The Company of Demons

by Michael Jordan

  “But—”

  She interrupted, as though she weren’t even listening to me. “Maybe Flanagan found out, doing his own investigation.”

  “But why would he even think about me and Martha?”

  “Ever think that Jennifer might have known all along? Maybe the sisters even had a chitchat, before Martha kicked off, about the size of your dick.”

  “No, Arlene, fuck it, no. Her sister would come up in conversation sometimes, and Jennifer had no idea.”

  “Oh, right. You did such a masterful job of reading her.”

  “Well, should we have recalled—?”

  “What? You’re second-guessing my decision to rest …”

  “No, I—”

  “You recall a witness if there is surprise testimony, or the prosecutor held something back. There was no surprise here, no holding back, because you knew. The only one in the fucking courtroom who should have known and didn’t, was me!”

  “Calm down, Arlene. It was my fuck-up.”

  “Unbelievable.” She straightened her arms against the table and dropped her head. After a moment, she sat back. “If you’d told me, Martha would have been handled during my direct. You would have still sounded like an asshole, but I could have controlled the situation.”

  “All I can say is that I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head, her lips drawn tight, and then said, “I had a stake in this too, and you made me look stupid. Every lawyer in town will wonder if my brilliant strategy was to play hide-the-ball-from-the-jury. Perhaps you never figured it out, but I worked my ass off to build my life. Fucking Flanagan left a land mine for me, and my own client let me step on it.”

  Flanagan had not raised my affair with Martha during his casein-chief, predicting—accurately—that I’d have to take the stand. Drawing the admission out of me on cross was much more damning. “Like I said, Arlene, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “This case came down to your word against hers. How do you like them apples?” She looked away in disgust.

  “You have no idea … is there something I can do … help prep for the close?” I needed her to deliver the closing argument of a lifetime, but I’d crushed her, sucked the spirit out of her.

  She tossed her hair and leaned onto the table. Accepting my apology wasn’t on her agenda. “Don’t worry about the close. I need to figure a way to spin the pile of shit you left me into gold for the jury. But if it goes south, you’ll know one big reason why. And don’t get too drunk tonight. The least you can do is be half-ass alert tomorrow.” She was up and gone. I waited several minutes, knowing that she didn’t want me to accompany her in the elevator, before heading down to St. Clair and hailing a taxi. The cabbie who eventually pulled to the curb wasn’t a chatty type, thank God. He examined me in the rearview mirror and seemed to recognize my face from all the press coverage, but had the decency to just drive. The radio blared hip-hop, a genre that I found grating and one likely to dominate my cell block.

  The locks went unchecked that night. What the fuck did it matter? I considered just opening the front door, scattering some knives on the kitchen counter, and inviting Torso to have at it. With a stiff whiskey in hand, I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling. Jennifer marched into my head with her teasing voice. How could you not have known I’d be a great witness? Pretending comes naturally to me, even faking pleasure at the thrust of your tired body against mine. You made it so easy.

  I rearranged the pillow about a hundred damn times, wanting nothing more than to drown in a bucket of booze. Bernie. Fucking, fucking Bernie. Arlene’s admonition to show up in the morning without a hangover was fresh on my mind, but my thoughts wandered in a different direction. Maybe the prudent course was to swallow a bottle of aspirin and wash the pills down with a fifth.

  I’d been able to maintain the course because of Molly and, maybe, the slim possibility of making things right with Cathy. My wife was now out of the equation, permanently, and there was no way of knowing how my daughter would react. Schoolyard barbs echoed in my head. And he fucked her sister, too!

  There were several reasons that I ultimately drained my last drink and lay quietly in the dark. Killing myself would be contrary to the teachings of the Church and only bring further shame to Cathy. Torso, the Butcher, and Jennifer would all have a macabre victory, too, if the cops found me cold and blue when I failed to show up for court.

