Escape (40 page)

"I believe I do now."

"Do you know who cleaned it?"

"I believe I do."

"Well, essentially all you really told this jury is that you didn't find anything at the Campbell residence to indicate a crime had been committed there, isn't that true?"

"Yes, ma'am. We didn't find any evidence that a crime had been committed."

"No further questions."

After Watts stepped down from the stand, Karp called his last witness of the day, Homer Paris, the station master from Staatsburg. The door at the back of the courtroom opened, and an old man—bent over at about midchest level like a candy cane—hobbled into the courtroom and stopped, looking around at the spectators with suspicion.

"What the hell you people looking at?" he snarled.

"Don't let them bother you, Mr. Paris," Judge Dermondy said, amused. "Please, come take a seat so that we can swear you in and these fine lawyers can ask you a few questions."

"Well, make it snappy," Paris replied. "I need to get back to my station."

"We'll do our best."

Homer Paris had not wanted to appear at the trial. "Waste of my time," he complained when Clay Fulton drove to Staatsburg to serve him with a subpoena. "Who's going to keep the trains running on time if I'm not here, huh? Answer me that."

Fulton had pointed out that the subpoena required him to appear in court or be held in contempt, "and possibly jailed or fined." He added that Detective Cobing would be there, too.

"Oh that cute little black cop is going to be there?" Paris replied. "Well, I suppose I can make it. She's a fine-looking woman."

When the station master spotted Cobing sitting in the pew behind the prosecution table, he stopped and winked. She smiled and nodded toward the witness stand. He gave her a little salute, then straightened his back as best he could and hobbled to the stand to be sworn in.

As requested, the attorneys kept it snappy. Essentially, Paris was asked to relate the story of the day that past March when the woman in the cheap wig and big sunglasses had walked into his station and asked for a one-way ticket to Grand Central Terminal. "Paid cash," he recalled. "Nobody pays cash anymore."

"Is that woman in the courtroom today?" Karp asked.

"You bet your ass, sonny," Paris replied and pointed at Jessica Campbell. "The record should reflect that the witness, Mr. Paris, pointed to the defendant, Jessica Campbell," Karp noted. "How is it that you're so certain?"

"She's got big ears and her chin looks like a butt."

Before anyone could laugh, Dermondy cleared his throat, having anticipated the answer. "Please, don't," he warned those in the courtroom.

"Don't what?" Paris scowled. "Can I go now?"

Dermondy raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Karp?"

"No further questions."

"Miss Lewis?"

"No questions, your honor."

"Well then, Mr. Paris, thank you for your time. You may step down and return to your station," Dermondy said.

"Well la-di-da." The old man climbed down from the stand. "Brought me all the hell the way down here for that? Waste of my time, that's what it was." Apparently not a complete waste, however, as he stopped again next to the pew and gave Cobing another wink. "Now that's a fine-looking woman," he announced. This time, Dermondy didn't bother to bang his gavel and laughed along with everyone else.

The irascible station master left the room with a few choice words for a couple of reporters who dared ask how to spell his last name. Dermondy shook his head and asked the attorneys if there was anything else. "As you know, we're going to call it a little early tonight. I got invited to a gig with Woody's group down at Michael's Pub."

"Nothing from us," Karp said. "We expect to finish our case in chief tomorrow."

"Miss Lewis?"

Lewis, who'd also stood and was waiting for Karp to finish, held up a sheaf of papers. "Yes, actually, there is, your honor. I'm making a motion for a mistrial due to my earlier objections to the testimony of Detective Cobing and Officer Watts."

Judge Dermondy stared at Lewis for a long time, as if doing so would make her go away, but when she didn't, he turned to the jury. "I'm going to excuse you now while we discuss some legal issues that are not part of the evidence. Refrain from watching television newscasts, listening to radio news reports, or reading newspaper stories about this case. You are not to talk about it with anyone—not your family, not your friends, not your priest or rabbi, not even the television set. If someone—including any one of these rascals in the press—approaches you, please report it to the court clerk, and I will deal with them as harshly as the law allows. Have a good night, eat something healthy, and sleep well. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint."

The jurors filed out of the courtroom. "Okay, counsel," Dermondy said, "what are your grounds for dismissal based on?"

"Judicial error. You should not have allowed that testimony."

"I'm inclined to let the appellate courts decide if you're correct," Judge Dermondy said. "I have little doubt that you'll not succeed there either. But for the record, let's hear your reasoning."

