Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  The prosecutor looks at my lawyer. “I guess we’ll call Mr. Cosgrove now,” he says.

  Gary Degnan leaves the room. I look at my lawyer, who says nothing to me but nods curtly. For the most part, I stifle the conflicting emotions. What I have heard so far is good. The autopsy findings don’t support a rape or murder charge. Nor does it appear that Gina Mason was someone reluctant to engage in sex. And there’s something else. The pace of the proceedings. This prosecutor is running through the evidence so efficiently, it’s as if he’s in a hurry to conclude.

  Lyle is escorted into the conference room. His head is freshly shaved bald. He is in a red polo shirt and jeans. His eyes connect and withdraw from mine quickly. Seeing him for the first time since that night causes a stirring within me, something I can’t pinpoint, an itch I can’t scratch. He nods to the prosecutor with no enthusiasm, and without intimidation. He is a menacing figure, thick arms and a hard look. A tough, tough kid, even in these surroundings. He is facing across from the prosecutors, while my lawyer and I have his profile.

  “The court reporter will swear the witness.”

  The typist—I guess the court reporter—swears in Lyle Cosgrove.

  “State your full name.”

  “Lyle Alan Cosgrove.”

  “Residence?”

  “Four-oh-eight Benjamin.”

  “Here in Lansing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In the County of Summit?”

  “Right.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Are you a high school student?”

  “No. I dropped out. I work in construction.”

  “Okay. Let’s get to the details now.”

  Cosgrove tells the room that he went to this party with Gina Mason. He says she was not his girlfriend but that he had “messed around with her”—later clarified as sexual intercourse—on several occasions over the last several months. He cracks his knuckles a few times and squirms in his chair, but he is pretty direct in his answers.

  He turns to the party-within-the-party upstairs. “We had some weed,” he says. “Me and Grant and Jon and Gina were smoking weed.” No mention of Rick. The fewer witnesses, the better, I’ve heard from my lawyer—especially when that witness was a drug dealer. “We drank beers, smoked about four or five joints. Then someone had cocaine. So we did some of that. I mean, the coke part, that was me and Jon and Gina.”

  Grant has been left out of the cocaine part. A small gift he has thrown in for himself. I’m more than willing to accommodate; it is a small favor to pay considering what Grant has done for me. I could see that. No way he could admit to his father he was snorting cocaine. Marijuana’s bad enough, but coke—Grant couldn’t do it. That was the whole point of being in Summit County, I now realize, a place where Grant could do what he wanted in anonymity.

  It tells me something else, as well, which I struggle to block from my mind, at least for now and maybe forever. Lyle is telling a story here. Already he has lied, which means most or all of this might be fiction. And if he has to lie about the truth, then what is that truth?

  “How much cocaine?” Vega asks.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe a few grams. We were all pretty messed up.”

  They work on that topic awhile. Lyle goes through each person in the room—minus Rick and, now, Grant—and estimates how many lines of cocaine they snorted up their noses. The prosecutor covers the same with the beer and marijuana. Then they move to when the party broke up.

  “Well, we left,” says Lyle. “Gina left first and went home. Grant, he left when we did. He went home. Jon and I drove to Gina’s house.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Gina said she wanted Jon to stop by later. He didn’t know the way there so I took him.”

  “And why would you take Jon to see the person you brought to the party, Mr. Cosgrove?”

  Because he owed Grant one for the coke, and he didn’t give a shit about Gina Mason. I don’t expect to hear that answer.

  He shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Vega presses. “You don’t know why you drove Mr. Soliday over to your date’s house?” He opens his hands. “She wasn’t your girlfriend, you said?”

  “Nah. She wasn’t. I didn’t care any.”

  “Okay.” The prosecutor is not especially impressed. “So then what?”

  “Well, Jon went to Gina’s house and went in. He was in there about a half hour.”

  “And what were you doing all this time?”

  “Well, y’know.” He shrugs. “Had a couple cigarettes, drank a beer. Played a new tape I bought on my stereo. I might’ve fell asleep part of the time, too.”

  “What happened after this half an hour?”

  “I got sick of waiting, so I went over to Gina’s window on the side of the house. I was gonna bang on it but Jon was just about to leave. He was saying goodbye to Gina. Kissing her goodbye.”

  “He was kissing the decedent goodbye.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then nothing. I took him home. Then I went home.”

  The prosecutor nods, scribbling some notes on his pad. “Mr. Erwin, any questions?”

  “Just a couple, Mr. Vega, if you please.”

  “By all means.”

  “Mr. Cosgrove,” my lawyer begins, “while you were upstairs at that party, did Gina give any indication that she was fond of Mr. Soliday?”

  Lyle stares at Jeremiah Erwin a minute. “She was touching him some. Put her hand on his dick once.” He looks at the prosecutor. “Sorry.”

  “She placed her hand in his crotch?”

  “Yeah, right.” He points at Erwin.

  “When she told you she wanted Jon to come visit her later, can you tell us the exact words?”

  “Something like, Tell him to stop by. Tell him I’m waiting for him.”

