The Match

Chapter Four

Four months later

Hester Crimstein, celebrity defense attorney extraordinaire, watched her opponent, prosecutor Paul Hickory, adjust his tie and begin his closing statement.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is not only the most obvious and clear-cut murder case that I’ve ever prosecuted — it’s the most obvious and clear-cut that anyone in my office has ever seen.”

Hester resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn’t time.

Let him have his moment.

Hickory lifted the remote with a flourish, pointed it at the television, hit the on button with his thumb. The screen came to life. He could have had the image already up on the monitor, but no, Paul Hickory liked a little pizzazz, a little showmanship. Hester put on her bored face, so that if any jury members sneaked a glance at her, they would see how unimpressed she was.

Sitting next to Hester was her client, Richard Levine, the defendant in this murder trial. She had discussed with Richard at great length how he should behave, what his demeanor should be, how he should react (or more importantly, not react) in front of the jury. Right now, her client, who would spend the rest of his life behind bars if Hickory got his way, had his hands neatly folded on the table, his gaze steady.

Good boy.

On the screen, there were maybe a dozen people crowded together near the famed arch in avant-garde Washington Square Park. Paul Hickory made a production of clicking the play button. Hester kept her breathing steady as the video started up.

Show nothing, she reminded herself.

Paul Hickory had, of course, played this video before. Several times. But wisely, he hadn’t overexposed it, hadn’t shown it ad nauseam until the jury became numb to the brutality of what they were witnessing.

He still wanted it to be a gut punch. He wanted it to be visceral.

On the tape, Richard Levine, Hester’s client, wore a blue suit with no tie and Cole Haan black loafers. He walked up to a man named Lars Corbett, raised a hand that held a gun, and without the slightest hesitation, fired two shots into Corbett’s head.

Screams.

Lars Corbett collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

Paul Hickory hit the pause button and spread his hands.

“Do I really need to sum it up more than that?”

He gave his rhetorical question time to echo through the chamber as he strolled from one end of the jury box to the other, locking eyes with those who looked his way.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is an execution. It’s a cold-blooded murder on the streets of our city — in the heart of one of our most beloved parks. That’s it. No one disputes these facts. We have our victim, Lars Corbett, right here.” He points at the screen, at the fallen man lying in blood. “We have our defendant, Richard Levine, right here, firing a Glock 19 that ballistics confirmed was the murder weapon, a handgun Levine purchased only two weeks before the murder from a gun dealership in Paramus, New Jersey. We’ve put on the stand fourteen witnesses who saw the murder and identified Mr. Levine as the perpetrator. We presented two other videos from two independent sources that show this same murder from different angles.”

Hickory shook his head. “I mean, my God, what else do you need?”

He sighed with perhaps, in Hester’s viewpoint, a little too much melodrama. Paul Hickory was young, midthirties. Hester had gone to law school with Paul’s father, a flamboyant defense attorney named Flair (yes, Flair Hickory was his real name), who was now one of her toughest competitors. The son was good, and he would get better — the apple not falling far from the tree — but he wasn’t yet his father.

“No one, including Ms. Crimstein and the defense, has denied any of these key facts. No one has come forward to say that this” — he points hard at the paused video — “is not Richard Levine. No one has come forward to give Mr. Levine an alibi or claim in any way that he didn’t brutally murder Mr. Corbett.” He paused now, moving closer to the jury box.

“Nothing. Else. Matters.”

He said it like that, three separate sentences. Hester couldn’t resist. She met the eye of one of the jury members — a woman named Marti Vandevoort she felt was vulnerable — and did the smallest of conspiratorial eye rolls.

As if he knew what Hester was up to, Paul Hickory spun toward her. “Now, Ms. Crimstein will do everything she can to muddy this very simple narrative. But please, we’re all too intelligent to fall for her shenanigans. The evidence is overwhelming. I can’t imagine a case being more open and shut. Richard Levine bought a gun. He illegally carried it to Washington Square on March 18. We know from the testimony and computer forensic reports that Mr. Levine was destructively obsessed with Mr. Corbett. He planned this out, he stalked his victim, and then he executed Mr. Corbett on the street. That is the textbook definition of first-degree murder, ladies and gentlemen. And — I don’t believe I even have to say this — murder is wrong. It’s against the law. Put this killer behind bars. It’s your duty and obligation as citizens. Thank you.”

