The Disappearance

by J. F. Freedman

  He’s doing good, Luke thinks—short, sweet, concise, hardhitting. He learned good lessons from me.

  “Joe Allison was found with certain pieces of evidence in his possession that only Emma’s murderer could have possessed. Certain things that belonged to Emma Lancaster, certain pieces of evidence that place him at the crime scene on the night in question, certain pieces of evidence that will show the extraordinarily strong link between Joe Allison, an adult man, an employee of Emma Lancaster’s father, and the victim, Emma, a fourteen-year-old girl who was in the eighth grade.” Another pause. “A fourteen-year-old girl, ladies and gentlemen. Barely a teenager. Still wearing braces.”

  He stops for a moment and walks to his table. One of the other lawyers hands him a large manila envelope. He walks back to the jury box and opens it, taking out the sixteen-by-twenty-inch picture inside and holding it up so the jurors can get a good look at it. “This is Emma Lancaster, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. A few weeks before she was abducted from her bedroom in the dead of night, and subsequently murdered. And then hidden away in a terrible, lonely place, while her frantic parents and thousands of volunteer citizens searched for her in vain until, more than a week later, her body was accidentally discovered.”

  An easel has been set up at the corner of the jury box. He places the color photograph, a typical school yearbook picture, on the easel. She looks even younger than she was, about the age of her First Communion.

  The jurors all turn and look at it. A few then turn and look over at Joe Allison. Doug Lancaster does, too. Venomously.

  It’s a moment to catch, Luke thinks. He swivels in his chair, a glance at Glenna Lancaster sitting ten rows behind him on the other side. She is dry-eyed, but her skin is flushed, and he can see, even from this distance, that her breathing is ragged. She is scrupulously avoiding looking in Joe Allison’s direction.

  “That was Emma Lancaster before she died,” Logan says. His aides hand him a second envelope. He pulls the black and white enlargement out, looks at it, grimaces. From where Luke’s sitting, it’s an honest grimace.

  “And this was Emma Lancaster the week after she died.” Logan turns the photograph around, so the jury can see it for themselves.

  There is a collective gasp. One of the woman jurors cries out audibly, her hand flying to her mouth. Logan holds up the picture a moment longer.

  It’s one of the first police photographs that was taken of Emma when her body was found buried on the trail. It’s a grisly sight. Her body is swollen, her clothes have been ripped.

  Luke glances at Emma’s father. The man is looking down at his feet, not acknowledging the picture of his dead child that’s being displayed. He’s shaking. If he was involved, Luke thinks, he’s paying a heavy price for it now.

  Logan mercifully puts the picture in its envelope. “I’m sorry to have subjected you to that, ladies and gentlemen,” he says to the twelve jurors, most of whom look like they want to throw up, “but you had to see it. You had to know. How this beautiful girl”—he points to the cherubic photo on the easel—“became the victim of a heinous crime.

  “We don’t know why, exactly, Joe Allison took Emma Lancaster from her bed, where she was fast asleep, took her outside, and killed her in cold blood,” Logan says. “But we have a good idea. I’ll explain that to you in a moment. Before I do, let me caution you: you will not like everything you hear—in this tempestuous age, none of us lives in a vacuum, including the Lancaster family—but you will understand it, how it relates to your own lives, and the lives of your children and grandchildren.”

  He pauses to let the jury catch up with him; they have to be wondering, what is he talking about?

  “The reason might have been anger, mixed with fear. Or it might have been passion gone haywire,” Logan goes on. “Yes, there was passion in this. Passion between a young girl with a crush on a handsome male celebrity, and the male celebrity who used that advantage for his own narcissistic ends. And that will connect with the anger and the fear, also. Especially the fear.”

  Now the jurors are really paying attention. Logan’s going to tease them a bit more before he brings out the hard evidence—Emma’s pregnancy, the condoms found in the gazebo, the same condoms found in Allison’s house. Luke’s ready for the other shoe to drop.