"I already said—the testimony was out of context and unfairly prejudicial to my client receiving a fair trial," Lewis retorted.

"Now Miss Lewis, isn't it a matter of record from your opening statements, and your cross-examination of the witnesses, that you intend to use some of these very same statements in your case to demonstrate that your client was mentally ill?"

"Yes, your honor, but as I said, it's a matter of context. The prosecution presented these witnesses' statements in an erroneous context as a 'confession' by my client, in essence telling the jury that she was aware that she was murdering her children. And the so-called 'evidence' that the bathroom was meticulously cleaned was meant to be perceived as an admission by my client that she knew that what she was doing was wrong. However, if presented in the proper context with a medically appropriate understanding of her mental state, it becomes apparent that the statements regarding sending her children to be with God were not confessions to murder at all, but proof of a mental illness that rendered her incapable of understanding what she had actually done."

"And what about cleaning the bathroom?"

"Again, in context it's clear that she was in a disassociative state where she thought she was simply being a good housewife and cleaning up a mess she'd made."

Karp jumped to his feet. "Your honor, how long do we have to listen to this nonsense? 'Cleaning up the mess she'd made' is an awfully cavalier description for drowning and butchering children."

As the courtroom spectators gasped and Jessica Campbell gave a muffled cry, Dermondy responded in his usual measured drawl. "Mr. Karp, you know that you and counsel, Miss Lewis, will have ample opportunity to argue the facts to the jury at the appropriate time. I recognize that competent counsel may, from time to time, engage in a partisan spin of facts. But both sides should trust in my ability to see it clearly and to rule impartially. So Miss Lewis, let me get this straight. You believe that you should be able to use these statements made by the defendant, so long as they are in what you deem the proper context, but the prosecution can't? Well, that's a particularly self-serving argument, and, without meaning to insult you, Miss Lewis, has the legal impact of a feather. Long ago, I'm sure, we all heard the old saw: 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander.' I'll let the jury decide how to interpret the evidence. Your motion to dismiss, most respectfully, is denied."

Karp expected Lewis to take her lumps and sit. But instead, she said, "Then I'd like to make an objection right now to the appearance of tomorrow's prosecution witnesses."

"Can't you do that tomorrow, Miss Lewis?"

Despite not liking her tactics or her personally, Karp had to grudgingly respect how hard the woman fought for her client. She was going to throw everything she could against the wall, hoping something would stick, and she was willing to piss off the judge to do it.

Finding the bodies of the Campbell children had been a real blow to the defense. No longer could it be argued or inferred that Jessica had simply left them somewhere—something along the lines of sticking them in a boat and shoving them out to sea to be found by God, an act that unfortunately resulted in their deaths. Sinking the car in the river, when combined with her efforts to clean any fingerprints and bloodstains in the bathroom, clearly came off as someone who knew that what she had done was wrong, trying to hide evidence. And Lewis knew that the forensic examination of the bodies by Gates and Swanburg was going to hurt her chances of convincing the jury that Jessica Campbell didn't know what she was doing when she murdered her children.

As expected in pre-trial hearings, Lewis had demanded that the evidence located in the Hudson River be suppressed due to what she said was "misconduct by law enforcement," chiefly several violations of constitutional protections against search and seizure. Part of her contention was that Detective Cobing had questioned Jessica's parents "under the pretext of simply wanting to find the children so that they could be properly buried, when the real motivation was to create probable cause for a judge to issue a search warrant."

But Dermondy hadn't bought it. "Miss Lewis, I don't believe that Mr. and Mrs. Gupperstein were forced to talk to Detective Cobing. No one sat them in a hot little room with a bright bulb over their heads ... no rubber hoses ... not even the threat of arrest. This 'interrogation,' as you call it, was non-custodial and in fact occurred in their home. They talked voluntarily under their own free will. Motion denied."

"Then I object to any testimony about what was inside the car, again for unlawful search and seizure. These investigators in essence broke into private property by searching the Campbells' car without their permission or a search warrant."

