Premeditated Murder (14 page)

A:
Yeah. I see him.

Q:
Can you point him out for the jury, please?

A:
He's sitting right over there. The black dude at that table, sitting next to the two white dudes.

Q:
May the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?

THE COURT:
Yes.

(Trial Volume VI, Pages 111–112)

March 14—Northampton, Massachusetts

DISTRICT ATTORNEY FRANCIS X. O'NEILL HAD just finished checking his calendar to make sure that next week's lunch appointments were all with sufficiently important people when Frieda's voice came over the intercom and rained on his parade.

“Mr. O'Neill? Superintendent Mekita is on line one.”

F.X. slammed shut his appointment book and gritted his teeth. Mekita ran the prison where Thompkins was being held. There was no reason for a call unless there was bad news. He hated bad news. And he hated even more not knowing what the bad news was going to be. He relaxed his jaw just enough to say “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Not exactly, sir,” Frieda replied. “He just said he wanted to give you a heads-up about something. Would you like me to find out—”

“Never mind,” said F.X., punching the button for line one. He grabbed the phone. “O'Neill.”

“Uh, yes, Mr. O'Neill, this is Superintendent Robert Mekita at MCI-Wakefield,” the voice said. “How are you today?”

F.X. didn't normally deal with superintendents, because aside from running the prisons, they weren't of any particular use to him. The very fact that Mekita would call him directly was goddamn irritating. There was no reason for it, other than to try to appear important.

But you never know when someone might need to do you a favor, so F.X. decided to make nice, even though he was having a hard time containing himself. He needed to know what had happened to Thompkins. You couldn't very well prosecute and execute somebody who got killed in a prison fight.

Get on with it. “Fine, Bobby, fine. How are things up in Wakefield? Is Kathy Gates still working in records? Her husband, Walt, is working out of the Middlesex D.A.'s office, you know.”

“Is that right? You know, I'm not even sure if Ms. Gates is still in our records department,” Mekita answered. “I should make a note to check on that.”

There was a pause. For the love of God, was he ever going to get around to what happened to Thompkins? F.X. couldn't stand it.

“So how can I help the good people at MCI-Wakefield, Robert?” he asked finally.

“Well,” Mekita started, “I really just called out of professional courtesy. As you know, Inmate Calvin Thompkins has been in our custody since he was released from the hospital, and I wanted to inform you that he apparently has had some kind of nervous breakdown and has been transferred to Bridgewater for an evaluation.”

F.X. knew he wasn't the world's greatest lawyer, but he sure as hell knew when the press was gonna come knocking. At least Thompkins wasn't dead. But it made no sense to sit around and wait to see if the press was going to try to find a way to make this clown sympathetic. They'd already gone public with the deaths of his wife and kid. “When was this, now?” F.X. asked.

“Transportation took him over this morning,” Mekita replied. “I guess he started acting up yesterday—”

“Listen, Bobby,” F.X. interrupted, placing his finger on the disconnect button. “I'm sure you can understand—” and right in the middle of speaking, he hit the button, killing the connection. It was a trick he'd seen a defense attorney use once, and he loved it. He imagined that very important people used it often. It ended unnecessary conversations without any embarrassment. Who would ever think that people would hang up on themselves? Mekita would have gone on and on, and the district attorney had important things to do.

“Frieda,” he called out, flipping his appointment book open again. “Please call Mr. Mekita back, and tell him I'm sorry we got cut off, and that I told you to reconnect us, but that in the meantime, I got pulled away to an important meeting. And then get me Denny Garrity over at the
Post.
Oh, and have Stacey bring the Thompkins case autopsy reports in here right away.”

He was going to have to get that pregnancy thing going sooner than he'd thought.

March 24—Natick, Massachusetts

AS TERRY BLASTED CLASSIC AEROSMITH THROUGH his Lexus's stereo, Zack's mind drifted to Cal's case. One of the ways to establish an insanity defense would be to show that Cal had a mental defect that caused him to be unable to control his actions. Could the sudden, violent death of his family create that kind of a mental defect? Was blind vengeance the result of a mental defect? Had Cal truly lost the ability to control his actions?

Suddenly, the music stopped, and Terry spoke. “Are you loving the ride in this baby, or what?”

Terry was all about cars. Actually, Terry was all about a lot of stuff.

“Isn't this the same car you've had for, like, three years?” Zack asked.

“A year and a half,” replied Terry. “But I just got new tires. There's a whole new feel to it now.”

“Well, it still smells good,” Zack said.

“Probably something about my no-four-year-olds-eating-French-fries-in-the-backseat rule.”

As they pulled off the Mass Pike onto the exit for Framingham, Zack's cell phone rang.

“Zack Wilson,” he answered.

“Hi, Attorney Wilson, this is Adrianna Pino, from News Six.” On his cell phone? “I was wondering if you had any comment on the transfer of your client to Bridgewater State Hospital.”

According to the doctors, when Cal started hunting terrorists, he was merely postponing the time when he really let himself feel the loss of his family. And after he was arrested for the shootings in the apartment, his grief finally caught up with him and completely overwhelmed him. He was going to be in pretty bad emotional shape for a while.

“Excuse me, how did you get this number?” Zack asked.

The persistent Ms. Pino ignored the question. “Can you confirm reports that he's suffered a nervous breakdown?”

Zack had a policy of being available by phone from four to five in his office every weekday afternoon. Normally, that meant available to his clients, but ever since he'd taken Cal's case, he'd pretty much spent that hour of the day fielding phone calls from the press. His cell phone number was kept private for emergencies. The four thousandth attempt by the media to obtain a quote on Cal's case did not exactly constitute an emergency.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're not interested in making public statements about this case,” Zack said. “And please don't use this phone number again, or tell anyone else about it.” He turned off the phone's ringer and flipped it closed.

