Beach Road (20 page)

Tom
I LEAN IN close to Dante, figuring he needs some reassurance. “This isn’t going to be as much fun as
Mammy thought,” I say.

“Ms. Richardson, what do you do for a living?” Kate begins.

“I’m unemployed at the moment.”
“How about last summer? What were you doing then?”
“I was unemployed then too.”
“So you’ve been unemployed for a bit more than a moment, Ms. Richardson. How long exactly?”
“Three and a half years.”
“You seem bright and personable, not handicapped in any way. Is there a reason you haven’t been able to
find a job?”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“Sustained.”
“Did you come to Mr. Wilson’s estate alone that afternoon?”
“I came with Artis LaFontaine.”
“What was your relationship with Mr. LaFontaine?”
“Girlfriend.”
“Were you aware at the time that Mr. LaFontaine had spent a dozen years in jail for two separate drug
convictions?”
“I knew he’d been incarcerated, but I didn’t know for what.”
“Really? Did you know that according to police your former boyfriend was and remains a major drug
dealer?”
“I never asked him what he did for a living.”
“You weren’t curious how a man with no apparent job could drive a four-hundred-thousand-dollar
Ferrari?”
“Not really,” says Richardson, the trill in her voice long gone.

“Are you in a relationship right now, Ms. Richardson?”
“Not really.”
“You aren’t involved with Roscoe Hughes?”
“We date some.”
“Are you aware that he has also served time for a drug conviction?”
“I don’t ask about the specifics.”
“But I do, Ms. Richardson, so could you tell me, do you date drug dealers exclusively or just most of the
time?”
“Objection,” shouts Howard.

“Sustained,” says Rothstein.

Mammy Richardson has been skillfully discredited as a witness, but she can defend herself a little too.

“Why?” she asks, squaring her shoulders at Kate and putting her hands on her ample hips. “You want me
to fix you up?”

Tom
NEXT UP, DETECTIVE Van Buren. He takes the stand and, among other things, says that a call had
come to the station establishing that someone matching Dante’s description tossed a .45-caliber Beretta in
a Dumpster behind the Princess Diner. After Barney’s testimony, Rothstein offers an hour recess for lunch,
but the stone plaza outside is so hot and shadeless that despite the anemic air-conditioning in the
courtroom, the crowd is relieved to get back to their seats.

Once they’re settled, Melvin Howard pops right up from his table and approaches the bench with a large
plastic bag in each hand.

“The state,” says Howard, “submits to this court as evidence the forty-five-caliber Beretta recovered
behind the Princess Diner in Southampton early on the morning of September twelfth. Henceforth referred
to as Exhibit A. And a red Miami Heat basketball cap recovered at eight thirty-eight MacDonough Street in
Brooklyn four days later, from here on referred to as Exhibit B.”
Howard then calls a second member of East Hampton’s finest, Officer Hugo Lindgren.

“Officer Lindgren, were you on duty the morning the defendant turned himself in?”
“I wasn’t assigned to work that day, but I got a call to come in. I arrived at the police station just after Van
Buren and Geddes.”
“Were you privy to anything that the defendant told the detectives that morning?”
“Yes, the discussion about the gun. I retrieved it from the Princess Diner.”
“Tell us about it, please.”
“At about five thirty in the morning, five thirty-three to be exact, an anonymous call came into the station
and was routed to my desk. The caller reported that a few hours before, he’d seen a man discard a weapon
in the Dumpster behind the Princess Diner.”
“Did the caller describe the man?”
“Yes. He said the man was extremely tall and African American.”
“What did you do then?”
“I drove to the diner with Officer Richard Hume. We found the weapon in the garbage.”
“Is this the weapon that you found that morning?”
“Yes, it is.”
When Howard informs Rothstein he has no further questions, Kate stands to face off with our old buddy
Lindgren one more time.

“According to the defendant and receipts, what time was Dante Halleyville at the diner that morning?” she
asks.

“Between two thirty and two thirty-seven a.m.”
“And what time did you get to the police station?”
“A little after five.”
“So the caller, whoever it was, sat on the information for three hours.”
Lindgren shrugs and frowns. “People are resistant to get involved.”

