Killing Season by Carlton Smith

Author:Carlton Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781504047616
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

On the surface, it didn’t look that way; Kenny wasn’t much of a drinker. But one of Kenny’s friends was familiar with the four taverns and their clientele, and that was enough for Pina.

In any event, as Pina prepared to convene the special grand jury to look into the murders, he and his investigators were already working along diametrically different paths. The troopers thought Pina was about to go off on a wild-goose chase, in a fruitless search for some rational motive for the murders; meanwhile Pina was growing more and more frustrated by what he saw as a lack of cooperation from the troopers in investigating matters he thought were most important.

To head Pina off, the troopers conceived of a plan to heal the breach between Kenny Ponte and the D.A., an effort to put Ponte behind them, once and for all.

Indeed, as February drew to a close, the state police were deeply involved in negotiations with Kenny’s lawyers as part of an effort to convince him to cooperate with the district attorney. Everyone except Pina and the Saint agreed that Ponte had been badly handled, especially with the leak that had made Ponte’s name so public. The troopers believed that if only Kenny would agree to tell Pina what he knew about the victims, then Pina would agree that Kenny was a dry hole, and agree to move on to more promising suspects.

In the troopers’ view, a deal was possible: if Pina would agree to drop the indictment against Kenny relating to the Roger Swire assault charge, Kenny would in return agree to testify in front of the special jury about the Highway Murder victims he knew. It seemed simple, but it wasn’t. Kenny wanted more than just a dismissal of the gun charge. He wanted Pina to agree not to prosecute him for anything, short of murder.

Apparently some in the state police thought Pina had agreed to that, which would get Kenny off the hook for any drug allegations that might be brought against him, and allow the investigation to move forward.

But the negotiations foundered at the eleventh hour, and a lawyer negotiating for Kenny wound up tape-recording state police detective Jose Gonsalves in a conversation that made Pina look deceitful. The tape survived the next 18 months, and was ultimately broadcast in New Bedford at a critical time in Ron Pina’s life.

The negotiations were conducted by Ponte’s lawyer Joe Harrington and Pina, with the assistance of Norman McCarthy (the New Bedford lawyer who had earlier bought Kenny’s house) and Gonsalves. Gonsalves and McCarthy thought Pina had agreed to the deal, but for some reason Pina had rebuffed Harrington. This was news to Gonsalves, which shows that communications between Pina and the state police were already at low ebb.

“Boy, I’ll tell you,” McCarthy told Gonsalves, “I’m just amazed. There is really a breakdown in communication here or there’s a lot of deception going throughout your office, Jose. And I don’t mean to cast any aspersions at you, I don’t know what is going on.

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