The Murder House Read online

  “She just lied,” Paige says, spitting out the words. “She just lied.”

  Noah purses his lips. “She thinks I’m guilty. I could see it that night, when she broke into my house. She thinks I killed her uncle, and she thinks I killed Zach and Melanie, too. She thinks she’s doing the right thing.”

  Paige draws back. “You’re defending her? You must be joking.”

  Noah almost laughs at the paradox, the fact that he’s sticking up for the cop who lied on the witness stand to put him away. “I just…understand why she did it.”

  He wants to be upset with Murphy. She’s surely no friend of his. But there’s something in the way she handles herself, like she’s trying to prove something to somebody but isn’t sure what she’s proving, or to whom. He feels like he understands her. And regardless of what she did to him today, he can’t shake the feeling that…

  …that they understand each other. That she doesn’t really believe, deep in her heart, that he’s guilty.

  “Oh, why is this happening?” Paige says softly.

  There’s no answer to that question. Noah feels like he’s caught in a tornado, unmoored from any reality, whisked away with brutal force and carried through the air against his will. He has lost all control. Forces beyond his reach—the sensationalist media, ambitious prosecutors, crooked cops—have aligned to deem him guilty and deny him any chance of fighting back.

  He must focus on this one fact: It doesn’t really matter what anybody else thinks. It only matters what twelve jurors believe. He’s seen the looks on their faces, their disgusted expressions, their averted eyes. He knows he has an uphill battle. He can only hope that their minds are still open, however slightly, to what he has to say.

  He has to testify. His lawyer doesn’t want him to. But he has no choice. He has to find some way to convince those jurors that he’s not the killer they think he is.

  If he fails, his life is over.

  27

  JOSHUA BRODY lets out a sigh. Almost three hours have passed, Noah testifying in response to Brody’s questions, and now it’s coming to an end. A pregnant pause by the lawyer, to emphasize these final questions—questions already asked and answered, but important enough to be repeated.

  “Let me ask you one last time, Noah,” says Joshua Brody. “Did you kill Melanie Phillips?”

  Noah leans forward into the microphone on the witness stand. “No, I did not.”

  “Did you kill Zach Stern?”

  “No, I did not.”

  Joshua Brody casts a glance at the jury. “No further questions.”

  Noah takes some deep breaths. Halfway done. The easy half, and it wasn’t that easy. It has to feel natural, not rehearsed, his lawyer kept telling him as they prepared for today, and Noah feels like, all in all, it was convincing. From time to time during Joshua Brody’s questioning, he glanced over at the jury. Did he see reasonable doubt on their faces? He doesn’t know. This isn’t what he does for a living. And he’s in the moment, tense and focused. He wouldn’t trust his instincts, anyway.

  But he can’t suppress the surge of hope he feels. He has a chance.

  “Cross-examination?” Judge Barnett asks.

  The prosecutor, Sebastian Akers, drops a notepad on the lectern between the prosecution and defense tables. This is the kind of moment a guy like Akers lives for. The packed courtroom, the big trial, the cross-examination that will make or break this case.

  Keep your composure, his defense attorney told Noah. Akers wants to paint you as someone who committed murder in a blind rage. He wants you to show the jury that rage. He’s going to try to bring it out, get you upset.

  “Mr. Walker,” Akers begins, “you have no alibi for the night of the murder, correct?”

  Noah clears his throat. “As I told Mr. Brody, I stayed in that night.”

  Akers makes a face. “What I meant was, nobody can corroborate your alibi, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “The jury has to take your word, and only your word, for it.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “And you admit you were once given a key to the front door of 7 Ocean Drive, correct?”

  “Yes. I’ve done work on that mansion for years. At some point, it made sense for the contractor who used me to just give me my own key.”

  “And that key has now magically disappeared.”

  “I don’t know about ‘magically’—but I don’t know where it is.”

  There was no evidence of forced entry at the mansion on the night of the murders. The fact that Noah had his own key isn’t a good fact for him.

