Cover-up

by Michele Martinez

  Terrozzi dropped her off early at the office so she could prepare. Melanie had passed a restless night, partly because she missed Maya, who was staying with Melanie’s mom until further notice. Partly because Deputy Peter Terrozzi was sleeping on the living-room sofa—in his boxers, no less, which gave Melanie the heebie-jeebies. And partly because she was preoccupied with all the big, pressing questions in her life. But she’d risen with new steel in her backbone. She had no choice but to prevail and keep Welch locked up. Her own safety depended upon it. As to everything else—her career, Dan—well, she’d just have to look her problems in eye and overcome them.

  As step one in her new regime, she left a message for Dan.

  “Hey, it’s Melanie,” she said after the tone sounded. “This fight is weighing on me. I want to talk. I’ve been thinking that maybe I have some…trust issues. Maybe that explains why I reacted so strongly to you having dinner with Diane. I don’t know if I can get past them or not, but I want to try. The Welch bail hearing is scheduled for nine and I’m not sure how long I’ll be in court. But call me.”

  She paused, worrying that her words might not have sounded encouraging enough, or worse, might’ve come too late. Had he given up on her already? But she wasn’t one for leaving mushy messages, or desperate ones. She depressed the button with her fingertip, disconnecting the call, and sat there feeling paralyzed, like she couldn’t move on with her day. Luckily, the phone rang and jolted her back to life.

  “Melanie Vargas.”

  “Hey, it’s Pauline.”

  The caller ID indicated that Pauline was standing at the guard station near the elevator. “You’re here?”

  “You bet, baby doll. I brought you some kick-ass shit on your boy Benedict Welch just in time for the bail hearing. You’re gonna wild out when you see it. Come get me. The guard’s not here yet.”

  “Be right out.”

  Melanie opened the bulletproof door to find Pauline balancing a cardboard Starbucks tray precariously on top of a stack of files. Over skintight jeans, Pauline wore red cowboy boots.

  “Welcome home!” Melanie said, grinning.

  “I got you a latte and a banana muffin,” Pauline said, gesturing toward the tray with her chin.

  “Oh my God, I love you! Here, let me help.”

  Melanie took the tray and let Pauline slip by her through the door. A few minutes later, they were settled in Melanie’s office wading through articles and photographs from a quarter century earlier.

  “You were right on the money when you told me to investigate the real Benedict Welch,” Pauline said. “I call him ‘Dead Welch.’ Like you said, Welch here in New York didn’t just pick this identity out of a hat. A doctor who died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, eleven years ago? He picked it for a reason.”

  “He had to have known him somehow,” Melanie said.

  “Exactly.”

  Pauline handed Melanie a group photo that, based on clothing and hairstyles, looked vintage late seventies, early eighties. It showed a bunch of boys of varying ages standing in rows as if for a class photo, with several sober-looking middle-aged men seated on chairs down in the front.

  “This is a photo from the Marietta Welch Youth Residence taken the final year of its existence, which was 1981,” Pauline explained. “The man in the front row with the blond hair and glasses is the real Benedict Welch, whose identity our suspect stole. The home was founded by Dead Welch’s grandmother about fifty years earlier, and any search you do of the Welch name in Tulsa immediately brings up information about the home. Just so you understand what type of place we’re talking about, it used to be called the Marietta Welch Home for Wayward Boys until they saw the light of political correctness and sanitized it.”

  “You said this picture is from the last year the home existed?” Melanie asked.

  “Yes! The place burned to the ground about six months after this was taken. Arson. It was a huge scandal in Tulsa at the time. Four boys died, along with a psychiatrist named Howard Vine who was the director-in-residence. They said the—”

  “What?”

  “What?”

  “The director’s name was Howard Vine?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Pauline, Howard Vine was the name of a plastic surgeon in L.A. who skipped town after the murder of a stripper who had the word ‘slut’ carved into her stomach.”

  Pauline blinked. “Hit me with that again?”

