Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "They're not for sex, Ali," the second chided. "They just serve you grapes and stuff, but you ain't allowed to touch them."

  "Yeah? Well believe you me, that rule's off when I get there. Them sweet young thangs is going to be serving up a lot more than grapes."

  The two men laughed. They were obviously young and looking forward to dying, but that didn't make them easy targets for Marlene. They're set up in the hallway, probably behind something. The only way to come at them is to expose yourself, she thought as she looked around. What I need is a good smokescreen.

  Marlene ran back to the cafeteria and found the laundry cart she'd seen, full of dirty tablecloths and napkins. Apparently, the bigwigs eat better than the peasants today—and off linen. Dashing into the kitchen, she emerged with several large jugs of olive oil and a large tin of cayenne pepper, which she dumped into the laundry cart. She went back in and grabbed a large bucket of old fry grease next to the short-order grill. She hauled it back out to the cafeteria and nearly dropped it. "Jesus, Ertc!" she yelled at her cousin, who was standing in the middle of the room. "You're going to have to stop doing that or I'm going to shoot you just on principle."

  Eric flashed his trademark smile. "I called and the guy said to tell you that the cavalry's on the way but it could take a little time, which, by the way, we don't have much of. Those cops from the security room are on their way. I saw them coming across the trading floor; they'll be here in a minute." Marlene poured half the frying grease in on top of the other ingredients. "Got a lighter?"

  "Yeah, here, but don't lose it. It's my favorite Zippo."

  "If we live, I'll give it back." She explained her plan. "Ready?"

  "I was born ready, sister."

  They left the cafeteria. Eric turned to the left with the remains of the fry grease, which he took to the end of the hall and sloshed across the landing at the bottom of the stairs. He then took up a position in a nook that would give him some cover while keeping the landing in his line of sight.

  Marlene pushed her cart out into the hall and began walking it toward the intersection. They hear me coming but will wait to ambush me, which will let me get close. Ten feet from the intersection, she flipped open the Zippo and tossed it in the cart with a silent Hail Mary for lying to her cousin.

  The fry grease caught, then the olive oil, and finally the whole cart erupted in flame and dense, oily smoke. The cayenne pepper made her eyes water as she pushed the cart just hard enough for it to roll in front of the hallway where the two men waited. She back-pedaled to the filing cabinet and then lay down on the floor to get below the smoke and draw a bead on anyone who emerged.

  Behind her, she heard a gunshot. Sounded like a .380. Game on.

  41

  As Lewis took her seat, Karp could hear a few sniffles coming from the jury box as well as the spectator gallery. It was going to be a minefield, and he would have to pick his way carefully to get to the other side with the jury.

  Karp placed his notepad on the lectern and leaned on it with his elbows as he looked at the jurors. He didn't care if the press, or the spectators—the activists and justice junkies and would-be true-crime authors—could hear him. He needed to have a conversation with the twelve jurors and four alternates in the box.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "first I want to thank you for your service; this has been a tough case to hear and see. I know it doesn't make it any easier on you, but it was as difficult a case to prosecute as I, and certainly my young colleague, have ever had to take on. We understand that Jessica Campbell has a mental defect, but we also understand that mental defects don't excuse responsibility for criminal acts except in a very narrow definition of the law."

  He moved out from behind the lectern, arms crossed and head down for a moment, as he carefully chose his words. "The tears that some of you have shed and I expect will shed again in the jury room, and again when this is all over and you go home, are a natural reaction to the horrors and the tragedy of what happened to the Campbell children last March. They're nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed by; indeed, you have my respect, because despite what you've been put through, there you sit."

  Crossing to the exhibits table, he picked out a portrait photograph of the three children and placed it on the easel. "As a father and a husband, I understand those feelings. But let us not forget that those tears rightfully belong to Hillary, Chelsea, and Benjamin, not their mother. Let us remember that justice belongs to three small children who are not with us here today because of what the defendant knowingly, consciously, and wrongfully did. The only justice that belongs to the defendant is a guilty verdict."

