Chapter 82 – Betrayal & Subterfuge, Legitimate & Imagined
Thursday afternoon June 19, 2008 – 12:50 PM
As John Breslin’s old pal Charles “Charlie” Mercurio sobbed away his troubles on a corridor bench just down the hall from courtroom 630 of the Middlesex Superior Courthouse, who should come strolling out from the men’s room a mere few feet away from where Mercurio was sitting but none other than Fred Miller’s best buddy and former roommate, Robert Hurley.
Hurley, who had been in attendance for the majority of Mercurio’s confessional testimony, couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor guy…and he told him as much. Hurley hunkered down next to Mercurio and he made a sincere effort to comfort him, and even though his condolences were more than genuine, he never once made eye-contact with the crestfallen witness. Instead he just stared down absently at his shoes as he mumbled his denouement.
“You feel like you’ve been let down, don’t you? Maybe you even feel a little betrayed, a little sick that a friend could lie to you,” narrated Hurley in an empty tone that made it sound as if he were talking to a ghost.
“Yeah, and it sucks big time,” tearfully admitted Mercurio.
“Well I know the feeling too,” confided Hurley as he began to tear up as well…and after a prolonged silence, which he spent collecting his thoughts, he continued on with his stark summation. But this time, he really was talking to a ghost.
“Damn it Freddie, how could you desert us? Just when I needed a friend more than ever, you checked out on us. I told you to stay away from that bitch but no, you wouldn’t listen. But no, you were too smart to get hurt. But no, you could handle whatever life threw at you. Sure you could, and now look at you…where did it get you? Dead, that’s where it got you…or even worse, not quite dead, but still lingering in the attic, in the basement, in the closet…in my fuckin’ mind,” wailed Hurley, who ironically was now being comforted by Mercurio.
Meanwhile, at the exact same moment that Charles “Charlie” Mercurio and Robert “Hurl” Hurley were endeavoring to assist each other through their distinctly unique crises, the jurors in the John Breslin murder case were also discussing friendship, or to be more precise, a lack thereof. And while they picked at their catered lunches, Jane made her larger-than-life presence, not to mention her bigger-than-a-breadbasket opinion, known to one and all.
“Nice friend Breslin turned out to be. Jeez with friends like him, who needs enemies?” rhetorically asked Jane.
“He used that sucker like a rented mule,” added Jim, the strident telecom employee.
“He was manipulative right up to the very end?” chimed in Mark, the obstinate network security administrator.
“No question about it, he conned his own friend. The poor guy was clueless and Breslin got him caught up in his mess,” opined Mike, the reserved car salesman, who was becoming more vocal with each passing day.
And while most of the jurors were focused on what they perceived to be the manipulation of Charlie Mercurio, Annie had a differing take on the matter; a take which tended to imply that she still hadn’t totally given up on finding Breslin not guilty.
“All I know is that Gleason better call Breslin’s divorce lawyer to the stand to back up the claim he made to Mercurio that he was paying off his legal bill on the night they stopped by the 88 Bar and Grill,” argued Annie, and Newlan privately agreed with her assessment.
Of course, if Newlan could have somehow been made aware of the fact that the 88 restaurant was the very same watering hole where Tom Willis and Brent Blain had mapped out their plans for tracking him down, he might have swooned over like a wilting sunflower plant and anxiously exclaimed his infamous adage, “man, you can’t make this shit up”.
As it was, Newlan was fed up with the way that most folks, such as his fellow jurors for instance, not to mention Tom Willis, tended to jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts. But conversely, he also recognized that at the moment he had little ammunition with which to fight his way out of either predicament.
As far as Newlan was concerned, no one could say for sure what was going on in the mind of Charlie Mercurio when it came to what was discussed in private between him and John Breslin, least of all his smart-aleck colleagues. And yet even he secretly acknowledged that Mercurio came across as the type of person who could have been easily taken for a ride without ever realizing that he was being fleeced. But on the bright side, Annie comments echoed his thoughts exactly, and he continued to be encouraged by the fact that he might have at least one person on his side when deliberations began, for he still wasn’t ready to convict Breslin just yet.
