Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  Bennett snaps his fingers. “The document on Dale’s computer. About the Ace. The one the prosecutors haven’t breathed a word about?”

  I raise a hand to my forehead. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “But it all makes sense,” says Ben, leaping to his feet. “Trotter thinks that Dale and only Dale knew about the Ace, right? That was the point of Dale’s blackmail. Trotter thinks, he kills Dale, the Ace is gone, and everyone looks at you. Everyone thinks Dale blackmailed you about 1979.”

  “Right.”

  “But then the prosecutors find this memo on the computer. Elliot Raycroft, loyal servant that he is, shows it to Lang Trotter.”

  I point at Ben. “So now Trotter knows that I know about it, too, and the senator. The Ace didn’t die with Dale Garrison.”

  “So.” Ben sweeps a hand. “So the best thing that can happen for Trotter is for the thing to go away quickly. So he has Elliot Raycroft offer you a sweetheart of a plea deal. The best possible deal he could give you.”

  “And I reject it.”

  “And you reject it. So there’s gonna be a trial, there’s nothing Trotter can do about that. So he tells Raycroft not to mention anything about the blackmail letter. Suddenly, the prosecutors are withdrawing the letter as evidence.”

  “So that’s why,” I mumble.

  “Yeah, that’s why. And that’s why Dan Morphew dropped off the case, I bet. He was protesting. The guy’s a pretty straight shooter. He didn’t like being told how to try his case. They bring in a new person, Erica Johannsen, and probably keep her in the dark about most of this.”

  “So now,” I say, “they won’t touch this blackmail issue. They want a straight story without a motive—I was the only one there, I lied to the security guard, who else could it be?”

  “And Lyle Cosgrove?” Ben asks. I think he knows the answer, but he senses how much I’m enjoying unraveling the ball of string.

  “Lyle Cosgrove emphasizes 1979,” I say. “Now he’s been murdered, and the prosecutors are going to start asking the right questions. They are going to put all three of us—Lyle, Dale, and me—together in 1979. They’ve got their story.”

  “So after all of that, if you try to implicate Lang Trotter,” says Ben, “it’s the act of a desperate man, who now has killed two people to bury an ugly secret.”

  “Trotter killed Dale and Cosgrove.” I say the words to myself more than Ben.

  Ben is pacing now. “I suspect we’re going to be hearing a change of tune from the prosecutors in the next day or so. Suddenly, they are going to want to introduce the blackmail letter. And they’re going to talk about 1979. Trotter puts you deeper in the soup, and he produces a sensational story about his opponent a month before the election.”

  I feel a weight lift, for some reason I can’t explain. I always knew I was innocent of murdering Dale, it’s not that. And it’s more than the fact that we have solved the riddle. An emerging sense of salvation has gathered within me.

  Ben is looking at me now. “Is that why you wanted to go to the auditorium tonight?”

  I shrug. “I guess. I hadn’t put it together yet, but something was gnawing at me. I wanted to see if he’d look me in the eye.” I shake my head. “He wouldn’t. He did his whole charming routine, but he wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “No wonder,” says Ben, casting a glance at the television screen. “You know, we won’t be able to prove it. We might get reasonable doubt but—”

  “We’ll prove it,” I say as I watch Attorney General Langdon Trotter smile sincerely into the camera.

  50

  ERICA JOHANNSEN ASKS to be heard in chambers before the start of court this morning. The judge sits with us in her chambers and waits out the prosecutor.

  “Judge, we’d like a continuance,” says Johannsen.

  “Why is that, Counsel?” The judge is looking for something in a drawer.

  “Your Honor, we have just learned that a person who plays an important role in this case has been murdered. His name is Lyle Cosgrove.”

  “All right,” says the judge. “Tell me about Lyle Cosgrove.”

  “Your Honor, Mr. Cosgrove was just found murdered. He was a client of Mr. Garrison’s, recently released from prison. We believe he was on the other end of the cellular phone call to Mr. Soliday around the time of the murder.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the person whose phone was stolen gave a description of the thief that matches Mr. Cosgrove.”