  But the true motivation for determining to live, to put one tentative foot in front of the other, was because I could not do to Molly what my father had done to me. No matter the jury’s verdict, no matter my punishment, I would be there for my daughter until they slipped an icy needle into my vein.

  42

  The morning came too early, and I banged down a cup of coffee, interspersed with several spoonfuls of yogurt, before trotting out to Jack’s waiting car.

  “You doin’ okay?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

  “Slept like hell. All this shit … lots of rotten dreams last night. The Butcher, Jennifer. And Bernie, hell, had to be him who tipped off Flanagan about me and Martha. I’ve known him since we were kids, and he does that to me.”

  “I can ask him point blank if you want.”

  “Let me think about it; not sure it even matters, now.” Bernie had written me out of his life, that was for sure, and then some.

  “All I know is you picked a helluva combo for a twofer.” Jack flashed a wild grin as he backed down the driveway. “Never saw that comin’, that’s for sure.”

  He made me smile in spite of everything, and I wished we could just motor away—New York, Toronto. “I’m gonna miss you, man.”

  Grunting, he shifted into drive. “I talked to the guy in California again. He’s still making calls, workin’ his sources.”

  “Yeah, but it’s been months, and what’s he got to show for it?” I pictured more dollar bills fluttering out the window. “Tell him to give it a rest.”

  “Serious?”

  “I’m askin’ you to do it for me, Jack. Just stop. There’s nothin’ in California. Mary’s not gonna walk through the courthouse door and testify that she told Jennifer where Frank was. No one’s going to put Jennifer at the scene. Just tell your guy in San Diego to send a final bill.” We were silent for a spell, just two men in a car. When we pulled onto the Shoreway, I stared out the window, across Edgewater Park, to the lake shimmering in the morning sun. Now that was the way to go, not a lethal injection—just slide beneath the surface of the cool water and watch the sunlight fade to a cold, shadowy black.

  Jack accelerated, checking his rearview mirror and then looking back to me. His voice took on an odd, gentle quality. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “Nothin’ worked out, Jack. Not a thing in my life.”

  “Well, I’m startin’ to think we don’t have to worry about Torso so much.” He cleared his throat. “That’s one thing.”

  I could see what he was doing. He was letting me know that he’d be okay, that there was no need to worry about the Torso Murderer getting to him. “He wouldn’t stand a chance against you, Jack. For me, not sure it makes a difference if the jury comes back like I expect.”

  He gave me a wry smile. “Well, which way would you rather go? A quick needle, or …”

  “Fuck you!” I laughed aloud. “But you’re right; I’m getting the better deal.”

  “Just pointin’ out that you’re a man with options.” Jack glanced away, out the window. “Cathy called me last night. Says she’s not coming back to court anymore.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Her decision, Johnny.”

  There are things we can’t control—that was the message Jack was sending me. We parked in the usual spot and walked into the courthouse. The old bastard had lightened my load. They might strap me in shackles in no time, but I would never forget Jack Corrigan, a true friend.

  Jennifer was already seated in the gallery when we walked into the courtroom, and
her presence was legit, given that all of the testimony had been concluded. She had every right to focus her hazel eyes on my back. Flanagan was across the room, coiled and ready to pounce. Because the prosecutor has the burden of proof, he would speak to the jury initially, followed by Arlene. Flanagan would also be the last one to face the jury box and deliver the final argument in the case.

  When the judge summoned him to begin, Flanagan took center stage and seemed to own the jury before he uttered a word, before he ran a hand through his thick hair or adjusted his dark tailored suit coat. His tie was a blaze of red and blue. Softly, he said, “What do you do when a man asks you to trust him, to believe in him? You must fairly ask: what has this man done to convince me that he’s telling the truth?”

  He turned to me, and sixteen sets of eyes, jurors and alternates, followed his penetrating gaze. I was a creature on display, at the zoo, and I fixed my eyes on his barrel chest as beads of perspiration gathered on my forehead.

