Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “This is on page one hundred and twenty,” Karp said. “You asked, ‘Did Coach O’Toole tell you to lie to ACAA investigators if they asked you questions about the party?’ Now, read the next lines.”

  “‘That’s not what he said,’” Larkin read. “‘He told me to tell the truth. He said there’s never such a thing as one lie because one lie creates another lie until nobody knows what the truth is.’”

  Karp closed his copy of the transcript. “Until nobody knows what the truth is,” he repeated. “Mr. Larkin, after what we just heard, do you still feel that the only substantive, relevant information was on the nine pages of the transcript you created?”

  Larkin shrugged. “It was my opinion that the boys were lying to protect the coach.”

  “Nine pages of truth, to a hundred and twenty-six pages of lies,” Karp said. “That’s a whole lot of lying, Mr. Larkin. So many lies that nobody knows what the truth is, right, Mr. Larkin?”

  “Objection,” Zusskin said wearily. “Counsel is making a speech.”

  Karp looked at Larkin, then Zusskin, then the representatives of the ACAA, and snorted in disgust. “I withdraw the ‘speech,’ Your Honor. And I’m done with this witness.”

  Zusskin rose tiredly to his feet for redirect, but he seemed lost as he blinked at Larkin without speaking. One of the ACAA reps reached over the bar and tugged on his coat; the attorney leaned back and listened. When he looked up, it was with relief written all over his face.

  “Your Honor, we have no further questions for Mr. Larkin,” he said. “But may I approach the bench?”

  “Be my guests,” the judge said, and nodded to Karp and Meyers to join them.

  Zusskin smiled at Karp as he walked up, as if ready to offer the deal of a lifetime. “My clients—the ACAA and the university, which, considering the current circumstances of Mr. Huttington and Mr. Barnhill, is now represented by the Board of Regents—have decided that there is no reason to continue this trial. They are prepared to offer a very generous sum to settle the case, as well as reinstate Coach O’Toole to his former position at the University of Northwest Idaho.”

  “May I inquire as to the change of heart?” the judge asked.

  Zusskin spread his hands, shook his head, and smiled. “Just that the jury might misinterpret some of what has been said here. And we are concerned that the complainant, Rufus Porter, may not have been entirely truthful.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, everything he said was a lie,” Karp remarked. “Your clients are just trying to buy their way out of one huge expensive embarrassment.”

  “So, Mr. Karp, does that mean you are turning down the offer to negotiate a settlement?” the judge asked with an amused look on his face.

  “No, I owe it to my client to present the offer,” Karp said. “Give me just a moment.”

  Every eye in the courtroom followed Karp’s mission to the plaintiff’s table, where he sat and spoke quietly to O’Toole for perhaps thirty seconds with Meyers listening in. Then Karp stood up and returned to the judge’s bench with a big smile on his face, which Zusskin misinterpreted.

  “We have a deal?” Zusskin grinned.

  “No way.” Karp grinned back.

  “What?” Zusskin replied, frowning.

  “No way, Jose,” Karp chuckled. “My client wants complete vindication from this jury and this court.”

  The judge sat back and said aloud so that everyone in the courtroom could hear, “Well, then on that note, Mr. Zusskin, call your next witness, please.”

  Zusskin put his hands in his pants and rocked back on his heels. “Uh, Your Honor, we had intended to call Clyde Barnhill to the stand, but given the circumstances of which I’m sure you’ve been made aware, we, uh, won’t be doing that.”

  “So are you resting, Mr. Zusskin?”

  Zusskin looked back at the ACAA reps, who nodded as one. “Looks that way, Your Honor,” he said, and tried to smile but failed.

  Allen straightened up. “Well, then, if there are no further witnesses, I guess we can move to closing arguments. Yes, what is it, Mr. Karp?”

  “Your Honor, there is one request, we’d like to recall Kip Huttington back to the stand.”

