UNDER SIEGE (A Story Of Hope)

by Ciuri Di Badia

  Dan pointed to Tommy’s apartment as detective Allen noted down something into his notebook. He then thanked Dan for the helpful information he provided.

  An officer was sent to check-out Tommy's apartment. None of the doors had been locked since the officer was able to give all the rooms a once over. However, Tommy himself was nowhere to be seen. Nobody had seen him leave; not even James.

  Detective Allen stood up and went to consult with his officers. He then walked inside Birma’s apartment to the corpse. He looked at the body bag sternly before opening its zipper. It pained him a lot to see her face. It looked so young and full of promise. It was at that moment that meek thoughts crossed his mind. They were coupled with reflections of her beauty that turned over in his mind. He was bowled over by the person who did such an atrocious act to her. As he looked closely at her wounded forehead, his pain got even worse; it was as if the perpetrator had slighted him in person. He couldn’t understand it, but what he felt was unmistakable. Birma had been cruelly aggrieved.

  He zipped up the body bag and slowly walked past the scattering onlookers into the apartment as their glimpsing eyes deciphered his every move. With his interlocked fingers under his chin, he sat on a divan sofa and faced the passive television. In his mind were thoughts of possible perpetrators of the odious crime.

  The detective mulled ‘Tommy seems so suspicious to me. Why did he disappear at the time the murder happened? It’s as if he has something to do with this. Let me get this right. Perhaps he was enraged at the sight of his perceived girlfriend sleeping with Dan. He must have felt hood-winked.

  It is possible for an estranged man like the infuriated Tommy to decide to slay her. He would seek vengeance for the treachery. That’s it, there is no other elucidation. I see no other person I can ascribe all this to as a suspect. Yeah, Tommy becomes my first suspect. This is a possible crime of passion. Tommy might have had murdered because of a love triangle that went sour.

  There is motive and circumstantial evidence. They are all pointing at Tommy. Considering all the situations that surround this case, I think I am justified to put Tommy’s name as the main suspect; further more there was no robbery of any sort. I first have to implicate that runaway-guy. The hammer has to fall on somebody anyway.’

  Detective Allen and his team packed the body into a waiting police ambulance. It was then hauled to the morgue to wait for an autopsy the following day. The collected evidences were taken to the police lockers in the evidence room. They were to be used by the police in their investigations and by the prosecutor for the purposes of a court case. The apartment was then locked and cordoned off as a crime scene.

  The next morning, her body was taken to the laboratory where the pathologist examined it. He later mummified it before returning it to the morgue; pending her burial.

  As I stated before, Detective work and general investigation is cumbersome and brain numbing. I tried it once during my college years. At that time I was less knowledgeable as I am now but I managed to pull out something with what I knew. To give you an approach from a layman view, I’ll raconteur what happened below:

  A friend of mine was living in a dorm room that was divided into three cubicles. He shared the dorm room with his other two contemporaries. They attended the same lectures and did a lot of stuff together. They were nothing short of brothers. In spite of all that, one of his dorm-mates used to rip where they did not sow. whoever it was used to open his suitcase and filch out his savings. It had happened twice. My friend got so pissed off with it that he decided to catch the doer.

  When he consulted me on the matter, I advised him not to talk to his roommates about it but instead, capitalize on playing ignorant. It is called the rule of mislead and conquer. It’s simple. You see, when you don’t talk about such an issue, the doer may think that you do not realize that something was stolen from you or that you are a coward who cannot react. Ultimately, they may tend to continue with their rancid acts, giving you an opportunity to catch them.

  That evening I thought about the issue but I couldn’t get an answer. However, through the night, I managed to device an a way. It was based on the dissimilarity that people have when fastening the zippers of their suitcases. I advised my friend Brian to be closing his suitcase with the zippers left in the most unusual positions. If anybody trespassed or opened the suitcase, they would most likely not return the zippers in place as Brian would have done. In such a scenario, Brian would notice that somebody had prowled into his suitcase even before opening it himself. The way the bag-breaker would close the zipper would become Brian’s weapon.

  Out of ignorance, the interloper would probably zip Brian’s suitcase in the same manner that he zips his. By Brian noting the way that his suitcase has been zipped, he would then go to his roommate’s hand baggage and look for the zipping pattern that he found in his own. Between the two roommates, he would then establish who had his hands on his bag.

  It took him two weeks of monitoring until he found a strange occurrence. He did as I had instructed and from that, he was able to identify the swiper amongst his two roommates. As a detective, one needs to be smart, sharp, open minded and most importantly, creative. It is the only way of pacing up with the crooks.

  Again lets go back to the main story; Tommy's story. Immediately, the police launched a vigorous pursuit to capture Tommy, whom they enlisted as the first suspect in Birma’s murder. They engaged their tracking division which located Tommy via his cell phone. They employed their devices by using his phone as a transmitter until they got to his exact location. They pinpointed him at Parkways Avenue.

