by Kim Ekemar
The woman, a lawyer by profession, smoked intensely while she contemplated the detailed narrative she had just listened to. Her name was Justine du Lac and she was 45 years of age. She was a large striking woman, although not particularly beautiful. Her nose was a little too big, her mouth slightly too wide, her other features not proportional. However, beneath the blonde coiffed hair that stopped short of her shoulders her eyes shone with an intelligence that more than compensated for her lack of beauty. These eyes now pensively scrutinized the man in front of her – her client, whose innocence she had undertaken to prove.
His name was Corey Ferguson. He was accused and later convicted of the murders of Irving Forster and Oona Vermeil a year earlier. Ferguson had recently dismissed his attorney, and Justine du Lac had not hesitated when she had been asked to take over the case for his appeal. There were few trials this year that had received as much attention as the one concerning the “Snowstorm Axassin”, as the papers had baptized the Ferguson case. Justine was an ambitious professional, and she knew that the publicity connected with the case would get her name exposed. More exposure automatically meant she could charge higher fees for future cases.
The man sitting opposite her looked absent-mindedly down on the tabletop. One hand played with some tobacco flakes that had fallen beside her ashtray. Justine watched him and contemplated how to best judge his character from what she could see and the manner in which he had presented his narrative. She was a competent psychologist and experienced in the evaluation of circumstances to get to the truth – qualities that had helped her become one of the foremost criminal attorneys in the country. Nothing of what she had heard or seen could convince her that Corey Ferguson was capable of the murders he had been convicted of.
It was a frightened man she saw in front of her. The fear was rooted in his character. It rose from the depth of his soul. Insignificant particulars in his story revealed him as a man lacking courage in precarious situations. Her acute psychological aptitude found him incapable of having devised his account in order to conceal the two murders he’d been charged with, and later found guilty of. Perhaps he had the capacity to lie about all the important incidents so as to pass on the guilt to others. On the other hand, she felt it inconceivable that he could have fabricated lies to such extent as the verdict stated, without her having detected them.
Yet it was foremost his consistent behavior that convinced her that he could not have committed the crimes he had been accused of. Corey Ferguson was a timid man in his thirties, with the appearance of a bookkeeper who appeared five years older than his real age. If she made a sudden move, he involuntarily recoiled. His look was timorous to the point of self-effacement. Even when she appraised him professionally on the assumption he lied about everything, she could still not find him capable of performing crimes of violence.
The other side of the coin was, however, equally inexplicable. The account he now had narrated innumerable times and been cross-examined about in its every detail was notably the most fantastic story since the Grimm brothers published ‘Snow White’. Three persons do research in an Arctic region and return to civilization after three months. On their way back their van breaks down. The next day one of them is found as the only survivor. Weeks later one of the missing persons is discovered, murdered with an axe, his body by coincidence caught in a tree trunk submerged in the ocean. When interrogated, the survivor states they had been confronted by seven men who killed his two fellow travelers. There are no traces either of the female victim or of the seven men who allegedly committed the murders. Nor are there any signs of the ship that supposedly went up in flames. Everything that Ferguson claimed was like burst bubbles in a vacuum – there was no way to prove they hadn’t existed, nor the opposite.
She felt his eyes pass over her face. Both kept their silence. He because he had told her everything; she to weigh all she had heard against her experience, knowledge and instinct.
Justine recalled what she had read beforehand in the police report. Two of Ferguson's colleagues had stayed behind in the Inuit village to pack the remaining equipment. The snowstorm had surprised them as much as it had surprised all others in the vicinity. It could last a day or a month, the Inuit had told them, and they had had no choice but to remain. The storm had subsided by next morning, and to their relief they could depart with a delay of less than twenty-four hours.
Roads not cleared from snow had made their passage difficult, particularly since the snow began to fall anew by midday. It was afternoon by the time they reached the deserted van and found it broken down, broken into and empty. Worried, they had searched the nearby area and had almost immediately found Ferguson without outdoor clothing in a snowdrift some hundred yards away. They had put him in their bus with the motor running while they continued to look for their other two missing colleagues. After a couple of hours’ dusk fell and they had to give up their search. They had not been able to get any help from Ferguson who was chilled but beyond danger. To their amazement his hands, feet and waist had been tied with ropes that were burnt at the ends. Moreover, his clothes were bloody and damaged by fire.
Later that evening they had reached Haven where they reported their discovery to the police. Ferguson had been taken to a cottage hospital. An hour or so later all members of the village's limited police force and some volunteers were heading north trailing a snowplow. They could not find any signs of the missing parties in spite of the strong searchlights they had brought. During the night the snowfall became heavy, and after seven hours on the site the officer in charge called off the search.
Ferguson remained in torpor in his sickbed and was unable to give information concerning the two missing persons. The police in Clarisfield, the closest town, were contacted and asked to send reinforcement. This arrived in Haven later the same day. Due to the darkness and the snow that kept falling heavily it was deemed best to resume the search the next morning, weather permitting.
