So, that’s how it went down. X knew his name, Savoie knew his face, but it was the two little boys who knew where to find him. It wasn’t long before about a hundred cops and FBI agents descended on the spot where Thomas M. Jones was waiting for them.
When the first officers showed up, they said Jones was calmly sitting against a tree at the edge of the woods reading The Patriot Diaries.
CHAPTER 25
The courthouse occupied almost an entire city block in downtown Portland, rising above Federal and Newbury Streets like a monolith. It was here that Thomas M. Jones would spend most of the next few months of his life, and where the attention of all of the United States — and much of the world — would be focused.
The three-story building that housed the court was constructed of cold grey stone and had barred windows. On one side was Lincoln Park and on the other, an obstructed view of Casco Bay. On the Federal Street side, a string of Doric-style columns stretched up to the sky. The columns were capped with plain-looking capitals, the big circular stones that were supposed to hold up the upper expanse of the courthouse. The building looked like it was designed by a military commander to be a fort or something. It radiated formality and coldness, which I suppose was the idea.
Courtroom one was in a state of total chaos. People shouted, elbows were raised, curses were heard. Security was mediating disputes and, when necessary, ejecting those who were behaving badly. The cause of the chaos was easy to see: there were way more people in attendance than there were available seats. There was room to accommodate just shy of two hundred people, but ten times that number wanted to get in and see history being made.
Dozens of journalists were there, and they weren’t going to miss a single moment; all of the national networks had dispatched their marquee reporters to cover the first court appearance of Thomas M. Jones, the accused Portland bomber.
Every Portland lawyer and court clerk who could be there was there, too, and they had lined up before dawn for the best seats. Some of the local railbirds — mainly retired folks who whiled away the hours watching criminal trials — had even gotten there before the lawyers and clerks. Security was frantically trying to set up an overflow room in courtroom eight on the second floor. They’d rigged up an audio link to courtroom one, but nobody wanted to listen to the proceedings. They wanted to see what was happening.
X, Jessie, and Leah were there with me — X to write about Thomas M. Jones’s first court appearance, and me and Jessie and Leah just to see what the bastard looked like close up. Sam, Luke, and the Upchucks had all said they wouldn’t come. “I’m worried I’ll jump over the railing and kill the fucker with my bare hands,” Patti had said, looking like she meant it. Sister Betty agreed.
We loitered in the hallway just outside the courtroom, watching the security staff search people’s bags and wave metal-detector wands over them. I eyed the doors to the courtroom, which were being held open by the bodies moving in and out. Lawyers, clerks, and members of the media jostled for seats, growling at each other.
“If any of us get in, it should be you, X,” I said. “You’re here to write about it. The rest of us can sit in the overflow room upstairs.” Leah and Jessie nodded.
As we stood there, figuring out what to do, Chief Chow marched in, two uniformed Portland cops on his heels. He saw us right away and walked over. “X, Mr. Blank,” he said, extending his hand. “How are you?”
“Fine,” X said, and introduced Jessie and Leah. “Is this bail hearing going to happen?”
Chow smiled. “It has to,” he said. “The accused has been in custody for a day. The Eighth Amendment requires a bail hearing, even for him.”
X had his notepad out and was scribbling away. The rest of us kept quiet, watching the exchange. “He can be considered for bail, even in a case of a mass murder?” X asked.
“This is a Harnish bail proceeding,” Chow explained. “Murder used to be a capital offense in the state of Maine. A Harnish hearing determines whether the accused is facing what used to be a capital offense. If he is, then there’s no right to bail.”
“Chief, he killed over a hundred people. Isn’t this all a waste of time?” I asked.
Chow smiled. “No comment, Kurt. Now, excuse me, I need to speak with DA Martin.”
As Chow and his police escorts headed toward the stairs, none of the network reporters followed. I don’t think they even recognized the chief. What a bunch of goofs, I thought.
The District Attorney’s offices were directly across the hall from courtroom one. Savoie and Laverty were inside waiting for DA Sharon Martin.
When she finally stalked into her office, the DA said a curt hello and took a seat behind the large desk. She sighed as she flipped open a thick folder containing the grand jury’s indictment of the young man who called himself Thomas M. Jones. “Well, the defense is going to try to turn this into a media circus,” she said.
“It already is,” Laverty pointed out. “That’s unavoidable.”
Savoie, looking like he had slept in his Oldsmobile, sounded unconcerned. “I don’t think we need to worry about the media, ma’am. We’ve got this guy dead to rights. He did it. He even brags about it in his so-called manifesto.”
“Yes, Detective,” Martin said. “But we only have a single witness, this Mr. Cox, who sustained a serious knock on the head and hasn’t been a hundred percent certain in his identification of the perpetrator. Granted, we’ve also got the motel and truck rental clerks, but I don’t feel either of them is a very strong witness. Plus we’ve got some circumstantial evidence, but it’s not exactly cut and dry.”
“But we’ve got his autobiography,” Savoie said. “He admits it all in there. End of story, I’d say.”
“Not quite,” Martin said, tapping another document on her desk. This one wasn’t as imposing as the indictment, but it was thick enough. “We got served with this last night.”
