One Dog Night (19 page)

“I’ve talked to him. Carpenter is in the dark on this, he’s groping. If his people get in touch with you, your position should be that you don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Fowler’s voice sounded coldly amused. “Now you’re telling me my position?”

“I’m telling everyone the same thing,” Loney said.

“Just make sure they listen to you.”

It was a ridiculous comment for Fowler to make, since there was no question the people on that list would listen to Loney. Their fear of Loney, and in some cases their dependence on him, is what made the entire operation run in the first place.

By noon, Loney had made all the calls. He knew these people, he knew what made them tick, and he could have anticipated each of their reactions.

Some were nervous and afraid, which for the most part they tried to conceal. A few were less concerned, and two even relished the danger. But all promised to stonewall anyone who contacted them. They would not be intimidated; if Carpenter made their names public they were prepared to take him to court for defamation of character.

It was the reaction Loney wanted, though he was not sure each of them could be trusted. He would have to monitor things vigilantly, and perform whatever corrective actions might be needed.

Corrective action was a Loney specialty.

Assistant Chief Peter Hayes is Dylan’s first witness.

Chief Hayes comes from Passaic County Fire Department royalty; his family has been in the department since the early 1900s. Three of his ancestors have been chiefs, including his father, and there is no doubt that Hayes will ascend to the top spot as soon as the current chief reaches retirement age.

Hayes has an imperial attitude about him, as if his title should be “Emperor” rather than “Assistant Chief.” Dylan treats him with a nauseating reverence, so much so that I’m surprised he doesn’t spread rose petals in front of him as he heads for the witness stand.

Dylan starts by taking him through his career path. Hayes has been a firefighter for twenty-four years, and based on this endless testimony, he has received pretty much every commendation and award it is possible to receive, except for maybe a Grammy.

Finally I can’t take it anymore, and I object. “Your Honor, the witness’s service has certainly been admirable, but he’s not here applying for sainthood. He’s presenting evidence of a specific incident.”

De Luca nods. “Sustained. Let’s move it along, Mr. Campbell.”

Dylan turns Hayes’s attention to the night of the fire. “Were you the first one on the scene, Chief Hayes?”

“No, I wasn’t. I got there seven minutes after the alarm was received, but three units were already deployed and on the scene.”

“So you were not the first person to enter the burning building?” Dylan asks.

“No firefighter entered that building,” Hayes answers, uttering the words as if they are momentous. “The intensity of the fire would not permit it. And within six minutes of my arrival, there was no longer any building at all. It had completely disintegrated.”

“How many fire scenes have you visited, Chief?”

“I couldn’t say. Thousands.”

“Was this one unusual?” Dylan asks.

“You mean for reasons other than the toll in human lives?”

“Yes, I’m talking about the qualities of the fire itself.”

“It was the hottest, most intense fire I have ever witnessed, or investigated.”

Dylan pretends to be surprised by the answer. “Why is that?”

“The chemical mixture that was used, and the way it was distributed throughout the structure.”

Dylan takes Hayes through a long presentation on the chemical compound that investigators determined was used to start and spread the fire. It was a combination of benzene and polystyrene. There was some gasoline added, which Hayes says made it easier to ignite.

“Is there a name for this mixture that we would all be familiar with?” Dylan asks.

Hayes nods. “It’s a form of napalm.”

Dylan is positively shocked to hear this. “Napalm? You mean the weapon used to incinerate jungles in Vietnam?”

“Yes,” Hayes says, and goes on to describe the different types of napalm, and its devastating properties.

The description is impressive in its detail, and will be very damaging when the jury learns that Noah has the training and education to have concocted it.

Dylan is not going to wait for that to happen. He hands Hayes a piece of paper, and asks him questions about it. It is a copy of Noah’s course studies in college and graduate school, and lists his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I question the document’s admissibility and Hayes’s standing to testify about it, but De Luca shoots me down, as I knew he would.

