by Allen Eskens
“This is Crystal's diary,” Lila said, laying her hand upon the pages. “The prosecutor used certain passages from the diary to suggest that Carl Iverson was stalking Crystal and forcing her to have sex with him. He used those diary entries to convict Iverson. But there were a few coded lines in the diary.” Lila opened the diary to the first coded message.
“Where'd you get that?” Rupert picked up the diary pages and flipped through them. “See these numbers?” He pointed to a number stamped on the bottom of each page. “These pages are Bates stamped,” he said. “This was evidence in a case.”
“That's what we're telling you,” I said. “We got them from Iverson's attorney. They're from his trial.”
“Look at this code,” Lila said, showing Rupert the pages with the code. “In September of 1980 Crystal started writing in code. Not a lot, just every now and again. They never deciphered the code for the trial.”
Rupert read through the diary for a bit, lingering on the pages with coded entries. “Okay…And?” he said.
“And…” I looked at Lila. “We broke the code. Well actually, she broke the code.” I pointed at Lila, who pulled a page from her folder with all of the coded entries listed, followed by the decoded text. She slid the paper in front of Detective Rupert.
September 21 – Terrible day today - 7,22,13,1,14,6,13,25,17,24,26,21, 22,19,19,3,19. I am freaking out. This is very very bad.
September 21 – Terrible day today – can't find my glasses. I am freaking out. This is very very bad.
September 28 – 25,16,14,11,5,13,25,17,24,26,21,22,19,19,3,19. If I don't do what he wants he'll tell everyone. He'll ruin my life.
September 28 – DJ found my glasses. If I don't do what he wants he'll tell everyone. He'll ruin my life.
September 30 – 6,25,6,25,25,16,12,6,1,2,17,24,2,22,13,25. I hate him. I feel sick.
September 30 – I did DJ with my hand. I hate him. I feel sick
October 8 – 25,16,12,11,13,1,26,6,20,3,17,3,17,24,26,21,22,19,19,3, 19,9,22,7,8. He keeps threatening me. 2,3,12,22,13,1,19,17,3,1,11,5, 19,3,17,24,17,11,5,1,2.
October 8 – DJ won't give me my glasses back. He keeps threatening me. He wants me to use my mouth.
October 9 – 6,26,22,20,3,25,16,12,2,22,1,2,3,12,22,13,1,3,25. He forced me. I want to kill myself. I want to kill him.
October 9 – I gave DJ what he wanted. He forced me. I want to kill myself. I want to kill him.
October 17 – 25,16,17,22,25,3,17,3,25,11,6,1,22,26,22,6,13,2,3,12, 22,19,10,11,5,26,2.6,1,2,5,10,1.
October 17 – DJ made me do it again. He was rough. It hurt.
October 29 – 6,1,19,10,22,18,3. 25,16,19,10,22,18,6,13,26,17,3. Mrs. Tate said so. She said that the age difference means he'll go to prison for sure. It stops today. I am so happy.
October 29 – It's rape. DJ is raping me. Mrs. Tate said so. She said that the age difference means he'll go to prison for sure. It stops today. I am so happy.
“What's this about lost glasses?” Rupert asked.
I explained our conversation with Andrew Fisher, about how he and Crystal stole the car, wrecked it, and left behind proof of their deed in the form of the lens from Crystal's glasses. “You see,” I said, “whoever found those glasses must have known about the stolen car and the lens. He knew he had something to hold over her, leverage to make her…you know, comply.”
Rupert leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “So this Carl guy gets convicted based, in part, on this diary?”
“Yes,” I said. “The prosecutor told the jury that Iverson caught Crystal in a compromising position and was using that to force Crystal to have sex with him.”
Lila added. “Without breaking the code, there would be no way to know for sure who was raping her.”
“Do you have an idea who DJ is?” he asked.
“It's the girl's stepfather,” Lila said. “His name is Douglas Joseph Lockwood.”
“And you think it's him because his name is Douglas Joseph?” Rupert said.
“That,” I said, “and the fact that he managed the car lot where Crystal stole the car, so he would have known about the lens. The cops investigating the theft must've mentioned it when they came by the lot.”
