Trial by Fire

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Stella shouted, speaking from a pay phone in the booking area. “Tom Randall was shot, murdered. It must have happened sometime this morning. Fitzgerald just hadn’t been notified yet when he called me.”

  “Where were you when Randall was killed?” Growman asked. “If this isn’t a mistake, establishing an alibi is your first priority.”

  “How do I know?” Stella snapped back. “Until the medical examiner establishes a time of death, how can I possibly provide an alibi? I could have been on the plane, Ben.”

  “You were with Mario, though?” Growman said. “Right? You told me you weren’t going to stay in a hotel. If Mario was with you the whole time, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

  Glancing back over her shoulder at the booking officer, Stella felt her breath catch in her throat. Should she tell Growman the truths that Mario had gone out sometime during the night and never returned? Tell him she was terrified that her own brother might have been the one who had shot and killed Randall? The night before, Mario had been distraught and angry, certain his sister was about to face murder charges. Had he decided to help her by eliminating the state’s only witness?

  Of all the crimes the court handled, Stella knew the murder of a vital witness was one of the most serious. Killing a witness put the entire system on edge. Whereas the wheels of justice normally moved at a snail’s pace, when something like this occurred, events moved at the speed of sound. Warrants were cut in hours. Every police agency in the state was placed on alert.

  “They say they’re holding me for the Houston authorities,” Stella told him. “God, Ben, they’re going to ship me back to Houston. Until I appear in their court for arraignment, I can’t even post bail. They’re going to lock me up in a jail cell.”

  “Settle down,” Growman said, although his own voice was shaking. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this right away. I’ll assign Brenda Anderson to it immediately. If I have to,” he added, ‘Til send her to Houston and let her set up shop there.”

  Stella looked up to see the booking officer tapping the face of his watch and .motioning that it was time for her to get off the phone. “I have to go,” she said. Once she had hung up, she pleaded, “I have to make one more call. I need to speak to my brother. Please, it’s urgent. You can’t lock me up until I talk to him.”

  “Sorry,” he said, “we need to get you printed and processed.”

  The officer led her to another section of the booking room to roll her prints when Stella suddenly stopped short, a startled expression on her face.

  Carl Winters was standing in the far corner of the booking room, leaning against the wall.

  “So, we meet again,” he said, his eyes narrow. He stepped up close and leveled a finger at her chest. “This time you’re not going to walk away, lady. This time you fucked up big time.”

  Stella’s eyes burned right through him. She wanted to smack Winters across his fat face. Then again, antagonizing the detective was definitely not in her best interest. “When are you taking me back to Houston?” she said instead, forcing a mild tone.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Winters said, wanting to watch Stella squirm. “Could be tomorrow. Could be next week. Dallas is a right fine town, and I might want to take in some sightseeing.”

  Stella’s jaws locked so hard in anger, she heard them make a little popping sound when she opened them to speak. “You know I can’t make bail until I’m arraigned…Winters. That means I’ll have to be locked up in this miserable stinkhole until you transport me to Houston.”

  “Do tell?” he said, spinning around and marching out of the room. He glanced back at her, grinning, as he gave her a little wave.

  “Wait,” Stella called out, “at least tell me what happened to Randall. What time of day was he killed? Were there any witnesses? Why did Jack Fitzgerald call and tell me everything was okay if he was going to send those goons to arrest me?”

  Winters looked back and smirked, then continued on through the doorway.

  “Stand behind that blue line,” the booking officer said. “We need to get some mug shots.”

  Stella stepped backward until she felt the coldness of the sheetrock wall through her clothes. Every muscle in her body tensed. She knew what was coming.

  “Get all that hair out of your face,” he said.

  Almost in slow motion, Stella pushed both sides of her hair behind her ears. Her eyes went down and she couldn’t force herself to raise them.

  The man moved behind the camera and then stepped out from it again. “Is that an old scar or were you recently injured? Do you need medical treatment?”

  “Ol-old scar,” Stella stammered.

  “Look up,” he said. “Mug shots are no good if we can’t see your eyes.”

  She tried to focus on a spot high on the wall while the camera relentlessly clicked, but the sound of the shutter made the hairs on her arm prick and stand straight up. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she was reminded of another clicking sound. Not a camera shutter, but a distinctive sound that Stella had never been able to identify. Not long before the fire had broken out, she had heard a metallic clicking noise that seemed to be coming from beneath her bed. If she could only identify the sound, she had always told herself, she might be able to figure out what had happened that night, how Randall had set the fire that had taken her parents’ lives. But it had consistently eluded her through the years, no matter how hard she probed her memory. Other sounds came close, but none were exactly the same. The metallic clicking Stella had heard was firmly locked in her brain, one of the only precise recollections she carried from the night of the fire.

  Click, ting, click.

  The sounds from the past blended with the clicking of the camera’s shutter. Desperate to make the sound go away, she put her hands over her ears. The officer promptly ordered her to drop them so he could finish taking the mug shots.

  She was led to a tall bench, where the officer rolled her ice-cold fingers on an ink pad and then pressed them down one by one on a fingerprint card. Because her hands were damp with perspiration, he had to redo several of the prints.

