I thought about Elmer, who, even though he was a bad guy, too, he had an excuse – he was poisoned in utero, so he never had a chance. But Michael – Michael had no excuse. Well, maybe he can plead a fancy disorder like Affluenza or some nonsense like that, but, really, he had no excuse for being a scumbag.
Brad came in next. “Hey, sis,” he said. “I never thought we’d be meeting here.” His tone was teasing and I smiled.
“Oh, Brad, it’s okay. It’s going to be much better now, really. I’m finally getting the right meds, because I finally have a correct diagnosis. I mean, you know that I’ve always suffered from depression and anxiety, but I’ve never been manic until now. But now that I have the right diagnosis, I think that I can get the right kinds of meds, maybe for the first time.”
“Well,” Brad said. “The right meds have worked for Uncle Patrick, so hopefully they’ll work for you, too.”
“Yeah, I hope so too.”
For the rest of the day, the people who loved and cared about me shuffled in and out of my room, two by two, and I was feeling better than I had for a long time. It wasn’t just that I enjoyed the company. I also felt hopeful that I would be on a more even keel. That was necessary, because, if it was the last thing I did, I was going to get to the bottom of the Judge Sanders’ murder, and I had to be mentally sharp to do that.
Thirty-One
When I got out of the psychiatric facility, I got right back into it. When I was in the hospital, and I was alone in my room, I spent my time trying to make a flow chart of everything that I knew thus far. My mind was clearer than it had been in some time, and, unlike before, I didn’t have super clarity, but I did feel more normal than I had been feeling. I was sleeping normally, too. I felt hopeful that maybe these new meds were just what I needed to stabilize my emotions and brain.
On my flow chart, I put the names Gerald Stone, Kayla Stone, Michael Reynolds and Judge Perez. I was working on a theory, but I had no way to prove any of it. I figured that the best way to prove it would be to get one of the people on the list to flip on everyone else. Kayla, to me, seemed like the most likely candidate for that. I met her, and she seemed to be a decent person. She struck me as somebody who was a bit weak-minded.
I hadn’t met Gerald Stone, but, from what Megan Baker told me, Gerald Stone was a total bastard. As for Judge Perez – I had tried cases in front of him, so I knew him, but he was pretty high up the food chain as far as this conspiracy went, in my mind. I was going to have to concentrate on the low-hanging fruit.
I called Kayla when I got out of the hospital.
“Hello,” she said. “This is Kayla.”
“Kayla, this is Harper Ross. I need to speak with you at your earliest possible convenience.”
She was silent for a few minutes. “What do you need to speak with me about?”
“I need to speak to you about your husband.”
“I’m very sorry, but I’m very busy.”
I was expecting this. “I’ll subpoena you for another deposition. You can either come and speak with me off the record, or you can come and speak with me on the record. It’s your choice, but, either way, I need to speak with you.”
She sighed. “I can come in this afternoon. Three o’clock?”
“Three o’clock is perfect.” I had an afternoon DWI to take care of at 1:30, so I knew that I would be back at the office by 3, so meeting her then wouldn’t be a problem at all.
I hung up and called Anna. “Anna, I need something from you.”
“Sure. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”
“I need for you to find something out for me. Judge Perez was randomly assigned, by the computer, the case of Dowling Chemicals down at the federal courthouse. I need for you to find out if it wasn’t random after all. Can you do that? Can you find out if somebody hacked into the database to make sure that Judge Perez would be assigned that case?”
“I can do that,” she said. “I’ll have that information for you in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks.”
I had to get my ducks in a row before I presented the Chief Judge with what I had found out. There was just no way that I was just going to let him get away with trying that case. I was going to connect him to this whole rotten enterprise if it was the last thing I did. I already knew what was going to happen, but that judge was rotten as the day was long – he was going to find in favor of Dowling, and all the people who were hurt by Dowling were not going to get a dime. Not a dime.
Fifteen minutes later, Anna called back. “You’re good,” she said. “You were right. Somebody did hack into the system to make sure that Judge Perez was assigned to that Dowling Chemical case. What does that mean?”
I sighed. “It means that the judge is dirty and in the pocket of Gerald Stone.” The evidence was circumstantial, but I put the pieces together and figured out what was going on. “Thanks, Anna. You’re the best.”
“Not a problem.”
I hung up the phone and put that issue on the backburner. I was going to have to prepare for my meeting with Kayla. The low-hanging fruit that she was, I knew that her testimony to me was going to be key. The dominoes were going to fall, starting with her.
Kayla arrived right at 3, looking nervous. She was very pale and, when she sat down to speak with me, she kept looking around. Specifically, she kept looking at the front door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m just a little bit freaked out. I don’t trust Gerald. I think that he might have bugged me.” She shook her head rapidly. “I hired this guy to sweep my car and my house. He even swept my purse. So far, nothing has been found.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Your house. Does that mean that you’re no longer living with Gerald?”
“That’s right.” Her blue eyes were wide and she looked towards the front door again. “I moved out two weeks ago. I’m not seeing Michael anymore, either.”
