In truth, Kelly didn’t seem to care all that much about convicting Ricky Dew and he didn’t have any evidence to work with, anyway. The whole charge against Dew (valid or not) could be seen as just a way to legitimize the plea bargain with L’Heureux. And it had been the plea bargain with L’Heureux that they’d needed to get the man they really wanted—Rob Marshall. Ricky Dew, at this point, was no more than an inconvenient piece of excess baggage.
It had been Rob whom Kelly had been after from the start, with a vengeance he’d never brought into a courtroom before. And it had been Rob whom he’d spattered all over the walls on cross-examination. And, now, it would be Rob upon whom he would focus his energies, and even his venom, during his upcoming closing argument.
The date was Monday, March 3; the day dawned cold and clear, and the Mays Landing courthouse was packed. Two newspaper reporters had to give up their seats so Nathan Baird’s wife and daughter could watch him work. Even Kevin Kelly’s mother was there. This would be, after all, his final closing argument as a prosecutor. After this, it would be back to Bricktown and real estate closings from dawn till dusk. Kelly badly wanted Rob Marshall’s scalp to take back with him. He was all but certain that he’d won it with his cross-exam, but today, with this crowd gathered for his finale, his adrenaline would not let him lighten up.
But before he could speak, he had to listen. That was the way New Jersey worked it. Lawyers for the defendants spoke first.
Nathan Baird was charming and eloquent. He quoted the Bible (Deuteronomy 19:15, “One witness is not enough to convict”) and made reference to both his grandmother and his grandfather, as well as the poet Robert Burns, and he related an anecdote about beef stew in which the moral was that one bad piece of beef ought to make you cast the whole bowl aside, and he suggested that Ferlin L’Heureux, in his testimony, had presented the jury with more than just one bad piece of beef. Then he touched upon burden of proof and reasonable doubt and suggested that there was far more evidence that pointed toward L’Heureux as the killer than toward Dew. Against Dew, he said, there was not a single shred of evidence, save “the testimony of a man scarcely worthy of belief.” Then he sat down, still slightly radiant from a recent long weekend in Acapulco.
Carl Seely, whose Caribbean tan had long since faded into nothingness, but whose heavy gold Rolex was as shiny as ever, spoke for an hour and fifteen minutes in a voice so flat and so empty of feeling that jurors began slouching in their chairs and at least one appeared to fall asleep momentarily.
He did have some harsh words for L’Heureux: “What is more dangerous, what is the worst kind of person that can walk into a courtroom and stink up a courtroom than a cop who’s gone bad? And there shouldn’t be a question in anybody’s mind that that is what Ferlin L’Heureux is—a cop who went bad.”
The problem was, it wasn’t L’Heureux on trial—it was Rob Marshall, a husband and father who’d gone bad. And so, when in conclusion Seely perfunctorily asked the jury to “acquit Robert Marshall and send him back to his children,” there was at least one member of the audience heard to whisper, “Dear God, haven’t they suffered enough?”
Then, after lunch, it was time for Kelly’s Last Ride. And he did his best to make it unforgettable. He spent forty-five minutes giving a basic summation of his case. Given the strength of it, and his devastation of Rob on cross-examination, he probably could have stopped there.
But he didn’t. Kevin Kelly had come too far to stop there, to stop where the trail of dry fact ended. Instead, he plunged headlong into a final assault upon the tattered shreds of character with which Rob Marshall was vainly trying to clothe himself.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “you can live an entire lifetime and meet only one Robert Oakley Marshall.”
He paused. Business suit, eyeglasses and parochial school manners notwithstanding, he was still a rough-and-tumble Newark street kid, but one who believed in, and would fight for, what was right.
“I’m not going to stand before you and give you reasonable explanations for irrational acts,” he said, “and certainly what Marshall had done to his wife goes against every sense of decency and logic known to mankind. But I will tell you that desperation and greed have no limits.
