Misjudged

by James Chandler

“I had no choice, and when Johnstone found out about the DNA evidence, I granted his motion to set aside the verdict and start a new trial.”

  “You took a chance,” she said. “Will you get in trouble?”

  “Perhaps,” Daniels allowed. “What I did was unconventional, to be sure. I made what I thought was the right decision. Of course, I’m not in the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ business, so it may be that I’ll get my ears boxed. I can live with that.”

  “Will there be another trial?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on what Polson finds out. Olsen . . . well, there’s some degree of doubt there, although there’s still a bunch of evidence against him. The State will have to find a new prosecutor; Ann’s tainted at this point. She’s probably already been shown the door.”

  “But who killed Emily? It had to be either Tommy Olsen or Judge Howard, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, and we won’t know until another jury looks at it. Hell, I was convinced it was Olsen. That’s the beauty of the jury system. You give one man or woman power to judge and punish, there’s a good chance human emotion, bias, prejudice, or just plain clouded thinking will get in the way. Juries make mistakes, of course, but in my opinion we’re a helluva lot better off having twelve people look at the facts and make the call.”

  “Well, all I know is what’s being said. And right now, everyone thinks it was Judge Howard.”

  “Well, a week ago, everyone—me included—was convinced it was Tommy Olsen,” Daniels said. “Maybe everyone misjudged him. Maybe everyone is misjudging Howard, as well. Let’s wait and see what Detective Polson digs up.”

  59

  Punch and Becky Olsen were in an interrogation room at the justice center. He’d explained to her that she wasn’t under arrest and was free to go at any time, but that he wanted to ask her some questions.

  “So, Mrs. Olsen—” Punch began.

  “Call me Becky.”

  “Becky, what happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got all night. Coffee?”

  “Can I smoke?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then I’d like coffee. With sweetener, if you have it.”

  Punch nodded toward the one-way mirror. Jensen was back there observing; he’d get her a cup. Becky rooted through an expensive purse and eventually extracted a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one, took a long drag, and exhaled smoke. “It’s a long story,” she repeated.

  Punch simply stared at her.

  “I guess I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

  “Well, why don’t I ask you a few questions?”

  “Okay.”

  “How is it that your fingerprints came to be on that bayonet?”

  “What bayonet?”

  “Oh, Becky, please don’t insult me. The bayonet used to kill Emily. The same one found in your husband’s garage.”

  “How would I know?”

  “Well, who else would know?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. Tommy probably showed it to me at some point.”

  “That could explain it.”

  “Of course it does.”

  “Ever been to Emily’s house?”

  “I guess I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m simply asking whether you’ve ever been in Emily’s home.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I think you know that.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You cannot expect me to believe that you can’t recall whether you’ve ever been to Emily’s house,” Punch said. “I simply don’t believe it.”

  “You can believe whatever you want, Detective.”

  “I believe you’ve been there—you wanna know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because, as I already told you, your fingerprints are there,” Punch said. He let that sink in, but she showed no emotion, just inhaled smoke and blew it to the ceiling. “You’re denying that you’ve ever been there, but your prints say otherwise. You’re lying to me.”

  Becky said nothing. “Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon,” Punch reminded her.

  “I told you, he showed it to me one time.”

  “You had access to Tommy’s place.”

  “Of course I did! It was my house until I packed the kids and left his ass.”

  “You could easily have put that bayonet in the garage.”

  “You think I killed Emily?”

  “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you, do I?”

  “No, but you should,” Punch said. “More importantly, I know you want to do the right thing.”

  Becky sat quietly. “You killed her,” Punch said. “Why, I don’t know. But I know you did it. And I can prove it.”

  “Yeah, well, you proved it with Tommy as well—didn’t you?” Becky lit another cigarette.

  “Becky, tell me what happened,” he urged her.

  “Nothing happened. I’m telling you, you’re wrong. I had nothing to do with killing that little bitch.”

  “Where were you on Halloween night between eleven p.m. and six a.m.?”

  “How the hell do I know? Do you know where you were?”

  “No, but I’m not under suspicion of murder,” Punch said. “Becky, now that I’ve got your prints. . . we’ll find some DNA.”

  “I’m sure I was home with my kids.”

  “Can anyone corroborate that?”

  “Of course not! Unlike my husband, I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else!”

  “How did you know he was sleeping with Emily?”

  “What?”

  “How did you know he’d been sleeping with Emily?”

  “It was obvious!”

  “Tommy said he’d only slept with her that night. In fact, he’d only been with her that one time.”

  “Tommy’s full of shit.”

  “So, unless you were following him, how did you know he was sleeping with Emily?”

  “I just knew. Women know these things.”

  “Come on. You can do better than that.”

