Premeditated Murder (12 page)

“And yet …” Terry murmured softly, turning back to the file.

“This is a man I've known for over ten years,” Doctorow insisted. “From before he needed an accountant. We met doing volunteer work at a homeless shelter when he was still in college.” The phone rang, but he ignored it. “Did you know that ever since Cal sold that technology to Cellcom, he has been intentionally overpaying his taxes by tens of thousands of dollars every year, because he was physically unable to serve in the armed forces? And not only has he given hundreds of thousands of dollars, literally, to charity, but since he was twenty-one years old, he has gotten up at six
A
.
M
. every Thanksgiving morning to cook a full turkey dinner, just so he could bring it to some needy family that afternoon, pretending to be delivering the first prize in some bogus grocery store contest. This is a good man. He didn't lie about those people he killed.”

“I'm not talking about lying,” Zack said. As a matter of fact, he didn't know what he was talking about. “I'm talking about stress caused by the death of his family that might have caused him to lose touch with reality.”

“Cal sank into a terrible depression after Cheryl and Kevin were killed,” Doctorow replied. “But he never lost touch with reality. When he finally started to function again, and he contacted me about what he was doing, he was completely lucid. I spoke to him many times about the money he was spending on investigators, research, training. I told him I thought it was crazy for any number of reasons. My God, this guy was a software designer, and he was hunting terrorists. It was ridiculous. But he had made his choice. He knew there was a chance he'd be killed, but he had decided to devote his life to the fight against terrorism.” He pointed to the file Terry was looking through. “That file has the contact information for all the people he paid to help him.”

“We'll probably go talk to them next,” Zack said.

“Wait a minute,” Terry said, closing the file. “Did you just say you knew what he was going to do?”

“I only knew he was trying to track terrorists down,” Doctorow said. “I had no idea he was going to get a gun and try to kill them.”

“What did you think he was going to do?” Terry snapped. “Invite them over to his house for brunch?”

Doctorow was unmoved. “I know it might seem stupid now, but at the time, I just thought he was going to do what he always did. Immerse himself in the subject. Learn everything there was to learn about it.” Doctorow rubbed his temples as if he had a headache. “I actually thought that he wasn't going to find anything new. But if he did, I assumed that he was going to go to the police and let them take care of it.” He shook his head and added sadly, “You have no idea how sorry I am that I was wrong.”

“Well, now that you know what he was doing, don't you think it was a little insane?” Terry said.

Doctorow looked off into the distance again and was silent for a minute. Then he said, “After what he went through, I'm not sure I can answer that question.”

NINE

DIST. ATTY. O'NEILL:
In the afternoon and early evening of January 14, were you home at your apartment at 214 Main Street? Apartment 2C?

MS. QUALLS:
Yes. I wasn't supposed to go in to work until eight that night.

Q:
And what apartment is directly above yours in that building?

A:
Apartment 3C.

Q:
And did you make any observations on January 14, in the afternoon, about the apartment above you, apartment 3C?

A:
Observations?

Q:
Yeah. For example, did you see or hear anything from upstairs that day?

A:
Oh. Yes. I heard the shooting.

Q:
Well, can you tell us exactly, to the best of your recollection, what you heard?

A:
Well, the first thing I heard wasn't shooting. It was more like a screaming, or like a roaring. It was pretty scary. I didn't know what it was. Then, right after that, I heard the shooting, and windows breaking, and it sounded like, I don't know. It was, it was like suddenly there was a herd of elephants upstairs. There was a lot of screaming and shouting. And things falling and crashing.

Q:
Do you remember how long the shooting lasted?

A:
A couple of minutes. I don't know. A minute?

Q:
Did you hear anything else after that?

A:
Well, after the shooting stopped, I heard more of the screaming or roaring, or whatever it was, and then there was a little more shooting. But the roaring just kept going, even after the shooting was definitely over. And then even that stopped. Then I didn't hear anything else. And that's when I called the police.

(Trial Volume V, Pages 240–241)

March 13—Northampton, Massachusetts

TERRY LOVED EATING DINNER EARLY.

Actually, Terry loved eating dinner at any time, but when he was meeting Zack at The Sunspot, he loved eating early because that's when the grad students and the secretaries showed up for happy hour. And since the waitress population at The Sunspot was well known to be far above average, early dinner there was generally a pretty outstanding experience. Make it a Friday night, and there was nothing better.

Speaking of nothing better, Terry was fairly sure that the tall redhead standing at the corner of the bar wasn't wearing a bra. He squinted a little, and sure enough—

“Or maybe later,” Zack said, looking over at him. The redhead turned away, heading for the restroom. Damn.

“Yeah,” Terry said, looking back at Zack. Then he realized he had no idea what he just agreed with. “What?”

“I said that maybe we should go through this list later,” Zack said, holding one of the printouts they had gotten from Doctorow. He looked back over his shoulder at the bar and then back to Terry. “Everything all right?”

Terry swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “No, we can do this now. I was just, uh, you know, celebrating a young woman over by the bar.”

Zack nodded. “Right. So, why don't we get this over with—”

“Good evening, gentlemen, my name is Sandy, and I'll be your server tonight. Can I start you off with something to drink?”