That had been a month ago. Now Dermondy smiled and shook his head. "I respect the vigor with which you defend your client, Miss Lewis," he said. "But your arguments stretch the bounds of common sense, much less the sensibilities of the law. For the record, all these search and seizure issues were fully litigated by the defense before, during, and after the evidentiary fact-finding hearings prior to trial before this court. Essentially, I ruled that the car and its contents were abandoned, leaving the authorities rightfully to seize all of it for evidentiary purposes. So, Miss Lewis, I denied your motions to dismiss then, as I do presently. Unless you have newly discovered evidence, or new facts, please do not repeat the same motions previously litigated. Now, there being no further business before this court, we will remain in recess until 9 a.m."

That evening after work, Karp slipped out of the loft with Gilgamesh and headed down the street, where he tied the dog to a railing outside the Housing Works Used Bookstore. He went inside and back to the coffee shop, where he sat down at a table already occupied by Jaxon, who told him about the meeting the night before.

"I've already spoken to the mayor and the chief of police. They agree that we can't shut down the entire Metro system without more specifics. But they're going to pump up the number of uniformed officers throughout the line, especially at Grand Central, as well as triple the number of plainclothes cops. The cops will be instructed to search a lot more backpacks and keep an eye out for the possibility of suicide vests under coats. They're to err on the side of caution, even if it means racial and ethnic profiling."

"What are you doing about this Tatay?" Karp asked.

Jaxon smiled. "Why, pay him a little visit, and welcome him to these golden shores."

The guard standing duty at the bottom of the gangplank leading from the dock to the deck of the Star of
Vladisvostok
lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
Nothing like American tobacco,
he thought, savoring the flavor,
not like that cow dung we have in Russia.

He glanced up at the ship he was guarding. It was a tramp steamer built in the 1960s, commanded by an owner-captain who was not particular about what sort of cargo he was transporting. Nor did his crew care so long as they got paid and had plenty of shore leave on which to spend their earnings.

The guard didn't know many details, but he was aware that the captain mainly worked for the Tazamov gang running drugs and weapons, as well as getting people in and out of countries secretly. He'd been told that the Tazamovs were relatively new to the
Russkaya Mafiya.
The Russian mob was centered in the Brighton Beach community of Brooklyn, known to the locals as Little Odessa because of its large Russian population. However, he knew that the Tazamov family wasn't new to organized crime.

They were a brutally bloody legend back in his hometown of St. Petersburg. Unlike most of the Russian gangs, which were run by ex-Soviet Army and ex-KGB agents who'd lost their jobs at the end of the Cold War, the Tazamovs had been involved in crime since the days of the tsars.

The gang's most notorious contribution to the colorful pantheon of Russian mobsters was Viktor "the Butcher" Tazamov. Legend had it that he'd doubled the family's considerable fortune by selling "long pork" to his starving fellow citizens during the German siege of Leningrad in the winter of 1943.

Of course, there were no pigs in the city at that time. No, the Butcher's herd had walked on two legs until starvation, cold, or German munitions killed them, though rumor had it that some were not dead when Viktor sent them to hang in his meat locker. It could have been merely legend, but supposedly he'd joked after the war that he'd spent December 1943 "having my competition over for dinner."

Small wonder that the U.S. offshoot of the gang arrived in the 1990s with few, if any, scruples as to what they would and would not do for money. In that way, the ship's captain fit right in with the Tazamovs.

This particular dock was considered Tazamov territory. The longshoremen and dock security personnel had been bribed to ignore the ships that docked there and not to pay too much attention to whatever cargo was lifted, or walked, on and off the vessels.

What the guard, an able-bodied seaman who knew a thing or two about the seamy side of the world, wondered was why U.S. federal agents weren't all over this place, given the heightened threat of terrorism. But after the first couple of trips went smoothly, he'd decided to believe the captain's assurances that this was a milk run. It didn't hurt that the crew had received generous bonuses, as well as plenty of time to partake of New York's bars and sexual street vendors.

Somebody is paying somebody else a lot of money,
he thought. I
wish I had that kind of dough.
His pay seemed to be predicated on the degree of risk. This time the bonus had been twice as big as any other, which made him a little nervous. But the only downside so far had been that the crew was forbidden to go into the city—instead a small bar with several prostitutes available had been set up in a nearby warehouse—and it was to be a short trip, two nights in port and that was all.

They don't want one of us getting drunk and saying the wrong thing to the wrong person,
he thought as he looked up at the moonless night sky. Our
passengers must be very important.

