by Dave Derin
“Hell no,” Skip chuckled and shook his head at me. “That’s ridiculous. That peckerhead couldn’t do any of that on his own. He definitely hired a professional, maybe a few, to take care of it for him.”
“Wait,” I replied and widened my eyes at him. “You seriously want us to pursue this defense strategy? You know that’s not a wise idea.”
“Nope,” he stated and shook his head before he crossed his arms. “But I think we should operate on the assumption that it did happen that way and look for evidence that supports her innocence using that assumption.”
“You know what,” I said as I thought back on a conversation Claire and I had when she’d first accepted the position at Tranquility Air. “They do fingerprint all airline staff now, even the office workers, as an added security precaution after 9/11.”
“Well, there ya’ go,” Skip replied. “Easier to access than a police record, which she probably doesn’t have anyway.”
“Right,” I agreed as I rubbed my temples with my fingers. “Okay, well we have to speak with Susanna about this immediately. I don’t want to wait until our meeting next week.”
“You’re darn tootin’,” Skip retorted. “This is about to get a lot stickier.”
I picked up my cell phone and dialed my redheaded client’s number. It only rang once before Susanna’s sweet voice answered.
“Hello?” she said softly.
“Susanna, hi, it’s John Stone,” I said with a professional tone. “We need to meet in person as soon as possible.”
“I-Is everything okay?” she stammered, and her voice wavered.
“When can you be at my office?” I ignored her question and took the direct approach.
“Um, well, I can come tomorrow morning around ten if that’s alright?” she replied timidly.
“Yes, that’s great,” I replied. “Thank you, I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the phone, sat down in my office chair, closed my eyes, placed my palms against my face, and then let out a loud groan.
“We’ve got this, kid,” Skip reassured me and patted my shoulder.
“No, it’s not that,” I uncovered my face and met his eyes. “The preliminary hearing is just over two weeks away, and the prosecution hasn’t called with a settlement offer yet.”
“Oh,” Skip understood immediately and looked down at the ground, then rubbed his eyes with both hands.
“They’re wanting this to go to trial,” I said aloud what I was sure Skip already knew.
“Yep,” he nodded slowly.
“Alright, well we aren’t getting anything else productive done tonight,” I stated, stood up from my chair, and stretched my arms high above my head. “I’m going to head home and get some rest, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sounds good, kid,” Skip placed his cowboy hat on his head and yawned.
We headed toward the back hall, and I flipped off the lights and locked the door behind us. We crossed the brick patio in silence, and I looked up to see a red older model pickup truck parked beside my black BMW.
“Have a good night,” I waved goodbye as I climbed into my smooth leather driver’s seat.
“See ya’ in the mornin’,” Skip replied, then cranked up his truck and the engine roared.
I went home, made a ham sandwich, and devoured it as I zoned out in front of the television. I was in bed before eleven that night and woke up the next morning in a panic. My heart smashed into my ribcage painfully as I sat straight up in bed and felt a cold sweat drip down my face and back. I must have had a nightmare, but couldn’t remember what had been so unnerving. I showered the night sweat off, shaved off my dark stubble, and then dressed in charcoal gray slacks and a navy button-down shirt.
I started the Keurig, then sat at my kitchen island countertop and scrolled through the calendar on my phone. I only had fifteen days to prepare the defense for Susanna’s preliminary hearing, and now that the prosecution had her fingerprint on the laptop, our plan of attack needed to be reevaluated. The coffee maker finished brewing, so I dumped the black liquid into an insulated to-go cup, grabbed a granola bar from the pantry, and made my way toward my office. I scarfed down the almond and honey granola bar and slowly sipped on my steaming coffee on the drive there.
I pulled into the gravel parking lot at 7:50 a.m., grabbed my travel mug, and headed through the back door. I turned on the lights and strode across the wood floors to my desk where I’d locked Susanna’s file safely away in the lower cabinet the night before. I pulled out her file, spread the documents out on my desk, and then took a deep breath as I scanned through the data again.
