Premeditated Murder (33 page)

A:
Yes.

Q:
And isn't it also true that on January 14, at approximately 3:00, after ascertaining that the SIX victims were in their apartment, you took the machine gun and the ammunition, and you went across the hallway to Apartment 3C, and you shot and killed Marianne Duhamel, Helene Ghazi, Marc and Mitchell Nathenson, John Bercher, and Rudolf Lange?

A:
Yes.

Q:
And you meant to do this?

A:
Yes.

Q:
And you had planned to do it?

A:
Yes.

DIST. ATTY. O'NEILL:
I have no further questions, Your Honor.

THE COURT:
Any redirect, Mr. Wilson?

[No response.]

THE COURT:
Mr. Wilson?

MR. WILSON:
Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT:
Do you have any further questions for this witness?

MR. WILSON:
Actually, Your Honor, no, I don't.

THE COURT:
Fine. Mr. Thompkins, you may take your seat. Mr. Wilson. Anything further, or is the defense resting?

MR. WILSON:
If I might have a moment, Your Honor.

THE COURT:
Please, Mr. Wilson—

MR. TALLACH:
[inaudible] late, but he's here, Zack.

THE COURT:
Excuse me, Mr. Tallach.

COURT OFFICER:
[inaudible] … clear a path.

THE COURT:
Mr. Court Officer, what is going on back there?

MR. WILSON:
I apologize, Your Honor—

THE COURT:
Mr. Tallach. Unless someone can give me an explanation of what the disruption is, I will hold you directly responsible, and hold you in contempt—

MR. TALLACH:
I really don't think you're going to want to do that, Judge.

(Trial Volume XII, Page 111)

July 3—Washington, D.C.

THAT MORNING, MATT WALKED TO THE OVAL Office nursing a large mug of coffee. He had slept badly.

After the string quartet performance, Matt had a dream that Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman were in the World Trade Center, playing a concert, on September 11. The cellist made it out alive, but the violinist, because of his physical disability, did not. In the dream, Yo-Yo Ma came into the Oval Office carrying the lifeless body of Itzhak Perlman, both men still covered with the gray dust and ashes of the catastrophe. Then the cellist morphed into Carlos, and he placed Perlman's body on Matt's desk. Carlos said to Matt, “Here is the information you asked for,” and pointed to the Jewish violinist's arm, which had been marked with a concentration camp tattoo.

When he got to his desk, Matt opened the file he had been discussing with Browning a week ago. The dossiers of the terrorists who had been killed by that guy in Massachusetts were chilling. The brothers, Khalid and Nemetallah Wali, had apparently been working together for some time. The high points of their extensive criminal careers included complicity in the Bali nightclub bombing, convictions in absentia of a mass murder in Egypt, and direct involvement in the bombing of the U.S.S.
Cole.

The two women were also something of a team. They had been key players in the kidnapping and murder of a French businessman in Algeria six years ago during which over a million dollars had been extorted from the victim's family.

And the last two were no better. One had been caught on tape in an Iraqi marketplace running from a car that then exploded, killing eight and wounding sixteen. The other had been seen hanging around with two of the September 11 hijackers when they were attending flight school and had been indicted for the murder of a family of seven in Turkey. And he was linked to three other murders—one directly, and two through his association with the Wali brothers.

Matt felt restless, so he got up to ask Mrs. Wittenour to schedule a meeting as soon as possible with Homeland Security Director Francks. But just as he reached the office door, Carlos appeared. “Excuse me, Mr. President, but there's a story on the news that you should see, sir. It's on CNN right now.”

Matt followed him into the outer offices. The television screen showed video of an office building on fire. The voice-over was saying, “—arson took place less than two weeks after the Michigan newspaper ran a story on their front page titled ‘An Open Letter from a Fugitive.' The reporter who wrote the letter, who faces various drug charges, predicted that the paper might suffer retaliation just for printing her story. The reporter claimed …”

But Matt was no longer listening. He was thinking about the six terrorists who had been killed in Massachusetts. And the reporter who was running for her life. And the burning newspaper office. And what Browning had said a few days ago:
“We decided that it would be better for the public not to know.”

And suddenly Matt realized what he had to do.

Northampton, Massachusetts

“THE DEFENSE CALLS CALVIN THOMPKINS.”

As Cal took the stand, Terry marveled at the fact that somehow, things were just about to get worse.

The trial was already an eye-bulging, hair-pulling, blood-boiling, feather-flying duck-fucking.

And Cal hadn't even gotten up there yet and personally admitted to everything.

“Can you please identify yourself for the jury?”

“My name is Calvin Edgar Thompkins. I'm the defendant in this case.”

“Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Where you went to school, your profession, where you lived before this incident?”

Terry didn't need to check the earring ladies to read this jury anymore. It wasn't even close. There wasn't a sympathetic face in the bunch.

They'd probably already filled out and signed guilty verdict slips yesterday at lunch.

Which wasn't exactly a surprise. After all, this was a case charging a gigantic black man with walking into an apartment and lighting up six people with an AK-47.

Actually, the trial had gotten off to a relatively benign start. The early witnesses weren't too damaging. One neighbor heard a lot of shooting and banging upstairs and had called 911. Another had seen one of the victims as he went into the apartment building.

