Bury the Lead - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,49
acted horribly criminal. With no violent history, acted horribly violent. With obvious intelligence, acted horribly stupid.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t fly. He’s asking you to make sense out of something that makes no sense at all.
“Lastly, I want to talk to you about something that must be on your minds. Since Mr. Cummings’s arrest, these horrible murders have stopped. You may be thinking that this fact in and of itself is evidence of his guilt. It is not.
“Daniel Cummings is not here today by chance. His presence as the defendant was planned and perfectly orchestrated by the actual killer. For that person to have committed additional crimes while Mr. Cummings was in custody would have been to defeat his own plan. It would have been foolish for the killer to elaborately frame Mr. Cummings and then commit an act that would prove his innocence.
“Daniel Cummings has hurt no one. And you protect no one by taking his life away.
“Thank you.”
I go back to the defense table, satisfied that I made the points I wanted to make. Kevin nods his approval and Daniel looks pleased, while trying to maintain the impassive exterior that I instructed him to maintain. I notice him making eye contact with a group of seven people, all from Cleveland, who have made the trek here to show support. Two of them are giving him the thumbs-up, which I will instruct them never to do again.
What they and Daniel don’t seem to realize is that this was easy, and these were just words. Starting tomorrow, we have to deal with the evidence and the facts.
There is no such thing as a normal workday during a murder trial. You work as hard as you can until the hours run out, and then you start again the next day. Court lets out at four, and my standard procedure is to convene a meeting of the team at my house at five-thirty. We order in dinner and spend the night preparing for the next day’s witnesses, as well as looking at the “big picture.”
I get home and walk Tara, then rush back to order dinner. I want to make sure I do the ordering rather than Laurie, since if left in her hands, Kevin and I will be stuck eating healthful food all night.
Preparation for tomorrow’s court day goes relatively quickly, as Tucker will be putting on mostly foundation witnesses, slowly building his case. It gives us time to think about our own defense, pathetic though it currently is.
We have been totally unable to make any connection between the victims, and I think it’s safe to say that there is none. Linda Padilla remains our focus; Sam has not found any significant information, financial or otherwise, on the other victims. We have two possible theories, equally unlikely and difficult to prove. One is that Padilla was the main target and the others were killed to obscure that fact. The other is that all the victims were chosen randomly, by a killer whose only goal was to frame Daniel.
Kevin goes over the list of people and companies that Padilla caused varying degrees of trouble for with her whistle-blowing. Unfortunately for us, the very prominence of her “victims” works against us. Corporate criminals can be as low as their less upscale brethren, but it’s hard to picture most of them strangling women and cutting off their hands.
Nevertheless, our situation is bleak enough that we have to pursue everything. Laurie and Kevin divvy up the list to check them out, putting some aside for Marcus as well. Complicating matters is that many of them are spread out around the country; Padilla by no means limited herself to local wrongdoers.
Particularly annoying, and reflective of our lack of cohesion, is the fact that one of the companies is in Cleveland. Had I known, I could have had Marcus check it out while he was there. The subject is an enormous corporation called Castle Industries, named after its founder, Walter Castle. It was found polluting the water in a Cleveland suburb, and a leukemia cluster emerged. Padilla’s actions cost the company a hundred million dollars, more than my fortune but probably not that big a deal to Walter Castle. And somehow I don’t see a sixty-year-old billionaire running around cutting off naked women’s hands in protest.
There are a few other entities that seem slightly more credible as potential revenge-seekers. I’m just guessing, of course, but my first choice would be a clothing