Secrets and Fries at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

  ‘Alright,’ I said, as he stood up and started walking towards the door. I followed to see him out. A huge part of me wanted him to stay… Alright, all of me wanted him to stay, but that wasn’t fair. The guy had just shared something real personal with me. And I knew it was important to him to stay professional as long as he was representing me. Thoughts of what I could teach him about being affectionate with another person, about letting somebody in, danced in my mind, but I tried to blot them out. Tomorrow was a big day, pretty much the biggest day of my life, and even I knew better than to do anything to screw that up.

  Jimmy opened the door but before he left, he turned and said, ‘Goodnight, Blue.’

  At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard right but he’d definitely said Blue. Not Bonnie. Blue.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said, my heart pounding in my chest. Though he did nothing to invite it, I reached my arms up around his neck and held him. I just couldn’t bear standing far away from him anymore. ‘You’re a good man, Jimmy,’ I whispered into his ear. ‘I know that.’

  After this, I withdrew and took a step backwards. I could see Jimmy was breathing heavier than he had been and he swallowed in that nervous way I’d seen once or twice before.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?’ He pressed his lips together in a thin smile. ‘Get some sleep.’

  I nodded and he started walking back to his room. Not trusting myself to watch him walk away without shouting him back for a goodnight kiss, and maybe more, I shut the door, holding on to the handle for a moment longer than I needed to before letting it go.

  Turning back to look at my bare bed, I sighed. It would’ve been a lot more tempting if Jimmy was there to roll around in the sheets with me. Still, though it’d taken him more than a month to properly explain, at least, for once in my life, the blow-off wasn’t because of me. Which gave me a weird sense of hope that I would get to teach him a thing or two. Not today, but maybe one day.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘The defence calls Mrs Silvia Medina to the stand,’ Jimmy said, turning and staring at the doorway.

  Frankie frowned as a petite, Mexican woman in her early twenties swished her way up the aisle to the witness box. She was one of those women who was immaculately groomed. The kind of neat I could only dream about. She was wearing a black pantsuit with a white shirt underneath and a gold chain with a modest-sized cross hanging from it.

  I had no idea who this woman was. Jimmy had been secretive ever since his investigative trip out to Atlantic City a few weeks ago. He’d requested witness anonymity so her name hadn’t appeared in any of the articles printed up in the paper or the court documents. But even now that I’d heard her name, it meant nothing to me – and from the looks on the faces of the people connected with this case, like Frankie and Mrs Reeves, it didn’t convey anything to them either.

  ‘Mrs Medina,’ Jimmy began, once the witness had been sworn in. ‘Can you please tell the court where you were around eleven-thirty on the 23rd of December.’

  ‘I was in the Lighthouse Tavern at Stone Harbor with my husband,’ she replied in a deep voice.

  ‘Do you live in Stone Harbor?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I wanted to drive from Stone Harbor to Atlantic City, how long would that take me?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘Around forty minutes, if the roads were clear.’ Mrs Medina squinted, making the calculation in her mind. ‘But with traffic it’s often longer.’

  ‘And how busy was the Lighthouse Tavern that night?’

  ‘It was a really wild night at the coast, weather-wise, so it was quiet. Most people stayed indoors.’

  ‘Could you say exactly how many other people were at the bar?’

  ‘Just me, my husband, another couple having cocktails and an off-duty cop who was sitting at the bar.’

  Jimmy pressed his lips together and glanced at the jury before returning his attention to Mrs Medina. ‘Could you describe the officer for the court?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Yes, he is an officer we see regularly around Stone Harbor. We must be on his beat. He has short, dark hair, a dark moustache and is quite a tall man.’

  ‘Is this the man?’ Jimmy held up a large photo of Larry Harris and held it in front of Silvia Medina.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve not had any direct contact with him but that is the man I saw. And I’ve seen him around Stone Harbor. It’s definitely him.’

  ‘And what time did he leave the bar?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but we left the bar just before midnight and he was still sitting there.’

  ‘And how did you know the officer was off duty?’

  Mrs Medina thought for a second before answering. ‘Well, I didn’t. He was drinking beer so I just assumed.’