“Or maybe the caller just waited for
you
to get to the station, Officer Lindgren. Now why in the world would that be? Hmmmm?”

And Dante whispers to me, “She’s
damn
good.”

Yes, she is.

Kate
THE NEXT MORNING, Melvin Howard, who is patiently and pretty skillfully building the state’s case
block by block, puts Dr. Ewald Olson on the stand.

Olson, an itinerant forensic scientist, travels the land from courtroom to courtroom offering his expert
testimony to whoever is willing to pick up the tab. He arrives with his own video setup and an assistant,
who controls it from a laptop. Only after Olson has spent nearly an hour going through every last published
article and citation does the assistant DA turn his attention to the images on the monitor.

“Dr. Olson, could you tell us about the photograph on the left?”
“It’s an enlargement of the recovered forty-five-caliber shell that entered and exited the skull of Patrick
Roche,” says Olson, a tall, stooped man with a crawling monotone.

When he says all there is to say about the bullet, he talks about the Beretta and all the tests performed on
the inside of its barrel.

“The photographs on the right,” says Olson, wielding a red laser light, “are impressions taken from the
Beretta’s barrel. As you can see, the markings on the barrel conform exactly to the markings on the bullet.”
“And what does that indicate?”
“That the bullet that killed Patrick Roche was fired from the recovered weapon.”
“Based on twenty-eight years as a forensic scientist, Dr. Olson, how certain are you that this is the murder
weapon?”
“Entirely certain,” says Olson. “Barrel and bullets are a perfect match.”

At noon, Rothstein mercifully recesses for lunch, but an hour later, Olson picks up where he left off,
this time going through a similarly exhaustive drill with the
fingerprints
found on the handgun.

“As you can see,” says Olson, “the set of prints taken from the handle is an exact match to the prints later
taken from Walker’s right hand.”
“Dr. Olson, is there any doubt that the prints on the recovered weapon belong to Michael Walker?”
“Every print is unique, Mr. Howard. These could belong to no one other than Michael Walker.”
Then Howard holds up Exhibit B, the red Miami Heat cap found in the Brooklyn apartment where Walker
was killed. He asks Olson to compare two more sets of fingerprints displayed on the monitor.

“The prints on the left, Dr. Olson,” asks Howard, “whom do they belong to?”
“They were taken from the defendant, Dante Halleyville.”
“And the prints on the right?”
“An identical set of prints lifted from the bill of the basketball cap found in the apartment where Michael
Walker was murdered.”
“Again, Dr. Olson, could you give us the odds of these prints belonging to anyone but the defendant?”
“These prints could belong to no one other than Dante Halleyville.”
When the prosecution is through, Olson has been plodding along like the tortoise that always catches the
hare-for six hours.

So long that there are groans of disappointment when Tom pushes out of his chair.

My own feelings are even stronger. We hadn’t planned on cross-examining Olson. Tom is recklessly
winging it.

“Dr. Olson, no one questions that the handgun recovered behind the Princess Diner was the murder
weapon. The question is, who fired it? Is there
any physical evidence,
anything at all, linking the defendant to that weapon?”

“No. The only fingerprints left on that gun belong to Michael Walker.”
“As for the prints found on the gun, the ones belonging to Michael Walker, what kind of quality are we
talking about?”

”
Very
good. The highest quality.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Nine, maybe even a ten,” Olson says with pride in his voice. Maybe he’s been watching a little too
much
CSI.

“Doesn’t it strike you as suspicious, Dr. Olson, that on a gun that has been
carefully cleaned
there would be one complete set of prints and every fingertip would be perfect?”

Now, for the first time in hours, the crowd is actually awake and paying attention.

“Not in this case,” says Olson.

“But you have, in the past, on at least two occasions that I’m aware of, concluded that prints found
on murder weapons were, in your words, ‘too good to be credible.’ That was your conclusion in the
State of Rhode Island versus John Paul Newport.

Is that not true?”

“Yes, but that’s not my conclusion about these prints.”
“Defense has no further questions.”
The crowd is still buzzing when Judge Rothstein calls an adjournment for the day, but whether or not
Tom’s high-risk two-minute gambit succeeded in undermining six hours of testimony, we don’t have long
to dwell on it.