“If every defendant acted rationally, there would be no need for a jury system. If every defendant acted rationally, there would be no need for a criminal justice system, because no defendant would ever get caught.”
Kelly walked slowly across the courtroom until he stood directly over Marshall, who was seated at the defense table, by Seely’s side. When he spoke, it was with measured cadence.
“Don’t be fooled by his tears,” Kelly said, pointing. “He cries for no one but himself.
“Don’t be fooled by his ‘I Love You’ signs, because he loves no one but himself.”
He paused again, and took a step back toward the center of the courtroom. “I’ll sit across a table from Ricky Dew any day, because with Ricky Dew you see what you get. What you see is what you bargain for.
“But this defendant,” and now he was pointing again, and taking that one big step closer to Marshall, and his voice was as sharp as a handclap, “is a coward, he’s self-centered, he’s greedy, he’s desperate, he’s materialistic, and he’s a liar.”
He paused for breath, then spoke more slowly. “He is a legend in his own mind.” He paused again.
“No one,” he shouted, “has the audacity to question Robert Oakley Marshall, as per Robert Oakley Marshall. He is an outstanding citizen in the community and no one would dare to point a finger at him. And if it comes down to Robert Oakley Marshall’s testimony against Ferlin L’Heureux, no juror in his right mind would accept the testimony of Ferlin L’Heureux over such an outstanding citizen.
“That,” he said, pointing again, “is what is sitting in that chair. Make no mistake about it. The man was in dire financial straits, he was desperate, and he’s greedy, and he’s a liar. There was no way in the world this man could maintain his lifestyle and leave his wife. You know it, and I know it, and he knew it. He was desperate and he was greedy.
“He doesn’t wear his wedding band until the day this trial starts, and then he tells you that ‘well, they wouldn’t give it to me in the Ocean County jail.’ That’s an insult! That was testimony and actions on his part calculated to deceive you.”
Now Kelly’s anger was burning pure and clear. This was no act designed to sway a jury. This was real. He began to stride more quickly, more aggressively about the courtroom, gesticulating ever more forcefully as he spoke—his voice rising with his cresting emotions.
“On direct examination, ‘I miss Maria, I love Maria,’ and so forth, and so on. This man carried on three separate relationships within a three-month period after his wife died, and misses her so much that her ashes are still sitting in a drawer in a funeral home. That’s how much he misses her.
“And he gets on this witness stand, after there’s an objection at sidebar, after I asked that question, and he’s had an opportunity to think about his answer, and he says, ‘Well, we were really going to take her to Florida.’”
At full fever pitch, Kelly cried out: “And he has the audacity to bring in his three boys to testify. That’s obscene! To put his boys on that witness stand is obscene, and for that there’s a place in hell for him!”
An involuntary, collective gasp of shock was heard in the courtroom as Kelly uttered those words. In the front row, John Marshall buried his head in his hands. Roby, his own eyes red with tears, reached up from his second-row seat and squeezed John’s shoulders. Sitting next to John, Chris lowered his own head and his shoulders began to shake with sobs.
“He will use anybody, he will say anything, and he will do anything—including using his own family—to get out from under,” Kelly said. “And that’s Robert Oakley Marshall. Make no mistake about it.”
Through it all, Marshall sat silently, shaking his head slowly from side to side. With one last, derisive thrust o
f his arm, Kelly left him and recrossed the courtroom and took up a position at the very front row of the jury box.
Now his voice was soft again, his manner solemn. “I didn’t know Maria Marshall,” he said, “but I know and you know that she loved her boys. I know and you know that she loved her husband. For eight months that lady knew that his afternoons were spent in the arms of another woman.
“Yet she continued to cook for him, she continued to clean his clothes, she continued to keep the house clean, and she continued to make love with him—because she loved him.
“She wanted to start all over. She wanted to give him a second chance. She had the right to live her life in full. To watch her boys continue to grow. To watch them graduate from school, to get married, to have families of their own.
