by David Staats
“I appreciate that,” said Preston. “In plea negotiations with Mr. Whittaker, he’s arguing that because your client Houlihan confessed to the murder, the Commonwealth will never be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as to Loveless, because the defense will produce your client’s confession to the same crime, and that will be enough to give rise to reasonable doubt.”
“Hmm, not a bad argument.”
“So, I’m going to need your client to testify as to how he made a false confession.”
“How do you know that my client did make a false confession?” asked Dure, with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“Before Mr. Loveless retained Whittaker to represent him, he was cooperative,” said Preston, sounding put out. “He explained what he did in convincing detail which is corroborated by the physical evidence which we retrieved from his house and garage.”
“We’re dying to hear the details,” said Dure.
“I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me something.”
“What’s that?” said Dure.
“How you opened Mrs. Houlihan’s phone.”
“Okay, that’s a deal if you go first,” said Dure.
“Loveless was greatly annoyed by the groundhogs that Mr. Houlihan tolerated on his property. They used to come over to Loveless’s house and eat his garden plants and start digging holes. So, Loveless would shoot them with his .22 rifle. But to keep anyone in the neighborhood from finding out, he would only do his shooting when the landscape crews were mowing in the neighborhood. As you suggested, the sound of the mowers camouflaged the sound of the shots. So, when the mowers came, Loveless would set up his rifle in his bedroom and shoot out the window if he happened to see a groundhog in his yard or on the boundary line between the yards. On the day in question, he was watching for a groundhog when Mrs. Houlihan came into view. Apparently old resentments came to the surface and he took advantage of the opportunity. He hadn’t planned to do it – at least so he claims. After he fired the shot, he was afraid that the police would be able to use the bullet in the head to tie him to the murder, so he used a hacksaw to cut off the head and took it to his garage. He wanted to extract the bullet before disposing of the head, but he decided it would be too messy and difficult to extract the bullet. He thought about it a couple of days and finally used a blowtorch to heat up the shaft of a screwdriver from which he had cut the handle off. He put the shaft in the bullet hole and kept it long enough to deform or melt the bullet so that it could not be matched to his gun.
“It’s ironic that all of this effort did not really matter in the end because it was not by ballistics that he was found out. But he could not decide how to get rid of the head. When Houlihan confessed, he felt the pressure was off. Then, when you made such a big deal at trial of the police not having found the head, he snuck over to Houlihan’s house and planted the head in Houlihan’s shave-ice trailer. He thought he was killing two birds with one stone: getting rid of the head, and making sure that Houlihan would be convicted.
“We recovered a .22 rifle from his house and found evidence in his garage to corroborate this, including a screwdriver handle with no shaft, and burnt remains in a portable grill of plastic gloves, a plastic bag and other paraphernalia he had used to do his dirty work.
“So the conclusion is, we are convinced that he did it and that your client – God knows why – gave a false confession. So, now, you’ll help the Commonwealth defeat Mr. Whittaker’s gambit? . . . Oh, but first, how did you open that phone?”
Here Dure burst out laughing in a way that was uncharacteristic and seemed inappropriate. It was a horse laugh out of which the arc of his upper teeth was fully visible. Belatedly, he put his hand over his mouth. After a moment the laugh subsided. “Mr. Houlihan will remember, but you of course could not know. He signed an authorization to have the body exhumed, which I did to test for poisons in the body – at that time, no one knew, or at least we did not know, how the murder had been committed. While the body was up, I had the right thumb carefully tumefied with a saline solution. Then an impression was taken and a thin silicon membrane created of her thumbprint. I wore this on my thumb . . . and it worked to activate the phone’s touch ID. So, no big mystery.”
There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line. “I see,” said Preston finally.
Houlihan spoke up. He seemed to be feeling confident and expansive. “What was the hissing voicemail message on Mr. Parker’s phone?”
Preston answered this. The alacrity in his voice showed that he was glad of this opportunity to try to catch up with Dure in the perduring competition among lawyers to demonstrate knowledge and competence. “We determined that the default setting on Mrs. Houlihan’s phone, which she hadn’t changed, was that missed calls could be returned even while the phone was locked. As you know, we took possession of Parker’s phone and found out that he had called her at 6:56 p.m. Loveless waited until dark, around 9:30, to go out in the yard with his hacksaw. My hypothesis is that in disturbing the corpse, he caused a pocket dial that returned Parker’s call.”
“A brilliant deduction, Roderick,” said Dure.
“And now,” said Preston, “I imagine that Mr. Houlihan would like to see the real murderer of his wife convicted of his crime. So I can’t imagine that there would be any resistance to his testifying for the prosecution.”
“I expect you’re right, Roderick,” said Dure. “But I’ll discuss it with my client.”
“Keep in mind,” said Preston, “that making a false report to the police is a crime, even a false confession. But I will be willing to overlook the matter if Mr. Houlihan cooperates in the prosecution of Loveless.”
“In this case, Roderick, there’s a clear defense of entrapment. That would take the cake: the police use questionable methods to coerce a confession, and then prosecute the innocent party for making a false report to the police! But I’ll discuss the matter of testifying with my client. I think I can persuade him.”
“That would be good,” said Preston.
There was a pause in the conversation. Then Dure asked, “Roderick, what are you charging Loveless with?”
“Murder in the first degree.”
“Is that it?”
“What else could there be?”
“If you want some leverage in negotiating with our friend Mr. Whittaker, you might suggest that you are considering adding another count: you might charge Loveless with attempted murder.”
“Attempted murder? I don’t get it.”
“By lying and committing perjury, he tried to put my client to death. Seems like an attempt to murder to me. Murder by judicial process.”
“I’ll consider that.”
“You were asking for the death penalty.”
“That’s true.”
“Maybe you can persuade Mr. Whittaker to a reasonable plea bargain – then you won’t have to impeach your police as to how they wangled a false confession out of my client.”
“Whenever I talk with you, Walter, I learn something.”
“Iron sharpens iron. Good bye.” Dure hung up the phone and gave Houlihan one of his rare smiles.
THE END.
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