The Alligator Man (23 page)

“Yes.”

“And your investigation showed that William Fuller, who had two kids in St. Albans, came to Verona; registered at the Verona Inn as Tom Jones; paid cash; parked his car in the parking lot; and went to the Last Stop, the bar next to the Verona Inn, every night and got drunk, correct?”

“In part.”

“Let’s stay with that part for now—is there anything criminal in that behavior?”

“No.”

“Now, Verona is sixty miles from Gladestown, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And is it correct that the bartender, George Russo, told you that William Fuller left the bar, the Last Stop, which is in Verona right next to the Verona Inn, somewhere around eleven o’clock on the evening of April tenth?”

“That’s correct.”

“And according to the bartender he’d been doing that for a week—drinking every night and then leaving the bar?”

“That’s correct.”

“And is it also correct that nobody on the evening of April tenth or at any time ever saw William Fuller in Gladestown?”

“That’s not correct. Frederick Jenkins saw his car on Gladestown Road later that evening.”

“How much later?”

“Nobody has an accurate timetable. Mr. Jenkins puts it at eleven thirty approximately and Mr. Russo puts it at eleven approximately that he left. So if each one is off ten minutes or so, the times are pretty consistent.”

“They are?”

“Yes, in my opinion.”

“You just stated a moment ago that Freddie Jenkins saw my client’s car on Gladestown Road. That’s not correct, is it?”

“Not exactly.”

“And to be exact, Freddie Jenkins didn’t know if he saw a Toyota or a Honda or some other make or model. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“So, Freddie Jenkins, a seventeen-year-old high school student, sees what he describes as a gray car that he saw under a streetlight at night, and that’s your basis for concluding that William Fuller was in Gladestown on the night of April tenth and killed Roy Johnson?”

“That and the fact that Fuller had a very strong motive.”

“So did a lot of other people. Do you know where they were that night?”

Jeanette was on her feet again. “Objection.”

“Sustained.”

“Do you know if any of them were within sixty miles of Gladestown at eleven o’clock at night?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.” The judge looked directly at Kevin and pointed his right index finger. “Counsel, I’m warning you. I sustained the last question. You should have known better than to ask the same question again.”

Kevin stared right back at him. If he was going to make accusations in front of the jury, Kevin was going to respond. “It was a different question, Your Honor.”

“No, it wasn’t. Now proceed.”

Kevin paused for a minute. He had been asking the last few questions rapid-fire, and he wanted to let both the questions and the answers sink in before proceeding.

“After you identified Mr. Fuller as a suspect, did you ever attempt to test his car to see if it was involved in this hit-and-run?”

“Yes, we did.”

“When was that?”

“May tenth. It was a Tuesday, I believe.”

“And what did you do?”

“We impounded it, took it to the department, and took it apart.”

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t find anything linking this vehicle to the hit-and-run in Gladestown on April tenth, 2005, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“No further questions.”

“Redirect, Ms. Truluc?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.” Jeanette walked to the podium without any notes.

“Did you expect to find anything when you checked the vehicle out?”

“No. It was a month later. You’ve got to follow through and check it out but I didn’t expect to find any evidence. We may not have found anything if we got the car the next day.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If you hit somebody and, say, knock them into the swamp as in this case, there might be nothing on the car to show that—no dent, no clothing, no piece of skin—nothing.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Okay. Let’s break for lunch at this point,” the judge said. It was ten minutes to twelve. “We’ll reconvene at one o’clock.” After the jurors had filed out, he addressed the lawyers.

“Ms. Truluc, when do you think you’ll be finished?”

“I may be done this afternoon, Judge. I’ve got five witnesses, maybe six, although my questioning to most of them will be short. Mr. Booth, the FBI man, appears by video deposition. I don’t know for sure if I’ll finish because I don’t know how long Mr. Wylie’s cross-examination of the other witnesses is going to be.”

“Fair enough. If you have some objections to Mr. Wylie’s cross of Mr. Booth, you both may want to prepare those at lunchtime and we’ll take them up before we show the video of Mr. Booth’s deposition to the jury.

