Immoral

by Brian Freeman

  Stride was always amazed at how light on his feet Gale seemed for such a large, imposing man. Gale almost seemed to glide. He stopped to shake several hands on his way to the bar, then roared through the swinging gate. He deposited his slim burgundy briefcase on the defendant’s table, then interrupted Dan long enough to lean down and whisper something in his ear. Stride watched Gale’s lips and could make out what the lawyer said.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Daniel.”

  Seeing Gale, the bailiff opened a side door, and a guard escorted Graeme Stoner, dressed as impeccably as his attorney, into the courtroom. Graeme maintained the same even demeanor Stride had seen in him from the very beginning, cool, confident, with a slight amusement in his eyes. He didn’t blink or flinch when he saw his wife, who was soon to be his ex-wife. Graeme simply smiled at her, then sat down and began a hushed conversation with Archibald Gale.

  Emily, in contrast, could not take her eyes off Graeme. It was as if she had seen a ghost that she hated with all her soul.

  At nine o’clock, the bailiff called for the crowd to rise. Judge Catharine Kassel, forty years old, with a black robe obscuring her slim figure, entered the courtroom. She had been appointed to the bench two years earlier, and soon afterward Law & Politics magazine named her the Sexiest Judge in Minnesota. With impeccably coiffed blonde hair and an elegant, tapered face, she lived up to the billing. Even so, most lawyers feared her. Her cool gray eyes could quickly turn to ice in the courtroom.

  Seated, Judge Kassel cast a wary eye on the crowd.

  “Let me remind all of you,” she announced firmly, “that I want no demonstrations of any kind throughout the proceeding. Consider this a zero tolerance policy. Anyone who violates it will be escorted out immediately and will not return. I hope I am being very clear about that.”

  The courtroom was absolutely silent. Then Judge Kassel smiled, and she was radiant. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  She motioned to the bailiff.

  The jury was brought in and took their places uncomfortably, staring anxiously at the sea of faces in the courtroom. Judge Kassel welcomed them, adopting a more friendly tone to keep the jury at ease. They would spend the next several days separated from friends and family in the downtown Holiday Inn, and Stride could see in their faces that they were anxious for the trial to begin and end.

  The judge gave the jury a minute to settle down and led the courtroom through the usual preliminaries.

  Then she invited Dan Erickson to give his opening statement.

  Dan took his time. He made eye contact with each juror.

  He held up an enlarged school photograph of Rachel, a cryptic smile on her face. He looked at it, then held it delicately in his hands, facing the jury. He allowed her image to sink into all of their minds.

  “This is Rachel Deese,” he told them. “She’s beautiful. A pretty seventeen-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her. Unfortunately, a month after this photo was taken, Rachel disappeared. The evidence that was found in the subsequent weeks leads us to an unhappy conclusion. This beautiful girl was murdered.”

  Dan stared at his feet, shaking his head sadly.

  “I wish I could make it easy for you. I wish someone had been there on that Friday night in October, other than Rachel and the man who killed her, to sit here in the witness stand and tell you how it all came about. But I think you know that most murders don’t happen in public. Murder is an ugly, private business.”

  He turned and stared at Graeme Stoner, allowing the jury to follow his eyes. Then he continued.

  “But if murderers keep their own secrets, how do we convict them? Often, as in this case, we use what is called circumstantial evidence. These are facts that, when taken together, lead you to an inescapable conclusion about a defendant’s actions and his guilt. Let me give you an example. A man is found stabbed to death in his home. No one saw the crime. No one saw who killed him. There is no direct evidence at all. Nonetheless, we discover another man’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. We discover that this man had a grudge against the victim. We discover that this man had no alibi for the night of the murder. We find traces of blood matching the victim’s on his shoes. This is all circumstantial evidence that tells us the truth about the crime.”

  Dan waited, absorbing the looks on their faces, making sure they understood.

  “And in this trial, you will see overwhelming circumstantial evidence about the murder of Rachel Deese. You will be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the man at the defendant’s table, Graeme Stoner, killed this beautiful girl and disposed of her body.

