Beach Road

“And Michael Walker’s prints on the gun. That fails the smell test too. If Dante killed Walker he would have wiped all the prints off before discarding the weapon. He wouldn’t have carefully removed his prints and left Walker ’s.

“Now let’s talk about the Miami Heat cap-because this is where the actual murderers slipped up in a couple of important ways. Since the killers couldn’t get Dante’s print on the gun, they decided to leave one of his caps at the scene. But how could the killers know that the hats on Dante’s shelves were purely symbolic, that they were never worn, that Dante thought it was bad luck to put any of those hats on before the NBA draft? They couldn’t.

“That’s why they left a cap that had no trace of Dante’s sweat or hair oil on the band. They left a hat at the crime scene that had never been worn. If Dante had gone off that night to kill his best friend, would he pick the brightest, reddest cap in his collection? And in a year, the prosecution hasn’t been able to find one person, not one, who saw a nearly seven-foot man in a bright-red cap on the streets of New York City that night. Of course they didn’t. He wasn’t on the street that night.

“So what really happened? Who are the killers?

“Someone or some group of people co

“A hat that Dante had never worn at a crime scene. A gun planted in a Dumpster in a way that makes no sense. And then, the biggest blunder-leaning way too heavily on one crooked cop.”

At that, the whole room squirms, particularly the men in blue standing shoulder to shoulder along all four walls.

“Are we really expected to believe it’s a coincidence that the same cop who received the so-called anonymous tip about the gun in the Dumpster also got the call from Nikki Robinson when she came up with her ridiculous fabrication of rape? And this is the same cop who arrested her for possession? And the same cop who was left alone in Dante’s bedroom with those hats? Please.

“But for all the mistakes the killers made, one calculation proved to be spot on-which is that the police would be quick to believe that a black teenager, even one with no history of violence and the prospect of being a top selection in the NBA draft, would throw it all away because he lost a meaningless pickup basketball game and got hit by a harmless punch. Why? Because that’s what black teenagers do, right? They go off for no reason.

“From the begi

“I know Dante Halleyville, and there’s nothing fragile about his personality or character. When his older brother veered into crime, he stayed in school and worked on his game. When his mother lost her battle with drug addiction, he stayed in school and worked on his game, and now he’s stood up to almost a year in a maximum-security jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

“In this case, as in so many others, race is nothing but a smoke screen. I know you’re not going to be distracted or misled. You’re going to see the prosecution’s case for what it is. Because there is not one piece of credible evidence co

“And then, Madam Forewoman, you’re going to say the two words that Dante Halleyville has being waiting to hear for a year-not guilty.

“If you don’t do that, you will be helping the murderers get away with a fifth murder, the murder of a remarkable young man, a very good friend of mine named Dante Halleyville.”

Chapter 100. Kate

TOM COLLAPSES IN his chair, and the jurors stare at him stone-faced. Five of the jurors are African Americans and eight are women, but talking about race is a risk, particularly to a jury that’s mostly white.

Howard can’t wait to make us pay for it. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Melvin Howard. I’m fifty-two years of age, and to the best of my knowledge, I’ve been black the whole time.

“In Alabama, where my people are from, my grandparents were the grandchildren of slaves, and when my parents were coming up, black people couldn’t use the same bathrooms as white folks or eat at the same restaurants. But none of that disgraceful history has one iota to do with Dante Halleyville or this trial, and Mr. Dunleavy knows it.”

Tom didn’t say it did. In fact, he was saying the opposite, but Howard is twisting it anyway, doing whatever he thinks will work. But all that matters is how it plays to the twelve folks in the good seats, and when I look in their eyes I can’t read a thing. I’m proud of what Tom has done, but I’m nervous too.

“Race and police corruption?” asks Howard sarcastically. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Now where have I heard that before?” And then he looks at the end of the press row where Ro

“Oh, now I remember. It was from the tabloid trial of the century, the murder trial of Lorenzo Lewis. About the only thing missing is a snappy little slogan, like ‘if the hat’s too red, their case is dead.’

“But how many people still think Lorenzo’s i

“Now is the time for you to see through the nonsense and the imaginative conspiracy theories and focus on the evidence. For starters, we got a murder weapon with Michael Walker’s prints all over it, recovered at a Southampton diner three hours after Dante Halleyville stops there. Although the defense tried very hard to put words in his mouth, Dr. Ewald Olson, one of the nation’s top forensic scientists, has testified those prints could only belong to Michael Walker, and that gun killed all four of those young men.

“Now let me say something about a highly decorated East Hampton police officer named Hugo Lindgren.” In Riverhead every other family has a relative who’s a cop or corrections officer, and Howard is about to appeal directly to their defensive loyalties.

“By irresponsibly dragging his reputation through the mud, they have impugned not only an officer who has earned seventeen commendations in his nine years on the force, but by extension all policemen and corrections officers who risk their lives every day so that we can go about our business in safety.

“According to the defense, it’s evidence of a conspiracy that one cop should be so involved in every aspect of the biggest murder case in East Hampton in a hundred years. Good cops like Lindgren spend their whole career waiting for cases like this. It’s only natural that he would become obsessed with it. And remember, the East Hampton PD is a small unit, so for one officer to be involved a couple of times over the course of an investigation is hardly suspicious. It’s surprising to me his name didn’t come up more often.

“The defense, in its desperation, has said a couple other things that are simply untrue and need to be corrected.

“One is that it’s suspicious that the call about the gun came from the pay phone at the Princess Diner. Maybe most of us have cell phones now, but what if the caller was a busboy working the overnight shift at the restaurant that night for minimum wage? Not everyone can afford a cell phone. The second is the implication that the gun was found after the defendant told police he had been to the diner that night and that the defendant volunteered that information. Neither is true. Lindgren was nowhere near the room where the defendant was interviewed, and the police found out Halleyville had been at the diner after the gun was found.