Chasing Justice

by H. Terrell Griffin

  I heard the insistent sound of a cell phone ringing. I could see J.D. through the steam and the condensation on shower door. She was standing at the sink brushing out her hair. I wasn’t sure how much good that would do given the humidity level of the room. She walked into the bedroom, and I heard her answer the phone. She was back in a few minutes, just as I turned the shower off.

  “Matt,” she said, “That was Harry Robson. Wes Lucas is dead.”

  “What?” I was shocked.

  “He was found in his cell early this morning. He hanged himself with a bed sheet.”

  “Crap. Didn’t they have some kind of watch on him?”

  “Apparently not. Harry said they had no reason to think he was suicidal.”

  “I’m sorry he’s dead. He was a real bad guy, but still, dead is forever. Maybe there was some little part of him, some spark of goodness, that we’ll never see. Oh well, no big loss. I might have been able to call him back to the witness stand to admit that he killed Bannister, but I would have had a fight on my hands from Swann, and Lucas could have taken the Fifth again, regardless of what he told you and Harry. It wouldn’t have been worth taking a chance.”

  “Why not just put Harry Robson or me on the stand to testify to what he told us?”

  “That would be hearsay. The judge wouldn’t let it in. Why do you think Lucas killed himself?”

  “He was a very bad guy,” J.D. said, “and his trial would have been a three-ring circus. He probably took the easy way out. Saved everybody a lot of trouble. But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. It was like he had been forced into that life, and in the end wished he’d stayed an honest cop.”

  “We all have choices to make, and those choices always have consequences. He made a fatal choice when he picked up the phone and called Senator Hancock to tell him about his dead son. It was all downhill from there.”

  “There’s more,” J.D. said.

  “What?”

  “When Harry went to pick up Tori Madison last night, she’d flown the coop.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yes. She’d packed up and left the apartment she rented near downtown. Her car was gone, too.”

  “Are they looking for her?”

  “Yes, but so far, no luck.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, we were having breakfast at the Longbeach Café. Jock had come home from an early morning jog, and declined our invitation to eat with us. He was meeting Logan at the Longboat Key Club for a round of golf. I didn’t think that would be too pleasant. The heat was already settling over the island, and neither one of them was worth a hoot as a golfer. It was going to be a scorcher of a day, more like August than June. “I sure wish I could spend the day on Recess,” I said.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” J.D. said. “I’m off, unless something comes up. We could run down to Venice for lunch.”

  “If the jury returns a verdict today. If not, the judge might let them deliberate through the weekend. I’d actually prefer that to a two-day break. But we only go if we win. Jock likes the food at Crow’s Nest and maybe Logan and Marie will join us.”

  “Are you going to win today?”

  “I think so, even without the benefit of Lucas’ confession being admitted into evidence. Lucas didn’t confess to killing Bannister in court, but he did the next best thing by taking the Fifth. I thought Favereaux pretty much nailed Swann’s coffin shut with his testimony.”

  “Why do you suppose Tori tried to frame Abby?”

  “I’d like to know the answer to that one,” I said. “I think she set out to frame Robert Shorter. That would have been a pretty good plan. There was a history between Shorter and Bannister, and Shorter was known to have a hair-trigger temper. But when Shorter couldn’t come to the meeting on Sunday evening, Tori had to set something else up on short notice. But why Abby? That has never made any sense. And I would have thought Tori would have had better control over the scene, that she would not have let Linda be there at the time Lucas was supposed to kill Bannister. And then, we have the question of why Tori was part of the plot to kill her boss.”

  “You didn’t have Shorter testify about his being shot?”

  “No. I couldn’t show that it was connected to our case, and without that, Swann could have kept it out based on irrelevancy.”

  “Wouldn’t Tori have had as good a case that Shorter committed the murder even if he didn’t show up? His fingerprints were there. That placed him on the premises.”

  “Maybe the plan was to have the cops show up while Shorter was at Bannister’s. Catch him red-handed, as it were. Tori could have done that with an anonymous 911 call. Lucas shoots Bannister, leaves the scene, a few minutes later Shorter shows up and finds Bannister dead, and the police arrive before Shorter can leave.”

  “What about the gun used in the murder?” J.D. asked.

  “All kinds of possibilities. Maybe Lucas planned to wipe the revolver clean of fingerprints and leave it someplace where Shorter wouldn’t see it, but the police would find it when they searched the place. Maybe they planned to kill Shorter and make it appear that it was a murder-suicide.”

  “But Lucas told Harry Robson and me that he was to drop the murder weapon into the bay.”

  “True. That may have been part of plan B, the framing of Abby,” I said. “Who knows what the plan was. Unless we find Tori, we’ll probably never know.”

  “You’re ahead on points. Why not forget about putting Abby on the stand? Isn’t there the possibility that Swann will make some points on cross-examination?”