  ‘So you saw this man, the man in the photograph, just before midnight on the 23rd of December, drinking beer in Stone Harbor? A good forty-minute drive from the crime scene?’ Jimmy turned to Carter and smirked. She tilted her head to one side and looked between Mrs Medina and Jimmy, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Mrs Medina confirmed.

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour, no further questions.’ Jimmy sauntered back to his seat. He seemed to think this testimony was, in itself, enough to overturn the charges. It was an incredible piece of evidence, of course. But I was sure we’d need more than one woman’s word against Harris’s.

  ‘Ms Carter? Any questions for this witness?’ Hamilton said, looking over at the prosecution.

  ‘Yes, Your Honour,’ Carter stood and took three precise strides towards the witness box.

  ‘Mrs Medina, were you drinking alcohol that night, when you say you saw Officer Harris in Stone Harbor?’

  Silvia Medina nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much alcohol did you drink?’ Carter asked, crossing her arms and staring at Mrs Medina.

  ‘I’d had two glasses of wine.’

  ‘And after two glasses of wine, can you be certain the man you saw was Officer Harris?’ Carter took another step closer to the witness box as she spoke.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because I can handle my drink. Two glasses is not enough to impair my judgement. When we first met, my husband had to buy me four glasses of wine before I would agree to go out with him on a date.’

  A chuckle or two rose up from the jury but Hamilton glared them back into silence.

  ‘Have you ever spoken to Officer Harris?’ Carter asked.

  ‘No,’ Mrs Medina admitted, ‘but he frequents that bar. My husband and I have seen him in there once or twice before. It was him.’

  ‘Alright,’ Carter sighed. ‘No further questions, Your Honour.’

  ‘I believe you have one more witness before we recall Mr Harris,’ said Judge Hamilton.

  ‘Yes, Your Honour,’ Jimmy said, standing. ‘The defence calls Mr David Fuller to the stand.’

  I frowned across at the doorway and saw a middle-aged man in a cream suit enter the courtroom. He had a bald spot on top but had combed over his dirty blonde hair in an attempt to conceal that fact. The clerk swore him in and a moment later, Jimmy began his questions.

  ‘I only really have a few questions for you, Mr Fuller,’ said Jimmy. The first being where you were between eleven thirty and midnight on the 23rd of December 1990?’

  ‘I was having a drink with a lady friend at the Lighthouse Tavern in Stone Harbor.’

  Gasps started to rise up among the audience, in anticipation of what they sensed was coming next.

  ‘My next question, Mr Fuller, is who else was in the bar at that time?’

  ‘It was very quiet that night. There was just my friend and I, and a couple and a cop. The officer was having a beer at the bar.’

  ‘Could you describe the police officer for the court?’

  ‘He was a tall man. He had a dark moustache,’ said Mr Fuller, getting a little bit unnerved by the whispers of surprise rippling through the room. Of course, he had no i
dea what had been said in the courtroom just moments ago and had little idea why these seemingly small nuggets of information were causing quite so much of a stir.

  ‘Order!’ Judge Hamilton commanded, banging his hammer.

  ‘Is this the officer you saw, Mr Fuller?’ Jimmy asked, holding up a photograph of Larry Harris.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Fuller. ‘That’s him alright.’

  Jimmy turned to look at Carter, who was deflating by the second. She looked down at the file in front of her.

  ‘No further questions, Your Honour,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Ms Carter?’ Judge Hamilton offered.

  Carter shook her head. ‘No questions, Your Honour.’

  ‘Then let’s recall Mr Harris to the stand,’ said the Judge.

  The doorway to the courtroom opened and a surly-looking Harris was led up the aisle of the courtroom. His first stint in the witness box clearly hadn’t been as straightforward as he’d hoped and he looked less than enthused about reassuming this position.

  He was sworn in for a second time and Jimmy wasted no time going to work on him.

  ‘Mr Harris, according to information given to me by your precinct you are currently assigned to patrol Stone Harbor, rather than Atlantic City. Is that correct?’

