by Attica Locke
He was hardly through cursing his name when god himself seemed to have a change of heart about ol’ Rolly Snow, rolling a gift right across his windshield, at the corner of Franklin and Crawford, while his truck was idling at the light. He leaned over the steering wheel, peering past his headlights. It was T. J. Cobb, all right, there in front of him on the street. Long and lean, with a mean, skulking walk. Among the gray army of office workers and bank tellers, women in shoulder pads and high heels, he stood out like a peacock in a flock of pigeons. He was wearing that same faded denim jacket and black T-shirt, his right index finger curled around a cigarette.
Rolly, feeling lucky, tailed him for a few blocks.
Not so easy when the man was on foot.
He was about to ditch the El Camino and put his own two feet on the ground when T. J. Cobb ducked into the vestibule of a bar. The Last Call sat behind a windowless brick wall painted black and unadorned, save by a small wooden sign over the door. Rolly rolled past the bar’s front door just as Cobb slipped inside. He made the block before deciding to pull over and roll on him. The man had come to Jay’s home, near his kids. And Rolly wasn’t having that. He found a dirt lot and parked, not far from the old abandoned Union Station. This part of downtown, heading toward the menacing shadows of the 59 Freeway overpass, is grimly pastoral, the natural world taking back what the city no longer wants. There are weeds shooting up three feet from cracks in the sidewalk, and between the many vacant brick buildings, dirt lots dot the landscape. Rolly grabbed his piece from under the driver’s seat, the Colt .45. But he never got to use it. He was made before he even got out of his truck. By the time he got to the Last Call, Cobb was hiding in the dark vestibule, waiting for his mark, the real one he’d been eyeing in the courtroom. He put the muzzle of a handgun to Rolly’s chest, a .38 Rolly guessed, realizing too late that he’d been set up. It was his last coherent thought. He doesn’t remember the shot itself, remembers only the sound of his tooth cracking when his face hit the sidewalk, and then footsteps, sneakers on pavements, slipping far, far away.
Jay got the call this morning, after failing to reach Rolly all night.
It was Marisol, Rolly’s girlfriend, phoning from St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Court was due to start in less than five minutes, and Jay’s attempts to obtain a delay were rebuffed by Judge Keppler, who reminded him they’d put a city election on hold for this trial. To Nichols, she said, “Call your next witness.”
Next up: Kelley Young, crime scene technician.
Jay glances at the empty chair on the other side of Neal. He has not told his client the reason for Rolly’s absence, nor does Neal seem in the least bit curious about where the investigator is. He is staring straight ahead, watching as Ms. Young, a blonde in her thirties, takes the witness stand. Jay, on the other hand, is distracted to the point of near incompetence. He is sweating in the warm courtroom, his dress shirt a thin film against his damp back, and his throat is dry. He actually misses the D.A.’s first two questions for the witness, and makes a guess in his notes that they had to do with the correct spelling of her name and her years of service to the county. She is here to establish that a body had indeed been found in the early morning hours of Sunday, November tenth, and under what conditions. Matt Nichols needs to get in the fact of the rain that fell between the girl’s disappearance and the discovery of her remains–an explanation as to why no DNA tying the defendant to the crime was ever found. Ms. Young also processed the items that were in the deceased’s purse, which had been discovered one day before the body. One by one, she holds up the bloody items, individually sealed in clear evidence bags, for the jury to see. Jay glances at his client, thinking the same as Neal: we are going to lose.
Next up: Roy Singh, medical examiner.
It’s testimony Jay has been dreading. No one should have to witness what was done to Alicia Nowell, least of all her parents. But there it is, up on a three-by-five-foot projection screen, just to the left of Judge Keppler’s seat at the bench. The courtroom falls silent as the first image pops up. The only sound Jay hears is Maxine Robicheaux’s footsteps as she walks out of the courtroom. A couple of the jurors, two older men, squirm in their seats. One of the black men in the second row has his hands clenched tightly in his lap.
Nichols walks the doctor through the gruesome facts, the beating and the suspected sexual assault, the bruising around her pelvic area and across the face and neck. The cause of death was strangulation, the manner of death homicide. On cross, Jay gets as far as he’s likely to get in dismantling the state’s case. There is, he reminds the jury, stealing a look at the black men in the second row, not a single piece of evidence on the victim’s body that suggests his client ever came into contact with Alicia Nowell, let alone killed her. “Testing of the material underneath the victim’s fingernails was inconclusive, yes,” Dr. Singh says.
“And again, to be clear, Dr. Singh, that means none of it matched the DNA sample of my client, Neal Hathorne, isn’t that right?”
“That is correct.”
On redirect, Dr. Singh, with the D.A.’s prompting, reminds the jurors that the testing was “inconclusive,” as he turns to give them an impromptu lecture on the adverse effects of moisture on DNA material. “It’s terrible, in fact.”
“So the fact that the DNA test results were inconclusive doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the defendant’s DNA, does it?”
“Objection, leading.”