  Becky looked at Punch for a long time. “It was good when we started, you know?” Punch nodded, and she continued. “But he was never the same when he got back. Angry, yelling all the time. No patience with the kids, couldn’t hold a job. I could live with all that. But then he started fooling around with other women. That . . . hurt.”

  “I’m sorry,” Punch offered.

  “You know what else?”

  “What?”

  “He’s never asked to see the kids. Not once since I moved out.”

  “I’m sorry.” Punch motioned for Jensen to get her more coffee. “Becky, what happened?”

  “When I left with the kids, I thought maybe that would get him to change. Maybe he’d think things through and say he was sorry and maybe we could do counseling or something.” She lit another cigarette. “But instead he just hit the bars and picked up whores.”

  “How did you know what he was doing?”

  “Because I’d put the kids to bed and follow him! Wasn’t hard. Wasn’t like he cared. He was just out looking to drink and get laid. Meanwhile, I’m stuck at home with the kids, tryin’ to make ends meet. No money for rent, food—or for me to have a life!”

  “So, you followed him to Emily’s house?”

  “It was actually kind of an accident. I was on the way to the store to get some cough syrup for the little one. And I seen Tommy going the other way in his truck. Looked like he was following some fancy little car. I turned around and followed Tommy, and bigger than shit I seen that little car pull up to some house, then Tommy went inside and he and that bitch started making out. Can you believe that?”

  Punch said nothing. She stubbed out her cigarette. “They were all dressed up in costumes. I watched for a while and then I drove home and took care of my kid for a couple of hours. His kid too
, you know? And then, when everyone was asleep, I went and got that knife from Tommy’s house and was driving to that bitch’s house when Tommy went on by—going home, I suppose. So I parked down the street, walked to her place, and rang the doorbell.”

  “She answered?” Punch asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I think she thought maybe Tommy was coming back for seconds. She was surprised to see me. Shoulda seen the look in her eyes. She knew she was in the deep shit.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You know what happened.”

  “You killed her.”

  She sat quietly, smoking. He let her think about it. At last, she exhaled toward the ceiling, looked at him, and nodded. “I did,” she said. “Followed her upstairs. Was gonna do her in her room, but I got mad. Didn’t take much—she was weak. Then I went home, cleaned up, and gave the kids breakfast and got ’em off to school. Because that’s what I do. I’m a good mom, goddammit!”

  “I know you are.” Punch positioned himself between Becky and the door. “Then what?”

  “Then I took the knife back to Tommy’s house,” Becky said. She looked at the floor and then lifted her eyes to meet Punch’s stare. “How’d you know?”

  “Well, I didn’t, for a long time. I thought it was Tommy,” Punch admitted. “The evidence seemed overwhelming. Then with Howard’s DNA and print I started thinking maybe he did it. But just one print? And how would he get the weapon in Tommy’s house? And I kept thinking about those two unidentified sets of prints. I mean, you being his wife, it wouldn’t have surprised me if your print was on the bayonet. But my lab guys said the extra print on the bayonet didn’t match a print in the house, so I didn’t worry about it and eliminated you as a suspect early on. Sam and his experts saw it differently. Failure to match prints that should match is called a ‘false negative,’ I’ve since found out. Later, when I tried to match your prints with those on the scene and the weapon, you didn’t have any in the system. I couldn’t figure it out until Sam told me that your arrest in New Orleans was before the hurricane. That explained the lack of prints in the system. Then he gave me a beer bottle with your prints. Once I had them, I had your prints run and—”

  “And they matched, like that lawyer said.”

  “They did.”

  “So I might have gotten away with it if not for Sam Johnstone?”

  “Well, I like to think I’d have figured it out at some point,” Punch said.

  “I misjudged him. I thought he was just another crazy, screwed-up vet. Like Tommy.”

  Punch smiled despite himself. “Finish that smoke, and I’ll have you stand up and turn around.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m placing you under arrest—suspicion of murder, in that you did, on or about October 31, in Custer County, Wyoming, murder one C. Emily Smith.”

  “What about my kids?”

  “They’ll have to stay with grandma for a while,” Punch said. Jensen entered the room with a fresh cup of coffee and Punch motioned for him to set it on the table. “She’ll take that to go. Let her finish this butt, then read her rights and get her a room, will you?”

  60

  Ann awaited Rebecca’s arrival. In the five years that she had worked as a deputy county attorney, she had been called into Rebecca’s office exactly three times. Rebecca arrived and took her seat without even looking at Ann. “This is a disaster,” she said without preliminaries.

  “I got a conviction,” said Ann. “I did what I had to do. How was I to know the defendant had been framed? What is this, Perry Mason?”