  Zusskin whirled and stalked back up to the judge, where, when Karp and Meyers joined him, he whispered, “He can’t do that. Mr. Huttington has already appeared and been dismissed. And in light of what happened over the weekend, I doubt Mr. Huttington’s lawyer will let him take the stand unless it is to invoke his Fifth Amendment privileges against self-incrimination.”

  “Au contraire,” Karp whispered back. “Mr. Huttington has waived his Fifth and his right to an attorney. Your Honor, I am recalling Mr. Huttington to correct the record from his prior testimony. He will testify, among other things, that he lied when he said that Coach O’Toole confessed to him.”

  The judge nodded. “Then by all means, let’s get him up here and hear what he has to say.”

  The spectators in the courtroom gasped as a handcuffed Kip Huttington shuffled into the courtroom wearing a jail jumpsuit. A deputy walked alongside with a hand on his arm, though it looked like it was more to support the quaking man than out of concern he might attempt escape.

  Huttington kept his head and eyes down as he climbed into the witness stand. Once seated, the judge reminded him that he could still consider himself under oath.

  Karp wasted no time. “Mr. Huttington, on Friday you testified that Coach O’Toole came to your office and confessed that he’d known about this party and paid for the alcohol and strippers. Was that true?”

  Huttington shook his head.

  “Speak, Mr. Huttington,” Karp demanded. “The jury can’t hear you rattling your head back and forth, and the court reporter is obliged to accurately record your testimony.”

  Huttington flinched but spoke into the microphone. “No. Coach O’Toole never said that.”

  “Why did you testify that he did?”

  “My attorney at the time, Clyde Barnhill, told me to.”

  “Why?”

  “We were worried about the case.”

  “Is there a reason you were so anxious to get rid of Coach O’Toole?”

  “He wouldn’t let Rufus Porter back on the team.”

  “Was there anybody demanding that you get rid of Coach O’Toole so that Rufus Porter would be allowed back on the team?”

  “His father, John Porter.”

  “So you lied?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was being blackmailed.”

  “Blackmailed? Whatever for?” Karp acted as if this were the first he’d heard about the issue.

  Huttington’s head dropped and he began to cry.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Huttington,” Karp said, letting his voice rise.

  “I got a girl pregnant. Maria Santacristina. She was going to tell my wife, ruin me. I panicked and asked Mr. Barnhill to help. He called John Porter, who…who…who made the arrangements.”

  “Arrangements? What arrangements?”

  “To have her killed.”

  Again, the spectators gasped. A woman juror covered her mouth and gave a small cry.

  “Do you know how they murdered Maria Santacristina?”

  Huttington nodded but couldn’t speak. He just kept sniffling and trying to suppress sobs.

  “Come now, Mr. Huttington,” Karp said angrily. “The court reporter can’t hear you nodding your head, nor can she transcribe your sniffles and moans. Do you know how they murdered Maria Santacristina?”

  “YES!” Huttington screamed, looking up, his eyes red from tears and hate. “THEY BURIED HER ALIVE IN MY CAR!”

  The woman juror cried out. “Oh my God!” Others in the courtroom echoed the sentiment.

  Karp waited for the muttering to subside, and then turned to a new line of assault. “Okay, Mr. Huttington. So you were aware that a young woman, who you’d impregnated, was murdered on your behalf. And then you participated in this farce against my client beca
use the murderers were using it to blackmail you. But do you have any idea why the ACAA would be so anxious to participate in this travesty?”

  One of the ACAA reps poked Zusskin in the back. He bounced to his feet as if he’d sat on a tack. “Objection. Your Honor, there’s no evidence that my clients, the ACAA, were aware of this heinous act. Mr. Karp is painting with too broad a brush.”

  Allen, who was resting his head on his hand as he listened to the testimony, glanced at Zusskin. “Overruled. Continue, Mr. Karp.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp responded. “I believe the brush will narrow. Please answer my question, Mr. Huttington.”

  “It was easy to get them to believe the allegations against Coach O’Toole were true,” Huttington said. “They were still mad at him for his comments at his brother’s funeral.”

