The compliment made Chitra so happy she felt herself misting up. “Thank you.” She gave a quick smile to hide how she was feeling. “I’m not sure how much help I’ve been.”
“You’ve been great. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Chitra stood next to Judge Norcross. Her shoulder bumped his elbow, and they each immediately adjusted to maintain a proper space. The judge was much taller, so Chitra had to hold the phone up high so they could both see. She tapped the icon to open the attachment.
Both of them froze when, after a few seconds, the image of Ryan Jaworski appeared, handcuffed, naked, perched on a chair with a noose around his neck
The judge pulled his chin in. “Good Lord!”
Chitra wasn’t sure what to do. The scene was certainly bizarre, but her own situation was almost as strange, with the two of them bent close together over the tiny screen, staring like Peeping Toms. She could smell Judge Norcross’s aftershave.
She stepped back. “Judge, I could let you handle this on your …”
“Nope. Nope. I want your opinion here.” He pursed his lips, pulled on his nose, and sniffed. “They weren’t kidding. This certainly is unusual.”
The two of them watched as Jaworski mumbled the date and time, recited his name, and described his location. Drunk and miserable, he looked like something that had been pulled up out of a clogged toilet. A female voice in the background faded in and out, instructing him to speak up, pushing him through the chronology. Step by step, he laid out how he pilfered the flyer, took it to Professor Mattoon, and ultimately sent in the order for Playing Doctor with the defendant’s address and credit card information. He was pressed to repeat himself at various points to make himself clear. The only time his face took on any animation was during the description of his total horror when he realized that he and Mattoon had blundered into an FBI sting.
The video went on for about five minutes. When it was over, and Chitra had closed the screen, Judge Norcross shook his head and spoke disgustedly. “For heaven’s sake, a promising young man like that, with all his privileges.”
Chitra glanced at the judge. “He’s what we ladies in the Asian community would call a classic cad.”
“Well, I’d agree with them. He’s that and more.”
“It’s slang, Judge. Short for Cadbury—too tasty for his own good.”
The sides of Judge Norcross’s mouth turned down, and he spoke impatiently. “Why do kids get into these darn things? I don’t understand it.”
“It’s hard to explain after the fact, I guess,” Chitra hesitated. “Sometimes people do foolish things.”
“Well, this was a doozy.” Norcross cleared his throat. “What did you think of Jaworski?”
Chitra looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I think he’s accurately describing what happened. I believe him.”
“If a law enforcement officer ever procured a confession this way, I’d put him in jail.”
“Of course.”
Judge Norcross shook his head and sighed. “I’m going to want to see that fold.”
“Definitely. Amazing how such a small detail can make such a big difference.”
Linda Ames’s request for a bathroom break may have been a ruse for her, but after an extralarge coffee on the way to court, it was a lifesaver for Sid Cranmer. In the men’s room, he sidled up to a urinal and began a process of draining that seemed to start somewhere up around his cerebral cortex and proceed downward organ by organ. He could actually feel the muscles in his calves start to relax.
When he was emptied about halfway, the door thumped open, and someone entered. It was Patterson. The encounter wasn’t as awkward as it might have been—they’d gotten to know each other, in a way, during Patterson’s two raids on his house—but it was still very, very strange.
They stood side by side, not talking, taking care of business.
“How you holding up?” Patterson finally asked, shaking off and zipping. Cranmer felt like Alice, encountering the Caterpillar, being asked “Who are you?” and not being sure what to say.
“I’m okay.” Sid took his turn zipping and stepped over to one of the sinks. “Things keep changing. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and wonder if I’m still the same person.”
“Sorry about what happened when you were at Ludlow.”
Sid shrugged. “Fun and games.”
Patterson stepped over to the neighboring sink. They bumped hands reaching for the soap. “Sorry.”
Sid nodded at the dispenser. “Go ahead.”
If this got any weirder, Sid thought, he was just going to wipe his hands on his ass and get out of there. They rinsed off in silence.
Patterson pulled a paper towel out and turned to Sid. “I’m not supposed to talk to you, okay, so let’s forget we ever had this little coffee break. Paul Campanella would have a screaming bull calf.”
“Linda would be fine with it, as long as I peed on you.”
Patterson grunted. “Just had these trousers cleaned.” He looked to the side, pondering something, then continued. “I did some research on your star.”
“Ah.”
“Says you pulled two leathernecks out of heavy fire.”
Sid took a while to answer, conscious that Patterson was keeping his eyes on him. Finally, he spoke.
“Only one counted. The other guy was a sack of meat by the time I got him back to the line.” Sid hesitated, then plunged. “He was a friend, you know, a nice kid. That kind of thing.” He looked down at the black-and-white tiled floor. “It was a long time ago.”
“Says you got shot up.”
“I caught a couple scratches.”
Now it was Sid’s turn to give Patterson a hard look. The wonderful thing about combat was that the guy who was trying to kill you had nothing against you personally. Maybe even respected you in a crazy way. This was kind of like that.
