Shots in the Dark

by Allyson K. Abbott

  “Ben said they headed out along a narrow back road that led to one of the more main roads, but it was slow going because it was dark already and there was a brisk wind that stirred up the snow, whiting things out at times and creating big drifts on the road. After crawling along for about ten minutes, they came upon some guy standing in the middle of the road, flagging them down. Ben stopped and rolled his window down, thinking the guy might be hurt or in need of help in some way, but the next thing he knew, the guy was sticking a gun in his face and yelling at him to get out of the car.

  “Ben grabbed at the gun without thinking, and after he grappled with the guy for several seconds, the gun fired twice. Ben said he continued to wrestle for the gun for several seconds after that, and then the man suddenly let go and ran off.” She paused and grimaced. “That was when Ben realized Tiffany had been shot. She was hit in the head and died instantly.”

  “What did this guy with the gun look like?” Cora asked.

  “Ben said he was wearing a hooded parka and had a knit cap on beneath that. He also had a scarf wrapped around his lower face, so Ben wasn’t able to provide much of a description. He said the guy was white and his eyes were brown. Ben thought he was tall, around six feet or so, because of how far the guy had to bend down to stick the gun in the window.”

  “Not much to go on,” Joe Signoriello said. “What did your brother say happened next?”

  Sandra leaned forward in her seat, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands laced together. “Ben said he tried to call for help, but there was no cell service there. So he drove on as fast as he dared given the conditions. It was ten, maybe fifteen minutes later before he reached a part of the road where he had some kind of cell signal. He called nine-one-one, and an officer was dispatched out to the scene. Ben said they told him to wait where he was. He did, but he didn’t want to, because he realized the cops weren’t going to get to him very fast given the road conditions, and he didn’t know where the guy with the gun had gone. He worried the guy might try to come after them again. He wanted to keep driving along the road, thinking that would get him to the cops sooner, and get Tiffany help quicker.”

  She paused again and looked down at her hands with a sad expression. “He said that’s what he was thinking, but he admitted that some part of him knew at that point that Tiffany was beyond help. So he stayed where he was but remained watchful and vigilant, ready to bolt if he had to.”

  She straightened up, placing her hands on the arms of her chair and taking in a slow, bracing breath. “The cops met up with him some ten or fifteen minutes later, and an ambulance arrived shortly after that. The paramedics pronounced Tiffany dead there in the car, and the cops put Ben in one of their cars to get his story. I don’t know how long they were there, but at some point the cops drove down the road with Ben to try to find the spot where the guy with the gun had first appeared. But Ben was unable to pinpoint the exact spot because the wind had drifted the snow, changing the terrain and covering up any tracks.”

  She gave a wan smile then. “The rest you can more or less figure out. The cops took Ben to a local station and questioned him into the night. They released him the next morning, and he rented a car to drive home. One week later he was arrested for Tiffany’s murder. The cops said they didn’t believe there was an attempted carjacking. They thought Ben killed Tiffany and made up the story about the guy with the gun.”

  She looked around the room, gauging the various reactions. Several seconds of silence ensued as everyone digested the story. Some of the folks in the room—Joe, Frank, Carter, and Sam—studied Sandra Middleton. The others looked at anything but her.

  Carter finally broke the silence with a new question. “What evidence was there against your brother?”

  “Well, for starters, the cops said the gun was traced back to some thug here in Milwaukee, who admitted to selling it to a man two weeks before the shooting. And supposedly this guy identified Ben in a photo lineup as the man he sold it to. The cops theorized that Ben and Tiff’s marriage was falling apart and the trip was a last-ditch effort to try to save it. Knowing that it might not work, Ben had a backup plan, because he realized he might lose out on the Gallagher family money if he and Tiffany divorced. So when things didn’t go so well, he decided to kill Tiffany instead and make it look like a carjacking gone wrong.”

  Sandra paused again and studied some of the faces in the room. “That’s not what happened,” she insisted. “Ben loved Tiffany so much. She was his life. If you could have heard him talk about her the way I did, you’d know there’s no way he killed her.”

  Sam shrugged. “Money is a powerful motive,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be the first time intense love turned to intense hate.”

  Sandra shook her head vehemently. “Ben wouldn’t hurt a fly. And I mean that literally. When we were kids, we had this cabin up north, on Lake Superior, that my parents took us to every summer. The place had no air-conditioning, so the windows were open all the time, and despite the screens, tons of flies always made it inside. My parents hung those sticky fly strips all over the place. I can remember Ben standing beneath one of those strips, staring up at a couple of flies that were stuck to it and still alive, still moving. He looked so sad, and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me he couldn’t stand seeing the flies suffer like that. It bothered him so much that he actually got a kitchen knife and tried to scrape one of the flies from the strip and set it free outside.” She paused, a half smile on her face. “The fly died, anyway, and Ben cried for it.”

  Several people in the group looked skeptical.

  “I know it isn’t much,” Sandra said, not missing the doubt on some of the faces. “But I know my brother. He didn’t do this.”

