by Roger Bray
Steve continued, “I don’t know what the outcome will be, but I can promise you this: I genuinely believe that something stinks about your conviction and I will do everything I can to review the evidence there is and find out what the original investigation might have missed. I think they missed a few things.”
Alex looked at his sister and even in tears with her reddened eyes and streaked mascara, he could see that while she was upset, she seemed brighter and a lot happier than he had seen her in a few years. Alex wasn’t completely sure why. Was it because this new development was a new chance for him? But that was a little vain he realized, to believe that her life and happiness revolved around him, but then for the past three years it had, and he felt terrible guilt for that.
Was it this new man in her life? Alex looked at Steve and back to Alice and as he watched, he could almost see the chemistry developing between them; the way they looked at each other and the moments they shared, the unspoken words that linked two people together in love, or hate; in need or companionship. Whatever it was, for a moment, he could see, a brief glimpse of the old Alice emerging, from before Hazel’s disappearance and his imprisonment, before Brian even, back to a younger twenty-something Alice with her life in front of her.
Alex smiled inwardly at the picture and turned to Steve.
“What do you need from me? You’ve come here to talk to me so ask whatever you like, and I’ll try to answer as honestly as I can.”
Steve smiled and pulled a small notebook from his folio bag, which had been searched and returned to him when they had entered. He laid it on the table top with a glance at the guard who looked over and nodded his consent.
“Everything. Not only the evidence, not only what you told the investigators, and not solely what was in your statement. I need all of that and everything else as well.”
“All what? There’s nothing else, I told the investigators everything I could think of. All I wanted was for Hazel to be found and when I was charged, I was in a place I didn’t deserve, or want, to be in, so I told them everything.”
Steve nodded, “Yes you did, or at least you think you did, but I want the bits in the cracks, the dime that fell down the back of the sofa. The bits and pieces that you have forgotten, or you might think are so insignificant they don’t matter. It doesn’t even have to be a thing, it could be a sense of something, a smell, a feeling in your gut.”
“How do I do that?”
“Don’t give me a statement, you’ve already done that. When you spoke to your defense team, you went through the same statement over and over again. I’ve got all of that, I can read the statement, check it against the cross examination. I can watch the tapes of the interviews that you had with the investigators. So, I don’t want you to give me a statement. I want you to tell me a story, yours and Hazel’s story. Imagine that you want me to know everything about the story, not just the facts.”
Alex looked up at the barred window high up on the wall as he considered this, he glanced around at the stainless-steel furniture in the visitor’s area like the one they sat around. Bolted to the floor, clean, and shiny, in a depressing way. Clean and cold. The way he thought of tables and benches in mortuaries might be, and this, he had decided was his mortuary. Many mornings, in the darkness before the dawn, before the daily routine of the prison disturbed the silence that cloaked him, he felt that he had actually died and was being processed by the system. In his case it would take a few decades and not the usual couple of days between death and disposal, but he knew that the result would probably be the same, he would eventually come out of the other end of the process in a box and ready for burial or cremation, depending on the whim of whoever was left to care about him.
Considering Steve’s words, he decided that it should be cathartic, a release to get it out there. To release his thoughts and emotions.
He was innocent, he was; that’s what he kept saying, telling anyone who would listen.
“I am an innocent man.”
But the more he spoke about it, the more it dragged him into the abyss of depression. He’d been over it, again and again with Alice and Brian, with Hazel’s mom, with a myriad of solicitors who had come and gone. The more he told his story, the more futile it seemed.
“No, I didn’t kill her.”
“She was fine when she left the house.”
“I didn’t see her again.”
He didn’t know what else to say. The same damned story over and over again. He had told it so many times, to anyone who would listen, he had even believed that it would do some good. Well, it hadn’t had it, not to date it hadn’t, anyway.
He looked at Alice and she smiled encouragement at him. If for nothing else, she deserved him not to give up. She hadn’t given up on him even when he could see the sadness in her eyes. He knew that even through the smiles and the false promises of happy talk, he owed her.
He owed her something.
Everything!
He knew that her life was on hold. As much as his was. She couldn’t make plans or move away from the area. Well, he knew she could, but she wouldn’t. She was in a prison as much as he was. It was a different type of prison. It was bigger and open, room to move but with restrictions that she shouldn’t have to endure.
He felt the depression come over him again; he knew that Alice believed in him, believed in his innocence and he was innocent; he had done nothing to be in here, so why did he feel so fucking guilty?
Not because of Hazel, he knew he wasn’t guilty of that, but he felt that he was guilty of killing Alice. Killing her one visit at a time. And he could think of no solution to that. Well, maybe one final solution but he didn’t have the courage to face that one, not yet, but maybe soon.
He needed to break the mood, for all of them.
“I had another marriage proposal.”
Alice laughed nervously, recognizing that Alex was stalling for time before deciding.
“Who this time?”
“A woman in Des Moines, mid-forties. A little lonely, I guess. Like all the others.”
