“In Alabama, where my people are from, my grandparents were the grandchildren of slaves, and when my parents were coming up, black people couldn’t use the same bathrooms as white folks or eat at the same restaurants. But none of that disgraceful history has one iota to do with Dante Halleyville or this trial, and Mr. Dunleavy knows it.”
Tom didn’t say it did. In fact, he was saying the opposite, but Howard is twisting it anyway, doing whatever he thinks will work. But all that matters is how it plays to the twelve folks in the good seats, and when I look in their eyes I can’t read a thing. I’m proud of what Tom has done, but I’m nervous too.
“Race and police corruption?” asks Howard sarcastically. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Now where have I heard that before?” And then he looks at the end of the press row where Ronnie Montgomery is sitting and holds his mock stare.
“Oh, now I remember. It was from the tabloid trial of the century, the murder trial of Lorenzo Lewis. About the only thing missing is a snappy little slogan, like ‘if the hat’s too red, their case is dead.’
“But how many people still think Lorenzo’s innocent today? Not even his golfing buddies in Arizona. So don’t let yourself be conned like that jury, ladies and gentlemen, unless you want to be remembered the same way.
“Now is the time for you to see through the nonsense and the imaginative conspiracy theories and focus on the evidence. For starters, we got a murder weapon with Michael Walker’s prints all over it, recovered at a Southampton diner three hours after Dante Halleyville stops there. Although the defense tried very hard to put words in his mouth, Dr. Ewald Olson, one of the nation’s top forensic scientists, has testified those prints could only belong to Michael Walker, and that gun killed all four of those young men.
“Now let me say something about a highly decorated East Hampton police officer named Hugo Lindgren.” In Riverhead every other family has a relative who’s a cop or corrections officer, and Howard is about to appeal directly to their defensive loyalties.
“By irresponsibly dragging his reputation through the mud, they have impugned not only an officer who has earned seventeen commendations in his nine years on the force, but by extension all policemen and corrections officers who risk their lives every day so that we can go about our business in safety.
“According to the defense, it’s evidence of a conspiracy that one cop should be so involved in every aspect of the biggest murder case in East Hampton in a hundred years. Good cops like Lindgren spend their whole career waiting for cases like this. It’s only natural that he would become obsessed with it. And remember, the East Hampton PD is a small unit, so for one officer to be involved a couple of times over the course of an investigation is hardly suspicious. It’s surprising to me his name didn’t come up more often.
“The defense, in its desperation, has said a couple other things that are simply untrue and need to be corrected.
“One is that it’s suspicious that the call about the gun came from the pay phone at the Princess Diner. Maybe most of us have cell phones now, but what if the caller was a busboy working the overnight shift at the restaurant that night for minimum wage? Not everyone can afford a cell phone. The second is the implication that the gun was found after the defendant told police he had been to the diner that night and that the defendant volunteered that information. Neither is true. Lindgren was nowhere near the room where the defendant was interviewed, and the police found out Halleyville had been at the diner after the gun was found.
“Bear in mind, also, that the one person who places that officer in Dante’s room is Dante’s grandmother Marie Scott. Marie Scott may be a very good woman, and I’m sure she is, and she swore to tell this court the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help her, God. But she’s also a human being, and who of us can say with any certainty exactly what they would do or say to save the life of their flesh and blood?”
Howard is sweating at least as much as Tom, but when he stops it’s only for a drink of water.
“And there’s an important part of this case that the defense hasn’t even attempted to discredit or obscure, which is that on the morning before the murders, Michael Walker got a gun out of Dante’s car, brought it onto T. Smitty Wilson’s basketball court, and put it up against the head of one of the victims, Eric Feifer. As the witness told you, he didn’t just aim the weapon at Eric Feifer, he put the tip of the barrel right up against his head, and you’ve seen those grisly photographs so you know how close the killer held the gun to the victims’ heads when the shots were fired. And before Walker temporarily put that gun down, he announced, ‘This ain’t over, white boy, not by a long shot.’ Before the actual murder, there was a dress rehearsal to which fourteen men and women were invited.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a pretty simple case. You’ve got two defendants at the murder scene; you’ve got a murder weapon containing the fingerprints of one of them; you’ve got a hat with fingerprints that connects the defendant to the second murder scene. And now, thanks to the courage of Nikki Robinson, you have a powerful motive-revenge for a brutal rape.
“I want to thank all of you for the focus and commitment you have shown already. And thanks in advance for the concentration you will bring to the work that is still left. You’re almost home, ladies and gentlemen. Please, don’t take your eye off the ball now. Dante Halleyville is guilty of murder. If you value your safety and the safety of your loved ones, do not set him free.”
Chapter 101. Kate
FOR A COUPLE of quiet minutes spectators linger in their seats like moviegoers reading the closing credits. “We love you, Dante,” shouts Marie as two sheriffs approach the defense table to take him away. “It’s almost over, baby.”
“Yeah,” a guy in paint-splattered overalls calls from the door, “and then you fry!”
Tom and I shake Dante’s hand, which is still quivering; then the sheriffs put him back in handcuffs and lead him to the steel-cage elevator that will take him to the holding cell in the basement. On the opposite side of the room, another pair of sheriffs escorts the jury out a second door and walks them to a waiting bus. The bus will take them a quarter of a mile down the road to a Ramada Inn, where they’ll spend the weekend on the eleventh floor, sequestered from one another and the rest of the world.
After the jury’s bus pulls out, Tom and I slip out the same back door and hustle across the parking lot to where Clarence has left us his cab.
As we roll out the back exit in the yellow station wagon, TV reporters and other press are still waiting for us in front. By the time they realize what’s happened, we’re halfway to Sunrise Highway.
Neither of us says a whole lot during the drive home. Exhaustion is part of the reason, but mostly it’s shyness, or something like that. Suddenly alone together again, we’re not sure how to act. Actually, I’m thinking about the old days, when we were younger. During our senior year in high school, Tom and I saw each other just about every day-beach bums forever. It was pretty much the same way through college, and I went to almost all of Tom’s home games when he was at St. John’s. That’s why the breakup was such a shocker for me. I still didn’t know if I was over the hurt.
Anyway, when Tom pulls into Macklin’s driveway and I quickly get out of the car, I can read the disappointment in his eyes.
I’m feeling it too, but I’m so bone tired I need to get to my room before I collapse. I unbutton my skirt before I reach the top of the steep stairs, pull the shades, and crawl into bed.