by Sydney Bauer
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
Jones’s brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of it. ‘You’ve been working together?’
‘Yes.’
‘And all this commotion this morning . . . ?’
‘Your Honour,’ began David, ‘our first witness, a young man by the name of Jack Delgado, was due at court at nine, but I am afraid he has gone missing.’ David looked at McNally.
McNally went to talk but Jones held up his hand once again.
‘Missing?’ repeated the judge, his broad shoulders rounding further into the huddle, his large black hand cupping the microphone in front of him. ‘What do you mean missing?’
‘The young man was to give testimony regarding some extremely pertinent but distressing information as to his involvement in events on the night of Ms Maloney’s death – when Mr Delgado was present in her apartment with Connor Kincaid and another boy by the name of Will Cusack.’
‘You really do have an alternative theory in regards to the victim’s murder, Mr Cavanaugh?’
David realised the judge thought he had been bluffing all along. ‘It’s not just a theory, Judge, we have evidence.’
‘Rubbish!’ A now seething Marshall cut David short. ‘Your Honour, forgive me, but Mr Cavanaugh has already approached me with this unethical load of lies. His theatrics, his stall tactics, they are nothing but acts of disrespect carried out by a desperate man trying to pull a nonexistent case together.’ Marshall turned to David. ‘Tell me, Counsellor, did your first witness take the money and run? Did your client’s family pay him off to tell the court some cockamamie story that—’
‘Jack Delgado is dead.’ McNally couldn’t hold it in any longer. And even though David had suspected something had gone terribly wrong, the pain in his chest hit him like a road train. Jack . . . Mike’s Jack . . . the kid with all the promise.
‘The boy is dead?’ asked Jones.
‘Yes, Your Honour. I just received a text from my partner, Detective Carla Torres. She told me the Roseville police attended a call about a possible suicide in Branch Brook Park. The police found the body of a young man matching Mr Delgado’s description hanging from a tree overlooking the pond, Sir.’
David’s heart sank.
‘But how do you know it’s your witness?’ asked Jones.
‘It’s him, Your Honour,’ said David.
McNally met David’s eye – his face overcome with an expression that said, ‘We have failed’. And David nodded, before turning instinctively to take in Vicki Delgado and his good friend Mike beside her.
And that was when Vicki Delgado screamed – before the back door whooshed opened again and David’s breath left him, as the last person he expected to see came striding into the courtroom.
102
Will Cusack entered from the back, talking three long steps before stopping short.
The room was silent, electric almost – but what unnerved Will most was the fact that the entire fucking congregation had turned to look at him.
‘What?’ Will wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure of whom to ask it. But then he saw Cavanaugh and that asshole cop turn from the judge to meet his eye, and then a familiar voice called out.
‘You bastard!’ The crowd swivelled back toward the front of the room as Connor’s words filled the space with echo. ‘You fucking bastard!’ Connor was going ballistic, his voice cracking in between the sobs.
Will’s instinct kicked in – immediately sending him into defence mode. ‘What have you done, Connor?’ he asked as Connor rose to his feet, turning in the limited space around him to face Will front on. ‘What the hell have you done?’
‘What have I done?’ yelled Connor, and Will looked to the big black judge up front, expecting him to control his fucking courtroom, only to see him place his gavel purposefully on the bench before him, like an umpire taking off his whistle, to see what would happen when opposing teams went at it.
Connor leapt up on his bench, two spectators in the seat behind him scuttling sideways just in case the kid decided to jump right over their heads. And that was when Will knew that something beyond the obvious had gone terribly fucking wrong. He just needed to work out what.
‘Connor,’ said Will, taking a slight step forward, ‘what lies did you tell them?’
‘Lies? I told them the truth, Will,’ said Connor, now struggling against the arms of Mike Murphy which were wrapped firmly around his waist. ‘I told them what I saw – what we saw, what you did and . . .’
