Bury the Lead

by David Rosenfelt

  “There is a poem,” he says, “by Edwin Robinson. It’s called ‘Richard Corey.’”

  I nod. I’m vaguely familiar with the poem, mainly because Simon and Garfunkel had a song that ripped it off. The fact that Vince is talking about it is rather stunning. Until now I thought his intellectual awareness extended about as far as “knock, knock” jokes.

  He continues. “It’s about this really wealthy guy, who everybody in the town thinks has the greatest life in the world. At the end of the poem, they’re all shocked ’cause the guy goes home one night and puts a bullet in his head.”

  “So Daniel and Margaret seemed to have a great life, but you didn’t think it was real?”

  He nods. “Something like that. She had all this money, and they lived in a great house and had fancy cars and stuff, but there was something missing . . . something a little off. I couldn’t place it then . . . I can’t even place it now . . . but I felt it.”

  Vince seems like he’s getting upset, so I try to lighten the moment. “So now I’ve learned that not only did you once have sex, but you’ve also read a poem. What a life you’ve lived.”

  My effort at lightening lands with a heavy thud. “Andy, you’ve been on this for a while now. You think Daniel could have done this? Killed those people? Killed Margaret?”

  It’s the first time I’ve seen him exhibit any doubt, though I’ve always suspected it had to be there. It’s ironic because I’ve become more and more willing to believe that Daniel is innocent. “I don’t know anything about Margaret, Vince. I can’t really give an opinion on that. These killings here, though, they don’t fit with Daniel. But I’m not going to lie to you . . . I’m not sure, and I definitely could be wrong.”

  “Thanks,” he says, and then without another word just gets up and walks out of the place.

  This is not at all the Vince I know. Except for the part where he didn’t pay the check.

  I pick Sondra up first thing in the morning for the drive over to the foundation. The transformation in her has been remarkable. It’s not just the conservative clothing Laurie has gotten for her; it’s also a change in attitude. Her reluctance to go after this new life has gradually faded, if not to eagerness, then a willingness to give it a shot. Laurie has performed miracles with her.

  I’m a little nervous about Sondra and Willie meeting. He could come on with a heavy-handed “me boss, you slave” routine, which might cause her to bail out. On her part, she could decide that, even though she claims to like dogs, feeding them, cleaning their cages, and doing menial paperwork don’t constitute an upward career move.

  There is also the potential for a natural clash of personalities. Both are strong-willed and independent, used to taking care of themselves and only themselves. The idea of a close working relationship might be culturally repugnant to either or both of them.

  Sondra and I enter the foundation building. Willie is nowhere to be seen, so I tell Sondra to wait as I look for him. He turns out to be in the back, playing with one of the dogs that has kennel cough, a minor ailment but one that is contagious. Dogs that have it must be quarantined for seven days.

  “Your assistant is here, Willie.”

  He jumps up enthusiastically. “All right! There’s a lot to be done around here, man. Let me get my list.”

  He hasn’t met Sondra yet, but he’s actually written down a list of tasks for her to do. “Hold off on the list, Willie. And go easy on her at the beginning, okay? Your personality can take a few decades to get used to.”

  He doesn’t respond; I don’t think he’s heard me. He’s too busy rushing to meet his devoted servant.

  Willie gets out there before I do, preventing me from making the formal introduction. The first thing I hear is Willie’s voice. “Sondra!”

  “Willie! I can’t believe it!” she yells, not concealing her delight.

  By the time I get in the room, they are hugging each other and laughing, and Willie is whirling her around. This introduction has gone somewhat better than I expected.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “You two know each other.” My hope is that their relationship did not begin with Willie as a customer of hers.

  “For a long damn time, man,” Willie says. Then, to Sondra, “How long has it been?”

  “Too damn long,” she says.

  I’m finally able to ascertain that “damn long” takes them back to high school. They actually dated in their junior year and shared many of the same friends.

  “What you been doing?” Willie asks as I cringe.

  “Hooking,” says Sondra, and Willie nods, as if she had just said, “Marketing.”

  “And writin’ letters,” says Willie. “I really appreciated that. I should have called you when I got out.”

  “That’s okay,” Sondra says. “You were busy.”

  Willie, seeing I’m puzzled by the conversation, explains that Sondra wrote to him in prison, among other things telling him to hang in there, and that she knew he could never have committed such a crime.

  I can’t remember when anything I’ve planned has gone as smoothly as this meeting. Willie starts showing Sondra around the place, so I leave, but there is no way they notice.

  On the way out, I hear Willie ask Sondra, “You want a cup of coffee? We got every kind there is.”

  • • • • •

  “ROT IN HELL, you son of a bitch.” That’s the spray-painted message on my front curb as I take Tara out for her morning walk. It was done sometime during the night, no doubt timed to provide an inauspicious start for me on this, the first day of the trial.

  It’s strangely unintimidating, maybe because the perpetrator felt he needed the cover of darkness, but more likely because of what has gone on these last few weeks. I have received over twenty death threats and at least a hundred hate messages, and their impact has lessened even as their anger and level of threat seemed to increase. Kevin and Laurie have both suggested my using Marcus as a bodyguard, but I’ve resisted doing so. Why, I’m not sure. It must be a guy thing.

