Hell (33 page)

‘I'll allow it,' Judge Brazen said.

Sam sat with Cathy on his left, Saul to his right. His legs were crossed, his hands folded over his right thigh. His eyes followed Jerry Wagner as he rose from his seat, then tracked back to Grace.

She was looking at him.

Her eyes seemed to him bluer and clearer than ever.

He felt a violent, futile urge to go grab her by the hand, get her out of here. Instead, he sat quiet and still, wired to the hilt.

His eyes left Grace, returned to Wagner.

He willed the lawyer to do the best job he'd ever done in his career.

And then some.

‘On the evening of May sixth,' Wagner began, ‘in a dark, narrow road off Crandon Boulevard in Key Biscayne, to which Grace Becket had been called to help one of her patients – a distressed, vulnerable boy – a man approached her car in what she perceived as a terrifying and threatening manner. At the time, Mrs Becket believed the man to be Jerome Cooper, a known murderer with an obsessive hatred for her family. Unable to escape him, and in desperate fear for her own life and that of her young patient, she defended herself in the only way she could, by striking out with her car.'

Wagner paused, looked around briefly, then returned his focus to the judge.

‘Mrs Becket's remorse and horror when she discovered that the man was not, in fact, Jerome Cooper, but Mr Richard Bianchi, was and remains vast. Other than the very occasional parking ticket, Dr Grace Lucca Becket has never committed a crime or misdemeanor in her forty years, and her reputation as a child and adolescent psychologist is second to none. Mrs Becket is a loving wife and mother of two children: her adopted daughter, Cathy, and two-year-old Joshua. It is a matter of record that less than two years ago, Jerome Cooper abducted baby Joshua Becket from his family's home, and that Joshua was only narrowly saved from death when Cooper blew up the boat in which he had been keeping the baby prisoner. Cooper was believed dead, but he has since horrifically resurfaced and is currently in custody charged with two brutal murders, the attempted murder of Mrs Mildred Bleeker Becket, and the kidnapping of Joshua Becket. Numerous additional charges pending.' Wagner paused. ‘A dangerous and frightening man, Your Honor.'

‘Waiting again,' David Becket said to his wife, watching her as she sat on the rug on their sitting-room floor, playing with his grandson. ‘Seems all we're good for these days is waiting.'

‘We're minding Joshua,' Mildred said. ‘Seems to me that's pretty important, old man.' She paused. ‘It's going to be all right, you know.'

She looked up at her new husband, thinking how well he'd looked on their wedding day, just fifty days ago, compared with how
worn
he looked today, and how they'd all been through so much, and when did that finally turn into
too
much?

She prayed never to find that out.

She prayed, too, for Grace, and for her beloved Samuel, her dear friend before he'd become her son-in-law, and she never ceased wondering at the strangeness of such gifts of life, and she supposed it was simple greed to hope for more.

Or maybe it was just human.

‘On April twelfth this year,' Jerry Wagner continued, ‘a package containing a human heart was left outside the Becket family home. On May third, another human heart – which it is now known had been carved out of the strangled body of nineteen-year-old Ricardo Torres – was placed in the Becket family's bathtub. On May sixth – during the very evening that Richard Bianchi lost his life – Samuel Becket, Mrs Becket's husband, a detective with the Miami Beach Police Department, discovered a threatening note left for him by Jerome Cooper.

‘The prosecution would have you believe – and it's not unreasonable for them to have believed it themselves, until Ms Gina Bianchi gave evidence this morning – that Richard Bianchi was an innocent man. He was unarmed on the evening of his death. It appeared to Sara Mankowitz and the other witnesses arriving on the scene while Mr Bianchi lay dying, that he might have been approaching Mrs Becket in a conciliatory manner – indeed, that was what he told them. That he was “just trying to help”.

‘Mr Bianchi, it has been said, was a man with a loving family, a writer doing what many struggling writers do to make ends meet: copy editing to pay his bills while waiting for his big break.