‘Order!’ called the judge, now thumping his fucking hammer in double time.
Will took this as his cue to take two more strides forward. He had learnt long ago that showing fear only resulted in getting a bigger beating. And he had no intention of getting a beating – hadn’t then, didn’t now.
David moved quickly, sensing that unless he put himself between the two boys, one of them was going to get hurt. More than that, he felt a desperate need to look Will Cusack in the eye, to confront the young man who had killed his friend, and tell him that he would pay for all the pain he had inflicted – on Marilyn, on Chris, on Rebecca and on Mike, on Connor, on David and on David’s family and most of all, on Vicki Delgado and her beloved son, Jack.
‘I underestimated you,’ he said, his green eyes meeting Will’s dark gaze straight on. ‘You came back – for the extra fifty. Was it worth it, Will?’ he asked, advancing on Cusack now. ‘Was the $100,000 worth setting up your friends and ruining Chris Kincaid’s family?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Will, his left eye twitching ever so slightly before focusing on David once again.
‘What does it feel like, Will? What does it feel like to stand here and know that you took the life of a woman who spent her entire life wishing for nothing but the happiness of others? What does it feel like to be a sick and cowardly criminal who murdered once out of greed and a second time – if indirectly – out of selfishness.’
Cusack’s eyes flickered once again. ‘You’re making this shit up. You know nothing about me or what I did. I didn’t kill your friend, Cavanaugh – and this bullshit about a second murder . . .’ Cusack’s eyes shot toward McNally. ‘You and your fucking Keystone Cop friend are just trying to set me up.’
And then David saw it – the look of genuine confusion on Will Cusack’s face. He did not know. He did not know.
‘Jack Delgado is dead, Will. Your best friend, your brother, is dead.’
David watched as Will’s eyes went to Connor, and then to the woman, now sobbing on the bench beside Mike. And for the first time since he had met him, David saw an expression of real pain on Will Cusack’s face – an expression of anguish, of remorse, of sorrow. But as far as David was concerned, it was way too late for Cusack to make amends. Will Cusack had made his bed, and now he was going to lie in it.
Will felt the words before he heard them. He FELT. He had switched off the ability to feel many years ago, but now he felt the burning in his stomach, the pain behind his eyes.
‘Jack . . . I didn’t know . . . I don’t understand . . . How? Why?’
‘He took his own life, Will, because he would rather die than speak out against you,’ answered Cavanaugh. ‘Because to him, you were family.’
Will’s arms dropped like dead weights beside him as his eyes sought out Connor once again before meeting those of the woman who was the closest thing to a mother he had ever known.
‘Mrs D?’ he said, calling her by the name he always had. ‘Please . . . I didn’t know, I didn’t know . . .’
A sobbing Vicki Delgado lifted her eyes, and in them Will saw more pain than he had ever seen in his whole entire life. And he’d seen a lot of pain – seen it, felt it, stored it away.
Will went to go to her, but Cavanaugh blocked his way. And so Will, consumed by grief, by guilt, braced up, his broad shoulders filling with fury, his face now mere inches from Cavanaugh’s, whose expression was filled with hate.
‘You think I did this?’ asked
Cusack, his voiced sounding so genuine that David was taken aback.
‘I don’t think, I know,’ returned David, determined not to let the boy’s distress – feigned or not – get to him. ‘It’s over, Will. There is no way that you’re walking out of here with your money and your attitude intact. Jack may not be here to testify, but in the end, it doesn’t matter, because we have proof.’
David took a breath, praying harder than he had ever prayed for anything before that his proof would be at the ready.
His eyes flashed to Mike, and then to Chris, and then finally to his mother and brother, who stood tall and proud mere feet away from where David and Will Cusack were standing.
And then he felt it, the subtle tap on his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed Arthur leave and return to the courtroom but he must have, considering he was now standing before him – holding two pieces of faxed paper in his weathered right hand.
