“Yes.”
I take him through the various things that he found in his investigation: the flame on the stove, the missed meetings, the failure to bring in the Sunday paper or to be seen in the neighborhood—all of it. “In your experience, Detective, do signs like these generally mean that the disappearance is involuntary?”
“It can go either way.” He’s pissed at me for calling him, so he doesn’t want to give me what I want.
“Did you say fifteen minutes ago, in a meeting we just held, that your belief was that it was, in fact, involuntary?”
He can’t lie, especially since the court reporter had gotten it down, so he says, “Yes.”
“Have you learned anything in the last fifteen minutes that changed your view?”
“No.”
Tressel conducts a brief cross, during which he gets Summers to admit that there could be other explanations. “He could have had an accident, or a heart attack, or any one of many other things?” Tressel asks.
“Anything is possible,” Summers says, and is finally allowed to get off the stand and go back to work. He’ll continue looking for Barnett, but I’ll be very surprised if he finds him.
I really have very little case left to present.
My strategy was to impeach Tressel’s witnesses as much as possible and then point to Barnett as a credible alternative killer. I think I’ve accomplished both, but I can’t really be sure. Certainly, I’m going to have to hammer home my points in my summation.
Pups wants to take the stand, but I am absolutely opposed to it. All she can do is profess her innocence and declare that there is no way Jake could have been having that affair. All of that would be seen as self-serving and not particularly compelling; she has no evidence to back up either assertion.
Even more important is the fact that she would be a time bomb under cross-examination. Tressel would badger her and get her angry, and there is no telling what she might say. Pups is not a delicate flower.
To her credit, even though I admit that she has the absolute right to testify, she honors our agreement at the beginning of the trial that I would call all the shots. So I finish up the defense case with our final two witnesses.
The first is a vice president of the bank where Randall Hennessey had his account. His testimony confirms that the twenty-five thousand dollars wired to Hennessey was the only time he had anywhere close to that much money. In fact, he reveals, those were the only two wire transfers Hennessey ever received.
As our final witness, I call Dierdre Milone, Pups’s self-described closest friend in the world.
Laurie has interviewed Dierdre, and I have not, but Laurie tells me what she’ll say, and the demeanor with which she’ll say it. She turns out to be right, and Dierdre describes Pups as a wonderful person who has devoted her life to unwanted animals.
She was also a close friend of Jake’s, and she testifies that the Boyers had a great marriage, that Jake never would have cheated, and that, if he had, Pups would have confided in her about it.
Tressel’s cross is relatively brief, as if dismissing her as unimportant. He gets her to say that while she believes all these things, it’s impossible to be positive about any of them. If one is not in the marriage, she is forced to admit, it’s always possible that it could not be what it seems.
Overall, she is a good witness, and a nice way to end the case.
I utter the toughest words I ever have to say during a trial. Because once I say them, there is no going back. If I later realize that I should have done something differently or called another witness, it’s too late.
“Your Honor, the defense rests.”
I make a motion that I be allowed to reopen the defense case if David Barnett appears before the jury begins their deliberations. Judge Chambers says that he will hold off making a ruling on that until the situation presents itself, and then he sets closing arguments for tomorrow morning.
I’m sure that I prepare for closing arguments differently from most lawyers, in that I hardly prepare at all. I lay out in my mind what points I am going to cover, but I don’t write anything out or practice a set speech.
By this time in the trial, I know the facts and can recall them at will, and I don’t want to do anything that detracts from the spontaneity of what I will say. I understand why others do it more by the book, but my way has always worked for me.
I head for the office, and waiting for me is the FedEx package that Nolan Weisler, Hank Boyer’s attorney, promised he would send. It contains an offer, specific to the point that it’s eleven pages long, detailing a proposed settlement.
I look at it briefly, but spend long enough to determine that Weisler obviously had access to Jake’s will, which is, of course, part of the public record. He seems to have asked for half of Pups’s liquid assets and has divided up the land as well.
Hike comes into the office to do some paperwork, and I call Sam and ask him to come in too. Edna, with a remarkable burst of energy, makes copies of the offer for Sam and Hike. She doesn’t collate them, because there is a limit to what one person can do.
Once they have it in front of them, I say, “I just looked at this quickly, but the land is divided up by parcels. No pieces of land appear to be split; each entire parcel winds up with either Pups or Jake. So the first thing I want you to do is determine which of the three parcels you had isolated previously as potential sources of hidden value are listed in this proposal as going to Jake.”
Hike has already been looking through it as I talk. “The Nevada and Nebraska pieces stay with Pups. The South Dakota piece goes to Jake.”
“That’s the one with the potential pipeline on it?”
Hike nods. “Yes.”
“That’s the one I thought was the most likely. Let’s dig even more deeply into that one. Hike, there’s a chance I might want you to go out there and snoop around, see what you can learn.”
“To South Dakota?” he asks, his displeasure evident.
I nod. “Unless the land gets moved. Best to go wherever the land is. Sam, I also want you to take all the pieces of land that are on Jake’s side in this offer, and go over them again, just in case there’s something you missed the first time.”
