Judgement Day

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Of course, now that he’s dead, you have one hundred percent of his share, and his share of the company is fifty-five percent, so you have control of the company now, correct?”

  “Yes. I believe that’s so.”

  “Oh, you know it’s so. You’re not as oblivious to finance as you’re trying to get us to believe. Do you have money overseas, for example?”

  “Elliot invested in some overseas properties, I believe.”

  “I’m asking if you personally have money in a Swiss bank account, Mrs. Strumfield.”

  It was clear that Cisley Strumfield was astonished. How could Milton know this? Her husband didn’t even know it. Michele could almost see her mind at work. Should she admit it or deny it? He’s just guessing. He can’t prove it.

  “Didn’t Mr. Middleton help you set that up?” Milton followed.

  Now the look of shock was trembling on her face and brought the trembling to her hands. She fumbled with her tissue. She considered that Bob had betrayed her. It was confusing. He had money there, too. Or did. “I’m not doing anything illegal,” she said in response.

  “Ah, so you do have considerable funds in a Swiss bank account. It’s better just to tell the truth at the start, Mrs. Strumfield. It makes my work easier.” He gave the jury another one of his impish smiles.

  Cisley Strumfield looked toward Michele, but Michele didn’t want to prolong this subject with an objection. Milton also looked at her. It was as if he was challenging her to do it. She pressed her lips together, and he gave her a slight nod. She was sure of it. Then he turned back to the witness.

  “Did you withdraw seventy-five thousand dollars recently?”

  “No,” she said as firmly as she could, but she glanced at the jury. They looked skeptical. People were always hiding their investments and their withdrawals in Swiss banks.

  “When you overheard the argument between your husband and my client, you saw an opportunity, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean. What opportunity?”

  Milton moved in closer. “You’re actually the one who hired the hit man, and you lied here today about seeing Lester Heckett near your building on the day of your husband’s murder, didn’t you? Because of what had happened between him and your husband, you saw a wonderful opportunity, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You had the man you employed hide the pistol in Lester Heckett’s apartment and in a place where the police would find it, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “In fifteen minutes,” Milton said, and glanced at Matthew Blake. “Perhaps the police had an anonymous tip.”

  He let that hang in the air for a moment and nodded slightly at the jury.

  “You had no love for your husband anymore. You hadn’t slept with him for years. You suspected him of being unfaithful all the time. You wanted to start a new life,” he continued.

  “No, that’s not true. We were comfortable together.”

  “Comfortable? How can two people who live with such a compromise call themselves comfortable?”

  Tears were clouding her vision. She tried dabbing her eyes, but it didn’t help. And then . . . John Milton seemed to metamorphose right before her eyes and become her husband.

  “You hated me,” she thought she heard him say. It was her husband’s voice but slow, the words stretched and sounding like a recording playing too slowly . . . “Youuuuuu hatttteedd meeeee. Youuuuuu waaanteeed meeee killedddddd. Youuu neverrr forgave meeeee!”

  “No!” she screamed. “I didn’t hate you. I didn’t have you killed!” She stood up. The Judith Leiber purse fell out of her hands. She looked around at all the people, their faces stretching, their eyes oozing. She brought her hands to her ears and screamed again. “No!”

  Michele was up calling for a recess. The judge was banging her gavel.

  To Cisley Strumfield, John Milton became John Milton again, and her heart stopped pounding. But she couldn’t battle back the darkness. She couldn’t help herself. She collapsed in the witness chair.

  The courtroom was in a state of bedlam. Michele and a female officer rushed to Cisley Strumfield. The judge called for a recess and ordered the courtroom cleared. When Cisley Strumfield began to regain consciousness, they took her to an office near the courtroom. A physician was requested. It all happened so quickly that it was as if some mystical power had sped up time.

  Michele, dazed a bit herself by now, met her aunt out in the lobby. She was sitting on a bench, staring at the wall. The moment Michele appeared, she turned to her and shook her head. “How is she?”

  “She had to be sedated.”

  “This is bad for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I made a bad strategic mistake.”

  “I must tell you what I saw just before that poor woman fainted, Michele,” her aunt said, and reached for her hand. Michele could feel her trembling.

  “What, Aunt Eve?”

  “That man, that attorney, when he was questioning your witness, he became a large, thick, dark shadow.”

  “What?”

  “Just for a few moments, and then he returned to himself, but I saw it. I’ve seen it before, always just before something terrible is about to occur.”

  “You were probably just as angry and upset as I was, Aunt Eve. I should have done a better job of vetting my witness. We fell into a trap. He’s just a very clever attorney.”

  “No. I saw it,” Aunt Eve insisted.

  “Okay. You’re upset, too. You might as well go home. The trial won’t resume until tomorrow. I don’t expect it to last much longer, anyway,” she added mournfully.

  “You have to be more careful, Michele. There’s something bigger happening here. I’m sure of it now.”