By dawn next day the snowfall was lighter. The new search party left with a plow leading the way. Close to one hundred persons screened the area to find the disappeared scientists. They sifted the snowdrifts with rakes. Groups of volunteers scrutinized the shore below the cliffs. Rocks and ice had merged into one gigantic solid mass, all covered with newly fallen snow. Whether rocks, ice floes or the missing people created the irregularities on the ground was made impossible to tell due to the never-ceasing snowfall.
For three days the search continued with no success. The dead calm and the intense, perpetual snowing obstructed the investigations greatly. There was no change in the weather until the third day when the wind started to pick up. That same afternoon the superior in command declared the futility of prolonging the search – they had to accept that the two persons they were looking for could not be found.
On his sickbed Ferguson had been weak and feverish. Incoherently he had rambled about a ship, fire, murders and rape. There was a policeman by his side twenty-four hours a day taking down everything he said. Nobody could yet understand or interpret what he had spoken in his unconscious state.
A week passed before Ferguson had regained enough strength to give his version of what had occurred. The details of his account shocked the authorities in Haven, and a contingent of professional soldiers were sent to the area where Ferguson and the van had been found. The soldiers methodically searched every snowdrift on the ice next to the shore. They did not find anything, which according to the commanding officer could only depend on one of two things: either to the snowfall during the last weeks or that the information given was incorrect. There were no traces at all of the alleged ship, the allegedly assassinated persons or the eventual survivor among the seven men who allegedly had participated in the murder.
The police did not know what to believe. Two persons were missing, but there were no signs that they had ever existed. The sole survivor had told them about a ship, seven men, rape, murder and fire; they had not found a single clue to sustain Ferguson’s deposition.<
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Some time later a period of extremely warm weather for the season occurred. In days the warmth melted the snow and the ice in the region where Ferguson and the van had been encountered. The police returned to the site to continue the investigation, but neither on land nor on the water did they find anything related to it. A diver was sent down among the drift ice with the assignment to find remains of the burnt ship. He quickly discovered that the waters were deep on the location and the currents very strong. If a ship had existed, the undercurrents would have carried the pieces of wreckage away. When examining the sea floor, which was covered with a heavy growth of algae and other water plants, he eventually encountered several deformed metal objects. It turned out impossible, however, to establish how long they had been on the location or whether they had been brought there by the sea.
The salvage of the metal objects nevertheless spurred the police officer in charge to order the diver to continue diving one more day, but further away. That was when the diver finally made a discovery that supported Ferguson's narrative. Hooked on the branches of a fallen tree trunk, some distance beneath the surface, was the corpse of Irving Forster.
On basis of the discovery the resources were increased during the week to come. Four divers daily went down to the bottom of the ocean inspecting a large area. With the exception of an axe, broken china, an anchor and more deformed lumps of metal, they did not find anything. It was by chance that Forster's body had got caught on a tree trunk that was wedged between some boulders on the seabed close to the shore. If there had been other casualties, they would doubtless have been carried away by the currents. The investigation was closed.
A post mortem was performed on Forster and it was established that his death was due to a blow with an axe to his head. That the murder weapon was the axe found on the seabed close to the deceased was beyond doubt. It could not be ascertained that a ship had burnt down in the area. The broken china, the lumps of metal and the anchor could have been brought there by the sea, or they could originate from an assortment of ships – the coast was full of wrecks.
Since the police hadn’t found anything to corroborate Ferguson's statement, the district attorney decided to charge Corey Ferguson with the first-degree murders of Irving Forster and Oona Vermeil.
*
Justine du Lac opened the verdict of guilt and browsed through it until she came to the attorney's account of what he claimed had happened. She started to read and continually made notes in the margin with a chewed-on pencil.
November 15 last year the accused Corey Ferguson, in the company of Irving Forster and Oona Vermeil, departed from the village where they during a couple of months had conducted studies of the life of the Eskimos. Their colleagues, James Buckley and Thomas Harbinger, stayed behind to load the remaining equipment in the other van at their disposal, and would follow later the same day. By midday Ferguson, Forster and Vermeil were surprised by an unexpected snowstorm. On the coast road 16 miles north of Haven their van broke down. The reason was a broken rear axle.
With no possibilities of continuing their journey, they remained seated in the van waiting for the tempest to pass and their colleagues to arrive. Night fell, and in an attempt to avoid using up the battery too quickly, the ambience in the van rapidly became colder for its three passengers. Ferguson and Forster began to quarrel whether it was safer to stay in the car or continue on foot to Haven.
All acquainted with Ferguson knew that he had been deeply in love with Oona Vermeil for many years. Vermeil was Forster’s fiancée, a fact that Ferguson rejected. The disagreement in the van soon turned into an argument over Vermeil, an exceptionally beautiful woman, and developed into a crime of passion.