And furthermore, despite the surveillance of a private investigator, no one was privy to what went on between him and Marianne Plante behind the closed doors of his condo, and as far as he was concerned, no one was ever going to find out. Regardless of whatever conclusions her “crazy-assed” husband had come to, Willis had no real proof, one way or another, and Newlan, who seemed to be oblivious of the dangers of dealing with a gun-toting lunatic, had a good mind to tell him as much. But on the bright side, Willis’s “crazy-ass” as it were, was currently seated in a jail cell, so for the time being at least, he posed no imminent danger to our unwittingly dense and guilt-riddled protagonist.
And anyhow, in the end, reason prevailed and Newlan decided that he would not confront Tom Willis, even if he were to be presented with a golden opportunity to do so, smartly concluding that there was no sense tempting fate. In the end, Newlan bit his tongue for a change and decided to leave well enough alone and not challenge his colleagues to a debate regarding Charlie Mercurio’s testimony. And as it turned out, his reticence somehow soothed him as he was marched back into the courtroom for another afternoon of adventure and mayhem in a twisted tale that was beginning to bear more than a few startlingly striking similarities to his own tattered life.
The afternoon session started off with Judge Gershwin providing the jurors with a definition of the term “stipulation” as it related to a criminal court proceeding.
“Essentially, a stipulation is an agreement between the DA’s office and the council for the defense that is introduced as evidence in lieu of a witness being physically present to testify. In general, a stipulation can occur when neither party disputes the evidence in question, and it can help to prevent delays and defray court costs which can occur when a witness is unavailable to testify for whatever reasons,” elucidated Judge Gershwin. And with that explanation in hand, a stipulation was presented to the jurors right off the bat. The stipulation in question, which acknowledged the phone number sequence for Breslin’s work-issued cell phone, seemed innocuous enough, which was probably why it wasn’t disputed by either side in the first place.
With Judge Gershwin’s “stipulation” spiel behind them, DA Lyons approached the podium and with a rare hint of afflicted emotion in her voice she announced, “Your honor the prosecution calls Mr. Cameron Miller to the stand.”
And once again the courtroom was abuzz and heads were crooked, as they were for the introductions of both Tracy Stone and Nancy O’Brien. But this time of course, the jockeying for position in the gallery’s pew styled benches was for the purpose of gaining a better view of the murdered Fred Miller’s only brother “Cam”.
However, the courtroom audience, and in particular the impressionable jurors, would not see the vengeful Cam Miller that we have come to know, nor would they see the Cam Miller who had become inebriated by the toxic vapors of Ms. Tracy Stone. No, instead, the jurors would get a glimpse into the tortured soul of a man who missed his brother so much that he ached inside. And although his testimony provided little of substantive value to the prosecution, his words went a long way in evoking the sympathy factor within the jury box. It was obvious to Newlan that DA Lyons’ main goal was to swing open the wide doors of the jurors’ brains which housed the empathy department, and although it was a transparent ploy, it was powerful no
netheless, and he didn’t blame her for utilizing this not uncommon “humanization” courtroom tactic.
Cam Miller was reduced to tears as, at the request of DA Lyons, he reminisced about his childhood memories of carefree days spent in the company of his older brother Freddie. Miller took the jurors on an emotional journey through his past; Freddie teaching him how to fish; Freddie teaching him how to ride a bike; Freddie turning him on to music; Freddie taking him to his first concert, a Grateful Dead concert no less; Freddie going off to college in Arizona; and finally, Freddie turning up dead, murdered in the prime of his life.
Cam Miller recalled the day of his brother’s murder in excruciating detail, and by the time he reached the climactic scene where a police officer got a hold of him on the phone and informed him that his brother was deceased, there wasn’t a dry eye in the courtroom.