  There was a small flinch in Harris’s eyes at the mention of Stone Harbor. He paused for a moment before replying. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why were you not patrolling your assigned area on the 23rd of December?’ Jimmy asked, no doubt knowing the repetition was going to rile Harris up.

  Harris sighed. ‘I already told you the answer to this. Stone Harbor is a quiet district. Atlantic City isn’t. It made sense to reassign some of the manpower around the holidays.’

  ‘So you weren’t in Stone Harbor on the 23rd of December?’ Jimmy frowned.

  Harris shook his head. ‘Not at midnight, when I witnessed Ms Brooks fleeing a murder scene.’

  Jimmy raised both eyebrows in feigned surprise. ‘Have you ever been to the Lighthouse Tavern at Stone Harbor?’

  Harris didn’t flinch this time but his jaw visibly tightened. ‘Yes. Once or twice.’

  ‘Only once or twice? The owner, though he mysteriously couldn’t recall if you were there the night of the 23rd, said he sees you most evenings. That you’re one of his best customers.’

  ‘Well, it’s a nice place to relax after I’ve finished my shift, perhaps I go there a bit more than I realised.’

  ‘Were you there on the 23rd of December?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there’s no physical record of you being at that bar on the night Reeves was murdered, but the other customers who were there enjoying a nice pre-Christmas drink paid by credit card and I was able to talk to two separate customers who were in the bar right before midnight – the time you claim you were patrolling South Kentucky Avenue and saw my client run from one of the side alleyways holding a gun. You still sticking with that recollection? That that’s where you were?’

  Harris’s shoulders stiffened. ‘It’s not a recollection, Mr Boyle. It’s the truth.’

  ‘Well, seems there’s a lot of different versions of the truth being thrown around here. Because Mrs Medina and Mr Fuller, the witnesses we questioned right before you, say they saw you just before midnight in the Lighthouse Tavern. They saw you enjoying a beer there when you said you were on duty in Atlantic City. Now, even if you were speeding, which I know as a responsible officer of the law you wouldn’t do unless it was an emergency, you wouldn’t make it back to Atlantic City in time to see my client run from an alleyway at midnight.’

  ‘Now that I think about it,’ Harris said, ‘I did put my head into the Lighthouse Tavern earlier in the evening. But your witnesses must be mistaken about the time.’

  Jimmy smiled.

  ‘You know, I fancied that myself. I mean, it’s the holidays, and the witnesses were enjoying some drinks. Would they really be paying attention to the time? No. But you see, the Medinas have a house alarm that logs what time it’s set and what time it’s shut down as people enter the building. And the log from that evening has the Medinas leaving their house at half past nine and returning at midnight. Their house, I should make it clear to the court, is just a ten-minute walk from the bar. And they didn’t make any detours. It was cold and wet that night and they went straight home. So how did Mrs Medina see you right before midnight, forty minutes away from the crime scene? It makes your testimony implausible.’

  Harris swallowed and looked over at me, and then back at my attorney.

  Jimmy stared Harris down. ‘I ask you again. Where were you at midnight on the 23rd of December?’ Jimmy had raised his voice now. He wasn’t shouting, he knew he’d get shut down by the Judge for that, but there was an urgency to his voice and no mistake.

  Harris looked at Frankie.

  Frankie shook his head, slow and deadly.

  Harris looked back at Jimmy.

  His breathing was heavier than it had been before. He glanced at the jury, then back at Frankie, and finally his eyes landed on me, right before they screwed up tight in an attempt to block out all that was to follow. ‘Alright…’ Harris took in a deep breath, his eyes still closed. ‘I was in the Lighthouse Tavern.’

  ‘We know that, Mr Harris, but at what time?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘At midnight.’

  ‘If that’s true, how did you witness Ms Brooks run from that alleyway?’ Jimmy said, pushing for a full confession.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Harris said. His breath was huffy now. Hot and furious. He’d kept his eyes shut this whole time, perhaps trying to block out what was happening.

  Jimmy’s eyes were piercing, fixed on the witness crumbling in front of him. ‘So why did you give testimony claiming that you did?’

  ‘Mr Ray… He threatened me and forced me to give false testimony.’