  “You heard their representatives say this?”

  “Yes, the judge, Figa, said before the hearing that the ACAA was ‘tired of the O’Tooles opening their big mouths.’ That’s a quote.”

  “Was there someone else specifically who works for the ACAA who you know wanted to get rid of Coach O’Toole?”

  Zusskin jumped to his feet. His face was red and sweating. “Your Honor, this is improper examination. Counsel is haranguing this man into making wild statements. I just cannot—”

  Allen didn’t even bother to look at the attorney. “Mr. Zusskin, sit down.”

  Karp nodded at Huttington. “So?”

  “Yes,” Huttington answered. “Steve Zusskin.”

  “Any particular reason he wanted to do that?” Karp asked, glancing over at Zusskin, who had buried his face in his hands.

  “Yes, we paid him,” Huttington replied. “We wired two hundred thousand dollars into his bank account from a university slush fund supplied by John Porter. He was supposed to build a case with our help, and Mr. Larkin’s, so that the panel would have something to use against Coach O’Toole.”

  Karp glanced back at Marlene, who was smiling at him with tears in her eyes. “Mr. Huttington, have you been made any promises by me, or anyone associated with the plaintiff, or the prosecutor in Sawtooth, of leniency for any criminal charges you may be facing in exchange for your truthful testimony here today?”

  Huttington shook his head. “I will have to testify, truthfully, now and if called upon at any other trial. The only thing I’ve been told is that if I do tell the truth, the prosecutor will not recommend the death penalty for the murder of Maria Santacristina.”

  “Do you know where you’ll be going from here?”

  “Yes,” Huttington said, and began to cry again. “I’m going to hell.”

  Karp was surprised by the answer but recovered quickly. “Well, yes, I’m sure you will,” he replied. “But I meant while you’re still among the living?”

  Huttington blew his nose into a tissue. “Yes. Some of the people I will be testifying against are considered dangerous. I’m going to be placed in solitary confinement in a federal prison for my safety.”

  “And do you ever expect to walk out of prison a free man?”

  Huttington looked up at the jury. There were no sympathetic faces looking back. He glanced at the spectators; there wasn’t a smile or a hint of forgiveness there either. Then he looked at Karp. “No. I will spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  29

  “MR. FULTON JUST CALLED FROM THE LOBBY. HE SAYS THE package arrived and he’s on his way up.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Milquetost,” Karp replied to his receptionist, “show him in when he arrives, please.” He then sat back at his desk on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, looking down at the worn yellow legal pad with all of its arrows and balloons and names. Then he tossed it in the trash can. It had served its purpose, but he wasn’t going to need it anymore.

  Next, he gathered the photographs of the murdered schoolchildren and placed them in a large manila envelope. “Sleep tight, kids,” he said. “Tonight we’ll get him.”

  Karp stood and looked out the window. He loved April in Manhattan. The trees in Foley Square across Centre Street were in full leaf and had yet to fade in summer’s heat. The city felt young, renewed, ready to take on the world. He should have been enjoying his latest triumph. But even the end of the O’Toole trial had seemed anticlimactic.

  First, a representative for the university’s Board of Regents had met with him and O’Toole and gone a long way toward “healing” by apologizing for Huttington and Barnhill and what the coach had endured. The representative made no excuses, except to say that the regents had trusted the university president and attorney. So when their attorney, Karen Welt, then offered a large settlement and a lifetime “should he want it” contract as the baseball coach, O’Toole accepted it. “It’s where I want to be,” he’d said. “And I think we’ve all learned a great deal.”

  The ACAA was another matter. The association had replaced Zusskin, who was under indictment for suborning perjury and for the obstruction of the administration of justice. And the defense had switched to contending that the association had been duped by “the criminal masterminds” Huttington and Barnhill, as well as betrayed by Zusskin and Larkin.

  “The panel was merely following the rules as set forth in the American Collegiate Athletic Association bylaws,” the attorney, a nervous young man, said in his closing argument.