Paul Hickory collapsed into his chair.

The judge, her old friend David Greiner, cleared his throat and looked at Hester. “Ms. Crimstein?”

“In a second, your honor.” Hester fanned herself with her hand. “I’m still breathless from that overwrought yet completely irrelevant closing from the prosecution.”

Paul Hickory was on his feet. “Objection, your honor—”

“Ms. Crimstein,” the judge half-heartedly admonished.

Hester waved away an apology and stood.

“The reason I say Mr. Hickory is being overwrought and completely irrelevant, ladies and gentlemen, is...” Then Hester stopped herself: “First, let me say good afternoon to you all.” This was a small part of Hester’s closing technique. She would give them a little tease, make them wonder where she was going, let them bathe in that for a moment. “Jury duty is solemn and important work, and we on the defense team thank you for being here, for participating, for being diligent and open-minded about a man being so obviously railroaded. Lord knows this isn’t my first case” — Hester smiled, checking to see who smiled back, noting the three that did, including Marti Vandevoort — “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a jury that has adjudicated a case so seriously and intelligently.”

This was nonsense, of course. All juries looked pretty much the same. They were bored at the same time. They were riveted at the same time. Her jury expert, Samantha Reiter, sitting three rows behind her, believed that this jury was more malleable than most, but Hester’s defense was also more insane than most. The evidence, as Paul Hickory had laid out, was indeed overwhelming. She was starting the race miles behind the prosecution. She got that.

“Wait, where was I?” Hester asked.

This was a small reminder that Hester was not a young woman. She wasn’t above playing your favorite aunt or grandmother when she could. Sharp, fair, strict, a little forgetful, lovable. Most of the jury members knew Hester from her cable news show Crimstein on Crime. The prosecution always tried to select jury members who didn’t know who she was, but even if the juror claimed that they didn’t watch the show — not many did on a regular basis — almost all had seen her as a television analyst at some point or another. If a potential juror said that they didn’t know who Hester was, they were often lying, which made Hester want them because, for some reason, that meant they wanted to be on her jury and would probably be on her side. Over the years, the prosecution had picked up on that and so they stopped asking.

“Oh, that’s right. I was characterizing Mr. Hickory’s closing as ‘overwrought yet completely irrelevant.’ You probably want to know why.”

Her voice was soft. She always tried to start the closing that way to get the jury to lean in a little. It also gave her voice space to grow, space for her narrative to build.

“Mr. Hickory kept blabbing on about what we already knew, didn’t he? In terms of evidence, that is. We don’t dispute that the gun belonged to my client or any of that other stuff, so why waste our time with that?”

She gave a heartfelt shrug but didn’t wait for Hickory to try to answer.

“But everything else Mr. Hickory claimed... well, I won’t call them bald-faced lies because that would be rude. But the prosecutor’s office is a political one, and like the worst politicians — don’t we have too many of those nowadays? — Mr. Hickory slanted the story so that you only heard his biased and distorted narrative. Boy, I’m sick of that, aren’t you? I’m sick of that with politicians. I’m sick of that with the media. I’m sick of that on social media, not that I’m on social media, but my grandson Matthew is and sometimes he shows me what’s there, and I tell you, it’s Crazyville, am I right? Stay away.”

Brief laughter.

This was all a bit of rapport/showmanship on her part. Everyone dislikes politicians and the media in the same way they dislike attorneys, so this made Hester both self-deprecating and relatable. It was, however, an interesting dichotomy. If you ask someone what they think of lawyers, they will trash them. If you ask them what they think of their lawyer, they will speak glowingly.

“As you already know, most of what Mr. Hickory said doesn’t add up. That’s because life isn’t, as much as Mr. Hickory wants it to be, black and white. We all know this, don’t we? It is part of the human condition. We all think that we are uniquely complex, that no one can read our thoughts, but that we can read theirs. Are there black-and-whites in the world? Sure. We will get back to that in a moment. But mostly — and we all know this — life is lived in the grays.”

Without turning to the screen, Hester hit the remote and a slide appeared on the television screen the defense had brought in. Her television was intentionally bigger than the prosecution’s — seventy-two inches while Hickory’s was a mere fifty. Subliminally, it told the jury that she had nothing to hide.