  She let go of her aunt’s hand. Bigger? That’s what Matthew Blake had told her, twice. “What? Why do you say bigger?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  That had been Blake’s response, too. She sucked in her breath and tightened herself, recapturing her nearly perfect posture. “Well, whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” she said.

  Her aunt rose. “You don’t want to get to the bottom of it. That’s not a good place to be,” she said. “I’ll have something comforting to eat when you get home.”

  “Oh, don’t prepare anything, Aunt Eve. Thank you, but I’m not going right home,” she said, and kissed her cheek. Never had that cheek felt as cold as it did then, she thought, and watched her walk away, for the first time looking her age, looking older than Michele’s mother.

  When she turned, she was facing Dave Duggan. He shrugged. Here it comes, she thought.

  “The DA called me. Looks like we’ll have to discuss the wake,” he said. “The stench of reasonable doubt in that courtroom is pervasive.”

  “Heckett was responsible for this murder,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Once the jury rules, you can’t run around saying that, Michele. You win some; you lose some. The trick is knowing how to lose gracefully.”

  “You’re the second person who’s been in that courtroom who has made it sound like a game,” she said.

  “Who was the first?”

  “John Milton,” she replied. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Let me lose the damn trial first,” she added. “He still has to present a defense.”

  “My guess is he won’t bother,” Duggan said. “But I’ll wait. Unless you just want to go somewhere and cool down. How about the Advocate Club?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks, Dave. I don’t want to look at any lawyers right now or anyone or anything that has to do with them.”

  He nodded, disappointed. “Okay. Stay cool,” he said, sounding like a high school boy. He smiled and walked off.

  She felt bad about it, but right now, all she wanted to do was have a strong martini somewhere lawyers never went.

  As if he could hear her thoughts, he stepped into the hallway from the men’s room and waited for
her.

  “Take me to a quiet bar,” she told Matthew Blake. “No. Take me to a noisy one. Preferably one frequented by blue-collar workers.”

  He nodded. “I know just the place,” he said, offered his arm, and walked her out of the building.

  18

  “How did he know all that about Cisley Strumfield?” Michelle asked Blake as soon as they were served their drinks. “Her husband’s affair? Her own affair, who with, where they had gone to . . . to make love, and how many times?” She had almost said “fuck” but hesitated. Was it because she now knew he had been a seminary student? She suddenly realized that he had yet to use profanity with her, unlike just about every other policeman and detective she had met in her short but busy career.

  “Nobody on my side had any idea, obviously,” she continued, unable to contain her frustration. It was pouring out of her nose and ears like steam. “There was nothing in the file. Neither the DA nor Eleanor Rozwell mentioned anything mitigating about my chief witness.”

  She felt she was ranting, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I mean, John Milton just recently came onto this case. He claimed he didn’t need a postponement. He could have gotten one. I feel like I’m the one who should have asked for a postponement now, not him.”

  He reached out and touched her hand. “Easy,” he said.

  She took another sip of her drink and looked around. He had taken her to a blue-collar establishment, all right, a watering hole called the Easy Hour. They sat in one of the three booths available, well worn, faded, with small rips in the artificial leather. The clientele seemed to be New York City water and electrical workers, tollbooth employees, and taxi drivers. It was noisy with music, chatter, and laughter, but there was energy. They were all letting off steam and acting as if they had just been released from solitary. She didn’t want to be anywhere sedate. If anything, she didn’t want a place that suggested a wake.

  Michele fingered her glass. She could see her face reflected in it. It looked like the reflection in a fun house mirror. But for the moment, everything looked and felt distorted to her. It was as though all the laws of physics had suddenly been suspended, even gravity. She felt as if she might just rise and float to the ceiling at any moment.

  “I mean, how could he get so much secret personal information in so short a time? Why didn’t I think of the possibilities and ask the right questions of her before I put her on the stand?”

  “You had no reason to consider her a person of interest, Michele.”

  “But I should have had one. Skepticism and suspicion are essential ingredients in any prosecutor. I didn’t do a good job of vetting my witness at her deposition.”

  “You asked her if she and her husband had a good relationship?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t pursue it. I should have continued and asked when was it a good relationship and whether there was any reason that statement might be challenged in court.”

  “But you had the suspect almost instantly. Thanks to me.”

  “I didn’t cast a wide enough net of doubts and suspicions,” she replied. “It’s the first time I’ve been so narrowly focused. A good prosecutor has to challenge his or her own evidence, case strategy. I was too damn anxious to nail him and chalk up a victory, impress everyone. Ambition and vanity can be deadly.”

  “Blame it on me,” he said. “I should have been the one to widen my net to include the possibilities. I was confident we had the man who ordered the killing and the killer. I still think we did; we do. Look, John Milton had more reason to find holes in the witnesses. That’s his whole job.”

  “But how was he able to do it so quickly and so well? The bank information from Switzerland, too. He had just started at a new firm. It’s like he began this case months ago, like he knew Murphy would die and he’d step in to take his place.”

  Blake looked as if she had given him an idea.