  Karp let his words sink in before going on. "When I say that this has been a tough case to prosecute, it isn't because I have any reservations about the charges being appropriate. Most of the time, it isn't difficult for me to summon righteous indignation when the person sitting where Mrs. Campbell now sits has taken the life of another human being. Sometimes I can understand when a murder happens in the heat of a moment, or through recklessness, but it still does not excuse the behavior. And there are times when I'm absolutely, positively sure that the defendant regrets his or her actions—is genuinely remorseful, and not just because they got caught. But that doesn't excuse the fact that they committed a crime or that it's the deceased who deserves justice and our tears."

  Karp turned toward Lewis and Campbell. "Defense counsel has pointed to the defendant and told you that she is suffering and that this will affect her for the rest of her life. And I'm sure she's right. So how can we, as thoughtful, compassionate human beings, not feel sympathy for her? Well, it's okay to feel sympathy for Jessica Campbell, just like you might feel sympathy for an otherwise 'good guy,' a decent, hardworking family man, who has a few too many to drink, gets behind the wheel of a car, and kills somebody running a red light at an intersection. But having sympathy doesn't mean we excuse the behavior, especially when the defendant knew what she was doing, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. If her life has been negatively impacted by her actions, think about the three other lives and the negative impact on them."

  Returning to the lectern, Karp glanced at his notepad. "In all honesty, what we have going on here with defense counsel's arguments is what I call 'a cruel reversal of the facts.' And to explain what I mean, allow me to digress for a moment and tell you a story about a place called Sobibor ... a concentration camp during World War II where Jews were shipped to be exterminated..."

  "Objection!" Lewis rose from her seat with a scowl on her face. "What does this 'story' have to do with the facts of the case? Dredging up ghosts of Nazi concentration camps is hardly relevant to the trial of my client in New York City. It's an egregious attempt by the prosecutor to draw an imaginary line between Nazis and my client and sway the jury based on emotions, not evidence."

  Judge Dermondy raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Karp?"

  "Your Honor, I believe Miss Lewis was the one who started delving into history, complete with a slide show. In fact, your honor, I have a few slides I'd like to show the jury that are also of historical relevance."

  "My argument was relevant in discussing mental illness," Lewis argued.

  "And mine is relevant in a discussion about mass murder. In fact, it deals with mass murder whose perpetrators often blamed it on a type of mass hysteria."

  "Miss Lewis, I believe you opened the door for this," Dermondy decided. "I'm going to allow it, as well as the slides."

  "Thank you, Your Honor." Karp handed the DVD to the court clerk, who inserted it into the courtroom's multimedia system. As the lights dimmed, a photograph depicting dead bodies neatly stacked like cordwood appeared on the screen.

  "This is a photograph taken in 1943 at Sobibor. The bodies are stacked like that so that they will bum more efficiently." Karp changed to the next photograph. "And this is one of the gas chambers as bodies are being unloaded." Another photograph showed children standing in lines, many holding suitcases and toys. "These Dutch Jewish
children are waiting to be undressed and sent to the gas chamber."

  Thanking good timing for having ordered the DVD from the library to show the bar mitzvah class, Karp left the last photograph up on the screen. "I don't have time to tell you about all the horrors of Sobibor. Other than that 250,000 men, women, and children, most of them Jews, were murdered there. Stripped of everything they owned, including their modesty, herded into gas chambers, murdered, and then taken away to be burned and buried. This went on until a group of brave prisoners ..." he stopped and looked at Sobelman, who sat with a hand over his eyes, " ... escaped carrying the news of what had happened there. So the Germans killed those who still remained in the camp, then tore it down, plowed it under, and planted crops and trees to make it look like it had always been farmland. As far as they were concerned, the camp at Sobibor never existed." Karp flipped through several more photographs, letting each linger just long enough for the horror to sink in, then settled on one that simply looked like a farm. "This was taken that next spring, where the concentration camp once stood. When some of the people who were responsible for Sobibor, and for the other concentration camps that together murdered an estimated 12 million people, were brought to trial for war crimes, many of them pleaded a sort of mass insanity—that they'd been brainwashed by Hitler and the Nazi Party, that they were just following orders, and were, in fact, also victims. They were good people, just lost their minds for a few years—I guess the DSM might even call it a mass schizophrenia—their "real" personalities devolved into monsters. But now that they were better, the world should forgive them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I mean by a cruel reversal of the facts. They were not the victims; they knew what they were doing; they knew it was wrong; and they went ahead and did it anyway ... and then they tried to cover it up, pretend that it never happened."

