Three days before Spencer Shaw went to trial, the DA’s office discovered that his bloodstained wallet was no longer in the evidence locker. Without the wallet, any case against Shaw was circumstantial. The doorman at his apartment building told the police that Shaw had left the building around nine o’clock, which gave him time to get to the Brandts’ house and kill them. But no weapon had been found, no bloody clothes. A canvass of the neighborhood around the Brandts’ had produced no witnesses who could put Shaw at the scene. The DA decided to drop the murder charges and prosecute the kidnappings of Cassidy and Rhonda Raskin.
The lead prosecutor was a crackling-smart, perpetually pissed-off Brooklyn-born lawyer named Ted Lombardi who hated to lose. His round head was prematurely bald. It topped narrow shoulders and a long neck and made him look like an angry turtle. Lombardi had handled the prosecution of six or seven of Cassidy’s arrests over the years, and they had developed an easy friendship.
The defense team came from Sullivan and Cromwell. They arrived each day in a phalanx, armored in beautifully hand-tailored suits. They had a rich, elegant glow as if they were polished each morning with soft wads of old money.
The prosecution was built on Cassidy’s and Rhonda’s testimony. The defense countered with witnesses who swore that Cassidy had been drunk and disoriented on Hudson Street the morning in question, that the Brandts had publicly identified themselves as doctors and had volunteered to help him, that Cassidy had entered the car willingly. Shaw testified that Dr Ambrose suggested Cassidy be restrained on the bed in the house on Leroy Street until his disorientation passed. Ambrose, still suffering from his nervous breakdown, was not available to testify. The defense lawyers were not as successful with Rhonda, though they tried their best. They painted her as a promiscuous slut who drank too much and slept around, as an overly ambitious woman who would do anything for a story. Under the cover of national security considerations and the restrictions of classified information, they managed to exclude all testimony that pertained to the house on West 4th Street and to any experiments that might have been going on inside the house on Leroy Street. In the end, the jury found Spencer Shaw not guilty of kidnapping but guilty of the lesser charge of unlawful restraint. The judge took a moment to praise Shaw’s war record before sentencing him to three years in a medium-security facility in upstate New York.
Cassidy stood near the prosecution table and watched the bailiffs come to escort Shaw back to the holding cells. The defense lawyers shook hands and patted each other on the shoulder in congratulations while Ted Lombardi looked on sourly.
‘Kicked your ass around the courtroom,’ Cassidy said.
‘Yeah. National security, my ass,’ Lombardi said. ‘Of course it would have been nice if the fucking police department could hold onto the key evidence.’
‘Not the first time something grew legs in the evidence locker and walked away.’
‘Well, at least he’s off the street for a couple of years.’
‘Doesn’t seem like much,’ Cassidy said. ‘He killed two people we know about and at least one we suspect.’
‘You know what?’ Lombardi said. ‘I’m thinking maybe I’m on the wrong side. I’ve got a good mind to give up all this shit and join Sullivan and Cromwell. I love those suits.’
‘Great suits. Do you think they’d have you?’
‘Sure. Once I got the transplant – cut out the wop, put in the wasp.’
Before leaving the courtroom, Shaw looked back at Cassidy. He smiled and winked and then allowed the bailiffs to take him away.