Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers)

by John Ellsworth

  "Yes, of course I know who they were," Grandfather cried. He sounded terribly upset to Bibby, who knew everyone's moods—light and dark—because, as a spy, it was his job to know everything about the people he was living with.

  He heard the man say, "We can send someone immediately to kill him. Do you have his name?"

  Grandfather continued. "The one I remember from Treblinka and the other must have been there, too. He was the one who shot Bernhardt and Remarch. Of course they were Jews, I am certain of it. The leader's name is Lodzi Ashstein."

  "Do you know where he is right now? Do you want me to kill the family as well?"

  "We will kill both of them, we will kill their wives and children, and we will kill their friends. I make that vow."

  "We can find them—"

  Just then, in a terrifying crash as if lightning had entered the room, Bibby heard over the speakerphone the sound of the gun which killed his grandfather.

  Then a new voice came on the phone.

  "What is your address?" the new voice said. "I have something for you."

  "We are coming for you," said the visitor inside Grandfather's room. "You have been warned."

  Then the phone began making a loud electronic honking sound. It sounded to Bibby as if it were angry. He shut his eyes and drew a deep breath. He prayed to the Catholic God the visitor in Grandfather’s room wouldn’t discover him.

  Which he didn't.

  The visitor sounded hurried, as if he had run from the room.

  Bibby came out and immediately ducked into Grandfather's bathroom, where he threw up in the sink. He knew his grandfather was gone. He knew the sound he had heard was his grandfather being shot and killed. And he knew from the oath of vengeance he had heard his grandfather make that Grandfather, indeed, was a Nazi.

  Which meant Bibby's own blood was tainted.

  Just then, he knew he had no choice. He would be forced to enter the priesthood and pray hourly for the purification of his blood, for the forgiveness of the sins it carried to every cell in his body.

  He ran cold water in the sink. He watched his bile circle the basin, weaken in purity, and flow out the drain.

  “Just like that,” he thought. “My blood must be poured out of me just like that.”

  In the service of others.

  "God," he prayed, "I dedicate my life to the service of others. Please accept my blood as a blessing to others. Amen"

  Book 4

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Trial began on a warm day in May, in Chicago. The seagulls from Lake Michigan were boldly attacking scraps along the sidewalks where outdoor cafes had spilled out into the great spring weather, young lovers were pouring into the city from the suburbs, anxious to visit the Shedd Aquarium and take in a concert or watch the fireworks on Navy Pier, and young lawyers like Thaddeus Murfee were appearing for the first day of trial in Federal Court. It was a Monday and all federal trials began on Mondays. The case was United States of America v. Lodzi Ashstein, Docket Number 2015-CF-DAG.

  Thaddeus had walked the five blocks from his building on LaSalle to the federal court on South Dearborn. He was dressed in a very light gray suit, lace shoes with toecaps—black—patternless black socks, a very pale pink shirt with red-over-blue striped necktie, and he was pulling his heavy wheeled briefcase crammed with books and exhibits.

  Accompanying him was Christine Susmann, also pulling a wheeled monstrosity of a briefcase, brimming with exhibits and pleading files. She was wearing a knit suit of oyster white, Jimmy Choos, and a necklace of very fine pearls, exquisite and expensive, a thank-you from Thaddeus after one of their wins on a medical malpractice trial. She hadn’t been able to resist looking: the necklace, from Tiffany's, was on sale that week for just over five thousand dollars. She had hated herself for looking, but, she admitted, she did have her flaws, small as they were, as she told her husband, Sonny.

  They turned the corner and headed up Dearborn to the Dirksen Federal Building, pushed through the heavy security doors, and fell into line with one hundred fifty others who would attend some case or other inside the rather unremarkable federal courtrooms upstairs. Security was heavy, armed marshals everywhere, with undercover agents studying the crowd and looking out for God-only-knew in the time of terrorists, Nazi's, and lunatics in general. Unbeknownst to Thaddeus and Christine, extra security was in place because they were defending Lodzi Ashstein, accused of murdering a Nazi leader, and it was thought this kind of case stood a fairly high chance of bringing out some crazies who might want payback. Undercover agents identified Thaddeus and Christine as soon as they came through the heavy glass doors, but no one approached them. It was all planned to look as normal as possible and just see what, if anything, developed. Two marshals tailed them as they slowly moved along with the herd of people creeping through the security ring.

