal prosecution back in 1987 against a man charged with playing three-card monte—a variation of the shell game—in downtown Brooklyn.
Now Justin was really baffled. What did Mark Peters have to do with Jennifer Dowling—or Joe Campbell? Why would a three-card-monte case be included in a search that produced Jennifer Dowling’s sexual harassment cases?
Justin brought his little decoder kit and the Peters case into Abe’s office. “I think I decoded the marks, Abe, but it looks like another dead end.” He showed Abe how he had filled in the blanks.
Abe was enormously impressed with Justin’s resourcefulness. “How in hell did you figure that out?”
“Comes from watching Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune instead of studying during law school.”
Then he showed Abe the Peters case. Abe read it over and over again, searching for some possible relevance to the Campbell case. There was no relevance. It really was a dead end.
Abe looked again at Justin’s anagram. “Is it possible that your ‘Mark’ is really a ‘Mary’?”
“Unlikely,” Justin said with an air of newly found expertise. “The top of the ‘k’ shows, but a ‘y’ wouldn’t.”
“How about ‘Merle’? An ‘l’ would look like a ‘k,’ wouldn’t it?”
“Could be, but then there would be a spacing problem.”
“How about Merl?”
“No harm trying them all,” Justin said, heading back to the computer room.
A few minutes later he returned. “No cases under ‘Merle,’ ‘Merl,’ or even ‘Mary.’ I think it’s Mark.”
“But the Mark Peters case has nothing to do with Jennifer Dowling or Joe Campbell. I guess that means it’s back to the salt mines for you. Now you’ve got me really intrigued by this printout stuff. Let’s try to get to the bottom of it.”
“I’ll try my best, but I’m not optimistic.”
“I’m out of here for a few minutes,” Abe said, yawning. “I need some fresh air. Be back in half an hour. Do you need anything from the square?”
“Yeah, a good book on anagrams.”
Abe walked the three blocks to Harvard Square to pick up a newspaper and think. As he approached the kiosk, he realized he was hungry and glanced at the window of the corner sandwich shop. It had a sign advertising the daily special, a “Po’ Boy” sandwich. Abe had no idea what that was, but it didn’t sound appetizing. Inexplicably he found his eyes transfixed on the words Po’ Boy.
Suddenly it hit him. Of course! How could he—how could Justin—have missed it! As he stared at the sign, he realized that the capital letters P and B were indistinguishable from the top. Their friend Mark could have the unlikely last name of Beters or Belers or even Belare. They had missed this obvious possibility because “Peters”—which fit the blanks—was such a common name.
Abe raced the three blocks back to the office and found Justin fiddling with the computer. “It could be a ‘B,’ Justin, not a ‘P,’” Abe said, pointing to Mark’s last name on the printout.
“Damn, you’re right.” Justin shrugged. “I was sure I had the capital letters down pat. I was playing only with the small letters. But what kind of name is Beters with one ‘t’?”
“A strange one, to be sure, but it’s worth a try,” Abe insisted, showing some pride at his discovery of the similarity between the tops of capital “B” and “P.”
Justin punched in the case name, first using “Beters” instead of “Peters.” Bingo! After several seconds a recent case appeared under the heading “The People of the State of New York v. Mark Beters.” Maybe this case would bear some relationship to the Jennifer Dowling case.
But again, a careful reading of the case showed absolutely no connection. The Beters case involved a rape prosecution in which an Albany gas station owner named Mark Beters had been convicted of one count of rape and sentenced to eight years in prison. The conviction had been affirmed in a one paragraph order. It looked quite routine and ordinary.
Suddenly another case name appeared on the screen: “People ex rel Beters vs. McGrath, Superintendent.” It, too, involved Mark Beters. It was a state habeas corpus proceeding ordering Beters to be released on the ground that his accuser, a woman named Prudence Crane, had recanted her accusation after becoming a born-again Christian
and seeking counsel from a minister.
“This is all very interesting,” Abe said, “but what does it have to do with Jennifer Dowling? Why would Beters’s case come up in a search for information about Jennifer Dowling?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to check out this guy Beters until I find out what the connection is.”