I leave them to their work and head home. I have absolutely no evidence to make me believe that Hank Boyer is part of any conspiracy. I was the one who notified him of his possible inheritance, long after the murders were committed. His going after it, especially with the obvious prodding from his wife, makes perfect sense and is not obviously sinister.
But I have no other answer. My theory is that everything that has transpired has been part of an effort to get Jake’s, and then Pups’s, money. There are a very limited number of places for that money to ultimately go. It either stays with Pups, goes to the rescue groups as specified in her will, goes to the state of New Jersey, or goes to Hank. Maybe the bad guys have figured out a way to take it away from Hank after he gets it, but that seems unlikely and could not have been their initial plan.
This entire case has revealed an enormous, expensive, deadly conspiracy. No one undertakes that unless there is a huge amount of money at stake and they have a sure way to get it.
Dan Tressel put on a dark suit and a solemn face to give his closing statement.
His manner said that he was saddened by this whole thing and sorry to be a part of it. But there was a job to do; the public had to be protected.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when this trial started, I stood before you, as I am doing today, and made an opening statement. I told you that your job was to listen intently to all the witnesses that would come before you, to make sure you understood all the different aspects of the case. You have obviously done your job.
“My mandate was to present the facts, without prejudice, so that you could make the proper judgment when the time came for you to deliberate. I hope I have done my job … I think I have … because your deliberations will come soon.
“Back then I told you that I would
prove to you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Martha Boyer committed three murders. I didn’t say that she pulled the trigger in each case but, rather, that she was responsible for all of them happening. I told you that the murder of her husband, Jake Boyer, was so callous that she ordered the murder of another person, Raymond Parker, simply to throw the police off the track.
“I hope and believe that I have proven all of that to you.
“Jake Boyer was having an affair; he was cheating on his wife. I don’t defend that; I simply state it as a fact. But one never knows what’s going on inside someone else’s marriage, and no one other than Martha and Jake Boyer knew what was going on inside theirs. And whatever he was doing, he did not deserve to die for it.
“You’ve heard testimony about that affair and seen a financial document that proves it. The defense has not even bothered to claim otherwise. You’ve heard that Jake told Martha about it and that she was furious. And, soon after that, he was dead.
“You’ve also heard that Randall Hennessey complained about Martha Boyer, his neighbor, having more than twenty dogs in her house, when the law allowed only three. We don’t know why he complained—maybe he didn’t like the barking or maybe there was a smell. We’ll never know exactly why, because he made Martha Boyer angry, and now he is gone.
“He angered her, she publicly threatened him, he was shot with a gun found moments after the crime in her house, and she was spotted fleeing the murder scene. This is not a whodunit.
“We might never have known who killed Jake Boyer and Raymond Parker had not the same gun been used to kill Randall Hennessey. The defense would have you believe that using the same gun was so ill advised as to be evidence that Martha Boyer must have been framed, that she could not be that stupid or careless.
“But understand this: she did not expect the gun to be found. And if it was found in her possession, then she would be arrested and convicted for the murder of Mr. Hennessey, so what was the difference if those other murders were added on? She was ill; she would die soon anyway.
“I also told you back at the beginning of this trial to not let your sympathy for Martha Boyer’s illness sway you. People get sick and die every day, but they don’t go on a murder spree before they pass. Jake Boyer and Raymond Parker and Randall Hennessey never had the chance to see where their lives would take them. Martha Boyer saw to that.
“This is your chance to tell Martha Boyer, to tell the citizens of New Jersey, that there is no excuse for cold-blooded murder.”
Tressel nods sadly, throwing in a little shake of the head to drive it home, and then says, “Thank you for listening.”
As I’m about to get up, Pups leans over to me, to offer a word of encouragement.
Or not.
“The little prick,” she says, right on target, as always.
I begin with, “If you’ll indulge me, let me tell you what I think you need to do, what I think your job requires. You need to look at the evidence, all of it, and decide if you think Martha Boyer committed these murders beyond a reasonable doubt.
“You must, by definition, find that it is unreasonable to believe that someone else did it and unreasonable to believe that there is another explanation beyond Mr. Tressel’s. Because you cannot have more than one theory of the case and believe either one of them beyond a reasonable doubt.
“You heard the police detective that ran the investigation almost two years ago sit here and tell you that Martha Boyer could not have been on the scene, that she could not have pulled the trigger. His reason? He knew with certainty where she was; she was playing bridge with her friends. And, smart detective that he is, he knew she could not be in two places at once.
“So if she is guilty of those crimes, then she had to have arranged for the killings. She had to have hired someone to do the murdering for her. And it had to be an excellent, experienced shooter; it was dark, he was shooting from a slowly moving car, and he had to hit two different people accurately enough to kill them.
“I’ve never conducted a survey of hit men, but I’ll bet you that if I did, I’d find that the percentage of them that own guns is somewhere between ninety-nine and one hundred and one. Plumbers own plungers; painters own brushes; accountants own pencils; and hit men own guns.
