James Patterson - Murder House

Then the screen goes blank. Akers walks over to the witness stand. “You will hear from people who knew Melanie and Noah. They will sit in this chair and they will tell you about that relationship. They will tell you about Noah’s obsession. They will tell you that Noah couldn’t bear the thought of losing Melanie, that he was insane with jealousy.” Akers walks over to the evidence table and lifts a bag. “You will hear expert testimony that this knife was stained with the blood of Zach and Melanie. And you will hear from Chief of Police Langdon James that he found this knife under a heating duct in Noah Walker’s kitchen floor, along with a charm necklace that Melanie had worn around her neck every day of her life since she was six years old.”

Akers takes a moment, waiting for his conclusion.

“And you will hear something else from Chief James. You will hear testimony that Noah Walker confessed to these murders, that when his guard was down, he admitted killing Melanie and Zach and explained exactly how he did it.”

Akers turns again and points at Noah. “We will prove all of this to you, ladies and gentlemen, that much I promise you. And when this trial is over, we will ask you to give Melanie and Zach the only thing that you can give them now: justice. We will ask you to return two verdicts of guilty of murder in the first degree against Noah Lee Walker.”

In ten minutes, Akers has summarized the whole thing in a way that makes Noah look obviously guilty. Akers has horrified them with the gruesome photos and appealed to their sympathy with the talk of Hollywood dreams dashed. Hell, he’s even made that bloodsucker Zach Stern sound like a swell guy.

Noah sees it in the jurors’ eyes, the way they follow the prosecutor as he returns to the defense table, the way they stare in Noah’s direction with contempt.

He’s going to need a miracle.

“Remy Handleman,” the bailiff calls out into the hallway, summoning the prosecution’s first witness.

Remy Handleman enters the courtroom and takes the witness stand. He is wearing a suit, but not one that he’s worn before. The jacket hangs limp over his shoulders and the collar is too wide. Remy’s probably never worn a suit in his life.

After he takes his oath, he runs a hand over his oily hair and fidgets in his chair, his hands likewise unable to find a comfortable place to rest. The behavior of a liar, a bad one, at least.

“Mr. Handleman,” says the prosecutor, buttoning his coat at the podium, “is your appearance here today pursuant to a subpoena?”

“My appear—” Remy looks down at himself. “Somebody said I should wear a suit. Is that what you mean?”

Despite his predicament, Noah can’t help but feel for Remy, who’s too dim to understand why everyone’s chuckling in the courtroom. Remy first came to Bridgehampton when Noah was a seventh grader. He was one of those needy kids who wanted everyone to like him and could never understand when they didn’t, and never stopped trying. Noah tried to befriend him, even defended him a couple of times from playground beatings, but Remy never quite fit in. He smoked a lot of weed and sold some, too. He was known to the STPD long before they first busted him selling Oxy behind a diner off the turnpike about four years ago.

“Mr. Handleman, were you acquainted with the deceased, Melanie Phillips?”

“Yeah, I knew Melanie. I go into Tasty’s for steamers, maybe a couple times a week.”

“Tasty’s was the restaurant where Melanie waitressed?”

“Uh-huh, yes.”

“Take us back to the first weekend of June this year, Mr. Handleman,” says the prosecutor, Akers. “Thursday, June second. Did you go into Tasty’s that day?”

“Yeah, I did. I had lunch there.”

“Who waited on you that day?”

“Melanie did.”

“Did you see the defendant there on that day, at that time?”

“Yeah.” Remy nods at Noah. “Noah was there. He was, like, like following her around.”

“Melanie was doing her waitressing duties, and Noah was following her around?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear them speak?”

“Yeah. Melanie was like, ‘Leave me alone.’ And Noah was like, ‘Give me another chance, I love you,’ stuff like that.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Akers nods with grave importance, as if the witness has just said something brilliant. Remy is anything but. But he’s not so stupid that he couldn’t recognize a deal when it was offered to him. Three months ago, the STPD busted him for the second time for selling Oxy, and the second bust was likely to mean serious prison time. It was awfully convenient, then, that he just happened to have information that would help the STPD solve one of the biggest murders the region had ever seen. Suddenly an eight-year sentence is pleaded down to twenty months, all because of his testimony today, his assistance in a high-profile double-murder trial.

“The defendant told Melanie he loved her?”

“Yeah.”

“And he asked Melanie to give him another chance?”

“Yeah, he said, ‘Give me another chance.’ And she said it was over.”

“She said it was over?” The prosecutor leans in, like the testimony is just getting interesting. “Did the defendant say anything else that you heard?”

“Yeah, he said, ‘You don’t just walk away from me.’ He, like, grabbed her when he said it.”

“He... grabbed her where?”

“Like, by the arm. She dropped a dish when he done it, too.”

“He grabbed her arm and said, ‘You don’t just walk away from me’?”

“Right.”

“And this took place just two days before Melanie was found dead?”

“Yeah, it sure did.”

Sebastian Akers shakes his head, as if he’s hearing this testimony for the first time and can’t believe how damning it is. “No further questions,” he says.

Week two of the Noah Walker murder trial. My first day attending, but it’s packed wall-to-wall, as it’s apparently been every day since it began. The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office has started a lottery for the general public’s admission and a separate one for the media, though if you’re a reporter, not drawing a lucky ticket just means you go to a spillover room down the hall to watch the trial on a closed-circuit television. Even coppers like me have a hard time getting in, but I know Rusty the bailiff — that’s a good name for a bailiff, Rusty — so I got a spot in the fourth row, jammed between an older guy and a young woman wearing too much perfume.

I have a couple of days off after we completed our nine-week sting operation on the heroin trafficking, taking down over twenty people throughout Long Island, most notably a school principal at a private school in Montauk. I didn’t have anything else to do, so after my five-mile run this morning, I decided to clean up and come see “Surfer Jesus” for myself.

There he is at the defense table, scratching his beard and whispering to his defense lawyer. The press was initially intrigued with the story because Zach Stern was a victim and it happened in the Hamptons, but Noah himself has now become as interesting as anything else to the talking heads on the evening cable channels — his swarthy good looks, for one, and also his rebellious attitude, refusing to wear a suit to court, opting instead for the desert-islander look with a white shirt and blue jeans.

Taking the stand is a man named Dio Cornwall, an African American in his midtwenties with a long skinny neck and braids pulled tight against his head. He’s awaiting trial for armed robbery and had the pleasure of sharing a cell with Noah Walker during the week following Noah’s arrest, before Noah bonded out.