Conspiracy of Innocence

by Gene Grossman

  The Chief finally speaks. “Oh please, give us a break. You’re not under arrest, but you can’t leave here until we finish things up, so don’t worry, everything’s under control. Just relax for a couple of days and let us grown-ups handle everything. This is my house, and you’re going to be my guest until we clear up this matter.

  “Everyone else, including the press, thinks you’re still in that cell, and we’re letting no visitors in, so they’ll keep thinking that. I’ve got a room out in back for you upstairs over the garage, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay in it. We’re taking your cell phone away from you, because we don’t want anyone calling you, or you calling anyone on the outside. Your room has cable television, and my housekeeper will bring you whatever you want to eat, but she’s not going to chop one of those crazy salads for you, like the one you ordered that first day we met.”

  Snell has the last word. “I told you to keep out of this, didn’t I?. But would you listen to me? No. And now look what happened. You’d better stay here, out of our way, because if we can’t straighten this thing out, you’re going down for murder.”

  This is encouraging, because I don’t think that the Chief of any police department would bring a murder suspect into his own home, and put him up in relative comfort with a maid if he thought the suspect was actually guilty. Along with everyone else in this world, they must know something that I don’t know.

  The afternoon news is on and I recognize Myra’s house in the background. Evidently she did take off of work for a while, and a news crew is there to interview her. She comes out of the house and is asked a few stupid questions. Like a true pro, she makes a statement that answers the questions that they didn’t have the brains to ask.

  “Due to the fact that the person charged with this crime is my ex-husband, I felt it my responsibility to turn this matter over to the Attorney General’s office for prosecution, and I’ll be taking some vacation time while the case progresses.

  “I’ve been informed that they’ll probably be going before a grand jury soon, so from now on I’ll be out of the loop, and if you want some answers, they won’t be available from me or my office. You’ll have to ask the Attorney General’s staff what their plans are.”

  The only good thing about the interview is that in the background I see the front door to her house is open and what looks like the tip of something white and furry can be seen sticking out from behind the door. Unless Myra’s got a pet bear in the house, it must mean that the dog is there, and if the dog is there, then so’s the kid. I also know that Myra has a broadband Internet connection in the house, so Suzi can probably do her investigative stuff from right there, and if I know her at all, she’ll be using Myra’s passwords for entry into the State’s secure criminal databases.

  In the evening I can look down toward the Chief’s house and see him conducting meetings in that back room of his. Sometimes Snell is there too. They’ve also done a good job of not letting my true location leak out, because there’s always a news crew or two staked out in front of the police station, hoping to get some footage of me being transferred to another jail.

  Several newscasters have quoted ‘reliable sources’ as having said that I’m refusing to cooperate with the authorities. One station claims that they’re now negotiating with the police to get an exclusive interview with me. Film at eleven.

  They were nice enough to have brought my ‘grab bag’ up for me. Being a single, former manabout-town, I always keep a small case with shaving stuff, extra shirt, underwear, socks, and grooming supplies in my Hummer. It just dawned on me that there’s also a small flashlight in my bag, so I take it out and flash an S.O.S. down toward the house. It worked. The Chief noticed it, and sent one of his men out to my guesthouse. He escorts me down to join the rest of them in the house.

  When I walk into the room, I see that Snell is there too. They don’t look too happy to see me, but at least I get invited to sit down at the table and join them. I haven’t had anyone to talk to for the past couple of days, so I might as well see if the vocal chords still work.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I called this meeting.”

  They are not amused. Snell takes charge.

  “Just sit there and keep your mouth shut. The only reason we allowed you to come down here is to tell you that officially, you’re not under arrest. You’re in protective custody.”

  “Does that mean you have some doubt that I killed someone in that house?”

  Snell looks at the Chief, giving him the nod to explain it to me.

  “Mister Sharp, immediately after you talked to Special Agent Snell and told him about your knowing that Kathy Potter took a cab from his office, the Feds put a tail on you. It wasn’t too hard to follow you because of that huge yellow tank you drive, and also because they knew exactly where you’d be going on the day of the murder. You had a court appointment down the road, in Pomona.

  “Unlike the dramas on television, the Feds are not a bunch of incompetents who always get in the way of local law enforcement. On the contrary, they work with us locals and help us out in any way they can. In this particular case, Snell called to let me know that he would be here in town on the day of your trial. One of his team followed you on the road, while he flew up here and landed at our local small plane airport. When he got to my station, we decided to ride together in my car.

  “About the same time you arrived in town and decided to park and get some reading done, we received a call from your office, warning us that you might be going over to Beverly Luskin’s house, and asking us to try and stop you before you made a complete fool of yourself. Knowledge about your past gave us the idea that you were perfectly capable of doing just that, so we had one of our unmarked squad cars parked down the street from the Luskin house, and we followed you from the park to her street.