  However, by the time Meyers finished his closing—throwing in the word “malice” at least a dozen times—the jurors looked like they could hardly wait to get to the deliberation room and cut his client a big, fat check. Like the ACAA hearing panel, they took less than an hour to return with a judgment in the plaintiff’s favor.

  If Mikey O’Toole had wanted, he could have retired a very wealthy man. But coaching was in his blood, he told Karp. “I’d just get bored being retired.”

  Then it was back to New York for Karp and Marlene, where, with a nod from the doctors and a kiss from his wife, Karp returned to work at the DAO. In the meantime, Zook kept them informed about the progress of the cases against those implicated in the Santacristina murder.

  Most of it was going well, except for three disappointing developments. The first was that Barnhill wasn’t talking, and according to Huttington, he was the link, along with Big John Porter, to who knew how and why the computer system at the university was being used by an unknown group, or groups, connected to the Unified Church.

  The second was that before the police could apprehend Big John, his pickup truck was discovered upside down in the Payette River. The truck had apparently swerved off the road for some unknown reason and rolled down the embankment. He’d managed to get out of the truck but never made it to shore.

  “His body was found about a hundred feet downstream,” Zook said. “Funny, but he was only a yard or two from shore when he must have slipped and hit his head on a rock. Actually, he hit his head on a rock over and over, if you get my drift. But other than that, we don’t have enough to say it was foul play.”

  The third development had rendered asking Porter and Barnhill about the computers moot. The FBI had flown in specialists to try to break into encrypted files on the Cray computer. However, their attempts triggered a computer virus that had crashed the system, frying every bit of data in the files.

  Karp was wondering what was in those files when Fulton popped his head in the door. “I got that tape you wanted,” he said.

  “Great. Care to stick around while I look at it?” Karp said. “I could use your eyes.”

  Two hours later, Mrs. Milquetost buzzed to say that Jon Ellis had arrived for his appointment. Karp and Fulton rose to shake the hand of the assistant director of special operations for Homeland Security.

  “Thanks for coming,” Karp said. “I know this is all short notice.”

  “No problem,” Ellis replied. “Clay here said you needed to talk and might need my help with something important.”

  Karp nodded. “I got a call from some guy—sounded Russian—said to meet him tonight in
East River Park under the Williamsburg Bridge. He says he has a copy of a photograph purporting to be of Jamys Kellagh meeting with Nadya Malovo and Andrew Kane in Aspen. Says it’s a fax and not good quality, but good enough to nail this Kellagh character.”

  “I thought there was only one copy according to that reporter’s story,” Ellis said.

  Karp shrugged. “So did I, but this guy claims that a copy was made. Now he wants to give it to me. But I have to meet him in person at the park, tonight at midnight.”

  Ellis looked thoughtful, then nodded. “So what do you need from me?” he asked. “Obviously, we’re itching to take Jamys Kellagh down.”

  Karp grinned. “I thought you might be interested. And to be honest, except for my man Fulton here, I’m not sure who I can trust to provide security.”

  Ellis grinned back. “Well, if you can’t trust Homeland Security, then who can you trust?” His face turned serious. “Forgive me if this is out of line, and I asked your daughter this once before, but what about Jaxon? I know he’s out of the agency, but he’s a friend and, heck, he probably has more firepower and technology as a private guy than I do with the government.”

  Karp looked troubled, then sighed. “You’re right. I’ve known him for years and I’ve always liked him. And I’m not saying he can’t be trusted. But considering some of the unanswered questions, I’d like to leave him out of it for now.”

  “Of course,” Ellis said. “I think he’s one of the good guys, too, even if he went for the money. And hell, I’ve been involved in a lot of this, you could just as well put me in the same category.”

  “I’ve got to trust somebody,” Karp replied. “This photograph could break this wide open. But I can’t take a chance that it’s a setup.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got to trust somebody,” Ellis agreed. “It’s too bad that in these times, you can never be sure who. It’s a dirty business, though, when it makes friends suspicious of their friends.”