Judge & Jury Read online

  I heard it close. “Jarrod . . . Jarrod.”

  It was Andie DeGrasse. She was pinned beneath a metal support beam. Her hair was black. Her face was covered with blood. Her lips quivered. “Jarrod . . . Jarrod.” She kept calling for her son.

  “Help is here,” I said, bending to her.

  She was the only one alive.

  Chapter 42

  RICHARD NORDESHENKO HEARD the tremendous blast. At precisely 2:03 p.m., from three blocks away. He felt the ground beneath him shudder, the earth slide. It was done.

  He had instructed his limo to wait while he went inside an electronics store and purchased a gift for his son. World Championship Poker.

  Nordeshenko had heard similar explosions before. The double concussion. The ground shaking. Like an earthquake, actually. The store clerk looked confused. Nordeshenko knew what had happened. Nezzi had taken no chances. There was enough C-4 in that van to do the job three times over.

  Nordeshenko tucked the package under his arm and left the store. He looked forward to getting home. He had a few gifts for his son: an iPod and the new computer poker program that he knew would delight the boy. And earrings for his wife from New York’s Diamond District.

  His work here was over, and it couldn’t have gone any better.

  He had already received a message about his Swiss account. More than two million dollars. There were still a few more payments that had to be made. But he had earned every penny. He would take it easy for a while when he returned home.

  “What the hell was that?” the limo driver said, looking back toward Foley Square as Nordeshenko climbed back in the car.

  “I don’t know. Some kind of explosion. Maybe a fuel line.” The scent of gasoline and cordite hung in the air.

  They heard sirens. Two police cars rushed past them toward the courthouse, lights flashing.

  “Something’s happened!” the driver exclaimed, turning on the news. “This is not good.”

  Nordeshenko looked back and saw a cloud of black smoke rise up above the buildings, coming from directly behind them.

  He placed the gift for his son in his traveling case. Two rings came from his cell phone—Reichardt and Nezzi were safely away now.

  “Let’s go,” he said to the driver. “We’ll listen on the way. I have a plane to catch.”

  Chapter 43

  SHE OPENED HER EYES very slowly.

  She felt no pain. Just woozy and unreal. She was here—but she wasn’t. A leaden pressure was in her chest. Where was she? What had happened? Tubes were coming out of her, attached everywhere. She tried to move but couldn’t.

  Nothing. No power over her own body. Was she paralyzed? How had it happened?

  Then Andie began to panic. Something very heavy and bulky was blocking her throat. Making her gag. She couldn’t speak because of the obstruction.

  A nurse came in. Just the look on the nurse’s face told her. Something terrible has happened. What?

  “Andie. Don’t try to talk, sweetheart. There’s a tube down your throat to help you breathe. You’re in Bellevue Hospital. You’ve been in surgery. You’re going to be okay.”

  Andie made herself nod, eyes flicking wildly around the room. The hospital room.

  Then it started to come back to her.

  The jurors’ bus. She had been on the bus. A gray van had pulled up. . . .

  That’s when the panic started to grip her chest again. Her eyes darted anxiously toward the nurse. What happened next? She tried to speak again, but could only cough and gag. Her fingers found the nurse’s hand somehow. She managed to grab two fingers. She held on as tight as she could.

  My son . . . Where is Jarrod?

  “Please.” The nurse squeezed back. “Try and stay calm now, Andie.”

  She knew something horrible had happened, something unbelievable. She tried to sound out Jarrod’s name, but her air passage was blocked. And her mouth was as dry as sandpaper. Please, please, my son.

  But something was forcing her to close her eyes, and Andie couldn’t fight it.

  Chapter 44

  WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES again, someone else was standing there. She blinked sleepily. FBI. The one with the smile.

  But he wasn’t smiling now. Actually, he looked terrible.

  Memories of what had happened began flashing in her mind. The bus stopped at a red light. Then the van. The two men running away. She had reached out and tugged Jarrod close to her.