At one point during his testimony, Cam jabbed a subtly insulting comment in Tracy Stone’s direction, saying something to the affect that he thought his brother should have run the other way when Stone reemerged into his life again, and that he had a feeling things would end badly, although not this badly. But of course, when all was said and done, he couldn’t really be too harshly critical of his brother, seeing as how he was having a hard time fighting off Stone’s empyrean advances himself.
Cam Miller’s testimony ended dramatically with DA Lyons displaying a photograph of Cam and Fred, decked out in tuxedo’s, on the overhead projector, and Cam tearfully sniffling, “that was a picture of Fred and me on my wedding day…he was my best man.”
Wisely, Defense Attorney R. J. Gleason chose not to pester Cameron Miller with any questions which might disturb him and by transference the jurors as well. But nevertheless, as Miller left the stand, his sad demeanor transformed itself into a steel-eyed glare directed towards Breslin and his attorney; a glare which spoke volumes in a way that even a million words could never do justice to.
And although Cam Miller had accomplished the objective set out by DA Lyons, his own ambitions had yet to be fulfilled, and as such, it should be noted that he might just yet make his presence felt inside the halls of the Middlesex Superior Courthouse; and as such, it should be noted that we may not have heard the last of his name, uttered inside the wall of courtroom 630. However, for the time being anyway, his part had been played out, and the next witness to take the stand was a Newton Police detective by the name of George McManus.
McManus was assigned the thankless task of researching the particulars behind the countless phone calls that were made between John Breslin and Sammy Fox, and whether there might be any patterns to these phone calls (and as the jurors would soon find out, his research was quite extensive to say the least).
McManus’s testimony featured a twist on the DA’s side of the aisle. For the first time since the commencement of the trial, it would be Associate District Attorney, Paul Gentili, who would be leading the debriefing. Apparently, DA Lyons felt that Gentili’s flat, low-pitched voice would be perfect for the task at hand, and as usual she was correct in her assumptions.
Gentili’s inquiries featured an elaborate and impressive display of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides which documented over three months worth of phone calls made between the defendant John Breslin and his alleged co-conspirator Sammy Fox. The jurors were even provided with a handout so that they could follow along more easily, and for the next two hours DA Gentili patiently rambled on in a sleep-inducing monotone.
Gentili gently guided Detective McManus through the paces as he methodically elaborated on the location of various payphones, and with the clever use of PowerPoint slide-in features he superimposed Breslin’s whereabouts when he was alleged to have placed outgoing calls from specific payphones to none other than Sammy the Fox.
McManus displayed records of Breslin logging off from the Tex-Ray network and then ten minutes later, records would show a call being made to Sammy Fox from a pay phone not far from the Tex-Ray offices.
The same drill was used to verify the fact that Breslin had closed down the Irish-American Club in Watertown on the night of January 13th, 2006, and then six minutes later, records showed how a pay phone a block from the club was used to make a call to Sammy Fox; reliable, if not undisputable evidence that a phone call was made from Breslin to Fox on the very night of the murder.
“Now I see why the prosecution had the chairman of the Irish-American club verify that Breslin closed the joint on the night of the murder,” silently pondered Newlan, and suddenly the element of doubt began to creep into his head regarding the innocence of one Mr. John Breslin.
Meanwhile, at Gentili’s tranquil urgings, McManus meticulously documented every single traceable phone call that was made between Breslin and Fox, close to 100 calls in total. With the aid of a circular pie chart graph, the jurors saw that a sliver of the calls were made from Fox’s cell phone to one of Breslin’s many phones; a portion of the calls were made from Breslin’s work phone to Fox’s cell phone; a slice of the calls were made from Breslin’s cell phone to Fox cell phone; a heaping share of the calls were made from various payphones to Fox’s cell phone; payphone calls which were paid for with the much ballyhooed calling card that Breslin had purchased at his local Walmart. And on top of that, the prosecution was able to provide supporting evidence which placed Breslin in the vicinity of more than a few of the payphones in question at the precise times that the calls were being made.