  Finally they were upstairs, made all the adjustments to counsel table and the ice water pitcher, and spread their books and papers just so, everything within quick reach and organized as always. Christine knew how her boss liked things done and she obliged.

  Marshals, assigned specifically to protecting Lodzi Ashstein, delivered him to the courtroom at 8:45, having accompanied him from the drop-off zone out on South Dearborn Street, through security, and then upstairs. He was wearing a fairly new metallic-gray suit, black wingtips, and a white-on-white shirt with a plain silk tie, cool red in color. He shook hands with Thaddeus and Christine. They traded small talk, awaiting the judge. All the necessary preparation had been done and they were anxious to get things started.

  Trial would begin at nine sharp.

  Then Judge Howard Brant hurried to his lofty throne and softly told the bailiff to call court to order. Preliminaries were run through and the judge spent the next three hours picking a jury. Then they could begin. Opening statements first.

  Assistant U.S. Attorney Rona VanMeter adjusted the lectern in Courtroom 505 in the Federal Court Building in Chicago. She tapped the mike once, heard the report echo back in the courtroom, cleared her throat, and began addressing the jury in her opening statement.

  VanMeter wasted no time getting to the heart of her case, which depended a hundred percent on DNA testing. So she addressed it upon commencing her opening statement.

  "DNA testing, according to what I can find on the subject, begins in England. The first DNA profiling was done there in 1986 in a rape case. The testing set the defendant free and resulted in the arrest of the guilty party one year later. Then it came to the United States.

  "The first U.S. case was another rape case. This was in 1987 when the Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida, convicted Tommy Lee Andrews of rape after DNA tests matched his DNA from a blood sample with that of semen traces found in the victim. For the literal-minded among our spectators, the case may be found at Andrews v. State, 533 So. 2d 841 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1988.)

  “This is also a case of great good fortune, for the items retrieved from the scene of the crime were bagged and saved. I’m talking about hand soap, paper towels, and bullet casings. The case was reopened when DNA testing became commonplace, as we had a directive from the Supreme Court to review all open cases where there was physical evidence taken from murder and sexual assault crime scenes. This case is a murder case, of course, and this is why it was reopened after all these years.”

  The jury seemed more alert than most, but Thaddeus knew this was probably more a matter of perception—based on the extreme formalities in federal court—than real. Federal court juries were known for being much more on their game than state court juries, according to some national commentators. The difference between the two was lost on Thaddeus, however, who reasoned since federal and state jury pools are comprised of the same people, they are equally bright and ambitious to be good jurors. Or not.

  ADA VanMeter went on, “Our case today is just that—a DNA case. You won't hear from an eyewitness here—there isn't one. The only witnesses are dead as a result of this defendant's actions."

>   With that last sentence, a long, lingering sweep of the hand indicated the defendant she had in her sights: Lodzi Ashstein, a diminutive, now ninety-year-old man with a shock of white hair, thick black glasses, and behind-the-ear hearing aids. The defendant and Thaddeus and Christine were seated at counsel table. Christine had done the workup; she would remain at counsel table throughout.

  Discovery had been exchanged in the form of police reports, lab reports, FBI surveillance records and tapes and photographs, witness statements, medical examiner reports, DNA testing, and all the rest of the 897 documents in the case file. Christine had her files organized by key-number, which was cross-referenced on staff computers by date, name, fact, prior recorded statements, and prior inconsistent statements. It was all there, waiting for Thaddeus to jump on and ride to victory.

  Except victory wouldn't likely come to pass.

