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“Keep your seat, counsel. Mr. Owens, that is the last time I want to hear about song lyrics.”
“My apologies, Your Honor. It won’t happen again.”
Owens returned to his seat, seemingly satisfied that twice being reprimanded by the judge was well worth it, as long as that song stuck in the jurors’ heads.
The judge turned his attention to the defense. “Mr. Swyteck? Your opening statement?”
Jack hesitated. For weeks, he had been pushing the prosecutor for a clear articulation of how he intended to prove Imani’s active participation in the murder of Tyler McCormick. The answer had come in a song.
Imani grabbed her lawyer by the wrist and whispered, “My songs are not murder plots. You have to say something.”
Jack understood her reaction. But the joint defense team had weighed all options before the start of trial, and the agreed-upon plan was for Jack to plant seeds of doubt in his opening statement, to lay out a theme for the defense, not to respond point by point to every theory and every piece of evidence presented by the prosecutor. It was a good strategy, and Jack resisted the urge to change it based on Owens’s clever reference to a song.
Jack rose and stepped to the well of the courtroom, that stage-like opening before the bench where lawyers could seemingly step away from the action and speak directly to the jury, as if delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy. He buttoned his suit coat, bid the jurors a good afternoon, and dove straight into his theme.
“A cheating spouse, a dead lover. If it were really that simple, this jury would have the easiest job on the planet.
“But it isn’t so easy. Your job is to make the prosecution prove its case against Shaky Nichols and Imani Nichols beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard applies to each of them. They were husband and wife at the time of the victim’s death, but the charges against them are separate. Each has been charged with murder in the second degree. Each has been charged with mutilation of a dead body. It’s as if the prosecutor wants you to tack a scarlet letter on each of their foreheads and simply conclude that they did it.Theydid it.”
Jack shook his head. “The prosecution has it all wrong, folks. There is nothey. Look carefully at the charges in the indictment. Notice what is missing. They arenotcharged with conspiracy to commit murder. That’s not an oversight by the prosecutor. There is no charge of conspiracy because the essence of a conspiracy is an agreement. You will hear no evidence of an agreement to murder Tyler McCormick. Noevidence of a plan. The reason? There was no agreement. There was no plan. This all just sort of happened, is what the prosecutor would have you believe.
“To convict my client, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Imani Nichols did it. To convict Shaky Nichols, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it. It isn’t enough that one of them might have had some theoretical desire for Tyler McCormick to go away. Two weak cases do not add up to a conviction.
“I submit that after all the evidence is in, you will conclude that neither of them killed Tyler McCormick. You will most certainly conclude that the prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of anyone in this courtroom beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. Your verdict must be ‘not guilty.’”
Jack started back to his seat, then stopped. He supposed he owed it to her client to defend her work. “Oh, one other thing before you swallow this life-imitating-art nonsense. Imani composes the music to her songs. She does not write the lyrics. I guess that makes the lyricist from ‘Safe Word’ a co-conspirator in the murder of Tyler McCormick.”
Jack returned to his seat beside his client at the defense table.
“Nice work,” Imani whispered.
Judge Cookson looked at Shaky’s counsel. “Ms. Ellis, your opening statement, please.”
She rose and said, “My client elects to defer his opening statement until the close of the prosecution’s case, Your Honor.”
Dividing their opening statements in this fashion, Jack first and Ellis later, was a joint defense strategy, but it came as no small relief to Jack that Shaky’s lawyer had actually honored the arrangement.
“Very well,” said the judge. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Nichols has elected to save his opening statement until after the state has presented its case. That’s his right to do so, and if any defense is necessary, you will be hearing from his lawyer at that time.” Judge Cookson checked the clock in the back of the courtroom. “It’s almost five o’clock. Let’s reconvene tomorrow at nine. The jurors are reminded of their oaths. We’re adjourned for the day,” he said with the bang of a gavel.
All rose, and as the judge exited to his chambers, Jack noticed Shaky and Imani exchange glances. Though Jack could only guess, he imagined the defendants were thinking the same thing. All this talk about reasonable doubt was nice. But even nicer would have been the one thing Jack couldn’t deliver.
A forceful denial that Imani had ever met Tyler McCormick.
Chapter 32
Boston Harbor was awash in gray. Seas, sky, and the steady drizzle blended into a monochromatic band on the horizon. It reminded Andie of weathered tin roofs and spent steel bullet casings, as she and two officers from the Boston PD’s harbor unit sped across choppy waters at over thirty knots. They were aboard one of the fastest police boats operating out of South Boston’s Terminal Road, a sleek thirty-four-foot Intercept with twin 300-horsepower outboard engines.
“How much farther?” Andie asked, shouting over the roar of the engines. Her FBI raincoat kept her dry for the most part. For added measure, she’d positioned herself forward in the cockpit, as close to the windshield as possible, allowing the speed of the boat to take the raindrops and sea spray over her head.
“Just a few more minutes,” the BP officer shouted back.
A speck of land appeared on the horizon. “Is that it?” she asked, pointing.
“Yup.”
Andie’s day had started in Miami with a predawn phone call from her ASAC. The body of a twenty-three-year-old woman had been found chained to a concrete piling in the harbor. An alert Boston homicide detective had immediately noted the similarities to the Tyler McCormick homicide, which had returned to law enforcement’s top of mind, thanks to the trial of Imani and Shaky Nichols. FBI Agent Andie Henning was the only still-active law enforcement officer who’d observed the McCormick recovery site firsthand. Andie was in Boston by noon, and twenty minutes later they were headed east-southeast to a tiny island in the harbor.
“This is it,” said the boat pilot, throttling down to no-wake speed. “Nixes Mate.”