  “Who is this man?” Erickson demanded, jabbing a bony finger at Stoner. “In this trial, we’ll pull aside the mask that this man puts on for the world. We’ll show you someone very different. Someone who keeps a naked photo of his stepdaughter on his computer. Someone who fantasizes about sex with teenage girls. Someone with a dark secret about his relationship with Rachel. He was having a sexual affair with her.”

  He paused, letting the jury reflect on this conclusion. He let them stare at Graeme and wonder what was behind his impassive expression. It didn’t matter that Graeme was wearing a business suit, as he would for any workday at the bank. Dan wanted the jury to see his clothes as a facade for a dirty mind.

  “And what of Rachel?” Dan asked. “I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know where Rachel’s body is. There’s only one person who does, and he’s sitting over there at the defense table. You may wonder why we know a murder has been committed, if we can’t show you a body. You’ll hear the defense try to tell you that, because we have no body, it’s possible for you to believe that Rachel is still alive.”

  Dan shook his head.

  “Is it possible? Well, I suppose it’s possible that Elvis is still alive. But you’re not here to determine what’s possible. You’re here to determine the facts beyond a reasonable doubt. So remember this. When you see the physical evidence we have gathered, you’ll realize that the only reasonable conclusion you can draw is that Rachel was murdered, and her body hidden somewhere in the vast wilderness of northern Minnesota. Sadly, no one may ever find her. It’s a terrible, tragic reality. But not knowing where her murderer disposed of her body doesn’t change the truth. Rachel is dead. You will be convinced of that.

  “We’re going to retrace her steps for you. We’ll show you videotape of this girl driving home on a Friday night. She’s safe. She’s smiling. She’s just made a date with a boy for the next night. And yet this same girl is never seen again. Instead, we find a fragment of a shirt she was wearing—a shirt she had purchased only a few days earlier—stained with her blood, in a wooded area a few miles north of town. We find a bracelet she treasured lying on the ground. That’s the last we know of Rachel.”

  Erickson shot a withering look at Graeme Stoner, then turned sharply back to the jury. “And what connects these two scenes? The girl in the car, alive and happy, and the bloody scrap of clothing found miles away? Well, Rachel was heading home that night, where Graeme Stoner was alone. Rachel’s mother was out of town. And in the driveway of the house was Graeme Stoner’s van, locked up tight. In that van, you’ll find the evidence that links the scenes together. More of Rachel’s blood. Rachel’s bloody fingerprint on the blade of a knife. More fibers from the turtleneck she was wearing. And Graeme Stoner’s fingerprints on the same knife.

  “That’s what I’m going to show you in this trial. Facts. Evidence. Blood and fibers that don’t lie. My job is to lay out those facts for you, to show you what we found.

  “Now, the defense has a different job in this case,” Erickson told the jury. “They need you to overlook the facts, or to find wildly improbable explanations for them. Mr. Gale there, he’s a showman, kind of like one of those magicians you see in Las Vegas. Magicians are talented people. They can dazzle an audience and pretend to levitate a beautiful girl right before your eyes. In fact, a good magician can be so convincing, you might even be tempted to
believe that the girl really is hovering above the stage. But you know and I know it’s nothing but a trick. An illusion.”

  He locked eyes with each juror, his face turning serious.

  “Don’t be fooled. Don’t be tricked into giving up your common sense. Mr. Gale’s going to try his magic out on you, but I want you to look at the physical evidence of this case. And you will see that the evidence leads you to one explanation only—that on that terrible night when Rachel disappeared, Graeme Stoner’s obsessive relationship with his stepdaughter finally crossed the line into violence and murder. We may never know exactly what happened between them, or why. But an incestuous relationship is so ripe with evil that it can literally explode at any time. No one may have been there that night to see how the violence came about. But it happened. That’s what the evidence will show you. It happened.”

  Archibald Gale stood up, taking off his glasses and depositing them carefully on the defense table. He looked down at Graeme Stoner, smiled, then turned his attention to the jurors. Gale wandered closer, patting all of his pockets, as if looking for something.

