Premeditated Murder (30 page)

     A few days ago I realized something which made me sad. When I killed these people, I made a mistake. It's not that they weren't bad people. They had done horrible things in the past, and they were planning to do horrible things in the future. And I'm not sorry that they are dead. But when I first learned how dangerous they were, I didn't have to shoot them. I could have gone to the police and tried to have them captured, instead of just shooting them in cold blood. I let my own feelings of loss and pain blind me to the fact that what I was doing by hunting them down was tying your memory to more violence, more killing. I shouldn't have done that. I wish I hadn't.

     It's pretty strange, actually, that now, after going through this whole thing, and finally really facing my feelings about what happened to you and Mommy, I am probably in much better shape to live a productive life than I was right after you were killed. Yet here I am, standing on the verge of a conviction which will end in my own death.

     In many ways, by killing these people, I have failed you. You were such a kind, loving little boy. You wouldn't have wanted me to do that. I'm sorry that I did. I hope you can forgive me.

Because I know nobody else will.
Love, Daddy

(Letter #65 from Calvin Thompkins to deceased son, Kevin)

DIST. ATTY. O'NEILL:
Trooper Dragonin, I am handing you what have been marked as Exhibits 86 through 101. Can you identify what these are?

TROOPER DRAGONIN:
These are the jacket portions of sixteen .30-caliber spent projectiles.

Q:
Have you seen these projectiles before?

A:
Yes, I recovered these projectiles on January 14 from various locations within Apartment 3C at 214 Main Street, Northampton.

Q:
And directing your attention to Exhibit 75, can you identify that for us, Trooper?

A:
Yes. That was the modified AK-47 that I recovered at the same time as the projectiles, from the hallway immediately outside Apartment 3C.

Q:
After you recovered these projectiles and the AK-47, Trooper Dragonin, what, if anything, did you do with them?

A:
At the request of my supervisor, I made several test firings with the AK-47. I then made a microscopic comparison of the projectiles I had recovered at the scene with the projectiles that I obtained by test-firing the weapon.

Q:
Did you form an opinion about the projectiles that you had recovered at the scene?

A:
My opinion was that the projectiles at the scene had been fired by the modified AK-47 I had recovered in the hallway outside of the apartment.

(Trial Volume XI, Page 63)

June 19—Worcester, Massachusetts

AS HE PULLED INTO THE DOUBLE V FOR HIS last cup of coffee of the day, Pete Vanderhall thought about quitting—just walking away from the job. It was about the tenth time he had thought about it just that day.

The funny thing was that when he first became a cop, it was a dream come true. Pete had been working toward it since ninth grade, and when he finally passed through the academy, he felt like the proudest rookie in his class.

And even though the first years were tougher than he had imagined, and the moments of excitement and pride were far outnumbered by the moments of sadness and frustration, he was still convinced that what he did mattered. That if he stayed true to the job, and did his work right, he'd make a difference, even if only a small one, in the world.

But lately, he was starting to doubt that. Sure, he'd stayed true to the job and done his work right. The fact that he'd made sergeant bore that out. And the men who worked for and with Pete respected him. He knew that, too. But as far as making a difference …

As stupid as he felt about it, young Natalie Reggio's death had had a profound effect on him. He had attended her funeral and had even tried to look out a little bit for her friend, Julie. But Pete didn't need any special ability to predict the future to see where the girl was heading. The youth officer at Julie's school had told Pete that Julie was just another disaster waiting to happen. Pete had even gone to talk to her once, but it had backfired completely. He'd seen her hanging out at the 7-Eleven down by Grossman's, and he'd pulled into the lot to say hello and ask her how she was doing. But as soon as he did, she and the five kids she'd been with scattered. He knew that meant that they were carrying, probably alcohol, maybe weed, but he didn't chase them. He had wanted to speak to her, not bust her.

Pete walked into the diner and sat at his regular spot at the counter. Joe was on the cell phone with his son, Carlos, the one who worked at the White House, but he didn't need to ask Pete what he wanted. Coffee, black with two sugars. He put the cup down in front of Pete and walked down toward the other end of the counter, where Maria was washing something in the sink.

Every day was the same. Pete got up, got into work by seven-thirty for his eight-to-four shift, had lunch and late afternoon coffee at the Double V, went home, talked to the kids and Vicki, had dinner, watched some TV, and went to sleep.

The next day, he did it all over again.

And that had been enough, when he thought his job meant something.

So why wasn't it enough anymore?

Northampton, Massachusetts

JUDGE COTTONWOOD COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. He wasn't listening at all to Fran O'Neill drone on and on about the Commonwealth's theory of the case. All he could think about was that in the last trial of his career, he was going to have to put up with Terry Tallach.

Following his normal practice, His Honor had called the attorneys into his chambers for an informal, pretrial conference on the Thompkins case just to ensure that everything would run smoothly. He knew O'Neill and his assistant wouldn't give him any problems. And even if Zack Wilson was a little too smart for his own good, at least the guy followed the rules. But Wilson's partner, Terry Tallach, was a pest. Despite the fact that anybody who read the papers knew how this trial was going to turn out, the judge had been looking forward to being a part of the historic guilty verdict. Now he wasn't so sure.

