VC04 - Jury Double (37 page)

A clammy certainty slithered through Cardozo’s mind.
It’s him.

“Were you sentenced to serve time?”

“They put me in a trade school in Texarkana. It was really a kind of reformatory. I learned welding.”

The hair, the eyes, the earring. They fit Mademoiselle’s description of the man who took Toby.

“How long were you in this institution?”

“Three years—till a minister and his wife adopted me. They were Pentacostalists. We didn’t see eye-to-eye. I ran away—joined a rodeo. I was always big for my age.”

Cardozo’s eye went to the jury box. Kyra Talbot was staring at the witness with an expression of shock.

Does she know him?
he wondered.
Why’s she looking at him like that?

“And did your troubles with the law continue?”

Mickey grinned uneasily. “Regular as clockwork. I was drunk from the time I turned thirteen till I was fifteen. Sobered up in prison. Got released. Stayed drunk till I was seventeen. Sobered up in prison again.”

Dotson Elihu rose from the defense table. “Your Honor, I object to the presence of Ms. Lisa Lopez in this room.” He nodded toward the third row in the spectator section, where the little Hispanic girl, starched and immaculate in a fresh white dress, sat in the aisle seat beside her mother.

“Do you intend to call Lisa Lopez as a witness?” the judge asked.

“I do not, Your Honor. But her presence is clearly part of an orchestrated attempt by the People to—”

“Overruled.”

Tess diAngeli gazed at her witness for a long, evaluating moment. “And after your second stay in state prison?”

Mickey pulled at his earring. “I got out and assaulted a security guard at a Wendy’s restaurant. They caught that one on the security video; it made national TV.”

DiAngeli stood with her arms folded. Annoyance flicked across her face. She hammered the witness with a tight-jawed stare. As if she were trying to signal him.

“A recruiter for Texas A and M saw me and paid my bail, got me off, offered me a football scholarship. Should have been the happy ending, but I was too deep into drinking and drugging and self-will run riot.”

Cardozo flashed what the trouble was: the testimony was not following diAngeli’s script. She had lost control of her witness. Stage fright had got him, and he was babbling.

“After I graduated, I married a lovely young woman. Hope to hell we won’t have to drag her into any of this. Screwed up my marriage.”

“He married that movie actress,” the man next to Cardozo whispered. “She ditched him.”

DiAngeli uncrossed her arms. “How did you happen to meet Corey Lyle?”

“That’s quite a story.” Mickey gazed at the defendant with eyes that seemed to say,
My whole life I dreamed of loving someone and then of all people on God’s earth I picked you.
“I was up for the third time on a charge of exposing myself at a playground. It could have meant prison. But the judge offered me a deal: prison or join the Corey Lyle cult. I didn’t want to do hard time, so Corey seemed the way to go.”

“And how did you and Corey Lyle get along?”

“Corey treated me like no one else ever had in my life. He was gentle with me. He was wonderful with me.” Mickey smiled a smile of uncomplicated love, like a child’s. “He lifted my headaches. He lifted my sleeping trouble. He lifted my compulsion to drink. He lifted my compulsion to exhibit myself.”

“How did he do all this?”

“Just sitting with me—talking.”

“Do you recall anything specific Corey Lyle said in these talks that helped you?”

Mickey stared at the defendant. “He told me to relax. Sometimes he lit a candle and told me to look at the flame. He told me when he touched my arm it would rise. And he’d touch my arm and it would rise.” Mickey’s beefy arm floated up from the rail of the witness box, demonstrating. “He’d tell me to close my eyes—and after that it’s kind of blurry.”

“Would you say Corey Lyle hypnotized you?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

DiAngeli walked back to her table and consulted a piece of paper. “Mr. Williams, did you ever hear Corey Lyle use the phrase ‘share the miracle’?”

“All the time.”

“Would you explain what you understood Corey Lyle to mean?”

“Part of the Fellowship tradition was prayer shares. Members were paired off so they could help one another with prayer and meditation.”

“Who were you paired off with?”

“I was paired off with Johnny Briar.”

“Would you describe your impressions of John Briar?”

“Johnny went to extremes. I’d see him fast, then I’d see him binge on desserts. I’d see him go celibate for months. His wife was celibate and he thought he ought to try. But then he’d fall off the wagon and we’d go whoring together.”