  “I have nothing further. Thank you.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Cosgrove,” says Mr. Vega. He looks at my attorney. “We anticipated calling Gina Mason’s brother Billy next. Her brother is eight years old and reported her death to the police. That’s on the police report, which—let’s mark that as Exhibit three, while I’m thinking of it.” He slides that document to the court reporter. “And let’s mark his police interview as Exhibit four.” He raises his hand as my lawyer, Mr. Erwin, begins to speak. “Understanding the hearsay problem.”

  “Double hearsay, for the record,” says Mr. Erwin. The investigator, Mr. Degnan, grimaces.

  Mr. Erwin, following the prosecution’s case in a three-ring binder he has brought along, flips to the police interview with Billy Mason. It wasn’t much of an interview at all. He was an eight-year-old boy. He called the emergency room of a local hospital at 5:22 in the morning, reporting that his sister wasn’t breathing. The police attempted to speak with him later that morning at his home. The prosecutor, Mr. Vega, reads the contents of the short report into the record as I follow along:

  Billy was unresponsive, incoherent at best. He was unable to discuss the events of the prior night at all. His mother, Virginia Mason, ceased all questioning after fifteen minutes.

  6/24/79

  Billy appeared unhealthy. He had lost weight, confirmed by his mother. He was not entirely unresponsive to questioning but he was unable to provide any details of the incident in question. He stated that he found his sister dead on the morning in question but slept through the events themselves in the early hours of that morning. His mother stated that Billy would not be available to testify in any criminal investigation and she asked that he not be questioned further. Billy had several cuts on his body from what appeared to be a nonserrated knife: two on his left arm, one below the collarbone, width of approx. two-three inches, but he could not tell us the source of the cut. The wounds were fresh and likely self-inflicted. Mrs. Mason confirmed that she had found her son inflicting the wounds on himself yesterday. She indicated that Billy was rece
iving counseling and would not be left alone in the house for the foreseeable future.

  “Christ almighty,” I mumble, though this is not the first time I saw the report. Was he trying to end his life? Or just punishing himself? Am I part of what’s happened to him?

  “We have been told by Mrs. Virginia Mason, their mother, that Billy will not be testifying.” The prosecutor, Mr. Vega, settles his hands in front of himself. “We have the power to compel testimony here at our discretion. We will elect not to do so in the context of a young boy, over the objection of his mother, particularly under the circumstances. We will take no presumption, favorable or unfavorable, from the refusal to testify. We will not engage in speculation. What we can note for the record is that Billy Mason has been hospitalized for treatment and intensive counseling.” Mr. Vega sighs. “Okay. Let’s move on.”

  The prosecutor confers briefly with his investigator, Mr. Degnan. Where the prosecutor, Vega, shows little emotion in these proceedings, Degnan appears quite unhappy with the state of affairs. He is sulking, to use one of my teachers’ words.

  Mr. Vega turns to my lawyer. “Counsel, are we finished?”

  Mr. Erwin clears his throat. “I’d like to call my client, Jonathan Soliday.”

  “Very well. Mr. Soliday? Please take a seat in the witness chair. Mr. Erwin?” Vega motions to a seat near him. The point is to have us near the court reporter, I imagine.

  I stand up on uncertain legs and grimly take my place where Lyle Cosgrove was just sitting. I am relatively calm as I await my lawyer’s questions.

  The court reporter looks at me. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “I do,” I answer. And God, please help me.

  I could do the examination without the lawyer at this point, we’ve gone over it so many times. Gina was flirting with me at the party. She grabbed my crotch in full view of the others. She said she’d see me later. So Lyle and I drove to Gina’s house. She invited me in and we had sex. At one point, we fell from the bed, she banged her head—accounting for the blow to the head. Later, I said goodbye, we kissed, I saw Lyle outside the window, and Lyle and I left together.

  “And did Ms. Mason ever make physical contact with you, at that party?”

  “Yes. She ran her hand up my leg.”

  “Where did she stop?”

  “My—crotch.”

  As I testify to these events, I settle on a view outside the window, behind Mr. Vega and Mr. Degnan. I can’t look at my lawyer and I can’t look at the prosecutors. Instead, I focus on the park down the street, where a young woman is playing with her child on a swing set. It’s a small boy, who appears to be pleading with his mother to push the swing harder, to allow him to swing higher in the air. He is kicking his legs to aid in the momentum.

  I keep my voice flat, free of inflection, simply detailing the cold facts to which I can’t honestly say I have any memory.

  “So there you are, in Ms. Mason’s bedroom. Can you tell us who initiated any sexual activity?”

  “She did.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “She took off her robe. She was naked. She unzipped my pants and took them off.”

  “And what did she do then?”

  “She started doing—she started with her mouth—”

  “Did she perform oral sex on you, Jon?”

  “Yeah.”

  I will never know what happened between Gina and me. I will never know what I did. I know that if I did do something—it’s hard to even think the words—if I did cause her death, it wasn’t anything I ever knew was within my capacity. I would have to assume it was purely unintentional, an accident, chalked up to drunken sex or some bit of rage born of absolute intoxication. It’s not me. I’m not that person.