“We also have these pictures,” Lila said and pulled out the picture showing the closed blind and the second one that showed someone peeking out the window when no one should have been in the house.
Rupert studied the pictures, pulling a magnifying glass out of a drawer to look closer at each. Then he put the pictures down on the table, put his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, and tapped them as he spoke. “Do you know which prison Iverson is in?” he asked.
“He's not in prison,” I said. “He's dying of cancer, so they paroled him to the nursing home in Richfield.”
“So you are not trying to get this guy out of prison?”
“Mr. Rupert,” I said. “Carl Iverson's going to be dead in a matter of weeks. I'd like to clear his name before he dies.”
“It doesn't work like that,” Rupert said. “I don't know you. I don't know this case. You walk in here with the story of a diary and a code, and you want me to absolve this Iverson guy. I'm not the Pope. Someone's got to dig our file out of the basement, go through it, and verify that what you're saying is even close to being true. And then, even if it is true, who's to say you're right about this DJ person. I have no idea what other evidence there might be. Maybe the diary doesn't matter. Maybe there's an explanation for this picture. You're asking me to reopen a thirty-year-old investigation where the guy was convicted by a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt. Not only that, but the guy's not in prison anymore; he's sitting in a nursing home.”
“But if we are right,” I said, “there's a murderer who went free thirty years ago.”
“Have you been reading the papers?” Rupert asked. “Do you know how many homicides we've had this year?”
I shook my head.
“We've had thirty-seven so far: thirty-seven homicides this year. We had nineteen homicides all of last year. We don't have enough manpower to solve murders that happened thirty days ago much less thirty years ago.”
“But we've solved the case already,” I said. “All you have to do is verify it.”
“It's not that easy.” Rupert started stacking the papers together as if to indicate that our meeting was over. “The evidence has to be strong enough to convince my boss to reopen the case. Then my boss has to convince the County Attorney that they screwed up and convicted the wrong man thirty years ago. After that, you have to go into court and convince a judge to undo the conviction. Now you said this Iverson guy only has a few weeks to live. Even if I did believe you—and I'm not saying I do—there's no way to undo his conviction before he dies.”
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Lila and I were so excited when we broke the code. The truth jumped off the page and screamed at us. We knew Carl was innocent. I suspected that Detective Rupert knew the truth as well, which made his “we're too busy” excuse all the harder to swallow. I knew Carl's file well enough to know the massive resources they threw into this case when they thought Carl was guilty. But now—now that we could prove his innocence—the entire system became rusted. It seemed so unfair. Rupert handed the stack of papers back to me.
“This ain't right,” I said. “I'm not some nut job coming in here and telling you he's innocent because I saw a vision in my cereal bowl or talked to a dog. We brought proof. And you're not going to do anything because you're understaffed? That's bullshit.”
“Now, hold on—”
“No. You hold on,” I said. “If you thought that I was full of crap and kicked me out, I would understand. But you're not going to look into this because it's too much work?”
“That's not what I said—”
“So you are gonna look into it?”
Rupert held his hand up to stop me from talking. He considered the folder in front of me. Then he put his hand down and leaned onto the table. “Let's do th
is,” he said. “I got a friend who works at the Innocence Project.” Rupert reached into his pocket, pulled out one of his business cards, and wrote a name on the back of it. “His name is Boady Sanden. He's a law professor at Hamline Law School.” Rupert handed me the card. “I'll dig our old file out of storage, assuming it's still there, and you contact Boady. Maybe he can help. I'll do what I can on this end, but don't get your hopes up. If your guy is innocent, Boady can help get the evidence back into court.”
I looked at the card with Rupert's name on one side and Professor Sanden's name written on the other. “Have Boady call me,” Rupert said. “I can tell him what we have in the file here, if anything.”
Lila and I stood up to leave.
“And Joe,” Rupert said. “If this is a wild-goose chase, I'll be calling on you. I don't like getting yanked around. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” I said.
Carl wasn't expecting my visit that day.
