MARLENE PAUSED NEXT TO THE ELEVATORS IN THE LOBBY OF the new Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains to check the directory. She was looking for the office of District Attorney Harley Chin, hoping without much hope to prevent her client from being railroaded.
“Dirty Warren” Bennett was due to be arraigned in one hour on the charge of murder. At that point, her client would be slated to go on trial for his life in a setting where Tourette’s syndrome would automatically put him at a disadvantage with a jury. Even if he never took the stand, which would be suicide, his tics and outbursts just while sitting in his seat at the defense table would prejudice the jury against him.
If he even makes it to trial, Marlene reminded herself for the hundredth time since visiting Warren in jail two days earlier and hearing about the Aryans. After she had left him that day, she’d gone to the jail administrator and demanded that Warren be placed in protective custody. But the man had just given her a baleful look and explained that every one of his segregation cells was filled by “some schmuck who’s already been knifed, hit, raped, and otherwise attacked. Your guy’s still in one piece.”
“And if he’s not when this is all over, I’ll hold you personally responsible,” Marlene had replied angrily.
“Yeah, you and the lawyer for every ‘innocent’ character who has the misfortune of being given into my care,” the man had said. He’d then sighed in such a way that she almost felt sorry for him, and he’d added, “Squeeze some more money from the taxpayers, and we’ll build more cells. Until then, sorry, but if you could see yourself out, I have a jail that’s bursting at the seams, and I’ve got to go put my finger in the dike.”
Marlene had talked her concern over with her husband when she’d seen him in his office during lunch break. “He’s walking around with a target on his back. If he dies, the Michelle Oakley case goes away.”
Butch had commiserated, but there wasn’t much he could do in the middle of his trial. So she’d come to Westchester County an hour early, hoping to talk Chin out of arraigning Warren or at least into not opposing bail. She didn’t think it would work. Chin had announced the indictment to the media within minutes of the grand jury returning it, citing “incontrovertible evidence.”
Dropping the charges, or even putting off the arraignment, would be the same as admitting he’d been wrong. Not very likely with Harley Chin, whose bid for the soon-to-be-vacant state attorney general seat seemed to have gained steam since the indictment was announced.
But I have to try, Marlene thought as she pressed the button to summon the elevator. As she waited, she compared the district attorney she was going to see to her husband, whom she’d spent the morning watching as he questioned John Jojola at the Jabbar trial.
With Butch, everything at the New York DAO was very methodical, and there was never a rush to judgment until all the facts were in. Certainly, nothing like the unnecessarily swift indictment of Warren Bennett. Like her cousin the detective had noted, the police investigation wasn’t even completed before Chin had wanted to go to the grand jury. She chalked it up to a rather desperate and pathetic grab for publicity to help his cause for the AG position. He obviously wanted to appear tough on crime and swift to mete out justice, knowing that the general public had no concept of how the system worked, only the perception that it was hopelessly bogged down and generally unable to protect innocent citizens. But there could not have been time to receive the police reports on the Oakley murder and properly evaluate the evidence.
At the New York DAO, the case would have been put through a rigorous process to ensure that the right man had been charged and that there was legally admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. That included having to pass through the weekly bureau meeting, where the top trial lawyers at the DAO, who were the top trial lawyers in the state, would gleefully rip apart cases presented to them by assistant district attorneys.
Harley had cut his teeth in that system and had the benefit of Butch’s personal attention. But Harley Chin is no Roger Karp, she thought as she got off the elevator. She walked down the hall and opened the door leading into the reception area of the Westchester County District Attorney.
“May I help you?” asked a pretty young woman wearing a headset, who sat in front of a large photograph of Chin that hung on the wall behind her.
“Yes, thank you. My name is Marlene Ciampi,” she said to the receptionist. “I called ahead. I’m here to see Harley Chin.”
The receptionist pressed a couple of buttons and spoke into the microphone of her headset. “Marlene Ciampi here to see you,” she said in a sweet voice, then giggled at the response. She looked up at Marlene. “He’ll be right out.”
