Sudden Death (21 page)

J
UDGE
H
ARRISON
calls court to order at nine
A.M.
sharp. He’s usually a few minutes late, but it’s as if this time he’s showing his determination not to allow the continuance to go on one minute longer than he had authorized.

I’m still more than a little shaken by last night. It did not have to result in any killing; Quintana could have walked off with the money. And as it played out, I can justify in my mind that it was self-defense; had I not called Petrone’s people, I would have been killed myself.

But the truth is that I set a process in motion knowing it could result in Quintana’s murder. Had I not done that, he would still be alive, as unpleasant as that might be for me. I’m compounding that by not revealing to the police what I know about the murders that took place at the stadium last night. As an officer of the court this has not been my finest moment.

There is no mention of those murders in the media, and Petrone may have chosen to keep them secret. It’s okay with me.

Things leading up to this crucial court day have progressed as well as I could have hoped. Pollard is in an anteroom with Kevin, ostensibly to discuss his testimony, but really to keep him from hearing anything about the witnesses before him. Laurie is with Teri at a TV studio that we have rented, though she is not likely to want to do any interviews after she discovers what happened to her husband. Laurie feels as guilty about this part of it as I do, but there was no other way to handle it. We simply could not have her drive Bobby to the hearing.

I will need to get the witnesses that precede Pollard on and off in a hurry, to reduce any chance that he will get wind of what is going on. My first witness is George Karas, whom I need to set the scene. I have him testify as to the facts surrounding the high school all-American weekend. I submit the subsequent death certificates of the various athletes as evidence, so as to support him.

Dylan has little to do with him on cross-examination, since the facts testified to are indisputable. Additionally, Dylan has no idea where I’m going with this, so he doesn’t want to inadvertently help me. The safest and correct thing for him to do is say very little for now, which is what he does.

Next up is Simon Barkley, a retired vice president at Hamilton Life Insurance, who ran that company’s actuarial department for seventeen years. He is also a part-time mathematics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, where he teaches a course in mathematical probabilities.

Once I quickly have his credentials established, I go right to the heart of his testimony. “Professor Barkley, did we meet at my home yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Did I give you the information that Mr. Karas just gave this jury concerning the deaths of these eight young football players?”

“Yes, you did.”

“What did I ask you to do?” I ask.

“To calculate the probability that these deaths could have been coincidental; that is to say, they could have happened by chance, without some common factor or cause among them.”

“And did you do so?”

“Yes. Would you like to hear my conclusions?”

I smile and spread my arms to include the judge, jury, and gallery. “I think we all would.”

“Well, let me say that the key assumption under which I was operating is that these young men had little or no connection to each other in the years after this weekend. For instance, had all eight been riding in the same car and that car plunged off a mountain, clearly the fact that they all died would not be a surprise to anyone. Or if they all belonged to the same army unit and went into battle together, these multiple deaths could be explainable as well. A third such example would be if they were together when exposed to a deadly bacterium.”

“I understand,” I say.

“Obviously, none of those things, or any circumstances like them, are applicable here.”

“So what are the chances that eight out of eleven men of this young age, athletes, would die in the past seven years, without there being a single factor causing all of the deaths?” I press the point. “What are the chances it is just a terrible coincidence?”

“Approximately one in seventy-eight billion.”

I hear a gasp from the gallery, and I pause to let the answer sink in. We’re talking DNA-like numbers here. “Just so I understand this, are you saying that the chance of these deaths being unrelated, that the members of this all-American team were just the victims of horrible coincidence, is one in seventy-eight billion? Billion with a ‘b’?”

He confirms that, and I turn him over to Dylan, who once again has no idea which way he should go. So far I’ve been setting up evidence of serial killings, and the only suspect in those killings until now is Kenny Schilling. Dylan has no reason or inclination to screw that up.

Once Barkley is off the stand, I ask for a sidebar conference with Judge Harrison and Dylan. As soon as we’re out of earshot of everyone, I inform the judge that Bobby Pollard will be called next and that I would like to have him declared as a “hostile” witness. As such I would be able to ask tough, leading questions, as if it were a cross-examination.

“On what grounds?” Harrison asks. “What would prompt his hostility?”

“I’m going to expose him as a fake and possible murderer.”

Dylan almost leaps in the air. “Your Honor, I really have to object to this. There has been absolutely no showing made to link Mr. Pollard to these crimes.”

Harrison looks at me, and I say, “There’s going to be plenty of showing once I get him on the stand, Your Honor.”

Harrison has little choice but to grant my request, though he will certainly come down on me if I don’t deliver. He allows me to treat Pollard as a hostile witness, though Dylan reiterates his futile objection.

“The defense calls Bobby Pollard,” I say, and within moments the door to the courtroom opens. Kevin pushes Pollard’s wheelchair to the stand, and Pollard pulls himself up out of the chair and into the witness chair with his powerful arms.

He looks confident and unworried, which means he has no idea what has preceded his testimony this morning. I start off with gentle questions about the background of his relationship with Kenny, including a brief mention of the all-star weekend. I then have him describe the nature of his injury and the circumstances in which it took place.

“So you have no use of your legs at all?” I ask.

He nods sadly. “That’s correct.”

“That’s amazing,” I say. “Yet you hold a job… live a full life. How do you get around?”

He credits his wife, Teri, with being a big help in that regard, and under prodding describes some of his daily routine, including his ability to drive a specially equipped car with hand gas and brake controls.