Gentili even presented phone company records showing how the placement of a cell phone call from Fox to Breslin was transmitted from a tower atop of the Barron Insurance Agency office building in Newton, which got Newlan thinking to himself, “hmmm, that contradicts the statement that Fox made to Detective Sasso where he insisted that he hadn’t even so much as passed through the city of Newton during the month of January 2006…and that also explains why Gleason fought so hard to get the cell phone expert, Alex McKeon, to concede that it was possible for a cell phone call to connect to a tower more than five miles away.”
While Newlan was coming to grips with the reality of the evidence that was being presented to the jurors, another stipulation was being made by which the owner of a convenience store located within the general vicinity of the Tex-Ray office complex verified the authenticity of footage that came from his emporium’s security camera. The jurors were then shown a grainy video taken from behind the front counter of the shop, and into the picture walked none other than John Breslin ordering what appeared to be a can of soda. The recording also displayed an exact date and time, and McManus then produced records of a payphone call from a phone directly outside of the convenience store to Fox’s cell phone at roughly the same moment that Breslin had just exited the store. And this was only the beginning.
On and on it went with Gentili and McManus chipping away, bit by bit, at any alibi that Breslin may have had…and after two hours of similar mind-numbing detail the jurors were justifiably irritable. But nevertheless, Newlan forced himself to listen, even if it killed him.
Newlan’s patience paid off, at least in his mind anyway, when somewhere around three quarters of the way into McManus’s testimony, he determined that Gentili was attempting to slip something past the jurors, and he caught him in the act, red-handed. Not long after McManus documented for prosperity the phone call that was placed from Charles Mercurio’s cell phone to Sammy Fox’s cell phone, Gentili softly prodded the witness with the following question; “and on January 10th of 2006, a call was placed from Fred Miller’s cell phone to John Breslin’s office phone at Tex-Ray Defense Systems, wasn’t it Mr. McManus?”
“Hold on their big fella…a call from Fred Miller to Breslin…what the hell was that all about?” wondered Newlan, but as usual the prosecution didn’t elaborate. And although it may not have mattered much in the grand scheme of the case, for days on end, Newlan was hung up over what the two men might have discussed. Did they get into a heated argument, much as he and Tom Willis had? Did the
y engage in a civil conversation? Or perhaps they never even ended up talking at all. Perhaps Breslin wasn’t available and Fred Miller left a message, or maybe he said nothing and just hung up. Newlan had a million scenarios playing out in his head, but unfortunately for him, Gleason didn’t broached the topic either, so he would never know for sure what the nature of this mysterious call might have been.
Much to Newlan’s dismay, the testimony regarding the phone call from Fred Miller to John Breslin slip past most of his colleagues due to Gentili’s expertly camouflaged delivery, and the few that did pick up on the subtly-rendered statement, didn’t think it amounted to a hill of beans.
In any event, just as the jurors were surely about to drift off into a deep sleep, en masse, Gentili’s ploddingly-paced interrogation of Detective McManus came to a merciful end, clocking in at just over two grueling hours. At that time, Judge Gershwin sagely decided that it would be an opportune moment for another break, and the jurors shuffled lazily back into the deliberation room, completely exhausted.
“Veedy interesting,” exclaimed Mark, in a fake Einstein tone, before his fanny even hit his chair.
“Yeah, I assumed you’d find that interesting,” retorted a bitter Newlan. He had been drained of every last ounce of energy by Detective McManus’s testimony, and he was irritable to boot. At the moment, the fight had been knocked out of Newlan and he was beginning to wonder why the hell he even cared. But care he did, and as such, he concluded that he needed some alone time to digest everything he had just witnessed before he was ready to make any reckless decisions, before he was willing to make any rash statements. And so for the time being he kept his feelings to himself as best as he could until the resumption of “show time” as Billy would say.
