“I guess your first question is going to be whether I did it or not.” Sulzberger came to sit opposite him. He rolled his fingers over each wrist, the marks of the handcuffs still cutting into his skin, and the force of his arrest still fresh in his mind. He struggled to find a comfortable position on the metal chair, his large frame too tall for the table and his heavy, solid shape too wide for the chair.
“I have no interest in whether or not you committed the crime or any crime for that matter. That’s not what I’m here for. We’ll investigate the case, but that’s not our primary focus. I’m a lawyer. A good one. Right now, my only concern is what we can prove in court.”
“No great statement about defending the innocent or only accepting clients that you think are innocent?”
“As you know my family history, you would know why I do what I do.” Hunter opened his briefcase. “I fight for the truth, and I give people the opportunity for a defense, something my father or mother never had.”
“So being a defense lawyer is something you’ve always wanted to do? Some dream for a kid to have.”
“As a child, I wanted to be Superman. That didn’t work out, so now I’m a lawyer.” His response was deadpan. “If you tell me that you did murder the girl, then it restricts what I can say or do in court. I can’t, and won’t, lie for you before a judge, so I don’t want to know the answer to that question. And I don’t want you discussing it with anyone else. Keep that to yourself.”
Robert Sulzberger had a picture-perfect life. After his time in reality television, he became a local Chicago celebrity, and he used that status to become elected as a Chicago City alderman in the region of Lakeview for the 44th Ward. He had a beautiful wife, a young daughter, investments in shareholdings, a white picket fence around his yard, and a house with all the trimmings. From the outside, his bright white teeth, fitted suits, and cheeky old-world charm presented the image of a textbook life.
But behind the façade, his immaculate world had been falling apart.
“For what it’s worth, I’m going to answer that question.” He stared straight at the lawyer. “I didn’t do it. I’ll be really clear about that. They showed me the photos of the girl, and I have never seen her before in my life. Never. I was as shocked as anyone when the detectives walked into my office. Of course, I answered their questions, every single one, because I had nothing to hide.” He shook his head. “I had no idea what was going on. Do you think I would’ve gone back to my office if I killed her? No, I would’ve been on the next plane to South America. You’ve got to find the person that did this, you’ve got to find this killer. Someone has set me up, and that means there’s a cold-blooded murderer out there on the streets, and they’ll do it again.”
Politics was the natural next step for a celebrity so esteemed. He entered politics on the back of his mission, on the back of his popularity, going to the City Council with the intention of not only increasing awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder but also with the goal of increasing funding to support veterans in Chicago.
But politics is a tough game, and if you don’t play the game, the game plays you out.
“The woman found in your basement was drugged, beaten within an inch of her life, tied to a chair and then left to die. All the while you were home alone, lying in bed, claiming that you didn’t hear a thing. How did she get there if you didn’t do it?”
“Someone set me up. Don’t you get it? They set me up.” Sulzberger ran his hand through his brown hair, tinged by gray on the sides. For a man in his late forties, he still had a great head of hair. Genetics, or a hair replacement company, had blessed him. “Someone is out to get me.”
Within six months of his election to the Chicago City Council, he’d been forced into a corner—approve the rezoning of an area for the development of a new multi-purpose and multi-billion-dollar ice hockey stadium, or see his political donors, and the Mayor, withdraw their endorsement for reelection.
He chose the support of his donors and mayor.
Only, the approval of the stadium meant the demolition of the building that housed the community assistance offices for veterans. It was their hub, their home for more than three decades. The veterans’ organizations were offered new offices, but the new building was well out of the way in the suburb of Buffalo Grove; a very nice, family suburb but an hour away by train from Downtown Chicago, and not easy to get to. What Sulzberger hadn’t appreciated was that veterans were born fighters, and they fought the development of the stadium all the way. There were marches, protests, letters, rocks through windows. The media had a field day, and the residents of Chicago were split—do they support a new stadium for everyone, or do they back the people that fought for their country?
“You have to find the truth. You have to find who did this to me. Someone out there is laughing at me and went to a lot of effort to destroy me. Someone hated me enough to kill an innocent girl.”
“We’ll investigate this case, and we’ll look at the evidence, but what matters to us now is what we can show in court. What matters is what we’re able to show the jury.” Hunter leaned forward. “Robert, is there anything that you haven’t told the police?”
Sulzberger looked over his left shoulder, and then the right one. He stared at the door for a long moment before turning back to Hunter. “Are they listening to us?”
“Is who listening to us?”
“Anyone.”
“No, these walls are soundproof, and it would go against your basic rights to record this conversation.” Hunter’s pen hovered, ready. “Tell me, what do you see as the truth?”
“I told you—someone set me up.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t say, or you don’t want to?”
Sulzberger shook his head and looked at his hands. “I can’t say because I don’t know her name. All I know is she’s called ‘X’. She set me up. It had to be her.”
“Is she a stripper?”