  Finally, the booking process was complete, and the officer led Stella out of the room. He took her to the secured section of the jail, standing in front of a thick metal door until a guard saw them and buzzed them through. At that point he handed her over to a female correctional officer, a shorty squat woman of maybe twenty-five, with blond hair pulled back and fashioned in a long french braid.

  Stella’s heels tapped on the tiled corridors as she was moved from one section to another. “I’m a district attorney,” she blurted out.

  “Oh, really?” the woman said, laughing. “Well, I’m really the mayor but don’t tell anybody.”

  Stella followed behind her to a large holding cell where several other women were waiting. “Can’t I be placed in a cell by myself?” Stella pleaded. “I’m a district attorney, I swear. Check the booking sheet. I could have prosecuted some of these women. One might recognize me and try to kill me.”

  “Humph,” the jailer said, eyeing Stella suspiciously. “You making this up?”

  “I swear,” Stella said.

  The woman jerked her arm and led her back through another maze of corridors. Then she stopped at a small window and stuck her head inside. “Hey, Lucy, check the booking sheet on this inmate. She claims she’s a district attorney. If she is, she should be in protective custody, not in the main jail population.”

  When the woman confirmed what Stella had told her, the jailer asked what the charges were. Then she turned around and gawked at Stella. “Who did you murder? Was it your husband?”

  “No,” Stella mumbled. “They’re trying to say I killed a man named Tom Randall.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” the woman said. “Come on, we’re putting you in the infirmary. All the cells in the protective-custody wing are occupied. We’ve got a lot of crooked cops right now.”

  “I’m innocent,” Stella said as
they were walking.

  “Then you’ll be in good company,” the woman said. “Everyone in here is innocent.”

  Stella managed to talk the female guard into allowing her another phone call before depositing her in her cell. As soon as Brenda Anderson came on the line, Stella asked if she had spoken to Growman. When the woman acknowledged that she had and was preparing that moment to fly to Houston and begin her investigation, Stella started rattling off a list of things for her to do. “We need to find out where Randall has been all these years and why he suddenly decided to return to Houston. Run him through NCIC, as well as the Texas system, and see if he committed any other crimes while he was outstanding.” Knowing she didn’t have much time, she was speaking fast, her words running together. “If you’re sneaky, you might be able to get to Randall’s wife and find out names of his friends and associates.” She sighed, and pressed her fingers against her forehead. “I didn’t kill him, Brenda, but in order to clear myself, I guess we’re going to have to find out who did.”

  Brenda Anderson felt terrible for Stella. Of all the prosecutors she worked with, Stella was her favorite. She was demanding, but always appreciate of Brenda’s efforts. The two women had worked late almost every night during the Pelham trial. Larry Kominsky would get tired and go home around eight o’clock, leaving Stella and Brenda in the conference room alone. With only Stella to contend with, Brenda had found herself opening up, and their discussions of the Pelham case became sprinkled with bits and pieces of their personal lives.

  After reaching the rank of sergeant at the Dallas Police Department, a remarkable accomplishment for a woman police professional in the Southwest, let alone a woman of color, Brenda had taken a leave of absence and obtained her master’s degree before transferring to the D.A.‘s office as an investigator. Tall, reserved, and efficient, with enormous brown eyes and luscious lips, she dressed conservatively, giving her a neat, professional appearance even though it hid her considerable curves. Brenda’s claim to fame, though, was not her shapely body, but her mastery of sophisticated technology. She never went anywhere without her portable computer, her fax, and her modem.

  Brenda had worked since she was a child to perfect the skills she now possessed. A soft-spoken intellectual, her father had been employed as a computer programmer for almost twenty years, back in the days when most African-Americans had never even seen a computer, let alone mastered one. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and a tireless worker. She sang in the choir at their church, and every Saturday she could be found in the ghetto dispersing food to the homeless. When people raved about her technical abilities, Brenda Anderson always gave credit to her father. But overall, it was her mother who had instilled her with the necessary drive to succeed. “Keep your nose to the grindstone, baby,” she’d always told her. “If you don’t, you’ll never beat the odds and get ahead in life.”

  “I have a friend in Houston,” she told Stella, an investigator I was involved with for a brief period of time. We were both assigned to the Watterman case several years back. You know, our agencies collaborated on that one.” She paused to look up at her computer screen. “I just got off the phone with him. The police have a witness, Stella. His name is Victor Pilgrim.”

  Stella was shocked. “What did he see?”

  “Enough to get you arrested,” Anderson said. “Other than that, I don’t have any idea. My friend wouldn’t say.”

  “Have you checked him out?” Stella asked, knowing this could fall either way. Because she was innocent, it was difficult to believe a witness could be damaging, but then she didn’t know what she was up against.

  “I’m doing that now,” Brenda said, computer keys tapping in the background. “I didn’t get much from his driving records, just his age, description, address. He’s forty-seven … lives in Galveston. He appears to be a city employee. Wait,” she said, “I’ve been waiting to go online, and I just got through. I know how to access the city’s personnel files in Houston.”

  “How?” Stella asked. Computers and online systems were intriguing to her, but she had never found the time to become proficient.

