Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  “Does that mean you have found connections?”

  “We have confidence that those connections exist.”

  “And does that mean that you have found more murders, beyond the eighteen Sam discovered?”

  “The total is now twenty-six, and may go higher.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “I eagerly await further information.”

  “Keep awaiting,” she says, and hangs up.

  I hang up as well, since talking to a dead phone seems an unproductive use of my time and conversational talents.

  I turn to Laurie. “The whole thing just exploded.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, no one saw Joseph Gamble murder James Haley,” Dylan says.

  He is speaking from a podium set dead center in the courtroom, midway between the defense and prosecution tables. He only questions witnesses from there; I am much less formal, and have a tendency to pace.

  “That is something on which Mr. Carpenter and I agree.” Then he smiles one of his fake smiles. “That will not happen often, I assure you.”

  He waits for the jury to smile and silently chuckle. They are paying rapt attention now; as the testimony goes on, some of them will be fighting to stay awake. It has taken us a day and a half to choose them, seven women and five men, six African Americans, five Caucasians, and one Hispanic. It is a jury that is excellent for the prosecution or excellent for the defense, or somewhere in the middle. Anyone who thinks they can tell at this point is lying.

  Dylan continues, “When a witness says something that he or she personally experiences, that is called direct evidence. Everything else is circumstantial evidence.

  “In other words, to use an example that you may have heard before, if tonight before you go to bed, you look outside and see it snowing, then you will obviously know it snowed. That is direct evidence—eyewitness evidence, if you will—that it snowed.

  “But let’s say you go to sleep and it is not snowing and there is no snow on the ground. Then, when you wake up in the morning, there is six inches of snow on the ground. You know that it snowed during the night just as surely as if you had actually seen it snowing. That is circumstantial evidence, and it can be as reliable, even more reliable, than direct evidence.

  “This is by no means unusual. When people commit crimes, they generally like to do it in secret, so that they cannot be caught and charged. It is rare that eyewitness testimony exists, and believe it or not, studies have shown that eyewitness testimony can often be wrong. People often don’t see things clearly, possibly because events happen so fast or there is so much stress involved.

  “The kind of evidence we will present always sees clearly and doesn’t feel stress. It will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Joseph Gamble shot and killed James Haley. Just like in my example where you knew with certainty that it snowed during the night, you will come to know with certainty that Mr. Gamble is guilty of this awful crime.

  “Mr. Haley did nothing to deserve his fate. He was a hardworking man, had never been charged with or convicted of a crime in his life. Ironically, he was trying to show the world the perils and difficulties of living in an economically disadvantaged inner city, hoping to maybe contribute to making things better. That work cost him his life.

  “You’re going to hear some strange things in this trial. Mr. Carpenter is actually going to try to turn this into a canine caper. I kid you not.” He smiles and shakes his head at the insanity of what he’s just predicted I will do.

  “My suggestion to you is the same suggestion you will be hearing from Judge Matthews: focus on the evidence and judge it fairly, without prejudgments or bias. You have a very serious task in front of you. As a citizen, there is nothing you can do that is more important. On behalf of Passaic County and the State of New Jersey, I thank you for not shirking this responsibility. You are standing up and saying that the law will be followed, and that those who do not follow the law will have to face the consequences.

  “I know you will do your job honorably and with dedication.”

  Dylan sits down, a solemn look on his face as if he has just delivered the most important message anyone will ever hear.

  Judge Matthews turns to me. “Mr. Carpenter, do you wish to give your opening statement now?”

  “Yes, thank you, Your Honor.”

  I always take this option, rather than waiting until the beginning of the defense case, because I don’t want the prosecution’s opening statement to stand unrefuted. It’s bad enough that they will be parading a long series of witnesses and evidence against Joey; I need the jury to know there is another side to the story.

  In this situation, it’s even more important that I speak now. Judges guard their calendar days like they are gold bullion. It’s Friday today, and I was hoping that Judge Matthews would delay the opening arguments until Monday. But the idea of today being wasted was abhorrent to her.

  Because of that, the jury is going to have this weekend with nothing to consider other than the opening statements. I can’t have them pondering only the prosecution’s point of view and not ours too; they need to spend the next two days knowing that this trial is not going to be a walkover, but rather a pitched battle.

  I also think that Joey’s grandmother Cynthia Gamble, sitting directly behind the defense table, will leap to her feet and strangle me if I don’t immediately start to say good things about her grandson. And as far as I know, Marcus is not here to protect me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to start by picking up where Mr. Campbell left off in his discussion of circumstantial evidence. And I may surprise you by not saying that it’s never accurate or significant. It is a fallacy that eyewitness evidence is always preferable.

  “But on the other hand, all evidence should be viewed with skepticism. Your job is to analyze it, to judge its merits, not just to take it at face value. That’s why you are here, and that’s why, when you came to court today, you brought your brain and your logic and your common sense with you.