‘Had Gina Bianchi come forward sooner, I believe that the charges brought against Grace Becket would have been dropped, because what Detective Samuel Becket already suspected would have been borne out. But until Ms Bianchi found the evidence on her late brother's laptop computer and made her courageous phone call to my office, it seemed there might be no way to prove Detective Becket's suspicion: that Richard Bianchi was being used by – was perhaps in the pay of – Jerome Cooper.'

Wagner paused to clear his throat.

‘Your Honor, I'd like to share with you some of the issues that had already aroused those suspicions. Richard Bianchi had, according to Sara Mankowitz, first introduced himself to her in a coffee shop near her son's school right after she had dropped him off one morning. He had – also according to Mrs Mankowitz – identified himself as Charles – Charlie – Duggan, a fictitious name he stuck with all through their friendship until his death. Nothing about Charlie Duggan was real, in fact. Neither the occupation he claimed, nor his address, nor the father he said was deceased, or the mother he said lived in North Miami.

‘Sam Becket believes this was a friendship that Richard Bianchi probably engineered for sinister reasons. It was certainly a friendship which alarmed young Peter Mankowitz, because he said that Charlie Duggan took pleasure in frightening him and, as Peter ultimately confided in Mrs Becket, Mr Duggan – Richard Bianchi – also physically hurt him on more than one occasion.'

FORTY-SEVEN

I
n his cell at Miami-Dade County Prison, Jerome Cooper was writing another
Epistle
.

He was writing about death.

His own.

The death penalty being alive and well in the great state of Florida.

If it were not for the prospect of hell, which he knew – had always known – was waiting for him, he thought he might not mind dying one bit.

He remembered what he'd written about jail in one of his early
Epistles
.

Describing ‘wickedness stealing around corners, oozing at him out of the night, flicking like snakes' tongues through cell doors.'

He remembered it because he'd been proud of his writing back then.

And because he'd been so damned scared that he could hardly breathe.

There was something to be said for being a known multiple killer.

Seemed that some of those low-life baby rapers and chicken hawks were scared of
him
now.

FORTY-EIGHT

‘
I
t was early evening on May sixth, after Pete had felt scared enough of “Charlie Duggan” to jump out of his open-topped car on Crandon Boulevard, when Sara Mankowitz called Grace Becket and implored her to come out to the scene.

‘The Becket family were staying at a place of safety, but nevertheless, Mrs Becket still felt compelled to help her young patient, so she did as Sara Mankowitz had begged, and drove to meet her. “Charlie Duggan” was nowhere to be seen, had, according to Peter's mother, dropped out of sight for her son's sake. So Grace Becket left her car, walked to where the boy had taken shelter beneath the trees, and began the task of trying to calm him.'

Sitting listening to Wagner telling the tale, Grace almost felt she was back there again. Under those trees in the dark.

Pete's eyes full of fear and need.

She knew that if she could go back in time, she'd make the same decision. To go there and try to help.

Not the rest.

No matter what Richard Bianchi was.

‘And then, suddenly, Duggan's car appeared, coming very slowly around a bend in the road. A red convertible Volkswagen Beetle. The same make, model and color car Grace Becket had noticed first during an unnerving situation on April nineteenth, and again on May fifth – the day before the event in question – when she had believed that the vehicle appeared to be following her.'

Wagner paused.

‘Except when Mrs Becket saw the driver on the evening of May sixth, she saw that it was not Charles Duggan at all, but Jerome Cooper.

‘She was terrified, but even then, her patient came first. She told Peter to go straight to his mother, called out to Sara Mankowitz to take her son and to run, to get back out to the highway and to people. Mrs Mankowitz has testified that this was what Mrs Becket told her to do.

‘Mrs Becket reached her own Toyota car, but the man got out of the VW and began walking toward her car. And she panicked. Her car wouldn't start first time, and by the time it did start, the man was right in front of her vehicle, so she went into reverse to try to escape, but it was pitch dark, and she hit something – a tree stump, it was later confirmed – and after that it was a case of forward or nothing.

