VC04 - Jury Double

by Edward Stewart

  “Would it be fair to say that at the time Lisa joined the cult, you trusted Corey Lyle?”

  Yolanda Lopez nodded. “With my life.”

  “And after your daughter joined, did your trust continue?”

  “I began to have doubts when he separated Lisa and me. He said Lisa needed the open air—so he moved her to John Briar’s estate in Connecticut. I stayed in New York in cult headquarters.”

  “When did you next see your daughter?”

  “A year later.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the burn center at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.”

  “Objection.” Dotson Elihu shoved wearily to his feet. “Irrelevant.”

  “Your Honor, the People will demonstrate relevance.”

  “Overruled.”

  DiAngeli turned to the witness. “Why was your daughter in the burn center?”

  “Because she wore a belt of explosives into the IRS building. The explosive leaked and she got third-degree burns over a quarter of her body.”

  “Who instructed her to wear the belt?”

  “Objection. Relevance.”

  DiAngeli whirled. “Your Honor, this goes straight to the character of the accused.”

  “Overruled. Witness may answer the question.”

  Yolanda Lopez’s gaze pinned the defendant. “Corey Lyle told Lisa to wear the belt or she wouldn’t get to heaven.”

  “Objection. Hearsay.”

  “Ms. diAngeli,” the judge said, “lay a foundation or I’ll have to sustain.”

  “They’re near death.” The voice resonating from the tiny tape recorder filled the courtroom like a genie from a bottle. “We have to keep a vigil over them. We want his wife to live forty-eight hours longer than him.”

  Tess diAngeli stopped the machine. “Mrs. Lopez, do you recognize the tape?”

  “Yes. I recorded it August tenth.”

  “Do you recognize the woman’s voice on that tape?”

  “It’s my voice.”

  “Who were you speaking with when you recorded that tape?”

  “With Corey and Mickey Williams.”

  “And whose was the last voice we heard?”

  “That was Corey.”

  “Did Corey Lyle tell you the names of the elderly couple who were near death?”

  “John and Amalia Briar.”

  “Objection!” Dotson Elihu leaped to his feet. “Those names are nowhere mentioned on that tape!”

  “Overruled. The witness may testify from her memory.”

  Tess diAngeli approached the witness box. Her voice became compassionate and caring. “Mrs. Lopez, could you tell the court what happened on Labor Day weekend following this conversation?”

  “Corey told me and Mickey to come to the Briars’ apartment midnight Friday. He said the Briars’ maid had to go to Pakistan for a family funeral, and he didn’t want them to be alone.”

  “Did you know at that time if there was any plan on the part of Corey Lyle and Mickey Williams to kill John and Amalia Briar?”

  “At that time I knew there was a plan that the Briars had to die before September fifteenth.”

  “Objection.” Dotson Elihu stood. “No such plan has been established.”

  “Your Honor.” Tess diAngeli appealed to the bench. “People’s exhibit demonstrates—”

  “A hope,” Elihu cut in, “is not a plan.”

  “Objection overruled.” Judge Bernheim glowered. “Mr. Elihu, you’ll get your chance in cross.”

  DiAngeli faced her witness. “Mrs. Lopez, how did you get into the apartment?”

  “Corey let us in.”

  “Were John and Amalia Briar alive when you arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Corey Lyle give you specific instructions at that time?”

  “He told Mickey to sit with John, and he told me to sit with Amalia. He told us to feed them carrot puree and carrot juice.”

  “Did you hear Corey Lyle give Mickey Williams any other instructions?”

  “No. Corey took Mickey into John’s bedroom. I didn’t go with them.”

  “Did he leave you and Mickey Williams in the apartment?”

  “Yes. He left us at two A.M.”

  “Were the Briars alive when he left?”

  “Amalia was. I don’t know about John.”

  “When did you next see John Briar?”

  “Around seven A.M. I heard Mickey chanting in the living room. He sounded crazy, so I—”

  “Objection.” Elihu jumped up. “Conclusion. This witness is not an expert. Not remotely.”

  “Sustained, but Mr. Elihu, spare us your footnotes.”