  Jarrod?

  Her eyes went back to the FBI man. She tried to scream out her son’s name. Please, don’t you understand? Can’t you read it in my eyes?

  He just looked at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? she repeated to herself. It took a moment to register. What is he saying? Sorry for what?

  She felt him place his fingers lightly on her hand. Then a squeeze. His touch told her everything.

  It was rushing back at her now. Her panic when she saw the men running from the van. The terrible explosion. Then she was thrown back. She remembered calling Jarrod’s name over and over.

  Her body spasmed in shock now.

  Andie felt something burn a path down her cheek. This can’t be real. This can’t have happened.

  The FBI man wiped away her tear.

  She still hadn’t been told what happened. They didn’t have to tell her now. She knew. She could see it in his eyes.

  Oh, my poor Jarrod.

  Tears began streaming down Andie’s cheeks, and she had the feeling that they would never stop.

  Chapter 45

  THEY DON’T USUALLY ALLOW anyone inside the cell blocks at this time of night, even law enforcement. Tonight, I was on my own.

  “Nick, it’s late,” said Trevor Ellis, who was in charge of the sixth-floor cell block, where witnesses and defendants were held in the Manhattan County Jail. We passed through the electronic doors together. Only the night crew was around.

  There was a guard at the desk, checking monitors. Trevor nodded for him to take a break. “I’m okay with Agent Pellisante here. Get some coffee.”

  “It’s official business,” I told Trevor. We walked some more, then stopped at the end of the corridor. Cavello’s cell was cordoned off, at the very end of the long wing.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Ellis looked at me.

  Nineteen people had died this afternoon. Seventeen jurors. My jurors. One victim was a kid on his tenth birthday. Some things you just have to do—regardless of the risk or the consequences.

  “Official business,” I repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You give him some official business for me.”

  Cavello’s electronic cell door clicked open.

  He was lying on a cot with his knees drawn up and an arm crooked behind his head. His eyes widened when he saw who it was.

  “Nicky,” he said, barely hiding that same mocking grin I had seen so often in the courtroom. “Jesus, I just heard. What a mess!” He slowly raised himself up off the cot. “I want to tell you how sorry I . . .”

  I slugged him in the face, and he went down.

  “Jeez, Nicky.” Cavello grunted, rubbing his jaw. He reached for the metal cot post and pulled himself back up, grinning. “Y’know, I heard of hung juries before, but this one takes on a whole new meaning.”

  I hit him again. Harder. Cavello slammed back against the concrete wall. He still stared at me with a sort of laughing arrogance, an animal savagery behind his eyes. “Your fault, Nicky. What’d you expect? I was gonna roll over and die? You knew that. You know me, like nobody else does.” He wiped away a trickle of blood with the back of his hand.

  I went over and yanked him off the floor by his collar. He was still wearing the same shirt he had on in the courtroom that day.

  “You may think you’ve won, you piece of shit, but I’m gonna dedicate my life to you going down. Nineteen people died. One of them was a ten-year-old kid.”

  “There was a kid on that bus?” Cavello said, showing mock surprise
. “Jesus, Pellisante, you oughta know better than that.”

  I punched him with everything I had. Cavello crashed into the cell wall again. I couldn’t control myself. I’d never hated one person so much.

  I heard Trevor Ellis behind me. “Okay, Nick, that’s enough.”

  I ignored him. I pulled Cavello up again and threw him to the other side of the cell. He went into a metal sink and fell to the floor. I went and pulled him up again. There was blood all over his shirt. “They were just doing their duty,” I screamed in his face.

  “Go on,” Cavello mocked. “Hit me. It doesn’t hurt. But you got it wrong. I told you. No court can hold me. You say I’m going down.” He spat out a glob of blood. “Maybe. But it won’t be from you. You see those cameras up there? They got every second of this. You’re through. I won’t go down. But you will, Nicky Smiles.”

