VC04 - Jury Double (3 page)

“It’s good for you.”

“When did you join the health fascists? Ellie’s on my case all the time.”

“Ellie’s a smart girl. Drink it while it’s potent. Exposed to light, Vitamin C has a half-life of eight minutes.”

Cardozo lifted his cup of juice and took a testing swallow. It was unbelievably sweet, unbelievably good.

Dan strolled back to his desk. He turned a page of a laser-printed draft report. “There were feather particles on John Briar’s face and lips. There were feather particles inside his mouth and esophagus. But there were no feather particles in Amalia Briar’s mouth or esophagus. None on her lips or even on her face.”

Cardozo studied Dan’s brown eyes, large and luminous beneath his receding hairline. “And what does that suggest to you?”

Dan moved his mug in a circular motion, stirring up waves in the apple juice. “Small veins at the back of John Briar’s eyes had hemorrhaged—we call them ‘petechiae’—they’re a pretty reliable sign of forcible asphyxiation.”

“What about Amalia’s eyes?”

“That’s the odd thing. The veins were unruptured.”

Cardozo sat forward in his chair. Something had shifted and he wanted to understand it.

“In my opinion,” Dan said, “John Briar was murdered and Amalia suffocated on her own phlegm. She died a natural death.”

Ellie Siegel turned the final page of the preliminary autopsy report. She exhaled a long, sighing breath.

“Explain it to me,” Cardozo said. “Mickey admits committing two murders and one of them’s not a murder.”

“This is only a preliminary report.” Ellie’s finger tapped her coffee cup. The clear polished nails caught glints of light from the fluorescent desk lamp. “Dan could have overlooked something.”

“No.” Cardozo shook his head vehemently. “Not Dan.”

Ellie didn’t answer. She pushed up from her desk and walked to the squad room window and stared out. Above the western skyline, pink welts stretched across the darkening heavens.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Cardozo said. “Why was Mickey waiting in the apartment? Why didn’t he get the hell out of there and save his ass?”

“Maybe he wants to be punished.”

“Then why doesn’t he show remorse?”

“Some men don’t like to show their feelings. You don’t.”

Cardozo had trained himself to ignore Ellie’s jibes. Her aim was laudable: the improvement and sensitizing of Vince Cardozo. But her tactics could be a pain. “How did Mickey get into the apartment? He didn’t have a key; the building staff were on strike; the Briars were bedridden. So who let him in? And why the hell did he even
want
to kill John Briar?”

Down on 63rd Street, two ambulances raced by, sirens screeching a fierce duet.

Ellie turned. “It’s only been six hours, Vince. Give yourself a break. You may not have all the answers yet, but at least you have the killer.”

“Then why’s he lying about killing Amalia Briar?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know he’s lying. Maybe Amalia was already dead when he suffocated her.”

Cardozo studied the crime scene photo of Amalia: a dear old grandma who seemed to have dozed off contentedly in bed, smiling as if in recognition of an amusing irony. Mounds of pillows, percale cases. The way to go.

He compared it to the photo of John Briar, sprawled on a green-bordered oriental rug—his silk robe open, exposing malnourished nakedness and an adult diaper. The eyes, gaping in terror and shock, were the horrible detail.

“Even if Amalia
was
dead,” he said, “there’d be pressure marks on the face; postmortem bruises; feathers;
something
.”

“At this point, I frankly don’t see that you’ve got a beef.” Ellie’s gaze rested on Cardozo, thoughtful and quietly concerned. “Maybe Mickey’s mistaken about Amalia. Or maybe he’s lying. But he’s not lying about John Briar.”

“I want him to take a lie detector test.”

Ellie’s eyes were suddenly shrewd and alert. “Be careful, Vince. You don’t know who’s going to be watching over your shoulder.”

Cardozo nodded. “First thing tomorrow, before the polygraph, we’ll get Mickey a lawyer from Legal Aid.”

THREE

Wednesday after Labor Day

10:30
A.M.

T
ODAY WAS SUPPOSED TO
be Cardozo’s RDO, his regular day off, and he’d already wasted an hour of it waiting in a windowless room beneath Criminal Court. It was almost ten-thirty when the Legal Aid lawyer finally showed up. Keys rattled and two figures stood silhouetted in the doorway.

“Vince Cardozo?” The woman held out a hand. “Tess diAngeli.” She was short and slender with lively dark eyes. “I’m the assistant D.A. assigned to the case, and I’ve been hunting all over for you.”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t they tell you we were here?”