“Sustained.”
“Let me ask it this way, then,” Nichols says. “Can Mr. Hathorne be ruled out as the contributor of the DNA found under the deceased’s right fingernails?”
“You cannot draw any real conclusions from this test, no.”
“Oh, I think we can,” Jay says on recross. “Inconclusive, by definition, means you cannot conclude that it was the DNA of my client, isn’t that right?”
Dr. Singh sighs. “Yes, that is correct.”
Next up: Derek Menendez, Sprint technician.
He’s here to pick up the story of the pager, found in the victim’s purse, and to get into evidence the phone records attached to the ten-digit pager number that Alicia Nowell was using. At 7:32 P.M., November fifth, Ms. Nowell’s pager did receive a call from 713-457-2221, digits that were stored in the small device. Jay, in a few questions, reminds the jury that there is no recording of any phone conversation between Neal and Alicia, nor proof that any such conversation ever took place. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Menendez says.
Next up: Tony Perlman, AT&T rep.
His only role is to establish that the above phone number belonged to a cellular telephone account paid for monthly by Mr. Neal P. Hathorne.
Jay passes on a cross.
And Judge Keppler breaks for lunch.
Lonnie agrees to meet him at the hospital. As soon as he steps through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room at St. Joseph’s, Jay starts to feel short of breath. It’s the stark scent of industrial-grade bleach and the cold, cold recycled air that tighten his chest, making him feel light-headed. He hasn’t been inside a hospital, or a doctor’s office for that matter, in a year. “Rolly Snow,” he tells the intake nurse, before being sent up to the third floor, to room 312, where the man himself is sleeping, seventeen hours out of surgery now. He’s lying on top of the bedsheets, bare chested. Jay can see the thick bandages, just under his left clavicle but, thank god, above his heart. Marisol, in a rather demure pair of brown slacks and a flowery blouse, is standing to the side of the hospital bed, leaning over the brushed metal railing to sweep damp black hairs away from Rolly’s face. “He’s okay,” she says, barely turning when Jay walks in. Maybe it’s the clothes, or the hospital setting, but she actually looks like someone’s grandmother today, cooing words into Rolly’s ear in Spanish. “He’s going to be okay,” Jay hears again, this time from Lonnie, who is sitting by the room’s one window, a slim rectangle just to the left of the door. For a moment, none of them says anything, just three sets of e
yes on the patient and the soft whir of the compression pump attached to his legs to prevent blood clots. Bernie’d had to wear the same. The steady rhythm of it, like a ghost’s breath in the room, used to keep her up, day and night. To Marisol, Jay says, “I’m sorry.”
She won’t look at him. “You’re trouble, both of you.”
“He’s very lucky,” Lon says, which leads Marisol to cut her eyes at the white girl. She suddenly grabs her purse off Rolly’s rolling meal tray. “I’m getting coffee,” she says, sliding the beaded strap onto her right shoulder. “He wakes up, you tell him just like that, tell him I said I’m getting coffee,” she says rather cryptically. Jay watches her walk out, wondering if he or Rolly will ever see her again. He will never forgive himself if he cost Rolly his girl. He inches closer to the bedside, reaching for the tattooed knuckles of Rolly’s good hand. The very warmth of it is such a comfort, Jay nearly cries. “He is lucky,” Lonnie says.
A few moments later, they step outside to let him sleep, leaving the door ajar. They lean against the wall just across the hall from the nurses’ station, Lonnie with an update on America’s Tomorrow.
“It’s a 527, a PAC.”
“A political action committee?”
“It was registered with the FEC early this year.” From her shoulder bag, she pulls a photocopy of a Federal Election Commission report. “This is a list of donors for the first quarterly reporting period, January to March of this year.” She hands it to Jay, who scans it quickly. “Those are some big names, my friend.”
“Yes, they are,” he says, reading.
AT&T
Bush, Dorothy
Bush, Marvin
Carlton, Jeffrey
Chevron
Cole Oil Industries
Cole, Richard
Cole, Mrs. Richard
Cole, Thomas
Dorian, Paul
Enron
Fox, Sam
Hunt, Ray L.
Koch, David and Julia
Lay, Kenneth and Linda
Luckman, Charlie
Maddox, Cynthia
Merrill Lynch
Mosbacher, Robert
National Rifle Association
Nunez, Pedro and Rita
PhRMA
Pfizer
ProFerma Chemicals
Philip Morris
Rose, Mark and Leanne
Stoney, Lee
Wyly, Charles
Wyly, Sam
“What does any of this have to do with Wolcott? These people are all donating to her mayoral campaign?” he says, looking down at one name in particular. It would mean he was right all along. Cynthia was double-dealing.
“I don’t know,” Lon says.
Jay folds the paper lengthwise and slides it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ve got to get back to court,” he says, glancing through the crack in the doorway to Rolly’s hospital room, watching for a few moments the rise and fall of his chest. “Can you stay for a little bit?” he asks. “In case he wakes up?”
