“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter,” Pete answers.
So far we are being polite as hell; it’s practically a lovefest.
“Captain, when you are called to a murder scene like this, and when you investigate the case, you make assumptions, do you not?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Which part didn’t you understand?”
“In this context, I don’t know what you’re getting at when you say ‘assumptions.’ I go where the facts take me.”
“First of all, just so we understand the ground rules here … it’s not important that you know what I’m getting at. It’s important that you truthfully answer the questions I ask. That’s your only role here.”
Carla objects that I’m being argumentative and harassing the witness, and while Avery overrules her, he tells me to be careful, that I am close to the line.
“Okay, to give you an obvious example by what I mean when I say you make assumptions, you boarded the truck and saw the victim lying dead with a bullet hole in his chest. That caused you to assume he was shot, even though you didn’t see it happen. Correct?”
He nods. “Correct.”
“Good,” I say. “And since it was Mr. Kramer’s gun that fired the fatal shot, and you saw on the tape that he boarded the truck, you assumed he was the killer, even though you didn’t watch him do it. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Good. Now let’s turn to some other assumptions you might have made. How did you assume that Mr. Kramer happened to be at the rest stop when Kenny Zimmer pulled up?”
“I can’t say for sure, but they obviously had plans to meet.”
“These mortal enemies said to each other, ‘Hey, let’s get together on your way through New Jersey. And since we both use bathrooms, let’s do it at the rest stop.’ Is that what you assume took place?”
“I don’t know why they were there, but I know what happened once they got there.”
“You do? Great! Tell us.”
“Mr. Kramer shot and killed Mr. Zimmer,” he says.
“I meant before that. Did he start firing immediately? Because according to the video, he didn’t draw his gun before he boarded the truck.”
“I don’t know if he fired immediately.”
“So that’s an assumption that you can’t make?”
“The point is that he fired.”
“Did they argue first?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they did.”
“But you can’t assume it one way or the other?”
“No. I wasn’t there.”
“Did Zimmer attack Mr. Kramer? Could Mr. Kramer have fired in self-defense, fearing for his life?”
“Zimmer was unarmed.”
“That’s an assumption you’re willing to make?”
“It’s not an assumption. There was no weapon on the truck, and it would have made no sense for Kramer to take it with him.”
“Could there have been a third person on the truck, who took the weapon with him when he left?”
“No,” he says.
“Assumption or fact?”
“Fact. The video does not show anyone leaving the truck, and when we arrived, there was no third person there.”
“So let me give you a hypothetical, and tell me whether you think it’s possible. Then we can discuss it further when I call you as a witness in the defense case.”
“Fine.”
“A third person, a suspected murderer in his own right, paid Zimmer a lot of money to try to kill Mr. Kramer. Zimmer then attacked Mr. Kramer with a weapon when he boarded the truck, but Mr. Kramer was able to fend him off and fired in self-defense. Then the third person, who was hidden throughout, exited the truck, with Mr. Zimmer’s weapon, but without the video recording it. That’s the hypothetical. Do you think it’s possible?”
“I don’t.”
“Not even possible?” I ask.
“Not even possible.”
“Then I look forward to talking to you later in the trial,” I say. I tell Judge Avery that I am finished with this witness, subject to recall in the defense case.
What I have managed to do is present our entire theory of the case and get Pete to say it is absolutely not possible. Later, when I fill in the blanks and show that it is possible, my hope is that the jury will start to doubt him, and by extension Carla, and buy into reasonable doubt.
At this point, it’s the only shot we have.
Once Pete leaves the stand, Carla rests the prosecution’s case. So we’re going to have to take that shot now.
In my dream, a cell phone rings, then rings again. It’s a soft ring, and it doesn’t sound like my ringtone, since mine is the Godfather theme music.
This sounds like Laurie’s phone, and what I hear next sounds like Laurie’s voice. “Marcus?” the voice asks. That jolts me completely awake; it is impossible to sleep through anything that includes Marcus.
I take a quick glance at the clock, which says 1:00 A.M. The chance of a call from Marcus at 1:00 A.M. being good news is too small to register as a percentage.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Laurie’s response is to wave her hand at me in a gesture that simultaneously tells me to wait and be quiet. She has expressive hands. “Got it,” she whispers to Marcus and hangs up.
Laurie turns to me and speaks in a calm, deliberate, very soft voice. “Andy, there is an intruder trying to come into our house. Very quietly go into Ricky’s room. Make sure he is sleeping, and if he wakes up, make sure he does not come out.”
“Is Marcus out there?”
“Andy, we don’t have time to talk now.”
There are a lot of questions I want to ask and a lot of things I think of doing. But I’ve learned enough to know that if there is a dangerous situation, and if Laurie and Marcus are in charge, I need to do what I’m told.
I get up and tiptoe down the hall to Ricky’s room. Behind me as I leave the room, I see Laurie getting up as well. I don’t know where she’s going, but it has to be toward the danger, which scares the hell out of me.