Not that they cared, but the crew had been told to stay away from the men they'd picked up on an equally short, and disappointing, stop in Manila. The guard had only seen the guests once and didn't want to know them any better; they looked hard and tough. Physically he would have pegged them as Southeast Asian, maybe Chinese. It appeared that they were Muslim, however, as various crew members had seen or heard them at their prayers on the passage over.

Whatever the passengers were up to in New York City, the guard knew that it was not sightseeing. But what they did was none of his business. It was a screwed-up world, and if the people in it wanted to kill each other, so be it, as long as he had a bottle of vodka, American cigarettes, and the occasional prostitute.

As if in answer to his prayers, the guard saw someone walking down the dock toward him. His hand went to the opening of his jacket, where he carried a gun in a shoulder holster, but then he relaxed. All he could see was a silhouette because of the lights from a warehouse behind her, but the figure was definitely that of a woman, and apparently a drunk woman by the way she wobbled. He licked his lips, hoping his comrades had sent one of the hookers over to offer their lonely shipmate a quick bang.

Just don't look at her face,
he reminded himself with a grin. There were always a few working girls servicing the men who worked the dockyards or the sailors who didn't have shore leave. But they were usually past their prime—if they'd ever had a prime—if not downright old enough to be his grandmother or with faces ravaged by diseases and just poor genetics.

As the woman drew closer, he could tell she was a lot younger than the usual dock whores and a whole lot better looking, even if her nose was a little too big for his tastes. True, there wasn't much meat on her, not for a sailor who liked plenty of cushion; but she was wearing a mini-skirt that showed off nice legs, and he was more than willing to pay top dollar for such a treat. He wondered if he had enough money in his wallet.

"Hi baby," the woman purred. "You look lonely. Want a date?"

"Sure, what is price?" he replied in broken English.

"I speak Russian, honey," the young woman replied, switching languages. "The price depends on what you want. Fifty dollars for a suck, one hundred for anything else."

Must
be my lucky day,
he thought.
I'm going to have sex with a classy young bitch with legs that
look
like they could go around me twice.
He didn't have that kind of money on him, but he figured that she would just have to give him a discount.

"I want it all," the guard said, reaching for her. But she dodged his hand.

"Not here, you fool," she smiled coyly. "Do you think I want to be a show for others on the ship? That would cost extra."

The guard scowled. He'd been told not to abandon his post on pain of being thrown overboard once they were back at sea. "Where?"

The woman nodded toward a stack of shipping containers. "It's dark over there," she said. "I cost a little more money, but you can do anything ... anything you want and you won't have to hurry. I'm new at this and a little shy."

The guard bit his lip.
I shouldn't have to guard this old rust bucket,
he thought.
I don't even like carrying a gun. People with guns get shot.
He looked again at the girl, who was turned sideways, giving him a good look at the profile of her breasts. Not
large, but perky,
he thought.
And if she's not lying, practically a virgin!
The thought of anything he might want was too much to resist. She wouldn't get paid after it was over, as punishment for making him take this risk, but what the hell could she do about it? Report him to the police?

"Let's go," she said and hooked her arm in his, leading him back toward the containers like they were on a high school date.

They had just reached the shadows when another figure loomed in front of them. The guard's first instinct was to go for his gun, but he couldn't move his arm because the girl tightened her grip and held it fast. A third person grabbed him from behind, an arm going around his neck in a figure-four headlock.
I
wish I'd had sex first,
he thought just before he passed out.

"Oh my God, if I never wear high heels and a mini-skirt again, it will be too soon," Lucy said as John Jojola let the man slump to the ground. "I thought I was going to break my ankle out there. I probably looked drunk." She glanced down at the sailor. "Is he dead?"

"No, it's just an old jujitsu choke-hold,
hadaka shime;
cuts off the blood supply to the brain. The victim goes out in a few seconds, but after you let go, most people wake up on their own in a matter of minutes."

"Most people? What about the others?"

Jojola shrugged. "They don't wake up without being revived. That's why most police departments have stopped using the 'sleeper hold.' But I'm not particularly worried about whether this dirtbag wakes up."

The man on the ground took a deep breath and groaned. "See, he's okay," Jojola said as other figures emerged from the dark, led by a tall man with an eye-patch.

"What do we do with this one, Mr. Karchovski?" asked one of the men. "A bullet and over the side? He works for those scum, the Tazamovs." Ivgeny Karchovski toed the fallen man, whose eyes fluttered open. "We will have words with the Tazamovs soon enough," he said, but in such a way that Lucy was sure that more than words would be exchanged. "But no, this one is just stupid Russian sailor who fell for cute girl; he wasn't the first and won't be the last. Just take his clothes and tie him up; we'll figure out what to do with him and his comrades later."