  “You deny that you confessed to this crime to Chief James. You deny that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when he said you did, he wasn’t telling the truth.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “And when Detective Murphy testified to what the chief told her about your confession, she wasn’t telling the truth, either.”

  “I don’t know if she was or not. Maybe the chief said that to her. Maybe he didn’t.”

  “If he did, then he was lying to her, too.”

  “Right.”

  “Or maybe Detective Murphy just made the whole thing up! Right, Mr. Walker?”

  Noah feels perspiration on his forehead, his neck. “Could be.”

  “So maybe she was also lying. Right, Mr. Walker?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sure,” Akers says with no shortage of sarcasm, flipping a hand. “And Dio Cornwall, who shared a cell with you in lockup, who testified that you confessed to killing Melanie, that you said you ‘cut her up good’ and that she ‘couldn’t be no movie star now’—Mr. Cornwall was also lying. Right, Mr. Walker?”

  “He was lying. I never said anything like that to him. I never talked to him about my case at all.”

  “I see.” Akers looks at the jury. “Any idea how Mr. Cornwall would have known the name Melanie, or that she’d wanted to be a movie star, if you didn’t tell him anything about your case at all?”

  “I—I don’t know. Maybe he read it in the newspaper.”

  “The newspaper? Mr. Walker, Dio Cornwall was in lockup with you. Do you recall ever being given a copy of any newspapers while you were in lockup?”

  Noah pauses. He casts his eyes downward.

  “If you like, we can bring in the sheriff’s deputies who controlled lockup while you were—”

  “No, we never got newspapers,” Noah concedes. “I don’t know how Dio got that information. Maybe Chief James told him.”

  “Chief James? So now you’re saying not only that Chief James lied about your confession, but that he helped Dio Cornwall make up a story, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Chief James isn’t here to testify, is he, Mr. Walker? So we’ll never be able to ask him, will we?”

  Noah fixes a glare on the prosecutor. He feels his blood go cold.

  “During your direct testimony, you admitted that you confronted Melanie at her job—at Tasty’s Diner—asking her to take you back. You admit that, correct?”

  Noah shakes his head, focuses on the change of subject. “Yes, I admit that we argued, and I grabbed her arm, but Remy has the date wrong. He said it happened two days before Melanie was killed. June second. But that’s wrong. Melanie broke up with me in April. About seven weeks before she died. That’s when I talked to her at Tasty’s.”

  He met Paige a week after Melanie dumped him, in April. He’d moved on from Melanie. But he’s never told anyone that. He’s never publicly acknowledged his affair with Paige. And he won’t now. No matter how many times Paige has told him to do so. He won’t bring Paige into this.

  Akers nods along, his eyes alight. “Pretty big difference between April—seven weeks before the murder—and two days before the murder.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So Remy’s lying, too.”

  “I don’t know if he’s lying—”

  “But he’s not telling the truth.” />
  “That’s right. He’s not.”

  “So, to summarize,” Akers says, strolling along the edge of the jury box, “Chief James, Detective Jenna Murphy, Dio Cornwall, and Remy Handleman—none of them are telling the truth. But you, Mr. Walker, on trial for your life, whom Melanie broke up with so she could start dating Zach Stern—you are telling the truth.”

  Noah feels his pulse ratchet up. The way Akers is stacking up all the evidence…nobody’s going to believe Noah. It hits him hard, for the first time. They won’t believe me. They’re going to convict me.

  “I’m telling the truth,” he pleads. “I swear I am. I would never hurt somebody else.”

  “You’d never hurt anybody?” Akers asks, with mock innocence. “Well, Mr. Walker, isn’t it true that, in 1995, you brought a rifle to Bridgehampton School and opened fire on a number of your classmates?”

  28

  THE COURTROOM erupts at Sebastian Akers’s question. Noah’s defense lawyer, Joshua Brody, is on his feet, arguing. Judge Barnett stands down from the bench and walks to the far end of the courtroom, away from the jury, for a sidebar with the lawyers. The spectators are all abuzz.