  Reason being, the DNA evidence from the scene of the murder of Janich Heiss and the blood sample taken from Lodzi Ashstein proved beyond all doubt Lodzi had indeed been at the scene, had washed his hands in the sink, had used a yellow bar of soap, had dried his hands on a paper towel, and had handled the bullet casing discovered beneath the counter overhang in the kitchen where Heiss' body was found. A sweep of the area had also turned up the bodies of two other members of the Chicago Nazi Party, both of whom had been randomly and unceremoniously dumped in a communal grave fifty meters from the camp building. That case was still under investigation as the men appeared to have been killed with a shotgun—never found—which made DNA evidence from the weapon and identification of the shooter all but impossible. Assistant U.S. Attorney VanMeter recounted in detail each of these facts she "expected the evidence to prove"—the basis upon which an attorney gets to build her case a pebble at a time for a jury's review in opening statement.

  VanMeter's opening statement continued for another two-and-a-half hours.

  She drew on records and known facts about the Jewish extermination at Treblinka. It was stated both Lodzi and Kaleb Rajski had been held there by the Nazis—one of whom was the victim, Janich Heiss. She recited the forms of torture and enslavement and forced labor the defendant had endured. She wondered aloud who was really the victim, here, and who really was the perpetrator—and by doing so stole Thaddeus' thunder, as the first thing Thaddeus had wanted to tell the jury was the real perpetrator was dead in the ground and the real victim was seated next to him at counsel table. But again, VanMeter beat him to this proposition, thereby flattening the sails Thaddeus had planned on using to move the story along in the direction he preferred and under the flag he meant to plant. He inwardly cursed as VanMeter went off on her teaching-moment about victims and perps. Ah well, thought Thaddeus, so much for that angle.

  But it didn't really matter, if he took the long view. The long view had it Lodzi killed Heiss and the jury should find him guilty of murder without regard to the history among the victims. Almost incredibly, the case was being brought under the Hate Crimes Act (Jew on Nazi) and it could result in a life sentence for whatever life remained to the ninety-year-old defendant. It could even result in the death penalty.

  But it was in the definition of the Hate Crimes Act itself Thaddeus conceived his best chances at a Not Guilty verdict. The Hate Crimes Act was predicated on behavior of a defendant against another based on offenses involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin. When the evidence was all in and the government had rested, which was when Thaddeus planned to strike, at the close of the Government's case. He would at then present a motion for judgment of acquittal. Both attacks would show how the death of Heiss was predicated on none of the predicates in the law itself, meaning: the killing wasn't based on race or perceived race, wasn't based on color, wasn't based on religion, and wasn't based on national origin. Given this analysis, there was a chance, a very slim one, Thaddeus might prevail. On a legal technicality, which was always iffy as hell, as he told Christine during their discussions. Of course, it was too early to predict anything, because any- and everything always happened in criminal trials. They were wide open.

  Christine Susmann saw it differently from Thaddeus. She saw the shooting as self-defense. Lodzi had told them he was afraid for his life and the lives of Ann-Marie and his family and Rajski and his family. That he had shot Heiss only when he heard the oath of revenge being made. Just then, he'd had no doubt the Nazis would be coming for them. So he shot first.

  Thaddeus didn't like the idea of self-defense because self-defense required the shooter be under the imminent apprehension of death. Which meant, according to Thaddeus, someone was advancing on you with the intent to see you dead.

  Christine said, "Okay, Lodzi heard the threats being made by Heiss and thought death was imminent. He knew his Nazis all too well."

  "Imminent, Christine," Thaddeus said. "Pointing a gun at someone and intending to kill them would have been one thing. Hearing someone making a telephone call is something entirely different. It won't fly. The jury won't be out fifteen minutes if we go that route. Trust me, I know juries and I know what they will and won't buy."

  "But doesn't the law say the jury has to gauge the reasonableness of the defendant's conduct by what the defendant reasonably perceived at the time of the act? They don't get to review the defendant's state of mind in the cool light of day, from a position of safety in a jury room, with the perfect eye of hindsight. Not that at all. They have to look at what Lodzi was thinking and perceiving at the exact time he pulled the trigger."