After Dante gives us both hugs and the sheriffs escort him back to his holding cell, the paralegal for the
prosecution delivers a note.

They’ve just added Dante’s eighteen-year-old cousin, Nikki Robinson, to their list of witnesses.

Nikki was among the group of spectators who saw Walker pull the gun on Feifer, but the prosecution
has already established what happened after the game.

So the decision to put Nikki on the stand now doesn’t make sense.

And when the prosecution makes a move I don’t understand, I get scared.

Tom

WHEN NIKKI ROBINSON, eyes averted, walks past our table and takes the witness stand, the
morning crowd ripples with anticipation. To be honest, Kate and I are a lot more on edge than the
spectators. Nikki works as a maid for a local house-cleaning service. She hung around at Smitty
Wilson’s-
but what else? Why is she being called now?

“Ms. Robinson,” says Melvin Howard, “could you please tell us your relationship with the defendant?”
“Dante is my cousin,” says Robinson, her girlish voice faint.

“And were you at the game at Smitty Wilson’s that afternoon?”
“I got there just before the fight broke out, and Michael Walker got that gun.”
“Did you leave right after?”
“No, sir.”
“What were you doing?”
“Talking to Eric Feifer,” says Robinson, her voice getting even fainter.

“Was that the first time you met?”
“I had seen him around.”
“Did you talk long that afternoon?”
“No. I clean for Maidstone Interiors and had to go do a house. Eric asked if he could go with me. Swim in
the pool while I worked. I said okay.”
“So the two of you left together?”
“He put his bicycle in my trunk.”
“What happened when you got to the house you had to clean?”
“Eric hung by the pool. I got to work. House wasn’t much of a mess. The owner’s gay, and gay people are
usually neat.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was vacuuming the master bedroom,” says Nikki, her voice reduced to a whisper, “and something made
me turn around. Eric was standing right behind me. Naked. At first, I was so shocked-I didn’t notice the
knife in his hand.”

The entire courtroom stares at Robinson now, and Rothstein gently taps his gavel. I resist looking over
at Kate, or especially Dante. What is
this
all about?

“What did you do then, Nikki?”
“I screamed,” she says, fighting through tears. “I ran and tried to lock myself in the bathroom. But Eric, he
grabbed the handle. He was strong for his size.”
“I know this is painful,” says Howard, handing her a tissue. “What happened next?”

“He
raped
me,” says Nikki Robinson in a tiny, anguished squeak.

Then Robinson’s head falls onto her chest, and for the first time since the trial began, both sides of the
courtroom are equally distressed. Within seconds of each other, one woman cries out, “Liar!” and another
yells, “Lying bitch.” Each have different reasons for their anger.

“One more outburst,” shouts Judge Rothstein, trying to control his courtroom, “and I’ll clear the room.”
Still, it’s another minute or so before Howard asks, “What happened after you were raped?”
“I pulled myself off the floor. Finished my work. I don’t know why. Shock, I guess. Then I left the house.”
“Where’d you go, Ms. Robinson?”
“I was going to go home. But I got more and more upset. I went to the courts behind the high school. Dante
and Michael were there. I told them what happened. That Feifer raped me.”
“How did Dante react?”
“He went crazy. He was screaming, stomping around. He and Michael.”
“Quiet!” shouts Rothstein again, calming the room some.

“What did you think when you heard about the killings, Ms. Robinson?”
“It was my fault,” says Robinson, staring at her lap. “I never should have let Feifer come to the house.
Most of all, I never should have told Dante and Michael Walker.”
Dante leans in to me. “She’s lying, Tom. She made that whole thing up. Every word.”

Kate

AS ROTHSTEIN BANGS his gavel like a jockey flogging a fading horse on the home stretch, Tom
writes
Lindgren
on a piece of paper. He slides it to me before I get out of my chair. I’m already there.

“Ms. Robinson, we’re all hearing this for the first time. To say the least, we’re a bit overwhelmed. And
confused. Could you tell us again why you decided to come forward now?”

”
Jesus,
” says Nikki, then pauses as if to let this sink in. “He came to me in a dream and told me it was my
duty to tell what happened.”

“Does Jesus often come to you in dreams, Nikki?” I ask, provoking enough derisive laughter to have
Rothstein pound his desk some more.