James Patterson - The Beach House

That morning, however, the drapes were pulled across the entire expanse of glass. The room was lit by powerful lights that Marci and Fenton had hung from the ceiling.

Montrose muttered, "Oh, Jesus, no."

The sparsely furnished room held a pair of long wooden tables and several beach chairs. Facing them from a foot-high plywood platform was a black leather office chair.

Between the elevated chair and the tables were two more chairs. One held a Bible, the other fronted a small desk. On it was an archaic contraption that looked like a typewriter with a few working parts chopped off.

Behind the raised chair hung two shimmering flags – the Stars and Stripes, and the green, orange, and white of Ireland.

In the midst of the furniture was a rolling tripod holding a TV camera. eh70 was stenciled on the side.

Molly aimed it at our guests as they filed into the room, handcuffed and grumbling, and sat in the row of beach chairs behind the tables. Each of them looked in shock. Next, the door to the room was locked. Hank stood beside it with a stun gun and a Louisville Slugger.

Then Molly spun the camera around to track Macklin as he walked the length of the room. He stepped warily onto his little stage and sat in the leather chair.

At about the same time, his friend and court stenographer, Mary Stevenson, took her seat in front of the old machine.

To Macklin's right, a homemade sign had been taped to the otherwise pristine white wall.

Molly focused on the simple block letters: the people v. BARRY NEUBAUER.

THE FIRST REAL DISTURBANCE CAME, not surprisingly, from Volpi. He stood up and yelled at the top of his voice, "This is bullshit!"

Hank ran over from the door with the stun gun held out like a sword. He zapped Volpi, who dropped to the floor, writhing in pain. I thought it was a good lesson for the group to see. I knew that the camera was still focused on the handmade sign. Hank's crowd control was not being broadcast.

"Frank, keep your mouth shut," Hank yelled. "That goes for the rest of you scum, too." I think they all got the point.

Without warning, Molly spun her camera again, this time to aim its merciless eye at me. I stood to my full six foot one, took a deep breath, and stared straight into the lens.

Ever since the cold-blooded murder of Sammy in Chelsea, I had applied myself in ways I never could have at Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel. I just hoped I was doing the right thing. I had been cramming for this my whole final year at Columbia. And not just by obsessing about Peter's murder and the injustice that followed. I had read and reread Fundamentals of Trial Techniques and The Art of Cross-Examination, a classic published in 1903 that still held up.

"We're on," said Molly, tapping the red light on the camera. "We're broadcasting. Go, Jack."

"My name is Jack Mullen," I began, my voice cracking slightly and sounding as if it belonged to someone I barely knew. "I was born and raised in Montauk and have lived here my whole life."

No one in the room was half as uptight as I was, but I put my faith in the steady, measured cadence I'd practiced so diligently during lawyering clinics at Columbia. Everything about my tone and bearing attempted to communicate that I was sane, basically reasonable, and worth hearing out.

I also knew that the time was ripe for this. I was pretty sure that a lot of people were angry and upset about what they considered courtroom injustices in the recent past: the Simpson trial, the Diallo verdict in New York City, the botched Jon-Benet Ramsey case, and others in their own cities and towns.

"A year ago yesterday," I continued, "my brother died at a party held at a Hamptons beach house. He'd been hired to park cars. The next day his body washed up on the beach below the property. The inquest held at the end of that summer concluded that my brother, who was twenty-one, died accidentally. He didn't. He was beaten to death. In the next few hours I will prove not only that he was murdered, but why and by whom.

"Sitting at the end of the table to my left is the man who owns the house and hosted the party. His name is Barry Neubauer. He's the CEO of Mayflower Enterprises. You've probably watched his cable channels or visited his web sites or taken your children to one of his theme parks. Maybe you've read about his bigger-than-life exploits in a business magazine or seen a picture of him taken at a celebrity charity gala. But that doesn't mean that you know the real Barry Neubauer.

"You will, though. Far better than you want to, because Barry Neubauer is about to stand trial for the murder of my brother."

"Jack Mullen is going to prosecute me?" shouted Neubauer. "Like hell! Turn that fucking camera off! Turn it off now!"

His outburst was followed by so many others that Macklin had to crack his black walnut gavel for quiet.

"This trial will begin in a few minutes," I finally said to the camera. "We're broadcasting live on Channel Seventy. This short break will give you a chance to call your friends."

MOLLY TURNED OFF THE CAMERA, and I motioned to Fenton and Hank. We walked over to Neubauer. He held up his handcuffed wrists. "Take them off!"

I ignored the demand as if it had come from a spoiled child.

"It doesn't make any difference to me whether you all participate in the trial or not," I told Barry flat out. "It changes nothing."

He huffed like a self-important CEO. "We're not going to cooperate. So what will that look like on TV? You'll look like a complete fuckup, Mullen, which is what you are."

I shook my head at Neubauer, then took a manila envelope out of my briefcase.

I showed him what was inside, and I showed only Barry.

"This is what it will look like, Barry. And this. And all of these," I said.

"You wouldn't dare," he snarled at me.

"Oh, yeah, I would. As I said, it's your choice. You can offer your side of things. If you don't, that's fine, too. We're going back on the air."

Molly started filming again, and I repeated my introductory remarks. This time a little more calmly and cogently.

"Before this trial is over," I continued, "you'll understand that Barry Neubauer is a killer and that everyone sitting in these chairs contributed to either the crime or its cover-up. Once you've seen what they've done, you won't have an ounce of pity for them. Believe me, you won't.

"The People will show that Barry Neubauer killed my brother himself or hired someone else to do his bloody grunt work. We will also show that along with the means and opportunity to kill Peter, he had one hell of a motive. When you hear the motive, you'll understand everything.

"I fully recognize these aren't ideal circumstances to determine a man's innocence or guilt," I said.

"Oh, really," said Bill Montrose. "That's the first intelligent thing you've said so far, Mullen."

I ignored Montrose. I knew the crucial thing at that point was to keep plowing ahead and not allow myself to be sidetracked. My mouth had become too dry to continue. I stopped and picked up my water glass. My hand trembled so badly, I almost dropped it.

My voice was steady, though.

"If you bear with me, I believe you'll see that this trial is at least as fair as any you might have followed lately. Fairness is all we're looking for here.

"For one thing, Mr. Neubauer will have the benefit of counsel. And not an overworked, underpaid green defender like those assigned to the many indigent defendants who end up on death row. He's the eminent Bill Montrose, senior partner and management committee chairman at a large New York law firm. And since Mr. Montrose is Mr. Neubauer's longtime personal attorney and recently represented him with such success at the inquest, he's extremely well versed in all the particulars. When you consider that Mr. Montrose's adversary will be me, a twenty-nine-year-old barely out of law school, it is, if anything, a mismatch in the defendant's favor.