“Whoring? But wasn’t this against cult regulations?”

“There weren’t regulations—there were guidelines. And Corey was pretty gentle about enforcing them.”

“Do you mean Corey Lyle was lax on sin?”

“Lax? He was gentle, not lax. But he said sins had to be atoned for. There was no getting around God’s law.”

“Did you and Corey Lyle ever discuss how you might atone for your sins?”

“He said if I performed an act of purification, my offenses against young girls would be forgiven and I could cut down my time in purgatory.”

“Did he suggest any particular act of purification?”

“Yes, he did. He told me to go to the Briars’ apartment Friday evening, Labor Day weekend—and kill them.”

“And did you?”

Mickey’s eyes dropped. At that instant he projected frailty, vulnerability—and fear. “I always did what Corey said.”

“Who let you into the apartment?”

“Corey let me in.”

“Did you and Corey Lyle have a conversation at that time?”

“Yes. He took me into Johnny’s room and lit a candle and told me to look at the flame. I don’t remember our whole talk, but he told me that at one
A.M.
I had to suffocate Johnny with a pillow.”

Cardozo glanced at Corey Lyle, sitting relaxed and serious, but not at all solemn or worried, at his lawyer’s side.

“Did Corey Lyle give you any further instructions?”

“He said to make sure Amalia stayed alive till six
A.M.
Monday.”

“And what was to happen at six
A.M.
Monday?”

“He wanted me to suffocate her too.”

DiAngeli allowed the words a moment to echo and die. “Can you recall killing John and Amalia Briar?”

“Yes, I recall doing it—but it was like I was watching someone else. I knew I was doing it but it didn’t seem real. I didn’t understand—Why am I doing this? Why can’t I make myself stop? Johnny was somebody that I loved—and I wouldn’t have hurt a little old lady like Amalia for all the world—and yet I had no choice except to do what I did. It was like …” Mickey put both hands over his face. “It was like Corey was inside me, making me kill.”

There was a knock and a rattle of keys. The steel door swung open and Dotson Elihu stood stoop-shouldered in the doorway, clutching to his gut a tattered, overstuffed briefcase.

Corey Lyle looked up. He laid down his plastic fork and wiped tuna salad from his mouth. “Hi there, Dot. How are we doing?”

Elihu waited till the door clicked shut behind him. “Not so good.” He pulled Jack Briar’s police tape from his briefcase. “This videocassette is our last hope. This afternoon in cross, I want to destroy Mickey with it. I want to jump right in to his record of child molestation and Jack Briar’s statements to the police.”

Corey gazed at his lawyer a long, refusing moment. “I won’t allow it. I will not betray a disciple.”

“Ex-disciple.”

“Mickey’s strayed, but he’s not lost.”

“What the hell do you think he’s doing to you? He’s a killer, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s you he’s killing.
You owe him nothing
! Only one of you can get out of this—you, or Mickey. My job is to make sure it’s you.”

Corey quietly folded his hands on the table. “Did Jesus cast Judas out?”

“Core—we’re talking about you, not Jesus. There’s a difference, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Corey’s expression was suddenly ferocious. “If you use anything on that tape to attack Mickey, I’ll fire you on the spot and take over my own defense.”

“Then you’re going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

Corey smiled. He wasn’t giving it much, but it was still a recognizable smile. “Not necessarily.”

“Bull! Look at those jurors. They hate your guts. They hate your fancy clothes and your salon-cut hair and they hate your cockamamy serenity.”

“All we need is one juror holding out for acquittal.”

“No juror is going to be idiot enough to do that.”

“Don’t be so sure. God moves in mysterious ways.”

“Leave the Almighty out of this—He’s not taking the stand.”

“And neither is this tape.” Corey seized the cassette and smashed it open against the edge of the table. Like a child destroying a doll, he ripped out handfuls of magnetic tape.

Elihu watched in disbelief. “Core, I’ve always known you were a lot of things. … But till this moment I never thought you were an idiot. You just committed suicide.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

2:30 P.M.

C
ARDOZO WATCHED DOTSON ELIHU
draw in a deep breath, bracing himself for an escalation of hostilities.

“Mr. Williams—why did you wait fifty-three hours between killing John Briar and killing his wife?”

