Premeditated Murder (15 page)

“Doctorow,” Zack interjected.

“Right.” He put out his cigarette butt in one of the ashtrays on his desk. “That you'd probably be out to see me. I read in the papers that Cal's in a jackpot. I'm real sorry to hear that. Cal's a class guy. A real gentleman, you know? Scary picture, though, huh?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “Well, we're looking to find out what you were working on for Cal. He's told us some pretty amazing things about these people he shot in that apartment.”

Rychek lit another cigarette, squinting through the smoke. “I got just what you're looking for.”

He went over to a bookcase that stood against the wall to the left of his desk and started picking through the stacks and stacks of videos and audiotapes that cluttered the shelves. “I know I got 'em here somewhere,” Rychek continued. “Cal told me I gotta destroy all my paper files, but I saved the tapes.”

Zack looked over at Terry.
What?

“Wait a minute,” Terry said. “Did you just say that Cal told you to destroy your files?”

Rychek kept digging through the tapes. “Yeah. He said these people were terrorists and that I needed to protect myself. He said that if they found out I was spying on them, they might come after me. So he said I had to destroy all my files.”

Worcester, Massachusetts

POLICE SERGEANT PETE VANDERWALL WASN'T surprised when he found Natalie Reggio awake in her bed at one-thirty in the morning. They had spoken on the phone, and he had told her that he was pulling an overnight shift and only would be able to stop by after midnight to take her statement. She had left her door ajar, and he knocked before he went in.

If anything, she looked smaller in the hospital bed than when he'd brought her here after the bar fight. Her head was bandaged, and there was some bruising around one of her eyes and on the left side of her forehead, but otherwise, she just looked tired and little.

According to the nurse on duty that night, her full name was Natalie Jean Reggio. She was seventeen years old, and had suffered a fractured skull as a result of the fight at Rockets. By the time Pete had brought her in, her blood alcohol level was above .20, and she had slipped into a coma from the blow to her head. Fortunately, she emerged from the coma the next day, but there had been brain swelling, so she had to remain in the hospital for some time. She was lucky to be alive.

From the other officers' reports, Pete had learned that Natalie had gone to Rockets with her boyfriend, a kid named Nick, and everybody was drinking. Another girl, named Robin, was dancing a little closer to Nick than Natalie liked, so she threw a drink in Robin's face. Robin and Natalie started to fight, which would have been bad enough if Robin's boyfriend hadn't come over to help. Nick got in his way, a bouncer came over to break up Robin and Natalie, one thing led to another, and suddenly people were on the floor, and chairs and tables were flying all over the place.

Exactly how Natalie got the injury to her head remained a mystery. There were two leading theories: she had gotten hit with a beer bottle, or she had slipped and fallen off a table, but that was something for the D.A. or a jury to figure out. All Pete wanted to do was to get a statement and get back to the station.

There was an older woman asleep in the other bed in the room, so Natalie was watching the TV muted. She turned it off when she saw Pete. He left the door open as he entered the room, got his pad and a pen out of his pocket, and took a seat beside her bed. “I'm Sergeant Pete Vanderwall—” he began to say, but she cut him off.

“I know who you are,” she said softly. “You're the one that saved my life. I—I wanted to get a chance to apologize to you for my behavior.” She met his gaze head- on. This was something new—a kid who was willing to take responsibility. “And to say thank you for what you did that night.” Her eyes welled up with tears, but she pushed ahead. “I don't remember everything that happened, but I do remember calling you”—she took a deep breath and kept going—“calling you an asshole, and trying to kick you. I can't tell you how embarrassed …” was as far as she got. Her voice broke, and her gaze fell. The tears rolled down her cheeks.

Pete reached for some tissues that were on the wheeled bed tray and handed them to the kid. She wiped her face and gently blew her nose. She was obviously still in a lot of pain. She was tiny, but she had guts. He couldn't remember the last teenager in her kind of trouble that had the balls to face up to what they'd done and apologize like that.

If this had happened when he was a rookie, Pete would have assumed that such a traumatic event would scare Natalie into completely and immediately turning her life around. But after years of watching kids self-destruct, he had moved squarely into the “I'll believe it when I see it” camp. Maybe Natalie was going to surprise him and actually do something with her life. But it was going to take a whole lot more than a tearful apology, no matter how gutsy, before he would start to feel hopeful for her. She was probably well on her way to being a full-time drunk. Would she go to AA meetings? Would she dump all the friends that she hung out with, the ones that drank every weekend, maybe every night? Would she spend her day working or going to school, instead of hanging around malls, convenience store parking lots, and bars? Natalie had a lot of issues to face, a lot of questions to answer.

“All right, Natalie, I appreciate that,” Pete said. “But right now, I need you to calm down and tell me what happened that night. You can start by telling me how you got into that bar, and what you were doing drinking at your age.”