  “Or it could have been an accident,” Logan says. “Not the killing—that was premeditated, without question. That is why we are going to ask for the death penalty in this case—because Emma Lancaster’s murder was clearly premeditated. But before that, who knows?” He pauses, grasps the railing of the jury box in both hands, leans forward, the bar bracing him. “Not Emma Lancaster—she isn’t here anymore to tell us. But ladies and gentlemen, in a way she is telling us. By the evidence she left behind, and the style in which she left it. And ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that, by the time this trial is over, Emma Lancaster will have spoken to you loudly and clearly. She will have spoken to you from her grave. And she will tell you, and you will believe beyond a reasonable doubt, that Joe Allison murdered her. And here is the clearest, most compelling thing she is going to tell you.” He pauses; even for him, presenting this is difficult. Then he says it: “She was pregnant.”

  The jurors are a classic tableau of human reaction to surprise and disbelief: shock, fear, horror. One man keeps shaking his head back and forth, a hand over his mouth to cover the self-conscious kind of smirk that comes on people when they see some terrible tragedy, like a ten-car crash or a train wreck.

  Luke sits quietly in his chair at the defense table while the maelstrom swirls around him, and thinks: it’s all changed. Months go by, people form opinions about this girl, her death, her family, her community, which for a while was the entire community, everyone was linked to everyone else through their connection to Emma Lancaster, a girl almost none of them had known. And their collective searching for her and mourning her when she was found, and their grief in the days after, and their frustration and impotence when her killer somehow vanished, out of their grasp; and then their relief—not happiness, it’s too somber a thing and it took too long to resolve, more than a year, to bring any kind of happiness to conclusion—but there was relief. It was finished. Her murderer had been caught. Life could go on, with a pattern, a rhythm that everyone can attach to, everyone can know.

  And now, with one sentence, those patterns and rhythms have been broken.

  Logan continues.

  “It would follow—I think any reasonable person will make this assumption—that whoever impregnated her had good cause to kill her. Because if he was ever discovered, he would be ruined. He would go to jail, for a long time.”

  He takes Emma’s photo off the easel. Holding it with both hands, he walks the length of the jury box, making sure each juror takes a close, hard look at it.

  “Listen to the voice of this poor victim, this helpless girl, this wonderful daughter who will never brighten her parents’ lives again. Who will never dance at her senior prom, never marry, never have children of her own. Listen to Emma Lancaster speaking to you from the grave, ladies and gentlemen—and you will hear her telling you, ‘Joe Allison killed me.’ It will be a young voice, a sweet voice, a clear voice. And it will tell you that there is only one verdict you can find in this case. A verdict of murder in the first degree.”

  He steps back from the jury box, so they can all see him clearly. “There is no real justice that can be administered here,” he says in a low voice. “Nothing you do will bring Emma Lancaster back to life. The best you can do is make sure her murderer is not allowed to pursue his life. The best you can do, and the thing you must do, is to find Joseph Allison guilty of murder with aggravating circumstances.” Then, and only then, will the spirit of Emma Lancaster begin to find rest. Then, and only then, will it finally be at peace.”

  Luke stands in front of the defense table, facing the jury across the room. Over the lunch break he’s changed shirts. He’s wearing the exact same style he had on at the beginni
ng of the day, but it’s crisp. Most of these people remember him from before. He doesn’t want to disappoint them. Not even sartorially.

  “Good afternoon,” he begins. He’s in laser mode—there are no butterflies in his stomach, as he knew there were in Ray Logan’s. That was pretrial, before he was shot at, before he found out about Riva’s pregnancy. After those things, this is another day at work. Important, yes, but not life-shattering.

  “My name is Luke Garrison. I represent the defendant in this case, the man sitting at this table.” He turns and sweeps his arm towards Allison. “His name is Joseph Allison. Joe. An easy name to remember. Many of you do remember him, of course, as our city’s leading television anchorman until recently. When he gave you the news, you believed him. You felt you could trust him.” He pauses, taking time to look each juror in the eye for a brief moment. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, by the time this trial is over, you will know that you can trust Joe again.”

