Hangman

by Michael Slade

  “Justin’s the authority. That’s why I corralled him,” Maddy said.

  Aft of the Champagne Terrace soared the Moby Dick Dining Room. Two deck levels high, it circled around a huge white whale diving from the ceiling. So as not to upset diners at their seafood repasts, obsessed Captain Ahab and his bloody harpoon were nowhere in sight. Beyond a wall of mammoth portholes, the lights of Seattle began to retreat astern as the North Star cast off for Puget Sound.

  “I hope this cruise is less eventful than my last one,” Alex sighed. “A bomb blew a hole in the hull and the ship sank under me. My leg was in a cast. I nearly drowned.”

  “You saved her?” Maddy asked Zinc.

  “No, I was in Africa. With trouble of my own.”

  The table they selected was as far away from the grand piano as they could get. The woman tickling the ivories played showbiz tunes from The Little Mermaid. It was enough to make Zinc swear off cruising for the rest of his life.

  “So,” he said to Justin, “tell us about Haddon.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “First, bring us up to speed on the crime.”

  “Peter Haddon was charged in May 1983 with the rape-murder of Anna Koulelis. Nine-year-old Anna lived with her father in the house next door to the basement suite Peter had recently rented. George Koulelis owned a Greek restaurant, the Athens Taverna, in Seattle. Before going to work, George took his daughter to school each weekday morning. During the break between serving lunch and dinner, he drove home to spend time with her after school.”

  “What about the mother?”

  “She was somewhere in Greece. Since Anna had been born in the States, George got custody of her when his wife ran off to Europe.”

  “Who stayed with the girl at night?”

  “A nanny arrived at five to cook for Anna and sit with her while her dad was at work.”

  “The girl was snatched?”

  “Yeah, after school. The last witness to see Anna alive was a classmate named Judy. The two stopped at a local store for bubble gum and agreed to meet at four in a park to play with their Cabbage Patch dolls. That was at 3:30. Judy was in the park at four, waiting for her friend.”

  “Anna didn’t show?”

  Justin nodded.

  “Where was she grabbed?”

  “Supposedly at home. Her father returned at 4:35 to find her gone.”

  “Four thirty-five?” said Zinc. “That seems rather late if he was to spend time with her.”

  “Yeah,” said Justin. “But he never budged on the time after he changed it.”

  “Changed it from what?”

  “Four-ten,” Maddy replied. “That was the time he gave in his initial statement.”

  “The time is crucial,” Justin said. “Peter worked part time at a computer store. Even if his alibi was a lie—he told police he stopped for food and gas after he got off work—it was physically impossible for him to have arrived home before 4:15. Had Anna’s dad stuck with his arrival time of 4:10, the case against Peter would have crumbled at the start. By changing the time he got home to find Anna gone to 4:35, George Koulelis opened a window of opportunity for Peter to have abducted his child. Instead of being eliminated, Peter became a plausible suspect.”

  “Why did the father initially think the time was 4:10?”

  “He glanced at the kitchen clock as he walked in the door.”

  “Why did he change the time?”

  “The clock, he said, was slow. He noticed it days later and threw the clock away.”

  “That satisfied detectives?”

  “Yes,” interjected Maddy. “Like you, the officers involved thought 4:35 was late if George drove home to spend time with Anna. They also noticed that he wore a new wristwatch. They suspected that he knew the time he got home was 4:35, but that he moved it back to 4:10 because he felt guilty about not being there when his daughter came home from school.”

  “The cops were wrong?” said Alex.

  “As it turned out,” said Justin. “From what we know now, it seems likely that George did get home at 4:10. Later, he changed the time to 4:35 so Peter would be charged. Which he was.”

  “Why was Haddon a suspect?”

  “Blame that on the father too. When Anna couldn’t be found after a neighborhood search, the investigators asked George if anyone had acted strangely toward her. He told them about ‘the weird kid’ next door, whose basement-suite windows faced Anna’s bedroom. The walkway to the Koulelis backyard was along that side. If Peter was home, he could have seen Anna walking her bike to the rear of the house before she went in to get her doll to go play with her friend in the park.”