Framingham, Massachusetts

“I'M GOING TO KILL HIM MYSELF,” TERRY ANNOUNCED. “Never mind the trial. I'm just going to kill him myself.”

Terry had a point, but he was already doing over eighty-five on the Mass Pike. He didn't need any more encouragement. “At least we got the tapes,” Zack replied.

Terry switched lanes to pass an eighteen-wheeler. “Yeah. A completely inadmissible audiotape of phone conversations in Arabic, which, if we're lucky, are half audible,” he said. “And a videotape of unrecognizable people coming in and out of an apartment building. If I were the D.A., I'd set him free right now.”

“It's more than we had when we started,” Zack countered. “Maybe while I'm out of town, you can find somebody to translate the tape for you.”

Terry made a sound of disgust. “It's like he set out to commit the perfect crime. Kill a bunch of people, stay there until the cops come, admit it, and then make sure that whatever evidence might possibly help you is destroyed. The guy's a freakin' criminal genius.”

Terry definitely had a point.

ELEVEN

DIST. ATTY. O'NEILL:
Can you describe what you saw when you arrived?

MR. WALLACE:
Yes. Well, my partner and me went into the apartment, because another unit was responding to a victim in the hallway.

Q:
You mean the defendant?

A:
Yeah. I guess so. I didn't really see because I went right into the apartment.

Q:
And what did you see when you went into the apartment?

A:
It was incredible. I never seen anything like it in ten years working as a paramedic.

Q:
Well, can you describe what you saw?

A:
There was bodies laying all over the place, and blood everywhere. It was like a war zone.

(Trial Volume VI, Page 180)

Dear Kev,

     It's hard for me to write these letters, because I miss you so much. And I feel so bad.

     I can't stop thinking about everything that happened that day, and I'm afraid you might have been scared, or you might have suffered

     I can't do this.

(Letter #6 from Calvin Thompkins to deceased son, Kevin)

SENATOR WILBRAHAM:
Mr. Curko, what was your position in the Graham administration?

MR. CURKO:
My official title was Special Assistant to the President, Director of Communications. But my role in President Graham's administration was speechwriter. I was President Graham's head speechwriter.

Q:
And did you stay on in that capacity after President Graham's death?

A:
Yes, at first I did. When President Ferguson took office, he asked—I think he asked the entire senior staff to stay on, to assist him in his transition.

Q:
Why did you ultimately resign?

A:
Well, I didn't feel that I was the right person for what President Ferguson needed in that position. When I served in President Graham's administration, speeches were prepared for him well in advance, leaving ample time for his review, staff meetings if necessary, revisions, et cetera. From the first day that President Ferguson took office, it was clear that he had a very different style of communicating with the public.

Q:
Are you talking about his first speech as President?

A:
Exactly. Apparently, he wrote that entirely by himself, hours before he made the speech. I didn't have anything to do with it.

Q:
You weren't consulted at all?

A:
No. I thought some of the speech was remarkable, but I would have suggested alternatives to certain passages had I been given the opportunity.

Q:
Mr. Curko, in your capacity as head speechwriter, were you familiar with an individual named Charles Cullhane?

A:
Yes. Charley Cullhane was one of the junior staff members in the Communications Office. He resigned for personal reasons shortly after President Ferguson took office.

Q:
But he worked for some time in the Graham administration?

A:
Yes. He came on board during the first year of President Graham's term.

Q:
Were you Mr. Cullhane's supervisor?

A:
I guess you could call it that, yes. Charley reported directly to me.

Q:
At any time, did you order Mr. Cullhane to prepare memoranda compiling certain information regarding federal judges or potential nominees for appointment to federal judgeships?

[Witness consulting with counsel.]

A:
At no time did I ever order Mr. Cullhane to prepare any such memos.

Q:
Were you aware that Mr. Cullhane prepared such memos?

A:
No, I was not.

Q:
Were you aware of anyone in the administration ordering Mr. Cullhane to prepare such memos?

A:
No, I was not.

Q:
When did you become aware of the existence of memoranda which compiled such information?

[Witness consulting with counsel.]

A:
I believe that it was in May, about a month after I resigned. I was contacted by a member of Vernon Browning's office, who informed me about the existence of the memos.

(Transcripts of the Special Senate Subcommittee Hearing on the Cullhane Memos, Volume XV, Pages 85–87)

April 6—Washington, D.C.

MATT AND SAMMY HAD JUST FINISHED A LATE dinner at the residence—some kind of salmon thing that Sammy loved and that Matt tolerated. But the blueberry pie à la mode was really working for him. Sammy wasn't a big dessert person unless chocolate was involved.

“I ran into Veronica Graham at a luncheon today,” Matt said. “She asked me if I had a chance to look at that laptop she dropped off after Jim's funeral.”

“Did you tell her about those memos you were wondering about?”

Matt had spoken to Sammy about that mystery some time ago. “No,” he said. “I didn't see the point.”