“For some reason, Mr. Hickory chose not to show you this.”

The jury’s eyes were naturally drawn to the image behind her. Hester didn’t turn and look. She wanted to show them that she knew what it was; instead she watched their faces.

“I hate to state the obvious, but this is a closeup of a hand. More specifically, the right hand of Mr. Lars Corbett.”

The image was blurry. That was part technology — it was an extreme closeup — and part intentional. If it had worked in her favor to improve the lighting or pixels, she would have done so. A trial is two competing stories. It didn’t serve her interest to do anything but blow it up in this way, quality be damned.

“Do you see what’s clutched in his hand?”

Some of the jury squinted.

“A little hard to make out, I know,” Hester continued. “But we can see it’s black. It’s metal. Watch now.”

Hester pressed play. The hand began to rise. Since this was extreme closeup, the hand appeared to move fast. Again: intentional. She strolled over to the exhibit table and picked up a small gun. “This is a Remington RM380 pocket-size pistol. It’s black. It’s metal. Do you know why you buy a gun this size?”

She waited a beat, as though the jury would answer. They didn’t, of course.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s in the gun’s name. Pocket-size. So you can carry it. So you can conceal it and use it. And what else do we know? We know that Lars Corbett owns at least one Remington RM380.”

Hester pointed again to the blurry image.

“Is that the gun right there in Lars Corbett’s hand?”

Again she paused, shorter this time.

“Right, exactly, so we already have reasonable doubt, don’t we? That’s enough to end all of this. I could sit down right now and not say another word, and your vote not to convict is obvious. But let’s continue, shall we? Because I do have more. Much more.”

Hester motioned dismissively toward the defense table. “We heard testimony that Lars Corbett’s Remington RM380 was ‘found’” — Hester put the word in sarcastic air quotes — “in his basement, but really? Do we know that for certain? Corbett owned a lot of guns. You saw them during this trial. He had a fetish for all sorts of destructive weaponry — big scary assault rifles and machine guns and revolvers and Lord-knows-what. Here, let me show you.”

She clicked the remote. The prosecution had tried to keep this photograph found on Corbett’s Facebook page out of the case. It didn’t matter, Paul Hickory had valiantly argued, what a victim looked like or wore or how he decorated his home. During voir dire, Hickory had asked Judge Greiner, “If this was a rape case, would you let Ms. Crimstein show the jury a photograph of the young woman in racy clothing? I thought we were beyond that.” But Hester argued that there was probative value because a man who had made public his vast gun collection would conceivably be more likely to draw a weapon, or at least, Richard Levine’s “state of mind” — his believing he was in real danger from Corbett — could thus be better explained.

But there was a bigger reason why Hester wanted the jury to see this photograph.

“Do you really think this man” — she pointed to Corbett — “only bought guns legally? Do we really think it’s not possible he had several small handguns and that what we see in his hand” — now she enlarged the blurry black mass in Corbett’s hand — “is one of them?”

The jury was paying attention.

Hester didn’t want them looking at the black mass for too long, so she clicked her remote and moved the image back to the photograph of Corbett with the assault rifle. She slowly walked back to her table so that they could stare at the photograph a little longer. Lars Corbett sported a crewcut and smirk. But the backdrop was the key.

Behind Corbett was a red flag with a swastika in the middle.

The flag of Nazi Germany.

But Hester didn’t say anything about it yet. She tried to keep her voice even, unemotional, detached, reasonable.

“Now Mr. Hickory has claimed, with very little proof, that this isn’t a gun in Lars Corbett’s hand but an iPhone.” In truth, Paul Hickory had very solid evidence that it was an iPhone. He had blown away this he-saw-a-gun theory pretty conclusively during the trial. He had introduced other photographs of the hand and used several videos and eyewitness testimony to support his claim that it was indeed an iPhone, that Lars Corbett was raising it in order to film the encounter, that we could all see, after the bullet went through Corbett’s head, his phone drop to the pavement.

Hickory had been convincing, so Hester didn’t dwell on it. Instead she tried to spin it another way.

“Now maybe Mr. Hickory is correct,” Hester allowed in her best conceding-the-point-aren’t-I-fair? tone. “Perhaps it is an iPhone. But I don’t know for sure. And you don’t know for sure. Think about that image of that hand I showed you. Now imagine you have a split second. Your blood is pumping. You are in fear for your life. You are standing in front of this man” — she points to the photograph of the smirking Lars Corbett in front of the Nazi flag — “who wants to kill you and your entire family.”