But then the witnesses who saw the crime scene began to testify. The jury was transfixed, and horrified. The photos of the apartment and the autopsies were devastating. As they were passed through the jury box, the younger earring lady had started to cry. The man to her right passed her a tissue and squeezed her hand in sympathy.

It was beyond bad.

The witnesses who testified to Cal's confession and the ballistics that conclusively tied him to the killings were just icing on the cake. The case was hopelessly lost.

But like he always did, Zack kept slugging away. He managed to get in the fact that Cal's wife and son had been killed by terrorists in Kenya. Terry watched carefully to see what effect it had on the jury.

Zero. The earring ladies had given up making eye contact with Zack or anybody else at the defense table. The skinny postal worker sitting two seats to their left even looked a little put out that he had to be bothered with the information.

There wasn't anything left to do now except for Calvin to finish telling his story, and for the jury to find him guilty. The conviction was a lock.

“So you are admitting that you shot these people?”

“That's right. I am admitting it.”

“But can you tell us why you did it?”

O'Neill was ready. “Objection, Your Honor! May we be seen at sidebar, please?”

“There's no need for that, Mr. District Attorney,” the judge said. “The objection is sustained. This concerns the issue we discussed before trial. The record will reflect that the defendant's appellate rights are protected in accordance with the motion
in limine
he filed on the topic of motive. Please move on to a different line of questioning, Mr. Wilson.”

And that was it. Calvin's entire defense—that he killed the victims because they were terrorists—was wrapped up, nice and neat, never to be even heard about by the jury.

The problem was, Zack played by the rules. He knew that Calvin's motive for the killings was an issue, and rather than springing it on the prosecutor or the judge in the middle of the trial without any warning, he had filed a motion
in limine,
a pretrial motion, seeking permission to put this evidence before the jury. This was the proper way to try a case. It alerted all sides to the presence of an issue, and allowed for a thorough and careful analysis by the trial judge, and then a ruling. And if the ruling was to be challenged on appeal, the appellate court would have a full record of the debate to consider in rendering its decision.

What made playing by the rules so tough in this case was that there was never any question that the judge would rule against them and that the judge would be technically correct. Whether or not these people were terrorists was not the least bit relevant as to whether Calvin murdered them. So any other lawyer in Zack's shoes would have gotten the information, or at least a hint of it, in front of the jury by asking a question that would never be answered.

Were you aware that the victims in this case were terrorists?

What led you to believe that the victims in this case were planning a terrorist attack?

How were the victims in this case connected with the terrorists that killed your wife and child?

Each of the questions was completely inappropriate and, according to the rules of ethics and evidence, should never be asked. But all a defendant needed was one juror to dig his heels in, and there would be no conviction. The jury needed to vote unanimously, one way or the other, guilty or not guilty. Anything short of a twelve-to-zero vote, and the judge would declare a mistrial. So given the choice between having no chance of getting the information before the jury and having the tiniest chance that an improper question might instill a seed of doubt or sympathy in the mind of one juror, Terry knew plenty of lawyers that would ask it.

But not Zack. For better or worse, when he took the oath to be a lawyer, he promised to play by the rules, so play by the rules he did. Zack glanced down at his notes before continuing to question Calvin. Although how he was going to continue was anybody's guess. There really wasn't a hell of a lot left to ask. He looked up, and just as he opened his mouth, Calvin spoke. “I killed them because they were terrorists.”

That woke everybody up.
Attaboy, Calvin.
Cottonwood shot Terry a venomous glare. Uh-oh. Had he said “Attaboy, Calvin” out loud?

O'Neill leapt to his feet and bellowed over the murmuring courtroom. “Objection, Your Honor! Move to strike!”

Cottonwood was about to have a stroke. But he managed to squeeze out through his clenched teeth, “The objection is sustained, and the jury is instructed to ignore the last remark from the defendant, which is to be stricken from the record.” Old Dick knew that this conviction was in the bag. He also knew that the bigger he made this issue, the more questions it would raise in the jurors' minds. That certainly wasn't in the prosecution's best interests, so Cottonwood tried to play it off as if nothing important had happened, despite the fact that his head looked like it was going to explode. “Please put your next question to the witness, Mr. Wilson.”

But Calvin wasn't done quite yet. “Your Honor,” he persisted, “there's no way I can get a fair trial if the jury is supposed to ignore the fact that these people were terrorists.”

This time when O'Neill jumped up and started shouting, the noise from the courtroom almost drowned him out. The jury looked bewildered. Judge Cottonwood looked like he wanted to dive off the bench and start pounding Calvin on the head. Instead, he picked up an old paperweight that he had and started slamming it on the bench, shouting, “Order! Order, or I'll clear the courtroom!” Then, when things quieted down a little, he actually rose from his chair, took a step toward Calvin, and looked down at him. “Mr. Thompkins,” he said, in a voice that had surely intimidated many a witness over the past decades, “I have already ruled on the issue you are trying to raise. Once before trial, and once during the trial. I now instruct you again. Confine your remarks to the questions that are put to you by the attorneys, or I will be forced to—”