Today is going to be another depressing day in court, watching Dylan parade his witnesses in front of the jury, questioning them in excruciating detail. It’s like getting a legal colonoscopy.
Before I leave I take Tara and Bailey for our daily morning walk, during which I get my monthly idea. With Bailey with us the walks are much slower; I think she would prefer that we push her in an enormous stroller.
Along the way we run into a neighbor walking her beautiful golden, Callaway. She’s one of Tara’s favorite dogs to interact with, they can spend all day sniffing and chatting. This time is a little different, as Callaway can’t take her eyes off Bailey. It’s like she wants to pull Tara aside and ask, “What the hell is that?”
When I get home I call Sam and ask him if he can recruit at least five people, with significant computer skills, who can work on the case under his direction.
“What about my computer class?” he asks.
“You take a computer class?”
“I teach one. A night course. I’m sure some of my students would love to do it.”
“Can you bring them to my house tonight?” I ask. “Around eight?”
“That’s pretty late,” he says. “How about six? Does that work?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll move some stuff around.”
I wish I could move the trial around, like around to August, but that’s not going to happen. Dylan surprises me by telling the court he wants to call FBI Special Agent Neil Mulcahy. I knew Mulcahy would eventually testify, I just thought Dylan might hold him off until later.
Mulcahy is not going to have much to say, at least not on his own. He was the agent to whom Danny Butler spoke when he claimed that Noah had confessed setting the fire, and he will basically be reading the transcript of that interview.
I let Hike argue on our behalf that the testimony should not be admitted, since Butler is not here to be cross-examined. De Luca overrules our objection, as we knew he would. I consider it a bad law, but it’s not De Luca’s job to make those judgments. He has to implement the law as it is, not as he thinks it should be.
Dylan asks very few questions, just a handful to set the scene. He’s correct in that approach; Butler’s words, even when spoken by Mulcahy, are powerful and speak for themselves.
In fact, the words are much more powerful than if Butler were here. Mulcahy is an impressive guy, and as an FBI agent he commands the kind of respect that a slimeball like Butler never could. The words have more credibility coming out of Mulcahy’s mouth than they would dripping out of Butler’s.
The original version of the interview took about two hours and fifteen minutes, and that’s how long the reenactment takes. Dylan actually plays the part of Mulcahy in asking the questions, and Mulcahy plays Butler.
I watch the jury as they watch the performance, and they are paying rapt attention. I’m surprised they haven’t asked for a playbill.
We take a break before my cross begins, and I call Cindy Spodek on my cell phone. Cindy is an FBI agent, recently promoted to assistant bureau chief in Boston. She is a very good friend to Laurie and me, which I constantly take advantage of to get information when I need it.
“What do you need now?” she asks, when she gets on the line, which is not exactly warm “friend” talk.
“What I need is to find out how my friend Cindy is doing, to find out what is going on in her life, because I care deeply about her. That is my whole reason for calling. It is my whole reason for being.”
“You’re full of shit,” she says.
“What tipped you off?”
“You only call when you’re on a case. This is about Galloway.”
“Actually, now that I have you…”
I go on to request the same missing persons information that I asked Pete for, since Cindy would have much better access. It takes some cajoling, but she basically likes to be helpful, and she’s not the type to let down a friend. Those are the kind of people I can take advantage of.
“This will take a while,” she says.
“I don’t have a while; the trial is almost over.”
“Good-bye, Andy.”
I head back to court for the Mulcahy cross-examination. I have little ammunition with which to challenge him, since he really was not the witness against Noah; he was only channeling Butler. But I have to give it a shot.
“Agent Mulcahy, did Danny Butler have a criminal record?”
“He did.”
“Did he have three convictions for drug possession, and two for breaking and entering?”
“Yes.”
“Was he arrested but not convicted on three other occasions?”
“Yes.”
“Was he himself addicted to drugs?” I ask. “Enough so that he was in rehab on four separate occasions?”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe his story?”
“I did.”
“Because of his status as an upstanding citizen?”
“We take information and judge it no matter where it comes from. It’s not always upstanding citizens that have information about a crime.”
“What would Butler’s background have to have been for you to doubt what he said? Maybe time as a Taliban commander? Or a Nazi SS officer?”
Dylan objects and De Luca admonishes me to cut it out. Business as usual.
“Did you check into Butler’s background after you talked to him?”
“I did.”
“Did he graduate high school?” I ask.
“He did not.”
I introduce Butler’s high school records, which include a PSAT combined score of 614, and I point out that in those days one got 400 for signing one’s name.
“In the interview, Butler said that his conscience had been bothering him all these years, and when he saw Mr. Galloway on television as a representative of the U.S. government, it pushed him over the edge. Made sense to you?”
“I had my doubts,” Mulcahy says, surprising me. “But when I checked it all out, I was convinced.”
Mulcahy has opened a door for me, that I was planning to open myself. “Checked it out how?”
“I compared it to the evidence of the fire. Everything Butler said was accurate, and it was information that was not publicly available.”
I introduce as evidence Butler’s records from one of his drug rehabs, and refer Mulcahy to the date on the report. “Is that two weeks after he says Mr. Galloway confided in him?”
“Sixteen days, yes,” Mulcahy says.
I then get him to read a paragraph from the initial statement Butler made to the rehab facility, admitting to heavy drug usage for the two months previously. “So by his own admission, Mr. Butler was using drugs during the period that he claims Mr. Galloway confessed to him?”
“Yes, but not necessarily that day.”
“Maybe it was a drug holiday,” I say. “Or maybe it was Thanksgiving, and he was going cold turkey for the day. But in any event, his recounting of the details of the fire, how it was set, et cetera, all of that proved to be accurate?”
“Definitely.”
“Down to the last detail?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s recap. A man with five felony convictions and extraordinarily low intelligence recounted almost verbatim technical details of a conversation he had six years earlier, when he was taking so many illegal drugs that he would soon be forced into rehab? And all because he was suddenly conscience-stricken. Is that about right?”
“That’s your description,” Mulcahy says.
“Which part of it is inaccurate?” I say.
“You left out the fact that there was no other way he could have gotten the information.”
“There was no other way that you could find,” I say. “Now, you said that Butler was subsequently killed in Las Vegas, and that Mr. Galloway is said to know people there.”
“That’s correct.”
“I also know people there. Are you going to cuff me?”
Mulcahy surprises me with a smile. “I’m tempted,” he says, and the jury laughs.
“Where did he get the money to go to Vegas in the first place? Did he have a job?”