“No.”
“A prostitute?”
“No.”
“A rapper?”
“You’re missing the point—X was the woman I was seeing.”
“You were having an affair.”
“Not just an affair, but…” He looked back to the door.
“What is it?”
“Are you sure these walls are soundproof?”
“Yes.”
“It’s complicated. My wife and I separated around six months ago. We were still living in the same house, but we were sleeping in separate rooms, and we agreed we would start to see other people. I think she was seeing someone else already.” He looked away. “We kept staying in the same house because it looked better to the public that way, and we weren’t ready to tell Lucy about us yet.”
“Lucy?”
“My four-year-old daughter.” He paused. “My career would have taken a massive hit if I started to go through a divorce, and I was already on the ropes. And I didn’t want to move away from Lucy. I wasn’t ready to move away from my family.” He looked at his hands. “But the grass is always greener, right?”
“If the grass is greener, you can bet that the water bill is higher.” Hunter wrote more notes on his pad. “So X was your lover?”
“X and I were lovers, but we also…” Sulzberger rubbed his fingers along the edge of the table. “We stole things together.”
“Such as?” Having heard so many excuses over his decades as a lawyer, nothing surprised Hunter anymore. Sulzberger could’ve said that a mouse was using mind control on him, and Hunter would’ve barely raised an eyebrow.
“Usually we only stole small things, like a chocolate bar or a bottle of water. That’s how it all started. Just small things. It was a harmless rush.”
“Why?”
“It was familiar. It’s what I did as a kid, and it…” Sulzberger shrugged, ashamed. “The rush of stealing took me back to the days when I was a teenager. Before all the stuff happened. Before all the deat
h that I saw.”
“So, you stole chocolate bars with X, and then she kills a woman and leaves her in your basement? As you can see, that’s quite a stretch to present in court. I’ve defended a lot of clients in court, but this… well, this is not exactly a foolproof defense.”
“It started out as chocolate bars but…” He ran a hand over his chin, the stubble growing thick. “But then it wasn’t thrilling enough. We had to do something more dangerous to get the same rush. We started doing more and more. Sweaters, shoes, electronic goods. The last thing we stole together was a laptop. She caused a distraction at the store, and when the staff member wasn’t looking, I stole it.” He held his hands up again. “But we never hurt anyone, and I always gave the goods to charity.”
“You gave stolen laptops to charities where they could be arrested for being in possession of stolen goods?”
“When you put it like that…”
“A real living Robin Hood.” Hunter began to write brief notes on his pad.
“Look, I was struggling. Really struggling. I’m not going to hide from that. My world was falling apart; I was losing my family. Stealing with X—it was the only thing that made me feel normal. The only support I had disappeared after I voted to approve the building demolition and build that stupid stadium. The people that I considered as my brothers and sisters, my people, they hated me. They all hated me; even people I had never met hated me. The whole veteran community hated me. Do you know what that’s like?” Sulzberger raised his eyes to look at Hunter. “Well, I guess you do. As much as anyone, you must know what it feels like to be hated by the whole world.” He paused. “With everything that was happening, with my life falling apart, I started having episodes again. I hadn’t had an episode in years.”
“Episodes?”
“PTSD.” He bit his lip. “From war. I would see things. They would come as flashbacks when I was really stressed.”
“So, your solution was to steal things?”
“I needed something. A rush. An escape.” He looked back at the door. “That’s what I did when I was a teenager—before I started my service. I was never charged with any crimes, but I used to steal stuff to get away from my parents, you know? It was a rebellion. Stealing things took me back to being a teenager—before I saw all those things at war.”
“And what exactly did you steal with X again? I need more details.” Hunter began to write on his notepad again.
“Mostly it was candy bars, sweaters, laptops. We even stole a blender. The bigger the item, the bigger the risk. The bigger the risk, the bigger the rush. That rush became my escape.” Sulzberger pulled up the sleeve of his jumpsuit.
Hunter was surprised they had a jumpsuit big enough for him.
“I don’t expect you to understand, but when the stakes are so high, when there’s no margin for error, that’s when the harmony begins. When you push past the fear, when you tempt destiny, the adrenaline kicks in, and it sings through your body, tingles your senses, brings a smile to your face that you can’t wipe off. Past what’s considered reasonable, you find your escape.”
“Doesn’t sound very sensible.”
“That’s because sensible people wouldn’t do it.” Sulzberger leaned forward, pressing his forefinger into the table. “They wouldn’t touch the candy bar. The risk is too much, so they ease back. They go back to their normal lives; they go back to doing sensible things: dusting, vacuuming, working nine-to-five. But past the limit of sensible, past the edge of sane, is excitement, exhilaration, and maybe, expiry. And that is the place where I needed to go. That was the place that took me away from the pain.”
Hunter stared at the man opposite him. The fire in his eyes, the pain in his face, was evident.
“Were you ever caught?”
