“Come on, I'm sorry!”
I think he can tell that it was not the most sincere of apologies, because he keeps closing the door.
I yell to Laurie, “Don't just stand there!”
After a brief moment that seems like an hour, she shrugs and says, “I need your help, Pete.”
Pete immediately relaxes and opens the door. He speaks only to Laurie. “Why didn't you say so? What's up?”
I jump in. “We have to run down an old license plate.”
Pete ignores me and again speaks to Laurie. “What's up?”
“We have to run down an old license plate,” Laurie says.
This is starting to annoy me-I mean, all I did in court was my job. “Hey, what am I, invisible?”
“You're lucky you're not dead,” Pete snarls. “You turned me into a goddamned idiot on the stand.”
“You were already a goddamned idiot. I just brought it out into the open.”
This time I'm pretty sure that if he has a gun in that cute red bathrobe he will shoot me. Laurie tells me to go wait in the car, which I think is a wise idea.
From the time I get in the car, it only takes a minute or so. Laurie comes back and gets in the passenger seat.
“Let's go,” she says.
“What happened?”
“He's going to call it in. We should have it tomorrow.”
“See?” I say. “I told you I could handle him.”
I drop Laurie off at her apartment and then head home. Pete's going to get us the information, and then we'll either have something or we'll have nothing. I have rarely felt less in control.
The next morning I ask for a meeting in Hatchet's chambers with him and Wallace. They have heard about Nicole getting shot, and I lay out for them the threats we had received and the attack in my office. I make the case that someone is actively trying to prevent justice from being carried out, and I ask that I be allowed to depose Victor Markham and Brown-field about the photograph.
Wallace seems genuinely sympathetic to my situation, but is obligated to make the point that no significant legal link has been made between the photograph and the Miller trial. He is technically correct, and Hatchet is also technically correct in denying my request. Which he does.
Our first witness this morning is going to be Edward Markham, on whom I am planning to take out my frustrations. Laurie has joined Kevin and me at the defense table for the day's festivities.
As I glance around the courtroom, I see that Victor is there to provide sonny boy moral support. He's going to need it.
Just as Hatchet is taking his seat behind the bench, the door in the back of the courtroom opens and Pete appears. He walks toward me as Hatchet is instructing me to call my first witness.
Pete hands me a small piece of paper and says, “I figured I should deliver this one personally.”
I look at the paper and say, “Holy shit.”
Laurie nudges me. “What is it?”
I hand her the paper; her whispered reaction is more biblical than mine. She says, “Jesus Christ.” She passes the paper down to Kevin, but I can't hear what he mutters.
Hatchet sees all this. “Are we going to pass notes in class today or might we call a witness?”
I stand up. “Your Honor, we call Edward Markham, but a significant development has taken place, and we would request a brief recess prior to his testimony.”
“How brief?”
“The balance of the morning, Your Honor. We would be prepared to question the witness right after the lunch break.”
Hatchet asks Wallace and me to approach. We do, and I tell them that this can be a crucial breakthrough, and that I need the morning to follow through on it. It can change the entire case.
I am shocked when Wallace doesn't object. He knows that his position will not be harmed by waiting a few hours, and he trusts me that this is in fact an important development. What he is doing is putting justice ahead of victory; my father would have been damn proud of him.
Hatchet goes along with it, and I head back to the defense table. I tell Kevin that if I'm not back in time, he is to question Edward for as long as it takes, just making sure that he does not leave the stand before I get there. I don't even wait for an answer; I'm out of the building and on the way to my car.
My trip out to Betty Anthony's is a nerve-racking one. Pete's information has the promise of cracking this case wide open and letting the long hidden secrets pour out, but it will be of no value if I can't get Betty Anthony on my side. And so far I have had no success at doing that.
I try her apartment first, hoping that she is not at work. When I arrive and prepare to ring the bell, I hear the strains of Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter, coming from inside the apartment. She's home.
Betty comes to the door, and her expression when she sees that it's me is a combination of exasperation and fear. She's fended me off until now, but she's afraid that I'll come at her from an angle that will shake up her world. Which is exactly what I'm about to do.
“Hello, Betty.”
“Mr. Carpenter, I really must ask you to stop bothering me like this. It's not-”
“I know about Julie McGregor.”
The effect is immediate, and it is all in her eyes. First there is the flash of fear, as she starts to process the words she hoped never to hear. Then comes the realization that there is no defense to those words, that resistance is futile. Then her body catches up to her eyes, and she sags noticeably, the fight taken out of her.
Watching her reaction is exhilarating and terribly, terribly sad.
She doesn't say a word, just opens the door wider for me to enter. The apartment is exactly what I would have expected … small, inexpensively furnished, but meticulously kept. There are a number of religious artifacts around, as well as pictures of family members, including many of Mike.
Betty starts to straighten the place up, dusting areas without dust and moving things which do not need to be moved. I suppose it is her way of trying to bring order into what is soon to be a chaotic situation.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asks.
“Yes, thank you.”
She is trying to find something to do. We both know that she is going to speak to me, but I'm helping her put it off at least for a few more minutes.
She makes the coffee and brings it to me. Finally, she says, “How much do you know?”
“Enough to tell the world the story. Not enough to prove it.”
She nods. “He was never the same after that night. He thought it would get better, but it got worse as the years went by.”
“Did you know him then?”
“Yes. We were engaged. But he didn't tell me the full story about what happened until years later.”
A pause, as she struggles with her own guilt. “But I couldn't help him with it.”
“Down deep he had to know it would come out,” I say. “He couldn't keep it inside any longer. And neither can you. Not anymore.”
She sighs. “I know.”
“Tell me about that night.”
She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “They were in Manhattan for a dinner, some kind of awards event for the best students from around the country. A future leaders thing, or something. Most of them never met each other before that night.”
I start to ask her if she knows their names, but I decide I'm not going to interrupt. The story is going to come pouring out of her, and I'm not going to do anything to influence or derail it.
She goes on. “A group of them began drinking at the banquet, and then went to a bar on the Upper West Side. All they were interested in was alcohol and women, but it was late on a slow Tuesday night, so they were having much more luck with the alcohol.
“The bar was about to close, and nothing much was happening, so they accepted the offer of one of their group to go to his house, where they could keep drinking and swim in his pool.