Five minutes later, Chin emerged from the back of the office area with a grin on his face and his long, effeminate hand held out like a fishmonger on Fulton Street holding out the morning’s catch. “Marlene Ciampi! It has been such a long time. How is that husband of yours? All wrapped up in a doozy of a trial, I hear. What’s the prognosis? Hey, hope there are no hard feelings about the past. I know I was young and brash, and Butch, well, Butch is Butch—heh heh—hard-nosed bastard but one hell of a trial lawyer.”
“No hard feelings, I’m sure,” Marlene said, shaking his hand, which was soft and slightly damp. She did her best to keep a modicum of a smile on her face, though she was repulsed by his transparent glad-handing.
“Good. Good. So I guess I owe the pleasure of your visit to the Bennett case? I was a bit surprised when I heard that you were the defense attorney,” Chin said. “But I hear his parents are rich, and we all have to make a living, don’t we?”
Marlene wanted to punch him in the face, but instead, she forced a slightly larger smile and pointed in the direction from which he’d come. “I suppose. And yes, I’d like a moment of your time regarding the Bennett case. Would you mind if we went into your office?”
“But of course; come on back.” Chin made a sweeping gesture with his hand. He winked at the receptionist, who giggled knowingly. “I’d love to hear what you have to say.”
Chin led the way back to his office with Marlene staring daggers into his back. Once they were settled in chairs across the desk from each other, he placed his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands. “I’m all ears, though we only have forty minutes before we’re to appear in front of Judge Jack Kingston, and I’d like thirty minutes or so to prepare.” He looked at his watch.
“Doing the math, I have ten minutes . . . or so,” Marlene said.
“Exactly,” Chin said with another grin.
“Then I won’t waste any more time. I’d like you to drop the charges against my client.”
Chin threw his head back and laughed. He looked back down at her, barely suppressing a lingering desire to chuckle. “Oh, that’s rich. Drop the charges? Marlene, I got an indictment hardly lifting a finger.”
“That I believe,” Marlene replied, dropping any pretense at friendliness. “At the very least, consider delaying this arraignment and letting my client out on bail before he gets killed.”
Chin let his jaw drop dramatically, then shook his head. “Are you kidding? Let a cold-blooded killer out on the streets? The press would crucify me.”
“Who cares what the press thinks?” she said, though the little voice in her head immediately chimed in: He does. “This is the life of an innocent man.”
Chin’s face grew serious. “Do you have something that clearly controverts the overwhelming evidence gathered by the police thus far? Something that proves his innocence?”
The little voice continued telling Marlene that she was wasting her time, but she went ahead anyway. “Proves his innocence? I didn’t realize the standard had changed,” she said. “But no, I don’t have proof . . . yet. But I know this guy. He’s just a sweet, little man who runs the newsstand in front of the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street . . .”
Chin waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, I met him once or twice when I was still employed by your husband,” he said. “I found him to be annoying and shifty. Typical street person.”
Marlene frowned. “He’d never hurt a fly.”
“Till now,” Chin said. He reached down and opened a thick manila folder on his desk. Picking up what looked like a police report, he began to read. “‘When informed that he was under arrest, suspect voluntarily made the following statement, “Michelle! . . . Whoop oh boy fucking bitch,” and “dirty whore whoop whoop.” ’”
“Oh, come on, you know he has Tourette’s syndrome,” Marlene retorted.
“So I’ve been told,” Chin said, placing the report back in the folder and clasping his hands again. “To be honest, I thought back then that a lot of it was a put-on for sympathy and to get away with saying whatever he wanted. A little nuts, maybe, but still competent to stand trial for murder. I suppose you could put him on the stand during the trial and let the jury decide if he’s faking.”
