“Apology accepted,” I said with little enthusiasm. It was odd, but I was feeling a strangely uncomfortable sensation creeping through me, and wasn't sure what it was.
Julius lifted an eyebrow at my tone, a thin smile cracking his lips. “Holding a grudge, huh, Archie? I can't say I blame you. But you are wrong about my motives. Chase is innocent, and Judge Henshaw has granted my request to question five witnesses. This is not a stunt on my part, and if I weren't allowed to act now, the true murderer would never be brought to justice. At least now there's a chance of that happening.”
Of course, Julius could still be bluffing me, but I wasn't so sure anymore. I now understood what that odd, uneasy sensation was that I was feeling, sort of like spiders crawling inside me—distrust. It was something I'd never felt with Julius before, and I guess it was because I wasn't sure whether he was leveling with me or playing me. All I knew for sure was that I didn't like this feeling, and decided for the time being to assume he was leveling.
“Why do you think Chase is innocent?”
Julius's smile lifted another eighth of an inch. “Patience, Archie. For now, I need you to research everything you can find about the company Chase and Wilcox worked for, Brenner Systems, and about them being acquired shortly after Wilcox's murder.”
With that, Julius leaned forward, turned on the cold-water faucet, and carefully splashed water over his face so as not to get his suit or collar wet. I was completely water resistant, so it wouldn't have mattered if he had gotten any on me, but he didn't. When he was done, he patted his face dry, left the washroom, and found that the bailiff was waiting for him in the hallway.
I had already done what Julius asked me to do during the first day of the trial. Brenner Systems was a small technology firm that built what was considered a whiz-bang software product for improving Web-site performance, although I could've knocked off a similar product in a matter of hours. The company was started by Felix Brenner and Dale Wilcox, with Brenner serving as CEO and Wilcox as Chief Technology Officer, although from what I could tell, Bill Chase provided the real genius in the product development. They were in talks for over nine months prior to Wilcox's murder about being acquired by one of the computer giants, but the sale didn't happen until three weeks after Wilcox was dead and buried. The sale made the surviving members of the firm very wealthy, Chase included. He alone netted eight million dollars from his vested stock options, money he would never be able to spend if he received the mandatory life sentence for first-degree murder, as it appeared he would regardless of what Julius was saying. I filled Julius in on all of this while the bailiff escorted him back to the courtroom.
The jury had been removed, as had the spectators. Outside of the judge, a sour-looking Henry Sanders, and a very preoccupied-looking Mark Zoll, there were what I assumed were Julius's five witnesses, with four of them sitting together in the front row: Felix Brenner, Gloria Wilcox, Stacy Ducker, Heather Chase, and her husband, Bill Chase, who sat apart from them. I've already mentioned who Felix Brenner was. Gloria Wilcox was the widow left by Dale Wilcox, Stacy Ducker was the office administrator, and Heather Chase was the defendant's wife. I was surprised to see Bill Chase as one of the five Julius would be questioning. Since he chose not to testify during his trial, I would've thought he'd refuse to be questioned now. Of course, it was possible he wasn't planning to cooperate, and that he'd remain mute to Julius's questions.
The judge waited until Julius had made his way up to the front of the courtroom before addressing the five, telling them that for the sake of justice she was allowing Julius to question each of them, but that it would be voluntary on their part. “In my seventeen years on the bench I've never done anything like this,” she told them, her slate-gray eyes peering slowly at each of the five. “Nor have I ever seen or heard of this done in another courtroom. But I'm sure you all know of Mr. Katz's reputation, and so I'm allowing him the opportunity to question you. None of this will be part of the court record or considered part of the court proceedings. None of you are obliged to answer him, or even remain here in this courtroom. Those of you who have been previously sworn in will not be considered under oath for these questions, and will not be subject for perjury for any answers you provide to Mr. Katz.”