  ‘And that five grand I saw in your bank records, paid in on Christmas Eve, that was a holiday bonus, was it?’ Jimmy said, scratching the side of his jaw.

  ‘Alright.’ Harris’s eyes sprang open to meet Jimmy’s. ‘He bribed me. But I didn’t want to take it. He threatened me and said if I didn’t take it he’d kill me too.’

  ‘What do you mean “too”?’

  ‘Well, he did it.’ Harris pointed over at Frankie. ‘He killed Donald Reeves. He forced me to plant the murder weapon and the wallet in Ms Brooks’s apartment the next day.’

  Gasps rose up from the audience and from the jury. Wide-eyed, I looked at Jimmy. He turned on the spot, looked at me and grinned. Breathless, I returned his smile, covering my nose and mouth with both hands as tears welled in my eyes.

  ‘Mr Ray and Mr Harris,’ Judge Hamilton said. ‘You will be tried separately for these alleged crimes. As Mr Harris has confessed to planting the physical evidence in Ms Brooks’s apartment and that he did not witness her leaving the crime scene with a weapon, there is no longer evidence to support the charges brought against her beyond reasonable doubt. Ms Brooks,’ Judge Hamilton smiled over to me, ‘you are free to go.’

  Chatter rose up from those watching the case as officers moved across the room to close in on Frankie Ray and Officer Harris. I looked back at Jimmy, who was still staring at me. Without thinking, I stood up from my chair, whipped around the desk and sped towards my attorney, arms outstretched. I almost knocked him over with the force of the hug, but I didn’t care, I just wanted – no, needed – to be close to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to him over and over again as he put his arms around me and laughed.

  In the periphery I could hear the officers arresting Frankie and then I heard a very sharp, very cruel version of his voice. The same voice I’d heard from him in the alleyway that night he’d shot Reeves.

  ‘This isn’t over, you little bitch,’ he said. Still clinging to Jimmy, I turned to look at his reddening face. ‘You cause trouble for me, I’ll cause trouble for you. This won’t be the last you hear of it.’

  ‘Get him outta here,’ Jimmy said, wavi
ng a hand, and the officers did as he asked. ‘Don’t mind him. Despite what he says, it is over. There’s no way he’s not going to prison over this.’

  I gave Jimmy a half-smile, but couldn’t help glancing at Frankie as he was led out of the courtroom. Though he was being hustled out, his eyes were still on me, cold and unrelenting, reminding me that Frankie wasn’t the kind of man to let things go.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Several hours later, I was sitting next to Jimmy with a bottle of beer in my hand on the stretch of beach opposite our motel. Behind us stood that loony-looking giant elephant made of wood and tin. She’d looked out over the Atlantic Ocean for more than a hundred years and now she was watching over Jimmy and me as we sat in the sands outside a sea-view bar, watching the sun going down over the water.

  ‘So, what’ll you do now you’re a free woman?’ Jimmy asked, gazing across at the surf.

  ‘Oh, come on, do you have to ask me a serious question like that and ruin the buzz of my newfound freedom?’ I laughed.

  ‘You’re not going to dye your hair blue again are you?’

  ‘Maybe. I quite liked being blue.’ I glanced over at him as I said this. His head turned a few degrees in my direction and then back to the view out front.

  ‘Nick a fan of the blue hair, is he?’ said Jimmy, taking two gulps of his beer in quick succession.

  I sighed. ‘Matter of fact, Nick is a fan of the blue hair.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Jimmy said, his head whipping round.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, glaring back at him now. Why was he so touchy about Nick when he’d pushed me away? Even last night he’d told me he couldn’t get into a relationship with me. Not now anyway. Did he really expect me to just hang around? ‘Nick’s been nothing but sweet to me the whole time I’ve known him. He hasn’t made any cruel comments or messed me around at all.’

  Jimmy frowned. ‘Well then, why don’t you marry the guy? Have ten kids by him for all I care.’

  ‘Because that’s not what I really want. And if you weren’t so busy being such a jerk whenever the mood took you, maybe you’d have figured that out,’ I said.