She turned back to the jury. “Would you bet your life on it being an iPhone? Me neither.”

Hester slowly circled so that she stood behind her client and put both hands on Richard Levine’s shoulders. Warmly. Maternally.

“I want you to meet my friend Richard,” she said with her kindest smile. She looked down at him. “Richard is a sixty-three-year-old grandfather. He has no criminal record. He has never been arrested before. Not once. He has no DUIs. Nothing. In his life, he has one speeding ticket. That’s it. He is — and I’m not a fan of this term but I have to say it here — a model citizen. He’s a father to three children: two sons — Ruben and Max — and a daughter, Julie. He had two grandchildren, twins Laura and Debra. His wife Rebecca died last year after a long battle with breast cancer. Mr. Levine took a long leave from his job just to care for his dying wife. He has worked for the past twenty-eight years in the corporate head office for a popular drugstore chain, running their accounting department for most of it. Richard was elected three times to the town council in his hometown of Livingston, New Jersey. He serves on the volunteer fire department and gives his time and money to a host of worthy causes. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a good man. No one has come forward and said otherwise. Everyone adores Richard Levine.”

Hester smiled again, patted Levine’s shoulders reassuringly, and strode back toward the photograph of Lars Corbett. “Lars Corbett’s ex-wife Delilah divorced him because he was physically abusive. He beat her constantly. She had to be hospitalized three times in a year. Delilah, thank God, got custody of their three-year-old daughter and a restraining order against him. Lars Corbett has numerous arrests and convictions for assaults and disorderly conduct and — and we need to stress this — illegal possession of a handgun. Look at this photograph, ladies and gentlemen. What do you see? Let’s not mince words. You see scum.”

Paul Hickory’s face reddened. He was about to rise, but Hester raised a hand.

“Maybe you don’t see scum, Mr. Hickory, I don’t know. That doesn’t matter. Richard Levine probably didn’t see scum either. He saw something much worse. Richard’s grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. The Americans rescued him in Auschwitz. Half starved. Near dead. But they were too late to save his family. His mother, his father, even his baby sister — all died in Auschwitz. They were murdered. Gassed. I want you to think about that for a moment.”

Hester moved toward the screen with Lars Corbett on it.

“Now I want you to imagine something. Imagine a man breaks into your home and kills your entire family. All of them. He tells you that’s what he’s going to do, and then he does it. He kills all those you hold dear and promises that he will come back and kill you too. He makes it clear that your death is his ultimate goal. A few years pass. You make a new family. And now that man is back in your house. He is coming up the stairs. He has something that looks like a gun in his hand.”

Hester gave it a moment, letting the room fall totally silent, before adding: “Do you give that monster the benefit of the doubt?

“Mr. Hickory” — her point now is angry, accusing — “keeps saying that this isn’t self-defense, that Lars Corbett made no threat of bodily harm. Is he joking? Is Mr. Hickory disingenuous or, well, dumb? Lars Corbett was the leader of a Nazi militia group in this country. His message of hate had thousands of social media followers. Nazis aren’t subtle, ladies and gentlemen. They made the goal clear: Kill. Slaughter. Exterminate certain people, including my friend Richard. Is anyone naïve enough to believe otherwise? That’s why Lars Corbett was marching that day — to rally his troops to murder and gas good people like Richard and his three children and his twin grandchildren.”

Hester’s voice was louder now, trembling.

“Now Mr. Hickory will tell you that Lars Corbett had the ‘right’” — again the air quotation marks — “to talk about throwing you in the gas chamber and butchering your entire family, just as Corbett’s Nazi forefathers did to my client’s. But put yourself in Richard’s shoes and ask yourself — what would you do? Do you sit at home and wait for Nazis to rise again and murder more? Do you have to wait until you’re pushed into the gas chamber before you defend yourself? We know what Corbett’s goal was. He and his filth state it very clearly. So you, as a concerned citizen, as an empathetic human being, as a loving father and doting grandfather leading an exemplary life, go to Washington Square Park to hear the hate these murderers are spewing. Of course, you’re scared. Of course, your heart is thundering in your chest. And then this evil man, this man who has sworn to kill you, this man who everyone knows owns tons of guns and rifles, starts raising his hand with something black and metallic in it and...”