  “Beverly Luskin was probably watching for you from an upstairs window, and when she saw you pull into her driveway, she placed a nineeleven call about the murder. The nine-eleven dispatcher knew that we were in the area of the Luskin house, so she patched the call through to us, and while you were standing outside of her garage window, trying to peek in there while obviously pretending to combing your hair, we all listened to Luskin hysterically scream that you just beat her up and shot someone in her house. This all took place while we were watching you, and before you got to her front door.” Snell takes over.

  “We know you didn’t beat her up or kill anyone, and we’ve already received the report from your office that Kathy Potter had been followed there two days earlier, so we also know that Luskin is lying about her friend coming that day to visit her and bringing a ‘gentleman’ with her.

  “We’re now in the process of trying to learn who the murder victim is. Kathy Potter is using another name and I’m keeping out of her sight, because we don’t want to spook them out of their game just yet. We’ve got the victim at our federal morgue in Los Angeles, and we’re running him through various databases. So far, his prints haven’t turned up, so we know he’s never been in the criminal justice system or applied for a license of any sort. The DNA tests can take up to two weeks to be completed, and in the meantime, we don’t want them to know that we’re on to them, so we have to keep you in the public’s eye as the killer, while we give them enough rope to make a mistake.” The Chief takes over.

  “These women are clever, but they’re not professional criminals, so they don’t know all the angles. Career crooks aren’t as smart as these dames are, but real thugs are familiar with police procedures, and these two aren’t. They’ll slip up, or we’ll find out who the dead guy is, and when either one of those things happens, we may have what we need to nail them.”

  I’m pleased to hear all this, but have a suggestion or two of my own. “Listen, gentlemen, I have a person on my staff who can put all this together for you, if you’ll only let me make a phone call to get that ball rolling.

  Snell looks at the Chief with a slight ‘no’ nod, so t
he Chief reiterates his warning. “Sorry, Sharp, but we can’t allow you to make any calls. My only suggestion to you is go back upstairs to your guest room and relax. Now that you know most of the facts already, we’ll keep you posted if anything new develops.”

  I appreciate being let in on what’s happening, but still have one more question. “Snell, what’s the deal with Kathy Potter? Is she supposed to be important to you on some other case?”

  Snell doesn’t answer me, but his silence tells me more than he wants me to know. The Chief’s deputy motions for me to follow him back to the guesthouse, so I guess my part of the meeting is over.

  Back up in my room, I see that the local news is making a big deal about my Hummer being towed to some CSI lab in Los Angeles, where they expect to find more evidence linking me to the murder. Not only am I a prisoner upstairs of a garage, if I escaped, I wouldn’t have a car to drive home.

  The only other news worth watching is about some upcoming trial of a crime boss with the unlikely name of Georgio ‘the actor’ Crescendo. Can’t these mafia guys come up with any better names for themselves? About the only thing interesting about them are the nicknames they adopt. Over twenty years ago, this particular guy is supposed to have fooled some jail employees by pretending to have an appendicitis attack. His act was so good that it enabled him to escape from jail, and earned him his nickname.

  I hope his trial is televised, because it would be nice to see someone who’s actually guilty go to trial for a change. From what the papers have been reporting about this Georgio, he’s a real piece of work. They say that compared to Crescendo, Tony Soprano is like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

  I’m being brought down to the house again for another meeting. Snell’s not there, so the Chief will brief me.

  “Mister Sharp, we’ve got a slight problem. The DNA tests came back on the victim in Luskin’s house, and there’s a match with Kathy Potter’s husband.”

  “So what’s the problem, Chief? His body was never found, so this closes that case out.”

  “Not exactly. The problem is that even though the DNA is a match for Mister Potter, the fingerprints aren’t, and he’s got quite a record, so there are plenty of samples for comparison. This means that we’ve either got the first successful fingerprint conversion in history, or two people with the exact same DNA. I personally don’t have much hope for either of those two choices, so we’re going to have to keep you under wraps for a while longer until we sort this anomaly out.”

  I understand their problem. Maybe they can do it in the movies, but without special effects, there’s no switching of fingerprints. There is a possibility of similar DNA, but from what I understand, it can only occur with blood relatives.

  This is frustrating. In my boredom, I’m going through the guesthouse inch by inch, looking for something to read. I’ve already finished Doctor Shoveen’s treatise on how to manipulate women, and wonder if I’ll ever get out of here to try it out. Eureka! There’s nothing here to read, but I just found something much more interesting on a shelf behind some piled up boxes. It’s a laptop computer that must be at least ten years old. Fortunately, the AC power cord is wrapped around it, so I can try it out. The battery is probably toast, but I should still be able to boot it up on 110.

  Success. I see that on the back of this antique Toshiba there’s a phone jack, so using the one they left up here when removing the telephone, I attach it to see if I can get online. Yes! It worked. I’m not expecting a 56k modem, but I don’t care if it’s only a 28, or even a 14; I’ll still be happy to use it. Fortunately, before MSN came along, Bill Gates had every laptop in the world come with a pre-installed AOL program, so I use the program to get online and avail myself of their free 30-day trial program. I’ve still got my credit card in my pocket, so after giving them all the info they need, I’m now an official member of the intelligentsia that uses AOL.

