“Maybe it’s nothing” Dep. Dawson repeated, “but a guy matching that description came up to Terri and me while we were keeping an eye on that storefront where the body was found. He started asking us questions about what was going on, which was understandable, and then began to ask things about the body and where it was found. He sometimes had to search for words, but he was determined to find out as much as he could.”
“Did any of his questions suggest that he knew something about the body that you and Terri did not tell him?” asked Peter.
Scott’s Styrofoam cup paused partway to his lips. “It was as if he knew that the body had been there for years. He repeatedly asked whether the there was anything left of the body.”
“A damned weird thing to ask under normal circumstances” remarked Tanner.
“And just what was his reason for asking questions about a thirty year old corpse? Aside from the fact that he and the corpse seem to share the same taste in fashion.”
Peter shook his head. “Yet more questions for which we have no answers. But I suppose this new information will come in handy at some point.”
“Now this just serves to prove the importance of the interaction among the various groups on law enforcement centering around a simple coffee pot. When we talk freely and often, good things happen” observed Tanner.
“Geez, Tanner. You’re starting to sound like Master Po instructing young Grasshopper. But it seems as though this mystery man may know something about ‘Wally’.”
Chapter 6
A week passed, with no new developments on either the identification of the mystery man from the night club shooting or the mystery corpse. An oppressively hot Labor Day weekend came and went, complete with a massive crowd of tourists fitting in their last hoorah of the summer, and leaving behind a bumper crop of drunk driving and public piddling cases in the Lake George Town Court, but not much else. The day after the actual holiday, Peter walked down to Judge Ginola’s chambers, his left arm bent around a large number of case files that were hooked on his hipbone.
When he arrived, the judge’s secretary ushered him into the judge’s spacious office and Peter set the files down in a mound next to one of the chairs facing the judge’s desk. Before his arrival, Peter had reviewed all of these files, making notes on what discussions `had occurred between the defendants’ attorneys and the prosecutors.
The next step in the process was for these cases to be discussed by Peter and each of the defense attorneys with Judge Ginola, in order to seek the judge’s approval of any plea bargain offer. If there had not been an offer made in a case the conference might lead to an offer or, at the least, an agreement of what steps were needed to bring the case to trial. This, too, was a part of the process that was largely unknown to the TV watching public. Much as a prosecutor like Peter might want to devote all of his attention to the two intriguing cases that were not among today’s more mundane files, he knew that he had to do his part in keeping the regular criminal cases flowing through the system.
Most of the matters were routine, and Judge Ginola accepted the prosecution’s proposals with little comment and less adjustment, until they came to a matter where Peter had made an unusually light offer on a drug sale case because the defendant, who had no prior criminal record at all, was also an honorably discharged U.S. Army vet.
“Peter, why are you suggesting a probation sentence for this drug dealer?” asked Judge Ginola.
“Judge, I feel that the circumstances are somewhat unique and justify this offer. In particular, this defendant, who had been serving this country in the U.S. Army was forced out due to a medical condition, which the Army did not wish to treat over the long-term. As a result, he was given a medical discharge, although an Honorable one, and suddenly found himself without a job and without medical insurance. His attempts to gain employment were further hampered by the fact that he is not a citizen, but rather a Lawful Permanent Resident, holding a green card.”
“Well, I am not going to go along with this proposal. It seems to me that if we are going to extend an unusually lenient offer to anyone, it should be to a citizen of this country, and not a Bahamian, even if he is a lawful permanent resident with a green card.”
“But he has no record at all, either here or in the Bahamas, he served this country honorably and if he is convicted of the top charge, and sent to prison, he may well be deported and barred from re-entry. His family members are all U.S. citizens.”
“He should have thought of that before he sold the drugs.”
“Your Honor, with all due respect.” Peter, like many other attorneys, tended to use this phrase when he was not feeling any respect at all. “With all due respect, while you have the right to agree or not agree to any plea proposal, denying a person some benefit within the criminal justice system, based on nationality or citizenship status, may well be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.”
Judge Ginola looked incensed, “I don’t believe that this involves Equal Protection, and I am not changing my mind” announced the judge, ending the discussion.
Afterward, Peter quietly assured the Bahamian defendant’s attorney that all was not lost.
One hell of a time for our beloved judge to actually conjure up an independent thought, although it figures that it would be something harebrained.
Even without looking up any case law, Peter had a recollection of having read old decisions of the Supreme Court that involved Chinese immigrants back in the late 1800’s. The gist of the decisions was that, while the government could regulate who came into the country and how they might be expelled, once here, they enjoyed precisely the same rights as citizens, particularly in the area of criminal law and could not be discriminated against on the basis of citizenship.
