“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
Elihu paused and turned, stepping back in the direction of the press benches. In his mind, he seemed to be exploring some new possibility, some shifted direction of attack. “Was any evidence of actual child abuse ever collected by your agency—any eyewitness accounts or photos matching children known to be linked to the Corey Lyle Fellowship?”
“Yes, indeed. Sworn depositions. DNA evidence.”
Elihu pounced. “You found Dr. Lyle’s DNA on the persons of these children?”
“Objection!” Tess diAngeli jumped to her feet. “The witness cannot reveal data in ongoing investigations!”
“This court,” Elihu said, orating now, “is not bound by secret memoranda of agreement between renegade federal agencies and their hired accomplices!”
“Mr. Elihu.” Judge Bernheim shot him a toxic glance. “You seem determined to push this case into the Supreme Court.”
“If that’s what it takes to get a straight answer out of Mr. Randolf, you bet I am.”
“The Supreme Court has enough trouble. Objection sustained.”
Elihu faced the witness. “Mr. Randolf, could you tell this court the name of one single child abused by anyone connected to Dr. Lyle?”
“Mr. Elihu,” Judge Bernheim demanded, “how is this line of questioning germane?”
Elihu faced the bench. “Child abuse is the red flag the government is waving in this jury’s face—and I agree with Your Honor: it is
not
germane to the charge.”
“Objection,” diAngeli cried. “Mr. Elihu is sneak-previewing his summation.”
Elihu spun. “Objection to that characterization.”
“Fellas …” Judge Bernheim placed both hands on the bench. “Stop it—the two of you. I’m going to sustain the objection to naming the children.”
“Your Honor,” Elihu said, “you are buying into the People’s argument. You are assuming that there are actual children who can actually be named. My point is—”
“The bench, Mr. Elihu, buys into nothing. I have seen many instances of young people drowning in emotional, moral, and physical abuse. I am not prepared to heap the acid of publicity upon the scars of their degradation.”
“Your Honor, on the basis of that remark, I move—”
“Denied.”
Elihu arranged his face into a courteous mask and turned back to the witness. “Could you tell us the name of one single eyewitness to the alleged abuse of children by anyone connected to Dr. Lyle?”
“Mr. Elihu,” Judge Bernheim said, “hold it right there. You are very close to contempt.”
“Your Honor, either this is a trial under the Constitution or it’s a star-chamber proceeding.”
“Mr. Elihu, you are cross-examining, not lecturing a freshman civics class.”
Elihu turned. “Mr. Randolf, you said that Dr. Lyle’s organization was suspected of child abuse. Then why did you allow the nine-year-old child of Yolanda Lopez to be taken into the cult?”
“Yolanda Lopez took her own daughter into the cult. We had nothing to do with it. It happened before we established contact.”
“This woman took her own child into a cult that you were allegedly investigating for child abuse, and you regarded her as a trustworthy agent?”
“Are you asking me a question?”
“I sure as hell am.”
“Mrs. Lopez was the best option available to us. And she proved to be a damned fine agent.”
“Isn’t it a fact that Yolanda Lopez habitually prostituted her daughter Lisa to wealthy and influential pedophiles? Didn’t she have two such charges against her when she first approached you?”
“That is false.”
“And didn’t she offer her services in exchange for the complete expunging of her record?”
“That is a contemptible lie.”
“Yolanda Lopez told you John and Amalia Briar had died natural deaths.” There was fire in Elihu’s eyes. “Isn’t that a fact?”
“That is false.”
“Isn’t it a fact that you fabricated evidence so as to implicate Corey Lyle in two murders that never happened?”
“That is false.”
“Didn’t you script Yolanda’s phone calls after the Briars’ deaths and alter the phone records so it appeared that John Briar died forty-eight hours before Amalia? And didn’t you thus create a motive for Corey Lyle’s supposedly ordering the Briars to be murdered?”
“That is false. The BATF answering machine is secure. The records can’t be tampered with.”
Seated at a table for four in Eugene’s Patio, Anne searched the menu for something that didn’t have mayo and wasn’t fried.
“You know who I wouldn’t mind sending to death row?” Thelma del Rio buttered a bread stick. “Dotson Elihu.”
Ramon Culpeper nodded in agreement. “I’m sick of him saying ‘Is it not a fact that …’ And then he tosses out some B.S.”