“What is it?” Laverty asked.
“A motion to exclude the manuscript,” Martin said, handing the document across. “It’s brilliant, actually.”
Laverty scanned the first page and frowned. “Privileged? How can anyone argue the manuscript is privileged? He was holding it when we arrested him.”
The DA sighed and shook her head. “Because Jones wrote it in the form of a long letter to his attorney, and for that reason they say it’s protected by attorney-client privilege.”
“And I see his attorney is none other than David Dennison. Interesting …”
Laverty had had several run-ins with lawyer David Dennison over the years, and she did not like him one bit.
Dennison and Partners was a notorious New York City criminal defense firm that Dennison owned and operated. The firm actually had no partners — Dennison refused to give up any equity to anyone — but it was wildly successful. What the other associates lacked in equity was more than made up for in salary. The top tier associates at Dennison and Partners were paid better than most partners at every other New York criminal defense firm. Dennison could afford it.
With his chiseled jaw, six-pack abs, and Hollywood good looks, Dennison had been a high school football star. He had done his undergrad at Yale, studied law at Harvard, and clerked for a Supreme Court justice. On paper, and probably in real life, David Dennison could have been a candidate for the presidency, or a billionaire, or the CEO of a flourishing Fortune 500 company. But from his earliest days, it seems Dennison was drawn to something far more mundane: press clippings. He was always in the paper, saying provocative things about monstrous clients, making appearances on the evening news, extolling yet another legal victory, and racking up win after win. More than money, more than power, more than the beautiful call girls he reportedly summoned to his Fifth Avenue penthouse, David Dennison seemed to be drawn to fame like a fly to horseshit.
Fame or infamy, Laverty didn’t think it made any difference to Dennison, as long as he was being talked about, watched, and reported on. He seemed better at being famous than being a cri
minal defense lawyer, though he was still a very good lawyer. For the most part, he appeared to have no ideology, no passion for one partisan cause or another. He had no core beliefs about anything, really, except one, Laverty thought as she flipped through his firm’s client lists. She’d already noticed that every lawyer who worked at Dennison and Partners was male. And it was clear to her that every client Dennison had represented was male. So, she suspected that there was one view that David Dennison shared with his newest client, Thomas M. Jones: that women were inferior to men.
CHAPTER 26
We sat at the back of courtroom one — me, X, Jessie, and Leah. We’d slipped in just as they were closing the doors. X had his pen and notepad out, so we kind of looked like we might be media. Nobody paid any attention to us anyway.
When Thomas M. Jones was first brought in, there was an audible intake of breath from some in the assembled crowd. But after he was led to the prisoner’s box and seated, other than some rustling of papers and a bit of murmuring, the crowd remained quiet, like they were in church or something.
This was the first time anyone outside of law enforcement had seen Thomas M. Jones up close in person. He appeared unremarkable. He was shackled, hands and feet, and was wearing an orange jumpsuit. Four security officers surrounded him, partially blocking our view.
But when the lawyer hustled over to confer with his client, the two guards at the front stepped back and we could see Jones better. He stared straight ahead as his lawyer whispered in his ear. He didn’t nod or respond in any way.
The judge’s chair was empty; he hadn’t arrived yet. But in the cordoned-off area at the front, two clerks had positioned themselves below the flags of the United States and the state of Maine. The defense team and the prosecution sat patiently waiting.
One of the clerks, an older, pudgy guy with a handlebar moustache, approached the rail that divided the room. “Judge O’Sullivan will be here shortly,” he announced. “This is a reminder that talking, smoking, and chewing gum are not permitted in the court. And everyone must rise when the judge enters.”
At that, I looked over at Jessie and laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Jessie was chewing gum. If she wasn’t smoking, Jessie was always chewing gum.
When we turned back to the courtroom, we saw that Thomas M. Jones had swiveled his head around and was now staring directly at us. Everyone else in the courtroom turned to see what Jones was looking at.
Jessie and I had debated whether she should even come. If he was the one who had raped her on the side of a road so long ago, I told her, being there might be too upsetting. But Jessie, who was mostly fearless, had been adamant. “This fucker doesn’t control me,” she said. “He did for a few minutes, one night, but not for one second since. If it’s him, I want to go and show him he doesn’t scare me.” So here she was, with me and X and Leah beside her.
The long silence of the courtroom was broken by the voice of Thomas M. Jones, reedy and still youthful. “Jessie?” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
X and I looked at each other.
Holy shit.
The media reacted immediately, though thankfully they couldn’t exactly rush over to find out who Jessie was. But within seconds, Laverty and Savoie hurried over to us. “Excuse me, Miss,” Laverty said quietly, ignoring the rest of us. She wasn’t a big fan of the X Gang, you might say. “Was the accused addressing you just now?”
“Who are you?” Jessie asked.
“Sorry. Special Agent Theresa Laverty, FBI. This is Detective Savoie. Can you tell us why the accused addressed you? How do you know him?”
Jessie looked over at me. I cleared my throat. “It might be better if we talk somewhere more private,” I said, then pointed at Savoie. “But not him — just you, me, and Jessie.”