“They said you were in Mr. Williams’s cell. We’ve had a tour of the whole damned jail.” She turned to Mickey Williams, hand extended. “Hi. Tess diAngeli.”

Mickey Williams, seated at the conference table, looked up from the
New York Post
horoscope. He smiled bashfully. “Are you going to be prosecuting me?”

“At this point it’s too early to say. But the court’s appointed David Moriarty here to represent you.”

Moriarty stepped into the conference room and thunked an overstuffed briefcase onto the table. “Hi there, Mickey.” He was a young man with thick eyeglasses and a grating voice. “You’re a Texas man, aren’t you?”

“Texarkana-born.”

“I thought so.”

“Vince,” Tess diAngeli said. “You don’t mind if I call you Vince, do you?”

“Ask Ellie,” Cardozo said. “She handles my social life. Detective Siegel, Counselor diAngeli.”

Ellie rose from the table. “Good to meet you.”

Perplexity clouded diAngeli’s face. “I don’t recall seeing you on the list of detectives assigned to the case.”

“Vince assigned me.”

DiAngeli glanced over at Cardozo. She opened a notepad and made a quick notation. “David and I have both read Mr. Williams’s statement. I’m satisfied and so’s David.”

“Is that true, Dave?” Cardozo said. “Are you satisfied?”

David Moriarty flashed a grin that ought to have been taken to the orthodontist twenty years ago. “Absolutely.” He pulled a skimpy manila folder from his briefcase. “And if Mickey will just initial each page at the bottom and sign the last one, we’re in business.”

The lawyer turned the sheets of the transcribed confession, and Mickey bent over the table and signed without bothering to read. Moriarty and diAngeli witnessed his signature.

“Then I have one request,” Cardozo said.

Moriarty’s eyes shot up. “Which is?”

“I’d like your client to take a lie detector test.” It was Tess diAngeli who broke the silence. “Vince, let’s talk.” She rapped for the guard to open the door and motioned Cardozo into the dimly lit corridor. “A skillful defense could use a polygraph to get the case thrown out.”

“Are you calling your man Moriarty skillful?”

“He crosses his
t’s
, and that’s why he was chosen.”

“Then why doesn’t it trouble him or you that Amalia Briar’s autopsy contradicts Mickey’s confession? Or am I the only one in this city who’d like to know what really happened in that apartment?”

Anger flashed through diAngeli’s eyes. “Look—that autopsy was only a preliminary. And the clock’s ticking. If we don’t hurry up and get Mickey arraigned, we’ll have to release him, and this whole discussion—pleasant as it is—will be water under the bridge.”

Cardozo settled himself next to Ellie on a bench in State Criminal Court part 312. A harried-looking judge slapped one manila file shut and opened the next. “Mickey Armitage Williams, Jr.?”

Mickey Williams rose. He struck Cardozo as unusually relaxed for a man facing arraignment on murder charges. Unshaven and smiling, he seemed casual, almost cheerful.

“Mr. Williams, you are charged with two counts of second-degree homicide. How do you plead?”

David Moriarty bounded to his feet. “Your Honor, my client pleads guilty.”

A door slammed and a voice shouted, “Just a moment!”

Cardozo turned his head. The benches held the usual midday sprinkling of lawyers, criminals, cops, and reporters. Those who weren’t asleep were clearly nodding off. At the rear of the court an elderly man with a wild crown of white hair pushed through the doorway.

A jolt of surprise caught Cardozo. He recognized the face from front pages of supermarket tabloids: Dotson Elihu—antigovernment gadfly and successful defender of murderous billionaires, international terrorists, and homegrown serial killers.

“Attorney Dotson Elihu, Your Honor. Mr. Williams’s sister has retained me to represent him.”

The judge peered dubiously over half-moon lenses. “Mr. Williams, which of these attorneys is defending you?”

“Your Honor,” Moriarty called out, “the court has appointed me to Mr. Williams’s defense. At no time has he expressed the slightest dissatisfaction with me.”

Elihu threw back his head and burst out laughing, as though he could savor a good legal tall tale as well as the next lawyer. “Mr. Moriarty has done nothing for my client except hold him incommunicado while the state lays the tracks to railroad him. If that sort of malfeasance is advocacy, then someone has rewritten the canons of the New York Bar Association.”