Two men soon had the prisoner stripped of his pants, coat, and hat. They were joined by Tran, Jaxon, and several of his FBI agents. "The bar's secure," Jaxon said. "We had to shoot the bartender, who apparently worked for the local mob, present company excluded. But the others gave up easily enough; they're just sailors, though I know some people who'll be interested in talking to them about this ship's travels and cargoes."

Karchovski's men quickly settled on who among them most closely resembled the prisoner, and that man donned the confiscated pants, coat, and hat. He offered his arm to Lucy. "Wait for my signal," he said.

"And make sure my little cousin is clear before we go," Karchovski added. Lucy and her escort walked out of the shadows. She clung to his arm, laughing and staggering—not entirely on purpose. As they drew near the gangplank they stopped, and the faux sailor handed her money.

"Was worth every ruble," he laughed, flashing a much nicer smile than his predecessor.

Ned better get back
soon
from Navy SEAL training,
Lucy thought.
A
young woman only has so much willpower.
"Next time it's free," she said, loud enough for any observers to hear.

Lucy reached the shadows, where Ivgeny met her first. "You're one fine actress," he said. "Though I suspect that if my cousin, Butch, your father, knew I'd dressed you up like prostitute and sent you to meet Russian sailors and terrorists, he would find a way to prosecute me in Brooklyn and send me to prison for life."

"Probably. He still thinks I'm in junior high and need protecting." She could see her escort pacing at the bottom of the gangplank. "What's the signal?" she asked.

"When he lights his cigarette," Ivgeny replied.

Azahari Mujahid paused at the rail outside his berth. He'd come out to look at the night sky. In a few days, the crescent moon would rise, signaling the start of Ramadan. And, he thought,
with Allah's blessing, the start of a new world of Islam.

The moment was tarnished when he saw the filthy infidel sailor and the
pokpok
emerge from the shadows by the containers. He gave the man who was standing outside the passenger cabins as a sentry a disgusted look, which the man answered by spitting in the direction of the Russian guard.

Mujahid was fifty years old and originally from the Philippine island of Panay, where his Malaysian ancestors had immigrated hundreds of years before. Almost thirty of those years he'd been a Muslim after converting during his years as a migrant laborer in Saudi Arabia. Born Emil Santos, he considered himself lucky to have been befriended by the imam of a Medina mosque. He'd gone there one day to learn more about his host country's religion, which he'd been told had been usurped from the Filipino people by the Spanish colonialists. Shortly thereafter, he committed his life to the worship of Allah and the promotion of Islam, taking the name Azahari Mujahid.

When he returned to the Philippines after nearly fifteen years abroad, he discovered that his wife and daughter were westernized. They'd spent his hard-earned money on shopping trips to buy indecent clothing. He tried to persuade them to convert to Islam, but his wife had no intentions of abandoning her Catholic upbringing, and his daughter just laughed in his face when he suggested that she wear a scarf to cover her hair.

One day, fed up with her insolence, he wrapped his hands, strong as vises, around her neck and squeezed. His wife had returned from a trip in time to see him choke the last bit of life out of their daughter. She screamed and tried to run, but he caught her and dragged her back into the house, where he beat her to death with a tire iron.

Mujahid fled, arriving on the island of Mindanao where the main population of Filipino Muslims lived. He felt little remorse over the murders of his wife and daughter, believing the imam who said that he'd only acted in accordance with the Qur'an.

Like other recent converts, he felt that the local Muslims were too permissive and didn't follow the teachings of the Prophet. Worse, they were content to be ostracized and discriminated against by the Roman Catholic majority in other parts of the Philippines. The entire country had been cowed into accepting the presence of the U.S. military, much as those who ruled Saudi Arabia were submissive to the infidel troops trampling holy Arabian soil.

Mujahid dedicated himself to returning the Philippines to a Muslim state and ridding it of all Western influences. He'd traveled to Africa and Pakistan, where Islamic fundamentalists were organizing and training to defeat the West. Soon he was specializing in making bombs—little bombs like the ones used in suicide vests and big bombs capable of leveling multi-storied buildings. Soon his car bombs were exploding outside of U.S. military bases and inside busy Manila shopping malls.