  “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I told the jury that Abby would testify. They’re expecting it. They’ve been watching her at counsel table all week. They’ll want to hear what she has to say. And if I don’t put her on, they’ll wonder why. After all, I promised she would testify and they won’t look kindly on me for not following through.”

  The café’s owner, Colleen Collandra, came over with the morning’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “Did you see this, Matt?”

  The headline was large: CHIEF’S WIFE DIDN’T KILL BUILDER. The subheadline read: SECRET AGENT TESTIFIES THAT FDLE AGENT WAS MURDERER. The story detailed the testimony of Favereaux and Lucas and Lucas’ decision to take the Fifth. I was pretty sure that each of the jurors would have read the story, even though Judge Thomas had told them at the close of each day’s testimony that they were not to read anything about the trial or watch anything about it on TV. It had been my experience that the natural curiosity of the American juror overcame the judge’s admonitions every time.

  “What do you think, Colleen?”

  “I think you’re going to win, Matt.”

  “We’ll see. I’ve got to get downtown. J.D. will take care of the check.”

  “You’re a vile person, Royal,” J.D. said. “Call me when you take a break. Good luck.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Nine o’clock on a Friday morning. The lawyers were settled in the courtroom, and Bill Lester sat in the gallery with few blank-faced strangers mixed in among the journalists. It was sometimes hard to tell them apart, the reporters here to record history and the watchers, those men and women who roamed the courthouse looking for a trial in progress, trying to escape a life that held little in the way of stimulus. Some of them were genuinely interested, having read about the trial in the newspapers, and some of them were street people looking for an air-conditioned place to escape the heat for a few hours. Others were just bored citizens looking for an interesting way to spend part of the day, one of an endless string of lonely days that stretched all the way to their graves. These are the widows and widowers who came to Florida with their husbands or wives, looking for a paradise in which to spend their golden years. They lose the spouse to the death that stalks us all, and find that their children, still in the northern states, are preoccupied with their own children, and have no time for an aging parent living far away. They find a trial in which they have no interest, a respite from the doldrums of life lived
among strangers in a strange land, and they sit for a bit, and then move on to the next courtroom.

  The court deputy entered the courtroom and announced that the judge wanted the lawyers in chambers. When Swann, his entourage, the court reporter, and I were seated and pleasantries had been exchanged, the judge said, “I want to let you know that Agent Lucas committed suicide in the jail last night. That news hasn’t been released yet, so I don’t think the jury will have heard about it. I’ll question them on the issue if you like. I could frame the question very vaguely along the line of whether they’d heard about anything unusual happening in the jail overnight. We can put our heads together and come up with something, but we might just be putting questions in their minds as to why we’re even broaching such a subject. What do you think?”

  I sat quietly, watching Swann. I knew he would be trying to come up with something he could use to try to rescue his case. He said, “I move for a mistrial, Your Honor.”

  “Motion denied.” The judge didn’t even think about that one. Or maybe he’d anticipated it and already ruled it out.

  “I was planning to use him in my rebuttal case,” Swann said.

  “I wouldn’t have allowed it,” Judge Thomas said. “You had your chance on cross-examination and you waived it. Anything new you could have gotten out of Lucas should have been introduced when you had him on the stand during your case. Mr. Royal?”

  “I can’t see any reason to even question the jury, Your Honor,” I said. “Mr. Lucas’ death has no bearing on the issues in this case. He’s testified, been subject to cross-examination, and jailed. His death, while tragic, is irrelevant to this case.”

  “Mr. Swann?” the judge asked.

  “In light of your ruling on my motion for a mistrial, I have to agree.”

  “Okay,” Judge Thomas said, “that’s what we’ll do. How many more witnesses do you have, Mr. Royal?”

  “Only one, Your Honor. My client.”

  “Rebuttal, Mr. Swann?”

  “It depends on what Mrs. Lester’s testimony is, Your Honor, but otherwise, I don’t have any plans for a rebuttal.”

  “Okay, gentlemen. Let’s finish the testimony and let the jury go while we handle the charge conference.”

  The charge conference is a time for the lawyers to argue which instructions of law the judge will give to the jury at the end of the case. The Florida Supreme Court has promulgated standard instructions for use in criminal cases of different types, but if the lawyers so choose they can submit additional instructions that they think might better fit their case.

  “I’ve looked at your instructions and they all seem to be the standards. Are we going to have any objections?”

  Both Swann and I answered in the negative.

  “Then it’ll be a short conference. We’ll just make sure we’re in agreement on the order in which I give the instructions. We’ll start closings at one o’clock. How long are you going to need?”

  “I’ll need at least an hour,” Swann said.

  “Fifteen minutes, probably.” I said. “Maybe less. Brevity is a virtue. I hope.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  “State your name, please,” I said.

  “Abigail Lester.”

  “How old are you, Abby?”

  “Forty.”

  “Your occupation?”