“Well, good morning, Mr. Stone,” my perky paralegal bounced through the back door and headed to her desk. She wore a black tea-length dress that flared around her legs and was belted with a wide yellow strip around her narrow waist. Her yellow pumps matched her belt and had little black bows on the toes. Athena’s pink tote bag was slung over her shoulder, and a black patent-leather purse hung from her other arm. She lovingly got Athena settled on her perch, then turned and powered up her computer.
“Good morning, Destinee,” I tried to smile as I looked across the room at her, but the stress of this new find had my nerves worn thin. “When you get settled in, come take a look at this discovery.”
“Absolutely,” she replied, then placed her shiny purse on her desk, and moved to stand beside me to view the evidence. “So, anything big come in?”
“Oh yeah,” I closed my eyes and nodded slowly. “I’d say so.”
“And what would that be?” Destinee looked down at me and furrowed her eyebrows.
“Well, they lifted a perfect thumbprint from the laptop,” I explained, and kept my eyes closed to protect against the dull thud of an impending headache. “It matches Susanna’s.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, we have a plan,” I said, then opened my eyes and saw my curly-haired paralegal’s frightened brown eyes and rubbed my temples gently. “Skip and I were here last night and discussed a few options.”
“You’ve totally got this, Mr. Stone,” she replied softly and tried to keep her positive attitude, but I could tell from her eyes she was worried.
“Good morning, boys and girls,” my white-haired consultant barged through the backdoor with a huge smile on his face and a styrofoam coffee cup in his hand. He wore dark-wash jeans with a white Western-style shirt and his usual black cowboy hat. “How we doin’ this glorious mornin’?”
“Whoa, can I have some of whatever you’re on?” Destinee asked the cheerful man with a delighted giggle.
“I’m just high on life, little lady,” Skip grinned at her, then tossed his hat on my desk. “Plus, I got a really good night’s sleep, and have a few ideas about this new discovery we can discuss with Susanna when she gets here.”
“Good,” I told him and leaned back in my chair. “My mind has been spinning since yesterday. Don’t you find it strange that in the entire hard drive of a young woman’s laptop, there were no pictures? No vacation pictures, no pet pictures. I can’t tell you a single person who doesn’t have at least one personal picture folder on their computer.”
“Excellent point,” Skip nodded. “I thought about that too.”
“And she only sent twenty or so emails?” I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “That’s highly unbelievable. Plus, we’ll need to request an explanation about those strangely coded ones.”
“Agreed,” the mustached man said, then took a sip from his styrofoam cup, set it on my desk, pulled out an orange chair from the storage room, and slid it beside my desk. He sat down and crossed his legs, then ran his hand through his thick, white hair. “Does Destinee know what’s going on yet?”
I looked over and saw Destinee’s brown eyes frozen on us, then she shook her head silently. For the next two hours, we updated Destinee with the new discovery and discussed possible plans of attack. Susanna walked through the front door at 9:55 a.m. dressed in a
modest, knee-length lavender dress with white lace accents around the sleeves and trim.
“Good morning, Susanna,” I hopped down the three wooden stairs to greet her. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice.”
“Sure,” she gave me a nervous smile, then followed me to my desk.
Skip pulled another orange chair from the storage room when Susanna walked in and had slid my nicer chair around for her to use. We all took our seats, and Susanna’s emerald eyes stayed trained on my face until I finally broke the silence.
“We received some new physical evidence from the prosecutor,” I said steadily as I tried to calm my rapid heartbeat and control my breathing, then stared directly into her eyes. “Susanna, they found your thumbprint on the laptop.”
The redhead’s green eyes grew round, and her lips parted, then closed again, before she exploded into tears. “But, that’s impossible,” she sobbed. “I’ve seriously never owned a laptop at all.”
“Well, the FBI thinks you do,” I pulled up the image of the laptop covered in pink flower stickers and turned my screen so she could view it.