I enter Ricky’s bedroom and walk over to his bed. He’s sound asleep, and the last thing I want to do is wake him. But I also want to go help Laurie, and I desperately want to know what is going on.
So I’m just standing here, frozen, with no idea what to do, mentally arguing with myself. And out there, where Laurie is, there is nothing but silence.
Finally, I come up with a plan. I leave Ricky’s room but lock the door behind me. If he wakes up, and there is no sign that he’s about to, he’ll be forced to stay in his room. I’m okay with that; it’s not like my being in there makes him any safer.
I walk down the hall toward the stairs, occasionally looking back to Ricky’s closed door to make sure there is nothing happening there. I don’t hear anything, which makes me extra cautious, because I don’t want to blunder into anything and mess up whatever Laurie has planned. I still have no idea where Marcus is; I’d feel a lot better if he were standing next to me. Or better yet, next to Laurie.
Suddenly, I see a flash of light from the end of the hall and hear Laurie yell in as powerful a voice as she can manage, “Freeze! Drop your weapon and place your hands over your head!”
I move toward the railing from where I can see the light, downstairs. It’s a powerful flashlight that Laurie is shining onto the face of an intruder who just entered through the back outside door, which leads into the corridor just outside the laundry room. I have no idea how he managed to circumvent our alarm system.
The intruder is grimacing in the glare, trying to get his eyes to adjust. I can’t tell yet if I recognize who it is, because of the distance I am from him and the bright light shining on his face. But I can see that he is holding a large handgun.
“Now!” she yells. “Drop it now!”
But the man doesn’t obey the command and drop the gun; instead, he raises it. And suddenly there is a deafening barrage, and he seems to explode.
He should have obeyed Laurie. I could have told him that’s always the best choice to make.
“Laurie, are you all right?” I yell. She doesn’t answer, but that’s okay, because I see her heading for the intruder to make sure he’s concluded his intruding career.
I go back to Ricky’s room and unlock the door. I look in to see if he’s still sleeping. He’s not moving, so I go over and put my hand on his chest, to make sure he’s breathing, and he is. How he slept through the chaos I have no idea, but he did.
I head toward the laundry room, and in addition to Laurie and the intruder’s body, Marcus has joined the party. When I get there, I look down at the formerly living intruder.
It is Eric Benjamin.
“Ricky okay?” Laurie asks.
“He’s sleeping.”
Laurie walks away; I assume she’s going to check on him. I go to the kitchen to get the phone so I can call Pete. But then I see that Laurie is already doing that. “I don’t know who it is, Pete,” she says.
“It’s Eric Benjamin,” I say.
Laurie relays that information to Pete and then says, “Thanks, Pete,” before she hangs up. “He’ll be right over,” she says to me. Then she goes upstairs to check on Ricky.
Two patrol cars pull up before Pete gets here. They set up a perimeter around our house, now better known as the crime scene. Once Pete arrives and takes a quick look around, he calls in forensics and then the coroner. Pete takes Laurie and Marcus and me into the den to talk to us. “Proper procedure is for me to question you separately,” he says. “But I think we can tolerate a little improper procedure right now.”
Pete and I learn at the same time that Marcus has been secretly watching over me since Benjamin’s threat, at Laurie’s request. When he can’t do so, he has assigned someone he works with to cover for him, though he doesn’t say who that is, and it doesn’t matter anyway.
I also learn that Benjamin was shot in both the front and back. Laurie was responsible for the front, Marcus the back. They had both seen him raise his weapon to fire, so both reacted.
“Why did he threaten you?” Pete asks me.
“Because I knew he was on the truck with Kenny Zimmer and, therefore, had to be the one who ran off with the weapon after Zimmer was killed. And I suspected he killed John Craddock and Tina Bauer. And he knew I was going to expose him for all of it.”
Pete just looks at me. He doesn’t rebut or agree with what I’ve just said. He doesn’t say a word.
He just looks at me.
Judge Avery delays the start of court this morning so we can meet with him in chambers. I’m not surprised; Benjamin’s death is all over the papers and local newscasts this morning. Carla and one of her assistants join Hike and me.
“Well, Mr. Carpenter, I understand you had quite a night last night,” Avery says. “You and your family are okay, I hope?”
“We are, thank you, Your Honor.”
“I’ve brought you all in here to talk about the possible impact of these events on our trial. The jury has been instructed not to read or listen to anything about the trial, but we can’t be sure they did not see coverage of this.”
Carla says, “Even if they did, while it involved Mr. Carpenter, it should not have anything to do with our case. The deceased, Mr. Benjamin, is not relevant to the matter before you, Judge.”
“Mr. Benjamin is very relevant to this matter, Judge, and that relevancy has just increased exponentially.”
“Mr. Benjamin is part of your case?” Avery asks.
“Mr. Benjamin is a huge part of my case, and that was true even before last night.”
Avery looks at me with a mixture of suspicion, skepticism, and annoyance. “I assume you will be able to back that up with facts rather than suppositions?”
“I look forward to it,” I lie. What I don’t say is that I hope every member of the jury heard all about Benjamin this morning and the way he met his death. I’m going to try to prove to them that he was a killer; what happened last night will only give my argument much more credibility.