When Forster had had enough of Ferguson's jealousy he left the van with the woman to proceed to Haven on foot. Ferguson was beside himself for being deserted by his companions and pursued them carrying an axe that was part of their supplies. He overtook Forster and insisted that they once and for all should settle their shared interest in the woman. Forster refused. Ferguson, enraged and jealous, swung the axe and killed Forster with a forceful blow on the head. The murder shocked Vermeil, who started to accuse Ferguson. He was unprepared for this reaction because he had expected to conquer her by destroying his opponent. Her aversion made him so embittered that he first raped her, then in blind fury killed her too.
Suddenly he found himself standing in a raging snowstorm with two people he had just murdered. Ferguson understood that he had to get rid of the corpses to avoid detection and then invent some tale he could present to the police. He was aware that they had been traveling along the coast and decided to bury the bodies in the ocean.
The coast in this region consists of steep cliffs. After exploring the area, Ferguson dragged the corpses one at a time to the cliffs and threw them down on the ice below. Between the rocks in this area there is a crevice through which he descended to reach the sea. Using the axe, he made a hole in the ice. After having plundered the dead of all their valuables Ferguson threw the bodies and the axe into the water. He knew that at least six months would pass before the breakup of the ice would commence, and that long before then the corpses would have been carried away by currents and eaten by fish. However, he could not foresee that Forster’s body by coincidence would get caught on a tree trunk close by, or that the weather would turn unusually warm a few weeks later. Divers found Forster and the axe, and Ferguson the assassin could eventually be exposed.
Ferguson returned to the van from the hole he had made in the ice and concocted the plot he later would serve the police. He decided to wait where he was until the storm subsided and his colleagues in the Eskimo village started their return trip. They would find him tied, wounded and chilled in a snowdrift some distance from the van to support the story he intended to tell the authorities. While working on the hole in the ice the axe had by mistake slipped and cut his underarm. Now his wound would serve his intentions to disguise that he was the murderer of his colleagues.
He probably spent the night sheltered by the rocks, collecting fuel from the trees and keeping himself warm by a fire. All the fuel he could find he tossed on that fire. This would explain the smell of fire in his clothes. The storm abated soon after dawn the following day. Ferguson calculated the time it would take the other van to reach the location and planned accordingly. He fetched a rope from the van and burnt it off in appropriate segments. These parts he tied around his waist, arms and legs to make it appear as if he had been held captive. When he was certain it would not be long before the rescue party arrived, he burnt his parka. He then shoved all remnants from the fire over the cliffs and returned to the van. He lay down in a snowdrift not far away and waited. Later Harbinger and Buckley found him wounded, but only superficially; chilled, but without frostbite; with clothes and ropes exposed to fire, but without suffering any significant burn injuries.
Justine du Lac looked up from the papers. Ferguson sat silent studying the printed grains in the plastic tabletop. To what extent is the account of the attorney relevant? she thought. There were of course a number of legal objections that could be made to his summary, but was there any basic truth in it? It could not be denied that the incredible story Ferguson had told her was difficult to stomach. How come there was no trace at all of the seven men Ferguson accused of being the actual assassins? If he were lying, why had he chosen seven men instead of one or two?
She went back to the verdict and turned the pages to get to the arguments for the defense. Justine had read them before but now skimmed through the important parts, which she had underlined with thick strokes. They came under three headlines.
The first one was The character of Corey Ferguson:
He is not known to have hurt a fly in his lifetime, and even less to have shown signs of violence against other persons. Such a man does not rape a colleague's fiancée, kill them both and plunder the corpses of their valuables during a snowstorm when their vehicle has broken down. He is neither known to be particula
rly imaginative nor to be cunning. In other words, he could not have told his version of the murders if it had not been true.
The second headline was Improbable circumstances:
Irving Forster was a huge man, notably larger than Ferguson. Forster outweighed him by approximately 70 pounds and was close to 8 inches taller. It would have been impossible for Ferguson to swing the axe and deliver a deadly blow from his lower position without Forster overpowering him. After hiding the axe among his clothes, did Ferguson then bring it out without any kind of reaction from Forster or Vermeil? Supposing he – contrary to previous arguments – managed to kill Forster, it would be against all logic that he also killed the woman he was in love with. Considering her remains have never been found, it is inconceivable that he killed the woman. The broken lock to the door of the van indicates that some stranger has forced his way into the vehicle. The anchor, the various pieces of metal and the broken china prove a ship existed. The deformed metal shows the ship burnt down. The leftovers of the fire were initially covered by snow and therefore not found during the investigation. Later the currents carried them away when the warm weather melted the ice. That Ferguson would have lit an immense fire, as the attorney has claimed, is simply not plausible. To find that amount of dry wood in a fierce snowstorm is infeasible, and besides the remains of such a fire have not been found. It is moreover absolutely impossible to calculate the time of arrival for the second van with such exactitude as the prosecutor declares that Ferguson did. If it had arrived a couple of hours later he would have frozen to death in the snowdrift.