Since he believes he is here to say good things about Kenny, I ask questions that let him do so. Once he finishes, I hand him the list of the offensive players on the high school all-American team. “Do you recognize these names?”

He looks at them. I’m surprised that he’s as cool as he is; I would have expected the list to make him look worried. “I know a few of the names. Obviously Kenny and Troy and myself.”

“Are you aware that eight of the people on that list are dead?”

His head snaps up from the list. “Dead?”

“Dead.”

He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I have no inclination to tell him what I’m talking about, so instead, I give him a group of copied pages that Sam has gotten from hacking into computers. “Please look through these pages and tell me if they are copies of your credit card bills.”

He looks, though not too carefully. His mind must be racing, trying to figure out a way out of the trap that he’s just “wheeled” himself into. “Yes… they look like mine. Sure.”

“You can take some time to confirm this, but I will now tell you that based on your credit card receipts, you were within two hours’ drive of every one of those deaths at the time they happened. Yet you lived in New Jersey, and these deaths occurred in all different parts of the country.”

“You’re not saying I killed these people. Is that what you’re saying?” He’s showing a proper measure of confusion and outrage, an amazing job under the circumstances. But for someone who can fake paralysis for years, this bullshit must be a piece of cake.

“So you did not kill them? You did not kill any of them? Including the victim in this case?”

“I have never killed anyone in my life.”

“And everything you’ve said in court today is truthful?”

“Totally.”

“Equally truthful? None of your statements were less true than others?”

“Every single word has been the truth.”

“How did you get to court today, Mr. Pollard?”

Finally, a crack in his armor, the kind of crack that the Iraqi army left on the way to Baghdad. First his eyes flash panic, then anger. “You son of a bitch,” he says.

Harrison admonishes him for his answer, and I ask the question again. “How did you get to court today, Mr. Pollard?”

His voice is soft, his teeth clenched. “I drove.”

“Using the set of hand controls you described earlier?”

“Yes.” He has the look of a man being dragged closer and closer to a cliff. All the while his mind must be racing, trying to figure out if I can prove that he’s lying. If I can prove it, he’ll stop lying and try to lessen the damage. If I can’t, there’s no reason for him to stop.

“And that statement is as truthful as every other one you’ve made today?”

“Yes.”

I let him off the stand, asking that he remain in the court, subject to recall. Harrison grants the request, and Dylan doesn’t object. Dylan looks like he’s planning to follow Pollard over the cliff.

Pollard takes a seat near the back of the room, and I call Lester Mankiewicz, a client of Sam’s. Mankiewicz was a computer technician for the Ford Motor Company at their Mahwah, New Jersey, plant. He worked there for eleven years, installing and operating the computers that exist in every car made today.

Lester agreed to Sam’s request for help in this case because it sounded like fun, and Sam says there’s pretty much nothing that Lester won’t do for fun. I had explained to Lester that what he would be doing was technically illegal, but that I could guarantee that he would not be charged with a crime. Once I told him what we wanted him to do, I think he would have paid us for the opportunity.

I have a television and VCR brought into the courtroom and take Lester through his story. He and Sam taped every aspect of it, so his words are like televised voice-over.

“Last night at three
A.M
. I entered Bobby Pollard’s unlocked vehicle, which was parked on the street in front of his neighbor’s house. I installed a device that is technically a small computer chip but really operates like an alarm clock. In this case it was set to go off five minutes after the car was started.”

“What would happen when it went off?” I ask.

“It would disable the hand controls… neither the brakes nor gas would work, other than by using the foot pedals.”

He continues to describe the rest of the operation. He installed another device to measure pressure on the foot pedals, and both devices could be monitored at a remote location.

“Please take us through what happened when Mr. Pollard started driving,” I say.

His presentation is devastating. I expected that when the hand controls lost power, Pollard would be forced to use his legs to control and drive the car, secure that no one would ever know the difference, since he was alone. Amazingly, Pollard never used the hand controls at all, using the foot pedals the entire time. Every bit of this is measured by computer.

I let Lester off the stand and try to introduce copies of Pollard’s medical records. They show that he was in fact in an accident in Spain but that it was relatively minor. The accident left him paralyzed, but the attending physician found no medical explanation for it.

Dylan objects to the introduction of the medical records, on the grounds that there is no one in the court qualified to authenticate them. Harrison agrees, as I figured he would, and we don’t get to use them.

Next up is Carlotta Abbruzze, a shrink I went to for a while when my marriage was breaking up. I decided I didn’t want to be shrunk, and my marriage broke up, but Carlotta and I remained friends. She has more Ph.D.’s than anyone I know, and she is easily qualified to testify in this case.

I ask Carlotta to explain psychosomatic paralysis. In layman’s terms she explains that while there is no physical reason for it, the paralysis itself is real. She also describes how the human mind, if it leans toward such a syndrome, can be incredibly opportunistic. A minor car accident such as Pollard had could have triggered the immediate mental response to develop the syndrome.

“How long might it last?” I ask.

“Anywhere from a few minutes to a lifetime. When it disappears, the patient might intentionally continue to fake the paralysis, if it is providing some mental comfort for him.”

“Just hypothetically, if a young man whose entire life was dedicated to football came to believe that he was not good enough to make it in the NFL, might even that subconscious realization bring on the syndrome?”