‘It’s here,’ said Arthur, and as he handed the sheets to David, he slid his finger toward the short word in the far left-hand corner of the front page. And David realised it was the one he had been hoping for – the five-letter word that read ‘Match’.
Will Cusack moved an inch forward, desperate to confirm that his worst fear had been realised. For months he had tried desperately to conceal the information that Cavanaugh was now staring at – thinking of nothing but his responsibility, every minute, of every day.
Cavanaugh made no attempt to hide it, on the contrary the ‘sure-of-himself’ attorney was holding it out . . . flat . . . so that Will could witness his own execution. And so Will advanced yet another inch, so that he might read the information, laid out like a nightmare before of him.
Will looked down to see a front sheet containing two columns – the column on the left displaying data and some sort of DNA imagery relating to a sample analysed in early 2002, and its complement, on the right, showing a second lot of data and imagery relating to a sample extracted from under Marilyn Maloney’s fingernails on January 26 of this year.
Cusack knew what Cavanaugh was looking for, he was looking for a relationship between the two DNA images, expecting to see similarities that supported his theory that the person who owned the DNA in the left column was the father of the person who owned the DNA in the right.
But what he expected to see and what he saw were two different things altogether. The DNA images were not similar – they were identical. In other words, the person who had died in 9/11 and been identified by the DNA collected afterwards, was exactly the same person who had murdered a woman close to a decade later.
‘They’re the same,’ said Cavanaugh, his voice barely above a whisper, his eyes looking up from the sheet to meet Will Cusack’s head on.
Will nodded, before leaning in closer still until his lips were mere inches from Cavanaugh’s ear. ‘Please, I beg you,’ he whispered. ‘Jack is dead. You gain nothing from revealing this here.’
And as Will withdrew, he searched once again for Cavanaugh’s eyes, praying that Cavanaugh would understand that he and Will were not so different after all. For just as Cavanaugh had risked everything to defend one friend, Will had risked everything to protect another.
David felt unsteady on his feet – unsteady, dizzy, dazed.
The samples were a match – not a partial match but a hundred per cent match, meaning the only familial relationship these two could have held would be that of identical twins.
A turn of the page confirmed it, as David saw the name of the boy whose body had been identified from the DNA taken from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The boy’s name was Joshua Delgado, and at the time of death, he was nine.
‘Mr Cavanaugh,’ boomed Jones. The judge had cut David a lot of slack, but his patience had finally run out. But David wasn’t ready to address the judge as yet. First he needed to ask one final question of Jack Delgado’s loyal friend before him.
‘He did this?’ he asked. ‘It was Jack, not you, who raped and murdered Marilyn Maloney – and you’ve been the one protecting him.’
‘No,’ said Will.
‘No?’ repeated David.
‘Jack didn’t rape or kill Marilyn Maloney. In fact, he didn’t rape anyone – just as me and Connor didn’t kill anyone intentionally when we threw that woman’s body in the river.’
‘You thought she was dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Jack’s DNA . . .’ David shook his head to clear it. ‘How did it get under . . . ?’
‘He found her like that,’ interrupted Cusack. ‘He tried to help her, and she scratched him before she passed out.’
‘Somebody else raped Marilyn?’
‘No.’
‘No!’
‘MR CAVANAUGH!’
David finally turned to meet the judge’s eye. The large man was standing, his gavel brandished like a weapon before him.
‘You want proof?’ whispered the boy, who had moved close to David’s ear once again.
David nodded, prompting Will to pull out his cell phone and send a pre-written text to an unidentified number before signalling for David to turn toward the courtroom’s back door once again. David did as he was directed, and the entire room followed his lead as the door was forced open, first by an inch, then by a foot, and then by a space big enough to allow the ‘proof’ to make her way into the room.
‘Rob?’ said the woman, her blonde hair pulled back tightly from her perfectly shaped face. ‘Oh God, Rob, tell me please, what has happened? What have I started, Rob? What in the hell have I done?’