  “I’m not saying that you could have known,” said Rebecca. “I am saying that everyone in the world expects that you would have figured it out, if you were paying attention to what was going on. Worse, you had exculpatory information. You were supposed to turn that over to the other side. You convicted the wrong man!”

  “I understand that, but there’s nothing I could have done. I did my job and convicted the person who best fit the evidence. I was given bad information by these stupid redneck cops. What else do you expect me to do?”

  “I expect—no, I demand—that my staff convict the right person, the right person being loosely defined here as the one who actually did it!”

  “The evidence indicated that Tommy Olsen was responsible for Emily’s death,” Ann said. “That’s where the evidence took us, and that’s what we told the jury. There was no way for me to know anything different. That hick detective couldn’t figure it out!”

  “That is not good enough.”

  “It has to be good enough! That is how the system is designed and that is how it must work. No one says the system is perfect. No one says the system never makes mistakes. Everyone has to understand that we are all human and we make mistakes.”

  “My office is perfect, at least as far as the public knows. We don't make mistakes in death penalty cases. We don't ask the public to understand when we convict the wrong person for murder.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it your intent to resign, or do I need to terminate you?”

  “You have to be kidding me!” Ann said. “You saw the exact same evidence I did. You believed the same thing I did. You know what I did was what any reasonable prosecutor would have done—proceed based upon the evidence in the prosecution of Tommy Olsen. You would have done the same thing!”

  “But I didn’t know what you knew.”

  “Sure you did,” Ann said. “Mike had to tell you. He’s too weak to keep something like that from you.”

  Rebecca wrote something on a legal pad in front of her. “Think he’ll remember that?”

  “My God, you are hanging me out to dry!”

  "I am willing to give you the opportunity to do the right thing and resign. Failing that, I will terminate you for cause—an ‘ethical lapse,’ I think I’ll call it. I need your decision by noon.”

  Sam and Veronica stood silently, respectfully, as the horse-drawn caisson passed by. Arlington National Cemetery was eerily quiet on this Friday morning, due in part, Sam supposed, to the rainy weather.

  “What’s the significance of that?” Veronica nodded toward the caparisoned horse.

  “Symbolizes the last ride of the rider,” Sam whispered. “For the same reason the saddle is empty and the boots face to the rear. In twenty minutes or so, you’ll hear a three-volley salute. Then the bugler will play ‘Taps.’”

  “My goodness. It’s so formal,” she said, looking around her. “How many people are buried here?”

  “I’m not sure. I think something like four hundred thousand.”

  “Oh my God! Do they go through all of this for four hundred thousand men and women?”

  “No, most people don’t get buried with full military honors. All gave some, but some gave all.”

  “So—?”

  “Yes. My men all got the full deal. It’s the least this country can do.”

  They’d been to the grave sites earlier that morning—all five of them. Sam had spent some time alone at each, head down and eyes closed in prayer and thought, while Veronica stood by, nodding at passersby and thinking about just how quiet the cemetery was. At each grave he had straightened, rendered a salute, and left a gold coin on the headstone. She’d asked him about it moments ago, but he just shook his head and said, “I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “I understand,” she said. “This place. It’s so . . . so reverent.”

  “It is.”

  “Will you be buried here?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But you could be.”

  “I could be,” he said, nodding to a man pushing a wheelchair occupied by another man, who was wearing a hat emblazoned “Army.” “But right now, I want to think about living. I want to focus on the future.”

  She kissed him deeply and put her arm through his. “Come on, Captain. Let’s go watch the changing of the guard. Then
maybe you can show me around D.C.”

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  ONE AND DONE

  When a black all-star college athlete is charged with murdering a gay student... attorney Sam Johnstone finds himself racing to solve a crime that isn’t as clear-cut as it appears.

  After an impressive performance in front of a full house, local college basketball stand-out Davonte Blair is relishing the victory with a few other students. But when a fierce argument over drugs ensues, the evening takes a violent turn—and one member of the group goes missing.

  When police discover the body of the basketball team manager, the town turns into a tinderbox of emotions. The victim was gay, and the media is calling it a hate crime. The college president is desperate to avoid a scandal. And the police department is under intense pressure to solve the horrific case.

  As defense attorney Sam Johnstone looks into the murder, the case grows even more complicated. Ronnie Norquist, the son of Sam’s longtime friend and law partner was the dead student’s roommate—and Ronnie was there the night his roommate disappeared. His personal and professional worlds colliding, Sam can tell Ronnie knows more than he’s letting on. But just what exactly has he witnessed? And whose guilt does it prove?

  In a case that’s full of circumstantial evidence, competing versions of truth, and activists desperate in their fight for social justice, Sam must find out what really happened—before this college town tears itself apart.