  “The defendant here wants you to believe him.” Flanagan’s voice was louder now. “What has he done to earn your trust? The man sitting at that table is an admitted adulterer who had the watch that Frank Frederickson wore—a gift from his father, his retirement watch—thirty-five thousand dollars, and a bloody knife concealed in the wheel well of his car.”

  Flanagan discredited my testimony with inflection alone. I watched the jury as he paraded in front of them, working without notes and never breaking eye contact. “And he slept with Jennifer Browning’s sister, the deceased daughter of her murdered father. He claims that his infidelity was a mistake, and that he made the same mistake later, when he seduced Jennifer.”

  He froze in place for a moment, before pivoting sharply. “At the least, there’s no mistake that Mr. Coleman earned the title of double-adulterer, is there? Maybe there’s a special name for a man who seduces two sisters, but frankly, I don’t know what it is. What you must do when you deliberate, however, is to ask yourself this: Can you trust a man like that?”

  More than a couple of them nodded in agreement with Flanagan. If there had been a towel in my hand, I might have just tossed it at his feet. He was relentless, reviewing the police reports and the pertinent testimony, rehashing the fingerprint analysis.

  “Counsel for the defendant raised some questions about the fingerprints—might this have happened, could this have occurred? But her questions fail to explain away the defendant’s prints on the knife that the testimony indisputably shows is consistent with the weapon used to slit Frank Frederickson’s throat. Only the defendant’s own testimony—his claim that he must have handled the knife at Jennifer’s apartment—could explain how his prints were left on the knife, other than when that sharp blade was used to brutally kill another human being.”

  Flanagan held the evidence bag aloft, as though the murder weapon were a trophy.

  “And that’s if you conclude that someone else—Jennifer, a Mexican gang, whatever it is they are claiming—used the same knife to commit the murder, or dipped a similar knife in a dead man’s blood to frame the defendant. But before you can dismiss the fingerprints on this knife, which you must do if you attempt to find this defendant not guilty, you have to ask yourself whether you can trust this man.”

  Flanagan prowled about the room and built toward a climax that would impress the jurors and remain fresh in their minds during deliberations.

  “Frank Frederickson had, in many ways, a sad life. He watched a mother and a sister die, suffered through the brutal murder of his father, and he battled his own demons. But he was able to live and breathe and laugh and cry and go about his life every single day—until the night the defendant claims to have stumbled upon his body in a pool of blood. He can’t tell his sister all of the things he would have liked to say, he can’t cry out for justice, he can’t tell us what happened the night someone ripped a steel blade across his throat. Now, only you can speak for Frank Frederickson.”

  Flanagan wheeled toward me and leveled a finger in my direction, his face a mask of revulsion. He had used my name sparingly, but now spat out all three syllables, each one dripping with venom. “John Coleman. Only you can find him guilty as charged!”

  The courtroom was silent, except for the muted whirr of the camera. Resisting the urge to grip the table for support, I feared that the jury might burst into applause.

  The judge looked at Arlene and gestured that it was her turn. As she rose, I stole a glance at Jennifer. She was a picture of calm and composure, a fine mist clouding her beautiful eyes. She caught me looking and, ever so slightly, smiled.

  43

  Arlene was fluid persuasion in court, her hair perfectly coifed and her scarlet dress projecting a regal authority. She chiseled away at every chip she’d made in the prosecution’s case and bolstered any hint of doubt. “And it is the prosecutor who bears the burden of proof, the weight of convincing you that Mr. Coleman is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And it is a reasonable doubt when fingerprints are smudged, when a knife cannot be positively identified as a murder weapon, when …”

  Her lyrical voice faltered a bit when she addressed my credibility, making sure the jury understood that even she found my behavior offensive.

  “I’m not asking you to like my client. Frankly, I don’t. He lied and cheated on his wife. And sleeping with Ms. Browning’s sister? Some, including me, would call his behavior immoral and crude. But people are funny when it comes to adultery. They lie about it and hide it and deny it. They don’t talk about it. That doesn’t make any of it right, but we don’t punish them by finding them guilty of something they didn’t do. And John Coleman did not murder Frank Frederickson.”