  I hit him again, and Cavello spun backward against the concrete wall. Trevor Ellis and a cell-block guard rushed in behind me. One of them pinned my arms while the other got between me and Cavello. He struggled to his feet again. He was wobbly, holding his side.

  “Look at you.” Cavello started to laugh. “You think you got me? You’re the one who’s through. You’re the one gonna be seeing that kid every day for the rest of your life. Me, I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”

  Trevor and the guard yanked me out of the cell, but Cavello called after me. His words and laughter echoed down the hall.

  “Like a baby, Pellisante. You hear that? First day in a month, I don’t have to worry about a goddamn trial.”

  Part Two

  RETRIAL

  Chapter 46

  ELBOWS ON MY DESK, I looked out at the class of twenty-two astonishingly smug and overconfident first-year law students.

  “Can anyone tell me why the law permits law enforcement agents to use deceit at the investigative stage, when they’re not even sure of a suspect’s guilt, but strictly forbids them from lying during the testimonial stage, when they’re absolutely sure the suspect is a criminal?”

  Five months had passed. I had taken an extended leave from the Bureau, and I’d been teaching a course in criminal ethics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice since January.

  Some leave. I was doing everything I knew just to hold it together. I wasn’t sure I’d ever go back, at least not to C-10, not after the beating I had given Cavello in his cell. But who was I kidding? It was more than that. Lots more. The bastard had been right. Since that day, the image of Jarrod’s face looking out the window of that juror bus hadn’t left my mind.

  A female student in the second row raised her hand. “It’s the means to an end,” she said. “Mapp, and United States versus Russell allow the police to use deceptive procedures to obtain evidence. Without it, they might never make a case. It’s deception for the greater good.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, then got up and started to stroll around. “But what if the police have to lie about those procedures during testimony—in order to protect their case?”

  In the back row I spotted something that annoyed me. Some kid seemed a lot more interested in a newspaper folded in his textbook than he was in me. I raised my voice. “Mr. Pearlman, you care to weigh in on this?”

  The student fumbled with his textbook. “Yeah. Sure thing. Not a problem.”

  I went up to him, removing the newspaper from his desk. “Mr. Pearlman here is busy checking his stocks while the Fourth Amendment is under siege. I hope for your future clients’ sake you’ve got a nice family practice in entertainment law to go into.”

  There were a few laughs around the room. Typical suck-up snickers.

  I felt a little ashamed, though. Like one of those professorial bullies who gets his rocks off from a big show of power over his class. And that wasn’t me. A few months ago I was pushing around one of the most notorious criminals in the country. Now it was just some kid, in law school. Jeez, Nick.

  “So, Mr. Pearlman,” I said, offering the kid an olive branch, “the Supreme Court case that held that the exclusionary law of evidence was binding is . . .”

  “Mapp versus Ohio, sir. U.S. 643. 1961.”

  “Nice guess.” I grinned. I tucked the newspaper under my arm. “I have stocks, too.”

  The bell rang shortly afterward. A couple of students came up to go over an assignment or question a grade. Then I just sat alone in the empty classroom.

  You’re lying to yourself again, Nick. You’re trying to run, but you’re not fast enough. It wasn’t about some kid catching up on the box scores in my class. Or the Fourth Amendment, or police methodology. It wasn’t even about this closed, dark corner of the universe I had let myself drift to, pretending I was building a new life.

  No. I flipped the paper over on my desk. I stared at the headline. The very one I’d been waiting these past five months to see.

  GODFATHER, PART II. In big bold letters.

  Unfinished business—that’s all it was. Cavello’s retrial was scheduled to begin next week.

  Chapter 47

  SHE WAS DOING her best to recover, but it was hard and lonely. And long. And basically impossible. Yet she was starting to come through it.

  For a while her sister, Rita, stayed with her. Andie had suffered a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, a lot of internal bleeding, and burns on her legs and arms. But those were the wounds that healed. What hurt a lot more was the pain inside. Every time she looked into Jarrod’s room, caught his scent on his books and things, his pajamas, his pillows.

