Chapter 105
PETER’S ASSEMBLED DREAM TEAM of lawyers looked like an ad for Paul Stuart suits as they conversed in hushed tones around the defense table. As for Peter himself, having traded in his flashy Brioni for a Brooks Brothers gray flannel, he kept his focus squarely on the jury as they were led back into the courtroom after a one-hour recess for lunch.
That’s right, people, make eye contact with me. Only an innocent man can stare a jury straight in the eyes, right? That’s been my experience, anyway.
“All rise!” bellowed the court clerk.
Judge Robert Barnett, midfifties with slicked-back gray hair divided by a razor-sharp part, made his way to the bench and further cemented his reputation as a no-nonsense, no dilly-dallying man even before he sat down. He dispensed with any idle chitchat—not even a “Please be seated”—and asked the prosecution to call their first witness.
Nolan Heath, the lead prosecutor, promptly stood and straightened his rep tie before adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. Heath was a deliberate and pensive man, his expression always like that of a chess player considering his next move.
“Your Honor, the prosecution calls Mark Dunne.”
Mark, pot-free for over four months now, rose quickly from the first row behind the prosecution table. If anything, he looked a little too anxious to testify. Who could blame him? He had something to say here, something hugely important.
As he was sworn in, he stared at Peter Carlyle, his hatred of the man on full display for all to see.
Heath said, “Mark, would you please describe the events, as you recall them, of the night of June twenty-fifth earlier this year?”
Mark nodded and took a deep breath. That was something Heath had repeatedly reminded him to do on the witness stand. Breathe. Think, then speak.
Slowly Mark began to answer. “My sister, Carrie, and I had been taking turns watching over our campsite on the island while everyone else slept. A large snake had attacked our mother a few days earlier, so we wanted to make sure nothing snuck up on us during the night. Carrie and I were vigilant.
“Anyway, a few hours in I heard something. It was dark, but I knew it wasn’t just the wind blowing. Or even an animal. They’re quieter. Sure enough, I could see someone approaching. I mean, I couldn’t tell who it was, but I knew it was a person.”
Heath nodded. “You must have been excited, right? You thought you were about to be saved.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first,” said Mark. “Then I wondered why the person wasn’t calling out to us or anything. It didn’t make any sense. That’s when I saw the gun in his hand.”
“So what did you do?” asked Heath, as if he were hearing the story for the first time.
“I protected my family as best I could. As soon as I saw him raise that gun and point it at my mother, I hit him with a heavy branch. Thankfully, it knocked him out.”
“And when you say him, who are you referring to, Mark?”
Mark pointed, jabbing his finger as he had done when he spotted Peter’s plane flying toward the island. “Him right there. Peter Carlyle. My stepfather. The son of a bitch!”
The courtroom buzzed until Judge Barnett banged his gavel. “Young man, I won’t tolerate that kind of language in my courtroom. Do you understand?”
Mark nodded dutifully before turning back to Heath. No one would ever know by the prosecutor’s expression that he was extremely proud of his young witness. Mark had delivered the son-of-a-bitch line exactly as he had been told.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
Chapter 106
JUDGE BARNETT MOTIONED to the defense table. “Your witness,” he announced.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” cooed Gordon Knowles, presumptive captain of Peter’s dream team. He stood up and nodded politely at the jury.
Then, as if to please the impatient judge, he turned to Mark and got right into it.
“You just testified that you were on guard duty that night on the island. So in a way you were sort of looking for trouble, weren’t you?”
Heath bolted up from the prosecution table. “Objection, Your Honor! He’s putting words in the witness’s mouth.”
“Sustained,” muttered Judge Barnett with a disapproving glance at Knowles. “You know better than that, Counselor.”
Yes, he did.
And he would do much better, too.
“Tell me, Mark,” he continued before quickly stopping himself. “You don’t mind if I call you by your first name, do you?”
“Not at all, Gordon.”
The jury chuckled.
“Fair enough,” said Knowles, pretending to laugh along. “Now, Mark, when you first saw Mr. Carlyle arrive at your campsite on the island, could you see what he was wearing?”
“No, I couldn’t,” answered Mark. “As I said, it was dark.”
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? As you said, you didn’t even know who the person approaching was until after you attacked him.”
Heath was halfway through his objection when Knowles rephrased. “I’m sorry,” he lied. “Sprang into action, I should’ve said.”
Judge Barnett frowned. “Get to your question, Counselor.”
“Gladly, Your Honor. My question is this. Mark, if you had known that it was Mr. Carlyle, would you have hit him with that heavy branch?”
Mark blinked a few times as if trying to keep his mental balance. He saw where Knowles—Gordon—was going with this line of questioning and didn’t want to be tripped up. Not by this prick!
“He had a gun,” Mark answered, slowly and distinctly.
“That’s not what I asked,” said Knowles. “If you had known who it was, would you have hit him with that branch?”
Mark fell silent again.
Judge Barnett leaned toward the witness stand. “Please answer the question, son,” he said.
“No, I wouldn’t have hit him,” said Mark softly.