  “What?” she demanded. “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing. Look, he has an ex-FBI agent working for him personally,” Blake said. “Tom Beardsly. I don’t know how long he’s employed him.”

  “Beardsly? Why do I know that name?”

  “National headline maker. He killed two innocent people in a shoot-out with two suspected terrorists that was off the charts, like a Wild West show on Wall Street, crowded and busy at the time. One of the innocent victims was the mayor’s personal friend, a billionaire, international financier, and philanthropist. The whole thing embarrassed the Bureau. Beardsly was often a loose cannon, the FBI’s Dirty Harry. The-ends-justify-the-means kind of guy. There was even some talk about him having taken vigilante action a number of times. People he was investigating met with odd accidents.”

  She nodded. “I remember the story.”

  “Thing was, he was good at conducting an investigation,” Blake said. “When it comes to information, he knows where to go and how to get it and fast. He probably taps on people who still owe him favors, opens otherwise locked doors. Very smart of John Milton to hire him. However, I suspect he might have done more than just dig up information for him. He might also be employed to bury information.”

  “Bury? What do you mean?”

  “I’m trying to tie him to the death of the hit-man broker.”

  “Barry Tyler?”

  “Yes. We arrived very soon after at the scene, and as I was entering the building, I was fairly sure I had seen Beardsly driving away. We’re running fingerprints, testing material, all of it to see if he left something of himself behind, but if anyone should be good at a cover-up, an ex-FBI agent should be.”

  “What are you saying, Lieutenant? Are you suggesting John Milton hired him to stop us from reaching a witness who could tie the killer to Lester Heckett?”

  “It smells like it.”

  She sat back, thought a moment, and then shook her head. She was beginning to get a queasy feeling about Lieutenant Blake. Maybe it was because of the work he had to do, or maybe it was because of his religious education, but he seemed to see evil conspiracies everywhere. An “evil lurks in the hearts of all men” sort of thing. The old Original Sin argument.

  She recalled him proposing that Warner Murphy’s death was somehow tied to what was happening in the Strumfield trial, for example. She shook her head.

  “How tempting, but no. That’s too easy for me to accept. Good excuse for my failure in there. Why would Milton care that much and risk so much for a man he barely knows?”

  “Ambition. He wants to win.”

  She thought, drank, and shook her head again. “No. That’s too much. I read Milton’s résumé. He’s good. He doesn’t seem to need to stack the deck. I must admit that I didn’t see him coming. Maybe I’m just not as good at this as I think I am.”

  “Not the time to start self-doubting,” Blake said. “Remember, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “You? Quoting Nietzsche?”

  “Why not?”

  “A former seminary student? Didn’t Nietzsche believe that religions were simply a way of reempowering the weak at the expense of the strong?”

  “I always liked to read and understand the opposite point of view, the challenges to faith. You have to know your enemy to defeat him.”

  “I recall Nietzsche also said to be careful when you fight monsters, lest you become one. You are fighting monsters, aren’t you?”

  Blake smiled. “Yes. And I worry about that all the time.”

  “So do I,” she said.

  “Then don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re still one of the good guys, no matter the outcome of one trial.”

  “Thanks, but are you comforting me now as a priest or as a policeman?”

  “I’m not a priest. I couldn’t be one.”

  “Why not? What stopped you?”

  “Before you say it, it wasn’t celibacy.”

  “I don’t know if I like that. I can’t help wishing it was.”

  “Okay, it was, to some extent,” he said. “Maybe to a la
rger extent than I was prepared to admit, but what stopped me was turning the other cheek.”

  She nodded. “An eye-for-an-eye sort of guy now?”

  “As long as it’s for justice and not revenge; otherwise, Gandhi was right. It just leads to blindness on both sides.”

  “So now I know why you were in Rome and why you’re different from any other cop I’ve met.”

  “Different, but I hope not less effective.”

  “No, I think I can believe you have better instincts than most. You don’t see it all as just black and white, facts and figures, do you? You operate almost as much on feelings. You’re more like a profiler. You get into the mind of the perpetrator.”

  “Exactly. You read me well,” he said. “But most of the time, that’s hard to convey, which bugs my new partner. I don’t know if he’ll last with me too much longer. I think I scare him sometimes with my predictions that look like they’re coming out of thin air.”

  “Is that what happened with your previous partner?”

  “Not exactly. There were other extenuating circumstances when it came to him that didn’t come out of thin air.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let’s just say he didn’t appreciate my having good instincts.”

  “I see. Whatever. I wish I had some of that power of good instincts right now. Maybe I would have known what to expect from Mrs. Strumfield.”

  “You have it. It just has to grow stronger, and it will, with time and experience.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Please.”

  “Sorry. I’m not in the mood for encouragement.”

  “You should be. Get back in there, and try again with Mrs. Strumfield,” Blake said.

  She sipped her drink and shook her head. “Would be a waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “You heard what she was screaming. She’s incoherent. I don’t know when I could get her back in there, and even if I did, I have no idea what she would say now. Frankly, she might need professional help.”