VC04 - Jury Double

by Edward Stewart

  The frosted glass door of Lars Fiumefreddo’s office was shut. Sondra rapped. “Toby?” She opened the door.

  The two chairs were still pushed together. The inflatable pillow still lay on one of them.

  The boy was gone.

  The sound of the organ was like a patient breathing on a respirator—it seemed to accentuate the hush around it. The church was full, a blue sea of uniforms. Faces were grim.

  Churches are always full for cops’ funerals, Cardozo thought. Faces are always grim.

  Candles glowed upon flowers and wreaths banked either side of the marble altar. Cardozo’s gaze drifted up to the crucifix. It was a large dark mahogany cross with the crucified Savior carved in ivory. The crown of thorns was an intricately chiseled band of mahogany.

  He tried to empty his heart of rage and focus instead on eternity and God’s merciful justice. Rage kept blanking out eternity.

  Detective Ellie Siegel, somber in navy blue, slid into the pew beside him. “Edie Vasquez is clean,” she whispered. “The morning of Thursday the nineteenth, after her shift, she went down to Pandora’s Box. The bartender vouches for her.”

  “What’s Pandora’s Box?”

  “An after-hours gay girls’ club in Chelsea.” Ellie looked down at the printed memorial program: Church of St. Mary, Martyr: Sanford Avenue, Flushing; requiem mass for Britta Maureen Bailey. “The bartender also happens to be Edie’s lover, and she says there’s no way Edie would be seeing another woman.”

  The mayor made a late, noisy entrance with a flying wedge of Armani-suited gofers and media reps and bodyguards. There was a sound of oak doors slamming. The congregation rose to their feet. Six pallbearers, cops from the Twenty-second Precinct in full-dress uniform, slowly wheeled Britta’s coffin up the aisle. It was draped in lilies and a New York City flag.

  “What makes the bartender so sure of Edie?”

  “They’re together every moment Edie’s not on the job. And have been since they met three months ago.”

  “Honeymoon. It won’t last.”

  “Cynic.”

  Three priests vested in white came out from behind the altar. Cardozo opened the hymnal to look for the first hymn.

  What about the bus to New York?” the man groaned.

  “There’s none direct.” Lieutenant Bill Benton studied the bus schedules. It gave him a headache to focus on the small print in the vibrating, dancing wash of fluorescent light. “Toby could just about have made the bus to Elizabeth. If he missed that, there’s the bus to Kearney. At Kearney he could make a connection to New York.”

  “The Kearney bus goes on to Union City,” Sondra van Orden said. “He could take the PATH train.”

  “Let me see those schedules.” The man grabbed them from Benton’s hand. Bus stops. Train stops. Arrival times. Departure times. Angry eyes narrowed into brown slits. “Toby will arrive at the Port Authority terminal in New York at one-oh-seven. We have to head him off.”

  “We’re only a twelve-man force. At the moment we only have a four-man capability.”

  “You Nazis owe me this! I’ll sue!” A fist slammed down on the desk. There was a scream of wood splitting. A blizzard of glass shards gusted over the floor.

  Benton held out a paper napkin. “Your hand.”

  The photograph of Bill Benton’s wife and daughter lay on the linoleum, blood dripping down on it from the heel of Talbot’s ripped palm. Benton knelt and picked the photograph up and gently wiped it off.

  Lucy-Anne Westervelt fixed her eyes carefully on the lines of Healing Words, a doctor’s research into the medical effects of prayer. The book kept bucking in her hand as the bus rumbled its way across the New Jersey marshland toward Manhattan. She turned the page and glanced at the boy in the seat beside her.

  His head was tipped back against the leatherette. His eyes were shut and, judging by the rise and fall of his shirt, he was asleep. It seemed odd to Lucy-Anne: a boy traveling alone into the city, wearing only a striped green Ralph Lauren polo shirt on a day when temperatures were in the low fifties and the weather bureau was predicting rain.

  A shadow brushed her thoughts. Today wasn’t a holiday. Why wasn’t the boy in school?