“Why is that?” asked Knowles.
“Because he was my stepfather.”
“Someone who would have no reason to harm you or anyone else in your family, right?”
“But he had a gun!” Mark repeated, his voice cracking.
“Yes, he did,” said Knowles. “For the same reason you claim to have jumped him. For self-defense.” He turned to the jury, throwing up his arms in mock desperation. “After all, Mr. Carlyle had more than large snakes to worry about that night. As I mentioned in my opening statement, he had been told by none other than a federal agent that drug traffickers may have been involved in his family’s disappearance. So Mr. Carlyle came prepared. He had a gun for self-defense. It makes all the sense in the world.”
Heath stood to object again, but it was too late. A few members of the jury were shrugging in agreement. Gun = guilty.
The damage was done.
So was Knowles.
“No further questions,” he announced.
Chapter 107
PETER’S EXTRADITION from the Bahamas was one thing, but this trial is definitely another kind of circus. I don’t know how much more of it I can take, and this is only the beginning! The madness has just begun.
It’s not just the trial itself, though. It’s what it represents—what this feels like for the kids and me.
It’s as if we’re taking the trip all over again.
We were finally getting on with our lives and moving forward. I had filed for divorce as soon as I got home, and it would be final in just a few weeks. The incessant media coverage had died down—no more pictures every day in the paper or boldface mentions in the gossip columns. Even my broken leg had healed nicely.
Then, pow! the trial throws us right back on The Family Dunne and we have to relive everything.
No wonder I’m back on the couch in Mona’s office. Once again, I thank God for her soundproof walls.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” I yell, barely a minute into our session. “This is so unfair to the kids.”
With the trial taking up almost
the entire day, Mona agreed to see me late for what she’s calling a “gripe and grub.” Translation: after I vent to her for an hour, we grab dinner together at the restaurant of her choice. My treat—my very expensive treat.
I quickly apologize for the yelling, and as usual Mona tells me it’s more than okay.
“In fact,” she says, “I think it’s good for you.”
“Maybe,” I reply. “What would really be good for me is seeing Peter locked up behind bars. That can’t happen soon enough.”
“At the same time, you need to prepare yourself if —”
I lift my hand, telling her to stop right there. I don’t even want to hear those two horrible words.
Not guilty.
What Peter did—and I’m convinced way beyond a reasonable doubt that he did indeed do it—is hard enough to swallow. The idea that he might not be punished makes me want to throw up.
Others agree with me. Not the least of whom is Agent Ellen Pierce. She risked her job, if not her career, following her gut about Peter Carlyle, Esq.
“What did you think when Agent Pierce first approached you?” I ask Mona.
“I didn’t know what to think. At the time I thought you were dead. That was shocking enough. The idea that Peter might have been responsible . . . Well, the least I could do was carry that tape recorder for her. I just wish it had helped.”
“Isn’t it ironic, though?” I say. “The person who I thought I trusted the most was trying to kill me, and the people who I thought I couldn’t count on—my kids—were the ones who ended up saving my life.”
“That’s definitely the word for it,” says Mona. “To think you were sitting right here in my office before the trip, wanting so desperately to save your family.” She smiled. “It almost killed you, but mission accomplished. You all came out better for it.”
We both fall silent, suddenly realizing that’s not entirely true.
We didn’t all come out better.
“I’m sorry,” says Mona. “I didn’t mean to forget Jake. I haven’t. None of us have.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Sometimes I wish I could, if you know what I mean. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about him.”
“What about the kids? Have they dealt with it?”
“Mark and Carrie have. They’re older. For Ernie it’s taking a little longer. He really looked up to Jake.”
I hear myself say that last sentence and I know exactly what Mona’s thinking. Probably because I’ve been thinking the same thing.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I ask Mona.
“Yes,” she answers. “I think it is.”
Chapter 108
“YOUR WITNESS, Mr. Knowles.”
Gordon Knowles thanked Judge Barnett with a sharp nod as he rose from the defense table. Agent Ellen Pierce was a key witness for the prosecution, and he was champing at the bit to cross-examine her and take her testimony apart.
“Agent Pierce,” he began, his tone as warm and inviting as a bed of nails, “you just testified that you followed my client to Vermont, where you trespassed on private property and secretly photographed him with a woman. Do you think that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was planning to kill his family?”
Ellen answered quickly and confidently. “No, I do not.”
“Earlier today we heard testimony from an explosives expert who said his lab found traces of RDX, a military-grade explosive, on the life jacket salvaged from the Dunne family’s boat. Do you think that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was planning to kill his family?”
Ellen, dressed modestly in a black pantsuit and simple white blouse, glanced over at the jury, as if to express her dissatisfaction with this line of questioning. She was being walked like a dog by Knowles and she didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
It was time to bite back.
“What I think is that the jury might start to wonder if all these coincidences, as you’d like to call them, are something more than just a coincidence,” she said.