  “Does he have any theories as to who did?” Frank asked.

  Sandra shook her head, looking frustrated and sad. “He insists he didn’t know the guy with the gun.”

  “So they have this money motive and a witness who says your brother bought the gun used in the crime,” Carter said. “That doesn’t seem like a lot of evidence. What else do they have?”

  “They found Ben’s fingerprints on the gun, and gunpowder residue on his hands and sleeves. But Ben said he was holding the gun and struggling with the carjacker both times it fired. Wouldn’t that explain the gunpowder residue?”

  “It could,” Carter said, and a few others in the room nodded in agreement.

  “Ben also said that once the carjacker gave up and let go of the gun, he held it with his hand on the trigger, pointing it out the window as the carjacker ran off, in case he came back. So that explains why his fingerprints were on it.”

  “Were his the only ones?” Carter asked.

  Sandra nodded. “It was cold and blustery outside, and Ben said the guy with the gun was wearing gloves. Ben’s car had a heated steering wheel, so he had taken his off.”

  “What about the bullets?” Carter asked. Originally, Carter had been focused on writing novels, but once he joined the Capone Club, he shifted his interest to writing true crime. As part of this newfound career, he’d been doing some forensic homework, and now he was putting some of that newly acquired knowledge to work. “Any prints on those or the spent cartridges?”

  “Not that I know of,” Sandra said.

  I said, “What proof did they offer that your brother’s marriage was on the rocks? If he and Tiffany were celebrating their anniversary and a romantic Valentine’s Day, it would seem to imply that their relationship was on good terms.”

  “As far as I knew, it was,” Sandra said with a shrug. “They seemed loving, and Ben told me not long before this last trip that they were talking about starting a family.” She frowned and gave us a half smile. “I mean, they fought. All couples do. But they never stayed mad at one another for very long, and overall, they seemed to get along just fine. But . . .” Sandra paused, biting her lip.

  “There was something that came out in the trial. During the autopsy, they found seminal fluid in Tiff
any’s . . . you know.” She blushed, waving a hand in the air, and several people nodded. “Anyway, they said there was no sperm, just the fluid, and apparently, they weren’t able to get any DNA. But they were able to determine a blood type or something like that, and they said the blood type ruled out Ben as the donor. So the assumption was that Tiffany was having an affair.”

  Looks were exchanged, and Sandra didn’t miss them. “Look, I don’t blame you for being skeptical,” she said in an exasperated tone. “Clearly, there was evidence that pointed toward my brother. Otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is now. But I’m telling you, he didn’t do it.” She hesitated, casting that pleading expression around the room yet again. “Ben loved Tiffany so much that even if Tiffany was having an affair and he found out about it, he wouldn’t have killed her over it. He would have done everything he could to try to save the marriage.” More looks of skepticism. “Please, all I’m asking is that you look into it.”

  I looked around the room at the others and sensed that they, like me, were skeptical but were also touched by Sandra’s conviction. I decided to give Sandra a little test. “Sandra, I’m going to ask you to do something that might seem odd and a little unsettling. But I need you to bear with me.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, looking wary.

  “I want you to tell me that your brother is guilty.”

  Sandra reared back as if I’d slapped her. “But he isn’t.”

  “Please, just do it.”

  Sandra looked hurt and betrayed, and she stared back at me with barely concealed anger. I watched the emotions play over her face, curious to see what would win out. In the end she gave in to common sense or desperation, or maybe both. “My brother did it,” she said with obvious distaste. “He killed Tiffany.”

  Her voice made the herbal taste in my mouth turn bitter, almost rancid. This suggested to me that she clearly believed in her cause, but it was no guarantee that her brother was innocent.

  “Thank you,” I told her with a warm smile. “I’m sorry I had to ask you to do that, and I know you don’t understand why I did, but believe me when I tell you it was helpful. Would you mind giving us some time to discuss the matter among ourselves before we decide if we’re going to look into your brother’s case? We’ll talk about it and see if we can come to some sort of consensus. Can you come back in a couple of days?”

  Sandra smiled with obvious relief and a hint of hope. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Don’t thank us yet,” I told her. “We haven’t agreed to do anything.”

  “I know, but the simple fact that you’re willing to even consider it gives me hope.” She then reached into the messenger bag she’d brought with her, removed a folder, and held it out to me. “These are my notes regarding the trial. I quit my job and moved back home with my parents so I could attend every day.”

  We certainly couldn’t fault her dedication to her brother.

  “What kind of work did you do?” Carter asked.

  “I was in pharmaceutical sales.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “To be honest, I hated the job, so I was more than happy to give it up.” While her altruism sank a notch with that confession, she clearly believed in her brother and was hurting over his fate. I figured the least we could do was give the case consideration.

  Sandra donned her coat, grabbed her bag, and headed out, thanking us three more times as she left. Once she was gone, the group sat in silence for a minute or two. I scanned their faces, seeing doubt, skepticism, curiosity and, in Carter’s case, eagerness. No doubt he was hoping the case might provide him with yet another true crime for one of his books. He was already working on a book about Tiny’s sister’s case and had even secured an agent who was willing to take him on and look at the work once it was done.