  Tommy was cleansing his fury inside a swing-club when the police were about to zero-in on him. His rage was still burning deep in his mind as he reflected the sight of Dan romping with his girl. He was a shattered man. Apart from his drinks and the skimpy and voluptuous girls that flooded the place, Tommy had nothing else to lean on. He continually imbibed tequila, shot after shot after shot.

  The police apprehended him on sight. They then cuffed him up before dragging his drunk self into an awaiting car. On arrival at the police station, they made mug shots of his sorry face before interrogating him for a while. Later, he found himself gaoled as a remand at Kelly’s penitentiary in Brooklyn.

  Life had suddenly changed for the worse. His stay in confinement became his worst nightmare. It was so difficult that in four days he had lost twenty pounds. It took him a week to fully acclimatize to the mandatory routines at that penal colony. The food, the people, and the way he slept; he hated it all. The only place he preferred was inside the courtroom, of which he visited several times that week.

  The worst part of everything was the finger-pointing impugn that he was facing from Birma’s family during her requiem. The death aroused ugly passions and created an inextricable odium towards Tommy. Birma's father cursed earth under Tommy for loosing his daughter. Her mother, being a consecrated Hindu, prayed for redemption of Tommy’s soul in inexplicable incantations. I state that not for the purposes of preaching anti-Semitism but for the purposes of telling the story as it happened.

  Tommy hired a renowned criminal barrister who was able to put up a strong defense for him. He coordinated witnesses who would testify in favor of Tommy as he filled the missing links so that their account would connect. He managed to hasten the case and in a few weeks it was nearing conclusion stages. However, it was an uphill task for the barrister considering the magnitude of the indictment. With a first degree charge murder, Tommy could not be grunted bail. He therefore had to spend his time as a remand while the case proceeded.

  He longed for a ruling upon his case. The possible sentence did not bother him as much as the uncertainty in his mind did. He was being troubled more by not knowing if he would be convicted or acquitted than the idea that he could be condemned to many years behind bars. You see, in his view, it was not the judgment itself that mattered but when it was to come. He wanted it soon.

  His job contract was terminated after
his absence from work for over one month. The Atlantic charter company’s policies stated that if an employee failed to report for duty in a period exceeding one month, they were to be dismissed with no benefits paid to them. That is; if they did not issue a prior notice for their absence or if the reason they gave was not convincing enough.

  The management’s decision only exacerbated Tommy's situation. Not only did he loose his freedom and good reputation but also his means of living. He wondered what he stood to loose next. Was it going to be his mind or his life? He marveled. He was only remained with the two and if he were to loose one more of his things; it was going to be one of those.

  His life had changed for the worse. He was not sure where he went wrong. He only wished he knew. From loving a girl, to loosing her and consequently, to find himself behind bars just because of her death; was too much. He only hoped that it would all end. But alas, he had a long way to go; a long, long way to go.

  Although all the circumstantial evidence pointed at Tommy, it was not credible enough to undoubtedly incriminate him. The testimonies from witnesses, the circumstances surrounding Birma's murder, Tommy's behavior after her death and most importantly, the perceived-normal-layman’s appraisal that everybody believed in; all pointed to Tommy being guilty. However, the jury, on their verdict, termed it as a fallacy that was not sufficiently conclusive to ascertain that it was Tommy who actually carried out the murder.

  As the judge stated, Tommy’s alibi also played a big part in clearing him of a role in the murder of Birma. The defense was able to account and bear out how Tommy spent his time on the evening of the murder. However, that did not have a solid ground to completely exonerate him as a suspect. Its main undoing was that the prosecutor claimed that the defense could have shammed witnesses who would testify on the alibi in favor of Tommy. However, his assertions did not yield any fruit since they lacked evidence in the eyes of the factual judicial system.

  Contrary to the expectations of many, the judge lifted the case and consequently ordered the unconditional release of Tommy on basis that he did not find any reason that warranted his remaining behind bars. “The prosecution has failed to attest its accusations” the judge added. He however ordered the court bailiff to authenticate Tommy’s alibi and consequently avail his findings before the court in three days.

  In spite of that, Tommy was conscripted from leaving New York City pending his alibis certification. Failure to which, he was bound to be in breach of a court order that barred him from leaving the city. A plaintiff was assigned the role of ensuring an effect to that court order.

  The court’s decision was a disappointment to Det. Allen's expectations. It pained him that all his efforts had hit a dead end. He was still convinced that Tommy was the murderer. Everything in his knowledge purported so. He had worked tooth and nail to put together any piece of evidence that he could possibly come across. Now, he is reduced to square one. By the time he was concluding his investigation, he was certain that he had put another murderer to where he belongs; but it was never to be. It broke his heart to see Tommy, the man he believed took the life of a defenseless woman, go free. Det. Allen could not believe what was happening; it nearly made him crumble under the agonizing pressure of despair.