There were some rumblings from Gloria Wilcox and Stacy Ducker, and both looked like they were ready to bolt from their seats and from the courtroom. Julius had been staring grim-faced at Bill Chase, but he moved quickly to turn his stare to the group of four. Gloria Wilcox and Stacy Ducker, at least for the moment, lowered themselves back into their seats, but neither of them looked happy.
“I'd like to thank Judge Henshaw for indulging me,” Julius said curtly, “as well as the prosecutor, Henry Sanders, and Mr. Chase's defense attorney, Mark Zoll, although it's not so much an indulgence as it is an opportunity to correct an injustice. To put it bluntly, the wrong person is on trial. Bill Chase is innocent of murdering Dale Wilcox. But let me first explain myself so there are no misunderstandings.”
Julius stopped to stare at each of the four in turn before continuing.
“When I say that Bill Chase did not murder Dale Wilcox, this is not an opinion of mine but something that I know as a fact. I believe if I am allowed twenty minutes to question you, I will uncover the true murderer. If any of you refuse to answer my questions or leave this courtroom, I will take it as a personal affront, and I will dedicate myself afterward to exposing Dale Wilcox's murderer. This is not a threat of extortion. I will not be attempting to frame any of you, simply exposing a murderer, and I will succeed. If, on the other hand, all of you cooperate and I fail after twenty minutes to expose the truth, then that will be that as far as I'm concerned. At least I'll be able to rest easy knowing I tried. So if one of you four did murder Dale Wilcox, as I suspect, then your only hope is to lie to me. I'm not infallible. While it doesn't happen often, I have been fooled before.”
This implied threat from Julius kept all four of them seated, and any rumblings from them had ceased. Assuming he wasn't bluffing and that Chase was indeed innocent, and further, that one of these four was the real murderer, I couldn't tell from their reaction to this hand grenade Julius tossed their way. Chase's wife's eyes widened in a look that was a mix of surprise and hopefulness, Felix Brenner's mouth dropped in a way that only showed that he was dumbfounded by this news, maybe even worried. Stacy Ducker smirked as if she were expecting what Julius said to turn out to be a joke. Wilcox's widow shot Julius a furious, bitter look, as if she thought Julius was working to free her husband's murderer, and the defendant reacted to this by raising an eyebrow for all of two point seven seconds but otherwise maintained the same morose expression that he had held throughout the trial.
“You might think I'm bluffing,” Julius continued with the same ill-humor that he'd been displaying since the trial started. “But I'm not. Within the first few hours of the trial, I knew of Chase's innocence and had a faint idea of how to expose the true murderer's identity.”
Julius stopped to meet Gloria Wilcox's angry stare. “You disapprove of what I'm doing, madam?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” she nearly spat out through tightened lips. Gloria Wilcox was forty-three, on the heavy side with thinning brown hair. The stress of her husband's murder and the subsequent trial had clearly taken their toll on her, leaving dark circles under her eyes and a looseness to her flesh. For several seconds her lips moved as if she were chewing gum, then she looked coldly at Bill Chase and said that the man who murdered her husband was sitting right there. She turned back to face Julius and her eyes scrunched up into what could only be described as an enraged look. She said in a tight, angry voice, “And I don't appreciate you trying to mess things up.”
“I see,” Julius said. I took that as significant. Usually Julius would've offered her his condolences for her loss. The fact that he didn't meant one of two things: either his four days as a juror had left him in an even fouler mood than I had imagined or he believed her to be the true mur
derer. That got me searching databases for whatever information I could find about her and I discovered that she not only had a gun permit but owned a licensed thirty-eight-caliber revolver. Her husband was killed with a nine millimeter, but still I found this interesting and told Julius about it. If he too found it interesting he didn't show it through any change in expression. After that I set off on building a simulation with her as the murderer.
“Do you believe your husband was having an affair with Heather Chase as was suggested during the trial?” he asked.
“Definitely not,” she said, but her voice wavered enough to show she was either lying or wasn't entirely sure.
“Then why the rumors?”
“Because of her.”