“Or weird. Like all the others.”
“What’s this?” Steve asked.
Alice smiled sadly, “People, women write to prisoners, I don’t know why, but Alex has received five …”
“Six, don’t forget that woman from Argentina.”
“Oh yeah, six marriage proposals in the last three years, they can’t seem to get enough of him.”
“Seriously?”
Alex shrugged as Alice nodded.
“But why? Why would someone do that?”
“The Argentinean woman was probably after her green card, she was a looker I’ll give her that, but the others are a bit …”
“Weird,” Alice finished for him.
“Weird,” Alex agreed.
“Pen pals, you write to them and then they propose, how does that happen?”
Alex shook his head, “Out of the blue, for all of them actually. Usually there’s a long rambling letter and some cheesy pictures, then protestations of undying love and a proposal.”
“OK, so that’s weird,” Steve had to admit.
“Some of them don’t propose. They want to lead me to Jesus. But I don’t know that there’s much difference between them. They all need something and writing to a condemned stranger seems an odd way to get it.”
They sat around the table as the moment passed, and Alex made up his mind.
He looked straight at Steve and asked, “What do you want to know? Do you want to know about Hazel and me, our life, or only what happened on that night?”
Steve paused for a moment. Although he was getting on well with Alice, Alex was still a stranger to him, they had met less than an hour ago and he didn’t think that he could expect a complete confessional from him. Maybe as a stranger, he was better placed now than once he got to know Alex and embarrassment or familiarity made talking about those intimate details difficult.
“For now, why don’t we go through the nigh
t Hazel disappeared, and what led up to it? Alice has filled me in on some background and I’ll probably want you to fill it out a bit more for me but let’s start with that night. How did she contact you, or did you contact her?”
“She contacted me.”
“How?”
“She text me, on my cell.”
“Did it come from her cell or from another one?”
“Hers. Her name came up.”
“And you were happy about that?”
Alex smiled at the memory, “I was ecstatic, nervous you know, but yeah, happy.”
*****
When he had first received the text from Hazel, he had looked at the little flashing light on his cell with fear. Fear of what exactly it meant. The first steps toward an official separation; or was Hazel, in her own mind, already past that and the message was asking for the inevitable divorce, did she want a meeting to discuss selling the house and dividing their assets or … what exactly did she want?
Hi, Alex, can we talk?
He stared at the non-committal message. This could go any way and was none the clearer as to what exactly it foretold. He only hesitated for a moment before replying.
What about? Sorry don’t want to be blunt but I need to know.
He pressed “send” and waited. After ten minutes when no reply had come back he placed his cell on the counter top and opened a bottle of red wine and poured half a glass. Taking a sip of the wine, he looked at his phone again, nothing. He stopped himself from touching the screen and let it fade and darken to screen saver mode. He still had the glass to his mouth and was looking over the rim as the cell suddenly sprang to life emitting a jovial two-toned beeping as a message appeared.
Sorry, needed privacy, so went to bathroom. Talk about us.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “That has told me nothing!”
His thumbs stabbed at the keyboard as he replied.
Sorry Hazel, but please be specific, what about us? Do you want a divorce? If you do please can you say so? I don’t want to mess around with this, I need to know.
He placed the cell back on the counter and stood there again, tapping his free hand against his thigh, as he watched the screen infuriatingly do nothing except darken again. He took another couple of mouthfuls of wine as the phone repeated its jingle and his future was laid bare as Hazel’s reply came in.
Divorce? No absolutely not, do you? Is that what you want? Oh, Alex I’m so sorry.
“Well, that’s a good sign,” he admitted to himself as he replied.
Well then what? Sorry for what?
He held the cell phone in his hand this time, not wanting to put in down.
The opposite, not that. I’ve been a fool, an absolute idiot, I know that now. To be honest, I knew it then. But, I don’t want to text like this, can we meet and talk?
OK, when, where?
Tomorrow evening, 7pm at home unless you would prefer to meet somewhere else, somewhere neutral?
No that’s fine, see you then
OK.
Alex refrained from doing his happy dance around the kitchen and instead punched the air a few times.
“Yes, yes, fucking yes.” he said through clenched teeth.
He was smiling now and the sick feeling he had had when he received the first message was gone and had been replaced by flutters of excitement.
Part Two
Chapter One
Steve was quiet on the drive back to Eugene thinking through what Alex had told him. They had talked though that meeting with Hazel, the best night of his life, Alex had said. He had been pretty specific and complete in his recollection about how the meeting had ended and how and at what time she had left. He was preoccupied with these thoughts and as they left OSP and took Mission Street toward the highway; he made some comment on how Alex had stayed sane while incarcerated and had then said nothing for most of the trip back to Eugene.
Alice wondered if he was angry mistaking his silence for emotion. Had she said something she shouldn’t or not said something she should? She couldn’t decide. Had he made some sort of decision about Alex’s guilt? Had it been something that Alex had said, or half said? Maybe a hesitation to a question, or a momentary drop of the eyes when he couldn’t answer the question honestly and look at Steve without giving something away.
