Away with the Fishes

by Stephanie Siciarz

  “May I present Exhibit A,” Monday announced, flamboyantly waving high in the air a copy of the Morning Crier, sealed in a clear plastic bag. “Can you describe this item for the court, please, Officer.”

  “Yes, sir, that would be a newspaper, sir,” Arnold answered. He spoke his words close into the microphone, rendering them almost unintelligible.

  “Thank you. No need to get so close to the mic, son. Now, tell the court please why this particular newspaper is so important.” (Bruce beamed, somewhere amidst the onlookers.)

  “It’s the edition with the ad, sir.”

  “The ad?”

  “Yes, sir, the ad for a lady,” Arnold explained.

  “Would that be the lady sought to fill the vacancy left behind by the murdered Rena Baker?”

  “Yes, sir. The ad came out the same day the mangled bike was discovered. It seemed obvious that whoever placed the ad needed a woman, to fill in for the one he got rid of by knocking her off the bike.”

  “I see,” Monday said, pinning to his corkboard a large, glossy photograph of the newspaper. “What makes you so sure that Mr. Fuller placed this ad?”

  “The ad was placed by a fisherman, and that’s what Mr. Fuller is. We confiscated a fishing pole when we searched his house.”

  “Would this, Exhibit B, be the fishing pole?” Monday asked, showing Arnold another glossy photo, then tacking it to the corkboard as well.

  Before Arnold could reply, Glynray jumped up and interrupted.

  “Objection, Your Honor! It’s common knowledge that my client is a fisherman, an activity in which he takes great pride. The witness is suggesting that Mr. Fuller tried to hide his occupation, when in fact he has nothing to hide, occupational or otherwise.”

  “The objection is sustained. The jury will disregard the fishing pole,” the judge ruled. “Mr. Jones, kindly remove the photo.”

  “Of course, Your Honor,” Monday conceded. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” Turning back to Arnold, he continued. “Was there anything else about the ad to indicate that Mr. Fuller was the one who placed it?”

  “Yes, sir. He wasn’t just asking for a lady. He wanted a lady who cooked and who had a bike. Rena used to cook him lunch every day, but Rena was a walker. We suspect he wanted a lady who had a bike, so she could get his food to him a little faster.”

  “Yes, that makes good sense,” Monday agreed.

  “Speculation, Your Honor!” Glynray called out.

  “Overruled,” the judge declared. “I agree completely that the testimony makes good sense.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Monday said, bowing to him slightly. “Officer Tullsey, let’s try another Exhibit B, shall we?” Again he wagged a clear plastic bag high in the air for the audience to see. In it was the beach towel the police had found at Madison’s house, the one covering the picnic basket that belonged to Rena Baker.

  “Can you tell the court what this item is, please?” He handed the towel to Arnold and pinned a picture of it on the board.

  “That’s a beach towel, sir. We found it at Mr. Fuller’s house.”

  “Where exactly at Mr. Fuller’s house did you find it?”

  “It was on top of a basket belonging to Rena Baker,” Arnold said.

  “Is this the basket that belonged to Miss Baker?” Monday tacked a photo marked “Exhibit C” onto the board.

  “Yes. Her things were inside it, with big R’s all over them.”

  “Thank you, Officer. Right you are.” Monday attached to his corkboard pictures of the articles found in Rena’s basket—a dinner plate, knife, fork, spoon, three plastic bowls tucked one inside the other, and three plastic lids (Exhibits D, E, F, G, H, and I).

  Like so, the questioning continued for three days, until Monday Jones’s corkboard was completely covered, with pictures of exhibits J through P as well. Halfway through Arnold’s testimony, Monday had excused him and called to the stand Joshua Smart instead, so both of the officers could take a turn. When the Prosecution finally rested its case, the most damning pieces of evidence were Madison’s ad (the Prosecution excluded the notion that someone else might have placed it), Rena’s basket (particularly the initialed lids inside it), and a pair of Madison’s muddy shoes, muddied presumably when he picked her remains up off the shortcut that leads from Thyme to Port-St. Luke.