  Detective Allen called it a day and moved on in his pursuit of justice. He put his mind in other cases that were under his obligation. However, it was hard for him to forget Tommy’s case. The case was like a ledge on his doorstep that he tripped on every time he went through the door.

  As the detective put together evidences that he collected, flashbacks flashed in his mind. He saw himself in Birma’s apartment, doing just what he had done over a month before. It pained his heart to know that Tommy was walking free just as any other man of a high moral rectitude. He severally cursed at Tommy for the mental plight that he was causing him.

  As a result of being out of work for sometime and the cash-guzzling court cases, Tommy was running out of means. He would soon be penniless. He needed money and he needed it soon. His upkeep was not assured and he didn’t have an idea of where to earn it. He knew too well that no one would employ him curtsey of his criminal record. That grim reality pained him a lot, more so, knowing that there was nothing that he could do about it. With the future seeming so bleak, Tommy could only see challenges; challenges that would form a part of his life for many days to come.

  It did not take long before Tommy found himself out in a limbo; he proliferated into a-nobody in a city that doesn’t know the principle of siblinghood. To his surprise, his maiden cousin, who was working as a journalist, came into his rescue. She took him in for the moment until he got his job back or rather, found another one. However, Tommy could not get off his feet lest his case was closed and pulled off the books. He also could not receive welfare doles from the government as he was under scrutiny.

  That was the worst nadir point that Tommy had ever flunked to. It was unimaginable how the case had reduced him to a modest, humble man who was being put up by his cousin.

  Later the courts jury produced a legal binding report that totally exonerated Tommy and closed his case indefinitely. It came at a time when Tommy needed such a proof for good conduct. It gave him a green light to continue with his life.

  The report looked like this;

  TITTLE: A report

  DATE: 14/07/2010

  REF NO: 2034

  TOPIC: Acquaintance of Tommy Rodgers on charges of

  Murdering Miss Birma Nanji.

  findings

  Following the investigations that has been carried out by the commission of the court, the investigations by the detectives, the evidences and witnesses that testified before the court of law; we find no direct links that connects the accused to the murder.

  There has been an additional and extended probe that involved the screening of forensic evidence, equipment and personal belongings of the deceased. They all tested negative to both the fingerprints and the DNA sample of the accused.

  reccomendations:

  Due to the above circumstances coupled with those of the rights of the rights and franchise of the accused of a fair trial, as provided by the jurisprudence of this nation, we find him not guilty of the crime that he has been accused of. Unless otherwise as may be directed by a law court; the case is here-in closed unless the court decides otherwise according to demand by a respective ordinance.

  Written and compiled by

  J. G. Hawkins, secretary to the jury, Federal Court.

  Tommy had been reduced to ashes and everyone thought that he was finished. He was soon to rise from the vestiges and restore himself in the society; contrary to the popularly anticipated foreboding. He had his employment ‘ban’ lifted and his reputation cleaned. That was a relief to him as he had been distressed by his suppressing situation.

  He promised himself to restructure his life and make the best out of it, pick up from where he had left and move on to high levels, just as his ambitions had been, all along. He had to re-acclimatize himself to living like normal people: They work, get married, have children and build societies. Those are deemed as ‘successful’ people. That was what Tommy was looking forward to. There came his chance and according to him, he couldn’t afford to loose it.

  As weeks passed, he made developments in restructuring his life. His major breakthrough came when he got a job with Kyan departmental stores, a popular chain-supermarket firm. He moved out of his cousin’s house to a two bed roomed bungalow in the hill view street. It was an ambient place that gave Tommy the tranquility he required, especially at such a time when he was in need of it.

  It espoused him in his restoration as he sort to recover from the harrowing experience that he had faced. It had been a rough ride. Right from the moment that he laid his eyes on Birma to the time that he was acquitted of her murder.

  Moving on was a hard task for him but he had to do it anyway. He needed to heal. He resolved not to have any perfidious girlfriends as a stepping stone to a fresh star
t. He now knew how much it hurt to be hoodwinked by a woman. Birma had proved to him that a woman can actually break the heart of a man into a thousand pieces. It’s a feeling that he couldn’t compare to anything else. He just wished that he could forget it all and life go on.

  His mind was bothered and bothered by his ordeal but he couldn’t get a way of forgetting it all. Whichever way he looked at it, he could not stomach the possibility of stumbling upon a heterogeneous plight as he did with Birma. For him to avoid that, he had to follow his only remaining option; that is, to remain single. He knew it very well but, what held him back was the fact that he was supposed not to search if he were to remain single. He finally decided to go ahead. It served him well and as a result, he held on to it for a long time.

  * * * * * * *

  Searching, hooking up and dating are the most enjoyable stages of any relationship. One looks forward to seeing his/her partner, they constantly long to meet up and spend sometime together. When they finally do, they lighten and fire up when they are in each others company. Love flows and the two feel it. They do varied stuff; meeting in different places, doing fun stuff together and basically enjoying their time. It is their excitement about the next date or next love making that makes it be so magical, lively and thrilling.