  Arlene did her best to spin every bit of evidence in my favor. When she had completed a summary that was as convincing as anything I could hope for, she stood completely still, a pillar in the middle of the courtroom. “The prosecuting attorney asked you to think about Frank Frederickson, and I request that you do the same—a young man who was murdered, his life snuffed out too soon. That is, by anyone’s definition, a terrible wrong. But we don’t make that wrong worse by sending the wrong man to prison. I didn’t know Frank Frederickson and neither did you, but I’m betting that he wouldn’t want an innocent man punished for this crime. Let society punish John Coleman for what we know he did, but that cannot include the crime of murder.”

  She walked slowly back to our table, the jurors’ eyes locked on her, the courtroom still. Flanagan rose to make his rebuttal, a boxer eager for the next round. He could have stepped from the pages of GQ magazine: a shellacked and glittering shell concealing a ruthless heart.

  “I commend my opposing counsel for her noble efforts to create some doubt in your mind. But there will always be some doubt, because none of us was there that fateful night. Do a few smeared fingerprints make you doubt? So a threatening gang was looking for Frank Frederickson—does that instill doubt? How about the notion that Jennifer Browning might have killed her own brother—any doubt there?”

  He stepped away, his forehead furrowed and his fingertips pressed together. “The question is whether any of that doubt is reasonable. Is it reasonable, in light of Frank Frederickson’s blood on a knife consistent with the murder weapon, hidden in the trunk of John Coleman’s car? Is it reasonable, in light of the money stashed away in that very same vehicle? The watch?”

  Flanagan stepped forward and leaned against the beech railing of the jury box, his arms spread wide. “We all know the answer. And we know something else. John Coleman is a liar.” He turned and pointed at me again, backing away from the jury, his voice breaking. “Do not let Frank Frederickson’s killer go unpunished!”

  Damn. But tears glimmered in those green eyes. Even I had to admit that the brevity of his comments made the entire case seem open and shut. The jury remained fixed on him until he took his seat, then turned their attention to the judge. In a stiff monotone, Seidelson somberly read the jury instructions, and the courtroom seemed funereal. There would be no heroic
last-minute save this time, no armed cops storming down the basement stairs.

  The judge completed his recitation just after five o’clock and recessed for the day. Jack dropped me at home, as usual, and I soon found myself with a glass of whiskey on the living room couch, eyeing cheery family photos still lined up on the mantel, below the crucifix. Our wedding picture, me in a tuxedo with comically wide lapels, and Cathy in a lacy white wedding gown, just the two of us, enclosed in a faux gold frame. No matter how Jennifer had urged me on, I could never reach the decision to end my marriage. And, in that basement, I’d wanted nothing more than a fresh start with Cathy.

  What the Butcher had slashed away could not compare with what Jennifer had done. I thought of her, of what she’d said and done and touched, every minute of every day. Her charms had ensnared me, and I’d obliviously staggered from one bad decision to another. And tomorrow, when that earnest jury filed into the courtroom, I knew Jennifer would emerge the victor. She had dismembered me in ways not even the Torso Murderer could match.

  I drained my whiskey and held the glass up to the light, enjoying, for just a moment, the glittering refraction. Jennifer’s hair—her blonde tresses shimmered in the light like that. I heaved the glass into the fireplace and watched the shards and slivers scatter against the brick.

  44

  The next morning, Arlene and I retreated to a vacant deliberation room, while the jury debated my fate in another. The swivel chairs squeaked, and the off-white walls closed in on me. Arlene, on the opposite side of the long, rectangular table, rubbed her eyes. Every bit of her seemed exhausted, from her unusually haggard appearance to her plain brown suit. “If the jury rules against you, we need to revisit the issue of mitigating circumstances, see how we can persuade them that the death penalty isn’t warranted.”