103
Tuesday – the following day
‘Her name was Anna Chesnokov,’ said Marilyn. She was seated in the judge’s chambers with her knees close together. She wore a simple blue skirt and a plain white blouse, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her skin clean, clear.
‘She was my friend,’ Marilyn continued as Judge Jones listened carefully to the story that the other three men in the room – David, McNally and Elliott Marshall – had now heard several times before, ‘and I was hers. She had no-one. She was Russian – wife to a man who had “ordered” her from Russia.’
‘And this man owned your building?’ asked a calm-voiced Jones, who had requested this meeting as a ‘post mortem’ to events revealed at yesterday’s trial.
Marilyn nodded. ‘Yes. His name is Alexei Chesnokov. I gathered, from the little that Anna told me, that he was into some sort of organised crime. When she first arrived, he treated her like a princess – expensive clothes, expensive shoes – but after a while, he started abusing her. I noticed the bruises, even when she tried to hide them. I suppose that’s how my dental records must have got confused with hers – because I let her use my health insurance card to see a dentist after her husband shattered her two front teeth. I knew it was illegal, but she was all alone and her husband controlled her money. It was the only way I could help her.’
Jones nodded before turning his attention to McNally. ‘So when ME Curtis approached Ms Maloney’s health insurance company to put her in contact with Ms Maloney’s dentist . . . ?’
‘The insurance company gave Doctor Curtis information based on the last dental claim made under Ms Maloney’s name,’ finished McNally, ‘knowing the ME would want the most recent set of X-rays in order to confirm identification.’
David understood it now – why Chris had frowned at the mention of the dentist named Doctor Ivan Bashukov at trial. Marilyn had seen a dentist by the name of Doctor George Wallace for her whole entire life – the same dentist the Cavanaugh kids had frequented – but Anna Chesnokov wanted a dentist who could speak Russian, and so Marilyn had sought Bashukov out.
Jones nodded for Marilyn to go on, and Marilyn took a breath.
‘In the days before her death, Anna told me she overheard Alexei talking on the telephone, something about ordering another bride. She said she feared he might do something to get rid of her. But I told her in many ways the new bride could be a good thing – because he might set her free.’
Marilyn swallowed before continuing. ‘I asked her if she wanted to stay with me, but she refused. She was concerned Alexei would seek her out and harm me in the process.’
‘So this man, Chesnokov,’ Jones turned to David. ‘You believe he beat and raped his wife when she confronted him about the second bride.’
‘It makes sense,’ said David. ‘Perhaps Chesnokov assumed his wife would run for fear of another beating – which was probably exactly what he wanted. He obviously didn’t expect her to die.’
‘We have a warrant out for the man’s arrest,’ said McNally. ‘A few months ago Mr Chesnokov contacted the building super, Mr Sacramoni, and gave him a new address to send the rent cheques – a security box in Manhattan. We’re working with the NYPD who are staking out the box, while we try to establish Mr Chesnokov’s current place of residence.’
Jones nodded once again, before his wide brow contracted into furrows. ‘I still don’t understand how the boys got the apartments confused?’
McNally looked to David for him to take this one.
‘During her confession to Father Michael Murphy,’ explained David, ‘Ms Maloney made a reference to living in the “penthouse” at 5 Park Avenue, and while it was a comment made in jest, the boys took it literally – assuming Marilyn lived in the single apartment on the building’s top floor.’
‘And the idea to steal the money?’ asked Jones.
‘Was Will Cusack’s,’ said David. ‘Cusack thought, that by pretending to be Chris Kincaid, he could lure Ms Maloney to the Hilton. He’d heard her express her own objections to taking the $100,000 and so he thought getting it back off her would be relatively easy. While Cusack was at the hotel, he sent Jack Delgado to Ms Maloney’s apartment – just in case she didn’t bring the money with her.’
‘And Jack Delgado went to the wrong one,’ said Jones.