  I wasn’t in Bridgehampton back in 1995, but I have a memory of Uncle Lang mentioning that someone had brought a BB gun to school and shot a bunch of the kids on their way into school. He never mentioned a name; no reason he would have. This was before Columbine, before zero-tolerance policies cropped up around the country and kids were expelled from school for even bringing toy replicas in their backpacks.

  If this was in 1995, Noah would have been young. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, something like that. It would have been a juvie beef. And if it was in juvenile court, it would have been confidential. I wonder if the town even knew who it was who did it. There would be rumors, sure, but I wonder if there was ever an official announcement. Judging from the reaction of the spectators—many of whom are presumably lifelong Bridgehampton residents—it seems like they’re hearing this news for the first time.

  The lawyers and court reporter and judge resume their positions, and the room goes quiet again.

  Noah’s lawyer, Joshua Brody, objects. “This is a juvenile offense,” he says.

  “Your Honor,” Sebastian Akers replies, “he just testified he’d never hurt anybody. He opened the door. I’m entitled to impeach him.”

  “Overruled,” says the judge. “Proceed, Mr. Akers.”

  And the prosecutor does just that, with a vengeance, a gleam in his eye. “You were arrested on Halloween, 1995, for shooting a number of schoolchildren on the south playground of Bridgehampton School, correct, Mr. Walker?”

  “I was…I was arrested, yes. It was a BB gun.”

  “Fifteen schoolkids were shot that day, weren’t they?”

  “I believe…that’s right.”

  “One child was hit in the eye, wasn’t he?”

  Noah nods but doesn’t speak.

  “That boy was nine,” says Akers. “He had to have two surgeries to repair the damage, isn’t that true?”

  Noah’s eyes are fixed on the floor now. “That happened, yes.”

  “Yes, that ‘happened.’ That ‘happened’ because you shot him with a BB gun, correct?”

  Noah doesn’t speak. Still staring at the floor.

  “Is that a yes, Mr. Walker?”

  “I didn’t shoot him,” Noah says, almost in a whisper, though the microphone gives it sufficient volume.

  “No? You didn’t shoot that boy? You were wrongfully accused then, too, is that it?”

  “I didn’t shoot him.”

  “I see. So when school officials said you did, they weren’t telling the truth, either, were they?”

  Noah’s shoulders close in on him, like he’s trying to shelter himself from a storm. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” he says.

  “Oh.” Akers lets out a chuckle. “Well, what do you wanna talk about? The Yankees’ chances in the postseason?”

  That gets a roar from the spectators. I thought it was clever, too, but I’m watching Noah. His face is turning red. He’s practically curled up into a ball. Akers, if he’s half the trial lawyer he thinks he is, senses it, too.

  By the time the laughter has subsided and the judge has gaveled the room to order, Akers has slowly approached Walker, a tiger stalking prey.

  “You shot fifteen people that day, Mr. Walker.”

  “I—no—I’m not going to—I don’t want—”

  “But you claim the school officials lied.”

  “I said I don’t—”

  “Just like you claim a decorated police chief, Langdon James, lied.”

  Noah shakes his head.

  “Just like Detective Murphy lied.”

  It’s clear now Noah’s not going to answer, and that seems to be fine with Akers. He’s watching—we’re all watching—a defendant smoldering on the witness stand, and Akers is hoping he’ll erupt.

  “Just like Dio Cornwall lied. Just like Remy Handleman lied.”

  Noah turns his head away, as if he’s done with this examination.

  “All of them lied,” says Akers. “It’s a grand conspiracy, isn’t it, Mr. Walker? The whole world against you.”

  Noah says something, but he’s turned away from the mike and it’s inaudible.

  “Mr. Walker—”

  “Yes!” Noah hisses, spinning around, nearly knocking over the microphone. Akers jumps back. The judge reacts, too. Several of the jurors recoil, seeing a new side of Noah Walker.

  “Everyone’s lying! The chief, that detective, the prison snitch, Remy, who couldn’t tie his own shoes without help—they’re all lying! They set me up!”