  “It’s complicated, but the point is, Benedict Welch wasn’t the first doctor from this boys’ home whose identity our suspect stole, and I don’t think Suzanne Shepard was the first woman he murdered, either. I have copies of all the paperwork from that old case. You should look at it.”

  Melanie’s heart was racing with excitement. She held the group picture up so the morning light streaming through her window would fall directly on it.

  “Our Benedict Welch has got to be in here, don’t you think?” she asked urgently, scanning the rows of boys.

  “Check out Mophead, middle row, third from the left. He looks promising to me.”

  Melanie squinted. “That’s him! Younger and with dark hair, but it’s him.”

  “You knew that yellow hair was fake, didn’t you? That kid’s name is Cory Nash, and he’s one of the ones who disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to finish the story. So the bodies of Howard Vine and four of the boys were discovered after the fire, right?”

  “But not Benedict—I mean, not Dead Welch?”

  “No. The real Benedict Welch survived the fire. He died years later in a car accident. Anyway, the bodies were burned to a crisp, but the ME still had the bones to work with, and listen to this. One of the boys’ bodies was missing limbs. One of his arms and part of a leg were chopped off. Guess where they were found?”

  “Where?”

  “In the basement, inside a metal trash can. And the rest of the body had scoring on the bones like from a cutting implement.”

  “He was stabbed to death and dismembered,” Melanie said.

  “Exactly. Well, more like somebody started dismembering him but gave up because it’s, you know, a shitload of work. I’ve had guys tell me sawing through all those muscles and tendons is not easy.”

  “So the killer got too impatient to dispose of the remains that way, and he set the place on fire instead.”

  Pauline nodded. “That’s what the cops thought, that the killer burned the building down to cover up the murder.”

  “But he was never caught?” Melanie asked.

  “No. I was getting to that part. Remember now, these kids were no Eagle Scouts. They were a bunch of delinquents, in fact. When the dust settled, eight of them who should’ve been present and accounted for were plain gone, never to be heard from again, and the cops believed the killer was among them.”

  “They ran away?”

  Pauline shrugged. “Probably. Or met with foul play and the cops never found out. Who knows.”

  “Cory Nash was among the missing?”

  “Yes,” Pauline said.

  “And he stayed that way, until we just found him masquerading as a doctor for the second time. Pauline, now that we’ve got him locked up, we need to make all three murder charges stick. Suzanne Shepard and Cheryl Driscoll and the boy he cut up and put in the trash. We have to close out those cases. Please, tell me you have background on Cory Nash. Fingerprints? A rap sheet?”

  “No, sweetie, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get any of that stuff. All the records were lost when the place burned down.”

  “Ugh. How am I going to prove all this to the judge?”

  Melanie’s phone rang. “Hold on. Don’t go anywhere,” she said, grabbing it. “Melanie Vargas.”

  “Melanie? Julian Hay. I’m here at the courthouse. We got a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Welch is going through some kind of psychosis caused by meth withdrawal. He just tried to kill himself. Judge wants you in court. Now.�
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  47

  The second Melanie walked into the ceremonial courtroom, she heard a sound like the wailing of a cat coming from the direction of the holding cell out back. But the screams were not by any means the most frightening thing in the room. Magistrate Judge Wilton Warner had taken the bench. On a good day, Judge Warner made Melanie quake in her high heels. And today wasn’t a good day.

  “Ah, Miss Vargas, so kind of you to join us,” he cried sarcastically, his voice cutting like a knife across the football-field-size courtroom. Then he leaned forward until the light bouncing off his half-glasses made him look like some vacant-eyed madman. “Get up here this minute.”

  Melanie strode down the center aisle, her cheeks burning with indignation. She knew what was coming. Warner routinely took the view that all problems with cases were the result of intentional wrongdoing by the prosecution. One of these days, she feared, she would lose her temper and give it back to him good, which of course would only result in heavy sanctions against her and possible disbarment.

  She banged through the low wooden gate that bounded the spectator gallery and took her place at the government’s podium. Her shoulders were square and her eyes determined. Out of nowhere, Mark Sonschein and Detective Julian Hay materialized to stand beside her. She glanced at them gratefully.