  She studied the sleeping form. He didn’t look like a runaway—on the other hand, it was obvious no mother had been near him in the last twelve hours: his face needed washing, and his hair could use a combing, and his shirt was badly rumpled, causing Lucy-Anne to suspect he’d slept in it.

  He stretched his arms and opened his eyes. He turned to look out the window at an empty brown meadow.

  “Did you have yourself a good sleep, young man?” As a former third-grade teacher, Lucy-Anne knew you can’t teach children respect without showing it, and that was why she called him young man. “You were dead to the world.”

  The boy forced a brief little effort of a smile.

  Lucy-Anne closed Healing Words. “Do you live in Kearney?”

  “No, ma’am.” His voice had a numb, quiet quality.

  “Then you must live in New York?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Whereabouts?” I’m six times your age, she thought, but it’s not so long since I played hooky and fibbed to my elders, too.

  “Downtown.”

  “Whereabouts downtown?”

  “The Village.”

  “That’s a lovely part of town.”

  Breasting a chattering tide of young students, Mark Wells climbed the curving flight of marble stairs and searched for room 103.

  The door was ajar; a bespectacled woman with steeply piled gray hair sat at a carved desk, marking the pages of blue examination booklets.

  He knocked. “Mademoiselle de Gramont? One of the teachers suggested I speak with you.”

  She rose, motioning him into the room. A curious sweet scent hovered in the air. “How may I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Toby Talbot. I’m his uncle—Mark Wells.” The lie came quite naturally now.

  She quickly shut the door. “Toby did not come to school today. I phoned his home and nobody answered.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “I haven’t seen Toby since his father picked him up last—”

  “His father?”

  “Last Saturday. He gave me a note from Toby’s mother.”

  No way, Mark thought. “Could I trouble you to show me that note?”

  Annoyance flared across her face. She took a sheet of paper from her desk, laid it over the window of a Xerox machine, and pushed a button. Greenish light flashed. She handed him the copy.

  Dear Mademoiselle: This is to inform you that Toby’s father, Catch Talbot, has my authorization to pick up Toby after today’s school excursion and bring him home. With many thanks, Kyra Talbot.

  The handwriting was undeniably Kyra’s—large and extroverted, with extravagantly looped b’s and h’s and k’s. But when she handed him a copy of the envelope, he saw that the printed address—118 East 81st—was Anne Bingham’s.

  “And you haven’t seen the boy since?”

  She shook her head. “There’s been no call, no explanation.”

  Mark ran the information through his mind, trying to make some sense of it. “Mademoiselle, could you describe the man who gave you this note?”

  “The people call Jeptha Randolf.”

  With six enormous strides, a lanky, suntanned man in his early sixties crossed to the stand and took the oath.

  Tess diAngeli asked the witness to describe his work.

  “For the last thirty-seven years I’ve been with the BATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.” His dark suit and striped tie were Wall Street, but his accent was Alabama. “At present I’m assistant deputy director of security operations for the eastern United States.”

  “Have you been monitoring the activities of Corey Lyle and his cult?”

  “Yes, I have, for eight and a half years.”

  “Why is the BATF concerned with their activities?”

  “We�
��d heard reports of mail fraud, charge card fraud, income tax fraud, drug and gun dealing, child abuse, and involvement in domestic bombings.”

  “Objection.” Dotson Elihu pushed himself to standing. “Those allegations are irrelevant and are raised solely to prejudice these proceedings.”

  “Your Honor,” diAngeli said, “the People intend to demonstrate relevance.”

  “I’ll give you a little leeway here,” Judge Bernheim said. “We’ll allow the witness to testify to crimes mentioned in his agents’ reports.”

  “Mr. Randolf,” diAngeli asked, “were your agents able to document legal irregularities in the cult’s activities?”

  “Yes, indeed. Enough gray-zone activity to warrant sending in an undercover agent.”

  “And did you send in an agent?”

  “Not exactly. We recruited a cult member. Her name’s Yolanda Lopez. Her nine-year-old daughter, Lisa, was also a member. Mrs. Lopez came to us with a complaint that Corey Lyle had used her little girl as a human bomb in an attempt to blow up—”

  Elihu sprang up. “Objection!”