When the jurors were returned to the courtroom, Gleason began his cross-examination of Detective McManus by recapitulating the details of an impromptu meeting that they had just engaged in.
“Detective McManus, during the break you and I had a conversation out in the hallway and you helped me breakdown some of the statistics pertaining to the phone calls that were placed between Mr. Breslin and Mr. Fox, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes sir,” replied McManus, and then, reading from a sheet of paper, Gleason went on to document the relatively brief duration of the nearly 100 phone calls in question; amazingly enough, all but a handful of the phone calls were under 30 seconds, with many clocking in at under 20 seconds; factual statistics that McManus didn’t dispute in the least.
Gleason then had McManus reiterate that the phone records alone, extensive though they may have been, could not be used to determine how many of the calls in question were picked up by an answering machine and how many were picked up by an actual person. And of course Gleason went ahead and had McManus state the obvious; which was that it would be impossible for anyone to determine what was said during any of the phone calls in question.
However, as much as he tried to poke a few holes in the evidence, Gleason seemed to be grasping at straws, even in the eyes of the hard-to-convince Frank Newlan, who wrote into his notepad:
Gleason did the best he could to put a dent in the phone record testimony, but no matter how you cut it, it seems mighty suspicious that Breslin and Fox were making all of these clandestine phone calls, at all hours of the day, right up to and including the night of the murder.
As you might imagine, DA Lyons was quite pleased with the work of her assistant, Paul Gentili, and she was wearing and ear-to-ear grin as she called the next witness, Richard Baker, yet another State Police Detective, to the stand.
Baker’s primary job was to schedule and coordinate interviews with many of the witnesses, and he was also in charge of gathering up much of the ancillary evidence such as computers, answering machines, written correspondences and the like, along with countless other items that proved to have little or no value to the case.
The only truly revealing portion of Detective Baker’s testimony was as it related to Tracy Stone’s former boyfriend, Peter Perry; the same Peter Perry whose collarbone was shattered in a tussle with the late Fred Miller.
Detective Baker recounted how he tracked Peter Perry down and found him living in a suburb just outside of Hartford Connecticut. Ostensibly Perry had an airtight alibi regarding his whereabouts on the morning of January 13th, 2006; he claimed that he was at work on that date and time, and that there were at least a half dozen people who could vouch for him.
Detective Baker went on to chronicle the interviews he conducted with Perry’s co-workers, which, by all accounts, seemingly ruled out Peter Perry as a suspect in Fred Miller’s murder. But of course, as usual, R. J. Gleason wasn’t totally convinced.
“Detective Baker, were you able to gather any verification of Mr. Perry’s whereabouts beyond the verbal corroboration of his co-workers?” asked Gleason.
“No sir, what did you have in mind?” replied Baker with a slight smirk.
“You know, timecards, security cameras, credit card transactions, phone records, things of that nature,” elaborated Gleason.
“No sir, we weren’t able to obtain any of those items,” confirmed Baker.
“Well they sure were able to gather some of those items when it came to Breslin…and I suppose that’s Gleason’s point,” surmised Newlan, while at the same time Gleason wondered, “Detective Baker, did you even try?”
But evidently Detective Baker didn’t try; as a matter of fact, his face became flushed with anger as he admitted as much.
“No sir, we determined that the corroboration of Mr. Perry’s whereabouts by his co-workers, along with other details obtained during the course of our investigation, ruled out Mr. Perry as a suspect in this case.”’
“Really, what other details are you referring to?” added Gleason.
“Look Mr. Gleason, there was no evidence that Mr. Perry had even been in the State of Massachusetts in the last several years, never mind being involved in the murder of Fred Miller,” shot back Baker.
“Well isn’t it possible that he could have hired someone?” rationalized the devious Gleason, and his hypothetical question had many of the jurors visibly shaking their heads in disgust, while at the same time Newlan admired Gleason’s tenacity, regardless of the implausibility of his hypothesis.
