Fatal Conceit (46 page)

“Yes.”

“And it's quite possible, if not probable, that you will write a book about this case?”

“It's possible.”

“And that could be worth a lot of money?”

“That's possible, too.”

Faust walked over to the prosecution table and picked up the DVD of Allen's proposed congressional testimony. She held it up. “Isn't it true that everything you wrote in your stories, and everything you've said here in court—except for the personal stuff, of course—you could have learned by watching this recording?”

“That's true. But why wouldn't I have written more? There's a lot on there that wasn't in my stories.”

Faust shrugged. “I don't know. You tell me. Maybe you were only told some of what the recording said.”

“By whom?”

Smiling, Faust tossed the bag back down on the prosecution table. “I'd say someone who had a copy of the recording. Wouldn't that make sense?”

“Not at all,” Stupenagel said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Mr. Karp, any further questions?” Judge Hart asked.

“Just one question, Your Honor. Miss Stupenagel, do you recall what General Allen was wearing that day at the White Horse Tavern?”

Stupenagel smiled at the memory. “Yes. He was ‘in disguise' and wearing an old sweatshirt, jeans, cheap sunglasses, and a Yankee ballcap that had seen better days.”

Karp nodded, then turned to Judge Hart. “Your Honor, may this witness be dismissed? She wants to sit in the gallery and watch the rest of the proceedings.”

The judge looked over at Faust. “Any objections?”

Busy making notes, the defense attorney didn't bother to look up. “No,” she said. “I'm sure she wants to take notes for her book.”

After that the reporter was allowed to step from the stand. Without looking to either side, she walked past the defense and prosecution tables, down the aisle of the gallery section, and took a seat in the back next to Marlene as Karp announced, “The people call Tabor Cowden.”

A young, well-built man with sandy hair and a nervous smile entered the courtroom from the side door leading across a narrow hallway to the witness room and took the stand. “Mr. Cowden, would you please tell the jury what you do for a living?”

“Uh, yeah, I tend bar at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street.”

K
ARP KNEW THAT THE DRAMATIC
narrative of the case against the two defendants was swiftly moving toward the final chapters. Unlike a book, he couldn't jump ahead to read what the defense intended to say or do when they presented their case. But just as some novels foreshadowed what was to come, he believed he had a pretty good idea of their strategy based on their public pretrial statements, their jury selection questions during voir dire, their questioning of the people's witnesses, and their own witness list.

So he was prepared for all eventualities and ready to counter Faust's intimation during her cross-examination of Stupenagel that she was either making up her meeting with Allen or in collusion with Ray Baum by calling White Horse Tavern bartender Tabor Cowden to the stand. “Mr. Cowden, last November you were interviewed by a Detective Clay Fulton, do you recall that?”

“Yeah, the big black guy. He was one tough-looking dude; I could use a guy like that as a bouncer on Saturday nights.”

Karp smiled. “I'll let Detective Fulton know in case he wants to moonlight. But in the meantime, do you remember him asking you if you recalled seeing Ariadne Stupenagel in the bar a couple of weeks earlier?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you recall your answer?”

“I told him that I seen her. She's pretty hard to miss,” Cowden replied to chuckles in the gallery. Stupenagel had never been a wallflower in dress or attitude among her colleagues, or anyone else, for that matter. “She used to come in a lot more, but I hadn't seen her in a while, so I noticed.”

“Do you remember whether Detective Fulton asked if she was sitting with anyone?”

Cowden nodded. “Yeah, I told him that I didn't know. I was behind the bar; she got a beer and went and sat down in the back. I can't see back there.”

“Do you remember Detective Fulton asking you if there were other people in the bar?”

“You mean about the guy sitting at the bar?”

“He's one, and I'll get to him in a minute; however, do you remember describing anyone else?”

