The first thing Quintana says is, “Show me the money.” Despite the seriousness of the moment, it strikes me as funny, as if Quintana is playing the movie version of the song-talking that Sam Willis does.
I’m tempted to respond, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse,” but instead, I open the briefcase and show it to him.
“Did you come alone?” I ask.
“Yeah.” This guy is not much of a conversationalist.
“So you’ll take this money and we’re even?” I ask. “You won’t come after me anymore?”
“That’s what I said.”
I know he’s lying, but I hand him the briefcase. He puts it under his arm and yells out something in Spanish, to the men he knows are outside the stadium. I am not supposed to know that those men are there and that their function will be to come in and kill Marcus and me. Marcus just watches all this impassively, betraying almost no interest at all.
Suddenly, there is the sound of gunfire, the noise rattling the old stadium. Quintana reacts with surprise and concern, looking around to see what could be happening.
“You lied to me,” I say, my voice cracking slightly with nervousness. “Your men followed you so that you could have me killed. I called for some support, which was purely an act of self-defense. I’m sorry it worked out this way, but you left me no choice.”
Off to our left, Petrone’s men are entering the stadium. Quintana displays amazing quickness for a man his size, and I display amazing stupidity for a man any size. He grabs me before I can get out of the way and holds me in front of him so that my body is between him and the advancing gunmen.
I’m gripped by panic; I can’t imagine Petrone’s men backing off simply because their bullets will have to pass through my body to get to Quintana. I have no doubt that Petrone has warned them that Quintana is not to escape alive, and even less doubt that they would not be willing to go back and say, “Sorry, Godfather, but we didn’t kill him. The lawyer was in the way.”
Suddenly, a sequoia tree in the form of Marcus’s forearm lands on Quintana’s head. He goes down as if shot, and I get a quick and nauseating glimpse of the crushed side of his head and face.
Marcus picks up the briefcase and hands it to me. “Let’s go,” he says, and we walk past Petrone’s men and out of the stadium, leaving them to attend to Quintana. Based on how he looked, and how hard Marcus hit him, they will not need their guns.
All they’ll need is a shovel.
* * * * *
JUDGE HARRISON calls court to order at nine A.M. sharp. He’s usually a few minutes late, but it’s as if this time he’s showing his determination not to allow the continuance to go on one minute longer than he had authorized.
I’m still more than a little shaken by last night. It did not have to result in any killing; Quintana could have walked off with the money. And as it played out, I can justify in my mind that it was self-defense; had I not called Petrone’s people, I would have been killed myself.
But the truth is that I set a process in motion knowing it could result in Quintana’s murder. Had I not done that, he would still be alive, as unpleasant as that might be for me. I’m compounding that by not revealing to the police what I know about the murders that took place at the stadium last night. As an officer of the court this has not been my finest moment.
There is no mention of those murders in the media, and Petrone may have chosen to keep them secret. It’s okay with me.
Things leading up to this crucial court day have progressed as well as I could have hoped. Pollard is in an anteroom with Kevin, ostensibly to discuss his testimony, but really to keep him from hearing anything about the witnesses before him. Laurie is with Teri at a TV studio that we have rented, though she is not likely to want to do any interviews after she discovers what happened to her husband. Laurie feels as guilty about this part of it as I do, but there was no other way to handle it. We simply could not have her drive Bobby to the hearing.
I will need to get the witnesses that precede Pollard on and off in a hurry, to reduce any chance that he will get wind of what is going on. My first witness is George Karas, whom I need to set the scene. I have him testify as to the facts surrounding the high school all-American weekend. I submit the subsequent death certificates of the various athletes as evidence, so as to support him.
Dylan has little to do with him on cross-examination, since the facts testified to are indisputable. Additionally, Dylan has no idea where I’m going with this, so he doesn’t want to inadvertently help me. The safest and correct thing for him to do is say very little for now, which is what he does.
Next up is Simon Barkley, a retired vice president at Hamilton Life Insurance, who ran that company’s actuarial department for seventeen years. He is also a part-time mathematics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, where he teaches a course in mathematical probabilities.
Once I quickly have his credentials established, I go right to the heart of his testimony. “Professor Barkley, did we meet at my home yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Did I give you the information that Mr. Karas just gave this jury concerning the deaths of these eight young football players?”
“Yes, you did.”
“What did I ask you to do?” I ask.
“To calculate the probability that these deaths could have been coincidental; that is to say, they could have happened by chance, without some common factor or cause among them.”
“And did you do so?”
“Yes. Would you like to hear my conclusions?”
I smile and spread my arms to include the judge, jury, and gallery. “I think we all would.”
“Well, let me say that the key assumption under which I was operating is that these young men had little or no connection to each other in the years after this weekend. For instance, had all eight been riding in the same car and that car plunged off a mountain, clearly the fact that they all died would not be a surprise to anyone. Or if they all belonged to the same army unit and went into battle together, these multiple deaths could be explainable as well. A third such example would be if they were together when exposed to a deadly bacterium.”
“I understand,” I say.
“Obviously, none of those things, or any circumstances like them, are applicable here.”
“So what are the chances that eight out of eleven men of this young age, athletes, would die in the past seven years, without there being a single factor causing all of the deaths?” I press the point. “What are the chances it is just a terrible coincidence?”
“Approximately one in seventy-eight billion.”
I hear a gasp from the gallery, and I pause to let the answer sink in. We’re talking DNA-like numbers here. “Just so I understand this, are you saying that the chance of these deaths being unrelated, that the members of this all-American team were just the victims of horrible coincidence, is one in seventy-eight billion? Billion with a ‘b’?”
He confirms that, and I turn him over to Dylan, who once again has no idea which way he should go. So far I’ve been setting up evidence of serial killings, and the only suspect in those killings until now is Kenny Schilling. Dylan has no reason or inclination to screw that up.
Once Barkley is off the stand, I ask for a sidebar conference with Judge Harrison and Dylan. As soon as we’re out of earshot of everyone, I inform the judge that Bobby Pollard will be called next and that I would like to have him declared as a “hostile” witness. As such I would be able to ask tough, leading questions, as if it were a cross- examination.
“On what grounds?” Harrison asks. “What would prompt his hostility?”
“I’m going to expose him as a fake and possible murderer.”
Dylan almost leaps in the air. “Your Honor, I really have to object to this. There has been absolutely no showing made to link Mr. Pollard to these crimes.”
Harrison looks at me, and I say, “There’s going to be plenty of showing once I get him on the stand, Your