  Karp pointed at Jessica Campbell. "Neither is she the victim here. She knew what she was doing; she knew that it was wrong; but she went ahead and did it anyway ... and then she tried to cover it up. But because this particular mass murderer is the mother of the victims, instead of a stranger, we're now supposed to overlook all of that, feel sorry for her because she has suffered enough and will have to live with her crime? Ladies and gentlemen, that is truly a cruel reversal of the facts."

  Karp allowed anger to creep into his voice. It was no act, and he had to remind himself to keep it in check. He walked to the prosecution table and poured himself a glass of water. His eyes met with Sobelman's, which were wet with tears. Sometimes justice needs a witness.

  He turned back to the jury. "In her closing, defense counsel played fast and loose with what she said the evidence demonstrated in regard to what Jessica Campbell was supposedly thinking. I contend there was not one bit of evidence to support most of that. I will leave it for you to decide if she was telling the truth. But let's now review the real facts of the case."

  Karp walked over to the easel, removed the photograph of the Campbell children, clipped a large sheet of blank paper to it, and picked up a black magic marker. "One, Jessica Campbell planned this murder," he said, and wrote the numeral "1" and "Planned the murder" on the paper. "Three days before the murders, she drove to Newark where she purchased a footlocker, a padlock, and a knife. These were not random items; she knew what she needed them for and they were very carefully selected. And why did she go to Newark, instead of shopping for the same items closer to home? I believe that the evidence suggests that it was to avoid being recognized. And we know why she should care about that: because she was planning to use these items in a murder."

  Karp wrote the numeral "2" and "No witnesses/No stop."

  "Before drowning her children, the defendant waited for her husband to leave the house and then called to tell the nanny that she would not be needed. Why? So there would not be any witnesses, or anyone who would be able to stop her. If she's so delusional, why didn't she get up that morning and tell her husband, or the nanny, or her parents, or any one of a number of other people, 'God told me to kill my children today'?

  "Three, she drew the bathwater knowing that it would be used as the means to execute her children. Four, she held her two youngest children's heads under water until they stopped moving, even though her middle child tried to fight and claw to stay alive. But that wasn't enough for Hillary, her oldest, who desperately wanted to live, so the defendant, her mother, also had to stab her six times in the chest."

  Jurors and spectators alike wiped at their eyes, but Karp kept at it. "She did this because God told her to, she says. But did she leave her handiwork for the world to see? Hineini ... the ancient Jewish promise to do God's work when called upon ... 'Here I am, God! See, I have done what you have asked. Shout it from every mountaintop!'? ... No, she cleaned up, loaded the bodies in the footlocker, drove them a hundred miles to the north, and dumped them in the river to hide what she'd done, just like the Nazis did at Sobibor. Then she put on a disguise, returned to Manhattan via train—paying in cash so that there'd be no record, and walked home more than twenty blocks rather than take a taxi that might have a driver who would remember picking her up."