  It took the remainder of that first trial week for Glynray Justice to cross-examine Officers Tullsey and Smart. Exhibit by Exhibit, Glynray ran down the list of incriminating items, refuting every one as best he could, first and foremost the classified ad.

  “Tell me, Officer Tullsey, how is it that the Police determined my client to be the author of this ad, placed anonymously, if I’m not mistaken, in our only island daily?”

  Arnold opened his mouth to respond, but Glynray kept talking.

  “I mention that it is our only island daily,” he explained, “so as to remind the court that the entire population of Oh reads this newspaper and this newspaper alone.” (Publicity! Bruce hadn’t thought of that!) “If the entire population reads the Morning Crier, then the pool from which to fish out the writer of that unusual ad is vast, Officer Tullsey, is it not?”

  “I suppose.”

  “The ad might have been placed by any one of the hundreds of spectators seated here before us. Not to mention those seated at home, listening to our proceedings on the radio.” (Raoul, hoping to stem the number of onlookers, had arranged for radio transmission of the trial.) “How did you narrow it down to my client?”

  “Your client was the only one who was missing a girl.”

  “I see, and did you bother to interview the editor of the paper?” Glynray asked.

  “Yes, sir. He told us the ad was anonymous, like you said. Someone slipped an envelope with cash and an unsigned note under the door of the Crier offices.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Officer Tullsey?”

  “No, sir,” Arnold said.

  “Do the court the favor of reading the ad aloud, please, would you?” Glynray handed Arnold the plastic bag that housed Exhibit A.

  “Honest man, early 40s, athletic, with fishing boat seeks honest woman, early 30s, with bicycle, cooking skills, and dainty hands. For immediate marriage,” he read.

  “How old are you, Officer?”

  “I turned forty last month.”

  “Do you like a nice home-cooked meal?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “So, you just turned forty, you find yourself with no girl, and admit to liking good home-cooking. Did you perhaps buy yourself a birthday present, Officer? Get yourself a boat and put an ad in the local paper to get your forty-year-old life in order?”

  “Absolutely not!” Arnold said. “I don’t need the newspaper to find myself a girl.”

  “And yet you don’t have one,” Glynray said.

  “Objection, your honor!” Monday Jones hollered, standing up. “Now who’s stabbing at invisible fish?”

  “Sustained. Move it along, counselor,” Judge Samuels ruled.

  “Fine.” Glynray feigned frustration, but was satisfied that he had made his point, as the animated whispers from the crowd clearly indicated. He made a show of rifling through a stack of papers, then started in again on Officer Tullsey.

  “Allow me to read to you a piece of your own testimony from earlier this week. Speaking about the newspaper ad in question, you said, and I quote, ‘Rena was a walker. We suspect he wanted a lady who had a bike, so she could get his food to him a little faster.’ If Rena was a walker, and the alleged victim of the crime with which my client is charged was a biker, then how do you figure Rena and the victim to be one and the same?”

  “No one but Rena is missing, so she must be the one who’s gone. Who’s dead, I mean,” Arnold added for clarity.

  “How do you know that no one else is missing?”

  “We canvassed all the surrounding areas, and everyone is accounted for. No other missing persons have been reported anywhere on the island.”

/>   “Okay. Assuming you are correct, and Rena was the biker on that fateful night, where did she get the bike?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “And why would an inexperienced cyclist choose the wettest night of the year so far, and the roughest road she could find, to go cycling?”

  “We don’t know that either.”

  “The truth is, Officer, that you don’t know for a fact that Rena did do any of those things, do you? No proof she got a bike. No proof she rode it on the Thyme shortcut. No proof she got knocked off her bike and killed,” Glynray said, counting off the proofs (or lack thereof) on his fingers as he spoke.

  “No, sir.”