“I see. Any particular reason why you and Michael aren’t together anymore?”
She shrugged. “It just ran its course.”
This was good. This was very good. If Kayla wasn’t emotionally attached to either of the men who I suspected was behind this whole mess, then perhaps she would be willing to roll on both of them. That is, if she wasn’t scared of doing that.
“Okay. Well, I don’t want to beat around the bush here. I need some information about your husband and your ex-boyfriend.”
“Ms. Ross, I think that I told you that I’m going to plead the fifth on that.”
“There’s no pleading the fifth right now. You’re not under oath. I’m not making a record. You can’t take the fifth. You can refuse just to answer me, but I need to tell you one thing – I know what happened. I know who killed Judge Sanders. I know that you were involved with it, and I know that Gerald was too.” I was bluffing. I didn’t know any of these things, but I had to make her believe that I had the goods. That was the only way that this whole gambit was going to work.
She rapidly shook her head. “What do you mean? What do you mean? I don’t know anything about that murder. I wasn’t involved with it.”
“Oh, but you were. You were. Here’s what happened. Your husband, Gerald Stone, is the CEO of Stone Enterprises. Stone Enterprises is the parent company of Dowling Chemicals. Dowling Chemicals has been criminally negligent in the handling of a particular chemical, known at Toluene. This chemical has affected thousands of people. It has made them very sick and it has caused fetuses to suffer brain damage in utero. Because of the way that Dowling Chemicals has handled the Toluene, they were going to be found liable and, under Judge Sanders, they would have been slapped down with hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages. Gerald Stone didn’t want that, so he had Judge Sanders killed. But, before he had Judge Sanders killed, he first tried to blackmail Judge Sanders with a bogus paternity case that purportedly showed that Judge Sanders impregnated his own daughter. Personally, I think that’s the most disgusting part of this whole sorry scenario.”
“What do you need from me?” Her voice was tiny and fearful.
“I need for you to tell me what happened. In your own words. How exactly the judge was murdered, who did it, and who poisoned him.”
“What will happen to me? I mean, if I tell you everything, what is going to happen to me?”
I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. I mean, I had a good feeling that Kayla was heavily involved in the murder because she was going to be cut out of her prenuptial agreement. Therefore, she was just doing it for greed. But I also had the feeling that she was intimidated into doing it by the two men who were squeezing her on her right and her left – Gerald and Michael.
“I have enough evidence to go to the police,” I said, knowing that was a big, fat lie. “And the three of you are going to be hung out to dry. But if you tell me the truth, then I’ll ask the police to not only go easy on you, but offer you immunity in exchange for your testimony. Believe me, getting somebody like Gerald and Judge Perez would be worth it to the police. If Gerald could do this to a judge, he could do it to anybody. As for Judge Perez, a corrupt judge does not need to be hearing federal cases that potentially involve millions of dollars. You can be a hero, Kayla. You only need to tell me what happened.”
She continued to bite her nails as she nervously looked to the door and then back at me. I saw her shaking and then she lowered her head and started to cry.
I wordlessly handed her a box of Kleenex. She took the box and brought one of the Kleenexes to her nose and blew it. “Oh, God,” she said. “I knew that we weren’t going to get away with this. I knew it. I told them.”
I nodded my head. “You told them? Who was involved besides Gerald? I mean, who was involved in the murder?” I doubted that Judge Perez was involved in the murder, but I knew that he was involved in possibly blackmailing Judge Sanders and I knew that he was involved in making sure he would be the one who tried the Dowling case. I wondered if money had changed hands there. I was quite sure that it did.
She sighed. “Ms. Ross, I know that you’re going to think horribly of me. But I need to tell you the story. The whole story. Please, when you go to the police, please ask them to go easy on me. Please ask them to offer me immunity. I’ll tell them anything that they want to know. But I might have to go into the witness protection program too.” She looked at the door again, looked back at me, and went back to biting her nails.
“That’s why you’re here.”
“I know.” She hung her head. “Okay. I’ll just start from the beginning. Gerald and I were having marital problems, and I met Michael. I met him on-line. On one of those dating sites. The one that is catered to married people who are looking to have affairs. I know, I know, it’s really sleazy. I don’t think that that site is even around anymore.”
“Ashley Madison,” I said. “I remember that site. Actually, it is still around, believe it or not.” That site was hacked and thousands of names were divulged, but it somehow managed to survive.
“Yes. Ashley Madison. I was unhappy, Ms. Ross, with Gerald. He was never at home, and I mean never. He practically lives at the office. I wanted children when we got married. He promised me that we could have a family. But after we got married, he told me that he didn’t want children, so he forced me to have my tubes tied. So, he lied when he told me that we could start a family.”
“When you came into the marriage, you didn’t have any assets or property, did you?”
She sighed. “No. I didn’t. I’ve worked my whole life, and I was working as a nurse when I met him. But I could never hold onto money. I always just lived in small apartments, I leased my cars, and I never opened up any financial accounts. So, yeah, when we got married, I came into the marriage with nothing. Literally nothing.”
“And Gerald was already wealthy.”