  “What do you guys think?” I asked the group.

  Carter spoke first. “She certainly seems convinced of her brother’s innocence.”

  Everyone nodded, and then Sam offered up the first counterpoint. “But conviction from a loved one doesn’t count for much.”

  This, too, generated several nods, and then Joe offered up a suggestion. “Mack, maybe you should talk with her brother, do that lie detector thing you do. See if his side of the story rings true.”

  My lie detector thing, which is just my synesthetic reaction to the subtle changes in people’s voices, isn’t 100 percent foolproof—I’ve run across some people who lie so well or mask their emotions to such an extent that there is no change for me to detect. But most people aren’t good enough liars to fool me. Some of the members of the group had been skeptical of my ability at first, and they’d tested me with some games. One by one each person in the room would utter a statement that was either true or false, some tidbit about themselves or their lives. Then they would ask me to determine if it was a truth or a falsehood. I knew the members of the group and the taste of their voices well by then so the tests had been relatively easy for me. I’d been right every time, a detail that made some of them eye me nervously. I couldn’t blame them for being a bit uncomfortable. I often picked up on lies among customers and with my staff, too. There were times when I’d overhear part of a conversation and know someone was fabricating a lie. As a result, my staff learned over time that if they called in sick and weren’t, I’d be able to tell. So the quirk did come with some perks.

  “I’m not crazy about the idea of making another prison visit,” I told the group. I’d gone to the Waupun Correctional Institution recently, when we were looking into the Gruber-Hermann case, and it had been a disquieting experience. “But I suppose that’s as good a place as any to start.” I looked over at Cora, who had been tapping away on her keyboard ever since Sandra left. “Do you know where he is?”

  She nodded. “Just found it,” she said. “He’s at Waupun. Just like Lonnie Carlisle.” Carlisle had been a suspect in the Gruber investigation.

  Resigned, I said, “I’ll get in touch with Tyrese and see if he can arrange for me to visit him tomorrow.” Tyrese was one of the local police officers who worked with the Capone Club, and he had arranged the prior visit to the prison. I handed the folder Sandra had given me to Cora. “Make copies of this for the others in the group so everyone can look through it. Look it over and research what you can to see if you come up with anything.”

  Cora nodded and took the file. “Can I use the copier in your office?”

  I nodded and slid my keys over to her. She gathered up her laptop, which was as much a part of her as her clothing, and headed downstairs.

  Frank Signoriello said, “Mack, you made that woman tell you her brother was guilty so you could do your lie detector thing with her, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “What did you determine?”

  “She seemed sincere. I can’t say if her brother is innocent or not, but she definitely believes he is.”

  “If you believe in her, that’s enough for me to commit to at least looking into it,” Frank said.

  “Me too,” his brother said, chiming in. This was followed by a chorus of other agreements from around the room.

  I looked over at the newcomers, Greg Nash and Sonja West. Normally, we tried to avoid discussing actual cases in front of new arrivals, but in this case it had been unavoidable. I could see the puzzled looks on their faces and guessed their confusion was related to the discussion of me and my lie detector abilities rather than to the case itself.

  “Greg, Sonja, do the two of you have an interest in being a part of this?” I asked.

  Greg nodded eagerly, but Sonja hesitated.

  “You’re probably wondering what this talk about my lie detector ability is all about,” I said, and they both nodded. “I have a neurological disorder called synesthesia,” I began, and then I explained it to them, with an occasional assist from one of the other members of the group. When I was done, I said, “Any questions?”

  Greg and Sonja both shook their heads.

  “Good. If
the others agree, the two of you are welcome to assist us through this process.” I looked around the room as the other members of the group either nodded or mumbled their assents. “Okay then. Here’s how it works. We often solicit input from everyone when we discuss potential scenarios, motives, suspects, and such. Please feel free to offer up an opinion. And if you have any connections or areas of expertise that you think might be of use to us during the investigatory process, we’d appreciate any help you can provide.”

  Neither of them said anything, but they nodded in unison.

  “One other thing,” I said. “Keep in mind that anything we do needs to stay under the radar. The press has been hounding me ever since we solved our first case, and I don’t want any of them to get a whiff of what we’re up to. Be careful about who you talk to and who might be within earshot when you do it.”

  “No problem,” Greg said.

  “Understood,” Sonja offered.

  “Thanks, guys. And to show my appreciation for all the hard work you’re about to do, I’m buying a round of drinks on the house.” That brought smiles to everyone’s faces. “In honor of the upcoming holiday, I’m treating everyone to a Santa Claus shot. I’ll send someone up with them shortly.” I rose from my chair and grabbed my crutches. “I’ve got some other business to tend to for a while, but I’ll come back later.”

  With that, I hobbled out of the room and headed downstairs to see if the mail had come yet, because the other business I had to tend to was the letter writer. I had to make sure my little group of crime solvers stayed alive long enough to help Sandra Middleton, if her claims seemed warranted.