  “Let’s take Mr. Campbell’s hypothetical about snow during the night. Let’s put a little twist on it. You’re an actor or actress; let’s say you’re filming a sequel to White Christmas. You leave the set in the evening and there’s no snow on the ground, but when you come back in the morning, the ground is covered with snow, so you know it snowed during the night.

  “But then you find out that the group of professional set decorators working on the movie brought the snow in during the night because it was needed for the next scene. I mean, after all, you’re filming White Christmas.

  “So the professionals made it appear that it had snowed, even though it hadn’t. That means that in this instance, Mr. Campbell’s circumstantial evidence would have led you in the wrong direction.

  “We all understand that this is not a movie set and everything is real, but the principle remains the same. The evidence may seem to be there, may even seem to be compelling, but you have to look deeper, using your brain and your logic and your common sense.

  “The evidence against Joey Gamble is circumstantial. Mr. Campbell admitted that, and I commend him for doing so. But how did it come about? Were there people who created it, like the professionals on the movie set? Yes, there were, and you will hear about them. Better yet, not only will we offer you ample cause to have reasonable doubt about Joey Gamble’s guilt, we will even tell you who actually committed the crime.

  “I would not be telling you all of this if I didn’t believe that I could deliver it, so at the end of the trial, I will recount in my closing statement exactly how I did that.

  “But for now, the focus is on Joey Gamble, even though he has done nothing to deserve this. He has never in his life been convicted of a crime. No one has ever accused him of committing any act of violence. He has lived his entire life in a neighborhood rife with gangs and crime, and has resisted all of it. He is working to earn money for college, which is his dream.

  “Bu
t events made him a convenient target, someone to blame for the terrible act of murdering James Haley. And the police and Mr. Campbell fell for it, because that’s what was intended by the professional criminals who planted the evidence that Mr. Campbell will put before you. You will hear both sides, and I am confident that you will have more than a reasonable doubt as to Mr. Gamble’s guilt.

  “Thank you for listening.”

  Jack Hagans, the investigator I hired in Florida, calls in with his first report.

  Since Laurie is in charge of the investigations end, I want him to deal with her, so I introduce them on the phone. She has independently checked him out since I got back and has gotten nothing but good feedback.

  Since I am familiar with the setup down in Florida and Laurie isn’t, I stay on the line. Hopefully I won’t have to do this in the future.

  “I’ll send you my report electronically and in full detail,” Hagans says, “but at this point I would describe the operation as uneventful, with one notable exception, which I’ll get to. I’ve begun surveillance on the Ginny May each morning at seven A.M., though the crewmen don’t start to arrive until close to nine. Moving forward I can start later, if you want me to.

  “The boat has gone out each day at eleven, as advertised, with anywhere from six to ten tourists on board, along with three crewmen. Obviously I can’t maintain the surveillance while they’re at sea, but their literature says that they are doing commercial sponge diving while teaching the observers the process. Those tourists, or observers, do not get to do any actual diving. The boat returns each day at four with the tourists and the sponge haul for the day.”

  I’m sure I will have questions, but at this point I don’t interrupt. Hagans sounds very competent and is giving us the information clearly and concisely, the way I like it.

  “As the crew disperses, I obviously can’t follow all of them, so I have alternated. They are predictable; one of them goes to a bar about a block away from where the boat is docked, while the other two take the sponges they’ve collected to a warehouse set off from the road on the way to Tarpon Springs. They store them there and then head back to the bar to join their friend.

  “They stay at the bar until around ten o’clock, then leave and go their own separate ways. One of them always drives to that same warehouse, pulls up outside, but does not go in. There are light sensors on the building, so his car sets them off.

  “Yesterday, while the boat was out, I went to the warehouse to see if I could determine anything unusual about it. I was able to make some observations from a distance, through a window, using high-powered binoculars. I found nothing out of the ordinary; there are cartons of what appear to be sponges stored there. I did not attempt to enter.

  “There is an alarm system that could be circumvented, but there are some risks of discovery attached to that, so I didn’t want to do so without your requesting it. There are also video cameras set up outside and I would think very likely inside as well.”

  “Can you send us a photograph of the warehouse and an address?” Laurie asks.

  “It will be in the electronic report.”

  “You said earlier that your report was uneventful, with one notable exception,” I say. “What were you referring to?”

  “The media reported this morning that a body turned up on shore during the night, brought in by the tide. The police are not at this point revealing details, but I am told that foul play is suspected.”

  I’m not about to tell him that this is the work of Marcus, and that the body is that of the man who tried to kill Lorna Diaz. “Has he been identified?”

  “Yes. He was the fourth member of the Ginny May crew.” He pauses, and then adds rather pointedly, “Is there anything I should know about this?”

  “Anything you can find out about it would be very helpful,” Laurie says, noncommittally.

  “Understood. I’ll check with my sources down here.”