  “You know, I was hoping to surprise you by pulling a rabbit out of my pocket, but I seem to have left all my magic tricks back at Caesars Palace.”

  The crowd in the courtroom tittered, as did several of the jurors. Gale’s eyes twinkled.

  He rubbed his graying goatee, then slowly let his eyes travel around the courtroom. Gale had a flair for creating suspense. It didn’t really matter what the facts were. What mattered was who told the most convincing story to the jury. With his commanding size and talent for drama, Gale was a natural.

  “I have been in this courtroom many, many times over the past few decades,” he began softly. “We have had some very newsworthy trials take place here. But I don’t recall ever seeing such a crowd and such intense interest in a trial before today. Why do you suppose that is?”

  He let the jurors think for a moment.

  “Because what we have here is a mystery. Everyone wants to know how the last chapter ends. A girl has vanished. What happened to her? Did someone do violence to her, or did she run away, like tens of thousands of unhappy teenagers do each year? If something did happen to her, what was it? And why? Was it really the fault of her stepfather, as the prosecutor contends? Or did one of the other people in Rachel’s life, who had reason to be angry and jealous of her, let their emotions become violent? Or did a brutal serial killer, who is still at large in our city, claim another victim?”

  Gale nodded thoughtfully.

  “I’d like to promise that when we’re done here, you’ll know what happened to Rachel. But you won’t. Because we don’t know. Graeme Stoner doesn’t know. And neither does Mr. Erickson. All you’ll end up with is questions and doubts. But that’s all right. You may want to find the truth yourself, but it isn’t your job in this courtroom to pick an ending to a mystery story.”

  He cocked his head. “Yes, I know what you may be thinking. There he goes again. The magician. Isn’t that what the prosecutor told you to watch out for? That I’d be twisting his nice little facts and trying to make you go off on some improbable flight of fancy? Well, no, I’m not asking you to take my word. The difference is that Mr. Erickson plans to show you some of the facts, and I want to make sure you see all of the facts. When you do, you’ll realize that Graeme Stoner is innocent of the crime of murder, and you’ll send a message to the police that they need to go back and find out what really happened to this strange, unhappy girl.”

  Gale leaned over and grabbed the railing of the jury box. “Mr. Erickson says you should pay attention to the evidence. I agree. I want you to watch the evidence closely, so you can see what the prosecution isn’t telling you.

  “They’re not telling you that Graeme was in his van with Rachel on the night she disappeared. Because they have no evidence that he was.

  “They’re not telling you that the Stoners’ van was at the barn on the night Rachel disappeared. Because they have no evidence that it was.

  “They’re not telling you that they know Rachel is dead. Because they don’t.

  “They’re not telling you that they can prove Graeme Stoner was having sex with his stepdaughter. Because they can’t.

  “Instead, they want you to make a leap. They’re going to give you little unrelated facts and stitch them together to try to make you believe what they can’t prove. That’s not evidence, circumstantial or otherwise. That’s fiction. That’s guesswork.”

  Stride felt his insides go soft. Bang bang bang, Gale was punching at the weaknesses in their case. Of course, he was right. They really couldn’t prove any of those things. All they could do was lay out the pieces of the puzzle and hope the jury was smart enough to put it together.

  “But there’s more,” Gale continued. “You’ll also see that the prosecution, in its zeal to package a neat ending to the mystery, has ignored many other possible solutions. I’m afraid that Mr. Erickson is the kind of man who would find a lot of parts left over after he put his engine back together and conclude they must not be very important.”

  He winked at the jury, then grinned at Dan.

  “Let’s look at a few of those extra parts,” Gale said. “Another teenage girl named Kerry McGrath, who lived within a couple miles of Rachel and who went to her school, disappeared the year before Rachel did. She, too, has never been found. The circumstances of her disappearance are remarkably similar to Rachel’s. The police know that Graeme Stoner had nothing to do with Kerry McGrath’s disappearance, and yet they ignore the grim possibility that a serial killer could be stalking the young girls of this city.