“I don’t have to tell you, right? Once the shit starts flying, the only heroes are the ones who come home in wooden houses. The rest of us are just …”
Patterson nodded. “I know.”
45
Would you please state your name for the record?”
“Michael Patterson.”
“And would you tell the court your profession.”
“Special agent, FBI.”
The judge broke in. “Let’s dispense with the formalities, Mr. Campanella, and get to the central issue, shall we? I know who Agent Patterson is.”
Campanella nodded up at the bench. A streamlined approach was okay with him. The facts were simple, and the quicker this went, the better.
“Fine, Judge.”
Agent Patterson was sitting in the witness box, at about two o’clock from the podium where Campanella was standing and about fifteen feet away. Judge Norcross was straight in front of him, at noon. Ames was behind him at the defense table at around five o’clock. During the break, Campanella had consulted with the senior assistant U.S. attorney in his office and, in a moment that still warmed him, had received a compliment for his quick and effective response to Ames’s motion to dismiss. This short evidentiary hearing would make the record clear and set the trial back on track.
“How long have you been working on the Cranmer case, Agent Patterson?”
“I first learned about it a little over a year ago and was formally assigned to the investigation about eleven months back.”
Agent Patterson was the perfect law enforcement witness—a physically impressive, well-dressed, serious-looking man, who radiated competence and reliability. The jurors, when they heard his testimony tomorrow, would be eating out of his hand, and Campanella was fairly confident that even Judge Norcross would find Patterson’s charisma magnetic.
“And you participated in the initial search of the defendant’s residence, isn’t that true?”
“Yes. I was
the lead agent. We came in following a controlled delivery of a contraband DVD.”
“Now, Agent Patterson, would you please tell the court how it came about that you made the controlled delivery on the morning you seized the DVD?”
“An earlier investigation had picked up Professor Cranmer on a website used by pedophiles. Somewhere down the line, the postal inspector sent him a flyer supposedly advertising DVDs containing pornography with prepubescent subjects. When the flyer came back, my team got involved. We assumed—”
Campanella said, “Please don’t tell us what you assumed. Just tell us—”
Ames stood. “Defense has no objection to testimony about the witness’s assumptions, Your Honor. That’s what this hearing is about—incorrect assumptions.”
“Well, we’ll see.” Norcross nodded at the witness. “Okay, Agent Patterson. What did you assume?”
Campanella was pleased to have the judge getting involved. It was always helpful, when the flow was in the right direction, to have the court get in the canoe and paddle.
“We assumed, Judge, when the flyer came back, that Professor Cranmer had filled it out with his information, including his credit card data, and sent it in. Once we had what we thought was his order, I organized the team handling the delivery of the DVD.” Patterson paused and folded his hands in front of him. “The plan was to conduct the search immediately after the delivery, to ensure we didn’t lose control of the contraband. So, as soon as Your Honor approved the warrant, we moved quickly. We wanted that DVD back in our hands ASAP.”
Campanella waited while Norcross scribbled down a short note, then continued with his next question. “And would you tell the court if there was anything else that made you assume that this defendant had been the one who sent the flyer in, ordering Exhibit One?”
Patterson shifted in his chair so that he was directly facing Judge Norcross.
“Well, Professor Cranmer immediately accepted the package when it was delivered with no questions, and he started to open it right away. He told the agent posing as the UPS employee something to the effect that he was expecting the package. As I said before …” He paused. “Is it still all right to say what I assumed?”
“I believe so.” The judge looked at Ames, raising his eyebrows.
Ames half rose, leaning over the table. “No objection.”
“We assumed when we saw him through the window that he was hiding the DVD when he saw us coming. Then, when I spoke to him, he never denied ordering the DVD, and he said he wasn’t surprised when it showed up.”
“Uh-huh, and …”
Ames broke in. “Your Honor, I’d object …”
Patterson continued. “At least, that was my interpretation of what he said.”
“Aha. With that clarification, I withdraw my objection.” Ames sat down.
Campanella pressed on. “Now, in the months leading up to this trial, did your assumptions with regard to the defendant’s role in sending the flyer in ever begin to change? Did it ever, ever, occur to you, even remotely, that someone else might be involved in sending it in?”
“At some point, yes.”
This was not quite the answer Campanella was expecting, but he had no trouble clarifying. “And that was when you learned this morning that an Amherst College undergraduate had made some kind of confession, isn’t that right?”
Ames’s voice piped up again. “Objection, leading.”
Patterson’s answer came out before Norcross had a chance to rule on Ames’s objection. “Well, no, I had some suspicions before then.”
Ames popped up. “Objection withdrawn.”
Patterson’s answer was a thumb-size cloud on the edge of Campanella’s clear horizon, a smudge he could wipe away.
“In your work as an investigator, it is part of your job to keep in mind all kinds of hypothetical possibilities, correct?”