‘She could have sat in her locked car, called 911 and waited. That is what the State says she should have done, and I have to tell you, Your Honor, that Grace Becket believes that too, with all her heart.

‘But she was in a state of high panic. Because the man was still standing right in front of her car, leaning over it, taunting her and blocking her escape. A man she believed to be a multiple
killer
, the man who had stolen her own baby from his crib, who had brutally killed several people, who was still continuing to kill. And at that moment, in that dark, frightening place, Grace Becket found herself in a state of genuine fear for her life – and so she used the only defense she had: her car.

‘And it was only when she was finally capable of getting out of the car and seeing the man lying on the ground, that she saw it was not Jerome Cooper at all, but another man. The man who had called himself Charles Duggan. The man who was, in reality, Richard Bianchi.'

A small, low moan pierced Wagner's pause.

A grieving mother, in unbearable pain.

He went on.

‘A man who, as it turns out, was driving a car which had previously belonged to a friend of Jerome Cooper's, a former madam in Savannah, Georgia. A man who, it is strongly suspected, though not yet proven, was the individual referred to in Cooper's own writings as “Toy”, a man who the killer admits brought him his “
shopping
”.'

Wagner turned, walked back to the defense table, picked up a sheet of paper, and read: ‘“Toy came to see me today and brought me some meat from his very own Fresh Market. I wonder sometimes how I'd manage without him.”'

Grace shuddered at that word.

‘Meat'.

She saw again in her mind the
thing
left in their bathtub.

Realized, as never before, the sheer profanity of Jerome Cooper's acts against his victims and against her own family.

Realized, too, that Wagner had not alluded to the fact that Cooper was her stepbrother, although the judge must know that,
everyone
knew that by now, but it might be another mark against her.

And mad as she knew it probably was, that fact brought another small gusher of shame from the well.

Wagner was continuing, relentless now.

‘Richard Bianchi, a man whose personal laptop computer and credit card were used for the purchase of the kind of surgical instruments later found on the killer's houseboat, and which were almost certainly used to carve out the hearts of at least two, and probably more, victims. A man who either allowed his computer to be used to download articles about open heart surgery. Or worse, who did so himself.

‘A man who was the last person to be seen with murder victim, Ricardo Torres, at a party thrown on the night of April twenty-fourth.

‘A man who, it is believed, cultivated a friendship with Sara Mankowitz precisely because Jerome Cooper knew her son was one of Grace Lucca Becket's patients. A man who used a false name, and who took pleasure in repeatedly frightening and physically hurting Peter Mankowitz.'

Wagner turned again to the defense table, laid down that sheet of paper and took a sip of water.

And then he turned back again to face the judge.

‘Yes, Richard Bianchi was unarmed on the night when he taunted and terrified Grace Becket in that narrow road off the highway. But Mrs Becket did not know that, and from her perspective in those moments, he might just as well have been pointing a loaded pistol at her head. She'd already tried reversing and failed, and so, with no other means of escape, she reacted by putting her foot on the gas pedal of her car. And for reasons that we may never comprehend, Richard Bianchi did not move out of the way.

‘Which was a tragedy for him, for his family, and for Grace Becket.

‘Self-defense, she truly believed, against one of the most violent, evil multiple murderers ever seen in South Florida.

‘Self-defense, for sure.

‘Your Honor, I move that the charges against Grace Becket be dismissed. And that this multilayered tragedy be allowed to end here.'

Wagner took his seat.

Elena Alonso rose.

‘Is this going to be a rebuttal, Counselor?' the judge asked.

Sam, Cathy, Saul, Claudia and the others there for Grace ceased breathing.

Grace's heart was pounding too hard again, her palms damp.

‘No, Your Honor,' Alonso said.

Her pause hung in the air.

‘In light of the new evidence,' she continued, ‘the State is prepared to accept a plea of not guilty by reason of self-defense.' She paused again. ‘If I may, I would like to add that this comes with the agreement, given during the last recess, of Mr Bianchi's family.'