Beach Road

I get one of the guys from Forensics to dust the TV remote for prints so we can turn the set off and I can ask the question of the hour.

“So who is this poor, unfortunate deceased individual?”

Chapter 37. Raiborne

THERE ARE THREE characteristics I find particularly endearing in a friend or coworker-a deep and dependable level of misery, male-pattern baldness, and a sexually stingy wife. Again, maybe all these traits work together, but that doesn’t make them any less likable, and my favorite medical examiner, Clifford Krauss, bless his heart, has all three.

Because of all his wi

By now we all know that the kid stretched out on his back on the metal gurney in the morgue is Michael Walker, seventeen, from Bridgehampton, Long Island, and one of the kids wanted in co

When I walk in, Krauss is at his desk in front of his laptop. He cups one hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “ Suffolk County coroner.”

“They just went through my report,” he says after hanging up, “and are pretty sure that the same gun that killed Walker was also used in the three Hampton homicides on Labor Day weekend.”

Then Krauss grabs his long yellow pad, comes over to where I’m standing next to Walker, and, wielding a stained Hunan Village chopstick for a pointer, takes me on a dead man’s tour.

The crispness and intensity of Krauss’s delivery hasn’t softened in nine years, and if anything, his enthusiasm for gleaning secrets from a corpse has only increased. He starts with the exact size and location of the entrance and exit wounds, and the angle at which the bullet traveled. Reading from his notes, he describes the caliber, make, and casing of the bullet picked out of the plaster from behind the bed, and says all three are consistent with the weapon and silencer recovered by police in Long Island.

“I put the time of death at early in the morning of September eleventh,” he says, “very early in the morning, approximately four a.m.”

“Approximately?”

“Yeah,” says Krauss, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Could have been four thirty. All his blood work and the amount of dilation of his pupils indicate someone who’d been in a deep sleep right up to the moment he was shot.”

“Hell of a way to wake up,” I say.

“I’d prefer a kiss from J-Lo,” says Krauss.

“So Walker wasn’t the one watching the tube?”

“Not unless he left it on.”

“Also, we found a basketball cap on the floor of the closet, where it looked like someone was searching for something. The hat’s barely been worn and is about three sizes too big for this guy here.”

“Isn’t that how they wear everything now?”

“Jeans, coats, sweatshirts, but not hats. And none of Mr. Walker’s prints are on it. Maybe if we’re really lucky, it was left by the shooter.

“That’s all you got for me, Cliffy?”

“One last thing. The rat who snacked on Walker ’s big toe-a black Norwegian, four to six pounds, female, pregnant.”

“Why’s it always got to be a black rat, Krauss? Why never a white one?”

One thing, just for the record. That description of Cliffy’s wife-pure bullshit. Her name is Emily, and she’s a sweetheart.

Chapter 38. Marie Scott

LAST WEEK THIS very same Riverhead courtroom was filled with a sickening indifference. It is even worse now. It turns my stomach inside out.

Today the room’s bursting with reporters, family and friends of the victims, and, more than anything else, a lust for blood. The parents of the three dead boys stare at me with powerful hatred, and Lucinda Walker, Michael’s mom, who I’ve known since she was a grade-school student at Saint Vincent ’s, looks at me as if she doesn’t know what to think. I feel so bad for Lucinda. I cried for her last night. Deep down she must realize Dante would no more kill Michael than Michael would kill Dante, but there’s so much hurt in her eyes that I look away and squeeze Clarence’s arm and rub the embossed leather cover of my Bible.

The spectators crane their necks and gawk as my grandson Dante, in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, is led to that bare table with nothing but a water pitcher in the middle of it. They stir with anticipation or whatever as a booming voice intones, “The State of New York versus Dante Halleyville” as if it were the ring a

The electricity builds as the judge leans into his microphone and says, “The state of New York charges Mr. Halleyville with a fourth count of first-degree murder.” Then the judge asks, “How does the defendant plead?”

Dante’s court lawyer says, “Not guilty.” But it’s as if he has said nothing at all. No one seems to believe him, or even listen to the man. Until this very moment, I don’t think I believed that a trial could ever really happen, but now I know it can.

The crowd’s only interest is the district attorney, and now that white man, so young he can’t possibly understand what he’s saying, so forgive him, Lord, addresses the judge.

“Your Honor,” he says, “in light of the heinous nature of the original crimes and the wanton disregard the defendant displayed in executing his accomplice, just as he did in the first three execution-style murders, the state of New York has no choice but to seek the ultimate penalty available to defend its citizens. In this case, the prosecution takes the extraordinary step of seeking the death penalty.”

I nearly collapse, but I won’t let myself fall in front of all these people. The state of New York wants to murder my grandson! Lord, it’s as simple as that. The state wants to murder my miraculous grandson who is as i

Lord, help me, and please help Dante in his terrible time of need.

I look at Clarence, and then I look at Mr. Dunleavy. “Please help us,” I say to him. “Please help Dante. He didn’t kill those boys.”

Chapter 39. Tom

IF YOU’VE NEVER seen a live media courtroom circus, consider yourself lucky.

Vans from all the TV networks and the big cable shows have been double-lined outside the courtroom building all day, and everywhere I look a correspondent is summoning the required fake gravitas to describe the ins and outs of such a high-profile death-penalty case.

I can’t get away from the courthouse fast enough. Eyes cast downward, I thread my way through the crowded parking lot, trying to avoid an encounter with people I’ve known my whole life.

I’m so eager to get into my car, I don’t notice Clarence in the front seat until my key is almost in the ignition. He’s shattered, sobbing into the back of his hand.

“They want to kill him, Tom. He’ll never get a fair trial. You see what it’s like in there.”

“Clarence, come back to my place tonight. I could use the company,” I tell him.

“I’m not after your sympathy, Tom. I’m here to ask you to be Dante’s lawyer.”

“Clarence, I haven’t been in a courtroom in over a year. Even then I was nothing special.”