“Sure thing,” she says. “And I’ll check in with Rob Urrea too. Maybe this list of names means something to him.”
CHAPTER 25
The court has thinned for the day’s second act, with half the seats in the gallery empty after intermission. The Hathornes are here, of course, and the Robicheauxs, both in the front row but on opposite sides of the courtroom. The Chronicle still has reporters present, including Bartolomo, but the usual court watchers and trial junkies got their fill from the autopsy photos before lunch.
Next up: Kenny Ester, the boyfriend.
“Mr. Ester, did you know a person by the name of Alicia Nowell?”
“Yes,” he says, the tears starting. He cries through his entire testimony actually, led gingerly by Matt Nichols into the story of meeting Alicia Nowell in fifth-period trigonometry during their junior year. “She was smart,” he says, “a lot smarter than people gave her credit for, smarter than she even knew, my opinion. I wanted her to go to college, tried to get her to apply to Lamar University, in Beaumont, with me. But she was worried about money, you know. She figured she’d work a little, save some cash, and maybe there’d be a scholarship or something. I think that’s why she wanted to volunteer on a campaign. She thought some school might look at that and put her at the top of the pile.”
“Well, let’s get to that, Mr. Ester,” Nichols says.
The jury hears the story for the first time (and all from Kenny Ester’s point of view) of how Neal Hathorne participated in the candidate forum at the high school, representing his uncle’s campaign, and how he had singled out Alicia and flirted openly with her, right in front of her boyfriend. “I didn’t like the dude.” Kenny’s alibi on the night in question is unimpeachable, and Jay doesn’t bother trying to dismantle it on cross. Instead, he attempts, suceeding rather easily, to make Kenny look like the jealous type who misread a situation that was as simple as the description of the event: campaigns looking for volunteers.
“But he gave her his card.”
“How else was she supposed to reach him?”
Kenny leans back, crossing his arms.
He’s in a boy’s idea of dress attire, a pressed golf shirt and baggy black jeans. He got a new fade for court, S-curls shining on top.
“Your girlfriend, she took other business cards that day, didn’t she?” Jay says, letting the boy testify, with his body language, to the fact that his grief is now hiding behind anger, an emotion that rarely ever works on a witness stand.
“I guess.”
“In fact, Alicia reached out to the Wolcott campaign, didn’t she?”
“That day, naw. It was her and him talking,” he says, pointing to Neal.
“But she eventually reached out to their campaign, didn’t she?”
“Objection, calls for hearsay.”
“Sustained,” Judge Keppler says, her first word on record since lunch.
“Your Honor, he may have personal knowledge of Alicia Nowell’s activities in the days and weeks leading up to her death,” Jay says, wishing almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth that he’d quit this cross three questions ago. Judge Keppler peers over the lenses of her purple eyeglasses at the witness stand. “Do you,” she says, “have personal knowledge, not something Ms. Nowell told you, but that you yourself witnessed?”
“Naw,” Kenny says, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “When me and her got together, we didn’t talk about politics. I never heard of no Wolcott having to do with Alicia until he brought it up in the newspaper.” He is pointing right at Jay.
Next up: Tonya Hardaway.
Jay turns as she’s being led into the courtroom by the bailiff, only to see his daughter sitting in the second row of the gallery, behind Ola Hathorne. Just as Tonya Hardaway, in a black sheath dress and ballet flats, her braids pushed back with a yellow headband, is being sworn in, Jay stands.
“Can I have a minute, Your Honor?”
“Something wrong?” Judge Keppler says, blowing steam from the mug of tea her clerk just handed her. She glances above Jay’s head at the courtroom’s clock.
“Just one second, Judge.”
He slips past the bar into the gallery, pulling his daughter with him into the hallway as half the courtroom watches. Outside the double doors, Ellie holds her backpack against her chest, almost as a buffer against her dad’s rising anger. She’s in the same jeans and roll-neck sweater she left the house in this morning.
“What are you doing here?”
“I want to watch.”
“How did you even get here?”
“I took the bus.”
Which, the way Metro runs, means she might have left school as long as two hours ago. “I thought we agreed, no more skipping class.”
“I didn’t,” she says, reaching into the front pencil pouch of her backpack, retrieving a slip of yellow paper, folded in half. She hands it to Jay. It’s a permission slip for an excused absence, signed by Principal Debra Hilliard.
“I told her you said it was okay.”
“Jesus, Ellie.”
The bailiff leans her head outside the courtroom. “Mr. Porter?”
“Yeah, I know,” he says to the deputy, glancing at his watch.
To Ellie, he says, “Get inside, we’ll talk about it later.”
Nichols barely waits for Ellie to take her seat, for Jay to get to his place at the defense table, before he starts in on his direct examination of the former field director for Axel Hathorne. “And how long did you work for the campaign?”
“Eight months. I was the first hired when they put the official campaign together. I worked through the general election, just up until a few weeks ago.”
“Well, we’ll get to that,” Nichols says, leaning against the lectern.