  “Steady as she goes,” Mark whispered.

  “I’m cool,” she said softly.

  But Warner hadn’t gotten started yet.

  “Miss Vargas, I am holding you personally responsible for the fact that a man is bleeding in my bull pen. What kind of slack, shiftless custody are you maintaining over these prisoners that allows them to get hold of razors and try to kill themselves?”

  Melanie had zero to do with housing or transporting prisoners, and Judge Warner knew that.

  “Your Honor, the government just learned of this situation, as did the court, and we are shocked and dismayed,” she said, her voice firm and her shoulders unbowed. Which, of course, only annoyed him more.

  “Don’t…give…me…that…nonsense! Are you claiming you didn’t know this prisoner had a drug problem?” Warner shouted, his face bright red.

  All the things she wished she could say came pouring into Melanie’s head with such force that she worried they would spill out of her mouth. Who has a substance-abuse problem in this courtroom, red face? When they say “sober as a judge,” they don’t mean you! Luckily, Julian kept her grounded.

  “I told the guards at MCC last night he had dependency,” he said to Melanie under his breath.

  “Your Honor, the Bureau of Prisons was made aware of the defendant’s drug use. Many defendants have drug problems—”

  “And meth usually ain’t this bad,” Julian whispered.

  “—and I’m informed that methamphetamine withdrawal is not normally expected to lead to such severe—”

  “No excuses!” the judge shouted. “I don’t care what you knew or what you thought. You obviously didn’t do anything! And you call yourselves public servants. If it were up to me, I’d fire every last one of you. Now either you fix this situation immediately, or I’m ordering this prisoner released without a hearing.”

  “Judge, you can’t do that! He’s potentially responsible for three homicides—”

  “I can do whatever I damn well please.”

  “Judge, we respectfully request—”

  “If you want him remanded, Miss Vargas, you get back in that bull pen and fix this problem. Now! Do I make myself clear?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Yes, Judge.”

  Did he expect her to save Welch’s life? Melanie wasn’t squeamish, but neither did she have any medical expertise. She gave Mark a baffled look.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, and turned to follow her. Judge Warner didn’t stop him.

  “What does he think I can do?” Melanie whispered.

  “He’s just grandstanding.”

  The “bull pen” was the holding cell adjacent to the courtroom where incarcerated prisoners awaited their court appearances. Melanie had rarely been inside one. She knew them primarily by sound: the clanging doors that meant a prisoner had been brought up in the secure elevator, the flushing toilet that meant he was ready to come out and face the music. What unnerved her now was not the sight of the bull pen, but the sight of Benedict Welch—or Cory Nash, as she now knew him to be—writhing on the floor, whimpering and sweating, his yellow hair matted and his blue prison jumpsuit stained with several coin-size droplets of blood. Suddenly he let out an inhuman howl, a sound so terrible that Melanie shrank back, fearing that he’d been mortally wounded. She didn’t want him to die. At least, not before she convicted him at trial.

  The cell door was wide open, and a number of uniformed men crowded around the prone figure. To Melanie’s great relief, she saw that at least two of them were EMTs, not guards. She angled her way in and grabbed the arm of the nearest EMT, an enormously tall guy with red hair in a ponytail, who was holding a roll of bandages and watching his colleague attend to Welch.

  “I’m the prosecutor. Will he make it?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah, sure. This ain’t nothin’. Shallow cuts on both wrists. Didn’t go deep enough to even nick a vein.”

  “Does he need to go to the hospital?”

  “Not for his hands. Carlos is taping the cuts now. He’ll be fine to do his court appearance—physically, I mean. Only thing is, with meth withdrawal cases, we normally take ’em over to Bellevue for a psych eval, unless you’d prefer to have the prison shrink do that.”

  “I have to ask the judge what he wants to do. Do you know how the prisoner got the knife?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t a knife. It was just a little bitty nail he picked up off the street when he pretended to trip while being transported. He hid it in his shoe. Hold on, I’ll show you.”