After meeting with Detective Rupert, I dropped Lila off at the apartment and drove to Hillview to tell Carl the good news. I expected to find Carl sitting in his wheelchair by the window, but he wasn't. He hadn't gotten out of bed all day; he couldn't. His cancer symptoms had weakened him to the point that he needed to have oxygen and nutrients piped into him through tubes.
Mrs. Lorngren was initially reluctant to let me see Carl, but she relented after I told her about our breakthrough. I even showed her the coded diary entries and their deciphered versions. As I explained Carl's innocence to her, she became sullen. “I'm afraid I haven't been a very good Christian,” she said.
She sent Janet back to check with Carl, to see if he would receive me. A minute later they showed me to his door. Carl's room consisted of a bed, an end table, a wooden chair, a closet with a built-in dresser, and a single tiny window with no view. The room's moss-colored walls were barren of any decor other than a placard of instructions on good hygiene. Carl lay in his bed, a plastic tube feeding oxygen into his nose and an IV in his arm.
“I'm sorry to drop in on you like this,” I said, “but I found something you should see.”
“Joe,” he said. “It's good to see you. Think it's gonna snow today?”
“I don't think so,” I said, peeking out the window at the dead branches of the unkempt lilac bush that blocked his view. “I went to see a detective today.”
“I wish it would snow,” he said. “One great big one before I die.”
“I know who killed Crystal Hagen,” I said.
Carl stopped talking and looked at me as if he were trying to change the stream of his thoughts. “I don't understand,” he said.
“Remember the diary, the one the prosecutor used to convict you?”
“Oh yes,” he said, with a melancholy smile. “The diary. I always thought she was such a sweet girl, practicing her little cheerleading routines in the back yard; and all that time she thought I was a pervert—a child molester. Yeah, I remember the diary.”
“Do you remember the lines that had numbers in them? The code? I deciphered it—well, we deciphered it—my brother, me, and this girl named Lila.”
“Well I'll be.” Carl smiled. “Aren't you clever? And what did it say?”
“All that stuff she was saying, about being forced to have sex and being threatened, she wasn't saying that about you at all. She was saying it about someone named DJ.”
“DJ?” he said.
“Douglas Joseph…Lockwood,” I said. “She was talking about her stepfather not you.”
“Her stepfather. That poor girl.”
“If I can get the cops to reopen the case, I can exonerate you,” I said. “And if they won't look into what really happened—then I'll do it myself.”
Carl sighed, let his head sink deeper into his pillow, and turned his attention back toward the tiny window and the dead lilac bush. “Don't do that,” he said. “I don't want you risking anything on my behalf. Besides, I've always known I didn't kill her. And now you know. That's enough for me.”
His response caught me off guard. I couldn't believe he could be so calm. I would have been howling and jumping in my pajamas. “Don't you want people to know you didn't kill her?” I said. “Clear your name? Let everyone know the prosecutor was wrong for putting you in prison?”
He smiled warmly. “Remember how I told you that I can count my life in hours?” he said. “How many of those hours should I spend worrying about what happened thirty years ago?”
“But you spent all that time in prison for a crime you didn't commit,” I said. “That's just wrong.”
Carl turned to me, his pale tongue licking his chapped lips, his eyes settling on mine. “I can't regret getting arrested, getting sent to prison. If they hadn't arrested me that night, I wouldn't be here today.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know that gun I bought the day Crystal was killed. I bought that gun to use on myself, not to use on that poor girl.”
“On you?”
His voice became thin, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “I didn't mean to pass out that night. That was an accident. I put the gun up to my temple two or three times but didn't have the guts to pull the trigger. I got a bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard. I was just gonna have a bit of it before I used the gun—just a nip to give me some courage. But I drank too much. I guess I needed more courage than I thought. I passed out. When I woke up, two big cops were hauling me out of my house. I would have finished the job had they not arrested me.”
“You didn't kill yourself in Vietnam because you didn't want to go to hell. Remember?”
“By the time I bought that gun, God and I weren't exactly on speaking terms. I was already in hell. I didn't care anymore. It didn't matter. I couldn't live with what I had done. I couldn't live with myself one more day.”
“All that because you couldn't save that girl in Vietnam?”
