The Perfect Marriage(68)

And it was also no surprise that Salvesen didn’t get to court early. Luckily, Judge Martin was also late, so Gabriel had a few minutes to debrief Salvesen before the case was called.

He tried to explain the facts of the case in that limited time. If Gabriel had to guess, Salvesen grasped 25 percent of it. If that much.

“No, I got it,” Salvesen said when Gabriel suggested they go over it one more time.

It didn’t matter. The clerk was cutting short their opportunity with her three knocks on the doorframe to the judge’s chambers. Then she said, “All rise! The Supreme Court for the State of New York, County of New York, Criminal Division, the Honorable Margaret A. Martin presiding. Come forward and you shall be heard.”

Gabriel and Asra sat in the gallery’s first row. They’d be spectators for this event, unless Judge Martin wanted to hear from witnesses. If not, it would all be up to Salvesen.

Wayne Fiske was wearing the prison orange, with his back to the gallery. The man hadn’t even looked back at Gabriel yet. He had been brought in wearing handcuffs, and the court officers and prison guards stood close by as soon as he was uncuffed, per courtroom protocol.

Judge Martin was relatively new to the bench. Gabriel’s phone Google search had revealed that she was a former ADA, which generally boded well for the good guys, but her tenure as a prosecutor had ended a long time ago. The bulk of her legal career had been spent doing immigration work for a nonprofit. That cut the other way: do-gooder types tended to be more suspicious of law enforcement than cops preferred.

The court clerk said: “Counsel, please state your appearances.”

“Assistant District Attorney Joseph P. Salvesen, on behalf of the People, Your Honor.”

“Alex Miller of Peikes Schwartz, representing Wayne Fiske.”

“Thank you both,” Judge Martin said. “And my sincerest apologies for running a few minutes behind this morning. Mr. Salvesen, are the People prepared to present witnesses today?”

Salvesen came back to his feet. “Good morning, Your Honor. Present in the courtroom are the two detectives that have been handling this case. They are the experts here, not me. So the answer to the court’s question is yes. I would very much like to call Gabriel Velasquez to the stand. He can explain to Your Honor precisely why execution of the warrant is critical to apprehending a murderer.”

Gabriel was pleased that he’d be telling the judge what was going on instead of Salvesen. He was less pleased that Salvesen had set it up to suggest that the DNA results alone would solve the case.

“Good,” the judge said. “I’m ready to hear from the witness now, unless you have something you want to address before then, Mr. Miller.”

Gabriel had never met Alex Miller before today. That was not uncommon. Most of the people prosecuted in Gabriel’s cases were too poor to have private lawyers. Ella had told him that Miller was “good . . . very good, in fact.” The same way he knew that his wife’s “okay” regarding Salvesen was unqualified shade, her review of Alex Miller was an absolute rave. As rarely as she criticized her colleagues in the DA’s office, Ella was even stingier in her praise for members of the defense bar.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Miller said, coming to his feet. “I’m as interested in hearing the People’s evidence as everyone else. For the life of us, we don’t understand why they have come to the conclusion that Mr. Fiske murdered Mr. Sommers. As far as we know, there is absolutely no evidence supporting that position.”

“Then I guess we’ll all find out together,” the judge said. “Mr. Salvesen, call your first witness.”



Gabriel stepped to the witness stand and raised his right hand before the request was made by the clerk. He knew the drill. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

Once he had sworn to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God, Salvesen said, “Before I ask you about the reason we’re all assembled today—the request for a DNA sample from Wayne Fiske—please give the court a brief description of your background with the NYPD so the judge knows a little bit about you, Detective.”

“First of all, I’m a lieutenant, not a detective, with the NYPD. I’ve been on the force for about twenty years now and assigned to major cases since 2014. In my career with the NYPD, I would estimate that I have handled two dozen homicide cases. Probably more.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Salvesen said. “Please explain to Judge Martin the nature of the crime that has brought us here today.”

“The crime is the homicide of a man named James Sommers. He was involved in an altercation at his place of business, and died when he was punched and fell, sustaining a blow to the head. Blood not belonging to Mr. Sommers was found at the crime scene. We believe that the person who left that blood is responsible for Mr. Sommers’s death.”

He came to a stop, as Gabriel was told long ago that a good witness did when he was about to change subjects. The equivalent of a paragraph break in a story.

“There were no matches in the police database for the blood at the crime scene,” he continued. “We therefore submitted the blood to a private genealogy database. The result was a partial match indicating that the blood at the crime scene was left by someone related to a man named Howard Fiske, who lives in Portland, Oregon. The defendant, Wayne Fiske, is a cousin of Howard Fiske and the ex-husband of Jessica Sommers, the wife of the victim. Mr. Fiske’s fingerprints were also found at the crime scene. We learned in the course of our investigation that Jessica Sommers’s relationship with James Sommers began when she was still married to Mr. Fiske, so jealousy is one motive. We later learned that Mr. Fiske’s son was undergoing a very expensive experimental medical treatment, and the cost of that treatment was well beyond the means of Mr. Fiske or that of his ex-wife. However, after James Sommers was murdered, his wife, Jessica Sommers, collected half a million dollars through an insurance policy on Mr. Sommers’s life, and those proceeds were used to pay for the lifesaving treatment for their son. We believe that Mr. Fiske killed Mr. Sommers in order for his ex-wife to collect on that life insurance policy because he knew that she would use the proceeds to save their son.”