  The morning paper contains a piece written by Vince revealing that Daniel is his son. It is thoughtful, intelligent, and poignant and therefore will certainly not make a dent in the public consciousness. The angry voices out there are simply too loud for anything to be heard over them.

  The trip to the courthouse is a further unnecessary tip-off on what is to come. It seems as if every person in New Jersey has shown up to either demonstrate or watch the others do so. The demonstrators seem to be peaceful, probably because they do not represent opposing points of view. Everybody has branded Daniel a killer, and his death will be the only acceptable outcome.

  I’m able to reach the courtroom only because I have a special pass that lets my car through the barricades. Our defense team was provided with only two such passes, and Kevin is picking Laurie up on the way in.

  Today is jury selection, and when I arrive, I see that enough prospective jurors have put down their anti-Daniel protest signs to fill the courtroom. Within a few minutes, everybody is present and in their seats. Daniel is brought in, and voir dire begins.

  Every single one of the one hundred and eight prospective jurors admits to knowing about this case, but ninety-nine of them claim they can be open-minded in deciding it. It is my task to determine, through gentle probing of their attitudes and experience, the few of them that might be telling the truth.

  Tucker, for his part, has a different challenge. Since this is a death penalty case, he wants to make absolutely sure there are no jurors who are opposed to capital punishment. Tucker would view life imprisonment for Daniel as a defeat; lethal injection as a modest victory; torture and public beheading as a triumph. I don’t think the chance of acquittal has even entered his mind.

  Considering the circumstances, the jury that we come up with isn’t half-bad. Kevin thinks we did great, and Daniel shares his enthusiasm. Even though Daniel reads the newspapers each day, and even though I’ve always been straight with him about our chances, I
don’t think he has a clue as to how dim those chances are.

  The preparation necessary in the days just before trial is incredibly intense, and we’ve been working fourteen-hour days. But with opening statements tomorrow, I observe my superstitious ritual of taking the night off from work.

  I usually spend the pretrial evening quietly, with Tara, but this time I’ve amended it to include Laurie. I ask that we not talk about the trial, and she happily agrees. It helps me clear my mind and ready myself for the job ahead.

  Laurie makes dinner, and afterward she suggests that we go to the den to play some gin. I think she does so as a way to boost my self-confidence, since she is the worst gin player that has ever lived. She speculates to the point that she takes cards with no regard to whether or not she needs them; I think she just goes by whether she likes the color or the pictures. I have always been an outstanding gin player, memorizing every card played and never taking an unnecessary chance.

  We play five racks, and she wins only four.

  With that confidence boost behind me, I take Tara for our walk. It is a time when I can think of the job ahead of me, especially the points I want to make in my opening argument. Most important, I must make myself remember to have fun.

  There is a scene in the movie Dave where Kevin Kline, impersonating the president, is about to confront Congress at a personally perilous time. He sees that his adviser looks stricken with worry, and he stops to tell the man to “enjoy the moment.” That’s what I must do to be effective in trial. It is a game to me, and I am at my best when I am enjoying that game and playing it loosely and confidently.

  As Tara and I are heading back, a car drives down the street toward us. Suddenly, there is a crashing noise, and I see that a liquor bottle, obviously thrown from the car, has landed less than a foot from Tara’s head. “You’re going down, asshole!” is the yell that comes from the idiot in the passenger seat as the car roars away.

  I reach down and pet Tara everywhere, making sure she hasn’t been cut by the shattered glass. She seems okay, but shaken by the scare, as I am.

  So far I’m not having much fun.

  • • • • •

  “NOT TOO MANY weeks ago, we were all afraid” is the way Tucker begins his opening argument. “People were dying, our neighbors were being mutilated and murdered. We worried for our wives, for our mothers and grandmothers, for our daughters. Because there was a monster out there targeting women, unsuspecting women who were going about their lives, until one day they didn’t have those lives anymore.”

  Tucker is very well aware of the public sentiment regarding this case, since to be unaware would have required spending the last few months on the planet Comatose. He wants to put the jury in the frame of mind where not convicting Daniel would be threatening the safety of their friends and relatives.

  “The police have done an extraordinary job investigating this case. They have gathered facts, not theories or suppositions. They have discovered items in Daniel Cummings’s possession that absolutely prove he murdered these people. As a prosecutor, I am grateful for that. As a member of this community, I am very grateful for that. They’ve done the hard work; my job is the easy one. I merely have to lay out those facts for you, so you can make your own decision.

  “This defendant taunted you, and taunted the police, even as he killed. Mr. Cummings pretended to be the one person that the murderer contacted, the one person that he trusted to speak to the world on his behalf. That is how he stayed in the spotlight, even as he lurked and slaughtered in the shadows.

  “The judge will guide you throughout this trial. One of the things he will tell you, which I will also tell you now, is that the state does not have to prove motive. I can only guess as to why Daniel Cummings went on this murdering spree. The true answer lies somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind.