The real problem, however, was that any plea bargain agreement required the consent of the judge as well as the defendant and the prosecutor. As long as Judge Ginola maintained his stance, there could be no agreement. When the conferences were completed, Peter returned to his desk and wrote notes in each of the files on what had occurred in the conferences.
Peter’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.
“Peter here.”
“Peter. This is Bob Robson.”
“Hi, Bob. What’s going on?”
“I’m calling to give you a heads up. We may have your foreign man of mystery that shot up the nightclub. A guy matching his description was just involved in a shooting at Adirondack Winery.”
“Really. This guy seems to bring chaos wherever he goes,” observed Peter.
“This time some of the chaos landed on him. I understand that he took a couple of rounds. The details are sketchy right now, but I know that he is on his way to Albany Med. Meanwhile, we have two fatalities and a pursuit underway for one of the perps, who is hightailing it down the Northway.
By the end of the day, Peter had visited the crime scene and had been briefed enough to have a fair idea of what went on at the Adirondack Winery. According to the owner, Jennifer Smith, she was working in the store together with her part-time clerk Sam Taylor, a local community college student, restocking the New York wine selection, when a man in a suit entered the store and began looking at the chardonnay selection.
She described the customer as medium height, slim build and in his forties or fifties, with a mustache and wearing a suit. He spoke only to ask a question, but seemed to her to speak in an Italian accent with limited English. Just as she returned to the area behind the counter where her clerk was, two other men burst into the store, armed with handguns. Neither made any attempt at a mask or other disguise. One threw a plastic bag at Ms. Smith, shouting “Fill it!” as the other kept a gun trained on the man in the suit.
As Ms. Smith reached out with the bag, now filled with money, she bumped over a bottle that crashed on the floor. The sound drew the attention of the two robbers whose heads turned toward the sound of the crash and the man in the suit drew a gun of his own and
fired, killing the perp who had been watching him. Several more shots were exchanged and the man in the suit went down, as did Sam Taylor. The other perp dropped the money-filled bag he had been handed and fled the store.
Jennifer Smith, who had not been injured, was able to describe the fleeing perp and his car. After a brief high-speed chase, southbound on the Northway toward Albany, the perp crashed into a wooded area of the median. He suffered serious neck and spine injuries and was airlifted to Albany Med. So far, he had not spoken a word. No identification or other documents were found on him when searched.
As for the mystery man, who had been shopping for wine, his driver’s license identified him as Bruno Sica, residing in Menands, a suburb of Albany. He also had an alien registration card, as a lawful permanent resident, in another name, Enzo Vinci. The gunshot wound to his shoulder, while needing surgery, was not life threatening. The wound to his head was a lucky, glancing impact that did some minor damage, including a concussion but had not penetrated the skull.
Unless a different conclusion was drawn by FIU personnel, who recently were spending altogether too much time at crime scenes in Warren County, or surprising results from the ballistics reports on the weapons used and any recovered bullets, it appeared that this Bruno Sica had fired the shots that killed both the robber and the store clerk. In order to facilitate evidence collection and to provide treatment to Sica for his gunshot wounds, he, along with the bodies of the store clerk and the dead robber were all transported to Albany Med.
Whether coincidence or fate, all the bodies of interest in Peter’s little world, living and deceased, were residing together in the same medical facility in Albany.
By the time Peter got home that evening, his in-laws had arrived for a week long visit. As these were his in-laws’ only grandchildren on the East Coast, Eileen and Peter understood and appreciated that her parents would be regular visitors. Peter was not so silly as to believe that they were drawn by his personality. While he got along with the two of them fairly well, he was fully aware that, particularly in the eyes of his father-in-law, no one was good enough for their daughter - Peter included. Peter had initially been uncomfortable with this attitude, even if he could rationally understand it. Now that little Susie was in his life, the right or wrong of it was nowhere near as clear. Peter was already trying to convince his daughter that she would be free to date – when she turned 65.
Once home, Peter promised himself he would not mention anything about work. He had learned that his father-in-law, a retired engineer, was very knowledgeable in his own field as well as Peter’s, and seemingly everyone else’s. Before he had made this promise to himself, when Peter had mentioned a fact pattern or a legal issue, Ron could be counted on to disagree with any opinion that Peter might be so foolish as to offer. It was okay, though, as their visits clearly brought Eileen pleasure …and the kids adored their “Papa” and “Baba”, as Susie had begun to call them. Before she could learn enough language to call them “Grandpa” and “Grandma”, Gary had picked up his sister’s variations, and the nicknames stuck. Peter had held up his hands in mock surrender, the day that he walked in on Susie leading her otherwise quite proper and restrained “Baba”, around the house, colanders on heads, hitting pans with wooden spoons in their own form of marching band.