Judge Barnett didn’t wait to hear Knowles’s objection to intervene. He quickly turned to the jury box. “The jury will disregard the unsolicited speculation by the witness.” He then fixed his disapproving gaze on Ellen. “Ms. Pierce, please just answer the question.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” she said. She wasn’t sorry, of course. In fact, she felt quite content that her point had been made. Somebody needed to make it if justice was to be done here.
“To repeat the question, Agent Pierce —”
She cut him off. “No, I don’t believe that the trace explosive alone proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was trying to kill his family.”
Knowles smiled with smug satisfaction. “Agent Pierce, you were suspended by the DEA for your reckless actions in pursuing my client, correct?”
Instinctively Ellen looked over at Ian McIntyre, seated behind the prosecution table. She was somewhat surprised that he had come to lend his support. It almost took the sting out of the three-month “vacation” he had given her.
“I don’t think the word reckless —”
It was Knowles’s turn to interrupt. “Were you or were you not suspended from duty?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Indeed, you had been told explicitly by the head of your division not to pursue Mr. Carlyle, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Nonetheless you met with Mr. Carlyle under false pretenses and lied to him about Jake Dunne’s being suspected of drug smuggling, didn’t you? In fact, you warned Mr. Carlyle that if he found his family, they were still potentially in danger.”
“What I was trying to do —”
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it? What were you trying to do? Was it some kind of revenge?”
Every ounce of Ellen was now telling her to keep her cool, not do this jerk-off any favors by getting emotional. Still, she had to defend herself. “That’s preposterous,” she said firmly. “There was no revenge. That’s utterly absurd and insulting.”
“Is it, though? The head of your division himself said that your judgment may have been clouded because of a trial a few months back in which Mr. Carlyle successfully defended someone you had vigorously investigated.”
“Trust me, the only clouded judgment was the verdict in that case,” replied Ellen. She knew she should’ve just answered straight, but she couldn’t help herself. Not anymore. “Sometimes justice truly is blind,” she added.
Knowles shook his head. Tsk-tsk! “It sounds to me, Agent Pierce, as if you have serious contempt for our legal system.”
“No,” said Ellen, looking him squarely in the eye. “Just for defense attorneys.”
Chapter 109
ONLY ONE DAY of school. That’s all I’m allowing the kids to miss for the trial, I tell myself.
For Carrie, that’s one day too many. She wants nothing to do with Peter, even if it means seeing him locked up for the rest of his miserable life. Hopefully it will.
Anyway, that’s fine with me. Carrie’s exactly where she should be—enjoying her sophomore year at Yale. There’s no more school nutritionist, no more school psychologist. Just school. Her body weight is back up to normal, and something tells me it’s going to stay that way.
Mark, of course, had to miss a day of classes at Deerfield in order to testify. I’m so proud of him, and I think he did a fine job under the circumstances. He, on the other hand, is a little bummed about the way Peter’s buddy-buddy lawyer—“the dickwad”—played hardball with him.
Speaking of bummed . . .
It’s Ernie.
After an early dinner with Nolan Heath to discuss my testimony tomorrow, I return to the apartment and relieve Angelica for the evening. She tells me Ernie’s in his room doing his homework.
In a lot of ways Ernie should be on cloud nine with the rest of us. It was his idea to put the note in the bottle. He saved us. And from the moment we flipped that transponder back on in Peter’s plane, his was a hero�
��s welcome. From the Today show to Larry King to On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, he did more than a dozen TV interviews. In every article written about our ordeal, he always got the most ink.
Except he never really enjoyed any of it, even though it was always his choice whether to make an appearance or not. He smiled for the cameras, saying and doing all the right things like the trouper he is. But I’m his mother. I could tell. And after more than four months, this funk of his hasn’t gotten too much better. I blame myself, of course.
Gently I knock on his half-open door. “Mind if I come in?” I ask.
He’s sitting at his desk in the far corner. “Sure,” he says, his eyes fixed on the glowing rectangle of his iMac. “Hi, Mom.”
“How’s your essay coming?” Five hundred words on the Emancipation Proclamation. Not counting a’s and the’s. This is what I get for cutting back my hours after returning to the hospital, something I was so sorely missing: the details of my kids’ lives.
“Three hundred and eighty-seven words . . . and counting,” Ernie answers, his fingers tapping away on the wireless keyboard. “I’ll make it.”
“Absolutely.”
I browse around his room for a minute, not wanting to get into it right away. I glance at a poster of Albert Einstein, the one in which he’s famously sticking out his tongue.
Then I stop in front of a framed photograph of Ernie with those two fishermen, Captain Steve and his first mate. Jason? No—it was Jeffrey, I remember. What a couple of characters those guys are. Look how they’re smiling, too! Then again, that shot was snapped right after I gave them their reward. Who wouldn’t be smiling?
I certainly was. Best million dollars anyone could ever spend.
“Are you scared?” asks Ernie out of nowhere, breaking the silence in the room.
“You mean about testifying tomorrow? I guess I’m a little nervous,” I say. “You’ll be there to support me, right?”
He nods. The one day he’s chosen for attending the trial is when I’m scheduled to take the stand. I can’t begin to explain how good that makes me feel.
“Ernie, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” I say.
Sail Page 20