“Okay. If Ms. Truluc finishes this afternoon, Mr. Wylie, be prepared to start your case on Monday morning. I’ll hear any motions then too. If she doesn’t finish today, I still want you to be prepared to start on Monday, Mr. Wylie.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Kevin replied.

Sitting in the courtroom eating his Snickers bar after everybody had left for lunch, Kevin wondered about what had happened that morning and what was about to occur. He was somewhat surprised by Jeanette’s brief redirect of Vern Fleming, but as he thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t really gotten to Vern at all. As for this afternoon, he wondered who the five,
possibly
six witnesses were.

She’s going to call the other FBI man,
he thought.
She’s going to refute the allegation that Roy Johnson was the confidential informant. She’s going to open that door.

C
all your next witness,” Judge Thorpe said at approximately five minutes after one.

“The State calls George Russo.”

George Russo was a thick man about six feet tall but in good shape overall. He looked like he probably played guard on the football team in high school. The beard he wore when he first spoke with Carlisle and later with Vern was gone. He answered Jeanette’s questions directly and without any commentary, but he was clearly nervous. He told Jeanette that he was the bartender at the Last Stop and how this man came in every night and drank heavily during the week before April tenth, 2005.

Kevin initially suspected that they had prepared beforehand. He became sure when they reached that dramatic moment of every criminal trial.

“Do you see the man who came in the bar every night and drank heavily during the week before and including April tenth in this courtroom?”

“I do.”

“Can you point him out for the jury?”

George Russo raised his right arm and pointed his finger directly at Billy. “That’s him right there. That’s the man.” It looked like a scene from a movie.

“What time did he leave the bar on April tenth?”

“Around eleven.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know why but I remember the news coming on a little bit after he left.”

“The eleven o’clock news?”

“Yes.”

“So he left before eleven?”

“Yeah, but not too much before. Maybe ten minutes or so.”

“What was his condition when he left?”

“He’d had a few but he was coherent.”

“Was he friendly?”

“No, he was agitated. I remember just before he left, I was down at that end of the bar serving some customers and I heard him talking to himself. He said something like ‘I’m gonna kill him tonight.’”

“Where did he go? Do you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you know if he had a car?”

“Yes, he did, a gray Toyota.”

“Did you see him get in it that night?”

“I did. Right after he left the bar.”

Before finishing up, she took him through his decision to drive over to Gladestown and report Billy’s behavior to Officer Carlisle Buchanan.

“When I read that kid’s statement in the paper, especially the part about the old gray car, I thought this might be the guy so I drove over and reported it.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Cross-examination, Mr. Wylie?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

There was something about George Russo’s nervousness that bothered Kevin. Perhaps he was just nervous because he was in a courtroom speaking in a public setting. Perhaps there was another reason. Kevin was going to try to find out.

“So, Mr. Russo, your testimony is that Mr. Fuller came into your bar every night for a week, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And I think you also testified that a lot of your clientele were guests from the hotel, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“Ever see any other guests stay for a week and drop in for a drink every night?”

“I’m sure there were, but I don’t recall.”

“You don’t recall. Mr. Fuller is the only person you recall, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you work last night?”

“Yes, but not at the Last Stop.”

“I have some records here that show that you worked at the Last Stop from April fifth to May sixth, is that accurate?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Do you want to look at the records to make sure?”

“No. That sounds about right.”

“So, you didn’t see Mr. Fuller come in the bar for a week because you were only employed five days before the event in question, correct?”

“I started work on Tuesday, which was the fifth, so I saw him come in for four straight days. Maybe I should have clarified that.”

“And you walked into the sheriff’s office in Gladestown on May fourth, correct?

“Sounds right.”

“And you voluntarily left your job on May sixth and haven’t worked there since, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So you came to the Last Stop, let’s say, six days before Roy Johnson was killed and left two days after you gave your testimony to the police, correct?”

Jeanette was on her feet. “Objection. Asked and answered.”

“Sustained.” The judge looked at Kevin. “That’s a summary, Mr. Wylie. You’ll have your chance for a summary in closing.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Kevin replied. He’d already had enough of Judge Thorpe. However, he would need him when it came to his crucial witnesses. Kevin had a few more questions for George Russo.

“Did Mr. Fuller drive his car into the bar?”

Judge Thorpe glared at Kevin. Jeanette didn’t make an objection, though.

