Premeditated Murder (9 page)

A:
Yes. That's another lease. That one's for Unit 3B.

Q:
At 214 Main Street?

A:
Yes.

Q:
And where is Unit 3B located, relative to Unit 3C?

A:
It's right across the hall. Directly across from 3C.

Q:
And are you familiar with the signatures on this lease?

A:
Yes. I signed it, and the defendant, Calvin Thompkins, also signed it, too.

Q:
And what is the term of this lease?

A:
The term? Uh, one year.

Q:
I mean—Strike that. What was—Was the defendant leasing Unit 3B on the date of the shooting? On January 14?

A:
Yes, he was.

(Trial Volume V, Page 116)

February 25—Springfield, Massachusetts

“IT SEEMED PRETTY STUPID TO ME, SPENDING all that time and energy trying to keep me alive, when all they're going to do is execute me anyway.”

The two lawyers were back, and Cal figured that if they really wanted the truth, they might as well get it all.

The tall one, Terry, looked the same. Kind of like an angry bear who hadn't slept in about fifteen years. He had a pad in his hand, and a pen that he clicked continuously. The other one, though—Zack—was real different. Last time, he actually looked kind of friendly. He did a lot of the talking, and he sounded like he had an open mind. This time, he didn't say a word. And his eyes stayed cold.

“You guys must have seen pictures of the place,” Cal said. “I really shot it up.”

“Yeah. We came to find out what the story was on that,” Terry said.

“No doubt,” Cal said, sitting forward a little to get more comfortable. The IV and the monitors were gone, so now they had him cuffed to the bed not only by his ankle but also by his good wrist. He leaned forward and, using the straw, took a sip of water from the glass on the tray in front of him. His appetite was returning slowly, but he seemed to be constantly thirsty. “Any chance I might be able to get rid of the cuffs?”

“You've been accused of shooting six people to death with an AK-47,” Zack said, his voice hard. “There's no chance.”

Cal nodded again. This guy Zack was pissed. “All right.” He sat back upright. “This whole thing started in 1998—”

Terry's eyes all but rolled back in his head. “Oh my God—1998? Are you sure?”

“Listen. You've got to hear the whole story, otherwise you'll never understand what happened in there.” From the way Zack kept staring at him, it didn't look like he'd ever understand. “Either of you guys have kids?”

“Never mind about us, okay, Cal?” Terry said. “Just tell us the story.” If it was possible, Zack started to look worse. Who needed a jury to hang him? Zack would take care of it all by himself.

“All right. But after I get done, you've got to be honest with me. This is a hard case. I know that. If you can't represent me, I respect that, but you've got to tell me. Don't stay in this thing and just go through the motions. I'd rather do it myself.”

Zack nodded almost imperceptibly. “That's fair,” he said softly.

“And if you do take the case, when we've lost—I mean when it's over, really over, I need you to tell me. No lies, no bullshit.”

“Don't worry.” Zack was dead serious. “I'll tell you when it's over.”

“Okay.” Call shifted a bit. His arm still ached, and his hand was still numb. The doctors said something about nerve damage. “About five years ago, things were very different. I had just earned, well, let's just say an extremely large amount of money from licensing a software product to Cellcom—”

“The phone company?” Terry interrupted.

“Yeah,” Cal said. “I had been working on this technology back from when I was a grad student at M.I.T.—”

“When was that?” asked Terry, clicking the pen, obviously intending at some point to check up on the facts.

“Let's see. I graduated in '93 and started postgrad right after,” Cal said.
Click click
. Terry wrote something down. Zack didn't move. “Anyway, my first payment was a little more than a million dollars, and the agreement was that Cellcom was going to pay me around thirty thousand dollars per month as a minimum licensing fee. It was likely to increase as their business grew. I was set for life, basically,” he said, checking to see if either believed him. Not so far.

Terry said, “Any way we can verify this?”

“Sure. My contact at Cellcom was Gina Gefardo.” Clumsily, he picked up a sheet of paper with the arm in a cast and handed it to Terry. “I figured you'd want to talk to some people about me, so before you came, I wrote down some names and numbers. Sorry about the handwriting.” He smiled apologetically as Terry took the paper from him. There was no reaction. Wow. “Gina can connect you with the legal department.”

Terry squinted at the paper. “Who's Steve … Doctorow?”

“He's my—well, he
was
my financial advisor. Steve can tell you whatever you need to know about my money.”

At this, Terry exchanged a look with Zack.
Financial advisor
. Terry looked like he didn't know what to think.
Crazy-ass rich black dude blew away a bunch of students. Now what do we do?
Zack's look was more like
If I had a gun with me, I might just shoot him now, and save us all a lot of aggravation.

“So anyway, right after I got the money, we decided that we were going to take a trip to Africa.”

“What?” Terry interrupted. “Who decided?”
Click click
.

“Me and my wife, Cheryl. I was married back then.” Another look passed between the lawyers. Terry wrote something else down. “And I had a son. Kevin. He was five at the time. We wanted him to see a part of the world where being black was the rule, not the exception, before he started kindergarten.” Cal paused for a moment. “So in the summer of '98, we took him to Kenya.”

Terry's eyes flashed up. “Aw, holy shit. Don't tell me. Kenya in 1998.”

Cal smiled sadly. “Yeah. On the morning of August seventh, Kevin woke up early. I'm not much of a morning person, so Cheryl decided to take him for a walk downtown to a bakery that had these sweet rolls that he loved. We were in the capital. Nairobi.” Cal swallowed. This was a little harder than he thought it was going to be. “They weren't going to the embassy, they were just out for a walk.” He paused. “They were right next to it when the bomb exploded.” His throat ached; his words sounded thick. “The cops told me that they died instantly. But I don't know.”