“Does this background suggest to you that the defendant would know how to make this mixture of chemicals?”

I object on the grounds that Hayes could not be aware of Noah’s base of knowledge. De Luca sustains the objection and asks Dylan to rephrase.

Finally, Hayes is allowed to say that people with Noah’s background should certainly have the capability of concocting it.

Dylan does not ask Hayes anything about the incinerated bodies that were left in the rubble; he will call the coroner later to describe that in horrible detail. But Hayes has done a very effective job, and by the time Dylan turns him over to me, we already have a steep hill to climb.

“Good morning, Mr. Hayes.” I’m not going to call him “Chief”; at the very least that gives him the upper hand and an added credibility in the jurors’ minds. It’s a small thing, but trials are made up of many small things.

“Good morning, Mr. Carpenter.”

“You talked about the elaborate way in which the fire was started, how the mixture was carefully spread out and placed, and how igniting it would have been difficult.”

“Yes.”

“The person doing it would have to have been intelligent, or at least very familiar with this type of thing?”

“Absolutely.”

“And he or she would have to have been patient in the process? It needed to be carefully thought out and executed?”

“Certainly.”

“And clearheaded and alert?”

There’s a flash of worry on Hayes’s face; he knows that the prosecution’s theory is of a drug-desperate Noah exacting revenge on the people denying him those drugs.

“I’m not sure I can speak to that.”

“If you’d like to ask Mr. Campbell’s permission, we can wait.”

Dylan explodes out of his chair to object, and De Luca admonishes me.

“Mr. Hayes, you’ve already stated that the perpetrator had to be knowledgeable in these matters, patient and careful. You think someone could have done all this while not clearheaded and alert?”

“I suppose that would have been the case, at least for a short while,” Hayes concedes.

“Good. Now this clearheaded, intelligent, careful, patient, alert arsonist would have to have had a knowledge of the chemicals in napalm?”

“Yes.”

“Because you can’t just walk into Home Depot and say, give me a jugful of napalm, can you? There are no Napalm R Us stores around, right?”

“That is correct. It is illegal to possess it, or purchase it.”

“And it requires a chemical engineering degree to create it?”

“Certainly doesn’t hurt,” he says.

I introduce four pieces of paper and have them marked as defense evidence exhibits. I then hand the first one to Hayes, and I give copies of all four to Dylan.

“Mr. Hayes, I have just handed you a copy of a Google search page, have I not?”

Hayes holds it away from him, as if it might be contagious. “Yes, I believe so.”

“You’re not sure?”

“That’s what it is,” he says.

“Please read the subject line at the top.”

“‘How to make napalm.’”

“And near the top it mentions how many hits there were on that subject. Please read that as well.”

He mutters the answer. “Two hundred and sixty-four thousand.”

I tell him that neither I nor the jury could hear his response, and I get him to say it louder.

“Mr. Hayes, I think we can assume that these two hundred and sixty-four thousand napalm teachers think the reader has a place to do it, like a napalm office or something. In case they don’t, can you read the subject line and the number of hits on this search page?”

I hand him the next piece of paper, which he sneers at. “‘How to make napalm at home,’” he says.

“And how many hits?”

“One hundred and ninety-five thousand.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I say. “But there’s always a catch. For instance, what if the person wanting to make napalm can’t read? Then he must be out of luck, right? Or maybe you can read this subject line.” I give him paper number three.

“‘Making napalm videos,’” he says.

“And the hits?” I feel like I’m dragging him to the edge of a cliff.

“One thousand six hundred and ten hits.”

“So I guess illiteracy wouldn’t be a deterrent after all. Live and learn. My bad.” I walk toward him with paper number four. “One more,” I say, and hand it to him. “What’s the subject line?”

“‘Need a chemical engineering degree to make napalm,’” he says.

“And the hits?” I ask.

“No results found.”

I’ve only partially succeeded in my cross of Chief Hayes.