  Thaddeus was willing to continue to disagree. "All right, I'll give you that. We go that route, fine. But how do we prove Heiss said those things on the phone? All we have is Lodzi saying Heiss said it. We don't have a witness to corroborate. Hearsay without corroboration is enough to get him the death penalty. Let's be realistic."

  Christine wasn't done. "How about the person on the other end of the call? What if we found them and made them talk? We've done it before, you know."

  "Yes, we've done it before. But this time, we have no idea who he was even talking to. Tell you what. You look around and run down all the possible avenues you can come up with for locating a witness or someone who heard Heiss say those things. If you can do that, we'll put some money and effort into developing the case in that direction. If not, nada. Forget it. Deal?"

  Christine stuck out her hand. "Deal."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Katy was working eighteen-hour days at her charity. Turquoise had returned from Wickenburg. Determined to keep watch over her eldest daughter, Katy ordered Turquoise to report to the kitchen staff every day after class. Now smoke pot, thought Katy, who was still angry at Turquoise for her little gaffe. Not so little: the girl had also been holding mushrooms, which, to Katy, pointed to more serious chemical abuse issues. Thaddeus arranged a plea of misdemeanor possession and a friendly judge put Turquoise on twenty-four months probation and community service consisting of daily duties at All You Can Wear, Eat, Sleep. Plus 12-Step meetings. Daily ones.

  Which suited Turquoise just fine. She carved out a role for herself in her mother's arena and applied herself. Not only did her schoolwork not suffer, her grades remained perfect as before.

  For the first time in months, Katy was happy. Practicing medicine never occurred to her, not while there were people in need of warm clothes, bedrolls, backpacks, and two cots and a flop. It was all good, as Turquoise put it. All good.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  On the second day of trial, while the United States was putting on its first witness, Christine went on the hunt. She intended to find the person who had been talking to Heiss at the moment of his shooting. And she wouldn't rest until she had found him or her. But where to begin?

  Paralegal Christine Susmann had received her paralegal training in the U.S. Army. Following Basic Training, she had begun her career working as an M.P. and had served two years at a Black Ops detention center in Baghdad. She was under lifetime orders to never discuss what she had seen or done on t
hat post, which was fine, she never wanted to discuss it anyway. Following two successful years working hand-in-glove with the CIA field officers, she had her choice of Army schools and selected paralegal school. She had seen all she ever wanted to see of detention centers, prisons, jails, or any other institution where people were held against their will. Paralegal training had dragged on for almost a year, but when she finished she was assigned to a JAG unit of busy lawyers in Germany.

  Christine was ready for anything. She was five-five and average weight, but that's where "average" ended for her. For one thing, she was beautiful and had won Miss Hickam County in the summer of her senior year, right before enlisting. For another thing she was built like an NFL safety: broad, heavily muscled shoulders and upper arms, muscular thighs and calves, and she could still press 275 while she only weighed 135. She worked out religiously at the East Orbit Athletic Club with her husband, Sonny. She taught karate and at one point had competed in amateur competitions in the Midwest. A knee injury had put an end to any dreams she had of full-time karate instruction and competition and anymore she used the sport to keep fit as much as anything. Still, as she was fond of saying, "I like to keep my hand in." Anyone who knew her had no doubt about that.

  Heiss had probably been talking to someone in the Chicago Nazi party when he was shot. He would have been calling for help, she figured. Which seriously compromised her chances of turning over the right rock and finding the other end of the phone conversation. After all, the shooting was over thirty years old. Those members would be old or even dead by now, she decided. Maybe some would still be active, but even if they were, how many would even remember Janich Heiss? And what were the chances she would find the exact person who had been speaking to Heiss when he was shot? Worsening the odds of success in this direction was the notion of that person even cooperating. Not one of them would be willing to admit Heiss had been planning a murder when he was shot. They weren't fools. They would never admit to it.