“Never.” Sulzberger shook his head. “X and I got close a few times, but we were never caught. The chance that we could get caught was part of the excitement. Part of the thrill.”
“And as well as the stealing, you were also sleeping with her?”
Sulzberger sighed, leaning back in his chair. “We would get hot and heavy in my car after every steal. It was a mix of passion, emotions, and pure lust—our emotions already heightened after the thrill. I’d never felt like that before, and I’m not sure I ever will again. I never knew her name. I never knew anything about her. Just that we stole things together and were electric when we got naked.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell you her name?”
“She wanted to protect her anonymity. She insisted on it. No names, just stealing and passion. She called me S, and I called her X; they were our code names. The secret code names only added to our excitement. It made everything seem mysterious. We would determine a different meeting point every week, and go from there.”
“Let me get this straight—you’re claiming that you were set up by a woman that you don’t know, but who you stole things with and had relations with in your car?”
Sulzberger’s head dropped. “I can see how that sounds.”
“Did she give you the black eye?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“That was from in here?”
“Things aren’t easy in here. Everywhere I turn, people hate me, but it’s not been violent yet. I’ve been told that there’s a target on me. That if I’m convicted of killing an innocent girl, then I’ll be dead within a week. Apparently, celebrities are targets back there. You get a lot of credit from the gangs for killing a big name. That’s why you have to get me out of here. So I can make it back to my Lucy.” He struggled to hold back his distress, blinking back a tear. “The black eye was from Cindy.”
“You’re not talking about Cindy Mendel, the politician?”
“We were arguing in my office. I was sitting down on my chair, and she walked over and hit me so hard that I almost blacked out. She’d never forgiven me for the stadium vote, and when I voted down another bill of hers, she cornered me in my office and yelled at me. I yelled back, so she took it to the next level and hit me. I think there was a lot of pent-up anger coming out in that punch.”
“Because of her husband.”
“That’s right. Liam committed suicide ten years ago after coming back from Iraq; he served with the army like I did. You hear the story a lot. You see things that are so hard to process, and when you get back to civilian life, it’s difficult to comprehend that people could do these things to each other. Everyone else, they go about their daily lives—getting dressed for work, catching the train, and never giving the evil of humanity a second thought.” He stopped, closed his eyes, and drew a breath. “I never met Liam, but we had similar paths. He saw things that Stephen King couldn’t dream of, and he could never get rid of those thoughts in his head. He fought his battle alone. Cindy felt that if Liam had the support of the community center, if he even knew it existed, then he could’ve come out of the treatment so much better. That’s why she went into politics—to make a difference for people like her husband.”
“And she stuck by her convictions,” Hunter stated. “But you voted to take that funding away, rezone their building, and give that money to a new stadium.”
“She saw me as a traitor to the cause.” Sulzberger closed his eyes again, desperate to avoid eye contact. “She always thought that I would understand her mission more than anyone. And I did understand. She served in the army as well, so I know that she’s one tough woman. She threatened me before the vote—said that if I were a traitor to the cause, she would never forgive me.”
“And you still voted for the stadium?”
“It’s not as easy as that. In politics, you’re trapped. You’ve got to do what the donors want, not what you think is right. If you’re against the people who back your campaign drive, then you lose their support. Without their support, I can’t do anything. You’ve got to pick your battles.”
“It seems you have a talent for making people angry. Your wife, X, Cindy Mendel, hundreds of returned veterans.” Hunter wrote more notes. His me
ssy handwriting was almost as good as a coded message. “It seems the list of people that could’ve set you up is quite long.”
“I’m sure that every person associated with the community group would also hate me. It’s not hard to find people that despise me. Walk down the street and do a poll—I’m sure you could find a suspect there. I don’t even know where you should start looking for the person that set me up.”
“I’m not going to look for that person. Let’s get that clear.” Hunter stopped taking notes, leaned forward on the table, and stared at his potential client. “I’m going to focus on winning this court case, and winning a trial happens in the courtroom, not out on the streets.”
“If you think that’s my best chance of getting out of here, then that’s what you should do.” Sulzberger nodded, slowly coming to terms with his predicament. “But whoever did this has killed once, and I’m sure they’ll do it again. They’re probably already planning it.”
Hunter stared at the man opposite him for a few long moments. It was clear that he was lost. It was clear that he was adrift in a sea of regret.
“I’ll take on the case,” Hunter stated firmly, “and this is what will happen. We’ll apply for bail. At this point, I think it’s likely that you’ll make bail, given your ties to the community; however, I suspect you’ll have to give up your passport.”
“Thank you.” Sulzberger nodded. “Do you really think I’ll make bail? I need it. I need to get out of here. I’ll die if I don’t.”
“You’ll get out of here, but buckle up, Robert.” Hunter stood tall, buttoning his Italian-made fitted suit. “Because out there isn’t going to be any easier.”
Power and Justice Page 2