“Do either of you have a motion to make regarding these latest events?” Avery asks.
He’s giving Carla and me the opportunity to request a mistrial. I doubt he would grant it even if we did; he certainly would want to question the jurors individually first. But neither of us makes the request.
I actually think a mistrial would work substantially in our favor, as it would give us much more time to investigate Benjamin and his role in the Zimmer killing. But I’m not the one sitting in jail, and my client told me this morning in no uncertain terms that he wants to proceed.
So Avery sends us back in and starts off by renewing his instructions to the jury, this time telling them to avoid all news coverage, not just things that are connected to this trial.
Then he tells me to call my first witness, and I call George Davenport.
“Mr. Davenport, Kenny Zimmer worked for you?”
“He did. For only a month.”
I’ve called Davenport to set up why Zimmer was on that truck in the first place and also to disabuse anyone of the notion that Zimmer was doing it to save the dogs. I don’t want dog lovers on the jury to sympathize with him.
“How did you come to hire him?”
“He answered an online ad I posted on Craigslist.”
“What were his responsibilities, specifically?” I ask.
Davenport relates how Zimmer would drive the truck down South, pick up dogs in shelters who were in danger of being euthanized, and bring them to rescue groups in New England.
“And that was the purpose of this trip?”
“Yes.”
“Would Zimmer notify you where the dogs were going and other specific information about them?”
“He would, yes; he would email me,” Davenport says.
“Did he for this trip?”
“No. I was surprised when I checked and discovered that he had not done so.”
“Did I share with you my subsequent efforts to learn where the dogs on this trip were going?”
“You did. No groups were expecting them; Zimmer had failed to set that up. It is very strange; I can’t imagine what he was planning to do with them.”
“So in a number of ways, this trip was different from the others?”
“Apparently so. Yes.”
Something Davenport has said triggers something in my mind, but for the moment, I can’t access it. So instead I ask, “On this trip, other than not emailing you, did Mr. Zimmer behave in a way consistent with his responsibilities?”
“He did not,” Davenport says.
“How much did Zimmer earn for making these trips?”
“A thousand dollars, plus thirty dollars a day for meals.”
“What about hotels?”
“He slept on the truck.” Obviously, the drivers must have slept in that padded room between the two sections of dog cages.
“Did you ever pay him $75,000?”
Davenport laughs at the suggestion. “No, sir.”
Davenport has been a solid witness with no ax to grind. He hasn’t been terribly important either way; all he did was set up work for us.
Carla asks a few perfunctory questions, but nothing of great consequence. She doesn’t think that Davenport hurt her, and she is clearly right.
My next witness is Helena Saldana, a vice president at the bank where Zimmer kept his account. We learned from Sam’s hacking that Zimmer received the wire transfer, so armed with that information, we obtained it through a legal subpoena.
After I establish who she is and that she has been called to discuss Kenny Zimmer’s banking record, I ask, “Prior to two months ago, what was Mr. Zimmer’s average account balance?”
“A little over $1,200,” she says.
“And in the previous two years, what was the largest deposit he ever made?”
“Just under $3,000; it was made eighteen months ago.”
“Was there an unusual deposit made six weeks befor
e Mr. Zimmer’s death?”
“Yes. He received a wire transfer in the amount of $75,000.”
“Where did it come from?” I ask.
“The Cayman Islands.”
“And who was the sender?”
“That’s impossible to say. They have strict secrecy in their banking laws.”
“So Zimmer received what was for him a huge amount of money from a secret source?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Nancy Pierce has been living in fear. Ever since the day that she had the paid liaison with Victor Andreson in the hotel room, her life has not been the same. The man that she knew as Manning had beaten her, and on his instructions, she had gone to the police and accused Andreson of the assault.
She was paid a great deal of money for doing so, and she had her eyes open going in. But what she hadn’t fully realized was what an important businessman Andreson was or the chaos that would ensue.
And ever since, Andreson’s lawyers had been coming at her in waves, dissecting her life and trying to prove that she was lying. It forced her into a shell, afraid to face each new day. She dreaded the time she would have to testify against Andreson at his trial; she was sure that those same lawyers would take her apart.
But all of those fears paled compared to what she was feeling now. It turns out that the man she knew as Manning was actually Eric Benjamin; she recognized him from his picture on TV and in the papers. And the reason his picture was there is that he had been killed.
Nancy remembered very clearly what Benjamin had said just before he left her hotel room that day. His words were, “There are some people that don’t give a damn about you. I am the only reason you will stay alive.”
Remembering those words, and knowing Benjamin was no longer among the living, frightened her more than a hundred of Andreson’s lawyers ever could.
Nancy decided in that moment that there was only one thing she could do.
She would tell the truth.
My first witness after lunch is Detective Linda Scalari. She was the officer that Pete had assigned to handle the fingerprinting of the storage rooms on the truck. I could have called a technician to testify, but I want to accomplish more than simply the identifying of the print.
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