“Yes. Very wealthy.” She sighed again and shook her head. “And he made me sign a pre-nuptial agreement before we got married. Basically, if we ever divorced, I would get 25% of the property that Gerald brought into the marriage and 50% of the property that was acquired during the marriage. I thought that was very fair. But he put in a clause that said that I wouldn’t get a dime of property if it was found that I had been unfaithful during the marriage.”
I tried to act surprised about what she was saying, but I was a terrible actress. I was afraid that she was going to see right through me. However, she was so distraught by this whole situation that she didn’t even look at me, so I relaxed.
She stopped talking and then looked out the window. She looked past me and then started to bite her nails again. “Gerald found out about Michael. He had a private investigator, and he had all the pictures that he needed. He threatened to divorce me and leave me penniless.”
“Okay. Kayla, can I ask you a personal question?”
She nodded.
“What would be the harm in Gerald leaving you penniless, as you say? I mean, you were a nurse before you met him. You were living in a small apartment. Couldn’t you just go back to nursing and living in another small apartment and just start over?”
I couldn’t quite understand her mentality. If she got involved with the murder of the judge so that she could get a nice settlement from Gerald, why would she do that? Was it really worth it to her to make sure that she remained wealthy after she was divorced from Gerald that she would do anything, even get involved with murdering somebody?
“Yes. In hindsight, I should have just broken away from him. Let him cut me out. I haven’t worked in 15 years, though. That’s how long we’ve been married.”
I bit my tongue, but I wanted to ask her another question, and that was why did she quit her job? She didn’t have children with Gerald. She told me that she never saw the guy. I had no idea how she spent her time, but, if it were me, I would still be working, even if I was married to a wealthy guy. I couldn’t imagine living a life of leisure.
I leaned back in my chair and put my pen in my mouth. Kayla could probably see the judgment in my eyes, although I hoped that she didn’t.
“Well, as I said, he threatened to divorce me and leave me with nothing. But he made me an offer.”
“An offer. Tell me about the offer.”
“He told me that he needed me to help him kill Judge Sanders. He told me that it was almost perfect that I was having an affair with Michael, because he was Judge Sanders son-in-law, so Michael had perfect access to Judge Sanders. He told me that if I got Michael to kill Judge Sanders that he would take the clause out of our prenuptial agreement that said that I wouldn’t get anything if I was unfaithful.”
I nodded my head. This was good. This was very good. “And you got Michael to do this?”
“Yes. I got Michael to put poison into the judge’s orange juice. Arsenic. Michael went over to Judge Sanders’ house every Sunday, and he refilled the judge’s pills every week. When he went into the judge’s kitchen to refill his pills, he put some poison into the judge’s orange juice too. Just enough poison to kill Judge Sanders slowly.”
Kayla started to cry. “Oh, I just can’t believe that I did that. I mean, what kind of person am I? That I would do that just because I wanted to make sure that I left my marriage with millions of dollars. I just don’t know what I’ve become. I know you don’t believe me, but I never cared about money before I met Gerald. But you don’t know what it’s like to go from living in a small apartment with a cat to going to a life where you’re eating at 5 star restaurants all the time, and you’re going around the world staying in the best hotels. All of a sudden, you have personal chefs and personal trainers and an indoor pool and maids. You’re spending your winters in Belize and Costa Rica, when you’re not skiing in Switzerland. Your summers are spent in the South of France. You can go to any department store and just pick up anything you want and never have to
worry about the price tag. That’s not an excuse, but you just don’t know what it’s like.”
“I know that I don’t know what that’s like,” I said. “I’ve always worked for a living. I’ve worked for everything I have. I don’t spend my winters in Belize and my summers in the South of France, and I probably never will. But I can look at myself in the mirror. I know that I would never get involved with a murder just to keep my lifestyle. I guess that makes me different from you.”
“I know that you’re judging me, and I don’t blame you. I would judge me too if I were in your shoes. But, truly, you simply don’t know how being really wealthy changes you. You don’t know until it happens to you.” She paused again and rubbed her eyes. “Anyhow, I got Michael to do that.”
“And what did Michael get out of this deal? I see what you got out of it, but what did he get out of it?”
She shook her head. “Michael did something to Gerald’s sister. It was really sick, but Gerald’s a wily one. He found out that Michael was a serial rapist. I didn’t know this, of course, otherwise I never would have gotten involved with him. But Gerald wanted to trap Michael, so he set his sister up with him. He didn’t tell his sister, whose name is Emily, about Michael’s violent tendencies. But Gerald was pretty certain that Michael was going to attack her. She’s very beautiful and he’s just Michael’s type, but she doesn’t sleep around, so Michael was going to have to force her to have sex with him. And he did. He did, and Gerald had it all recorded without Michael or Emily’s knowledge.”
“He had it recorded?”
“Yes. Recorded. He videoed it all with a hidden camera and hidden microphone. Then he showed Michael the videotape, which showed Emily clearly saying no, and him clearly holding her down and raping her while she screamed no, over and over again.” She shuddered. “He showed me the video, as well, and it made me sick. Literally.”
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 25