  Glynray went on to lure similar admissions from Arnold and Joshua regarding the rest of the evidence. If Madison truly wished to hide Rena’s basket, would he not have found a better means than a beach towel tossed on top of it? (He would, they said.) Weren’t the Officers’ shoes muddy, too, on that day of the hit-and-run, when they jumped off Jarvis Coutrelle’s bus and landed him in a ditch? (They were.) Didn’t Joshua himself own a yellow shirt that he liked to wear when he went dancing? (Yes, sir.) Wasn’t it possible the dishwashing gloves retrieved from Madison’s kitchen were for washing dishes and not for keeping fingerprints off corpses that didn’t exist? (It was.)

  The Defense position appeared to grow stronger as the week went on. Late in the afternoon on Friday, shortly before court was to recess for the weekend, Glynray neared the end of his cross-examination. Because the Prosecution had insisted the lids with Rena’s R’s on them were especially incriminating, Glynray chose to end with those, hoping to send the crowd home for the two-day hiatus on a pro-Defense note.

  Officer Joshua Smart was on the witness stand, when Glynray brought up Rena’s basket and its contents.

  “Can you remind the court of the items found in the picnic basket, hidden under the beach towel, in the kitchen of my client?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, there was a plate with a faded design, a knife, a fork, a spoon, and three plastic bowls. There were three lids for the bowls, too.”

  “Are these the lids?” Glynray held up the bag with Exhibit I, three plastic lids, each marked with a big black “R”.

  “Yes.”

  “Prosecutor Jones was disturbed by the fact that these lids were marked with Rena’s initial. Would you say that’s accurate?”

  Joshua said it was, adding, “It proved they belonged to the victim.”

  “We have already established that the confiscated picnic basket belonged to Rena, have we not? That it was the basket in which Rena took lunch to her beloved Madison every day?” Glynray went on.

  “That’s right.”

  “If the basket belonged to Rena, then why does the Island find it damaging that Madison should store lids clearly belonging to Rena inside it?”

  Joshua hesitated. “I couldn’t exactly say.”

  “Are you personally acquainted with the Defendant, Officer Smart?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then you don’t know firsthand what an honest, loyal man he is. And he is an honest man, and a loyal one, which is why he would never dream of storing any other woman’s lids in the basket belonging to his girl. Would you agree, Officer Smart, that only a dishonest man would dream of such a thing?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Which makes my client an honest man?”

  “I guess.”

  “Thank you, Officer, for that character assessment,” Glynray said smugly. “May I remind the court that my client, an ‘honest man’ according to the testimony of the Prosecution’s own witness here today, has maintained his innocence since this alleged crime and these heinous charges first came to light. No further questions, Your Honor.”

  The court was recessed.

  39

  As Bruce had predicted, the spectators lingered long after the Bicycle Trial broke for the weekend. They made of the open-air court a real Friday-night party-ground, eating, drinking, and dancing well into the wee hours. In a solitary corner at the outskirts of the merriment, May sat in contemplation, encouraged by the trial so far, but not daring to take her brother’s freedom for granted. Branson, who hadn’t kept his eyes off her the whole week, saw her sitting alone and decided to approach her.

  “May? You good? Would you like a drink or something?”

  May looked at him, still upset at his silence about the ad and yet not entirely displeased to see him there. “I’m fine,” she said, too tired to argue or plead with him.

  “Looks like Justice is doing a good job, eh?”

  “For now,” she said, her thoughts not fully there with Branson on the edge of the court-cum-carnival. In an act of unusual daring, Branson sat down beside her and took her hand in his.

  “Don’t worry too much. Trevor says Madison’s lawyer has a trick or two up his sleeve. He’s sure holding his own for now against that fancy Monday Jones.”

  “What I don’t understand is what happened to Rena,” May confided desperately to Branson. “Where in the world could she be?”

  Branson didn’t know what to say.

  “That fool brother of mine,” May went on, gradually feeling more like herself with Branson at her side, “isn’t even concerned about the predicament he’s in. All he can think about is that crazy girl, rest her soul.”

  “You think she’s dead?” Branson asked.

  “I wish to heaven I knew,” May replied.

  Neither of them said another word after that. Branson simply held May’s hand for as long as she would let him.