Whoever was in charge of making Terry's day, they were doing a killer job. Their waitress was young, blond, pretty, smiling, and wearing a low-cut, tight white top that showed the exact right amount of cleavage. Actually, there probably was no wrong amount of cleavage. Terry wasn't keeping close count, but he thought that this might be the fifth time he'd fallen in love that night.

“I'll have a Sam Adams, please,” he said.

“Me, too,” Zack added.

“Awesome,” Sandy said, with another smile. “I'll be right back with your drinks, and to take your order.” She turned to head for the bar, and, oh my God, the person who made those pants needed to receive some kind of award. Life was perfect, perfect, perfect.

“You okay there, Big Time?” Zack said.

“I'm good,” Terry responded.

“Celebrating Sandy?” Zack asked.

“Yeah. Give me a minute,” Terry responded, tilting his head slightly to the left. “I'm just going to make absolutely sure she gets back to the bar without any problems.” Damn. She even walked great. “Okay.” He pulled himself back to Zack. “Where were we? Doing something very important, right?”

“Right. Deciding which of these private investigators to see first.” Zack handed some papers to Terry.

Part of the file that Cal's accountant had given them was a fat printout of names and addresses and dates and amounts of money spent on various private investigators between the time that Cal's wife and son were killed and the time he shot the people in that apartment. He had hired literally dozens of investigators. And the amount of money he had spent was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The guy really was nuts. Terry gave the papers back to Zack.

“I don't know,” Terry said. “What do you think? Talk to the one he spent the most money on?”

“I was thinking about talking to the one he used last,” Zack said, just as Sandy returned with the beers.

As Zack ordered some pasta and chicken thing, Terry carefully and subtly made sure that while Sandy had been away, nothing had happened to her shirt or pants. Or anything else. When she turned to him, he ordered a steak.

As she left to put in the order, Zack continued. “I'm still not exactly sure what we're doing here, but I really want to understand what was going on in Cal's mind when he decided to go into that apartment.”

Terry said, “Yeah. I'm still not so sure about what we're doing, either. I mean, who cares what he thought? If he's not going to say he was insane, what difference does it make? So what if he thought they were terrorists? He meant to kill them, and he killed them. I don't see how that helps us.”

“I just can't let go of the fact that he did all this research,” Zack said. “I mean, what did he find? What made him think that killing six people was the right thing to do? I just have this instinct that the jury needs to hear the whole story.”

“Are you thinking jury nullification?” Terry asked. Talk about Hail Marys. In technical terms, jury nullification was when a jury acquitted a defendant regardless of the facts proven at the trial. In reality, it was the defendant saying to the jury, “We all know I did it, but I think you should vote not guilty because, let's face it, I really look good in this tie.” O.J. pulled it off. And in about half the TV lawyer shows, the defendant pulled it off.

But in real life, approximately nobody pulled it off.

“I don't know,” Zack said. “I'm starting to think that might be all we have.”

“Oh, God,” Terry said. “Cottonwood is going to love this. I'm looking forward to our conversation with him about how the lifestyles of the victims are relevant to whether they were murdered.”

“It's not like we've got a lot of options here,” Zack said. “And if we're going to have any chance of convincing Cottonwood to let this stuff in, we're going to have to have something more than Cal's testimony. He's never going to let him just get up there and say ‘I shot them because they were terrorists.'” He handed the printout back to Terry. “Why don't we do this? You start calling the investigators. In whatever order you think is best. I just want to see if we can meet with the ones that were working on the six people that Cal shot.”

“Okay,” Terry said. “And while I do that, you get in a few extra sessions at the tanning booth.”

“Sure,” Zack said. “And maybe I'll also be working on some pretrial motions. I'm getting a little tired of our guy getting bashed so regularly in the media, but I've got to be careful how I play this.” It seemed like every day another newspaper article came out, reminding everyone about the bloodbath. And making Cal look about as sympathetic as, well, as a mass murderer. Every Monday, in the left-hand column of the front page, under Cal's mug shot and a picture of an electric chair, with the title “The Hangman's News”—what a class act—the
Post
published the results of their latest poll about the Thompkins case: Guilty, Not Guilty, or Undecided. So far, the returns were not encouraging. “I've got to do some research.”

Sandy returned with their salads, another round of beer, and another smile. As she left, Terry said to Zack, “I just wanted to let you know that I am fully aware you brought me to dinner here so I'd say yes to whatever you suggested.” He watched as Sandy disappeared into the kitchen. “And I also wanted to let you know that it is working perfectly.”

Worcester, Massachusetts

FOR A TINY LITTLE GIRL, NATALIE REGGIO WAS turning out to be a pretty big pain in Sergeant Pete Vanderwall's butt.

Pete was looking over the reports that his officers had written up about the bar fight last week. Natalie was the only material witness that had yet to give a statement.

And according to Patrolman Freddy Kramer, she absolutely refused to talk to anybody about anything that happened that night until she talked to the officer who had taken her to the hospital.

Pete had no problem with interviewing witnesses and writing up reports. But he didn't like the idea of witnesses, victims, drunken brawlers, and/or subjects of criminal investigations controlling police procedures, so he intended to take his time before going to see her. There really was no rush in getting her statement. Most of the other witnesses had already filled in all of the blanks. It was a run-of-the-mill barroom brawl, starring Natalie and her drunken boyfriend.