Ben Esposito pulled reading glasses from his checked blue shirt. “
Isn’t it a fact that your child is an extraterrestrial hooker
?” he suggested.
“
Isn’t it a fact Martians killed John and Amalia
?” Thelma said.
“Isn’t it a fact we shouldn’t be discussing the trial?” Anne said.
“We’re not. We’re talking about that nitwit.” Thelma turned a page of the menu. “Has anyone tried the breaded fish sticks?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
2:50 P.M.
“W
AS THIS THE BOY?
” Cardozo handed Lieutenant Bill Benton the photo.
Benton crossed to the window. New Jersey sun fell in slatted shafts across his thin, intelligent features. He studied the picture of Toby Talbot sprawled on a lawn reading a Batman comic. “That’s him, all right.”
“And was this the man?” Cardozo handed Benton the newspaper photo of Mickey Williams with masking tape over the caption.
A scowl stole across Benton’s face. “Hair was completely different. This guy looks familiar, but … maybe the jaw was a little heavier. Could have been he just needed a shave.”
“And the boy said the man
wasn’t
his father?”
Benton nodded. “But the guy had a wallet full of Catch Talbot I.D.s. So we had no grounds for holding him.”
“The boy wasn’t hurt?”
“Not bad enough to charge assault. Fathers are allowed to spank their sons in New Jersey. Within reason. Of course, when we finally reached Seattle, and the
real
Catch Talbot was there, that was a different story. But by then it was too late.”
There was a knock at the door and a bearded face popped into the office. “I’m looking for Lieutenant Benton.”
“Richie. You got my message.” Cardozo jumped up and pumped Richie Gallagher’s hand. “Lieutenant, meet Richard Gallagher, one of our best sketch artists. And he makes out-of-state house calls. Richie, Lieutenant Bill Benton.”
“Good to meet you.” Richie sat, opened his artist’s carrying case, and extracted a folio-size drawing tablet and a set of charcoals. He skidded his chair around so Benton could see the sketch take shape. “How would you describe the head? Long and egg shaped? Round and ball shaped? Block shaped?”
“Long-headed,” Benton said.
With three strokes of charcoal, an egg shape materialized. With four more strokes it grew two rudimentary eyes; with another stroke, a mouth.
“Hairstyle?”
“Skinhead.”
“How would you describe the eyes?”
“Brown. Narrow. Cold.”
Leroy’s Discount Pharmacy smelled of bath soap, and the gray-haired clerk behind the counter had a smile that smelled of licorice. “Yes, sir, how can I help you?”
Cardozo laid his shield on the counter. “There was a fight in front of your store yesterday evening—a man and a young boy?”
“Sure was.”
“Did the man look like either of these fellows?” Cardozo laid the newspaper photo of Mickey Williams next to a photocopy of Richie’s sketch.
The clerk nodded. “Yeah, he did, kinda.”
“Which one?”
“Kinda like both.”
“Any possibility the man could have been inside the store before the fight?”
“Could’ve been. I don’t recall. Sunday’s our busiest day.”
“Maybe he bought something?”
“It’s possible, sure.”
“Would you mind checking your charge receipts? The name I’m looking for is Catch Talbot. As in
catch
a baseball.”
The clerk pressed the change button on the cash register and began searching through a bundle of charge carbons. “Mean bastard,” he muttered.
“You found him?”
“Sorry.” The clerk slipped a red elastic band back around the bundle. “If he bought anything, he must’ve paid cash.”
Cardozo ran the chronology through his mind: the man who’d called himself Catch Talbot picked the kid up from school Saturday, fought with him Sunday, lost him Monday, and disappeared. “Could I use your phone?”
“Help yourself.”
The clerk slid a telephone across the countertop and Cardozo dialed Greg Monteleone’s extension at the precinct.
“Monteleone.”
“Greg, Vince. Would you check whether any missing persons report has been filed on Toby Talbot?”
The deep male voice once again filled the courtroom. “
We want his wife to live forty-eight hours longer than him
. …”
Elihu stopped the tape machine. “Mr. Randolf, how do you interpret the remark you just heard?”
“Corey Lyle states that—”
Elihu slammed a fist onto the witness box. “Come on, Mr. Randolf, you’re not going to sneak that one past. The People have not demonstrated
who
the hell’s voice is on that tape.”