“So what did this hit man do? According to Mr. Tressel’s theory of the case, he either borrowed Martha Boyer’s gun and then gave it back or used his own gun but gave it to her afterwards as a memento to commemorate the occasion. Not only are both of those explanations unreasonable; they are ridiculous.
“Then he would have you believe that Martha used the same gun to kill Mr. Hennessey. Then she called the police to the scene, somehow cleaned all traces of gun residue from her hands and clothes in just a few minutes, and put the gun in her basement. But first she wiped her prints from the gun, as if having it in her basement would not be incriminating enough.
“That scenario is, at the very least, unreasonable.
“But someone killed those people; that’s something we can all agree on. And we believe that the killer—not necessarily the shooter, but the person who ordered it—was David Barnett.
“David Barnett went with Jake Boyer to the scene of his execution that night, the Bonfire Restaurant. He knew where they would be, and he was obviously, therefore, in a position to tell the shooter. In the hail of bullets that followed, Barnett emerged unscathed, a happy coincidence for him.
“You heard testimony from Frank Calderone, a man who had done work for Barnett. He said that Barnett paid him ten thousand dollars to get Randall Hennessey to complain about Martha Boyer’s dogs by promising him twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Now I can see why you might be initially skeptical of this; Frank Calderone is not an Eagle Scout. But, you see, he has some evidence backing him up. He received ten thousand dollars in a wire transfer, and Randall Hennessey received twenty-five. How would Calderone have known that Hennessey received that exact amount of money, unless he was telling the truth?
“And to bring it full circle, the wired money to both men came from the same shadow organization. Does that not give Calderone’s story not only reasonable, but total credibility?
“And how did Mr. Barnett react to the incriminating Calderone testimony? We don’t know, because he disappeared the next day; you heard the detective testify to that. Here are two hypotheses for what might have happened: One, he feared his involvement in the murders was about to be proven, so he ran. Or, two, his co-conspirators feared that if Barnett went down, he’d take them with him, so they eliminated him.
“Are those hypotheses not at least reasonable?
“Ladies and gentlemen, Martha Boyer has lived an exemplary life. She has never knowingly hurt anyone, and she has devoted decades to saving unwanted animals. She has inherited a substantial amount of money and yet has lived a thoroughly modest life.
“But that life has thrown huge obstacles and pain in her path. Her husband was murdered; she has an awful disease that will take her life; and now she has to go through this terrible ordeal.
“Let your logic guide you as to what is reasonable and what is not, and then do the right thing. Let Martha Boyer live out her days at home, a free and innocent woman.”
When I get back to the defense table, Pups leans over to talk to me again. This time, I assume she’s going to tell me I screwed up, but instead she says, “Not bad.”
That is what is known as high praise.
Judge Chambers gives his charge to the jury, and I am pleased that he discusses the absence of Barnett and says that the panel is free to assign whatever inference to it that they want. I think I’ve already gotten that across; if I haven’t, then the jury has to be composed of twelve potted plants.
But having the judge’s stamp of approval certainly cannot hurt, and it will increase my confidence while waiting for the verdict. But if my past experiences with verdict waiting are any guide, that confidence will last almost until I get to my car.
The wait for t
his particular verdict is unique, at least in my career.
Not entirely; I’m still a nervous wreck and indulge my verdict-watch superstitions. For example, I will only make right turns, never left. This makes perfect sense to me, because I want the jury to do what’s right.
So if I want to go left, I’ll make three right turns to get me going in the desired direction. When I’m in my car, that’s not such a big deal, and not noticeable. When I’m walking, I essentially make a 270-degree twirl, and people watching me generally assume I’m a lunatic and keep their distance.
I’ll only eat certain kinds of foods, watch certain TV shows, take Tara and Sebastian for walks down certain streets. I have reasons for all of these things, but it would take too long, and they are too stupid, for me to list them here. Intellectually, I know what I’m doing, or not doing, has no influence on the jurors’ actions, but just in case …
For all these reasons, I get nothing whatsoever of consequence accomplished during a verdict watch; I don’t even try. But, like I said, this time has to be different. Because if by some chance we win, then we have another trial following right on its heels. So I have to be productive, even though it does not come remotely naturally.
I meet Sam and Hike at the office to get an update. I also call Edna and ask her to come in, which comes as an unwelcome surprise to her. She naturally assumed that her work ended with the end of the trial, and the fact that her assumption was wrong is clearly jarring to her.
“We don’t have another client, do we?” she asks, and seems somewhat reassured when I tell her we do not.
Sam has gone through Weisler’s settlement offer, which, of course, will only be filed if Pups is acquitted by the criminal jury.
“I’ve gone through all the land holdings that he is proposing his client get, and the only one that rings a bell is still the South Dakota land that could possibly get the pipeline. If the other pieces have any potential value, I can’t find it.”
“Forget the pipeline situation for a moment. In terms of overall value, is his offer fair?”
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas Page 17