  Noah surges to his feet, sweeping his hand, this time knocking the microphone to the floor. “They all set me up! They framed me! They’re all liars!”

  “Sit down, Mr. Walker, or I’ll have you restrained!” the judge commands. “Deputies?” he calls out, and quickly two sheriff’s deputies approach Noah.

  When Noah doesn’t immediately take his seat, one of the deputies grabs his arm. He yanks it free. Both bailiffs reach for their batons, but Noah drops himself back into his chair. The judge calls for order and admonishes Noah. His face has lost all hope now; it’s distorted with bitterness.

  But when he looks up, his expression breaks, the scowl changing to despair, and for the briefest of moments, I think he’s looking at me. Then I realize he’s looking past me. I glance over my shoulder and see the woman he was with when I arrested him—Paige, I think her name was. She’s mouthing something to him from across the courtroom, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.

  I look back at Noah, who shakes his head and breaks eye contact.

  “Your Honor, I have no further questions,” says Sebastian Akers.

  29

  THE FIRST day, Noah didn’t think much of it. It had been a long trial. There was a lot of information to review. It could just be the simple matter of plowing through all the material, wanting to be thorough.

  The second day, he began to wonder. He had no experience with this kind of thing, so he tried not to think too much about it.

  The third day of jury deliberations, he began to have hope. Somebody on that jury was doing some heavy thinking about his guilt. Don’t read too much into it, his lawyer advised him during a visit. A lot of people have lost a lot of bets trying to guess what a jury is thinking.

  At a quarter after one on the fourth day of jury deliberations, Noah is summoned by the sheriff’s deputy. He is heading, as always, toward the side door of the county courthouse, reserved for prisoner transfers, but the transport vehicle slows a block from the courthouse. The crowd has swelled beyond the sidewalks into the street. There are blockades, but they are hopeless against the swarm of onlookers. The transport vehicle moves slowly, and people grudgingly open a path, shouting at the vehicle as it passes, some of them even slapping the hood or one of the side windows.

  When the vehicle turns toward the transfer door, Noah sees the t
rucks from all the national media lined up, faces of reporters he’d seen on television before the trial began and with whom he’s now practically on a first-name basis, plus countless other reporters who couldn’t get inside the courtroom but are always here, every morning, ready to shoot video footage or snap his picture.

  The thousands of locals are here for various reasons, geriatric trial-watchers, concerned citizens, people just interested in the spectacle of it all, friends or family of Melanie Phillips. From time to time in the courtroom or standing outside here by the prisoner transfer, he has seen people who vaguely resemble Melanie and wondered if they were cousins or aunts or uncles. Melanie had a big family, though Noah never met any of them. They were only together for two months before Melanie ended things.

  He remembers that day well, the day Melanie broke up with him, her resolve, the firmness of her words. I’m sorry, but I’ve made my decision. That was it. She wouldn’t hear his protests. She just made the statement, a second time to be clear, and that was that. Noah always wondered if she’d discussed it with her friends or family ahead of time. He imagines someone advising her, It’s best to do it clean, just break it off, no long explanations or debate. It bothered him to think that others knew about their breakup before he did.

  He lets these thoughts occupy him so he won’t think about what’s coming as he passes down a long corridor lined with armed deputies, as he enters the courtroom from the side and dozens of heads turn in his direction. The law enforcement presence in this room is also heavy; the wall space is occupied by sheriff’s deputies ready to keep order when the verdict is read.

  And then it’s as if everything is under water, almost dreamlike. His lawyer says something to him, but Noah doesn’t really listen; he’s gone to another place now, readying himself for what’s about to come. Judge Barnett walks in and calls for the jury. The jurors file in and take their seats, one by one. You’re supposed to watch them as they come in, looking for clues—If they make eye contact, they’re going to acquit you; if they don’t, they’re going to convict. That never made sense to him, why you’d look for clues in the first place, when you’re about to find out in a few seconds.