  “Overruled.”

  Randolf continued. “To blow up the IRS building in Manhattan. The bomb malfunctioned and the explosive leaked. The little girl was badly injured and required eighteen separate skin grafts. We arranged for the operations and sent Mrs. Lopez back in to surveil the cult.”

  “And did Mrs. Lopez uncover proof of illegal activity?”

  “In less than a month, she was sending back reports of tax fraud, crooked fund-raising, illegal import of Czech plastic explosives—”

  “Objection.” Dotson Elihu rose. “How is alleged felony by parties unnamed relevant to the charge against Dr. Lyle?”

  “Overruled.”

  DiAngeli smiled. “Did Mrs. Lopez send back reports mentioning John and Amalia Briar?”

  “Five months after she went back in, she told me Corey had something real dirty cooking with John and Amalia Briar.”

  “Objection!” Elihu leaped up. “Hearsay!”

  “Mr. Randolf,” the judge said, “are you referring to a written report by Agent Lopez?”

  “No, ma’am, this instance was a phone talk.”

  “Was this phone talk recorded?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m going to have to sustain the objection.”

  DiAngeli stood, frowning. “Mr. Randolf—five months after you sent Mrs. Lopez back into the cult, did you instruct her to tape her discussions with Corey Lyle?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. Soon as the Briar murder plot came up.”

  “Objection.” Elihu was on his feet again. “We’re smack back to hearsay.”

  “If it please Your Honor,” diAngeli said, “it’s a simple matter to clear this up. I ask permission to play the court one of Yolanda Lopez’s tapes—which we are prepared to offer in evidence as People’s Exhibit fifty-two.”

  “Young man,” Lucy-Anne Westervelt asked as the bus nosed to a stop on the upper-level ramp of the Port Authority, “would you help me with my bag?”

  “Sure.” The boy pulled her suitcase from the overhead rack. They joined the passengers filing out.

  “I suppose you’re heading down to the Village?”

  “Eventually.” The boy seemed to be scanning the crowd, searching for someone.

  “Can I give you a lift in a cab?” Lucy-Anne suggested. She stepped onto the down escalator.

  The boy followed. Lucy-Anne knew he didn’t want to come with her; but he was holding her bag, and he was well brought-up.

  “Which way are you headed?” he said.

  “Downtown,” Lucy-Anne lied.

  Down on the first level the scene was bad: kids with opportunistic, purse-snatching gazes, loitering in running shoes. Beggars stationed at newsstands and candy and soda machines, rattling cups. Homeless men curled up in corners on nests of Big Mac wrappings and thrown-away newspaper. Crazies screaming conversations with themselves. Lucy-Anne smelled crack deals and concealed firearms and children lured into prostitution.

  “I’m not going downtown right away.” The boy stopped. He set Lucy-Anne’s suitcase down. It became a rock of stillness in a sea of hurrying feet. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Lucy-Anne was aware of another population in the bus terminal—cops circulating everywhere, male and female, officers barely twenty years old, with holster-heavy hips and the cynical eyes of octogenarians.

  “I have to go uptown first.” She picked up her suitcase. “I can drop you off anywhere you’re going.”

  “Thanks, but I’d better not.” The boy’s eyes had stopped searching. He was staring at something.

  Lucy-Anne turned, following the direction of his gaze.

  A man with a shaved head was standing thirty feet away in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts window, staring back at the boy.

  Lucy-Anne didn’t like it; she didn’t like it one bit. She reached out her free hand and caught the elbow of the nearest cop. “Officer!”

  The cop whirled, one hand on his holster.

  “This little boy—”

  The officer’s face tightened. A red, rough-textured face. “Is the kid bothering you, lady?”

  “This little boy is a truant—he should be in school.”

  Something slammed into Lucy-Anne’s suitcase, knocking it from her surprised hand. The boy dove into the crowd. “Young man!” she called.

  The suitcase spun across the floor. She ran and caught it, but when she turned around, the little boy was gone. Her eye went to Dunkin’ Donuts.

  The man with the shaved head had vanished too.

  TWENTY-SIX

  12:07 P.M.

