Chapter 92
Tom
ON THIS STIFLING early June morning, with the temperature on its way to the midnineties, the state initiates its pursuit of justice by calling drug-dealer Artis LaFontaine’s former girlfriend, Mammy Richardson, to the stand. Mammy was at the basketball court when Feif and Dante came to blows. She saw it all.
A large, pretty woman in her early thirties, Mammy cut a striking figure at Wilson’s estate last summer, and as strong rays slant in through the courtroom’s only window, she steps into the booth in a cream-colored pantsuit that she fills to bursting.
“Directing your attention to last August thirtieth, Ms. Richardson, do you recall where you were that afternoon?”
“Watching a basketball game at Smitty Wilson’s estate,” says Richardson, clearly enjoying her cameo, a trill of excitement in her voice.
“Could you tell us who was playing in this game?”
“Young fellas from Bridgehampton taking on an older squad from Montauk.”
“Was it a friendly game?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Way both squads were going at it, you’d think it was game seven of the NBA finals.”
“Ms. Richardson, do you have any idea why a weekend pickup game would be so intense?”
“Objection!” snapped Kate. “The witness isn’t a mind reader.”
“Sustained.”
“Ms. Richardson, were the players on the Bridgehampton squad all African American?”
“Yeah,” says Richardson.
“And the Montauk team?”
“White.”
“Which team won the game, Ms. Richardson?”
“The white fellas.”
“And then what happened, Ms. Richardson?”
“That’s when the trouble happened. Some of the Montauk guys started showboating. One of the Bridgehampton fellas didn’t appreciate it. He shoved somebody. They shoved back. Before anyone could calm things down, one of the victims and the defendant were throwing down.”
“Throwing down?” asks Howard, feigning ignorance.
Richardson flashes him a look. “You know, scrapping.”
“How far away were you sitting from the court, Ms. Richardson?”
“Closer than I am to the jury right now.”
“About how big was Eric Feifer?”
“Six feet, and skinny. One hundred seventy pounds, tops.”
“You’ve got a pretty good eye, Ms. Richardson. According to the coroner’s report, Eric Feifer was five eleven and weighed one hundred sixty-three pounds. And the defendant?”
“Anyone can see, he’s got some size on him.”
“Six foot nine inches and two hundred fifty-five pounds to be exact. How did Eric Feifer do in the fight?”
“That skinny white boy could fight. He put a whupping on Dante.”
“What happened next?”
“Michael Walker, one of Dante’s teammates, ran to his car and came back with a gun. Which he put upside Eric Feifer’s head.”
“How far away did he hold the gun from Eric Feifer’s head?”
“He pressed it right up against it. Just like those pictures showed.”
“Objection,” shouts Kate like a fan screaming at the refs about a bad call. “Your Honor, the witness has clearly been coached and has no right or authority to equate what she saw to the pictures taken of the crime scene. This is grounds for a mistrial.”
“The jury will disregard Ms. Richardson’s last remark, and the stenographer will expunge it from the record.”
Howard moves on. “Then what happened, Ms. Richardson?”
“Walker put the gun down.”
“Did Michael Walker say anything?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” says Kate, increasingly exasperated. “This is nothing but hearsay.”
“Overruled,” says Rothstein.
“What did Michael Walker say, Ms. Richardson?”
“‘This shit ain’t over, white boy. Not by a long shot.’”
“No further questions, Your Honor,” says Howard, and Kate is already up out of her chair.
Chapter 93
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?”
Chapter 94
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.
Chapter 95
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.
Chapter 96
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.”