  Laurie thanks Hagans and compliments him on his work. She asks him to keep doing what he’s doing and to report to us both electronically and by phone.

  We get off the phone and I ask Laurie what she thinks. “I think he’s professional and doing the job he’s supposed to be doing. And I don’t think we know any more than we did before he called. Other than that a body has been found.”

  I nod. “Boy, that puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? One minute you’re trying to strangle a woman in an alley, and the next thing you know, your body is washing up on shore.”

  “Marcus would not have done it if it wasn’t necessary,” Laurie says. I know she believes that, but she also is re-convincing herself of it. As an ex-cop, Laurie is just naturally uncomfortable with a killing of any type, for any reason, not being adjudicated by the justice system.

  “The guy would have killed Lorna Diaz,” I say. “There is no doubt about it.” Then, “But we need to talk about Marcus.”

  “What about him?”

  “I know he’s watching me, and I get that I need some watching, but we need to make better use of his time.”

  “How so?” she asks, with obvious suspicion.

  “I’m going to be in court all day; I don’t need protection then. And when I’m home, where you and your gun reside, I’m pretty safe as well. Plus, as you know, I can handle myself pretty well.”

  “You just blew your argument.”

  I nod. “Yeah, I tried to slip that last one in. But I would rather that Marcus was tailing Chico Simmons.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve started the trial and we are basically nowhere. We know that James Haley learned something that got him killed, and we know he was interested in Chico Simmons and Christopher Tolbert. And we know that Chico had Tolbert killed. So I admit I am throwing things against the wall and hoping something sticks, but Chico is involved in this and maybe Marcus will catch him making a mistake, and…”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t have a better idea.

  She nods. “Neither do I. I’ll talk to Marcus.”

  “We call Mr. Darryl Holland,” Dylan says.

  Holland is going to be an uncontroversial witness, and the fact that Dylan is calling him is logical and straight out of the prosecutorial textbook. He is going to build his case from the beginning.

  Dylan shows a map of the neighborhood and gets Holland to identify where he lives and where James Haley had been living at the time of his death. The houses were almost directly around the block from each other. There is a fairly large common area behind all of the houses, which is to say in the center of the square block.

  Dylan brings him to the night in question. “So that night you were walking in this area, between all the houses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was walking my dog. Many of the neighbors walked their dogs there; it was fairly common. I did it every night.”

  Dylan nods. “What did you see when you passed Mr. Haley’s back door?”

  “Well, at first I saw that it was open, so I was half expecting him to come out. It’s usually closed, so I thought maybe he had just opened it. He could have forgotten something and gone back in to get it.”

  “Did he come out?”

  “No, so I walked over. There was a chance that he didn’t realize it was open, so I was going to call in to him.”

  “You knew Mr. Haley?”

  “I wouldn’t say I knew him; he had only been living there a very short time. But I had seen him and said hello a couple of times.”

  “It was dark that night in the back?”

  “Yes. It was a cloudy night, so very little moonlight. There was some light coming from the houses, but not much.”

  “Was there a light in the doorway of Mr. Haley’s house?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes. It was bright. When I went to it, it took me a few moments to adjust my eyes to the light when I looked inside.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Inside the back hallway, about fifteen or s
o feet from the door, I saw Mr. Haley. I didn’t know it was him, of course, because he was facedown. There was blood coming from him onto the floor; it looked like it might be coming from his head, but I couldn’t be sure.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, at first I didn’t know what to do, whether to go to him or run home and call nine-one-one. I didn’t have my cell phone with me,” Holland says. “I’m afraid I panicked. But I don’t know first aid, so it seemed like the way I could be most helpful was to call nine-one-one.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “I did. I ran home and called, and then went back to the house to direct the police to Mr. Haley’s back door. They were there just a couple of minutes after I got back.”

  Holland has nothing more to offer. Once the police came, they heard what he had to say and then kept him out of the way. Every other neighbor in the area soon came down and joined him, though they were all prevented from getting close enough to see anything.

  Dylan turns him over to me. There’s nothing there for me to attack, or any reason to try to discredit him, but I do have a point to make.

  “Mr. Holland, did you see anyone in or around Mr. Haley’s house besides Mr. Haley?”

  He shakes his head. “I did not.”

  “How long were you out in this back area before you saw the open door?”

  “I had just gotten out there, so maybe two minutes?”

  “And the door was already open? You didn’t see it open while you were out there?”

  “It was already open.”

  “So it could have been open five or ten minutes before you saw it? You’d have no way of knowing?”

  “Correct,” he says.

  “So someone else, presumably the person who shot Mr. Haley, could have left through the back door, just as they came in, without you seeing that person?”

  Dylan objects that we have no way of knowing whether the killer came in through the back door, that there is no testimony to that effect. It is a silly objection, since he himself is going to introduce evidence later showing the door was broken into.