  “You can get into anyone’s files,” Anderson told her. “If you know what you’re doing, you can even get into DOD files. You know. Department of Defense.” She was quiet for a few moments, waiting for the answers to her queries to flash on her computer screen. “Okay,” she said, “here it is. Shit, he’s an ex-cop! He used to be with the Houston P.D.”

  “Good God,” Stella gasped, “Winters is trying to frame me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He’s been after me all these years,” Stella said. “Maybe he got tired of playing by the rules.” The female jailer was chatting with another guard, but glancing over at Stella and motioning that it was time to conclude her phone call. “Check records and see if this Pilgrim guy ever worked under Winters.”

  “That’s going to take some time, Stella,” Anderson said. “I know how to get into the city’s personnel system, but the police department’s records may not even be computerized, particularly those listing job assignments and performance reviews. Internal Affairs usually keeps a tight lid on that kind of stuff.”

  “You have to find out what he saw,” Stella said. “If this Pilgrim guy claims he saw me shoot Randall, we’ll know for sure it’s a setup.”

  “I’m leaving on the next shuttle,” Brenda said. “I’ll do my best, Stella. Try not to panic. We’re going to get you out of there. Growman’s behind you all the way, as well as everyone else at the agency.”

  Before Stella could say anything else, the guard walked over, snatched the phone out of her hands, and replaced it in the cradle.

  Later that evening, the same blond guard opened the door to Stella’s room in the infirmary and told her she had a visitor. Stella had been pacing back and forth and slapping the walls, desperate to get out of the tiny cubicle. As she walked behind the guard, the inmates whistled and tossed out profanities. “Hey, D.A,” a female voice yelled, “how do you like being behind bars? Isn’t much fun, is it? Fucking bitch.”

  The guard just looked at Stella and shrugged. “News travels fast inside a jail facility. You better watch your back, Cataloni. From what I can tell, you don’t have a lot of fans in here.”

  The woman indicated that Stella should take a seat in one of the glass-partitioned cubicles. Her body stiffened when she saw Sam staring at her through the glass.

  Sam picked up the phone. “This is terrible, Stella,” he said. “I tried to find out what’s going on, but the jail won’t tell me a thing.”

  “That’s because you’re not representing me,” Stella said. “Next time, tell them you’re my defense attorney and they’ll let you see me in an interview room.”

  “What in God’s name happened?” he asked. “I thought you said this Randall thing had been cleared up. Isn’t that what you told me when you asked me to pick you up at the airport?” He stopped speaking and buried his head in his hands. “I felt so helpless out there today. I wanted to do something, but I was powerless. I had to just stand there while—”

  Stella tuned his voice out. Her face was burning in shame as she recalled how Sam’s son had watched as they handcuffed her and marched her away. That was the end of that, she thought sadly; Sam might be here now, but he wouldn’t be around much longer. No father would want an accused murderer hanging around his kid.

  When they had both composed themselves somewhat, Stella explained what had transpired and what she had learned thus far. “Murder?” Sam exclaimed, his face ashen. “You’re going to need money for an attorney. I’ll call Brad as soon as I leave and see what funds he can raise.” Thanks,” Stella said, her eyes misting over. I’m so sorry your son had to be there today, Sam. I was hoping he’d like me, you know. How can he ever respect me now?”

  “Forget it,” Sam said softly, mustering up a smile. “Just worry about yourself, Stella. Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get for you?”

  “
Yes,” Stella said. Behind her a recorded voice came over the loudspeaker, advising that visiting hours would be over in five minutes. “I’ve been trying to reach Mario, but I can’t find him. I don’t want him to hear about my arrest on television. Can you try to get through and tell him what’s happened, see if he can call me here at the jail?”

  “Certainly, Stella,” Sam said, waiting while Stella pulled out a piece of paper with her brother’s number on it and placed it in the metal bin.

  “And clothes,” she said. “When I get to Houston, I’ll need some fresh clothes for the court hearing. Also, could you check my—”

  Just then a male guard appeared in the door behind Stella and barked in a loud, abrasive voice, “Move it, Cataloni. Didn’t you hear the announcement? Visiting hours are over.”

  Sam leaped to his feet, placing his palms against the glass. “Can you give us a fucking minute here?” he shouted. “At least let the woman finish her sentence.”

  “I’ve never heard you curse before,” Stella said, surprised at the fierceness she saw in his eyes. The guard walked over and placed a hand on Stella’s shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah?” Sam said, giving the guard a scathing look. “There’s a lot of things you haven’t seen me do. What were you saying, Stella? Don’t let these goons push you around. You have rights, you know, even if you are a prisoner.”

  At the jailer’s insistence, Stella slowly stood, depositing the phone in the metal bin. Sam might be an attorney, she decided, but he had a lot to learn about being in jail.

  When Carl Winters appeared the next morning to transfer his prisoner to Houston, he had a thick stack of newspapers in his arms and a smug smile on his face. Stella stepped into the holding pen and stuck out her hands, waiting for Winters to cuff them. Instead, he flashed the front page of the Dallas Morning News in her face. “I got us some reading material for the plane. Recognize anyone?”