“Of course not,” Russo replied.

“The parking lot is outside the bar?”

“Yeah, but you can see it.”

“And for some reason during your first four days on the job, you had time to not only notice Mr. Fuller and give an accurate description to the police, you noticed what kind of car he was driving, including the color and the make, correct?”

“Yes. It wasn’t very busy…”

Kevin cut him off. “No further questions.”

Jeanette did not have any follow-up.

“Next witness,” Judge Thorpe said before Russo was even out the door.

“The State calls Maria Perez.”

The bailiff left the courtroom and returned moments later with a young Mexican woman. After he administered the oath, Maria took the stand. Her English was not very good, and she kept apologizing to Jeanette when she asked Jeanette to repeat certain questions and to the jury when particular jurors asked her to repeat her answers. Eventually, however, they muddled through. Maria was the chambermaid who cleaned Billy’s room every day at the Verona Inn. She identified Billy as he sat in the courtroom and she added without prompting from Jeanette that he was a very nice man.

When it came time for cross-examination, Kevin stood up and thanked Maria for coming down and testifying but said he had no questions for her. Maria had no stake in this case at all. She had no reason to be anything but truthful. There was nothing in her testimony that needed to be clarified. As an experienced trial lawyer, Kevin understood there was absolutely no benefit in cross-examining this witness.

The next witness was somewhat of a surprise, but not really. Jeanette needed Becky Yates to establish conclusively for the jury that Freddie was not necking with her on the night of April tenth. There was a downside to her testimony, however, and Kevin immediately brought it out on cross-examination.

“Freddie says you called him to meet you on the night of April tenth. Did you?”

“No.”

“Had you been out there at the Chamber of Commerce on other nights?”

“Yeah. We were out there on Friday and Saturday night, the eighth and ninth.”

“Around what time?”

“Eleven thirty to twelve thirty maybe.”

“Did you call him on those days?”

“I think he called me one night and I called him the other.”

“Did you ever talk to Freddie about the night of the tenth?”

“I sure did. He said I called him and I told him I never called him that night.”

“Could you have been mistaken?”

“No. It was a Sunday night. I wouldn’t call him on a Sunday night.”

They did the video of Harvey Booth after that. Jeanette had laid out for the judge all her objections to specific questions and answers. The judge listened to her with a smile on his face. The jury had been removed for this argument. Judge Thorpe ruled immediately after she finished her argument. “As I told you the day Mr. Booth’s deposition was taken, Ms. Truluc, I’m inclined to give Mr. Wylie some leeway in defending his client. Whether his strategy is correct or not remains to be seen, but I’m going to let all the testimony in.”

The judge told the jury they were to treat the video testimony of Harvey Booth the same as if Harvey were actually in the courtroom testifying.

Everybody watched and listened in rapt silence as Harvey’s video testimony was played for the jury. Jeanette got in the information she needed about Billy’s retirement account and what he lost. Then it was time for Kevin’s cross-examination. He watched the jury carefully: He saw the moment when they sat up in their seats and focused their attention more intently.

“And is it accurate that Roy Johnson at the time of his death was under criminal investigation?”

“Yes.”

“For what specifically?”

“No indictment had been drawn, but basically, it was for defrauding investors, employees, insider trading—you name it.”

“Was an indictment imminent?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘imminent.’ I can say that it was certain.”

“Mr. Johnson had an attorney, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And that was Bernie Stang?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if Mr. Stang had any negotiations with the U.S. attorney regarding this matter?”

“No, I don’t.”

“When did the criminal investigation of Dynatron begin?”

“I can’t say for sure. I know we had been looking into the company’s finances for about a year.”

“Before Roy Johnson left the company?”

“Possibly.”

“Were you aware that Mr. Johnson received a severance package of approximately one hundred million dollars when he left the company?”

“Yes. I was.”

“When you reviewed all the accounting information for Dynatron, were you able to determine where all of the earnings of the company went?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Dynatron, like most major corporations in the United States, had offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Tax havens. We could not get at those accounts. We could trace money that went to those accounts but not money that was earned or money that was withdrawn.”

“So Roy Johnson could have received more than one hundred million dollars?”

“Possibly.”