Cowden furrowed his brow and then brightened. “Oh, yeah. Another guy came in after Ariadne. I'd say he was middle-aged, not real big but still one of those guys who carries himself like you don't want to mess with him. I remember he was wearing sunglasses—the cheap kind you buy off a vendor on Sixth Avenue—but not much about his clothes. He was definitely wearing an old, beat-up Yankee ballcap; I remember that because I'm a fan. Don't come wearing a Red Sox hat into my bar, or I'll eighty-six your ass double-quick.”

“As it should be.” Karp laughed. “Do you remember where the man in the Yankee ballcap sat?”

Shaking his head, Cowden said, “Nah, he didn't sit at the bar. But I don't remember seeing him again. I got busy not long after that so he might have slipped out the back.”

Karp walked over to the prosecution table and picked up a photograph and returned to the witness stand. “You mentioned another man, a younger guy, who did sit at the bar. Was he sitting there when Ariadne Stupenagel came in?”

“No.”

“How about when the man in the ballcap arrived?”

“The young guy came in after the guy in the ballcap. He walked toward the back at first but then he returned and sat down at the bar.”

“Do you remember describing him for Detective Fulton?”

“Yeah. He was young, maybe thirty or so. Clean-cut, not particularly friendly. He had a tattoo on his forearm.”

“You know what sort of tattoo?”

“Yeah, the Marine eagle, globe, and anchors. My dad was a Marine.”

“You talk to him?”

“A little. Like I said, he wasn't real friendly. Mostly just, ‘Hey, how ya doin'?' That sort of stuff. But he got all chatty when Ariadne came up to pay her bill.”

“Chatty how?”

“For starters he was hittin' on her like he hadn't seen a woman in a year,” Cowden said. “I mean laying it on thick.”

“How did Miss Stupenagel react?”

Cowden glanced back at where Stupenagel was sitting in the rear of the courtroom with Marlene. “Well, the guy was a stud so I figure she was liking the attention. But in the end she shut him down. She said she had a boyfriend to go home to; and good for her, the guy was a creep.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, after she left he asked if I knew who she was.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Uh, yeah, I mean everybody knows who Ariadne Stupenagel is,” Cowden said, “at least in this town. So I figured it wouldn't hurt to tell him her name and that she was a famous newspaper writer. But he kept asking all these other questions like where she lived, who she worked for . . . that sort of thing. Only now he was getting under my skin so I told him I didn't give out that sort of personal information.”

Karp held up the photograph with its back to the witness. “Do you remember being shown a photo lineup by Detective Fulton the day he talked to you?”

“Yeah, the detective showed me like five or six photographs of different guys.”

“And were you able to identify the young man with the Marine tattoo sitting at the bar?”

“Yeah, right away.”

Karp turned the photograph around and handed it up to Cowden. “Is this the man you identified?”

Cowden was already nodding before Karp finished his question. “Yeah, that's the guy.”

“Mr. Cowden, would you turn the photograph over and tell me what, if anything, is written on the back?”

Doing as he was told, Cowden looked back up. “Yeah, there's a date and my initials. Detective Fulton had me write that there after I identified the guy.”

Taking the photograph back, Karp looked at the court stenographer. “Let the record reflect that the witness identified People's Exhibit 25 which has been previously identified by Tom Spooner and Ariadne Stupenagel as Ray Baum.”

Bill Caulkin quickly muttered, “No objections.”

“Mr. Cowden, were you shown a second set of photographs that day?” Karp asked.

“Yeah.”

“And were you able to identify any of those as the man in the ballcap?”

“Nope.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cowden. No further questions.”

As Karp sat down, Caulkin rose to handle the cross-examination. He moved out from around the defense table as if arthritis was killing him, though Karp knew for a fact that the sixty-six-year-old played racquetball several times a week at the West River Health & Racquet Club on the Upper West Side. “Mr. Cowden, were you
told that among the photographs you couldn't identify was one of General Sam Allen?”

“Oh, I recognized him because he'd been all over the news,” Cowden answered. “But I couldn't say if he was the guy in the baseball cap.”

“So you don't know if General Allen was in the bar that day, or any day?”