“Yes, but this was different. I became concerned some months back that—”
“So, as a conscientious law enforcement officer, you simply—”
Ames was standing again. “Wait a minute now, hold up. Let’s let Agent Patterson finish his answer. He was saying something about concerns some months ago.”
Judge Norcross folded his hands and leaned toward Patterson. “Yes, please explain your concerns.”
“Well, Your Honor,” Campanella interrupted. “I’d object to that.” Something was happening with Patterson. His eyes had gone hard, and he was looking to the side.
Judge Norcross did not sound happy. “You object to your own witness’s testimony?”
“Well, Your Honor, I’d like to conduct the questioning in my own manner.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Campanella. It’s true that this is your witness, but this”—Norcross tapped himself on the temple—“this is the brain that will be making the decision here. And I’d like to know what Agent Patterson’s concerns were some months ago.” He turned to Agent Patterson. “Would you please tell us what these concerns were?”
“Your Honor, I object.”
“You’re objecting to my question now, Mr. Campanella? I think it’s an excellent question. Objection overruled.” Norcross turned to Patterson again. “Please tell us when you had these concerns and what they were.”
Campanella could do nothing but stand there resting his hands on the podium. He’d been abruptly dumped from his pilot seat, and the water was cold.
“Well, like I say, a few months ago, I began thinking there was something funny about this case. Professor Cranmer was certainly eccentric, and it turned out that, like a lot of men, he looked at pornography. But he was quite successful professionally, which is not the usual profile, and I was, frankly, a little surprised to find someone like him interested in really hard-core prepubescent material.”
“I see.” Norcross jotted something on his pad.
This was agony. If Campanella interrupted again, Norcross was likely to fling a lightning bolt at him. All he could do was fall back on nonverbal advocacy. Campanella began furiously jotting notes, scribbling extra hard to let Norcross know just how many excellent questions he had, praying that his performance would be distracting.
Patterson continued. “Eventually, after I made some inquiries, I found there were a number of other people who might have had access to the defendant’s home and computer and possible motives to injure Professor Cranmer.”
“Can you give me examples of these other people?”
“There were several. Elizabeth Spencer, his research assistant, was refusing to talk to us. Two colleagues, Professors Harlan Graves and Darren Mattoon, clearly didn’t like Professor Cranmer and could possibly have been involved. There was a housecleaner and, I believe, a carpenter on the premises. And then, of course, there was Ms. Spencer’s boyfriend, Ryan Jaworski.”
“Did you follow up on these leads?”
“Not for quite a while.”
“Why not?”
Patterson took a breath and looked at his hands, appearing to struggle. Finally, he spoke. “From the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Campanella led me to believe he didn’t want to hear about other suspects.”
This was too much. Campanella couldn’t restrain himself. “Your Honor …”
Norcross didn’t raise his voice, but his tone went steely. “Please sit down, Mr. Campanella. You’ll have your chance in a moment.” The judge pulled on his nose and sniffed. “Mr. Campanella told you this?”
After a pause, Patterson said, “Yes.”
“He told you he didn’t want to hear about other suspects?”
“Yes, I believe those were his exact words.”
“And why didn’t he want to hear about them?”
“Well, he was sure that Professor Cranmer was guilty. I was pretty sure, too, in the beginning. And he told me if I broadened the investigation, it might generate written document
s, witness statements and so forth, that he would have to turn over to Attorney Ames. It would complicate the case, he said, and make it harder for him to get a conviction.”
A clatter told Campanella that Ames had tossed her pencil onto her table in what was probably a gesture of disgust. The hearing was drifting out of his control.
“Anything else?” Norcross asked.
“He said if I broadened the investigation, I would just be manufacturing red herrings that Ms. Ames would use to distract the jury.”
“And Ryan Jaworski was one of these possible red herrings?”
“Yes.” Patterson looked sadly over at Campanella and then up at Norcross. “Judge, it’s not easy for me to go into this. I’d just like to say that—”
Ames quickly stood. “Objection!”
“Overruled. Please continue.”
“I have to say that I’m sure Mr. Campanella meant no harm. He was positive Professor Cranmer was guilty, and, like I said, I pretty much agreed with him at first. He was focused on what he thought were the interests of justice and was trying to keep the case simple.”
“I understand. Did you at any point pursue the investigation of these other possible suspects?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Mr. Campanella?”
“I told him about my conversation with Ryan Jaworski.”
“And what was his reaction?”
“He seemed pleased initially because …” Patterson paused, sighed, and looked up at the bench. “Judge, am I permitted to reveal the name of the confidential informant whose information led to the second search?”
Campanella started to stand, but the judge nodded him down. “No need to be explicit. I think it’s now obvious.”
“Okay, well, Mr. Campanella was pleased that we had the information to support a second search. But he didn’t see any reason to pursue Mr. Jaworski further.”
“Did you pursue other leads?”
“Yes.”
“And did you tell Mr. Campanella about this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He wouldn’t have liked it. It was his case. He might have called my superiors.”
The One-Eyed Judge Page 35