“Because Corey said ‘Kill Johnny at one
A.M.
Saturday morning and kill Amalia six
A.M.
Monday.’”

The times struck Cardozo as oddly precise and oddly pointless. Why fifty-three hours when all the will required was forty-eight? Had Mickey and Corey synchronized watches Friday evening at the sound of a starter’s pistol?

“But isn’t it a fact that Dr. Lyle did
not
order you to kill Amalia Briar? Isn’t it a fact that Dr. Lyle did
not
order you to kill John Briar?”

Mickey’s brow wrinkled. “No, sir. Corey told me to kill them.”

“Isn’t it a fact that John and Amalia Briar were both alive Sunday morning? Didn’t they die natural deaths Sunday evening?”

Mickey shook his head. “No.”

It was an obvious strategy, Cardozo reflected; undermine the state’s case by blasting the witness with alternate scenarios, and hope one or two jurors find them credible. He checked the jury box to see if any of the jurors were buying it. Several were frowning, and Kyra Talbot was shaking her head.

“Isn’t it a fact that Monday night, before the police questioned you about the murders, you and other persons”—Elihu stared a moment at the prosecutor—“worked out the whole story of Dr. Lyle hypnotizing you?”

“Objection.” Tess diAngeli sighed. “Mr. Williams was never arrested for these murders.”

“An astonishing oversight!” Elihu spat.

“Objection sustained.” Judge Bernheim gazed down at the defense attorney. “Tonight, Mr. Elihu, you are a guest of the federal prison system. Proceed.”

“I appreciate the hospitality, Your Honor.” A sly half-smile twinkled. “Mr. Williams, did you not make a phone call from the Briars’ apartment to the BATF at seven forty-one Monday evening? And did you not talk to your government handlers until eight fifty-nine
P.M.
?”

“That’s not true.”

Cardozo watched Elihu’s face go through the motions of perplexity. He strode to the defense table and snatched up a document that looked, from twenty feet away, very much like a Nynex phone bill. “Mr. Williams—Yolanda Lopez has testified that she made only one phone call from the Briars’ apartment—a call to the BATF Saturday morning. Yet the Briars’ Nynex record for Monday, September seventh, shows a call made that evening to the BATF, lasting well over an hour. If
you
didn’t make the call and your friend Yolanda Lopez didn’t, then who did? The corpse of John Briar?”

Canny old bastard
, Cardozo thought.

Mickey sat as though he had been struck, rigid and red-faced, brown eyes bulging with pinprick pupils. “I don’t … I didn’t see … I mean, I …”

Cardozo saw that this was exactly the reaction Elihu had been probing for: panic and confusion. Mickey’s eyes flicked an appeal toward the prosecutor.

“Objection.” Tess diAngeli sprang to her feet. “That alleged phone record was not raised in direct and it’s never been offered in evidence.”

“Sustained.”

Elihu threw a glance toward the jury:
See what I have to put up with for the sake of justice?
“Mr. Williams, isn’t it a fact that BATF instructed you to suffocate John and Amalia Briar’s
dead
bodies with a pillow?”

Mickey blinked. The shift of subject seemed to have thrown him. “No, sir.”

Elihu thumped a hand on the witness box. Cardozo could feel him closing in now. He had bracketed his quarry and he was centered on it and the next question would shake it from the bush.

“In exchange for the testimony you give in this trial, hasn’t the BATF promised you immunity from charges arising from your admissions?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“No, sir,” Mickey Williams said, “the BATF hasn’t promised me immunity from anything.”

Judge Bernheim glanced toward the witness. “Mr. Williams, please do not answer a question when I have sustained an objection. The answer will be struck and the jurors will disregard it.”

“Mr. Williams,” Elihu said, “has any agency of the federal government offered judicial lenience in exchange for your delivering their scripted testimony in this trial?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“Your Honor,” Elihu shouted, “this jury is being kept in the dark as to the true nature of the government’s witnesses in this trial! There is not a word in their case that has not been suborned, scripted, and paid for!”

“Counselor—you are one millimeter away from being the government’s guest for a week! That will be enough!”

Dotson Elihu moved away from the witness stand and slowly turned. “Mr. Williams … you said you were given a choice of joining Corey Lyle’s group or going to prison for a crime you’d committed three times. Could you tell us what that crime was?”