  Then there was the anger she felt every single day. Anger that his killers had never been brought to justice. That everyone knew who was behind it—Cavello! And the bastard wasn’t even being charged. She even had dreams of finding him in his jail cell and killing him herself.

  Then one day she was finally able to put some of Jarrod’s things away, pack them into boxes, without crying. Without being too ashamed. She had asked the coroner to cut off a piece of the Knicks uniform shirt Jarrod was wearing that day. She kept it in her purse.

  MARBURY

  3

  She started back toward having a life with the simplest things. Doing her proofreading, seeing a flick. It was like relearning the steps of life all over again. Telling herself it was okay. To live was okay.

  Over time, she found herself reading the papers again, watching the news. Laughing at a joke on Letterman. One day, she even picked up a copy of Variety. A few weeks later, she called her agent.

  Then, five months after it happened, Andie found herself standing in front of the doors to a casting studio on West 57th Street. The call was for some Cialis commercial. All it took was looking fortyish and a little sexy—pretty much herself. Her agent said, Go. See how it feels.

  Standing in front of the studio, Andie had never felt so terrified in her life. It was like the first time she ever went on a casting call. It was too new. It wasn’t right. Way too soon.

  A pretty blond woman stepped out of the elevator behind her. “You goin’ in?”

  “No, you go ahead.” Andie shook her head. A wave of panic swept over her. A tightness pounded in her chest. She needed air.

  She didn’t even wait for the elevator, just hurried down the back staircase and onto 57th Street. Her legs felt weak and wobbly. She sucked a deep, grateful breath into her lungs.

  This isn’t going to go away, Andie. It’s always going to be with you. Survivors pull it together. You have to do that, too. A few people passing by on the street glanced at her. She realized how foolish she felt, and probably looked.

  Andie pressed herself against the cold concrete of the building and took another breath. She reached into her purse and felt for the little piece from Jarrod’s uniform. You’re always going to be with me.

  Andie went back into the building, taking the elevator this time, back up to the third floor. She stood outside the studio again. Clutching her portfolio, she sucked in a breath. This was hard. This was so damn hard.

  A woman stepped out just as she entered, an
d the woman had that look of disappointment Andie knew so well. Andie pushed through the doors and walked up to the receptionist.

  “Andie DeGrasse. I’m here to read for the part.”

  Chapter 48

  FROM A STAIRCASE across 183rd Street, I bit my lower lip as I watched her coming back home. I don’t think she ever saw me, and I wanted to keep it that way. The alternative was too crazy to spend time thinking about.

  Andie DeGrasse looked good. She was dressed up and clutching a large black portfolio. On the outside it looked as if she had it all back together. But I thought I knew what must be going on inside her.

  I came up this way from time to time, and I wasn’t even really sure why.

  Maybe I just felt good that someone had come out of this thing alive. A couple of times I even went up and knocked on her door. I’d say hi, or bring something—a little news about the investigation. Basically, stand around a few moments, as though it was an official visit and I had something to say that I couldn’t quite put into words. It felt good being connected to somebody. I didn’t reach out to people much since the trial.

  Maybe I was just kidding myself again. Maybe it was simply Andie DeGrasse. How she was pulling her life back together after what had happened. I envied that. That she never once accused me, though she had every right to—that she never looked at me with blame in her eyes.

  Maybe it was simply the knowledge that we shared something—neither of our lives would ever be whole again. That’s what I believed, anyway.

  So I watched her as she climbed the stairs to her building and unlocked the inside door. She checked her mail and tucked a few envelopes and magazines under her arm, then disappeared from sight. A short while later, the lights went on in her apartment. What am I, a stalker? But I knew that wasn’t it.

  I finally walked across the street. Another tenant stepped out, and I fumbled in my pockets for a second, as if I’d lost my keys, catching the door before it closed.