“There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that theory, Mr. Gleason,” reasoned Baker.
“I see, well then no further questions your honor,” announced Gleason, while Newlan took the time to scribble the following observation into his notebook:
Gleason gave it the old college try, but I don’t think he’s gonna convince anyone that Peter Perry was involved in this mess unless he comes up with some overwhelmingly convincing evidence during Breslin’s defense.
And finally, the last witness of the long day was none other than the lead detective on the case for the Newton Police Department, the oft mentioned Carolyn Curran.
Detective Curran was a tall attractive 42 year old woman who had very long, very straight, light brown hair, and as she approached the witness stand, it was also rather obvious that she had an air of confidence about her as well.
Right off the bat, DA Lyons had Curran enumerate the list of activities that she engaged in on the day of Fred Miller’s murder, and from there her testimony seemed to trundle along quite nicely (at least until R. J. Gleason got a hold of her that is).
“Well, one of the first things the team of detectives assigned to the case, including myself, did was to interview Mr. Miller’s co-workers at the Barron Insurance Agency. This led us to contact Tracy Breslin, who now goes by the name of Tracy Stone…which in turn led us to pay a visit to her estranged husband John Breslin, who was living with his mother in Waltham at the time of the murder,” explained Curran.
“And were you able to locate Mr. Breslin?” asked Lyons.
“Yes, Detective Donavan from the State Police and I drove out to Waltham and parked down the street from the address
that Tracy had given us. After about ten minutes, a man emerged from the front door of the residence in question, and it appeared that he may have noticed us since he went back inside within seconds of leaving the house. But then a few minutes later he resurfaced from the basement door, this time carrying a water bottle. At that point we decided to pull up to where he was standing and we identified ourselves as police officers. We then confirmed that he was in fact John Breslin and we asked if we could speak to him for few minutes,” replied Curran.
“And what was Mr. Breslin’s response?” inquired Lyons.
“Well, he kept asking us, ‘what’s this all about?’ and he appeared to be extremely nervous. In fact, I observed that the water bottle he was holding in his hand was shaking uncontrollably. Anyhow, we informed him that we’d let him know why we were there in due time, but first we wanted to ask him a few questions. But he wasn’t being very cooperative with us, and so eventually we just came right out and told him that we were investigating the murder of Fred Miller. And oddly, he didn’t seem surprised in the least, which isn’t the reaction you’d expect from someone who has no knowledge of a crime where a person of familiarity is murdered. Instead he kept on repeating that he had nothing to do with it,” answered Curran.
“And Detective Curran, did Mr. Breslin’s mother return home while you were in the process of interviewing him?” asked Lyons.
“Yes, she pulled up in front of the house and she asked her son what was going on. He told her that we were with the police, and he also told her not to talk to us. I attempted to pull Mrs. Breslin aside, but Mr. Breslin became very agitated and he hollered at us to leave his mother out of it. Mr. Breslin then informed us that he had left work for a few hours to take care of a problem with a squirrel in the basement of his mother’s house, and that he had to return to his office immediately for a meeting. At that time, we had no reason to take him into custody, so we let him go, and we returned to the scene of the crime so that we could conduct more follow-up interviews,” recalled Curran.
“Did you eventually interview Tracy Stone again?” continued Lyons.
“Yes, Detective Donavan and I interviewed Tracy in person on the day after the murder as well as the day of the murder, and she provided us with more details regarding her relationship with Fred Miller, as well as with more details regarding the marital problems she was having with her husband. Tracy also revealed that her husband had made a number of threatening comments directed towards Fred Miller,” replied Curran, and with DA Lyons guiding her every step of the way, she went on to document the events that led up to the arrest of John Breslin and Sammy Fox, including how the police eventually became aware of Nancy O’Brien and what her connection was to the two men.
Curran also participated in executing the search warrant on the Breslin home in Waltham, and she expanded further upon the now infamous binoculars (but try as she might, she still couldn’t convince Newlan that they were anything more than a kid’s toy).