  “When did you next see John Briar?” diAngeli repeated.

  “Around seven A.M. I went to John’s bedroom to make sure he was all right, and …” She faltered.

  “And what condition was John Briar in when you found him?”

  “He was lying on the floor.” Yolanda Lopez drew in a long breath. “Dead. I could see there’d been a fight, and I knew Corey had somehow flipped Mickey out.”

  “Objection!” Dotson Elihu rose shouting. “This kind of tabloid conjecture by a paid government informer has no more place in a court of law than outright perjury!”

  Yolanda Lopez crumpled against the partition of the witness box. A stir passed through the spectators’ benches.

  “Your Honor,” diAngeli cried, “would the bench instruct my colleague to temper his attacks on this witness? She’s been through a horrible ordeal.”

  Judge Bernheim whispered to the bailiff. He helped Yolanda Lopez to her feet and guided her out of the court.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Judge Bernheim said, “it sometimes happens that witnesses do become overexcited or collapse during direct or cross-examination. This is not to affect your standards of judgment in evaluating their testimony.”

  Little West Twelfth Street looked like a bomb-testing site. Most of the storefronts were boarded up. Skeletonized car wrecks lined the curbs.

  Cardozo found number 526, a four-story brick tenement with peeling blue paint. A timber buttress running from the cobbled gutter braced an ominous second-story hernia. A hand-lettered card spelling SPOOK BOUTIQUE had been shoved partway into one of the buzzer slots. He pressed the button.

  The steel door opened with a ratchety buzz. A moldy smell floated in the air. He took the dark, narrow staircase two flights up till he saw light.

  A tinkling bead curtain swayed at the end of the landing. He stepped through and looked around him. A poster solicited funds for the Corey Lyle Defense Fund: FOR THE LOVE OF LIBERTY, CONTRIBUTE! Electronic gear was arranged in glass cabinets. Bookshelves lined two walls. He took down a book: Spooking Big Sam—How to Find Out if He’s Spooking You and What to Do About It.

  The door behind him closed. He wheeled around.

  A short, heavyset woman with close-cropped, iron-gray hair stood smack in his path. She must have been hiding behind the door. “Help you?”

  He replaced the book on the shelf. “Who’s Big Sam?”

  “The hybrid progeny of Uncle Sam and Big Brother.” Her tone was mild, matter-of-fact. Her T-shirt said: LET GO AND LET GOD.

  Cardozo took his time making a selection. He could feel the clerk watching him and he didn’t want it to look random. He bypassed books on crystals and past-life therapy and chose Freak the Fiend: Establish and Document Your Alternate Identity and Drive Big Sam Bonkers.

  The clerk rang the book up on the computerized cash register. “With a ten percent discount for hardcover, that comes to twenty-four seventy-five.”

  Cardozo realized his NYPD shield would get him nowhere in this environment. He took out his Visa card. “And I’d like to make a contribution to the Corey Lyle Defense Fund. Twenty dollars. Can you put it on the card?”

  “Can do.”

  “I’ll make that forty dollars,” Cardozo said, “if you can give me some information.”

  Suspicious eyes fixed on him. �
�What kind of information?”

  “A man by the name of Catch Talbot made a twenty-four-hundred-dollar purchase from you last Wednesday. Would you by any chance recall the gentleman?”

  “Sorry. Wednesday’s my day off.”

  “Could you tell me what he bought?” Cardozo gave her the order number.

  The clerk went to the bead curtain and glanced into the hallway. She sat at the computer. She punched up a file and searched the data. “Mitchelson Medusa-type microminiaturized solid state block-defeater with redirecting capability. Bell and Howard signal inverter.”

  “What’s a signal inverter?”

  “Disguises the voice.”

  “And a block-defeater?”

  Her eyes flicked up. “It bypasses blocked telephone lines and redirects caller I.D. to a false number or no number at all.”

  Which, Cardozo reflected, might explain how Kyra Talbot got her threatening phone call and why there was no record of it. “Could I see Mr. Talbot’s order?”