Marlene bit her lip. She imagined jumping over the desk and strangling Chin just to get the smirk off his face, but her client’s life hung in the balance. “Look, Harley.” She tried to placate. “I don’t want to get in a pissing match here with you. I do appreciate you hearing me out. But I want to tell you that something’s just not right here.”
“And why do you say that?” Chin asked, as if still willing to listen to reason.
“For one thing, his apartment was tossed by an intruder sometime after his arrest,” she pointed out.
Chin’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”
“I was there at the tail end of the search,” Marlene said. “The place looked as if a tornado had gone through it—drawers and closets flung open, clothes and personal belongings scattered everywhere. But my client is obsessive-compulsive about keeping his things orderly. Somebody went through there looking for something.”
Chin shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought. Have you ever been to his apartment before this?”
“No,” she admitted. “But the deceased had told him that she’d made a mistake and was going to have to pay for it.”
“Even if I believe she said that, and I don’t, she could have been talking about one of her many divorces. What else have you got?” Chin looked at his watch to make his point.
“But why would he kill her? They were going to go out on a date,” Marlene said. “He loved her.”
“Which was probably his motive,” Chin said. “Not that I have to prove why he snapped, but love is responsible for more murders than drugs. And what’s he going to say, ‘I asked her out. She turned me down. So I stabbed her to death and raped her’? No, he’s going to claim that this beautiful, wealthy woman wanted to go out with a foul-mouthed, twitching newspaper boy and willingly had sex with him. Go ahead, Marlene, I dare you, put him on the witness stand, and see if the jury will believe him.” Chin tapped the thick manila file on his desk. “Maybe you ought to know what’s in here,” he said. “You will soon enough, after I charge him with murder, so here’s what I got: a cab driver who dropped him off at seven P.M. The driver says he was agitated, angry, cursing up a storm.”
“That’s the Tourette’s. He was excited,” Marlene countered.
Chin ignored her and held up a second finger. “There’s no record of a cab being called to pick him up.”
“He wanted to walk home.”
“Yeah, right. And he says he left a little after nine. But his parents say he didn’t come home until after ten. That’s a long walk. Time enough to clean up, maybe.” Holding up a third finger, Chin said, “He is the last one to see Michelle Oakley alive.”
Chin snorted. “Nice try. His fingerprints are all over the place, including one very nice lift from the murder weapon—a steak knife. And by the way, he raped her, too. Such are the ways of ‘true love.’”
“You’re an ass, Harley,” Marlene swore. “You always were, and nothing has changed. You have DNA proof from the body that proves Warren had sex with her? A used rubber?” She was pleased and relieved to see the shadow that passed across her opponent’s face. No, he doesn’t, she thought.
“Oh, we have the right man, Marlene. And believe me, I’m going to enjoy taking Butch Karp’s bitch wife apart in court,” Chin said with a sneer. “Your motion to dismiss is denied. I’m going to charge and convict your client and send this disgusting bum’s ass to Attica, where one day he’ll say the wrong thing to the wrong animal and justice will be served. Now get the fuck out of here.”
Marlene stood but leaned over the desk. “I’ll see you in court, Chin,” she snarled. “You didn’t learn a damn thing from my husband, which is good for my client, because I’m going to tear you a new one in front of the jury, your peers, and the media. And when I get done with you, you won’t be able to run for dog catcher and win.”
It wasn’t much, but she enjoyed the momentary look of doubt in Chin’s eyes. She was confident that she could take him in court if the playing field was level.
Unfortunately, that was put into question in the courtroom when the judge—a tan, handsome man with long silver hair combed back—who would be presiding over the case entered. After they were told they could sit back down, Warren slumped into his seat and put a hand over his eyes. “I’m so . . . whoop whoop bite me . . . fucked,” he mumbled.
“What?” Marlene asked. “What’s wrong? We’ll enter a not-guilty plea and ask for bail.”
“It won’t matter,” Warren replied. “The judge . . .”
“What about him?”
“He’s the one Michelle was arguing with at my sister’s party.”