The jury and most of the gallery laugh at this, which is the reaction I was hoping for.
“No.”
Finally, I take him through the bloodstains and ask him why they were not washed away by the rain.
“One was under cover, and the other was on the bottom of the railing.”
“That was convenient for you and your crack forensics team, wasn’t it?”
Before Ferrara can answer, Hawpe objects and Judge Gordon sustains. I let Ferrara off the stand, having accomplished as much as I could with him. Kevin’s nod as I head back to the defense table indicates that he is pleased with the result.
Judge Gordon adjourns court for the day, and I turn to Richard before they take him away. “You okay?” I ask. Sitting quietly and watching the State of New Jersey attempt to take your life away can’t be easy, even the second time around.
He grins. “Are you kidding? Compared to what I’ve been doing every day for the last five years, I feel like I just saw a Broadway show.”
* * * * *
TOMORROW IS STACY Harriman’s day in court.
Daniel Hawpe is going to parade a series of witnesses in front of the jury who know nothing about the night of the murder but who will talk about Stacy. It is Hawpe’s way of humanizing the victim and making the jury feel as if they knew her.
It is a standard and perfectly logical strategy. Human nature is such that the more the jury likes Stacy, the more likely they are to exact revenge on her behalf. Unfortunately, the only one around to get revenge against is Richard.
For me it should be a relatively easy day. All the witnesses on Hawpe’s list for tomorrow were called during the first trial, so I know what they are going to say.
The truth is, they aren’t going to say that much. Stacy may have been a wonderful person, but she was not yet well known in the community and seemed to live a very private life. The witnesses will talk about her in positive generalities, but it is clear from the transcript of the first trial that none of them counted her among their close friends.
As I do every night during a trial, I review every piece of information we have that in any way relates to the next day’s testimony. So tonight I gather everything we have about Stacy, including information from the first trial, notes from my interviews with Richard and Karen, and the material that Sam came up with when he checked her out.
Sam had described her as relentlessly normal, and there’s nothing here to contradict that. Actually, she seems disconcertingly normal. I’m reading page after page about her, but I don’t have a real sense of who she was.
Sam’s background check provides some of the facts of her life but not much more. It tells me where she lived before coming here, where she worked, what credit card accounts she had, and how much she owed on them.
I’ve gone over these things at least five times, but this time something about the credit card records strikes me as strange. Her credit report shows that she owed a total of about $4,500 on three different cards, which is certainly not unusual. The strange part is that the accounts are not listed as closed.
I call Sam, who, as always, answers on the first ring. I think he keeps his cell phone clipped to his ear so he can be ready. “Hey, Andy,” he says. “What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you about some of the things you dug up on Stacy Harriman.”
“Shoot.”
“I’d rather do it in person; then we can have the reports in front of us.”
“Charlie’s okay?” he asks.
“Well, my office has more privacy, but Charlie’s has better beer. Meet you there in fifteen minutes?”
“You got it,” he says.
He’s waiting for me when I get there, and once we order I spread out some of the Stacy Harriman pages in front of him.
“I’ve been going through these reports,” I say, “but they don’t seem to list her credit card accounts as closed.”
He takes a quick look at them to refamiliarize himself, and then he shrugs. “So maybe nobody called and told them she was dead. That’s not unusual, especially since she wasn’t married. Nobody else was going to be responsible for her debts, so why bother? And Richard wasn’t home to receive the bills; he was in the hospital and then jail.”
“But these records are current?” I ask.
“Sure, I got them…,” he says, and then pauses. “Holy shit.” He has just come to the same realization that hit me a few minutes ago, and he looks at the pages more thoroughly to confirm that realization.
“If nobody reported to these companies that she died, then the accounts would be listed as delinquent,” I say. “By now they would have been closed for nonpayment.”
He nods his head vigorously as he continues to look at the pages. “And if they pursued it and found out that she had died, they would have closed the accounts anyway. There’s no way they would just be sitting there like this.”
“Here’s a riddle for you,” I say. “When does a credit card company show no interest whatsoever in money that is owed to them?”
He looks up. “Never.”
“Right. Which means that she didn’t owe them a dime. The accounts can’t be real.”
I ask Sam to look into Stacy’s background again but this time to go much deeper. “I don’t just want her college transcript; I want to know who her teachers were and how often she cut class. I don’t just want her previous address; I want to know where she got her cafe lattes in the morning.”
“I’m on it, boss,” he says, getting up. “I’ll start right now.”
I tell him we can finish our meal and have a beer or two, and he sits back down. I can tell he’s anxious to get going, and I want to get the information as soon as possible, so we eat quickly.
When I get to the parking lot, I call Laurie in Wisconsin from the car. It takes her five rings to answer; apparently my calls aren’t as important to her as they are to Sam.
“Andy, I just walked in the door,” she says.
“You first walk in the door at eight o’clock at night? Where were you? Nightclubbing?”
“Actually, I was doing paperwork in the office. I just came home to change before going back out. I hate dancing in my uniform.”
“Before you go, I need your opinion.” I describe to her what I’ve learned-or, more correctly, what I haven’t learned-about Stacy Harriman’s background.
She listens without interrupting until I finish. Then, “Can you check the other records besides the credit reports more thoroughly?”
“Sam is starting on that right now. But can you think of an explanation for the credit reports never being updated or closed?”
She thinks for a moment. “It could always be some kind of mistake. Maybe some computer glitch that froze her records in time. But she is not just anyone; she is a murder victim.”
“That she is,” I say.
“So coincidences and mistakes are not to be trusted.”
“No, they’re not. So what’s your take on it?”
“If Sam keeps hitting dead ends-and I’ve got a feeling he will-then her background has been created as a deception. And it’s not a deception that she could have pulled off herself.”
“Right,” I say. “People don’t get to write their own credit reports.”
“But there are people who can write them for you.”
“Government people,” I say. “Witness protection program people.”
“It all fits, Andy. The government has been looking over your shoulder on this from day one. If the victim was someone they were protecting, they would absolutely be interested.”