Chapter Nine
Haskel had deteriorated significantly. His hands were shaking. His lips were trembling. There were tears in his eyes. He looked sadder than Abe had seen him since his wife had died three years ago. It was obvious he was not taking his medicine. It broke Abe’s heart to see his old friend suffer so much. And it hurt him doubly to know that Charlie Odell was also experiencing his own particular devils because of Abe’s advice.
After a few minutes of imploring Haskel to take his medicine, Abe described the computer dilemma to the old man. Haskel thought for a few minutes and then began to ask his usual questions.
“If this Dowling woman has nothing to do with this Beters man, then what do their stories have in common? Why would one person be interested in reading about these two people at the same time?”
“That’s a good question,” Abe said, his mind racing to find an answer. Suddenly it came to him.
“Thanks, Haskel, you did it again.” Abe left for his office, hoping to find someone there who could work the computer.
But the office was empty. He called Justin: no answer. Abe walked into the computer room and saw that the Macintosh was on, and that the search program Justin had been using was still up on the screen. He started to fiddle with the keys, trying to figure out how to search for a topic. As he was standing around scratching his head in frustration, Justin walked in.
Seeing Abe with his fingers on the computer keyboard, Justin began to yell. “Don’t touch anything! Don’t you know you could erase the memory? What are you trying to do?”
“Haskel asked me why anyone would want to read about both the Dowling and Beters cases at the same time. He’s on the right track. Now, can you translate that sensible question into computerese?”
“Sure,” Justin replied eagerly. “Which word or words are both narrow and broad enough to generate both of these cases in the same search?”
“That sounds easy enough,” Abe mused. “We need to find categories that cover several different cases with common features.”
“You’ve got it, Abe. If you lose the Campbell trial, you can always become a programmer.”
“Let’s see,” Abe began. “Rape is too narrow, because Jennifer Dowling’s case doesn’t involve rape. It involves consensual sex given for a promotion.”
“Sexual harassment.”
“Yeah, but that’s too narrow to include the Beters case.”
“How about ‘sexual misconduct’?”
“Much too broad. There are probably thousands of cases under that heading. We have to narrow it.”
“What about ‘false sexual allegations,’ or ‘false accusations’?”
“Or ‘recantations,’” Abe added. “Something like that?”
“Sounds promising.” Justin began to press buttons on his computer. After a few minutes of trial and error, he settled on “sexual misconduct—unfounded—current year—New York.”
Seven listings! Over to the printer. Again some fiddling. Then the printout, and there they were. The two cases dealing with Jennifer Dowling; then a case about a woman who falsely accused a man of raping her at gunpoint in Central Park; a date rape case in which a teenager admitted making up the charge after her father learned that she had lost her virginity; a case in which a woman claimed that her estranged husband had raped her and then recanted after they reconciled; one case about a recantation of a recantation of rape.
And then the Beters case! But the Beters case did not immediately follow the Dowling stories in this printout, and Abe asked Justin why it didn’t track as it had in Campbell’s original printout. Justin explained that the sequence of the printout could change over time as new items were added to the categories. It was certainly possible that when Campbell ordered the printout, the Beters case had followed immediately after the Dowling stories. Or maybe, Justin conceded, he hadn’t gotten the search request precisely right. But one thing was crystal clear: Campbell had not gotten the Dowling cases by searching under “Jennifer Dowling.” Maybe he had started with her name. But that was not how he’d gotten her cases and Beters’s cases on the same printout. He had almost certainly gotten them by searching under a more general category involving recent stories about unfounded charges of sexual misconduct.
“I don’t know what this all means,” Justin said with an air of triumph. “One thing is clear: Campbell lied to us again.”
“Hold your prosecutorial horses, young man,” Abe said. “I understand how proud you are of your little computer discovery, and it’s only natural that you want it to mean something. But you’re way out of line here. It raises some questions, maybe. But it doesn’t prove anything.”
“Look, Abe,” Justin responded with an edge in his voice. “We have to presume our client innocent. I’m not arguing with that. But it doesn’t mean we have to close our eyes to the truth.”
“Justin, I’m as interested in the truth as you are. And I’m not sure I appreciate your sanctimonious tone. Sure, go ahead. Get to the bottom of this. Just don’t start with an attitude toward Joe. He probably has an explanation for all of this. We haven’t even given him a chance.”
