Premeditated Murder (29 page)

“I'm so sorry I got you involved in all of this. I can't believe any of it.”

“You didn't get me involved in anything,” Becca said, turning left onto Elm Street. “Whatever I did, I wanted to do. These assholes have no right to do this. And they aren't going to get away with it, either.”

“Well, I think we should just find another FBI office, turn ourselves in, and get some kind of protection from whoever these crazy people are.” Lena started digging around in her bag, looking for her cell phone. “I'm sorry I didn't do that when you first suggested it.”

Becca turned down First Avenue, toward the entrance to the interstate. “I don't trust anybody anymore,” she said. “The FBI planted drugs in your apartment. Then they came and busted my place up. Now the Detroit P.D. has staked out my street and are ready to arrest me for drugs and harboring a fugitive and God knows what else.” Becca merged into the acceleration lane of the interstate, heading north. “You've got your laptop, and I've got an idea.” She signaled left and got into the fast lane. “We are so out of here.”

TWENTY-ONE

An Open Letter from a Fugitive

My name is Lena Takamura. Not quite two years ago, I graduated with honors from the University of Michigan in the field of journalism, and with high hopes of becoming an investigative reporter.

     Today I am in hiding, because the police and the FBI are seeking to arrest me on false charges for crimes I did not commit. Indeed, the very publication of this column might subject the newspaper printing it to retribution from whoever it is that is attempting to intimidate me with my own government's legal system.

     These people want one thing: for me to stop investigating why the homes of so many families throughout Michigan, most of them Muslim or Arab, have been burglarized by thieves who are apparently interested only in stealing computer software and electronic storage media. And why, in at least one of these cases, police attempted to tamper with witnesses' statements, police reports, and emergency phone transcripts to cover up evidence of such a burglary when it led to the death of Phillipe LeClerq, a beloved high school teacher from Oak Park …

(
Ypsilanti Sentinel,
June 17, page 1)

June 15—Northampton, Massachusetts

TERRY COULDN'T BELIEVE HIS EARS.

“Anyone with half a brain would know that the only chance you had for jury nullification is if you tried the case in the press,” Zack's father said, with a strange smile on his face. Terry, Zack, and his dad were in the kitchen, getting more drinks for some of the guests. Zack was having a birthday party for Justin, and had invited his parents and his sister and her husband out to his house. “But you just got the court to issue a gag order! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Christ, Zachery, what were you thinking? Were you thinking anything at all? Now you've got absolutely zero chance to win.”

Terry wondered what would happen if he just hauled off and smacked the old man right in the mouth. Was there a special criminal statute which prohibited bitch-slapping a federal judge at his grandson's birthday party?

“Dad, could we talk about this some other time?” Zack asked, as he reached into the refrigerator for another bottle of root beer. Justin loved root beer. The kid had taste. “I was hoping we could keep this day just about Justin.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” the old man said, taking a sip of his drink. “I just can't believe that your guy's been telling you he killed these people because they were terrorists, and Franny O'Neill's the one who's been playing the media like a two-dollar banjo.”

Zack got a couple of paper cups out of a cabinet and started pouring the soda. Anybody who knew him could see that he was getting steamed, but he just kept pouring while his father kept spewing.

“Why the hell weren't you leaking this terrorist nonsense to some of your buddies at the
Globe
? You know Dick Cottonwood's never going to let you get that stuff in at trial. He'll rule that it's irrelevant, and he's right. Nobody on the jury's ever going to know why this guy shot those people.”

Zack didn't say a thing. He just took the cups of soda and left the kitchen. So Judge Wilson turned on Terry. How was it that he could say all this shit and keep smiling? Was that supposed to make it friendly? Or funny?

“Am I missing something here?” the judge continued. “This trial is hopelessly lost, isn't it? And your client's a big colored guy, to boot. Oh, the jury's really going to love that.”

A long time ago Zack had told Terry about a Buddhist saying that was supposed to work when someone was pissing you off. How did it go?

“I don't know what kind of case you think you're going to put in, but as far as jury nullification, you can forget about that,” Zack's father continued.

If a guy offers you a gift—

“I mean, talk about a bungled opportunity.” The old man just wouldn't quit. “You two are diddling around at a birthday party, and about a week from now your guy is going to get hooked on murder one. I was reading the
Post
the other day, and I swear to God, that electric chair poll they're running is about ninety-five percent guilty—”

—
and you really don't want the gift
—

Terry put down the bottle of beer he was drinking so that he didn't crush it into sand. Maybe it hit the counter a little hard, because Zack's father jumped. “Judge Wilson,” he said, careful to keep his voice even. “You did a lot of trial work before your appointment, didn't you?”

“Oh, yeah,” the old man said. The smile was back. “Spent close to thirty years trying cases before President Bush put me on the bench.”

“Wow,” Terry said. “Many of those criminal trials?”

“Over a hundred,” the judge said with pride. “The district attorney's office knew me pretty well, I can tell you that.”

“I'm curious. How many of those cases did you win by jury nullification?”

Bang. Good-bye smile, hello glare.

—
take the gift and bash him on the head with it.

“That's what I thought,” Terry said. “So how about you listen to your son for once in your life, climb down from the pulpit, come out into the other room, and have some of your grandson's birthday cake.”

ZACK LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW OF HIS OFFICE, watching Justin play in the yard. The boy seemed to be alternating between squatting down and looking quietly at some dandelions and chasing squirrels around like a madman.