Gloria Wilcox glared hotly at Stacy Ducker, who was sitting two seats over to Wilcox's right. Ducker noticed her angry glare but didn't let it interfere with her smirking. She was twenty-seven, thin to the point of boniness, and a brunette with what could only be described as big hair, the kind you see on The Real Housewives of New Jersey—and like the housewives on that show she had on layers too much rouge, lipstick, and eye shadow. She certainly wasn't beautiful, but she was probably considered attractive, at least in a superficial sort of way. I was able to compare her to several actresses in a Hollywood database, but these were actresses who always played secondary roles and never the leading lady.
“I was telling the truth,” Stacy Ducker volunteered, both smirking and slightly sticking out her chin at Julius as if she were challenging him to call her a liar. Even though she wasn't chewing gum, she sounded as if she was. “I saw them all over each other at our last company Christmas party, and after that over the next five weeks before Dale was killed I'd see him get calls on his cell phone, then rush out of the office and not come back until maybe two hours later.”
“That's not true,” Heather Chase said in a soft and absolutely miserable-sounding voice. She was thirty-two, with honey-colored blond hair, clear blue eyes, and a slender build. Normally, she would be considered stunningly beautiful, at least from all the newspaper photos I found of her, but at that moment she looked as miserable as she sounded.
She smiled sadly at her husband, who showed no reaction whatsoever, then she looked back at Julius and added, “Dale was my husband's boss and he was drunk at that Christmas party, so I wasn't going to make a scene when he cornered me and got grabby, but it was all one-sided. As soon as I could free myself I did. But there was never any affair.”
“I know what I saw,” Stacy Ducker stated stubbornly.
“Interesting,” Julius told Ducker. “If you did witness what you claim, why would you spread that type of office gossip about one of your company's partners? Were you hoping to be fired?”
It lasted less than a second, but the way Ducker's mouth pinched into a tiny oval gave away her reason for why she did what she did. I recognized that look instantly, and even though I was sure Julius did also, I couldn't help telling Julius that she spread that gossip because she was jealous. Julius nodded slightly, maybe as much as an eighth of an inch, to let me know that I was right.
Ducker's smirk faded. “I was only saying what was the truth,” she insisted.
“But why would you risk your job like that?” Julius asked. “Especially with talk of the company being acquired? You were granted stock options, weren't you? Why would you risk a substantial amount of money simply to spread gossip?”
It was easy enough for me to hack into their company's computer system to find Stacy Ducker's personnel file and give Julius the amount of stock options Ducker had been granted and what they were worth. While not millions, it was still a substantial amount. Ducker tried to meet Julius's stare but she flinched and her eyes shifted from his. Otherwise, she didn't answer him.
“You were having an affair with him, weren't you?”
I could see the lie forming in her eyes, but just like her earlier smirk, it faded. She nodded. Instead of looking miserable, as Heather Chase had, her expression hardened into something more contemptuous. I tried to imagine it. This office lothario, Dale Wilcox, was forty-seven and with his badly receding hairline and pot belly, he resembled the actor John Travolta if Travolta had gone completely to pot. Like Tony Manero, the character Travolta played in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, Dale Wilcox in the photos I could find of him wore gold chains and clothing as if he were heading to a seventies disco.
“How long did this affair last?” Julius asked.
“Sixteen months.”
“When did it end?”
Her smirk came back. “The night of that Christmas party. That was when I caught Dale and that cheap blonde over there all hot and heavy together. A real kick in the teeth, let me tell you. Dale was promising me he was going to leave his wife for me, and what a way to find out he was full of it. But I didn't kill Dale, if that's what you're trying to imply. All I did was tell people what I saw.”
“We'll see,” Julius said. Then to Gail Wilcox, “Did you know about this affair?”
Gail Wilcox looked absolutely crestfallen as she shook her head. She could've been lying, I wasn't sure. If she did know about her husband's involvement with Stacy Ducker, then she'd have even a stronger motive for wanting to kill him. Of course, now Ducker also had a strong motive. But if either Gail Wilcox or Ducker were the killer, it would take some fancy footwork to explain how Bill Chase was the one who ended up in the alley holding the murder weapon when the police arrived. Of course, when it came to detecting genius, Julius could show moves that would make Fred Astaire green with envy. I started working on a second simulation, this one explaining how Ducker could be the killer.