Hester’s voice petered out now, broke down in a semi-sob, her eyes welling. She lowered her head and closed her eyes.

“Of course this is self-defense.”

Hester let one tear slide down her cheek.

“It is the most clear-cut case of self-defense any of us could ever imagine. It is not only rooted in the moment, but the roots of his defense have traveled seventy years and across an ocean. The self-defense is in Mr. Levine’s DNA. It is in your DNA and my DNA too. This...” Hester pointed again to Lars Corbett in front of the swastika flag. “This man,” she said, spitting out the word, “wants to kill you and your loved ones. He has something black in his hand. He raises it toward you and all of that — all of the horrible past, the concentration camps, the gas chambers, all of the ugliness and blood and death Corbett wanted to resurrect — it reaches up from the grave to grab you and those you love.”

Hester moved back to the defense table, back behind her client, and once again she put her hands on Richard Levine’s shoulders. “I don’t ask why Richard pulled the trigger.”

Hester closed her eyes, let one more tear leak out — then she opened them and stared hard at the jury.

“I ask, ‘Who wouldn’t have?’”

As the judge gave his final instructions, Hester spotted her grandson Matthew standing alone against the back wall. Hester felt a flutter in her heart. This couldn’t be good news. The last time Matthew had surprised her at work, a classmate had gone missing and he’d come to her for help.

Why was he here this time?

Matthew was a freshman at the University of Michigan. Or at least, he had been. If he was back in the area, Hester assumed the school year was over. It was May. Was that when school ended? She didn’t know. She didn’t know that he was back either, which disturbed her. Neither Matthew nor his mother, Laila, had told her that her grandson was back. Laila was Hester’s daughter-in-law. Or would the correct terminology be former daughter-in-law?

What do you call the woman who was widowed when your youngest son died?

“All rise.”

Hester and Richard Levine stood as the jury headed out for deliberations. Richard Levine kept his eyes forward. “Thank you,” he whispered to her.

Hester nodded as the guards took Levine back into custody. At this stage of momentous trials, most attorneys enjoy playing pundit, breaking down the case’s strengths and weaknesses, trying to read the jury members’ body language, predicting the outcome. Hester made her living — part of it anyway — doing just that on television. She was skilled at it. It was fun too, a mental exercise with no real-world implications, but when it came to her own cases — cases like this where so much of her heart and soul was invested — Hester let go. Juries were notoriously unpredictable, as, when you think about it, is most of life. Think about those “genius” talking heads you see on cable news. Do they ever get anything right? Who predicted a man in Tunisia would set himself on fire and start an Arab uprising? Who predicted we would be staring at smartphones for half our waking life? Who predicted Trump or Biden or COVID or any of that?

As the old Yiddish expression goes, “Man plans, God laughs.”

Hester had done her best. The jury’s decision was out of her hands. That was another key thing she had learned with age: Worry about what you can control. If you can’t control it, let it go.

That was her serenity prayer without the serenity.

Hester hurried toward her grandson. It never got easier to see the echo of her dead son David in this handsome boy-cum-man. Matthew was eighteen, taller than her David had ever been, darker skinned since Laila was black and so her grandson was biracial. But the mannerisms, the way Matthew stood against the wall, the way he looked around and took in the whole room, the way he walked, the way he hesitated before he spoke, the way he looked to his left when he was mulling over a question — it was all David. Hester relished that and let it crush her all at the same time.

When she reached Matthew, Hester said, “So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Hester gave him the skeptical-grandma frown. “Your mom...?”

“She’s fine, Nana. Everyone is fine.”

He had said that last time he’d surprised her like this. It hadn’t proved accurate.

“When did you get back from Ann Arbor?” she asked.

“A week ago.”

She tried not to sound hurt. “And you didn’t call?”

“We know how you get at the end of a trial,” Matthew said.

Hester wasn’t sure how to counter that, so she skipped the reprimands, opting to wrap her arms around her grandson and pull him close. Matthew, who had always been an affectionate boy, hugged her back. Hester closed her eyes and tried to make time stop. For a second or two, it almost did.

With her eyes still closed and her head pressed against his chest, Hester once again said, “So what’s wrong?”

“I’m worried about Wilde.”