  He walks towards the jury box. Halfway there, he stops. He’s in the center of the front section of the room, the action arena where the spectator’s railing divides the room between the players and the watchers—between the bench, where Judge Ewing sits, the prosecutor’s table, and the defendant’s table. The midday sun, filtering in through the high windows that are pocked with bird shit, insect mash, and dust, radiates emotional and psychological isolation.

  He turns and looks directly at Ray Logan, staring at him with intensity. Logan, startled, looks away. Then he looks back defiantly, as if to say to Luke, You can’t cow me, that was from surprise, that’s all.

  Still staring at Logan, Luke says, “I used to be him.” He points at Logan, who’s fighting not to squirm. Pivoting back to the jury, he goes on, “I was the district attorney in this county for ten years. Some of you might remember that. Ray Logan worked under me then. He was one of my chief assistant D.A.’s. Let me tell you, he was really good. He won a lot of tough cases for the people of this county.”

  He pauses to let the jurors think on that. “And the other D.A.’s sitting with Mr. Logan—they worked for me, too, worked with me. We were a great team. I have no reason to doubt that they still are. With or without me.”

  His voice is finding its cadence, like that of a good country preacher. When he was starting out, he studied famous preachers, men like Martin Luther King and Billy Graham. He doesn’t “preach” in the courtroom, it isn’t who he is and this isn’t the place for it, but he likes the undercurrent of the rhythms, the musicality of their voices, the repetition of key words and phrases, the leaning on certain words to give them importance beyond their corporeal meanings.

  “These are good people,” he says. “They believe in the law, in justice. They try to be fair, as fair as they can be. And they don’t like to make mistakes, because they do try to be fair, and because they know that their mistakes can come back to haunt them. Like one of mine did to me.”

  The jurors are paying rapt attention—this is not your normal opening statement. “Prosecutors and police departments don’t make that many mistakes, ladies and gentlemen. Especially not in Santa Barbara. They do a good job, they’re thorough. When they bring charges against a suspect, they usually have the goods. And of course, they always think they do. At least initially.

  “But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he says, his voice rising with the emotion of what he’s doing—not getting loud, but more intense, fuller, coming from his entire body, his entire being—“sometimes they do make mistakes. We all do—we’re all human. And when they do, my friends, they can be tragic. Which is the case here, where Joe Allison, truly an innocent man, is being tried for a crime he didn’t commit. A crime he couldn’t have committed.”

  There’s an undercurrent in the large room. Ewing starts to pick up his gavel to silence it, but thinks better of it. All that would do is call attention to something that’s organic and not really consciously noticeable, except it’s coming from everyone, everywhere. He lays the gavel down. The undercurrent fades away as Luke stands in the middle of the floor, waiting to go on.

  “There is a bit of physical evidence against my client,” he says. “I grant you that. But it’s flimsy, folks. It’s so contrived. It was found so conveniently. Way too conveniently. And even the police procedures that ‘uncovered’ this evidence, if that’s the right word—stumbled onto it is closer to the truth—even those very procedures are suspect.”

  Logan starts to rise in his place to protest, but Ewing waves him to sit down. “This is opening, Counselor,” he says before Logan can open his mouth in protest. “It’s supposed to be informative, just as yours was.”