Julius looked towards Felix Brenner and asked, “Did you know that Wilcox was having an affair with your office administrator?”
Brenner showed Julius a queasy look that was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. Brenner was sixty-two. A small man who wore thick glasses and was mostly bald with only fringes of white hair. During most of the trial he'd had what looked like a freshly-scrubbed pink complexion, but at that moment his skin had a grayish, unhealthy look to it.
“I don't know,” he said, and it was his turn now to sound miserable. “Dale always had a tough time keeping it in his pants, and maybe I suspected he was fooling around with Stacy and chose to be in denial about it. I don't know. I couldn't tell you for sure.”
“I see,” Julius said. “Let me ask something you can tell me for sure. You were in talks to sell your company for nine months before Wilcox was murdered. In fact, you had an offer during those nine months, isn't that true?”
Brenner nodded.
“And yet three weeks after Wilcox's murder you were able to reach an agreement. Why was that? Was the offer changed substantially?”
Brenner hesitated before shaking his head. “No, the offer wasn't substantially changed. We just thought after what happened to Dale it was best to move forward.”
“I would think it would be highly unusual to have one of the founders of a small technology company murdered and for them to still be an attractive acquisition, especially when that founder was also the company's chief technology officer.”
Brenner slumped further in his seat, his grimace growing more pained. “The company that bought us was more interested in our product than our people,” he said. “It didn't really matter to them what happened to Dale.”
Julius let that sit for a good minute while he stared at Brenner. “Dale Wilcox fought against selling the company, didn't he?”
As with Stacy Ducker before, I could see it as the lie forming in Brenner's eye faded away. He nodded glumly. “Dale thought we could do it on our own. He was being foolish, and unfortunately he was able to convince board members to go along with his foolishness. Eventually I would've turned them around.”
“Possibly,” Julius said. “Or possibly the offer would've been withdrawn before that happened. You benefited greatly from Wilcox's murder. Over forty million dollars, isn't that correct?”
“I
benefited greatly from the sale of the company. As did our investors. As did all our employees, and they deserved it with all the hours they worked. Eighty-hour work weeks weren't unusual.”
“Was it common knowledge that Wilcox was holding up the sale, and was responsible for keeping everyone from benefiting so greatly?”
Brenner shifted his eyes from Julius's as he nodded.
“So really you, your employees, investors, and relatives of such had reason to want to kill Wilcox?”
Brenner's eyes shot up then to meet Julius's stare. “Bill was the only one found in that alley holding a gun over Dale's dead body,” he said, his voice tight.
Behind Julius there was the sound of Judge Margaret Henshaw clearing her throat. When Julius looked back, she crooked her index finger at him, indicating she wanted him to approach the bench. He did so, along with Sanders and Zoll.
“The deal was for you to prove someone other than the defendant murdered Dale Wilcox, and not simply to spread suspicion among other parties,” she said in an annoyed whisper.
At that moment I got a call from Tom Durkin. Tom is a local private investigator who occasionally does freelance work for Julius, and he sounded surprised when I answered the phone.
“Archie, are you in the courtroom now with Julius?” he asked.
“Nope, but I can get a message to him. What's up?”
“Tell Julius I'll be there in three minutes, and that it's in the bag.”
So Julius must've hired Tom while I was turned off. I did as he asked, and Julius showed Henshaw a thin smile and promised her that he'd be delivering her the real murderer in three minutes. She gave him a dubious look, but told him to get on with it, and with that Julius walked back to his four suspects and settled his gaze on Gail Wilcox.
“You were aware that your husband was an obstacle keeping you from a fortune?” he asked.
She gave him a steely look. “I was aware that my husband was doing what he thought was best for the company.”
EQMM, June 2012 Page 18