I’ve won what I classify as “debating” points, rather than “verdict” points. Debating points are part of a “gotcha” cross-examination, in which the witness might look bad, or get caught in a mistake. But those kinds of points don’t accomplish much in real life; they don’t win over the jury and help them make up their minds. Only verdict points do that.

I showed how silly it was to assume that it takes a chemical engineering degree to know how to mix the chemicals necessary to make napalm. I’m sure the jury gets that intellectually, and I even think they will give me credit for a smooth piece of lawyering.

But ultimately they will dismiss it as a debating point. At the end of the day they will think that if an arsonist went to the trouble of mixing such a concoction, then it is more likely than not that he had a knowledge of chemicals. And there, sitting at the defense table sits the accused, a chemical engineer.

It will all seem to fit for the jury. It won’t be the deciding factor; it will be a contributing one. And unfortunately Dylan is not nearly finished making evidentiary contributions.

His next witness is Detective Sue Pyles of the Paterson Police Department. She’s one of the lead detectives in the drug enforcement division. Pyles has been fighting the thankless, mostly losing battle against drugs for almost twenty-two years.

Dylan asks her about the occupants of the two ground-floor apartments in the destroyed building, and Pyles prefaces her testimony by saying that there are things she cannot say, and names she cannot mention, because it could prejudice an ongoing investigation.

What that means is that the department is still trying to make a case against Double J, who will be playing checkers at the Sunset Rest Home for Retired Drug Dealers by the time the cops get to him.

“But at the time of the fire, these two apartments were part of an active drug distribution center?” Dylan asks.

“They were selling drugs illegally, yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“We had them under part-time surveillance. We were building a case.”

“Were they being watched that night?”

Pyles shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“So drug users would come to that building to buy their drugs?”

“Some would,” Pyles says. “But in other cases the sale would be made elsewhere. Customers who were good enough might get theirs delivered, or the purchase would take place at a prearranged meeting place, perhaps a park.”

“Back around the time of the fire, were you familiar with Noah Galloway?”

Pyles nods. “Yes.”

“What did you know about him?” Dylan asks.

“He was an addict, and one of the customers of the people we are talking about.”

“A good customer?”

A shrug from Pyles. “Depends on your definition of ‘good.’ He was certainly a frequent buyer, but there were times he was cut off because he had no money. They did not consider him a good credit risk.”

“How did you know this?”

“Audio surveillance.”

“If you had all this information, why had you not made any arrests?”

Pyles frowns, her frustration evident. “We were about to.”

Dylan turns Pyles over to me. She hasn’t done us much damage, merely set up some facts that we would have admitted to anyway.

Pyles’s statement that Noah was a drug addict was something we acknowledged in my opening statement, and was widely known anyway. Noah had received much publicity when he got the presidential appointment, and his overcoming his addiction was a heroic aspect to it.

The fact that Noah was a customer of the people in that building was something that was going to come out anyway. Slightly damaging was the testimony that he sometimes couldn’t afford his habit, and it is there where I will focus my cross-examination.

“Detective Pyles, you said you had audio surveillance of Mr. Galloway dealing with these people.”

“Yes.”

“Tapes?”

“Yes.”

“Would you play them for us, please?”

“We couldn’t find them,” she says, appearing uncomfortable.

I knew this from the discovery, but I wanted the jury to hear it. “Is that unusual?”

“It happens.”

“Obviously. My question was whether or not its happening could be considered unusual.”

“Yes, I would say it’s unusual. But in this case the fire seemed to end our investigation, so perhaps not enough care was paid.”

“You said the investigation is ongoing, and that’s why you couldn’t reveal certain names.”

Pyles nods; to her credit she tackles the issue head-on. “Because of the intensity of the fire, many of the bodies could not be identified. We believed the ringleader of the operation to be one of the dead, but we learned quite a while later he was not.”

I’m surprised by this; Double J must have gone undercover after the incident, perhaps considering himself still a target.

“So your recounting of what Mr. Galloway might have said on the tapes is by memory only?”