  Logan falls back into his chair. Without missing a beat, Luke goes on. “Let me give you one example of how contrived the state’s evidence is. The police found an incredible piece of evidence in Mr. Allison’s car—a key chain that belonged to Emma Lancaster, that was missing the next day, when her mother first realized she had disappeared. It’s one of the most important pieces of evidence they have against Mr. Allison,” he says, emphasizing its importance. “And they’re going to claim that Mr. Allison, who they allege was her kidnapper, took it with him when he abducted Emma. Now let me ask you this, ladies and gentlemen: Why would a kidnapper take her keys? If you’re going to abduct someone, you don’t stop to look around for things like keys. There are two other girls in that bedroom. You want to get out of there as fast as you can.” He shakes his head at the ridiculousness of it. “And Emma certainly wouldn’t have taken them,” he continues. “Somebody’s kidnapping her but she somehow manages to take her keys with her? And if she was leaving voluntarily, which the evidence is clearly going to show, she still wouldn’t have taken them, because she would have returned to her room through the same patio door.” He sweeps the jury box with his eyes. “You’re all intelligent people. Does that make sense to you? It sure doesn’t to me.

  “But there’s more to this, my friends. Much more. We’re going to show you, we’re going to prove to you, that many of the people closest to Emma Lancaster should be suspects in this, but never were.” A strategic pause. “Now, the prosecution knows about all this. They’ve known about it for months, but they’ve never pursued any leads about it. They have Joe Allison in their jail, and that’s all they care about. They want a conviction, regardless of whether or not justice is served. Because the pressure to get one is too strong to resist.”

  Now he moves, a deliberate pacing, a caged tiger, back and forth in front of the jury box. “Here are some of the things the prosecution doesn’t want you to know about, because it looks bad for them, for their case. They don’t want you to know that Emma Lancaster’s father was missing when his daughter was abducted. But did they ever pursue that?” He looks past the prosecution table to Doug Lancaster, sitting two rows back, directly behind Ray Logan. Doug is glaring wildly at him. He stares back before turning away. “No, they did not, even though immediate family are always—always, ladies and gentlemen, unless there is concrete, irrefutable proof to the contrary, like eyewitnesses—the initial suspects. Because we know that in the majority of murders like this one, a member of the family did it. But the authorities didn’t investigate Doug Lancaster fully. They interviewed him, took him at his word that he was innocent, and let it go.”

  The murmur is loud again. The courtroom is electric. Luke stops and looks at Sheriff Williams, who’s staring straight ahead passively, not moving a muscle in his face.

  Pacing again. “You’re going to hear things about all the principals in this case that will chill you, ladies and gentlemen. I have no desire to throw mud on Emma Lancaster’s reputation, or her parents’. They’ve already suffered enough. But that does not mean, and I want you all to hear this and remember it, that does not mean that Joe Allison has to be found guilty of the crime of murder because we’re all feeling sympathy for the Lancasters, even though they’re no longer a family. They’re parents, they’ll always be parents. And they’re never going to get their daughter back,
regardless of whether we execute Joe Allison or a dozen Joe Allisons.”

  He stops again. Composes himself for the jury’s sake, although inside he feels great. Walking over to the jury box, he rests his hands against the railing. A few avert their gazes, a few smile nervously. “This is not an ordinary trial for me,” he tells them. “This is personal—very personal. A couple of months ago, someone tried to kill me. Maybe you know about that, it was on television and in the newspapers. Right now, every day and night, a sheriff’s deputy stands watch over me. The sheriff’s office is working hard to find out who tried to kill me, but so far they haven’t been able to.”

  They are with him now, they are drawing breath when he is drawing breath.

  “Maybe the attempt on my life had nothing to do with my taking on Mr. Allison’s defense. In a way, that would be preferable to believing that it did. But think about it, ladies and gentlemen—doesn’t it seem awfully coincidental to you that someone randomly tries to kill the lawyer for the most despised criminal in recent county history right before the trial starts, when that lawyer—me—is starting to find cracks in the prosecution’s case? Isn’t that pressing the old ‘coincidence’ envelope pretty far?”

  He turns away from the jury for a second, making eye contact with Riva. Her eyes are bright—she nods an emphatic yes.

  “When you hear all the facts emerge in this case, you’re going to find yourself in a maze more complex than anything you could imagine. Alice in Wonderland couldn’t find her way out of the labyrinth you’re going to find yourselves ensnared in. But there’s one thing you are going to know: the state will not have proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.”