Page 61 of The Accomplice
‘Well, only real way is the front …’
Lake stood still.
‘The front door is theonlyway in,’ he said. ‘The back door has better cover but he didn’t even try to enter that way. There are no tool marks on the locks. The deadbolts on the inside of the kitchen … Shit, you can’t see the deadbolts from the outside. He knew about them. Miller had been in this house before …’
But Bloch wasn’t listening. She was on the phone to Eddie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EDDIE
‘Mr. Flynn, do you wish to make an opening statement at this time ?’ asked Judge Stoker.
The courtroom had flooded with silence. After the murmurs that erupted from White’s opening, and Stoker’s question to me, it had now settled into an almost liquid quiet. A dense nothingness in the air. A total void of sound. Or so it seemed to me.
My head was whirling. A thousand problems were thundering through my brain.
‘Eddie, we’re not helping Kate. Just go talk to the jury,’ whispered Harry.
‘And what am I going to say ?’
‘Just tell them what Kate told us.’
I got up, took a long drink of water and put the glass back down. My heels were like a snare drum on the floor – the noise filling that pool of void, sending ripples of sound along the four walls of this place. I looked down, found that I was standing in the center of the courtroom, facing the jury. The judge on my left, the rest of the courtroom on my right. I looked at the faces of each jury member. There were some, like Ethel Gorman, who couldn’t hide their disgust. It was written on her cruel lips and her small black pin eyes.
‘The prosecution will talk a lot about the victims in this case. And this is only right. It’s Mr. White’s job to give a voice to the dead in this courtroom. To let them speak through him. And to show you who killed them. Ladies and gentlemen, there are two problems faced by the prosecution. The first is that the man who killed these victims is not in this courtroom. He’s still out there. Still taking lives. And the FBI and NYPD can’t catch him. The FBI and NYPD have rarely faced this much public pressure to bring a criminal to justice. Because they have failed to do so, they are offering you his wife instead. You will hear the evidence against Carrie Miller, but really this is evidence against her husband, Daniel Miller. There is no evidence to link Carrie Miller to these murders. There is no evidence that proves Carrie Miller knew her husband was a killer. There is no evidence that proves she ever assisted or aided him, knowingly. Carrie Miller is a victim of the Sandman. She has had her life torn apart. She will never trust another man. Not for as long as she lives. Imagine finding out that your partner is a killer ? Imagine what that would do to someone ?
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecutor will try to ride two horses in this case. He’s going to try to prove that she was involved in these murders, but that is going to fail. When it does fail, he is going to try and show that she knew about the murders, and colluded in those murders, even lying to the authorities.’
I paused, took a moment to drink in the expressions of the jurors.
They weren’t buying it.
I realized in that moment it was because, deep down, I didn’t buy it either.
Carrie Miller was carrying around something heavy. Something dark that latched onto her heart. And whatever that was, it had caused her to run from this trial. Run from me, Kate and Harry. But when I’d spoken to her and she told me, face to face, that she hadn’t killed anyone, I had believed her. Deep in my soul, Iknewthat was true. And yet, here I was, delivering an opening statement, doubt about my client’s innocence running rampant in my own mind. I had made a mistake taking this case. Now, with Kate’s life in the balance, I had no choice. I had to make this jury believe me. I had to win. Not for Carrie.
For Kate.
‘I’m not going to tell you Carrie Miller didn’t have suspicions about her husband.’
I paused again, let that one float around the jury. Some of them shifted in their seats. One or two leaned forward, just a little.
‘At what point does a suspicion become a legal obligation to tell the police you think your husband might have hurt someone ? That’s a question that’s never been in front of a jury before. Her husband lied to her. And she believed him. If that’s a crime, you can lock up every married person in New York.
‘Carrie Miller isn’t here today. She might not be here for the rest of the trial. That’s okay, because she doesn’t have to prove anything. It’s the prosecution’s job to prove their case. And when it comes right down to it, they don’t have a case against Carrie Miller. I believe that soon enough – you will see that too.’
I turned and started walking back to my seat. My phone vibrated. With my back to the judge, I checked the caller ID. It was Bloch.
‘The People call Doctor Farley Climpton,’ said White.
The medical examiner. White was going to start this case with a horror picture. Several of them. Lurid photos of the victims. The jury would carry some of these images around in their minds for the rest of their lives. And with that terror in their guts, he would then proceed to point the finger at Carrie Miller and tell the jury she was responsible. Looking at those photos inflicts trauma and the jury would need to blame someone for their psychological injury – and the blame rested easy on a defendant.
‘Take over a minute,’ I said to Harry, then carried on walking right out the door.
I answered the call in the hallway.
‘What have you got ?’ I asked Bloch.
