Assistant District Attorney Bullock paused, letting the horrific declarations from the witness stand seep into the consciousness of all those who could hear, including the jury, before he proceeded. “Was anyone left alive?”
“Only the fifteen-year-old girl, Erin Faulkner. The one who called us. She was in the passageway from the laundry room. She had crawled up from the basement. She was severely injured, but she was still alive. Barely.”
“What did you do next?”
“I called for medical attention for the girl.” Sergeant Marder was a trim man in his early thirties, one of the few men on earth, Ben thought, who actually looked good in a police uniform. Like all PD witnesses, he had been taught to keep his testimony brief and to the point, but Ben had a sense of hidden depths, a fire perhaps, that burned just below the surface. “She’d called the police, but hadn’t the strength, or the clarity of mind, to call for help for herself.”
Bullock was a tall, slightly balding man in his late forties. Ben had known him for years, since they had both worked at the state attorney general’s office. “Would you please describe her injuries?”
“She’d been beaten, stripped naked. Her left kneecap was dislocated and broken. And as you’ve already heard, she broke her own hand to escape from the handcuffs. She was in severe shock. So I called for an EMSA team and they took her down to St. Francis’s.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I conducted a closer inspection of the… remains. The corpses. It’s standard procedure in a homicide.”
“Of course. You did the right thing. Under extremely difficult circumstances.”
An improper comment, to be sure. But what was Ben going to do, object? The jury would crucify him. Years ago, when Bullock had been his mentor, he had told Ben: “When they put a hero on the stand, make sure you treat him with respect. Then rip him apart. But respectfully.”
“Could you tell the jury more about the condition of the bodies when you found them?” Bullock asked.
“Of course.” The casualness of Marder’s response didn’t fool anyone. This was a question he was dreading. “All eight of them were dead. With the two deceased females, there was evidence of sexual assault of… one kind or another. They were all in the living room, except that the baby was found in his crib in the nursery. And of course, Erin had been chained up in the basement.”
“Perhaps you should describe the victims for us one at a time, sir.”
Marder shifted his weight around in the chair. “The first corpse I inspected was the father, Frank Faulkner. His body was facedown, spread-eagled on a white plush rug in the center of the living room. His throat had been cut. But that was not the only injury he had suffered. He appeared to have been beaten. Quite severely. One of his legs had been broken. One of his arms had been dislocated and twisted around in an unnatural position. His shirt was off, and I could see bruises and lacerations on his chest. One of his nipples had been cut off. And his eyes-” For the first time, Officer Marder choked.
“You were saying?” Bullock prodded. “About his eyes?”
Marder swallowed, then licked his lips. “His eyes had been… removed.”
“Removed?”
“Cut out,” he said, inhaling deeply. “Right out of the sockets.”
“I… see.” Ben knew this gruesome detail was not news to Bullock-probably not to anyone in the packed courtroom. The details of this crime had held the Tulsa media in thrall-which was why the courtroom was SRO. Nonetheless, the testimony had a chilling effect on everyone within earshot. Even Judge Kearns looked shaken. And Kearns, an African-American who had been on the bench for almost forty years, was a hard man to shake. “Did you ever… locate the missing eyes?”
“No. None of them.”
“None of them?” Bullock tilted his head sideways. “Were there… others?”
“All of the victims had suffered the same end, more or less. All of them had their eyes removed. And none of the eyes were ever found.”
“Even-?”
“Yes,” Marder said, and for the first time a note of anger, anger and perhaps something else, tinged his voice. “Even the baby.”
Ben and his client huddled in a corner of the corridor outside the courtroom, cradling paper cups in both hands, trying to use the heat of the coffee to warm themselves against the bitter cold that seemed to have enveloped the courthouse.
“So…” Ray said, as casually as possible, “you didn’t want to cross that guy?”
Ben shook his head. “You have a problem with that?”
Goldman was a handsome man in his early thirties, with a tanned face and strong features. Strands of gray already flecked his hair, but they only made his appearance more striking, giving him a sense of maturity that exceeded his chronological age. “I haven’t been to law school or anything, but I thought his detailed description of the crime scene was… damaging.”
“You were right.”
“Then why-”
“What would be the point? The man saw what he saw. It’s not as if he were lying.”
“But the jury will think-”
“The jury will think a lot worse if I spin around some poor schlep whose only crime was having the misfortune to be on duty the day the worst home invasion slash murder case in the history of Tulsa occurred. It’s not as if his testimony pointed to you, anyway. Everything he said was uncontested.”
“Then why did they spend so long on it?”
“Because Bullock knows that the more gruesome the crime-scene details, the more inclined the jury will be to convict.”
“Then why-”
Ben placed his hand on his client’s shoulder. “Ray, I promise you we will put on a defense. When the proper time comes. This just wasn’t it.”
Goldman nodded, but he didn’t seem much comforted by the counsel. His reserved, almost intellectual demeanor reminded Ben that this alleged multiple murderer was, after all, a scientist. “Ben… I know this is amateurish, and defense lawyers don’t like it, but-I didn’t do this. I’m not guilty.”
“Ray-”
“I know. It’s just-this crime is so… ghastly. I’m trying not to let it show, but it makes me sick to my stomach just to hear about it. I want you to know-I need to know that this isn’t just another job for you. I want you to know that I’m innocent.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said, not quite truthfully.
“I know. But I want you to know. I want you to want-”
“If you’re thinking I didn’t cross because I suspect you’re guilty and I want to send you up the river, forget it. I will fight for you. I will do anything the law allows to help you.”