  Back at Raoul’s cottage, where to his dismay not a single message had turned up since the trial began, Raoul was outside staring at the silent walls. Because of his recent busy schedule, he had all but abandoned Dagmore, and apart from arranging the trial, he hadn’t accomplished a thing in the way of finding Rena (his sources in Killig had so far proved unhelpful); and yet, the ghostly messenger failed to insist about the one or the other. Confused as he was feeling, Raoul had rather hoped a new word would appear, to guide him, but the weekend came and went without so much as a letter.

  A new week began, as it always does, dragging into court another lucky Monday. Amidst an ominous flurry of whispers and conferrals on the dais (during which Judge Samuels wrapped his pudgy fist around the mic to silence it), the Prosecution called Officer Tullsey back to the stand, having requested a redirect. The crowd sensed something sinister was coming, and Glynray Justice braced himself for bad news, though what it might be, he couldn’t imagine.

  “Members of the jury, Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen, good morning,” Monday Jones began with characteristic gravitas. “I have a confession to make.” He turned to the audience, that they might fully absorb what he had said, and for a minute they half expected him to admit to the murder himself. When they were suitably on the edge of their seats, Monday continued. “It has come to my attention that in examining my first witness, I failed to address a very crucial piece of evidence, and for this I beg your forgiveness.” The crowd was simultaneously disappointed and intrigued, the Madison Fuller camp rather terrified.

  “I submit to you, members of the jury, Exhibit Q.” He held up for them another large, glossy photo, this one of a boat. “Exhibit Q is nothing less than the fishing boat belonging to the very fisherman responsible for the newspaper ad and for Rena Baker’s murder, Madison Fuller.” With that, Monday pointed dramatically across the dais, fully extending his arm and his index finger in Madison’s direction.

  The spectators sat quiet and perplexed, failing to see the significance of the boat of a known fisherman.

  “Officer Tullsey,” Monday said, “do you confirm for the court that this is a picture of the boat belonging to Mr. Fuller, and that it is currently in the custody of the Island Police?”

  “I do,” Arnold said.

  “Can you tell us what was found in the boat when you confiscated it?”

  “Yes, sir. We found a bucket of worms and a lantern, some towels, and, I belie
ve, an empty thermos.”

  “Is that all you found? Are you sure?” Monday insisted. Smiling he added, “Take all the time you need to respond.”

  Arnold looked at him, puzzled, then testified, “Oh, right! We found blood! There was blood on Mr. Fuller’s boat.”

  At the word “blood,” Madison’s ears perked up and the crowd commented noisily.

  “Order in the court!” the judge cried, smacking his gavel repeatedly.

  “Objection, Your Honor!” Glynray yelled out. “The Defense was not informed of this piece of evidence.”

  Before the judge could sustain the objection, or overrule it, Monday was back at the microphone, reiterating again his apologies for overlooking Exhibit Q and theatrically begging the forgiveness of the Defense.

  “I’ll allow it,” Judge Samuels said. “An honest mistake is an honest mistake. Defense can cross-examine again when Mr. Jones is finished.”

  At that, Mr. Jones jumped right back into his questioning.

  “Officer Tullsey, please tell us how much blood you found on the boat. A few droplets? Smears from one end to the other? How would you describe it?”

  “Hard to say, sir. More than droplets, but less than smears,” he answered.

  “I see. How long have you been a police officer, if I may ask?”

  “Close to fifteen years.”

  “My compliments on a fine career,” Monday said. “Is it your professional opinion, based on fifteen years of police work, that the blood evidence found on Mr. Fuller’s boat is not inconsistent with the blood you would expect to find if one, say, dumped a dead body into the sea?”

  “You could say that,” Arnold said, feeling especially important.

  “Thank you, Officer. The Defense may question the witness.”

  Glynray got up, agitated, with only one question in mind.

  “Officer Tullsey,” he sharply said, “are you completely sure that the blood on Mr. Fuller’s boat belongs to Rena Baker and not to a fish?”

  Arnold reflected a minute. “Not completely sure, no.”

  “Your Honor,” Glynray said firmly, turning to the judge, “I request that the court have the blood evidence analyzed before this case goes any further.”