Zack turned to Terry and said, “I think the quote you were looking for goes something like this: ‘If someone offers you a gift and you refuse it, then to whom does that gift belong?'”

They were in the final stages of pretrial preparation. Not that there was much to prepare. Outside, Justin returned to the dandelions. “Oh, yeah, that's it,” Terry said. “But mine works, too. In a kind of confrontational, non-Buddha-like way.”

A bird landed on the lawn behind Justin. What would he do when he saw it?

Terry spoke again. “Your father was right, wasn't he?”

Zack turned back to look at his friend. Terry was reading the directions to a desk clock he had bought that would tell what day and time it was anywhere in the world. “About the fact that there's no way we can win this case?” Zack asked him.

“About that fact that the only hope we had of winning this case was to convince the jury that the victims were terrorists, and the only hope we had of doing that was of leaking it to the press before the trial.”

Justin was doing somersaults. The bird was gone. “Yeah,” Zack said.

Terry was quiet for a minute. “But you knew that back when you started working on that motion to shut the D.A. up, right? You just refuse to play those games, even though you know everybody else does.”

Courtrooms were full of lawyers who promised to play by the rules and then broke every one they could get their hands on. They tainted jury pools by leaking and planting stories in the media, by holding press conferences to try to put whatever spin they could on a case, by giving their opinions, honest or not, about their chances of victory. They bribed court officers and assistant clerks with lunches and drinks to get information. They coached their witnesses by telling them what to say on the stand, without the least regard for the truth. They concocted alibis for defendants. They hid witnesses. They withheld evidence. They enhanced the stories of victims. They violated the letter and the spirit of court orders, laws, canons of ethics. They lied and they cheated, and they did anything they thought they could get away with, because they were in a bottom-line business. Win or lose. All or nothing.

Guilty or not guilty.

The phone rang. Zack let the answering machine pick it up. “This is Judge Cottonwood's secretary,” a female voice said. “The judge was wondering if you could fax over a draft of any pretrial motions you had, including any updated witness lists.” She gave a phone number and then hung up.

Zack looked over to Terry, who was still fiddling with the clock. Apparently, it was 11:32
P
.
M
. in Shanghai. “You hear that Judge Cottonwood's suddenly looking to get pretrial faxes?”

“No,” Terry said. “You hear that Roger Spinnelli, Judge Cottonwood's secretary, got a sex-change operation in the last five days?” He blew a burst of air from his mouth and took another look at the directions. “Those asshole reporters'll do anything to get a story.”

Justin was now sitting down and doing some reading. Out loud. To the dandelions. “You know, if we knew that those people were terrorists, I'd have been really tempted to try that crap my father was talking about.”

Terry put down the clock and looked up. “Man. You're the one always saying that the system would work if people didn't try to manipulate it.” He joined Zack at the window. It looked like Justin was trying to get a dandelion to read to him. “You know that when the trial starts, I'm going to be in there swinging, because the Constitution says Cal gets to have a defense. But I know he did it, you know he did it, everybody on the planet knows he did it. Are you seriously thinking that it would be a good idea if he got off?”

Justin left the book out on the lawn, open and on its edges, like a tent, and ran into the house for something. “If those people really were terrorists, I'm having a hard time faulting what he did,” Zack said. “And I'm having a really hard time thinking it would be a good idea to execute him for doing what he did. It seems that ever since September 11, all this country has been focused on is catching and killing terrorists. So Cal Thompkins catches and kills six terrorists and what are we going to do? We're going to convict him of murder, and then we're going to kill
him
.”

“Call me crazy,” Terry said, “but however smart or nice Cal Thompkins is, and whatever tragedy happened in his life, I'm just not comfortable with him wandering around town with his trusty AK-47, deciding who he's going to blow away. That's a little too
Wild Wild West
even for me, thank you very much.”

They both watched as Justin reappeared and began to place tiny toy chairs and tables under the tent that he had made with his book. Apparently he was furnishing a home for the flower.

“What are you going to do with Justin during the trial?” asked Terry.

“He's going to stay with my sister and her husband in Boston,” Zack said. “They promised that they'd take him to see the fireworks at the Esplanade on the Fourth of July.”

“Sweet.”

Washington, D.C.

MATT WAS HAVING BREAKFAST WITH SAMMY IN the residence when Carlos brought in a newspaper article. Matt had asked him to keep a eye out for stories just like this one—a Michigan reporter was claiming that she had to go underground because authorities were trying to keep her from investigating illegal searches of Arab homes. And in the middle of the article, there was a single name circled:
LeClerq
. The
q
was underlined. And suddenly, everything made sense.

He turned to Sammy. “What do magistrate judges do, again?”

“Hey, where are you going?” she said. “You haven't finished eating—”

“Remember you said magistrate judges don't do the important things,” Matt said, handing her the article. She looked down at it and then back up at Matt.

“Yes. Like pretrial motions and scheduling conferences.”

“And applications for search warrants?” Matt was shrugging on his jacket.

Sammy just stared at him. And then she jumped up and followed him into the hall. “Exactly like applications for search warrants.”

TWENTY-TWO

Dear Kevin,

     Well, tomorrow is the big day. The beginning of the trial.

     The judge has decided that the television cameras can stay, so the whole world will be watching. It doesn't really matter to me. The only opinions I really care about are yours and Mommy's.