  “Why was he ‘weird’?” asked Alex.

  “Peter Haddon was a cyber-geek. His goal in life was to become the next Bill Gates. When he wasn’t working, he was off in the Zone, seated in front of a glowing screen down in his underground hole.”

  “Was he a pervert?”

  “Only in George’s mind. A glance out Peter’s window would angle up under Anna’s skirt.”

  The dining room was filling up with a motley crew of cruisers. The scarlet tunics of the Mounties seized the most attention, followed by the penguin getups of the Canadian barristers. It could be the set of a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon film, if only the Arctic was home to Antarctic wildlife.

  “What was the detectives’ theory on how the crime occurred?” asked Zinc.

  Maddy took over from Justin. “Anna brought her bike home from school. The bike was found in the back yard. Something delayed her from going to meet her friend. Peter returned home sometime between 4:15 and 4:35. He waylaid Anna when she rushed out to go to the park and locked her inside the trunk of his car which was parked out back. By the time George arrived at 4:35, they had driven off.”

  “When was the abduction?”

  “January 23, 1983.”

  “When was the body found?”

  “Three months later. April 25, to be exact.”

  “Where was it discovered?”

  “On the outskirts of Seattle. By a man searching a thicket of woods for his lost dog.”

  “What were her remains?”

  “Mostly skeletal bones. Time and the weather had rotted what animals didn’t eat. Tattered clothes covered the torso. Below the waist was bare. The way the body was sprawled suggested a savage sex assault. A broken hyoid bone indicated strangulation. Her underwear was found stuffed in her mouth.”

  “The lab find any traces?”

  “Yes,” said Maddy. “Two hairs, not Anna’s, caught in the chain of a locket around her neck. Numerous fibers on what remained of her clothes. And semen stains on her underwear.”

  The conversation paused while vegetable soup was served, then picked up after the waiters moved to the next table. One of them almost stepped on the Stetson propped against Zinc’s chair.

  Justin picked up from Maddy. “Armed with the lab report, detectives sought out Peter. On first impression, ‘the weird kid’ did seem strange. Peter’s eyes were dark and piercing. A nervous tic made him look guilty. The tic was actually a mild case of Tourette’s syndrome, genetically inherited from his mom.”

  “They told him Anna was dead,” said Maddy between sips of soup. “They asked if he would provide a sample of his hair and let them vacuum his car to eliminate him as a suspect.”

  “Which he did,” said Justin. “And the samples went to the lab. And the lab report that came back confirmed their suspicion.”

  “Peter’s hair matched the two hairs caught on the locket,” said Maddy. “And six fibers recovered from the girl’s clothes, including two on her underwear, matched five fibers in what was vacuumed from the trunk of Peter’s car. That was 1983, so DNA tests on the semen stains weren’t available.”

  “From then on,” Justin said, “Peter lived in the shadow of the gallows.”

  Maddy finished her soup and set down the spoon. “Tunnel vision took over,” she said. “The lab report linking Anna to the trunk of Pete
r’s car, and Peter to the locket on Anna’s corpse, convinced investigators that they had the right man. So married did they become to their pursuit of Haddon that they screened out evidence that didn’t fit their only suspect. Such blind conviction meant the case put together against Peter was self-fulfilling. In effect, they made a case after the case.”

  “How far did they go?”

  “The works,” said Maddy. “Interviews conducted so they planted ideas. No record of troubling statements. Jumping to conclusions and never looking back.”

  “Was Haddon arrested?”

  “Not right away. First, they tried to smoke him out with a false profile. The FBI sent a profiler to assess the crime. He toured the murder site and re-enacted the killing. His profile predicted that the perp would be an older, lazy, unintelligent man who lacked self-esteem, was physically disfigured, and had a history of arson and voyeurism.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Haddon.”