“So let’s give him a chance. Let’s confront him with what I found.”
“Too early. If we confront him, it will make him sound like our adversary, not our client. He will lose whatever trust he still has, and he’ll never level with us.”
“How about a trip to Zimmerman?” Justin asked, referring to Gustav Zimmerman, Boston’s leading polygrapher.
“Wouldn’t work with Campbell,” Abe snapped back.
“I don’t mean the machine,” Justin explained, “I mean the ruse.”
“I know what you mean, and that won’t work either.”
By the “ruse,” Justin was referring to a technique that Abe sometimes used on clients who he suspected weren’t leveling with him but whom he wasn’t yet ready to confront directly. First he would suggest that they submit to a lie detector test that could convince the prosecutor to drop the charges. Then, on the way downtown to the polygrapher, he would explain how no one could trick Zimmerman—he was foolproof. Typically the client would admit he was lying before they even got to Zimmerman’s office. Justin wasn’t even sure there was a Zimmerman.
“Joe knows that passing a lie detector test wouldn’t persuade Cheryl Puccio to drop such a high-profile case,” Abe was saying. “He’d figure out the ruse and find some reason for not taking the test. Remember, this guy is really smart. Second highest SATs in the NBA—after David Robinson. Unless and until we come up with hard facts—not your ambiguous computer inferences—we continue to treat Joe Campbell as our innocent client. Got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Justin said, giving Abe a mock salute.
“Now, while I’m down in Trenton for the Charlie O. hearing, I want you to find out everything you can about this computer stuff. The presumption of innocence is just a presumption. Something we start with. It can be overcome by hard facts. Until it is, I believe in Campbell’s innocence. Got it?”
Before taking the job with Abe, Justin Aldrich had worked for a number of lawyers, some famous, some notorious. He’d never before had one who was always so emotionally committed to his clients, and as a result he’d come personally to think a great deal of his boss. In this case, however, he was worried that Abe’s commendable commitment might create a blind spot.
“You know, Abe,” he said, “I appreciate your candor toward me and that you don’t pull your punches.”
“Stick around, kiddo, you might learn something they didn’t teach you in those downtown firms!”
Chapter Ten
NEWARK—MONDAY, MARCH 27
Ab
e and his pharmacological expert, Dr. Ralph Hoxie, arrived at the old brownstone courthouse in Newark at 8:30 A.M. for the scheduled hearing for Charlie O.
Judge Cox convened the hearing at 9:00 A.M. Charlie was brought in wearing shackles and cuffs. The bailiff sat Charlie next to Abe. Dr. Hoxie had briefed Abe about Charlie’s muscle spasms—they were related to the withdrawal from the antipsychotic medicines. Worse than that was the empty stare, the deadened look, in Charlie’s eyes and the relentless rocking that caused the shackles to clank against the table. Abe knew that no young man who grew up in the projects would want the world to see him as this pathetic haunted creature.
The judge got right to it. “Mr. Ringel, I want to know one thing, and I want to know it now. Did you advise your mentally ill client not to take his drugs?”
Abe saw an opening in the judge’s question. “If this court is prepared to find that my client, Mr. Odell, was mentally ill at the time he began not taking his medicine, then we can end this matter right now.”
“Stop playing games with me, Counselor, and answer my question.”
“I am most certainly not playing games, Your Honor. The issue is whether Mr. Odell was mentally competent at the time he was still taking the medicine. If he was not, then he can begin taking his medicine and still not be executed. If he was competent, then it doesn’t matter what advice anyone gave him. It would be his decision. Therefore, Your Honor, I’m entitled to a ruling on his competence before I answer your question.”
“How should I know whether he was competent then?” the judge replied angrily. “I never saw him then. He was presumed competent, since he was scheduled to be executed, and now I’m advised by the prison psychiatrist that he is not competent. He certainly doesn’t look competent. Now answer my question.”
With that, the attention of the courtroom shifted to the black man by Abe’s side. Abe had to stop himself from throwing a protective arm around Charlie’s shoulder. It would not serve his purpose now to offer Charlie any comfort that might appease him, yet Abe yearned with every nurturing and protective cell in his body to smash the TV cameras that zoomed in on his client’s twitching face.
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