The judge’s gaze rested patiently on the prisoner. “Mr. Williams, have you chosen
either
of these attorneys to represent you? Or do you wish to do so now?”

“Your Honor.” Tess diAngeli rose. “I must protest.”

“Save it for trial. This is arraignment. Well, Mr. Williams? The court hasn’t got all day.”

Mickey Williams blinked painfully, as though embarrassed to be the center of controversy. “Well, Your Honor, if my little sister really hired the gentleman with gray hair—”

“Indeed she did, Mickey.” Elihu waved a piece of paper. “I hold in my hand Rilda-Mae Turnbull’s fax retaining me.”

Williams shrugged. “Then I guess he’s my lawyer.”

“My client,” Elihu said, “pleads not guilty on all counts.”

Tess diAngeli strode angrily to the bench. “Your Honor, in view of Mickey Williams’s appalling record of past offenses and the savagery of the Briar murders, we request that he be held without bail pending trial.”

“Ms. diAngeli … as we are both well aware, criminal court has an overflowing calendar.” The judge sat tapping his fingers on the open file. “How much time are we realistically talking—two, three years?”

“I hope not. The state will do all it can to reasonably expedite trial.”

Dotson Elihu ambled toward the bench. “Your Honor, since my client has no previous record in New York State, and since the police coerced his so-called confession
in the absence of counsel
—”

“Mr. Elihu,” the judge cut in, “none of that’s relevant here today.”

“Then I ask Your Honor to release Mr. Williams on nominal bail on his own recognizance.”

“Your Honor,” Tess diAngeli cried, “Mickey Williams’s continued freedom constitutes a clear danger to the community.”

For a long, deliberating moment, the judge was silent. “The court understands your concern, Ms. diAngeli, but it must balance that concern against the prisoner’s rights. We therefore set bail at five hundred thousand dollars.”

Mickey’s people are dirt farmers. I don’t believe for one minute his sister could afford to hire a big-ticket defender like Elihu.” Cardozo thumped his mug on the desktop. Coffee sloshed across a stack of unsolved crime reports awaiting their semiannual update. “So who’s paying? Where did Elihu get the money to put up bail?”

“Give the coffee a rest, Vince.” Ellie reached down with a Kleenex and daubed the papers dry. “That’s your third cup in ten minutes. You should switch to ginseng tea.”

Cardozo relied on coffee to stoke his brain. Like all addicts, he didn’t want to discuss or defend his habit; and like all addictions, it had begun to deliver diminishing returns. Today his synapses weren’t getting the jump start they needed; the chemical switch in his head refused to click. “How the hell does a showboater like Elihu get in on the act?”

The linoleum floor deadened the slow, careful tap-tap of Ellie’s heels. “You want an educated guess? Elihu represented Corey Lyle in the White Plains hearings. So the cult hired him to help Mickey.”

Cardozo ran it through his mind. “Where do they get their money?”

She shrugged. “Rich supporters.”

“I wonder. They’ve got enough troubles with law enforcement. Why would they go out of their way to identify themselves with a wacko like Mickey? He’s a known rapist and child molester, and now he’s a killer.”

“It could be the cult’s loyal to their members.”

“There’s got to be more to it than that.” Outside the shut door of Cardozo’s cubicle, the squad room kept up its steady bubbling—footsteps hurrying, voices chattering, cop radios giving off bursts of static. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit on my duff and wait for Mickey to rape another little girl.”

“What makes you so sure he will?”

“Look at his rap sheet. He’s a compulsive sociopath. He can’t control his actions and I doubt he even wants to.” Cardozo’s gaze came up, angry and grim. “If the court’s not going to deal with him, then it’s up to us.”

“Hold on a minute.” Misgiving was written in capital letters on Ellie’s face. “What are you planning to do?”

“Whatever it takes.” Cardozo searched the cluttered desktop and found the transcript of Mickey’s confession. He reread it. He reread Dan Hippolito’s preliminary autopsy and his own report on yesterday’s crime scene. He couldn’t get past a nagging sense that the picture was incomplete—some vital element was still missing.

On his computer, he called up Sergeant Britta Bailey’s crime-scene report. According to Bailey, a man named Jack Briar came to the precinct at 1:10
P.M.
yesterday and reported trouble in his parents’ apartment. Bailey then checked with the telephone operator. Learning there was a receiver off the hook, she broke into the Briars’ apartment and found John and Amalia’s bodies.

That much Cardozo already knew. Now came the part he hadn’t known. “Well, how about that?”