  “But not only don’t I have to prove what his motive was, I don’t really care. Because it simply doesn’t matter; what’s done is done, and it can never be set right. It may sound harsh, but this trial is not about compassion, it’s not about understanding, and it’s not about rehabilitation. This trial is about protection. It’s about you, as representatives of this community, saying something very simple.”

  He turns and points at Daniel. “It’s about saying that you, Daniel Cummings, are finished murdering. Now it’s your turn to be afraid.”

  He turns back to the jury. “Thank you for listening.”

  Tucker has done a masterful job; even I gagged only once or twice. There is no way I can effectively counter it, not at this stage. All I can do is make our presence felt, by making it clear to the jury that we are not going to roll over and die.

  I stand. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that was a beautiful speech, wasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I was hanging on Mr. Zachry’s every word. Of course, my reason for listening so intently was a bit different than yours. I was waiting to hear something that was true. I’m still waiting.

  “Mr. Zachry did not offer you the specific facts of the case, so I won’t respond to them. He’ll have plenty of time to present his side, and so will I. Of course, he said that Daniel Cummings was a murderer, and he is simply wrong about that. But that argument also is for a later date.

  “One thing Mr. Zachry did say was that certain incriminating items were found, not on Mr. Cummings personally, but in his car and apartment. This he says constitutes possession, and possession he considers evidence of guilt.”

  I reach back with my hands and place them behind my hips, then look puzzled. Not feeling my wallet, I start to pat my right back pocket. “Excuse me . . . I seem to have misplaced my wallet.”

  I go back to the defense table, quickly looking through my personal papers and briefcase. I glance at Kevin, who holds up his hands in a gesture indicating that he has no idea where the wallet could be.

  I then walk over behind the prosecution table, look around for a moment, and reach under Tucker’s chair. There, where I taped it to the leg, is my wallet. I rip it off the leg of the chair, hold it aloft, and feign astonishment. “Mr. Zachry, how could you?” Then, “Bailiff, arrest this man!”

  The jury, not exactly the best and brightest, finally understands and roars with laughter. Tucker goes ballistic, screaming his objections. Calvin, though I think he’s secretly amused, comes down hard on me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I am not going to turn his courtroom into a circus. Business as usual.

  I resume my opening as if nothing happened. “What disturbed me the most about what Mr. Zachry had to say was his characterization of you as society’s protectors. You could read every lawbook ever written, and sometimes I feel like I have, and never find that. Not anywhere. Not once. You are the trier of fact. You decide who is guilty and who isn’t. That’s all. If the result of that decision is that society is protected, that’s great. But your role is simply to make the correct decision about guilt or innocence. Believe me, that’s enough to have on your plate.

  “Wherever we go, whatever we do, we bring the person that we are with us. None of us has been dropped from another planet, with no life history and all empty pages. We act reasonably consistent with our past actions.

  “Yet Mr. Zachry would have you believe that Mr. Cummings, with no criminal history, acted horribly criminal. With no violent history, acted horribly violent. With obvious intelligence, acted horribly stupid.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t fly. He’s asking you to make sense out of something that makes no sense at all.

  “Lastly, I want to talk to you about something that must be on your minds. Since Mr. Cummings’s arrest, these horrible murders have stopped. You may be thinking that this fact in and of itself is evidence of his guilt. It is not.

  “Daniel Cummings is not here today by chance. His presence as the defendant was planned and perfectly orchestrated by the actual killer. For that person to have committed additional crimes while Mr. Cummings was in custody would have been to defeat his own plan. It would ha
ve been foolish for the killer to elaborately frame Mr. Cummings and then commit an act that would prove his innocence.

  “Daniel Cummings has hurt no one. And you protect no one by taking his life away.

  “Thank you.”

  I go back to the defense table, satisfied that I made the points I wanted to make. Kevin nods his approval and Daniel looks pleased, while trying to maintain the impassive exterior that I instructed him to maintain. I notice him making eye contact with a group of seven people, all from Cleveland, who have made the trek here to show support. Two of them are giving him the thumbs-up, which I will instruct them never to do again.

  What they and Daniel don’t seem to realize is that this was easy, and these were just words. Starting tomorrow, we have to deal with the evidence and the facts.

  There is no such thing as a normal workday during a murder trial. You work as hard as you can until the hours run out, and then you start again the next day. Court lets out at four, and my standard procedure is to convene a meeting of the team at my house at five-thirty. We order in dinner and spend the night preparing for the next day’s witnesses, as well as looking at the “big picture.”

  I get home and walk Tara, then rush back to order dinner. I want to make sure I do the ordering rather than Laurie, since if left in her hands, Kevin and I will be stuck eating healthful food all night.

  Preparation for tomorrow’s court day goes relatively quickly, as Tucker will be putting on mostly foundation witnesses, slowly building his case. It gives us time to think about our own defense, pathetic though it currently is.

  We have been totally unable to make any connection between the victims, and I think it’s safe to say that there is none. Linda Padilla remains our focus; Sam has not found any significant information, financial or otherwise, on the other victims. We have two possible theories, equally unlikely and difficult to prove. One is that Padilla was the main target and the others were killed to obscure that fact. The other is that all the victims were chosen randomly, by a killer whose only goal was to frame Daniel.