“But he tossed it all away because of his desperation and his greed. And—that—is Robert Oakley Marshall.”
For a moment, as Kelly finished—for more than a moment—there was absolutely no reaction. The jammed courtroom stayed frozen in silence, while the echoes of Kelly’s diatribe seemed still to reverberate from wall to wall.
Then the sound of John Marshall’s sobbing could be heard. And, at the same time, a rush of whispers, mingled with other sobs—these, seemingly, for Maria and for the life she might have had—swept across the crowded rows.
John leaned his head against Chris’s shoulder and let himself cry openly, as Chris struggled unsuccessfully to hold back his own tears.
Rob twisted in his seat, a grotesque smile on his face, and looked back toward the boys, apparently still hoping to see signs of support. There were none. There was not even eye contact, except, finally, with Roby, in the second row, and when it came Roby simply shook his head and looked away.
As the deputies led Rob away for the night, none of his sons stepped forward to hug him. Instead, eyes averted, heads down, they turned and filed slowly toward the door.
Back at 884 Crest Ridge Drive for the night, Chris couldn’t decide whether he was in a circus or a zoo. Everyone was there and nothing made sense. Tessie McBride, and his father’s old college friend Paul Kennedy, and Brenda Dew. (Christ! How insane it was to have Brenda Dew living in their house! A couple of days earlier, Roby had said, “Yeah, and when Dad gets off and comes home and finds her here, he’ll say, ‘Don’t worry, boys, she’s just like Mom.’”) And now even Brenda Dew’s sister!
And all of them acting so goofy now, all of them such a pain in the ass. Tessie McBride cutting up yellow ribbons that she wanted them all to tie around oak trees in the morning, and everybody talking all this prayer talk—he felt as if he’d been taken captive and was living in Jonestown just before they drank the poisoned Kool-Aid—and Brenda Dew following him around, telling him that no matter what happened, “You got to be law-al to your daddy.”
Where had all the good people gone? What had happened to Sal Coccaro, the Rogerses, the Pecks, the Critellis, the Perillis, all the sane, decent, normal friends they used to have?
What had happened, Chris knew, was that the bunker mentality that Tessie McBride had brought with her when she’d moved in—the rudeness, the scorn, the hostility toward anyone who was not “on the team,” which meant everyone except members of the immediate family—had driven away all the well-intentioned, caring, loving friends and neighbors who otherwise might have been there to help.
And Chris knew also that he’d been part of it. And Roby, too. The decision to show “support” had somehow become a decision not to associate with anyone unwilling to do the same. It was a trap he wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten himself into, but as he looked around the dining room and living room of what had once seemed the happiest home in the world, and saw the people by whom he was surrounded, he knew it was a trap from which somehow, someday, he’d have to escape.
Then, from the dining room, he heard voices raised. Tessie’s, of course, was raised loudest. She was yelling at Roby for something he’d said.
“I don’t care!” she was saying. “You have got to stay loyal! He’s your father!” And Brenda Dew was chiming in with drawls of agreement.
“But, listen,” Roby said, in a voice that made them pay attention. “There are some things that just aren’t right. That just don’t fit.”
“Now, Roby,” said Paul Kennedy, “there are some things that maybe you had just ought to keep to yourself. This night, of all nights, is not a night for negative emotion. This is a night for faith and prayer.”
Paul Kennedy knew, because Roby had already told him—he was so upset by it that he had to tell someone—how Rob had called him three times to try to get him to lie. But Paul didn’t want anyone else to know. God forbid the truth should get out. That might make “support” all the harder to maintain. Though probably not. Nobody seemed to care about the truth anymore. All they wanted was Rob acquitted. Rob acquitted could still mean—both Roby and Chris had come to realize—a lot of insurance money to spread around, especially when it did not seem that Felice would be there to soak it up.
When he saw Chris standing at the entrance to the dining room, Roby got up and left the table. “Come here,” he said, “I’ve got to talk to you in private.”