  “Extra parts. On the night she disappeared, Rachel was behaving strangely. Why? Did she know something? Was she meeting someone? Was she planning to run away?

  “Extra parts. Who else was with Rachel on the night she disappeared? Who else had reason to be happy if she vanished forever?

  “Extra parts. What was the real source of Rachel’s unhappiness? Was it her relationship with her stepfather? No. It was the miserable, bitter, violent relationship she had with her mother. Remember that word. Violent.”

  Stride glanced at Emily and saw a tear slip from her eye. She looked down at her lap, weeping silently.

  Gale continued. “Questions and doubts. You’ll have many at the end of the trial. But there will be no question, and no doubt in your minds, as to the right action for you to take. And that is to find my client not guilty of the crime of which he has been wrongfully accused.”

  Gale held the stares of the jurors for a few long seconds. Then he returned to the defense table and sat down.

  Stride examined the jurors’ faces. He figured it was a tie ball game heading into the first inning.

  Batter up.

  22

  Stride took his place in the witness stand. He had done so hundreds of times before, so many that the chair felt familiar, as if he had worn an impression in it so it clung to his body. He made eye contact with the jurors.

  Duluth jurors believed the police. He saw it in their eyes. This wasn’t an urban jury pool, where the citizens felt the police were sometimes an enemy. He saw them studying his craggy features, the strands of gray in his dark hair and his sturdy physique, and concluding they could trust him.

  Dan took him through introductions and allowed Stride to talk about his history on the force, his years of experience, his expertise on crimes and crime scenes. Only after the jury had gotten to know him did Dan begin to talk about Rachel. Stride explained how he had first been notified of the girl’s disappearance and then, step by step, led the jury through a reconstruction of the evidence from Rachel’s last night.

  He described the bank video showing Rachel’s car gliding by shortly after ten o’clock. Dan played the video for the jury. Then he held up a grainy, enlarged photograph, showing a girl’s face behind the wheel. Despite the blurry image, everyone could see it was Rachel. She was smiling. She looked happy.

  It was the last image,
Dan reminded the jury, that anyone ever saw of Rachel Deese.

  “Lieutenant, what is Rachel wearing in this photograph?”

  “A white turtleneck,” Stride said.

  Dan returned to the prosecution’s table and retrieved an exhibit—a receipt neatly packaged in a plastic bag. “Can you identify this item?”

  Stride nodded. “It’s a receipt found in a Gap bag found on the floor in Rachel’s bedroom. We discovered it during our initial investigation.”

  “What is the receipt for?”

  “It’s for an item of clothing sold the Sunday prior to Rachel’s disappearance. A white Gap-brand turtleneck.”

  “Did you find any white turtleneck during your search of Rachel’s bedroom?”

  “No, we did not.”

  Dan nodded thoughtfully. “Lieutenant, please tell us how you and your officers conducted a search for Rachel.”

  “We mounted an immediate and exhaustive statewide and region-wide search. My officers interviewed all neighbors within twelve blocks around the Stoner house. We checked the bus station, the airport, the train station, and all taxi companies in both Duluth and Superior. Throughout the state, police checked every service station and convenience store along the major highways, distributing Rachel’s photograph and interviewing clerks. We posted a notice on our Web site and faxed information to police across the country. These efforts generated hundreds of leads, which were methodically researched by our officers and our fellow officers in other states. We had excellent photographs of Rachel to use with witnesses. We conducted literally thousands of interviews. Nonetheless, we did not receive a single verified sighting of Rachel after the videotape at the bank. Not one. Not anywhere.”

  “What conclusion did you draw from this?” Dan asked.

  “We began to discount the possibility that Rachel had run away. No one had seen her alive since that Friday night. Plus, we were doubtful from the beginning that Rachel would have run away and left her car at home. It seemed highly unusual to us that a teenager with a car would leave her sole means of transportation behind her. And as I said, we covered all possible means of public transportation and found no evidence that she had used any of them.”