  The clerk pressed a key on the computer and a small dot-matrix printer spat out a length of two-inch-wide tape.

  Cardozo studied the print. It was almost too faint to make out. “Does this say head cleaner!”

  “Triple-X VCR head cleaner.” She tapped the display case where several pale blue canisters had been piled in a pyramid.

  He crouched to read the label. A deep inhalation is required to clean the head. Saturdate cloth and apply to nose and mouth. Do not use paper towel.

  “Saturdate?” he said.

  “They’re from Mexico.” She winked. “The government doesn’t allow us to sell chloroform.”

  “After you found John Briar dead,” Tess diAngeli said, “what were your actions?”

  Yolanda Lopez, back in the witness box after a half-hour absence, looked drained and exhausted. “I locked myself into Amalia’s room. I phoned the BATF. A machine answered. I left a message. But it was a holiday weekend—so I phoned 911. They said an ambulance would be over in twenty minutes. I waited an hour and phoned again. They said the ambulance had come and no one was at the address. So I went to the police. I told them John Briar was dead and Amalia was in danger.”

  “Did the police help you?”

  Yolanda Lopez shook her head. “Sergeant Bailey phoned the apartment. She spoke with a man who said he was John Briar. He said he was fine. She spoke with Amalia, and Amalia was fine too. So there was nothing the police could do.”

  There was a flurry of movement at the defense table. “Your Honor!” Elihu sprang to his feet. “I demand that you declare an immediate mistrial! John Briar was alive and spoke to the police a good twelve hours after the time the People’s coroner has alleged he died. The People have been in possession of this evidence and they have knowingly withheld it.”

  Judge Bernheim turned to the prosecutor. “Ms. diAngeli?”

  “Your Honor, I never heard the witness mention this information before this moment.”

  “Your Honor, is this a court of law or a vaudeville theater?”

  “That’s up to you, Mr. Elihu.”

  “Haven’t we had enough of the People’s mind reading and the People’s hearsay and the People’s cover-up? I demand that Sergeant Britta Bailey be recalled to the stand to be properly examined on this crucial point.”

  “That’s not possible,” Tess diAngeli said.

  Elihu whirled. “I’d like to know what law forbids it.”

  “Your Honor,” diAngeli said, “may I approach?”

  Judge Bernheim asked both attorneys to approach the bench. After five minutes of whispering, Judge Bernheim informed the court that Officer Britta Bailey would not be recalled to the stand. “I shall review this witness’s previous depositions and grand jury testimony. Pending the outcome of that review, direct examination may continue.”

  Tess diAngeli smiled encouragingly at the witness, as if to say, We’re almost home. “Mrs. Lopez, after the police refused to investigate, what did you then do?”

  “I spent the day running from hospital to hospital—trying to persuade a doctor, a nurse, somebody to come back to the apartment and help. No one would come.” Yolanda Lopez looked down guiltily at her hands. As though they had somehow failed.

  “When you were unable to get medical help, what did you then do?”

  “I kept phoning BATF, but I always got the answering machine. So I spent Saturday night in the entrance hall outside the apartment—ringing the bell and pounding on the door.”

  “And did you see Mickey Williams again?”

  “Labor Day morning, he finally opened the door. He said, ‘It’s done. They’re gone.’”

  In the jury room, afternoon light streamed through the window.

  “I’m starved,” Thelma del Rio said. “There should be a law: morning sessions end at one sharp.”

  “If John was dead,” Lara Duggan said, “how could he have answered the phone?”

  “I’m not going to think about it,” Anne said, “till we have all the evidence.”

  “It wasn’t John who answered,” Seymour Shen said. “It was Mickey.”

  Lara made a confused face. “I didn’t hear anyone prove that.”

  “Sometimes,” Thelma del Rio said, “you have to use your head just a little.”

  “Hey,” Ben Esposito said. “No discussion.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  3:40 P.M.

  CATCH TALBOT PUSHED THROUGH the revolving door into the lobby of St. Andrea Polyclinic. He joined the line at the information desk. A blue-haired matron was fielding inquiries.

  He cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  She gave him a look that said, Go ahead, take another piece of my sanity.

