Crime & Punishment: The Prequel Ch. 02

Eleanor McCarthy was feeling every one of her seventy-one years. She had had only the one brief phone call with the young woman from the prosecutor's office, who had simply read back her statement to the police. She had had to walk past all those cameras and broadcast trucks to get to the courthouse. She found herself waiting in a crowded corridor, all alone. When they called her into the packed courtroom, she was trembling, and then she saw a friendly face among all those strangers

Steven wore a big smile, as if he were happy to see her, and, indeed, he was.

Eleanor was required to swear to tell the truth and to state her name and address for the record. Then, the woman prosecutor started asking her short, blunt questions. When she tried to explain, she was gruffly told, "Just answer the question asked."

"Did you observe the defendant Roger Hamilton that night?"

"What? I don't understand?"

"Did you see the defendant Roger Hamilton on the night his wife was murdered?"

"Oh, yes he was—"

"Where—"

Steven Fitzgerald had risen to his feet. He smiled at Mrs. McCarthy as he said, "Objection, your honor, could the prosecutrix please let her own witness finish her answers?"

William Constable had been a judge for nineteen of the twenty years needed for a full pension, but he was ten years short of mandatory retirement age. He had seen many a lawyer in his time, but few as slick as the man before him now.

"Yes, the defendant's attorney is correct. Let your witness finish her answers," Judge Constable said.

The young prosecutrix took a deep breath.

"Where did you see Mr. Hamilton?"

"It was on his driveway. He was walking his trash cans up to his house after parking his car in the garage," Mrs. McCarthy said, with a little smile of thanks toward the defense counsel.

"Please tell us what time that was," the prosecutrix asked, grateful to have gotten to the issue with the long-winded witness.

"1:45 a.m.," said the witness.

"WHAT?!" There was a scramble at the prosecution table for the police report.

"You mean 12:45 a.m., don't you?"

"No, I'm quite certain it would have been about 1:45, or a little after."

"But you told the police 12:35!"

"No, I told them after Jay Leno, who goes off at ..."

Mrs. McCarthy then went on to give a full description of her activities that night, including an abbreviated version of her pot roast recipe, but she was unshakable on the time.

When Steven rose, for the cross-examination, she greeted him with a warm smile, and he smiled back as he said, "No questions."

The prosecution put on a bevy of witnesses, ostensibly on motive, but in fact to besmirch the character of the defendant. In this particular case, they were actually revealing the character of truly arrogant and selfish man. Finally, they rested on a Thursday evening and adjourned to their office to plan their attack on the long list of experts the defense had given them. The gloves were off, and the clubs were out. Steven Fitzgerald had played them, but now they were ready. It was the young woman who noticed the one witness who seemed to have no function, a PI, name of Lux, who seemed to have been hired almost on the day of trial.

"What's he for?" she asked, but only received shrugs in reply as they turned to prepare their cross of Roger Hamilton. They intended to cut him to shreds.

Promptly at 9:00 on Friday morning, the judge called the court to order.

"Are you ready, Mr. Fitzgerald?" the judge asked.

"Yes, I call Martin Lux."

Mr. Lux took the stand. He was sworn in; he gave his business address and his profession as a private investigator.

"For whom are you presently working?" Steven asked.

"For you, Mr. Fitzgerald."

"And what did I ask you to do?"

"Find the current whereabouts of Leroy Johnson."

"Did you succeed?"

"Yes, I did," Lux said, breaking into a big smile, while everyone in the courtroom unconsciously leaned in—except, notably, those sitting at the prosecution table, who already knew the answer.

"Where is he?"

"Rio de Janeiro, Brazil."

For a moment, there was dead silence, then a row of reporters ran for the door like something out of an old movie. By the time Judge Constable restored order, some minutes had passed, and the prosecutors had decided not to question the witness. They feared to establish as a fact that Leroy was staying at the Rio Hilton and had been since the start of the trial. What happened next was as sudden as it was unexpected.

"The defense rests, your honor, and I'm ready for closing remarks."

"Your honor, we would request a recess," said the prosecutors.

Judge Constable seemed to reflect, but he was actually trying to figure who Steven reminded him of.