“Fine,” Laverty said. She led me and Jessie out of the courtroom and through the crowd of people still milling about outside. A couple of reporters ran out after us barking questions at Jessie, but Laverty ushered us through a set of double doors marked No Entry and into what looked like a combination library and boardroom. She closed the door behind us, extended her hand to Jessie, and introduced herself formally.
She then waved us toward a couple of empty chairs. “And you are?”
“Jessie … Jessie Jett.”
“Jett?” Laverty said, arching an eyebrow.
“Jett,” Jessie said, deadpan.
“O-kay,” Laverty said, clearly unconvinced. “Why did Jones just say your name, Jessie?”
Jessie looked at me, uncertain. I nodded. Laverty, I figured, could be trusted, sort of.
“I know him, or at least I used to know him.”
“How did you know him?”
“When I was in high school, I lived in Clinton, in Kennebec County,” Jessie said. “I worked in the library there, after school.”
“Jones lived there, too?”
“Near there,” Jessie said. “In the woods.”
“With his family?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said. “They squatted in a shack in the woods, basically. But I’d see him at the library after school.”
“Did he go to your school?”
“I never saw him there,” Jessie said. “I think his parents home-schooled him.”
“Why would he go to the library?” Laverty asked.
“He was smart. He knew a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Like everything,” Jessie said. “He read a ton of books — Shakespeare, poetry, classical stuff, all of that. He read because he wanted to, he said, not because he had to.”
Laverty hesitated before asking, “Was he your friend? Your … boyfriend?”
Jessie laughed out loud at that. I smiled. “I’m not into boys so much, Agent Laverty,” she said. “Not my thing.”
At that point, Laverty visibly relaxed and smiled.
“It’s cool,” I said to Jessie, nodding in Laverty’s direction. “Not an issue with Agent Laverty.”
The two women exchanged a look, and Jessie continued, “So, no, he wasn’t a boyfriend or anything. He was just a friend, back then.”
Laverty nodded. “Did he have any unusual … ideas … back then? Was he involved in any political groups that you know of?”
“He wasn’t involved in anything that I knew of,” Jessie said. “But he did have lots of weird ideas. That was okay, at first. But later on it started to make me uncomfortable.”
“Racism, anti-Semitism? Stuff like that?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said. “At the end, lots of that shit. He changed.”
“How?”
Jessie frowned, remembering. “He got … angrier,” she said. “It was like he found a religion or something.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Immigrants, refugees, Jews, gay people, all of that,” she said. “He started to rail against them a lot when we talked. But there was one group he hated the most …” She hesitated.
“Who?”
Jessie looked upset for the first time. “Women,” she said, finally. “Females. Girls. He started getting really critical of women in general.”
“Why?” Laverty asked, then she abruptly changed course. Sensing something, she leaned forward a bit. “Jessie, did something happen?”
Jessie looked down at the floor. I put a hand on her arm. “Yes,” she said.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he —” Laverty started to say.
Jessie cut her off. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes!” she said, eyes blazing. “The bastard raped me!”
Laverty looked shocked but also like she wanted to hug her. “I’m so sorry, Jessie,” she said. “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions …”
“It’s okay,” Jessie said. After a long pause, she took a deep breath and continued. “He raped me after work one night. He pulled me into the woods and did it.” She looked at me, and her face was sad. “He was strong. I couldn’t fight him.”
I reached over
and hugged her. “It’s not your fault, Jess.”
“I know it isn’t!” Jess snapped, pulling away.
Laverty nodded. “Kurt, I think it would be better if I conduct a formal interview with Jessie — in private.”
I looked at Jessie. “You cool with that?”
She nodded.
Theresa Laverty stood up. “I need to get back in the courtroom to speak with some of my colleagues,” she said. “Can we reconnect in a day or two?”
“Sure,” Jessie said.
Laverty pointed in the direction of courtroom one. “The media will probably swarm you if you go back in there,” she said. “And I think you will need to stay away if we decide to proceed with charges.”
“Charges?”
“New charges, for assaulting you,” Laverty said, her jaw set. “There’s no statute of limitations on rape, Jessie. And the prosecution might be able to use this to their advantage.”
CHAPTER 27
Laverty looked at the monitor showing Thomas M. Jones sitting on the bunk in the fortified cell, ramrod straight, hands folded in his lap. He was wearing an oversized orange jumpsuit and flip flops that were too big. He sat staring at the wall, unmoving.
She was told he hadn’t eaten for a day.
Laverty and Savoie were in a tiny room just down the hall from the holding cell at the Cumberland County courthouse. Two security officers stood by the door.
“He just sits there like he’s in a trance or something,” one officer told them. “Like a goddamn statue. He’s refusing food.”
Laverty kept watching Jones on the grainy black-and-white screen. “So, he says he won’t eat until he gets some books?”
“Not just any books,” the officer said. “He has a list. Says his lawyer has it.”
“What’s on it?” Laverty asked.
“Classical stuff. Old stuff,” the officer said, sounding unimpressed.
Laverty glanced over at the burly courthouse officer. She couldn’t picture him reading any book, let alone an old classical one.
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