  He passed her a plastic bag containing a small nail encrusted with both rust and blood. “Small” was too generous a word—it was minuscule.

  “Suicide by tetanus is about all that’ll do for you. He knew it, too,” the EMT said.

  “So you don’t believe this was a serious attempt?” she asked.

  “He’s a drama queen. We see a lot of this when people get arrested. He wants a bed in a nice rehab program instead of at Otisville.”

  “Not gonna happen if I have anything to say about it,” Melanie said.

  Several of the guards helped Welch to his feet. He caught sight of Melanie. His eyes without his contact lenses in were dark brown instead of violet, with a crazy glint that hadn’t been there yesterday. He looked…unhinged. The transformation from suave Upper East Side society doctor to strung-out junkie was startling.

  “Are you happy, you bitch? Is this what you wanted?” Welch cried.

  Two guards instantly grabbed him by the arms. He screwed up his lips and sent a gob of spit hurling in Melanie’s direction. It splattered on the floor a foot short of her. Mark Sonschein grabbed her arm and pulled her forcibly from the bull pen as the guards wrestled Welch to a sitting position on the floor.

  “You think we can arraign him like this?” she asked Mark. Melanie was shaking but her voice was steady. She was damned if this lowlife would make her flinch.

  One of the EMTs was now administering a sedative.

  “Frankly,” Mark said, “I think you ought to go out there and ask to have the prisoner sent to Bellevue for evaluation. At least then he’ll be on a locked ward. With Warner on the bench, you never know, he might release the guy otherwise. Especially given the Brady material.”

  Melanie looked at Mark sharply. Brady material was exculpatory evidence that prosecutors were required to hand over to the defense prior to court proceedings.

  “What Brady material?” she asked suspiciously.

  Mark gaped at her. “You know.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “The fact that your one eyewitness states that your suspect doesn’t look like the killer. And you don’t have DNA results back yet, so there’s no
thing to contradict that.”

  “Nothing except the victim’s missing driver’s license in his desk!” Melanie exclaimed.

  “I agree that’s good evidence. But you know Warner. He’ll want Welch’s fingerprints on it before it’s worth anything to him.”

  “The killer wore gloves.”

  “Nothing we can do about that. We’re still required to disclose Harris’s failure to identify Welch from the photograph.”

  “Mark, what kind of stickler are you? Harris only saw the Butcher from behind.”

  “What kind of aggressive hothead are you?”

  “One with a psychotic killer stalking her. If you tell Warner that, we’ll lose. He’ll cut Welch loose.”

  “That’s exactly what makes it Brady material. Maybe you should recuse yourself from prosecuting this case, Melanie. Because I know my ethical obligations, and if you don’t disclose this information, I will.”

  “Ahem.”

  Melanie and Mark both whirled. Judge Warner’s deputy clerk, Gabriel Colón, who was a good courthouse buddy of Melanie’s, stood in the doorway, having cleared his throat theatrically to get their attention. Or to get them to stop blabbing their secrets in front of him.

  “Defense counsel just showed up,” Gabriel said. “Judge wants you front and center.”

  “Thanks, Gabe,” Melanie said.

  As she passed by him on her way back to the courtroom, Gabriel winked at her. “My lips are sealed, mami,” he whispered.

  The fact was, it was very important to Melanie to be an ethical prosecutor. She honestly thought Mark Sonschein was being overly legalistic in his interpretation of the evidence. Surely, if a witness hadn’t gotten a good look at a suspect, his failure to recognize him in a photograph was not exculpatory Brady material. If she’d had time to do legal research, Melanie was confident she could have found dozens of cases supporting her view. But she didn’t have time.

  She waited in front of the bench. All the stars had lined up against Melanie this morning, because Donald Kerr, the prominent and respected defense attorney representing Welch, was good friends with Judge Warner. Melanie stood in silence while the judge and the defense lawyer gossiped about some charitable board they served on together.