  “And you want time to investigate,” says Judge Bridges.

  “We do, Judge. We feel sure we will tie Mr. Cosgrove to Mr. Soliday. We haven’t yet.” She looks at Bennett and me. “The defense’s speedy trial extends to ninety days. We have another almost fifty days before it expires. If we could have a week or two, that’s all we need.”

  “Counsel?” The judge looks at Bennett.

  “Smoke and mirrors,” says Ben. “They’ve looked at Lyle Cosgrove since day one. He’s a recently released ex-con. They investigated him immediately upon Mr. Garrison’s death. Really, Judge, he’s the first person any good investigator would look at. He pleaded ineffective assistance on appeal after his last conviction—he was complaining about Mr. Garrison. They looked at him and decided, for some reason, that he wasn’t their man. And they interviewed that woman whose cell phone was stolen right away, weeks ago. They had the description of the person, who apparently resembles Mr. Cosgrove, back even before my client was arrested.” Ben opens his hands. “There’s nothing new here. If Cosgrove is a suspect, he already should have been. The fact that he is now dead doesn’t change anything about his potential involvement in this case. It’s a blatant attempt to get more time, because they know they can’t beat reasonable doubt right now.”

  “All right, Counsel,” says the judge. “Ms. Johannsen?”

  “We want to investigate the possibility that Mr. Soliday murdered this man, Your Honor. That is certainly a new development.”

  “Not in this case, it isn’t.” The judge plants a finger on her desk. “You can prosecute Mr. Soliday for that offense down the road, if you can prove it. That doesn’t change this person—Mr. Cosgrove—this doesn’t change his involvement in Mr. Garrison’s death. I agree with Mr. Carey. Either he’s involved or he isn’t. If he is, you’ve had ample opportunity to put that together.” She shakes her head. “I’m not moving the trial date. We continue right now.”

  “Then we move to have bond revoked, Your Honor,” says Johannsen.

  The judge pivots forward. “Counsel, are you going to present me with more evidence than you already have, with regard to the defendant’s involvement in the death of this witness?”

  “This all just happened.” Erica Johannsen opens her hands plaintively. “We are accusing the defendant of murder and we believe he may, possibly, have just committed a second murder. You have wide discretion in bond issues, Your Honor. All we’re saying is—”

  “I’m not revoking bond, Counsel.” Her Honor shakes her head. “If you can give me evidence, I’ll look at it. But this individual was not even someone you were going to call as a witness. Now you tell me he was material, and his death should be attributed to the defendant? No. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “I want to say something else, if I could, Judge.” Ben sits forward. “Among other things here, you’re the finder of fact. I think the prosecution is trying to taint your evaluation of this case. They’re suggesting my client committed a murder for which he isn’t even charged. For which he hasn’t even been questioned. I would move for a mistrial but that’s exactly what she wants.”

  “I understand that, Counsel.”

  “Yesterday, this Lyle Cosgrove didn’t even warrant a mention on the witness list. Now he’s critical? Of course he isn’t, and Ms. Johannsen knows it. She just wanted another chance to call my client a murderer. I think we’ve been severely biased.”

  “Mr. Carey,” the judge answers, “I can assure you that you hav
e not been prejudiced. This will not factor into my consideration in any way. Now let’s get out there.”

  I make a point of walking out with confidence, trying to remain oblivious to the fact that everyone in the judge’s chambers probably believes I killed Lyle Cosgrove. The judge may have her doubts. The prosecutor doesn’t. And Bennett, well, he would not bet the house on my innocence.

  Oh, how close I came to doing it, the night that I followed him and waited to ambush him on the sidewalk. I stood within two or three feet of Lyle Cosgrove as he limped past me. I was filled with venom. I was bitter and furious and hateful, and along walked a man who was vulnerable to my wrath. I was ready to make him my scapegoat; his death would be the answer to a problem in the present, and resolution, if not absolution, for a problem in the past.