  “I’m looking for an eleven-year-old by the name of Toby Talbot?”

  She typed the name into her computer. He could see the cursor on the monitor, blinking in a column of T’s that went from Tabachnik straight to Taylor. No Talbot.

  “Sorry, we have no patient by that name.”

  “Could he have been released?”

  “He was never admitted to pediatric.”

  “What about the adult wards? Maybe there was a mix-up in the records.”

  Fingers danced over the computer keyboard. She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Have you admitted any unidentified eleven-year-old boys since Monday morning?”

  She entered more data. “We had a young burn victim, male, yesterday.”

  Catch had to think very hard about getting his next breath. “May I see him?”

  “He was transferred the same day to the burn center at St. Vincent’s, Manhattan.”

  “Thank you.” As Catch turned, he saw a heavyset man in line behind him, wearing a jacket over a Hawaiian shirt. The man quickly looked away.

  Help you, sir?” The smiling clerk with the name tag Mitzi had to shout.

  Cardozo showed his I.D. Mitzi lost the smile.

  Philmar’s Car Rental agency was crowded and bad-tempered, echoing like a fast-food joint. Jet planes passing overhead added to the din.

  “A man by the name of Catch Talbot rented a car from you last Wednesday. I’d like to see that contract.” Cardozo gave her the transaction number.

  Mitzi consulted with coworkers, searched drawers, and finally produced a pink sheet with unreadably small print and a barely legible carbon scrawl filling in the blanks.

  Cardozo noted that the blue ’94 Pontiac was not due to be returned for ten days. He copied the license number, 12F73, and Catch Talbot’s New Jersey address, the Holiday Inn in Kearney. “Thanks, Mitzi. I appreciate it.”

  “Isn’t it a fact”—Dotson Elihu’s tone was let’s-work-this-out-together helpful—“that John and Amalia Briar were both dead when you left the apartment, and both voices that Officer Bailey heard on the phone were Mickey Williams?”

  “No.” Yolanda Lopez’s eyes were burning moistly. “Amalia was alive—there was still a chance. Why would I phone BATF if she was dead?”

  “I’m glad y
ou asked that question. I don’t quite understand … if you were seeking help so desperately, why did you repeatedly phone an answering machine that you knew no one was answering?”

  “I phoned because those were my instructions and I hoped someone would get my message in time.”

  “But after phoning and never once getting through—why didn’t you return to Amalia Briar’s bedside and protect her yourself?”

  “I tried to—but I couldn’t get into the apartment. Mickey wouldn’t open the door.”

  “So you sat vigil outside the apartment for over twenty-four hours—pounding on the door?”

  “Yes!”

  Dotson Elihu looked politely astonished. “Did anyone hear or see you during this time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you sleep in the hallway?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Did you urinate or defecate in the hallway during these twenty-four hours?”

  “Objection!” Tess diAngeli cried. “Hectoring the witness!”

  “Counselor,” Judge Bernheim warned, “save your scatological humor for your poker club.”

  Elihu inclined his head just sufficiently to suggest respect. “My apologies, Your Honor, if I’ve offended the court’s sensibilities. However, as a sage once remarked, biology is destiny, and I’m sure the jury is as curious as I to know how Ms. Lopez managed to evade it for so long a stretch of time.”

  Cardozo laid his shield unobtrusively on the countertop. The desk clerk of the Kearney Holiday Inn flinched.

  “Did you have a Catch Talbot registered here September eighteenth?”

  The clerk entered the name into her computer. A river of print flowed up the monitor screen. “We show no one by that name registered then or now.”

  “Could I speak with house security?”

  She tapped a number into the phone. “Mr. Higgins—a police officer to speak with you.”

  He calls himself Catch Talbot. He could be using other names as well.”

  Higgins examined the sketch and then the photograph. A scowl creased his sallow, jowly face.

  “Over the weekend he might have had an eleven-year-old boy with him.” Cardozo handed Higgins the snapshot of Toby Talbot.

  Higgins squinted a long, considering moment. “Haven’t seen the boy.”