Susanna’s eyes grew wide with horror as she recognized her bed covers and black metal desk. “Oh my god,” she gasped and pointed at the screen. “What is this? How did they? I-I, but that’s my bedroom.”
“Yes, I know,” I zoomed in on the closed laptop. “So, you’ve never seen this computer before?”
“Absolutely not,” she exclaimed and leaned in to see it better. “I hate pink. Like, completely hate it, ask anyone I know. I’d never put pink stickers on anything I own.”
“I found those a little odd, too,” Destinee chimed in. “It’s like someone’s trying way too hard to make it look like it belongs to a girly girl.”
“I’m more concerned with having to fight the fingerprint evidence than the contents of the hard drive,” I explained and ran my fingers through my dark hair. “There’s still more discovery coming, too. Destinee and I requested the video surveillance from the airport and hotel to confirm her arrival time, and I’m praying that our mysterious maintenance man is on it.”
“I hope so, too,” Susanna looked down at her folded hands in her lap. Her nails were painted fire engine red, but she’d chipped away at the polish on a few fingers.
“Hey,” I grabbed her left hand and held it between my own. “Remember, let me do the worrying for you, okay?”
“Okay,” she sniffled, then let a small grin escape.
I smiled back as I gently rubbed her small hand and couldn’t believe how soft and smooth her fingers were. I barely touched her thumb, and she jerked her hand away as if I’d shocked her.
“Sorry,” she shook her head and smiled at me. “I have some nerve damage in that hand, it still bothers me sometimes.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I leaned away from her. “I didn’t know.”
“You’re fine, hun,” she said with a laugh and waved her hand in the air. “I don’t really talk about it, it was my own dumb fault that it happened. Anyway, let’s talk about the case, shall we?”
“You got it,” I nodded and accepted that she wanted to change the subject.
We discussed case details and possible strategies for the next two hours, then Miss Jenkins left and the three of us sat around my desk and stared at each other for a long moment. Destinee silently stood up, collected Athena from her perch, returned to her seat, and placed her yellow bearded dragon in her lap.
“So, what’s next?” Destinee asked hesitantly as she gently stroked her lizard’s head.
“What’s next,” I repeated under my breath as I leaned my elbows against my desk and put my face in my hands, then looked up suddenly. “How about lunch?”
“I could eat,” Skip nodded.
“Oh yeah, same,” my paralegal agreed.
We ordered some takeout while we continued to discuss our defense strategy and how we wanted to present our defendant. After a long day at John Stone Law, we all headed home around six o’clock. I drove in silence to my apartment as I vividly daydreamed about how the preliminary hearing might go. I tossed and turned that night, until I finally got out of bed around midnight, poured myself a short glass of whiskey, downed it in one large gulp, then laid back down. I drifted off to sleep as I replayed the court scenarios over and over in my head, and each time we won with a different defense.
The hot summer days flew by as we meticulously prepared Susanna’s defense. On July twentieth, the alleged trace evidence of TATP came back negative. Our lab confirmed that what was actually found were traces of hydrogen peroxide and ammonium nitrate on the same item retrieved from Miss Jenkins’ bathroom. Those are two common chemicals used to manufacture TATP, but without the other ingredients added to them, they are relatively useless. They’d found no other evidence of bomb manufacturing at Susanna’s home, so that was one massive chink in the prosecution’s armour.
Skip and I were granted access to speak with Cooper, and he waived his right for his attorney to be present at the meeting. To our surprise, Cooper had hidden from everyone that the Sheridan family he belonged to were old-money wheat farmers in northern Texas with several expansive estates, and they’d hired one of the most infamous, and probably most devious, criminal defense attorneys in the state to represent him.
Cooper was clean shaven with short hair when we interviewed him to confirm our client’s version of events. He even seemed happy to see us as he verified that he and Susanna had been on five dates and that there was no way he believed she could be involved with this violent act. He was certain he’d get off on all charges, and even though I detested his arrogance, I hoped he was right. No innocent man should go to prison even if they were garbage human beings. Before we left, Cooper agreed to testify should we need him to, which could prove helpful to our case. I had Destinee update the potential witness list to add him while we continued to build our defense.