“That'll show 'em,” Terry said dryly, fiddling with some new device he had recently bought that supposedly helped navigate routes to unfamiliar destinations. Just what Terry needed. Something else to yell at when he got hopelessly lost. “Those vultures really piss me off.” He stopped at a red light, pressed another button on the device, and the display on the automatic navigator screen changed. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “Here we go. I make a left onto Route 135, and then a right into Natick Center. This is going to be easy.”

“Strikingly similar to the directions you got over the phone,” Zack said.

“Don't mock the technology,” Terry replied, as he made the left turn. “One day you may be lost in the middle of a strange city, and this thing will save your life.”

“Yeah, if I suddenly and inexplicably lose the ability to use a map or a telephone, or forget how to stop and ask for directions from someone else,” Zack countered.

“I can't hear you,” Terry said. “I'm too busy concentrating on how much better my life is now that I have an advanced navigational system in my car.” He signaled to make a right turn and pulled onto a one-way street.

“I'd still like to know how that reporter got my cell phone number,” Zack said. “That's just great.”

Terry came to another red light and looked over at Zack. “By the way, it's also great that every week I get to read ‘The Hangman's News,' or listen to that jackass O'Neill give another press conference, or watch another paper reprint that stunning mug shot of Cal on the front page. One of these days, I'd like to say something other than ‘No comment' to these idiot papers about their idiot polls about how guilty our idiot client is.”

Terry was right. The media and Fran O'Neill were proving to be absolutely shameless. But Zack never tried his cases in the press. And even if he had wanted to, everything he or Terry might say would be printed under another full-page picture of Cal's horror movie head shot.

“This whole thing sucks,” Terry said, checking his new gizmo.

They turned right again, and passed a couple of good-looking women. The one with the long dark hair was walking a puppy. Justin asked for a puppy about once a week. It was a tempting idea.

Then they made another turn onto a one-way street that looked very similar to the one they had been on a few minutes ago. “By the way, are we lost yet?” Zack asked.

“Shut up,” Terry said, slowing down as he approached the next intersection and turning left. They were heading into a rundown part of town. “I know exactly where we are.” He checked his navigational device. “According to my calculations, we should be just about at the corner of Holbrook Lane.” He looked up at the passing street sign and read out loud, “Iris Street.” He pulled over to the side of the road, punched a few buttons on the screen, and then said, to no one in particular, “Fuck me naked.”

As soon as Terry figured out how to get there, they'd be visiting Johnny Rychek, a private eye that Terry had said actually sounded promising. Most of the others he'd spoken to were dead ends. One investigator had spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars flying all over Europe and Africa, chasing down some bogus leads Cal had gotten from the Internet. Another had taken weeks to research and then shadow a supposedly suspicious man through California and Arizona only to find that he was nothing more than a harmless tourist from the Middle East.

When it was all said and done, the accountant's printout of Cal's expenditures on investigators turned out to be little more than a blueprint for spending an astonishing amount of money in a relatively short amount of time.

Finally, Terry pulled into the driveway of a small, worn-down white house with a sign on the front door that read “Rychek Investigations.” A tall chain-link fence separated it on one side from a lumberyard's storage area. On the other side was another small house where a tired-looking, mud-spattered dog was patrolling the front yard, which was littered with spare tires, a rusted shopping cart, and what looked to be two to three weeks' worth of garbage.

Suddenly the notion of getting a puppy for Justin didn't seem so appealing.

“You sure you don't want me to go to Florida with Justin instead?” Terry asked, as they emerged from the car, watching the dog walk over to Rychek's front yard and pee on the remains of a dead shrub. “I know you're going to miss it here in the glamorous world of criminal defense.”

Long before he had taken Cal's case, Zack had set up a one-week vacation for himself and Justin at Disney World. The next pretrial court appearance before Judge Baumgartner was scheduled for the week after they returned. So Zack would go to Orlando for a week and do nothing but take it easy and have fun with his son.

Terry knocked on the front door and a thin man with a portable phone pinned between his ear and his shoulder let them in and gestured for them to follow him. The place smelled disgusting—like a mix of moldy food and stale smoke—and looked worse than it smelled.

The man was on the phone listening to someone named Eduardo explain why some job hadn't yet been done. He led them down a dim hallway leading to the back of the house, and just before they turned into his office he lit the cigarette that was hanging from his lips. He blew out the match and tossed it onto the floor of the hallway. Mr. Hospitality.

“That's bullshit and you know it,” Rychek said into the phone. He cleared some papers from the two chairs that were in front of his desk and motioned for them to sit. Zack sat down. Terry started to pace. “Why not?” he said into the phone again. The smoke from the lit cigarette curled around his head. “Okay. Relax, Eduardo, relax. Take it easy, for Chrissakes. Just take the picture.” Another pause. “No. Listen to me. Take the picture. I'm hemorrhaging money here. Use your head, find the guy, and take the picture, okay? Call me later.”

He hung up, put the phone down on top of the nearest pile on the desk, and smiled apologetically. “Sorry, guys. My wife's younger brother. Good kid, but I swear to God he's a fuckin' moron, you know what I mean?” He reached over the desk and held out his hand. “Johnny Rychek,” he said. “You must be the lawyers. Terry, right? And Zack?” They shook hands. “How's my man Cal? I heard from his accountant, Steve Moldock—”