  Hands in his pockets, Karp strolled over to the jury box. "Still, she brutally murdered her own children because she thought God wanted her to. Isn't that crazy? Isn't she nuts? The answer is, 'Of course she is.' How else could thoughtful, compassionate people describe someone who would do such a thing? As I said, we know Jessica Campbell suffers from a mental defect. She suffered from delusions that impelled her to kill her children. But should our criminal justice system allow individuals with a delusional belief system that induces irrational motivations which result in violent, wrongful conduct to be exonerated? Isn't one of the major purposes of the criminal justice system to incarcerate those violent criminals who cannot control, and instead act upon, their violent impulses? I believe we heard testimony that a large percentage of those people currently incarcerated suffer from a variety of personality disorders—whether they are anti-social, narcissistic, or schizophrenic. But if we're not going to excuse their behavior, why would we consider excusing the behavior of Jessica Campbell?

  "Defense counsel suggested that if the defendant knew that killing her children was wrong, but wanted to get away with it, she would have come up with a better plan. But I'd wager that every convicted killer wishes he or she had come up with a better plan. Heck, some didn't even try to hide their crimes, which doesn't make sense, but it also doesn't mean they were not responsible when they killed another human being."

  Wrapping up, Karp analyzed the insanity defense: Was the defendant aware of the nature and consequences of her actions? And did she know it was wrong? "I don't know about you, but it offends my notion of common sense that the criminal justice system creates—by the misuse of the insanity defense—the very mechanism for violent offenders to avoid responsibility and escape punishment.

  "How do we know Jessica Campbell intended to kill her children? She planned the crime, she bought the materials to commit it, and she carried out her plan—not with a banana or a bathtub full of potato chips, but with a knife and a tub full of water. She drowned them and stabbed them until they were dead—not unconscious, not wounded ... dead. They fought back, surely a clue that killing them was wrong. I urge you to look at the photographs of Jessica's arms and think about what the last moments were like for those poor little kids. And then think about the efforts she made after they were dead—ask yourselves, Were those the actions of a person who was so out of her mind that she didn't know what she was doing, or were those the actions of someone who felt guilty, who was trying to hide what she had done because she didn't want to be caught and punished? It doesn't matter if it was a rational plan; our prisons are full of the creators of irrational plans."

  Karp walked back over to the prosecution table and took another sip of water, not because he was thirsty but because he wanted the jury to have time to absorb what he'd said.

  "The defense counsel asked you to consider what you w
ould do if you truly believed that God asked you to do some horrible thing because there was some greater purpose. I don't believe that a great and compassionate God would ask such things of us.... But isn't that the same argument used by Islamic terrorists when they fly airplanes into office buildings, or massacre women and children on school buses, or blow themselves up in places of worship? Don't they say they are doing God's will?"

  Karp let the image hang in the air like the pall that still hung over his city. "Ladies and gentlemen, if it's okay for Jessica Campbell to knowingly, wrongfully do what she did because she believed she was obeying God, then by that argument we cannot in good faith hold terrorists responsible for their actions either. They, too, believe that God told them to do it. So what's the difference?

  "There is none. Pointing the finger at God, or Hitler, or Allah, or Osama bin Laden and saying, 'He told me to do it,' does not absolve anyone from personal responsibility for their actions. Ladies and gentlemen, save your tears for Hillary, Chelsea, and Benjamin. Save justice for Jessica Campbell. In the name of the People of the State of New York, I ask you to find her guilty of the murder of Hillary, guilty of the murder of Chelsea, and guilty of the murder of baby Benjamin."

  With summations concluded, Dermondy instructed the jury on the law, sent them to deliberate, and adjourned the court. As he rose from his seat, there was a commotion at the back of the courtroom. The cause became clear when Clay Fulton pushed through the last of the spectators.

  "Is there something we can help you with, Detective Fulton?" Dermondy asked.

  "Forgive me, Your Honor," Fulton replied. "But I urgently need to speak to Mr. Karp about an entirely different matter."

  "By all means, detective. Mr. Farley, will you see that the rest of these people clear the courtroom at once?"

  "Yes, sir," Farley replied and turned to those spectators, mostly media types, who lingered to see what went on between Fulton and Karp. "All right, folks, show's over for today. Everybody clear the courtroom. Thank you ... that's it, move along."