  “Not by a mile. So what investigators did was doctor the profile for a news release. The strategy was to make it seem as if Peter fit Anna’s killer to a T, in the hope that he would panic and give himself away. No one considered the prejudicial effect of the ruse. Tailoring the false profile to fit him planted certainty of Peter’s guilt in the minds of civilian witnesses. And in the minds of potential jurors too.”

  “Did he spook?”

  “No. The people who spooked were the detectives. The FBI told them to allow two or three weeks for the killer’s fear to fester. But when there was no reaction within a few days, Peter was arrested.”

  “Why jump the gun?”

  Justin jumped in. “The excuse I was offered years later was this: ‘Well, he didn’t come running in to say, “Here I am. I confess,” did he?’”

  “And now we know why, don’t we?” said Maddy.

  “Was Haddon grilled?”

  “And how,” said the detective. “All Homicide had was a circumstantial case. The window of opportunity and a few hairs and fibers. The hairs and fibers matched, but that wasn’t conclusive. Other hairs and fibers could match too. What they lacked to cinch the noose was a confession.”

  A flurry of waiter activity whisked away the soup bowls, replacing them with the main course, a medley of fruits de mer. The conversation slowed as the four ate seafood, to the accompaniment of the clatter of cutlery on china. As the ship cruised up Puget Sound, past Kitsap Peninsula and Whidbey Island, isolated lights slipped by the portholes. Ahead, beyond Admiralty Inlet, stretched the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

  “Interrogation wrung no confession from Peter. He steadfastly maintained he was innocent,” said Maddy. “Every comment he made, of course, became suspect. Showing too much emotion or curiosity revealed guilt. Too little did the same.

  “By then, news of his arrest saturated the media. Detectives were forced to justify their conviction, so they began cobbling a case around Peter. A cop driving the paddy wagon swore he overheard Peter admit to someone in back, ‘I’m in trouble if they find out I had sex with an underage girl.’”

  “How old was Haddon?”

  “At the time of the crime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Old enough to hang,” added Justin.

  “What sealed his fate,” Maddy said, “was the word of two snitches. The first to come out of the woodwork was a man charged with robbery who was locked in the cell with Peter on the night of his arrest. He ratted on him in exchange for leniency. His cellmate, the snitch swore, became distraught that night and, in a fit of agonizing over his plight, blurted out, ‘Fuck, man. I killed that little girl.’”

  Zinc shook his head. “I don’t trust rats.”

  “The rat passed a polygraph.”

  “I’m leery of them too.”

  “So am I,” said Maddy.

  “And the other snitch?”

  “He emerged the following day. A deal was struck to reduce his wounding charge after he swore he heard Peter confess through his cell wall.”

  “The same confession?”

  “Yes. The night of Peter’s arrest. The second rat was jailed next to him and the first snitch.”

  “The same words?”

  “Almost. A slight variation. In his version, what Peter wailed was ‘Fuck, man. I did it. I killed that little girl.’”

  “And the polygraph?”

  “It didn’t catch him either. That was enough for Homicide,” Maddy wrapped up. “Detectives had motive: lust for underage girls. Means: the car with the same fibers as those found on Anna’s clothes. And opportunity: the 4:15 to 4:35 window.

  “Peter was charged with murder.

  “The next year, 1984, he stood trial.”

  * * *

  “The trial was an eye-opener,” Justin said. “I sat through it as a journalism student. The battle between the prosecution and the defense was more like a boxing match than a solemn inquiry into the guilt or innocence of a man. The hard-edged partisanship of the lawyers was scary. ‘Fight him every inch of the way.’ ‘Don’t let that sleazebag cuddle up to you in front of the jury.’ ‘Force him to call witnesses so we can gut them alive.’ Those were comments I overheard from the state attorney.”

  “My dad was a trial lawyer,” Alex said. “That was always a concern. How does an attorney vigorously prosecute an accused in an adversary system without overstepping the boundary of fairness to him? His term for the answer was ‘noble cause corruption.’ The belief that it is okay to distort justice because of the moral rightness of convicting someone like Haddon.”

  “An honest lawyer?”

  “There are a few,” she said.