She couldn’t recall a moment of hesitation in the almost two hours that they had talked about the meeting between Alex and Hazel. There wasn’t a question that Alex wouldn’t answer and even when he couldn’t answer something he was honest about it.
Driving south on the highway she glanced across at him a few times, trying to decide if the silence was a good or bad thing, but Steve’s face was blank, until about halfway she heard him mutter something under his breath. She saw it as an opportunity.
“Sorry?”
“What?”
“Sorry, I thought that you said something.”
“No, nothing.” and he fell silent again.
“Are we heading back to my house or did you want me to drop you somewhere?”
“What? No, your place, your place is great, I need to check something then we need to talk.”
“Oh dear,” she thought. “This can’t be good at all.”
Thirty minutes later she pulled the car into her driveway. He was still silent and not giving anything away when they got inside. Steve went straight to the dining table and was pulling paperwork and folders out of the folio boxes until he found the folder he was looking for. Alice had a sense of foreboding as she waited for him to announce that her brother was in the right place and there was nothing more he could do for her.
Deep in thought he turned and put the folder down on the kitchen bench, another moment passed before he started.
“What if she had turned up at the house, as Alex said and their amicable, marriage saving conversation had turned ugly, if Alex had reacted badly to her mea culpa, suddenly realizing what she had done to him. If he’d thought she had betrayed him, and realized how badly he’d been treated. The knowledge that the girl of his dreams was a slut, and he reacted against that.”
Alice looked shocked; where was all this coming from?
Steve stopped, seeing the look on her face.
“Sorry, that was probably a little forceful, but I’m trying to put the worst case forward. That’s what the prosecution would have had us believe. The pent-up rage in Alex suddenly burst out and overtook his reason. The anger, the violence, and she would have to fight back. You say that Alex isn’t like that …”
“And he isn’t, he is never like that at all.”
“Not possessive of her?”
“That she was his, his wife, his chattel?”
“Something like that.”
“No, absolutely not. If Hazel had said that she was leaving he would have done everything that he could to remain friends with her at least. He loved her unreservedly but would not have stood in her way at all.”
Steve nodded and smiled without humor.
“Why?”
“I want to know how he killed her?”
“Well I don’t … I mean he didn’t kill her.”
Steve stood and picked a buff folder from the table, he turned back to the kitchen bench. Opening the folder, he pulled out what Alice recognized as the crime scene photographs of Alex and Hazel’s house.
He flicked through them and selected the long shots; the pictures of the hallway, the kitchen, the dining and lounge rooms. One shot after the other in four rows until the kitchen bench was covered.
“How did he kill her?”
Steve held his hand up before Alice could answer.
“On this evidence he didn’t, he couldn’t have. Not in the way the DA said he did, anyway.”
“Which was how?”
He opened the document in his hand and flicked through the pages until he came to one of the back pages. Quoting the DA’s closing address to the jury …
“We may never know exactly what happened on that evening but wha
t we do know is that, angry beyond reason, Alex Reed committed an assault, a grievous assault, resulting in the incapacitation and death of this young woman, his estranged wife. I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that Alex Reed bludgeoned his wife to death. Whether that’s what he originally intended or not is irrelevant, for that was the result. Alex Reed admits that no one else was in the house that evening and we have the evidence of her being attacked, her blood. Her blood that was left behind after he cleaned up the majority of the evidence of his crime, a few small drops can still show us what he did …”
“And so on.”
“I know all this, I know what he said I was there.”
“Look at the pictures, Alice. We are to believe that your brother bludgeoned Hazel to death. With what? There’s no evidence of a weapon. With his fists? There’s no evidence of that and knuckles break easily, especially if you are punching someone hard around the head; hard enough to kill them.
“Where did this heinous act take place? On the evidence of these pictures, not in the house, in the proximity of the kitchen bench where they found some blood or the edge of the tiles where they found some more blood. More than six feet away.”
Steve pointed to one of the pictures, showing the edge of the hallway.
“A glass shelving unit, filled with cut glass ornaments. It’s still there and still standing, no damage at all and it’s right next to the second blood spot. And yet we are to believe that Hazel, having been attacked staggered at least six feet across the kitchen?”
“Between the blood spots.”
“Correct. Forensics are pretty clear on this—the blood spots were the result of blood falling down, dripping from a cut onto floor.”
“Instead of what?”
“Instead of hitting the floor at an angle, what might happen if someone was struck and blood either flicked off the assailant’s fist or the victims wound.
“The blood fell straight down and, in the DA’s fantasy scenario, the attack either happened right next to these ornaments and she staggered to the kitchen bench where the other blood spot was found, or she was assaulted there and staggered toward the ornaments, because both the blood spots are related and are both, according to the DA, proof of the assault. Whichever way she went, had she been badly injured you would imagine that she would have tried to steady herself, reach out to stop herself falling. And this shelving unit is the only thing around.