One major setback in the discovery process was our request for video surveillance. The hotel Susanna had stayed in the night before she went in to Central US Air for work had willingly turned over their video, which proved that Susanna left the hotel right at 11 a.m. like she’d told us. We’d also received a clip from the airport’s entrance that showed Susanna had entered the building at 11:23 a.m., and another that showed her walk into the flight attendant’s lounge at 11:39 a.m. However, all I’d received regarding our request for the video surveillance of the exterior of the airport that faced the loading dock was a copy of our original request with a red stamp across it that said Evidence Irreparably Damaged. That made it next-to-impossible to prove the existence of the mysterious man who wore the wrong color maintenance coveralls.
I decided to review the photographs in detail with Susanna one more time on Thursday the twenty-sixth, and we discovered another huge point in our favor that the prosecution had failed to recognize. The date on the laptop’s receipt indicated it’d been purchased with cash on May fifth, but my client remembered she’d been on a cruise with her family from May first through May seventh, and provided credit card receipts and pictures that proved it. We sent that crucial piece of information to all parties that same day, but I’d yet to hear from Mr. Price about the matter.
Every new piece of evidence appeared to line up perfectly to incriminate my client. So perfectly, in fact, that it would make any conspiracy theorist overly suspicious. I was confident our key witness, the comical Ms. Myrtle, would testify and rebut all the witnesses the prosecution intended to call regarding Susanna’s whereabouts before the explosion.
The one thing that loomed heavy on my heart was the mysterious thumbprint. I knew that single piece of physical evidence could potentially break our entire defense, so we really had to sell the suspicious nature of the lack of any other prints, personal files, or photos on the device, and our client’s adamant denial that she’d ever seen a laptop with pink flower stickers.
After countless hours of preparation, it was finally July thirty-first, the eve of my first preliminary h
earing with John Stone Law. I arrived at the office at 8:00 a.m. that Tuesday morning and found that Destinee and Skip were already there.
“Well, you two sure are here early,” I grinned at them as I strode to my desk.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Skip grumbled and rubbed his eyes.
“Oh, well I had a little surprise to get ready,” Destinee said in a singsong voice, then skipped over to a small table I’d initially missed at the back of the office and presented it like Vanna White. “Ta-da, look what I did.”
A new chrome coffee pot sat on top of a decorative wrought iron serving cart on wheels. She’d placed individual packets of creamers and sweeteners in baskets beside the pot, and a stack of disposable coffee cups with lids towered behind it. A black mini-fridge sat to the right of the coffee station, and I opened it to reveal bottled waters and a few cans of soda.
“This is incredible,” I exclaimed. “Thank you so much Destinee. How much do I owe you for all this?”
“I’ll bill you,” she said with a smile. Her curly dark hair was pulled back into a bun on top of her head, and she wore a pair of round pink-rimmed glasses. A pastel pink cardigan with a tiny blue bird embroidered on the front, black dress pants, and blue ballet flats completed her outfit. I made myself a cup of coffee at the new station, then walked over to my desk and set the steaming cup down to let it cool.
“Any word from Ms. Myrtle yet?” I asked the room as I booted up my laptop.
“Nothing yet,” Destinee sighed. “But I did confirm with Susanna, so she’ll be here at two this afternoon.”
“So, do I need to go on a search-and-retrieve mission, John?” Skip inquired and leaned back in his brown leather office chair. He’d brought in his own office furniture after he’d politely rebuked my offer to purchase him new furnishings and told me to save my money because he had a whole office set in storage.
“We do need her testimony,” I replied and sipped my coffee. It had cooled enough to be tolerable, and I was thankful to have more caffeine since my travel mug was almost empty. “Do you mind locating her?”