Greetings were exchanged and a bit of light conversation with Peter’s in-laws, Ron and Stephanie, who were both sipping sherry as Eileen had a glass of wine and Peter a beer, he then went out onto the back deck to start up the grill for dinner. The flames from the lighter fluid danced through the charcoal, delighting Peter’s eyes, just as they had for Stone Age man, Peter suspected. Meat taste better when fire touch!
The wine store robbery came up in the dinner conversation, as it had hit the evening news. A video clip of the crime scene caught Peter walking across the parking lot, prompting Susie and Gary to yell out “Daddy!” when they saw him. Peter kept his comments about the case to a minimum and dinner went along quietly and pleasantly.
Although he was pretty good at leaving the job at the office, thoughts of the past few weeks kept intruding through the evening. Bodies were beginning to pile up in a community where bodies just did not pile up. There was no rhyme or reason, and only one common denominator; Bruno Sica of Menands, NY. One thing was clear: more answers to questions were going to be needed before this made any sense.
*****
It was two weeks after the wine store robbery and Peter was going to ride to Albany Med with Abe Dorn and Tanner Saint to try and interview Bruno Sica, whose condition had stabilized. A misty, cold rain hung in the morning air as Peter drove to work. Periodically, a light breeze would swirl the mixture, reminding Peter of winter in Germany, where the clammy cold wind would cut straight through any clothing, including his Olive Drab Green uniform jacket, and into his bones. Fortunately, the sun would probably burn this off before long and the forecast promised this.
As the three shot south on I-87, blowing by the morning commuter traffic, they reviewed the developments since “Wally’s” autopsy and the wine store robbery.
“So how did Grand Jury go yesterday?”
“It went pretty well,” replied Peter, looking up from the back seat where he had been writing down some to-do notes. “Jennifer is an excellent witness, with good recall. Despite the trauma she just went through, she held it together in identifying a photo of the dead robber and his buddy, John Doe as well as the one of our friend Sica. She is, of course, really rattled by the death of her clerk. I would imagine that she is feeling some survivor’s guilt.”
“So the other perp is still is not talking?” asked Tanner.
Abe, who was driving, said “His appointed attorney can’t even get him to speak with him in private to indicate whether he wants to testify before the Grand Jury. The attorney does not even know whether this guy understands any English. We did an inventory search on his clothing and he had no paper on him at all. So far, we haven’t located where he and his late friend may have stayed, and the car had been reported stolen last week down in Queens.”
“But didn’t he tell the store owner to fill the bag with money during the robbery?” asked Tanner.
“Sure, but he might have just been taught the phrase, kind of like the band ABBA sang all those songs in the late 70’s without knowing any English,” replied Peter. “Until we find some people who have conversed with Sica, we can’t be sure of his ability to speak English fluently either. Although he did seem to make himself understood when he talked to Scott and Terri at the crime scene when you guys found ‘Wally’.”
“So what are the charges against John Doe?”
“I hit him with felony murder for the death of the store clerk, attempted murder against Bruno Sica, robbery first, assault first and criminal use of a firearm first. The Grand jury had no problem with any of them.”
“How did you do felony murder when we think that it was a round fired by Sica that killed the clerk?”
“The statute says he has to ‘cause the death’ of the non-participant in the robbery. My theory was that by engaging in a gun battle with Sica, he was a significant factor in Sam Taylor’s death” explained Peter. “The case law is kind of muddy in this area though. The old traditional case, People versus Wood insisted that the death be at the felon or co-felon’s hand, but since then the statute has been changed a lot and the phrase ‘cause the death’ has been added.
“More recent court decisions are split on the issue, but at least one from the Court of Appeals says that we have to prove that the ‘culpable act is a sufficiently direct cause of the death, so that the fatal result was reasonably foreseeable’. I guess the real question is whether it is foreseeable that someone in the store they were robbing might also be armed and return fire. I am fairly comfortable that, under these facts, an appeals court would agree with me, although it would be an easier sell in Texas, I suspect.”
Abe observed, “Even if they don’t, the other charges will do him for a lot
of years.”
Tanner Saint turned in his seat to glance back at Peter. “You know, these cases are starting to sound like the plot in a novel. Why don’t you write it up, Peter? I’ll buy a copy.”
Peter replied, “You’re right. It is turning into something out of a Ludlum book, but the truth is, I could never write anything that would be bought by the public.”
“Why not?”
“Nowadays, you can’t sell books without sex scenes, and I couldn’t possibly get myself to write that stuff.”
Abe joined in. “Peter. We know you’re a prude, but are you really that bad?”
“Look. I’m married. If I write about sex as my wife and I do it, she’ll get all pissed off because I am revealing our private lives. Now, if I describe the sex differently, then she will go for my throat, and the last words I’ll hear before I pass out will be ‘What bitch taught you that?’ Clearly, a no-win proposition!”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?” laughed Tanner.
Wiseguys in the Woods Page 8