  LIEUTENANT BILL BENTON ANGLED his wrist. The hands of his watch pointed to 12:07—9:07 in Seattle. Somebody ought to be answering that company phone in Seattle by now.

  He found the envelope he’d written the number on. The call clicked through and a woman with an upbeat voice and a bad head cold answered. “Gurney and Gurney, attorneys-at-law. May I help you?”

  “Could I speak with Catch Talbot, please?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Lieutenant William Benton, Scotsville Police, New Jersey.”

  “Just a moment, I’ll put you through.”

  Bill Benton’s fingertips danced on the edge of his desk.

  “Yes, Lieutenant.” The male voice was bemused. “This is Catch Talbot. How can I help you?”

  The minute he heard that voice, Bill Benton had a sinking feeling how this talk was going to go. “Mr. Talbot, were you by any chance in Scotsville, New Jersey, last night?” He didn’t bother asking or two hours ago? That would have sounded too crazy.

  “Last night? Are you kidding?”

  “No, sir, I’m not kidding.”

  “I’ve never been in Scotsville in my life.”

  “Have you lost a wallet recently or any I.D.s—charge cards, driver’s license?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you have an eleven-year-old son by the name of Toby?”

  “Yes, I do.” The voice tightened. “Is something the matter? Is Toby in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, sir. Someone tried to use your I.D. and we’re just checking.”

  “I don’t understand. What does Toby have to do with this?”

  “You’ve cleared the matter up, Mr. Talbot. Thank you.” Bill Benton snapped a finger down on the disconnect bar.

  Sondra van Orden sat with her legs crossed, foot arcing slowly back and forth. She was staring at the toe of her shoe, avoiding Benton’s eyes.

  “Sondra, honey …” He pushed to standing. “You and me and that polygraph are in deep doodoo.”

  “How long can they hang on?” the high-voiced male said.

  “Only God knows that,” the woman said.

  The voices came from the pocket-size tape recorder that Tess diAngeli held in her hand. She walked slowly along the jury box, moving as if she were carved of flowing water.

  “If they’re not dead
by September fifteenth,” the deep-voiced male said, “we’ll be in a bad financial way.”

  DiAngeli stopped the tape. A shudder of silence passed. “Do you recognize this tape?”

  “I do,” Jeptha Randolf said. “That tape was recorded by Yolanda Lopez two years ago, August fourth.”

  “Objection!” Dotson Elihu rose angrily. “The People have introduced no evidence that Ms. Lopez recorded that tape.”

  “Sustained. Counselor, lay a foundation.”

  DiAngeli snapped the cassette out of the recorder. “Do you have reason to believe this tape was recorded by your agent Yolanda Lopez?”

  “I do.” Jeptha Randolf nodded. “Yolanda Lopez gave me that tape in compliance with my request for tapes of her conversations with Corey Lyle.”

  “Can you identify the voices on the tape?”

  “The woman’s voice is Yolie’s—Yolanda’s. The deeper male voice is Corey’s. The other is—”

  “Your Honor, I object.” Dotson Elihu was working very hard at appearing shocked. “The People have submitted absolutely no proof as to the identity of any of the voices on that tape.”

  “Surely a government expert can be trusted,” diAngeli said, “to identify the voice of his own operative on a tape of his own operation?”

  “Your Honor,” Elihu cried, “a witness who admits hiring amateur sleuths could just as easily hire amateur actors.”

  Judge Bernheim’s eyes shot staples into Elihu. “Overruled. The witness is competent to identify the voice of his own agent.”

  DiAngeli removed the tape from the recorder and inserted a second. “Mr. Randolf, would you listen to this tape and tell me if you recognize it?”

  “They’re near,” the deep male voice said. “Very near.”

  “Thank the merciful Lord,” the woman’s voice said.

  “We have to keep a vigil over them,” the man said. “We want his wife to live forty-eight hours longer than him.”

  DiAngeli stopped the tape. “Do you recognize this conversation?”

  “I do. That tape was given to me by Yolanda Lopez on August twelfth, two years ago, in compliance with my request for records of her conversations with Corey Lyle.”

  “Had you heard any of these voices before?”