  “She kissed me goodbye and asked me to stop by again sometime.”

  “Was she standing up? Or sitting? Or lying down?”

  “Standing up. She kissed me goodbye.”

  “Anything else happen?”

  “I asked her if she wanted me to stick around, to talk or something.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she needed to sleep. She said she felt nauseous. Like she might need to throw up.”

  “She felt nauseous? She felt like she might vomit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then you left?”

  “Right.”

  The prosecutor’s turn to ask questions comes, and he makes no attempt to trip me up. He couldn’t, probably, even if he wanted to, but it’s clear to me he won’t even try. He is confirming my story, covering all the bases for the inevitable conclusion that the Summit County prosecutor will not try Jonathan Soliday for the death of Gina Mason. The criminal investigation will be closed.

  There is a very strong part of me that disapproves of what Grant has done, with the help of his father’s political power. He got to the prosecutor. He got to the coroner. He got to Lyle Cosgrove. Maybe he got to Gina’s brother, Billy. But I can’t escape the fact that I’m accepting his help. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want my life ruined. I’m seventeen years old, I may have done something truly awful, but I can’t say for sure and I’m willing to give myself the benefit of the doubt.

  Jeremiah Erwin escorts me from the building. It is not until we are outside that he pronounces his optimism that we’ll prevail. I’m young but not stupid. This was a foregone conclusion from the moment we walked in. Gina Mason is just a young nobody and I have friends in powerful places.

  “They’ll decide by next week,” says my lawyer. “And then, hopefully, you can put this behind you.”

  I will. Time will bring many things. It will bring a cushion, a gentle ebbing of the fear and pain and guilt. It will also bring a fading of what little memory I possess, and with it the inevitable revisionism. In a year, I’ll remember this as a childish mistake that maybe, just maybe resulted in a truly evil thing. Five years, it will be that I was out-of-control stoned and not really responsible for my actions, and anyway who can say what really happened? Twenty years, it will be that one incident after high school with the promiscuous chick who wore tiny shorts and heels and grabbed my dick and got all coked up and OD’d, and I almost got blamed. That’s what scares me. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to revise. I want to remember this always as I do now. That I was part of something bad. And that, regardless of any legal vindication, evidence or not, I’ll never really know whether I am responsible for the death of Gina Mason.

  We reach the car in the parking lot across the street from the court building. I take a last look back and see a boy standing on the sidewalk, the massive structure and stone stairs framing him. He is too young to be alone, a small boy dressed in a raggedy T-shirt and oversized shorts. He offers no reaction to my recognition, just stands completely still, arms at his side, watching me with the awkward posture of preadolescence. There is little to discern from his expression. Not hatred, not anger. A curiosity, perhaps. Mr. Erwin follows my line of vision and sees the boy. He looks back at me, but we say nothing. I start to ask the question of Mr. Erwin, but I’m sure he never met Gina Mason’s little brother, Billy.

  I consider some kind of gesture, a wave or a solemn shake of the head. But what can I say to this boy? His sister is gone, maybe because somebody did something bad, but no one will be punished. He doesn’t know who, he doesn’t know why, but he knows it was wrong. I make a silent vow to this boy that I will not forget. I will not allow myself a pass on this event. I will impose my own punishment. I will do the only thing that I can do, live a good life and repent and ask forgiveness from God.

  And above all else, remember my debts.

  21

  I WAS ARRESTED for the murder of Dale Garrison on that Tuesday in the station house. The press got wind of it immediately and featured it on the evening news. Senator Tully did not comment initially. Bennett Carey, acting as my lawyer for the time being, angrily denounced the arrest as politically motivated
. That stirred things up even more, and though Bennett’s spin helped my cause, what it did more than anything was pique the media’s interest further.

  The press didn’t—still doesn’t—have the full story. All they have are the literal facts of the supposed crime. I was the last one seen with Garrison, I claimed to have stepped out of the office before returning, and the forensic evidence showed death by strangulation. What is not clear from any media stories is the why. They have no idea why Senator Tully’s lawyer would want to kill Dale Garrison. The county attorney’s office doesn’t know, either, but they have a blackmail letter that must count for something. They have not shared the letter with the press yet. I assume they want to know what it means before they disclose it.

  I was arraigned the following Thursday. The charge was first-degree murder. Bennett told me that it was possible I’d get bail but not likely. So I went into the proceeding with low expectations. Without my prior knowledge—probably because I wouldn’t have approved—State Senator Grant Tully walked into the courtroom and told the judge that he would put up whatever bond was set, that he would personally guarantee my presence in the state, and that I would remain in his employ at all times. The judge, an old guy named Aidan Riordan who wouldn’t be on the bench without the help of Senator Tully’s father about twenty years ago, seemed rather taken aback by the whole thing but then set my bond at half a million dollars. Grant put up fifty thousand dollars—ten percent as required—and I was sprung that morning.

  That certainly made for a news item. Senator Tully held court, so to speak, outside the courthouse with reporters, angrily declaring my innocence and stating, “This is no time to desert a friend, a totally innocent friend.” As always, Grant managed to turn a potentially explosive news item into a semi-positive.