"Sorry, counselor, if the defense is ready, he may proceed. Don't worry; I will give you time to get the DA here for his big moment."

The judge didn't add that he expected the DA to be just a bit unprepared, which was precisely what the defense wanted.

Now, who plays the game that quick and dirty? the judge asked himself.

Steven was brief and to the point. He dragged the easel with the photograph of Leroy Johnson up to the jury box and spent twenty minutes making his case against the man who was not there to defend himself, closing with a question.

"Who killed Shelly Hamilton? The cuckold husband who arrived after the coroner tells us she was dead? Or the man she had dinner with— a man who was possessive, sexually aggressive, and is now conveniently beyond the reach of the law?" said Steven Fitzgerald.

As he closed his remarks, he looked every juror in the eye, something the DA, making a great speech on short notice, did not quite do. Nor was the DA's case helped by his few clearly misstated facts, this last the result of the clever defense manipulations on what time Roget returned home and what cloth his coat was made of. But the DA had not actually sat through the evidence, so he was not familiar with what took place in the courtroom. After all, it was a slam dunk, wasn't it?

The judge sent the jury to deliberate at just after three. As he did, he snapped his fingers, Got it, he thought, that young ADA over in Van Patten! What's his name? Something Irish.

The jury came right back with their not guilty verdict, in time for the evening news. The TV reporters were surprised by the verdict because they had not been in the courtroom. The print reporters had their stories written already. As one of the best writers said, while toasting his fellows in McGeary's, a hole in the wall bar near the courthouse, the fat lady sang 1:45, and all the PI did was pull the curtain down on the DA head. Hamilton was innocent in all but the prosecutor's opinion, for at least a few days—or so said the media.

The reporters sang a different tune when Leroy returned after his vacation. It seemed he had, remarkably, won a contest he could not remember entering. The travel agent assured him that he had indeed won, a trip that was not changeable or refundable. On his return, Leroy proved to have the proverbial iron-clad alibi, backed up by security video of him picking up his sister at the airport at 9:15 p.m., and a half dozen witness to his whereabouts until long after midnight.

The Times Union had a harsh editorial about how the rich escaped justice while the poor could rarely find it. Everyone knew the point was the Hamilton case, and the foxy lawyer who represented Hamilton.

****

Susan Singleton looked across her kitchen table at her beloved husband. He was the victorious hero of the Hamilton case. Despite her nagging, and she admitted to herself that she did nag, he had ducked the cameras. But as she looked at him, she knew the reason. He might be able to hide from the world and even fool himself. But Susan was the woman who loved him, who knew him and had been there these last years through the good and bad.

"He was guilty, just like they said. He murdered that woman and her unborn child. He's a monster, and you helped him go free," she said, but, as she did, she reached her hand across the table to comfort her husband.

She found herself at a bit of a loss. On the one hand, she wanted to shout his accomplishment from the Capitol roof, but on the other, she felt sick for the murdered wife and her dead child.

For his part, the lawyer Steven Fitzgerald did not tell his wife anything. Not how he had bribed a waitress into shading the truth a bit. How well the landscaper was paid for saying nothing about the shell casing he found in the rose bushes. And certainly not how a sleepy older woman had hit the DVR, thereby watching the Thursday night Tonight Show with Drew Barrymore at around 10:30, and not the Sigourney Weaver Friday night broadcast. Mrs. McCarthy was awoken, he suspected, by the gunshot which only she and a neighbor's dog were in a position to hear. She had seen Hamilton returning to his residence after having disposed of the evidence of his crime in the bushes at the driveway's end. Steven held these things in confidence as he presented his bill to Roger Hamilton, which included the price of the Rio trip.

Roger objected to the bill—right up until Steven explained how bad it would be for Roger if, in defending his bill, Steven was required to explain the purpose and the need for all the charges.

"You know your guilt required me to spend this additional time and money. Consider what people would think, and how much your deceased wife's family could sue you for."

As the Hamilton trial faded, the Presidential election began to warm up. Susan Singleton's attentions were diverted from her husband. But a character had been born in the minds of people. His name was Foxy Fitzgerald, and he was a criminal defense lawyer. Like all good fictional characters, he was a fiction grounded in reality. Only, in this case, the reality was particularly unpleasant.