Carl looked away from me. I could see his breath grow shallow in his chest. He licked his lips again with a dry tongue, paused to compose his thoughts, and said, “That's not all. That is where things started, sure, but that's not the end of the story.”
I said nothing. I watched him in silence, waiting for him to explain. He asked me to pour some water for him, which I did. He sipped it to wet his lips.
“I'm going to tell you something,” he said, his voice soft and level. “Something I've never told anyone, not even Virgil. I'm telling you this because I promised I'd be honest with you. I said I would not hold anything back.” He settled back into his pillow, his eyes staring at the ceiling. I watched as the pain of a jagged and dreadful memory crossed his face. Part of me wanted to save him that pain—tell him that he could keep his secret to himself—but I couldn't. I wanted to hear it. I needed to hear it.
He summoned his strength and continued, “After that fight, the one where Virgil and I both got shot, they sent Virgil home, and I spent a month recuperating in Da Nang before getting sent back to my unit. Vietnam was tolerable when I had Virgil and Tater there, but without them…well, I can't think of a word to describe how low I got. And then, just when I thought it couldn't get worse, it did.”
His eyes lost their focus as he once again went back to Vietnam. “We were on a routine search and destroy mission in July of ’68, tossing some little no-name village, looking for food and ammo: the usual. It was a hell of a hot day, ’bout as hot as a man can stand, with mosquitoes as big as dragonflies that liked to suck your blood dry. Made you wonder why anyone would live in such a godforsaken place, or why in the hell anyone would be fighting over it. As we were rousting this village, I see a girl run down a trail and into a hut, and I see Gibbs watching her, following her, heading that way all by himself. It was Oxbow all over again.”
Carl's lips quivered as he took another drink of water before continuing. “At that moment, the war around me seemed to disappear. All the crap, the screaming, the heat, all the right and wrong of it—it all melted away, leaving just me and Gibbs. The only thing
that mattered to me was stopping Gibbs. I couldn't let Oxbow happen again. I went to the hooch, and Gibbs had his pants down. He had beaten the girl bloody and had a knife against her throat. I pointed my rifle at him, right between the eyes. He looked at me, spit tobacco juice on my boot, and said he'd deal with me in a second. I told him to stop what he was doing, but he didn't. ‘Shoot me you fucking coward,’ he says to me. ‘Shoot me and they'll stand you up in front of a firing squad.’
“He was right. I was ready to die in Vietnam—sure—but not like that. When I put my rifle down, Gibbs laughed at me, that is, until he saw me draw my knife. His eyes were as big as chicken eggs when I stabbed him, stuck him right through his heart, watched him bleed to death in my hands. He looked so surprised, so disbelieving.” Carl's voice leveled out, smooth and calm like a plane pulling out of a storm. “You see, Joe, I murdered Sergeant Gibbs. Murdered him in cold blood.”
I didn't know what to say. Carl stopped talking. He had come to the end of his story. He had told me the truth. The silence that followed pressed and squeezed at my chest until I thought my heart would stop, but I waited for Carl to continue.
“I helped the girl put her clothes back on, shoved her out the door, and told her to run away—to di di mau—into the jungle. Then I waited a bit and fired a few shots into the air to call in the cavalry. I told them I saw someone running toward the jungle.” He paused again and then he looked at me. “So, you see Joe, I am a murderer after all.”
“But you saved that girl's life,” I said.
“I had no right to take Gibbs's life,” Carl said. “He had a wife and two kids back in the states, and I murdered him. I killed a great many men in Vietnam…a great many, but they were soldiers. They were the enemy. I was doing my job. I murdered Gibbs, and as far as I'm concerned I murdered that girl in Oxbow. I didn't pull the knife across her throat, but I murdered her just the same. When they arrested me for the murder of Crystal Hagen…well, I think part of me figured it was time to pay my debt. Before I went to prison, I used to fall asleep every night seeing the face of that poor Vietnamese girl. I would see her fingers begging me to come to her, to help her. No matter how much whiskey I drank, I could never dim that memory.” Carl closed his eyes and shook his head as he remembered. “God, how I drank. I just wanted the pain to stop.”