  My first task is to contact the kid. I e-mail her to get back to me as soon as possible. She must have been on line, because in less than two minutes I get her response. She wants to know where I am.

  I purposely don’t tell her where I am, but that’s for her own good. The Feds are involved in this, and I don’t want her sucked into things any further than she has to be. All I want her to know is that I’m okay, and available by e-mail.

  This old laptop doesn’t have a built-in microphone, so I can’t use any Internet telephony connections for voice contact. I’ll have to settle for e-mail, so after thinking about it for a little while, I send one to Jack B., inquiring about the mileage checks he did on the minivan and distances from the insurance office where we started to tail Kathy Potter.

  Jack is cool. He doesn’t waste any time in asking where I am or what’s going on, because he knows that information is probably available from the kid, and that if I’m contacting him, I’m already in touch with Suzi. He tells me that comparing the miles it had on it when she picked up at the car rental place, to the final mileage when it was in the garage at Beverly’s house, it showed an extra twenty miles, which means that she only had to drive a maximum of about ten miles out of her way to pick up baldy. This isn’t very helpful, but I want us to have every bit of information possible. This case is starting to look like a huge jigsaw puzzle, and you never can tell which piece will be a crucial one. At the end of Jack’s message he gives me a heads-up: just before I contacted him he received several other assignments on this case, but they have nothing to do with the minivan’s mileage.

  I knew it. The kid’s already two steps ahead of everyone, including the Feds and me. She’s got Jack checking on some things that no one has thought of yet, and probably never will, so I hope Jack does a good job.

  Another day or two has passed by, and I’m still sitting here getting cabin fever. There have been no briefings from Snell or the Chief, and I haven’t heard anything from the kid. I know better than to ask her what’s going on, because she probably hasn’t slept much over the past couple of days. She’s like a bloodhound when she gets the scent of a problem case, especially one that I’m involved in. I hide the laptop whenever the maid comes with my food.. No sense in letting anyone get the idea that I’m in touch with the outside world.

  I feel like the rest of the public. My only source of what’s going on is the television set, and as everyone knows, if it’s on television, it must be true. The only things on during the afternoon are soap operas, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen one. A person can get claustrophobic watching these programs because all you ever see are people in a room, usually two at a time. No one ever goes outside, and all they ever do is glare at each other with questions or accusations about infidelity, or a medical diagnosis for some disease that I’ve never heard of before. Cable isn’t that much better, but at least MSNBC and CNN have better sets than the local guys do.

  I never thought I’d be happy to see the news come on, but after two hours of watching some models that they gave speaking parts to, overacting and chewing up the scenery, and a bunch of talk shows with overweight people poring out their hearts to hosts who don’t really care, the news is going to be refreshing.

  Tonight’s local news opens with an announcement by the Attorney General’s office. Myra turned the case over to them because I’m involved in it. They show some pictures of the ugliest guys I’ve ever seen and say that there has been an arrest of two Oregon drug dealers in the La Verne drive-by shooting death. They go on to boast that they feel confident that these drug dealers will cooperate and further involve a wellknown Marina del Rey criminal attorney in their murder conspiracy. I wonder who that might be.

  After the usual items about car thefts, car accidents, car commercials, car jacking, and car chases, they have a new bulletin that ‘just came in.’ The newsreader drones on that District Attorney Myra Scots’ office has issued an announcement, and they play a taped statement she made outside of her office.

  “Our office is pleased to announce that we’ve made two arrests out in La Verne. The women
arrested have been charged with conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and murder. Several of our investigators and myself are on my way out there now to take custody of the arrestees and bring them back to Los Angeles, where they will be processed and incarcerated. We have issued no-bail warrants for them, so they’ll be guests of the County until their trial”

  One of the reporters asks about me. “What about your ex-husband. Does this mean he’s off the hook?”

  Myra smirks at the camera. “Yes, I’m afraid he’s getting away this time, but don’t worry, the next time he makes a mistake I’ll be there waiting, with a pair of handcuffs that have his name engraved on them.”

  This gets a laugh out of the crowd, as Myra dashes for her car. Boy, if they only knew how serious she was about that remark. I guess this means I’ll be getting out pretty soon, so I might as well shave, shower, and get ready for my release.

  The Chief has sent one of his men over to get me, probably so that I can be formally released from the police station. When we get there I’m hustled in through the back door so the press doesn’t get any hint that I wasn’t there all of this time.

  I walk upstairs to the Chief’s office and watch the news people crowding around downstairs. Off in the distance I see a sight for sore eyes. Two vehicles are approaching the station. The one in front is an unmarked police vehicle, because I can see the metal cage that separates the rear seats from the front ones. The vehicle in back of it is the Lincoln Town Car that the County assigned to Myra and her driver, but I’m sure that no one has ever seen it like this before. The Town Car’s sunroof is open, and there’s a huge Saint Bernard’s head sticking out of it – and the beast is wearing a pair of Doggles. When the press sees this, they go nuts. The cameras are all immediately focused on the car with the dog, and the arrested murderers drop to second billing. I guess everyone loves animals.