“No, I honestly can't say.”

“And you can't say if Miss Stupenagel met with anyone besides chatting to the young man sitting at the bar?”

“That's right.”

Caulkin walked slowly in front of the jury with one hand on the rail. “Mr. Cowden, I believe your testimony is that Miss Stupenagel has been a regular at the White Horse Tavern?”

“Well, she used to be,” Cowden replied. “I hadn't seen her for quite a while before this.”

“But it wouldn't have been unusual for her to walk into the bar and have a beer on any given day?”

Cowden shrugged. “Not particularly.”

“Were you standing right there when Miss Stupenagel and Mr. Baum were having their conversation?”

“Not right in front of them,” Cowden said, “I was washing glasses down at the sink.”

“So you weren't really focused on what they were doing and saying?”

“Oh, I could hear them pretty good. I was checking out the dude's pickup lines.”

“Were you in a position to see if they passed any notes, or maybe said something under their breath?”

“What? You mean secretly?”

“Yes, maybe talking out loud for your consumption, but otherwise communicating secretly.”

Cowden looked as if he thought the defense attorney was crazy and shook his head. “Yeah, I guess. But that sounds pretty ridiculous.”

Karp tried not to smile at the response.
It does sound ridiculous. Couldn't have said it better myself, and the jury will pick up on that
, he thought.

Realizing the same thing, Caulkin blinked a couple of times at the answer, then simply turned to the judge and said, “No further questions.”

Hart looked back at Karp. “Mr. Karp?”

Standing, Karp remained behind the table. “Mr. Cowden, how long have you known Miss Stupenagel?”

“Oh, man . . . let's see, I started working there eight years ago and she was a regular back then.”

“So, eight years. Have you ever seen her with Ray Baum before that day?”

“Never. I've never seen him before at all.”

“Did Miss Stupenagel act in any way as though she knew Mr. Baum when she came to pay her tab?”

“No. I'd say the opposite. She didn't say anything to him until he started to hit on her.”

“And again her reaction was?”

“She mostly laughed. She said she was old enough to be his older sister or something like that . . . typical funny Ariadne. Then she said she had a boyfriend and was going home.”

“And your testimony was that after she left he began asking personal questions about her?”

“Yes.”

“He wanted to know her name?”

“Yep.”

“Where she lived?”

“That's right. But I didn't tell him . . . actually I don't know.”

“And what she did for a living?”

“Yes.”

“And when you told him she was a journalist, what was his reaction?”

Cowden thought about it for a moment. “He got kind of a funny
look on his face. He wasn't smiling anymore and left right after that.”

After Cowden stepped down, Karp nodded to the court clerk, Jim Farley, who rolled a television out in front of the jury box. He'd waited until this moment to show the jury the recording Allen made of the testimony he'd planned giving to the congressional committee on Chechnya so that they'd understand how it fit into the case he was making against the defendants. Karp painstakingly set the scene, and included small, but important, details such as the police photographer who identified photographs he'd taken at the Loon Lake cabin study from the same angle Allen's camera had been so that the jurors could see where the tape was made, and thus corroborate, Stupenagel's testimony.

The defense had, of course, protested allowing the tape to be shown to the jury, arguing that it was addressing collateral issues and was not proof that what Allen intended to testify to “was in any way subject to the administration censure.”

Karp responded, “Your Honor, it goes to the heart of establishing motive for the defendants' murder of General Allen.”

Hart then ruled. “I find that the probative value of motive outweighs any collateral effect. It will be up to the jury to determine its factual persuasiveness, if any.”

The lights in the courtroom went dark as General Sam Allen's handsome, tan face appeared on the television screen. “My name is Samuel H. Allen, lieutenant general U.S. Army retired. What follows is a recording of the testimony I intend to swear to under oath in front of the congressional committee hearing on what occurred at the U.S. compound outside of Zandaq, Chechnya. If you are viewing this recording instead of having watched my testimony before the congressional committee on Chechnya then I have been prevented from appearing in person.