  “I’m a history teacher at Sarasota High School.”

  “You’re the defendant in this case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Nate Bannister?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you know Nate Bannister?”

  “I did not know him. Never met him, as far as I know.”

  “How do you explain a wine glass with your fingerprints being found in Mr. Bannister’s bedroom after he was killed?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Were you ever in his bedroom?”

  “No.”

  “Were you ever in his condo?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Tori Madison?”

  “I met her once.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “In a restaurant in downtown Sarasota.”

  “When?”

  “On Saturday, the day before Mr. Bannister was killed.”

  “How did that meeting come about?”

  “Ms. Madison called me at the school on Friday. She told me she was in charge of construction of a condo complex in Lakeland. She wanted to use an Old Florida motif on the inside of the buildings and she’d heard that I taught Florida history. She wanted to discuss hiring me as a consultant on the project. She asked me to meet her for a drink the next afternoon, and I agreed.”

  “What happened at the meeting?”

  “Nothing of consequence. We talked about some ideas and agreed that I would put together a concept and we’d meet again in a week or so.”

  “Did you have anything to drink?”

  “Each of us had a glass of wine.”

  “Do you remember what kind of wine you had?”

  “The same thing I always drink. A Zinfandel.”

  “That’s a red wine, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Do you remember anything about the glass the wine was served in?”

  “No. It was a wine glass, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

  “Was that the only time you ever met Ms. Madison?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you think of any reason she would have to do you harm?”

  “None.”

  “Where were you on the night of March thirty-first of this year? The night that Mr. Bannister was killed.”

  “I was home, alone.”

  “Where was your husband, Chief Lester?”

  “He was visiting his mother.”

  “Is that a regular thing?”

  “Yes. She’s in a nursing home in Bradenton. He and I go to visit every Wednesday evening and then he goes back alone on Sundays. It gives them a little time by themselves. He never misses those visits.”

  “Did you ever have any email correspondence with Mr. Bannister?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever have any email correspondence with Ms. Madison?”

  “No.”

  I stood for a minute, looking at Abby and watching the jury out of my peripheral vision. Abby appeared calm and relaxed, and the jurors had been attentive to her and her testimony. I thought we’d brought it off. I’d tailored my questions so that Swann wouldn’t have much to cross-examine on. He could go back into the areas he’d covered in his case, but I thought, despite all his inadequacies, he was a better lawyer than that. Abby would refute each piece of the evidence against her, and it would just emphasize her testimony in my direct. There was nothing for Swann to gain by taking her on. I looked up at the bench. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

  Swann stood at counsel table, looked at the jury, and said, “I have no questions, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Royal?”

  “The defense rests, Your Honor.”

  “Rebuttal, Mr. Swann?”

  “Yes, sir. One witness.”

  I was surprised. I ran through a mental list of all the people who might have some knowledge of this case, some evidence to present. I couldn’t come up with anybody. Then it hit me. A jailhouse snitch. If someone who had been in jail with Abby came forward and testified that Abby had admitted to the murder, it would be troublesome, but not devastating, to my case. She’d only spent one night in jail, the night she’d been arrested, and that was in isolation. Still, I couldn’t prove that Abby had not been in a cell for at least a few minutes with whomever the witness would be.

  I looked behind me. The reporter, Robin Hartill, was sitting in the gallery, notebook in hand. Several chairs were lined up inside the rail that separated the gallery from the area where the trial participants sat. These were for members of the bar who had no part in the case being tried, but could come inside the rail and sit. I motioned Robin up to t
he rail and asked her to come inside and take one of the chairs right behind me. I leaned over and whispered. “Hide your notebook, and when I lean back to talk to you, pretend we’re in conversation.”

  “What’s up?”

  “No time to explain. Just follow my lead.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  I turned to Abby. “I want you to leave the courtroom right now. Just go outside and wait in the hall. I’ll let you know when it’s time to come back in.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Trust me. Go. Don’t talk to anybody.”

  Abby got up and left. Swann called his next witness. The court deputy stuck his head into the hall and summoned a woman who was probably in her early twenties. She was dressed in a conservative business suit, white blouse, and high-heel pumps. She took the stand and was sworn.

  “State your name, please,” Swann said

  “Stephanie Bramlett.”

  “Do you know Abigail Lester?”

  “I met her.”

  “Where did you meet her?

  “In the Sarasota County jail.”

  “Why were you at the jail?”

  “I was serving a six-month sentence.”

  “What were you arrested for?”

  “Prostitution.”

  “Have I or anyone else offered you a reduced sentence on that conviction in return for your testimony today?”

  “No, sir.”

  Swann was being very careful in how he phrased his questions. Too careful, I thought. He had specifically asked her about a reduction of the sentence on that conviction, the one she was serving time for on the night Abby was jailed. Was there another conviction? Maybe a more recent one that would merit a little help from the state in reducing the sentence?