  I was ready to kill Lyle Cosgrove with my bare hands, right there on the dark sidewalk. He approached me with the halt in his stride. He was whistling softly, no song that I knew, but something cheerful. I smelled tobacco on him. His face, cast in the faint illumination of the street and parking lot, seemed pale and meek. His beady eyes flickered in my direction as I stood at the gate of the parking lot. He nodded to me without alarm. I imagine he’d been scared of a lot more in prison than a medium-sized man leaving a parking lot. He resumed his whistling and I stood, frozen, as he slowly moved along.

  I wiped my wet forehead and slowly exhaled. It was, in many ways, a completely unremarkable moment, two people simply noticing each other as they went on with their lives. But I learned something about myself, or maybe it’s more appropriate to say I relearned something, in that span of five seconds. I thought I could kill another human being under certain circumstances, but I can’t. I had the means and opportunity and I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t driven by rational thought; I wasn’t thinking at all. I did not calculate the morals or the likelihood of being apprehended; I was freed of all such thought, acting purely on instinct—and my instinct kept my feet planted.

  I enjoyed a brief moment of relief and celebration there by the sidewalk, unable to pinpoint the particular thing Cosgrove did, or emotion I felt, that prevented me from taking his life. My mind had been dark and cold only moments before; I was prepared to act without reason, and then suddenly I was unconsciously recognizing the humanity in this frail, flawed man.

  The lawyers and I walk out of the judge’s chambers and back into the courtroom. Ben and I look at each other but say nothing. This is precisely the kind of thing Ben predicted.

  The judge settles in on the bench. “Call your next witness, Ms. Johannsen.”

  “The People call Brad Gillis.”

  Brad Gillis looks like a city cop, a real cowboy. I don’t dislike the man. He was pretty straight-up with me, didn’t condescend and didn’t prejudge. I know before he opens his mouth he’ll be a good witness for the prosecution.

  But he doesn’t have much to say today. Almost all the evidence against me consists of what happened before the cops showed up. There’s not much dispute over the physical evidence, either. They found a few strands of my hair on Dale, but I was giving him mouth-to-mouth. They didn’t find any traces of his skin under my fingernails but they also didn’t arrest me for several days after his death, so I would have had time to remove any traces. In the end, there’s no doubt that I was there, it’s just a question of what I did.

  “Placing the defendant at the scene obviously was not a priority,” he explains. “Given that he was found there and admitted as much in an interview afterward.”

  “Nevertheless,” says Erica Johannsen, “you investigated the crime scene.”

  “Yes, of course,” says Gillis. “But when the call first came in, there wasn’t any particular reason to believe that a murder had been committed. It was possible, but it was equally likely that an elderly man had simply died. We had to wait for the autopsy. So I spoke with the defendant a few minutes and let him go.”

  “Tell us what was said.”

  “The defendant claimed that he had left the building for a few minutes, but that he returned when he was phoned by the victim.”

  “Phoned by Mr. Garrison?”

  “That’s what he said. He said Mr. Garrison called the defendant.”

  “On the defendant’s cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the defendant show you his cell phone?”

  “Yes. I took down the phone number.” The detective states my phone number. Bennett has already stipulated that this is my number, and that the phone records are accurate. The detective explains that he checked my cell phone records, that a call was made to me at 7:22 p.m. on August 18, 2000, from a phone owned by Joanne Souter.

  “Did you check the phone records for Mr. Garrison’s office, Detective?”

  Johannsen hands the detective phone records from the law offices of Dale Garrison. We stipulated to their authenticity, too. No point in disputing things they can prove, anyway.

  “So there were no phone calls made from any phone at the victim’s law firm after seven p.m. that evening? August eighteenth?”

  “Correct.”

  The prosecutor then confirms that Dale did not own a cell phone of his own.

  “Let me ask you about Joanne Souter. Did you speak with her?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you learn about her cellular telephone?”