Tallach was fool enough to try anything, and with a courtroom full of cameras, that made the judge uneasy. He had no qualms about throwing the loudmouth into a cell for contempt if necessary. But who could guess how that might play on television? The judge had no desire to give the defendant something to complain about on appeal. No, he'd have to be a little careful with Tallach.

The district attorney finally finished talking. Then Wilson said he wasn't comfortable revealing anything about his client's case until the trial actually started. That just confirmed what Judge Cottonwood had already suspected: The defendant had no case.

It was time for the speech.

“As those of you who have tried cases before me know, I don't like surprises,” the judge began.

OH GOD. THE SPEECH. TERRY COULDN'T BELIEVE he had to sit through it again. No surprises, rules were made to be followed, everyone's goal is to discover the truth and to participate in a fair trial, blah blah blah. If the Big Dick hadn't so completely established his reputation as the judge most likely to go out of his way to screw defendants, it might have been a little easier to swallow.

But every defense lawyer knew that a criminal trial before Judge Cottonwood was nothing less and nothing more than a big, fat, five-alarm boning. And as he got older, Judge Dick would do everything in his power to make sure you lost not only at trial but also on appeal. Lately, simple cover-your-ass motions at the end of trials had become golden opportunities for Cottonwood to make completely bullshit “factual findings” on the record, which would be sure to doom any hope of a new trial.

Like that time in one of Cottonwood's robbery cases, when the defendant suffered a concussion in a car accident on the way to the courthouse and began the trial dizzy and with a blinding headache. Midway through the trial he actually fainted, right in front of the jury, but thirty minutes later, after a nurse took his vital signs and determined that he was conscious and not having a heart attack or bleeding internally, the trial was resumed.

After losing, the defense attorney filed a motion for a new trial, claiming that his client hadn't been able to assist his attorney during the trial.

Judge Cottonwood issued a ruling that read “While it is true that the defendant lost consciousness during the trial, the trial was suspended at the moment that he fainted, and resumed thirty minutes later only after he was thoroughly examined and cleared by a health-care professional.” Then Cottonwood wrote exactly what he knew would totally fuck the defendant's appeal: “I observed the defendant at all times during the trial, and he was consistently and actively helping his attorney throughout.”

Yeah, sure. What Cottonwood really observed was the defendant occasionally whispering to his lawyer. For all Cottonwood knew, the guy had been singing the “Macarena.” But it was enough for the Appeals Court. Appeal denied. Next case.

“One final word before we get out there and begin.” Cottonwood was finally in the homestretch. Thank God. “I will be retiring at the end of the proceedings in this case. So it is my hope that we can all work together to be sure that this is a fair trial …”

A few empty platitudes later, everyone stood up, and the lawyers returned to the courtroom to await Judge Blowhard's grand entrance.

Except for the seats in the gallery which had been reserved for the prospective jurors, the place was packed. Countless reporters and freak-show junkies who wanted a firsthand view of the impending train wreck were squeezed into every available seat. Three television cameras complete with geek crews were obnoxiously conspicuous. Every court officer on the payroll was somewhere in the room, clustered in twos and threes, all trying to look vitally important.

And sitting by himself, at one of the two long tables set up in the front of the room, was the guest of honor, the main event, the big black guy whose mug shot had been scaring the shit out of America for months. Cal Thompkins. For somebody who was about to go through a few weeks of hell on earth while everybody and his uncle gawked, he looked like the most relaxed guy in the place.

Thanks to a typical screwup, before Zack and Terry had even reached their places next to Cal, one of the court officers opened the doors at the back of the room and began to usher the fifty prospective jurors into the seats that had been reserved for them, and another officer at the front of the room shouted, “Court! All rise!” and Judge Cottonwood made his entrance. The reporters and the gallery didn't know where to look and whom to pay attention to. But Terry did. He watched the jury pool enter the courtroom like they were on a Hollywood red carpet.

Picking juries wasn't really that hard if you used your common sense. The idea was to try to choose people who would have an easier time relating to your client than to the other side's client. So there were a few rules of thumb in picking juries for criminal trials if you were a defense lawyer and your client was black. One was that you never let a family member of somebody in law enforcement near the case, and the other was that you tried to get as many minorities onto the jury as possible.

A quick look at the prospective jurors and their questionnaires—the little forms that told the lawyers tiny bits of information about them, like their occupation, or if they'd ever been involved in a criminal or civil trial before—confirmed that Cal's incredibly bad luck was holding firm. Of the fifty-seven people in the jury pool, over twenty were related to someone who worked either with the police or with the prison system.

And the total number of minorities on the panel was four. Naturally, one of them was married to a cop.

Getting a jury of Cal's peers out of this panel was going to be a joke.

But then again, the number of people in any jury pool who had blown away six students with an automatic weapon was likely to be small.