Terry's pen clicking stopped. Zack's ferocious mask had been replaced by something a little less hostile.

“Before the bombing, I always had something going full speed. My education, my software design, my family. But after Kenya, I just didn't care about anything. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I started drinking, first to help me get to sleep, then to numb myself when I was awake. I got so depressed I wouldn't even let anyone in the house.

“It was bad for a long time.” Cal stopped to take another drink of water. “Nothing mattered to me. Absolutely nothing. I remember getting a call from a friend around that time, telling me that there had been a break in the investigation of the bombing and that they had found the people who were responsible. I didn't care. I was basically just waiting to die.” He took a deep breath.

“Then, one day, I dropped a bottle of vodka in the sink by accident. And there it was. All this broken glass, right in front of me. I could just cut my wrists and be done with it.”

He shook his head and laughed quietly. “Before Kevin and Cheryl got killed, if you'd ever have told me I'd be that close to suicide, I'd have told you you were crazy. But there I was, ready to do it, when this incredible wave of fatigue hit me.” It was funny watching Terry listen to this. Cal doubted that the man had slept more than five hours in a row in his life. “Here I was, on the verge of killing myself, when all of a sudden, I couldn't keep my eyes open. I went into the living room, laid down on the couch, and slept for twenty-seven straight hours. Then I got up, went to the bathroom, and fell asleep for another twelve hours.” Cal took another sip of water.

“Go on,” Zack said, very still.

“When I woke up, I don't know. It was like something had shifted inside of me. It was really strange,” Cal said. “I had this odd, calm feeling, like I finally understood what I wanted to do. And I didn't want to drink, and I didn't want to kill myself, and I didn't want to stay in my house forever.” He swallowed and said, “I wanted revenge.”

“So you're telling us you shot six innocent people in Massachusetts as revenge for a bombing that happened five years ago, halfway around the world,” Terry said. He looked like he was ready to give up.

“Yeah, I shot them out of revenge, but they were not six innocent people. Oh, no. These were six terrorists. This was an Al Qaeda cell, right here in Northampton, Massachusetts. Cold-blooded killers. Planning to kill again.”

Terry put his head in his hands. “Oh, man,” he moaned.

“And you didn't report this to anyone,” Zack said skeptically. “You just figured out they were terrorists, all by yourself, and then you wasted them.”

Cal felt a flicker of annoyance. “Look. I didn't just check out the phone book for Arabic names and then start shooting. I'm not a fool. I'm actually a pretty smart guy. I really was postgrad at M.I.T., and I really was a software designer, all right? It took me years to find these people and confirm that they were terrorists. Remember all that money I had? I used it to hire people. Dozens of investigators in over thirty states. I traveled all over the country doing research, training for when I was going to confront them. This wasn't a half-assed, stupid mistake.” He looked at each of the lawyers before he spoke again. “This was revenge. I killed these people to avenge the murder of my wife and child,” he said. “They'd murdered innocent people before, and they were planning on murdering innocent people again. I'm not sorry for what I did, and I'm not going to lie about it. And if that means I'm going to get executed, then I want a trial so someone can look me in the face and say I deserve to die.”

Worcester, Massachusetts

BY THE TIME POLICE SERGEANT PETE VANDERWALL arrived at the bar, it looked as if the officers who had already responded to the call to break up the fight had everything pretty much under control. The lights were still low, and the jukebox was still pounding out some lame disco hit, but the party had definitely been put on serious hold. A college-age kid was sitting at a table, holding a piece of ice to his bloody lip, while he talked to Patrolman Freddy Kramer. Freddy's partner, a rookie named Charone, was across the room, talking to another kid, who was clearly agitated. Probably the other fighter. Detectives Billy Saunders and Paula Ulanski stood near the door, speaking to a bouncer, a guy wearing a tight T-shirt with the name of the bar across the chest.
Rockets
.

The head bartender had just started to walk over to speak to Pete when all of a sudden this little tornado with a ponytail came flying out of nowhere and jumped at the guy with the split lip. Before the kid had a chance to hit back, Freddy had wrestled him away from the tiny teenage girl, and Pete quickly grabbed her from behind.

“Let me go, you asshole!” she screamed, flailing uselessly as Pete scooped her up and moved her away from her target.

“Calm down,” Pete shouted over the music, right into her ear. “I'm a police officer, and I'm way bigger than you are. Just calm down and let's figure this thing out so nobody else gets hurt, okay?”

Way bigger indeed. What was she? Fourteen? Fifteen at the most? Maybe a hundred pounds, soaking wet. She could've been one of his daughter's classmates. But she just kept kicking and flailing and screaming. Until she went limp.

Pete looked down at her skeptically. Pretending to give up was not a new method of escaping, and since seconds before she had been battling to get away, Pete assumed that she was just hoping he'd release his hold, giving her another chance to do whatever nutty thing she wanted to do next.

Then he saw the back of her head.

Dark blood matted her hair and was still oozing from her scalp. Whatever had hit her back there had hit her hard. “Hey,” he said, holding her still with one hand, while turning her by the chin to face him.

Her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Paula!” he shouted, shifting his hold on the girl so he was carrying her in both arms like the baby she was as he headed for the door to the street. “I need a ride to the emergency room right now. Billy, call for more backup!”