  “It had been stolen earlier that day, August eighteenth. Her purse had been stolen, and the phone was in it. It was stolen at a public library.”

  “All right. Now, did Ms. Souter provide any description of the person who stole her purse?”

  “She did,” says Gillis.

  I look at Ben, who is making no attempt to object. We’ve stipulated to this testimony, and anyway, we agree that Lyle Cosgrove stole the phone.

  “She stated that the perpetrator had long red hair in a ponytail, and wore a denim jacket.”

  “Let me show you a photograph, Detective.” The prosecutor walks over and hands Bennett a photograph of Lyle Cosgrove from his criminal file. It’s in color, showing red hair.

  “Detective, was this photograph shown to Ms. Souter?”

  Gillis nods, yes. “I took it out to her myself last night.”

  “What did she say when she saw it?”

  “She said it could have been him.”

  Johannsen looks at Bennett. “Can we agree this is a photograph of Lyle Cosgrove?” She speaks with a hint of distaste. It’s obvious now that we’ve known about Lyle Cosgrove for a while, and she does not like that fact.

  “We’ll stipulate.” Sure we will.

  “Thank you, Mr. Carey.” She admits the photograph into evidence.

  “All right. Let me take you back to the scene, Detective. You spoke with the defendant. Was anyone else present at that time?”

  Gillis reviews his notes and rattles off the names of the security guards.

  “Anyone else, though?” asks Johannsen. “Lawyers, paralegals, secretaries?”

  “No laypersons,” he answers. “Mr. Soliday was the only person in that office with the victim.”

  “Okay. Now, at some point, the county coroner ruled the death a murder, right? Asphyxiation by manual strangulation.”

  “That’s correct. That’s when I returned to Mr. Garrison’s office.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed to check the offices again. Look at possible entries and exits and the like.”

  “Tell us.”

  “There’s only one entrance into the office. The front door. There’s two exits. One is that same door, the other is a side door for people to go out to the hallway, usually to the bathroom. But it’s not an entrance. Not without a key.”

  “Had the cleaning people been there?” she asks. “That night. The eighteenth. Before Mr. Garrison’s death.”

  “No, they hadn’t. We checked their records. In fact, they walked in while I was there that night.”

  “Did you interview the other people who worked in those offices?”


  “I did. No one had been near the place at seven on Friday night.”

  “No one,” says Johannsen, “other than the defendant.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Thank you, Detective.” Erica Johannsen walks to the prosecution table, feeling pretty good about her presentation. I look at the judge, who makes eye contact with me and quickly breaks it. I suppose that’s just judicial decorum, but I can’t shake the feeling she’s giving off. The look on her face, however momentary. She thinks I killed Dale. The feeling of dread is sudden and powerful, and as Bennett Carey rises for cross-examination, I look to him with a hope I’ve never felt, a vulnerability so suddenly clear, so palpable, that I begin to tremble.

  51

  “DETECTIVE GILLIS,” SAYS Ben. “There are two exits from Mr. Garrison’s suite of offices.”

  “Yes.” Gillis crosses a leg but otherwise shows no change of attitude under cross-examination. By now, he’s been in court enough. He can handle himself just fine.

  “That side exit you mentioned—you don’t need a key to leave the office from that exit, do you?”

  “To leave? No. Just to come in from the hallway.”

  “So if someone were in the offices, they could leave whenever they wanted.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Did you dust that exit for fingerprints, Detective?”

  “I—I did not do that initially, no.”

  “You weren’t sure it was a homicide at all, when you first got there.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re still not sure, are you?”

  “I didn’t say that, Counsel. I’m confident in the findings of the coroner.”

  “Okay,” says Ben. “But the night of Mr. Garrison’s death, you didn’t dust the exits for prints.”

  “No. I didn’t necessarily consider it a crime scene.”

  “Did you try to pull prints later?”

  “The cleaning people had been through four or five times by the time we returned. There was no point.”