“The voice states that Amalia Briar must be killed no sooner than forty-eight hours after her husband.”
“Then the jury and I must have missed something. Does the man at any time use the word
killed
? Doesn’t he say Amalia Briar must
live?
In fact, couldn’t this tape, far from showing any kind of conspiracy to murder … show intention to
prolong
life for forty-eight hours?”
In the jury box, next to Anne, Thelma del Rio shifted irritably. “Gimme a break,” she muttered.
“In my opinion, in the context of this investigation, that is not what the tape says.”
Elihu’s eyes were a cool swell of amazement. “Mr. Randolf, if it isn’t going to give away any professional or personal secrets, just where the hell were you on Labor Day weekend when your agent was allegedly leaving all those desperate messages on your machine?”
“I was on holiday.”
“Where?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Let’s see if I have this right. You and your bureau are winding up a multimillion-dollar eight-and-a-half-year investigation. You skip town on vacation, leaving an untrained agent in place without so much as a phone number where she can reach you. Now, even for a tenured employee of a big-spending government agency, isn’t that pretty casual behavior?”
“We didn’t expect the case to break till after Labor Day.”
“You had the timing worked out ahead of time?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Randolf, isn’t the Treasury Department’s security budget under attack? Wouldn’t a guilty verdict in today’s case save the bureau from draconian personnel and budget cuts?”
“Objection!”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Randolf, during all your investigation of Corey Lyle, how many criminal accusations against him did you turn up?”
“I’d say somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five.”
“And did any result in criminal charges?”
“We preferred not to charge Corey Lyle till we had a rock-solid case.”
“In other words, until the deaths of John and Amalia Briar, you had no case against him?”
“We had a case. We wanted to be sure of it.”
“Precisely my point. No further questions.”
Mark Wells’s secretary was dressed in form-fitting, hey-look-at-me colors that left no curve unhugged. “May I help you?”
“Vince Cardozo, New York City police.” He flipped open his shield case. “I’d like a word with Mr. Wells. Concerning the missing person report he filed.”
A startle reflex showed in her green-shadowed eyes. “I’ll see if Mr. Wells is free.” She lifted the phone and spoke in a scarcely audible murmur. The fingers of her right hand were tipped in fresh red nail polish that matched the glossy red on her lips. She hadn’t yet painted the nails of the left. Or maybe, Cardozo speculated, unsymmetrical was the look in Wall Street law firms.
“You can go right in, sir.”
Mark Wells met him at the door—a tall man dressed like a magazine ad. His worried eyes didn’t go with the jaunty millionaire look. “You’ve found Toby?” He closed the door and motioned toward the leather chairs. “Please.”
Cardozo sat. His eyes roamed book-lined walls. A Harvard Law diploma hung above a trophy for the Racquet and Tennis Club squash semifinals. “Sorry. I’m looking for him too. A cop was murdered, and Toby Talbot was one of the last people to speak with her. He also seems to be acquainted with one of the suspects. They were seen in New Jersey this morning.”
Mark Wells shot him a panicked look. “A suspected
murderer
has him?”
“The man is using the name Catch Talbot. But the real Catch Talbot is in Seattle. The impostor picked your nephew up from school last Saturday. He had a note from your sister.”
Wells’s fingers jittered on the desktop. “Look. Kyra’s not my sister—she’s my client. Saying I was Toby’s uncle was the only way I could get those precinct people to listen to me.”
“If you’re not family, how did you know Toby was missing?”
“Kyra told me.”
“Kyra Talbot’s serving on a sequestered jury. How did she know?”
Wells lifted the phone. “No calls, Miss Emerson.” He covered his eyes a moment, as if fending off a migraine. “I’d rather you didn’t repeat this. Saturday night Kyra received a threatening phone call. She was told to acquit Corey Lyle or she’d never see Toby alive again.”
“Did she recognize the voice?” Cardozo said.
“No. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man’s or a woman’s.”
“And how did you find all this out?”
“Judge Bernheim phoned me. There was no record of the call and she felt Kyra was lying—trying to get off the jury. So Kyra and I had a discussion. I explained that the government would go very hard on her if she caused a mistrial in a forty-million-dollar prosecution. And as a felon, she’d lose custody of her son. The upshot was, she decided to withdraw her story and stay on the jury.”