By Wednesday night, Fitch was all but certain David Lancaster was Nicholas Easter.
Early Thursday morning, Nussman had received from his office in Chicago two large boxes which contained the jury file from the Glavine trial in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Glavine had been a vicious courtroom brawl two years earlier against Trellco, with Fitch securing his verdict long before the lawyers stopped arguing. Nussman had not slept Thursday as he plowed through the Glavine jury research.
There had been a young white male in Broken Arrow named Perry Hirsch, age twenty-five at the time, allegedly born in St. Louis on a date which was ultimately determined to be false. He said he worked in a lamp factory and delivered pizzas on the weekend. Single, Catholic, college dropout, no prior jury service, all according to his own words recorded on a brief questionnaire which was given to the lawyers before the trial. He had registered to vote four months before the trial, and supposedly lived with an aunt in a trailer park. He was one of two hundred people who answered the call for jury service.
There were two photos of Hirsch. In one he was hauling a stack of pizzas to his car, a battered Pinto, in a colorful blue-and-red Rizzo's shirt and matching cap. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a beard. The other was a shot of him standing beside the trailer where he lived, but his face could hardly be seen.
Hirsch almost made the Glavine jury, but was cut by the plaintiff for reasons that were unclear at the time. Evidently he left town at some point after the trial. The factory where he worked employed a man named Terry Hurtz, but no Perry Hirsch.
Fitch was paying a local investigator to dig furiously. The unnamed aunt had not been found; there were no records from the trailer park. No one at Rizzo's remembered a Perry Hirsch.
Fitch and Pang and Nussman sat in the dark and stared at the wall Friday afternoon. The photos of Hirsch, Lancaster, and Easter were blown up and focused as clearly as possible. Easter of course was now clean-shaven. His photo was taken as he worked, so there were no sunglasses, no cap. The three faces were of the same person.
Nussman's handwriting expert arrived after lunch Friday. He was flown in on a Pynex jet from B.C. He took fewer than thirty minutes to form a few opinions. The only handwriting samples available were the jury information cards from Cimmino and Wood, and the short questionnaire from Glavine. It was more than enough. The expert had no doubt that Perry Hirsch and David Lancaster were the same person. Easter's handwriting was quite dissimilar from Lancaster's, but he'd made a mistake in running from Hirsch. The carefully printed, block-style hand Easter had used was obviously designed to distinguish itself from earlier trails. He had worked hard to create an entirely new style of writing, one that could not be linked to the past. His mistake came at the bottom of the card when Easter signed his name. The "t" was crossed low and angled down from left to right, very distinguishable. Hirsch had used a sloppy cursive style, no doubt designed to portray a lack of education. The "t" in St. Louis, his alleged place of birth, was identical to the "t" in Easter, though to the untrained eye nothing about the two appeared remotely similar.
He announced without the slightest doubt, "Hirsch and Lancaster are the same people. Hirsch and Easter are the same people. Therefore, Lancaster and Easter must be the same."
"All three are the same," Fitch said slowly as it sunk in.
"That's correct. And he's very, very bright."
The handwriting expert left Cable's. Fitch returned to his office where he met with Pang and Konrad for the rest of Friday afternoon and into the night. He had people on the ground in both Allentown and Broken Arrow digging and bribing and hoping to pry loose employment records and tax withholding forms on Hirsch and Lancaster.
"Have you ever known a person to stalk a trial?" Konrad asked.
"Never," Fitch growled.
THE RULES for conjugal visits were simple. Between 7 P.M. and 9 P.M. Friday night, each juror could entertain spouses or mates or whomever in their rooms. The guests could come and go at any time, but they first had to be registered by Lou Dell, who sized them up and down as if she and she alone possessed the power to approve what they were about to do.
The first to arrive, promptly at seven, was Derrick Maples, the handsome boyfriend of young Angel Weese. Lou Dell took his name, pointed down the hall, said, "Room 55." He was not seen again until nine, when he came up for air.
Nicholas would not have a guest Friday night. Neither would Jerry Fernandez. His wife had moved into a separate bedroom a month ago, and she wasn't about to waste her time visiting a man she despised. Besides, Jerry and the Poodle were exercising conjugal rights every night. Colonel Herrera's wife was out of town. Lonnie Shaver's wife couldn't find a baby-sitter. So the four men watched John Wayne in the Party Room and lamented the sorry states of their romances. Blind old Herman was getting some, but they weren't.
Phillip Savelle had a guest, but Lou Dell refused to divulge to the rest of the boys the sex, race, age, or anything else about his visitor. It happened to be a very nice young lady who appeared to be Indian or Pakistani.
Mrs. Gladys Card watched TV in her room with Mr. Nelson Card. Loreen Duke, who was divorced, visited with her two young teenaged daughters. Rikki Coleman exercised conjugal relations with her husband Rhea, then talked about their kids for the remaining one hour and forty-five minutes.
And Hoppy Dupree brought Millie some flowers and a box of chocolates, which she ate most of while he jumped around the room in a fit of excitement, the likes of which she'd rarely seen. The kids were fine, all out on dates, and business was going full speed. In fact, business had never been better. He had a secret, a large wonderful rich secret about a deal he'd stepped into, but he couldn't tell her just yet. Maybe Monday. Maybe later. But he just couldn't now. He stayed an hour and rushed back to the office for more work.
Mr. Nelson Card left at nine, and Gladys made the mistake of stepping into the Party Room where the boys were drinking beer and eating popcorn and watching boxing matches now. She found a soft drink and sat at the table. Jerry eyed her suspiciously. "You little devil," he said. "Come on, tell us about it."
Her mouth fell open and her cheeks flushed. She couldn't speak.
"Come on, Gladys. We didn't get any."
She grabbed her Coke and jumped to her feet. "Maybe there's a good reason you didn't," she snapped angrily, then marched from the room. Jerry managed a laugh. The other men were too tired and despondent to care.
MARLEE'S CAR was a Lexus leased from a dealer in Biloxi, a three-year lease at six hundred a month with the lessee being Rochelle Group, a brand-spanking-new corporation Fitch had been able to learn nothing about. A transmitter weighing almost a pound had been attached by a magnet under the rear left tire well, so Marlee could now be tracked by Konrad sitting at his desk. Joe Boy had stuck it under there a few hours after they'd followed her from Mobile and seen her license plates.
Her large new condo was leased by the same corporation. Almost two thousand dollars a month. Marlee had some serious overhead, but Fitch and company couldn't find a trace of a job.
She called late Friday night, just minutes after Fitch had stripped to his XX-Large boxers and black socks and sprawled on his bed like a beached whale. For now he owned the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the Colonial Hotel in Biloxi, on Highway 90, the Gulf a hundred yards away. When he bothered to look, he had a nice view of the beach. No one outside his little circle knew where he was.
The call went to the front desk, an urgent message for Mr. Fitch, and it posed a dilemma for the night clerk. The hotel was being paid large sums of money to protect the privacy and identity of Mr. Fitch. The clerk could not admit he was a guest. The young lady had it all figured out.