  “The prosecutor danced circles around Peter’s attorney. He had an answer for everything. The defense attacked the match between the fibers found in Peter’s car and those on Anna’s clothes. The fibers were simply there. No common source was known. Something shedding, like say a rug in Peter’s car. Given the close proximity of both homes, the wind could have transferred the airborne fibers of unknown origin to Peter’s car and to Anna’s clothes. Or maybe they were tracked about by someone they had in common, like the postman.

  “The prosecutor’s answer was Anna’s underwear. How did the fibers end up there? Because she was raped on a blanket from the trunk of Peter’s car? A blanket he got rid of after she was dead?”

  “That is more likely,” Zinc said.

  “I agree.”

  “And then there was the similar hair.”

  “That didn’t help,” Justin said.

  “But without the confession, there was no smoking gun.”

  “The defense attacked the snitches as rats without moral constraints. They concocted that bogus confession to buy leniency. Their brazen performances on the stand should not be believed.

  “The prosecutor’s answer was that the worst liar in the world can still tell the truth. The fact that both men concurred in what they heard, the fact that both statements weren’t identical, the fact that the confession echoed Peter’s admission of underage sex overheard in the paddy wagon—these were sound reasons to accept the testimony given under oath. Did Peter’s front collapse that first night in jail? Was it guilt that forced him to blurt out the confession?

  “As the trial ground on, Peter seemed to slip into full-blown paranoia. All of it, we now know, was justified. By the time he took the stand in his own defense, he was a twitchy wreck of a man.”

  “His alibi sank?”

  “It didn’t hold water. No one remembered him buying food or gas. He could have returned home by 4:15. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, Peter’s lawyer made a blunder that torpedoed his client. He called a backup defense of insanity.”

  “The fool,” said Zinc.

  “You’ve seen that done up north?”

  “We, too, have dithering lawyers who can’t make up their minds. They hedge their bets by splitting the defense. ‘My client didn’t do it. But if he did do it, he was insane.’”

  “Mugwumps,” said Alex
. “That’s what my dad called them. Their mug’s on one side of the fence and their wump’s on the other.”

  The four shared a laugh.

  “Dr. Jupp is notorious as a shrink who loves the limelight. The defense can always count on him,” Justin said.

  “Peter’s lawyer called Jupp,” Maddy added.

  “The psychiatrist testified that Peter was schizophrenic,” Justin continued. “He could have raped and killed Anna in a delusionary fugue, and later repressed all memory of what he had done. By leading evidence of insanity, Peter’s attorney not only conveyed the message that he was acting for a dangerous man, but he also made it look like he didn’t believe his client’s alibi. It struck observers as passing strange that a defense of insanity would be led for an accused who hadn’t committed the underlying murder.

  “So in the end, what began as a case of junk evidence against Peter turned into a courtroom battle dressed up in enough legal theatrics to overcome its basic weaknesses. All that stood between Peter and the hangman’s noose was the common sense of twelve jurors. His life depended on their being true to the oath they took, and not playing out personal agendas in the jury room.”

  A man about thirty, with blond hair and bleary eyes, approached their table from the other side of the dining room.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “No,” Justin replied. “Everybody, meet my brother, Ethan Shaw.”

  Zinc, Alex and Maddy acknowledged him. One by one, the three introduced themselves.

  “Crime isn’t his field, so I doubt you’ve crossed swords, but Ethan is a Vancouver lawyer,” Justin told Zinc.

  “I practice with a criminal lawyer,” the young man said. He pointed back at the table he had left, where a tough-looking fellow about the same age and wearing barrister’s robes studied them. “Jeff Kline. Know him?”

  “No,” said Zinc. “But then, I don’t get into court much these days.”

  “Join us?” Alex offered.

  Ethan shook his head. “Actually, I came to spirit Justin away. Everyone’s talking about the hangman word game. Jeff and I were discussing Peter Haddon. I told him Justin was the reporter who blew the whistle, so Jeff wants to hear the story from him.” He turned to his brother. “How about dessert?”