The two of them stepped into the living room.
“Chris, some things just aren’t right,” he said. “I know things that other people don’t. Chris, Dad tried to get me to lie.”
And then he told Chris the whole story. And John came in toward the end, wanting to know what was going on.
“John,” Roby said, “we don’t want to upset you with the details, but there are just some things that don’t work.”
“What are you saying?” John asked.
“John,” Chris said, “you know we’re all hoping for an innocent verdict tomorrow, but if it goes the other way—what we’re trying to say—look, if they find him guilty it might not be by mistake.”
Coming from his two older brothers—the only substitutes he’d ever have for parents—this was more than John could bear to hear.
“No!” he said. “There’s no way. He can’t be guilty!”
And John left them and went back to the dining room, to rejoin Tessie and Brenda and Paul and Brenda’s sister, who could tell him again how the case against his father was all lies.
Roby and Chris stayed up late that night. Just the two of them, talking. Remembering. Remembering how they’d be playing stickball in the street and their father would be working in his office and he’d hear them and come out and join in. How he’d always shown up at all their games, going way back to third grade—soccer, biddy basketball, things that didn’t mean a thing except when you were the kid and it was your father who cared enough to come. And the Christmas mornings, year after year, the pile of presents always higher than the year before, the wrapping paper always a little more expensive, and their father seeming so full of joy and pride as he took the home movies that then were filed away, unwatched for years. And the good times they’d had in Florida, fishing and waterskiing. And the ski trip to Brodie Mountain in the Berkshires. And how happy—how much in love with him—their mother had always seemed. How much in love with each other they’d all seemed. They were such a cliché and they knew it but that didn’t stop them from loving every minute of their lives. The All-American family. The American Dream that came true.
And hadn’t it been real—any of it?
After a while, they couldn’t talk anymore. They just sat on the floor in an upstairs hallway, leaning against a wall, each with one arm over the shoulder of the other. Roby and Chris. Ages twenty and nineteen. With the tears streaming shamelessly down their cheeks.
27
Mays Landing is a quiet South Jersey town, twelve miles inland and not on a main route to anywhere. If it weren’t the county seat, and were not therefore the site of the county courthouse, it is not likely that many travelers passing through would tend to pause, and not much more likely that many travelers would even pass through.
In 1935, in the depths of the Depr
ession, the American Sunbathing Association had opened a nudist colony in Mays Landing. This was considered such a boost to the local economy that not even religious leaders protested. Colony members, it was reported at the time, were “sound-minded and not at all queer.”
Almost a half century later, few who had been in attendance in Judge Greenberg’s courtroom were willing to bestow such a charitable judgment upon the principals and supporting players in the trial of Rob Marshall and Ricky Dew.
But the town of Mays Landing—unlike Toms River, where the very air was incandescent in anticipation of the verdicts—seemed not to care. The town of Mays Landing, in fact, seemed scarcely to be aware of what had been occurring and of what was about to occur.
There is only one central intersection in Mays Landing, and, except for the courthouse, not much clustered around that: a Rexall drugstore, a gas station, a coffee shop, a real estate agency that is open part-time and a store that sells used Classics Illustrated comic books.
But there is, in fact, the courthouse: a handsome brick building, two stories high and a full block long, if one measures in Mays Landing blocks. At the west end is a small park, which in summer, one can imagine, must be a pleasant place to sit beneath the high shade trees.
Atop the courthouse, rising above its central section, is a tall wooden cupola, painted white. This was the only part of the original eighteenth-century courthouse to be preserved when the new building was constructed in 1972.
Inside the cupola is a bell, a large bell, which can be rung by someone standing one flight below, pulling on a long, heavy rope.
The door leading to the stairway was always kept locked and the key that would open it had years before been tucked away in an obscure drawer in an obscure desk in an obscure corner of one of the more obscure courthouse offices.
No one could remember the last time the bell had been rung. But in its day it had served a purpose.
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