Not surprisingly Gleason chose to focus on a handful of discrepancies in Curran’s testimony as compared to her written reports and her subsequent grand jury testimony.
“Detective Curran, while you conducted your interview with Mr. Breslin in front of his mother’s home, you didn’t take any notes, did you?” asked Gleason, and Curran admitted as much, which promptly sent Gleason cruising down the dangerous road of insinuating police incompetence.
“Detective Curran, before becoming a lead investigator you must first complete quite an extensive training curriculum, including studying topics such as using the proper methods and techniques for interviewing witnesses and writing reports, and subjects of that nature, isn’t that true?” rambled Gleason in an innocently inquisitive tone. And although Curran cautiously replied in the affirmative, in the back of her mind she wondered what Gleason was up to with this line of questioning…and of course, she would soon find out.
“Detective Curran, would it be fair to say that you wrote your report outlining the events of January 13th, 2006 on that same evening, presumably so that the details would be fresh in your mind?” added Gleason.
“Yes that’s correct,” replied Curran, and with her acknowledgment officially on the record, Gleason went in for the kill.
“And yet you never once mentioned in your report that Mr. Breslin was extremely nervous…you never once mentioned that he was shaking uncontrollably. You never once mentioned in your report that Mr. Breslin told his mother not to talk to the police. You never once mentioned that Mr. Breslin became agitated. You never once mentioned that Mr. Breslin was uncooperative. And on top of that, you never once mentioned any such details to the grand jury, isn’t that also true Detective Curran?” boomed Gleason in a voice so abruptly loud that it almost startled Curran out of her seat.
Detective Curran tried desperately to explain these oversights, but Gleason insisted on ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, and so she was forced to admit that the statements she had just made within the last hour were neither in her written report, a report which was authored on the very same day that Fred Miller was murdered, a report which was authored on the very same day she conducted her interview with John Breslin outside of his mother’s home, nor were any of these statements ever uttered by her when she appeared before the grand jury, some two years ago.
“And finally Detective Curran, the first time you interviewed Nancy O’Brien, you asked her if Mr. Breslin had ever said anything to the affect that he wanted Fred Miller killed, and she replied, ‘no, not to me,’ isn’t that true?” continued Gleason.
“Well yes, but she later told us…” began Curran, but she was cut off by an annoyed Gleason in midsentence.
“I’m not interested in what she told you later, so please listen carefully and just answer the question. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’, did Nancy O’Brien reply, ‘no, not to me,’ the first time you asked her whether Mr. Breslin ever said that he wanted Fred Miller killed?” angrily shouted Gleason.
“Yes,” admitted Curran in a cross tone, and with that, another day of testimony in the John Breslin murder trial had come to an end. And with that, the overwhelmed jurors were whisked out of the courtroom for another day. And with that, the jurors went their separate ways, but not before another round of unabashedly biased commentary. And with that, Frank Newlan left behind the parallel universe that the trial was beginning to represent in his distorted mind, and once again, he reentered the real world with his all too real problems staring him right in the face.
For the most part, Newlan was able to block out his own issues while he was seated in his comfortable swivel chair, within the safely secured confines of the jury box, intellectually pondering testimony from witness after witness. But on this uneasy day, the floodgates of emotion opened up the second he pulled out of the courthouse parking lot, and he found himself running; running in place through the quicksand of his life; motoring away as steadily as he could through the gridlock in his soul; crawling through the morass of his own making; but to where, he could not say; from whom, he did not know.
Whether he realized it or not, Frank Newlan was making one last ditch effort to escape; but escape from what, even he couldn’t quite comprehend. Maybe Newlan was attempting to escape the unknown; maybe he was attempting to escape his fate; maybe he was attempting to escape his past; maybe he was attempting to escape his present; or perhaps he was desperately trying to escape an uncertain future…which was finally coming into focus.