Innocence On Trial

by Rick Bowers

  At long last, Laura had exonerated herself.

  Laura turned onto Meadow Lark Lane. Big houses. Nice part of town.

  She smiled at one more piece of personal news. She no longer worked for the Council Against Wrongful Convictions. With all the press coverage from the case, she’d gained quite the rep within the legal community. The head of an important advocacy group in Albany—the state capital—had tracked her down. He praised her work and offered her a job. It was a proposition Laura couldn’t pass up. Working for the Center for Legal Reform would enable her to push for new laws to help the incarcerated innocent even more. It would help prevent future innocent defendants from being convicted and locked up in tombs of the innocent. The reforms would help people across the legal spectrum. Fewer innocents would go to prison. Police would focus on actual criminals. Victims and survivors would see the real perpetrators punished. The public would have more confidence in the laws and the courts.

  Laura looked forward to the challenge—once her hiatus was over. She wouldn’t start the new job for another month. So, right now, she was a free agent—open to doing whatever.

  88

  Laura pulled up to the three-story, brick house at 122 Meadow Lark Lane. It had what real estate agents call curb appeal. Three stories, freshly painted. Large, shining windows flanked by black shutters. A wooden swing on the wrap-around porch. Shrubs flanking the brick walkway.

  Laura climbed out of the Mustang and strolled up the walk. The azaleas were blooming, the red bushes on fire. She bounded up the porch steps to the red oak door. The woman who’d invited her was waiting there. The woman who’d tracked her down and asked her to pay a visit. The woman who’d said it was vital that they meet.

  “Mrs. Lambert.” Laura smiled. “How are you?”

  “Thank you for coming, Laura,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Please come in and sit, and call me Josie.”

  For some reason, Josie Lambert looked up and down the street as Laura stepped past her.

  The two women sat in antique armchairs in the well-appointed living room. Josie wore a white, cotton dress. Much nicer than Laura’s loose-fitting, flannel shirt and faded jeans. What did she care? She wasn’t on duty. She didn’t have a job yet.

  Laura pointed to a framed photo of a young girl on the coffee table. “Is that Erin?” The girl in the picture was playing the piano, her eyes riveted on the keys. She was maybe ten years old.

  “Yes,” Josie Lambert confirmed in a voice that threatened to break. “It’s my little girl. My beautiful little girl.”

  Erin wondered, Is it a permanent shrine or a prop for my visit?

  Josie Lambert cleared her throat. “You must be wondering why I asked you to come down.”

  “Well, I was surprised to get your call. I know the trial was very upsetting to you and your husband.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to spare you the pain.”

  “No. You did the right thing.”

  Laura tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Let me explain.” Mrs. Lambert leaned forward. “My husband and I want to tell you something. We want to tell you something about our little girl.”

  Laura nodded and asked, “Where is Mr. Lambert?”

  Mrs. Lambert lifted a water glass from the coffee table and took a sip. “I’m afraid Paul got called into work. There was an emergency down at the recycling plant. He’s a very high-level foreman and has to respond to all the crises. He’s out there now. He wanted to be here.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry I missed him.”

  Laura knew that Paul Lambert was an important man at the Erie County Recycling Center, overseeing metal reclamation. Laura had wanted to meet with him. She wanted to make a new start. Their encounter in the hallway of the courthouse was so unfortunate.

  Laura smiled at Josie. “I understand why he can’t be here. He has responsibilities to tend to.”

  “Miss Tobias,” Josie Lambert said, “I have to tell you how sorry we are. Paul and I both believed that Eddie killed our precious daughter. We were so distraught over the loss that we lost track of the truth. The evidence just seemed so overwhelming against him, and we were desperate for justice. In the sentencing part of that first trial, we urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence. We are so sorry. We were wrong. When I—”

  Laura interrupted. “Why apologize to me?”

  Mrs. Lambert took another sip and looked out the window. “You brought out the truth. You righted the wrong. We owe you our thanks. Perhaps you can pass along our apology to Eddie. I’m sure he has no interest in hearing from us. We wouldn’t presume to contact him. How is he?”

  “He’s good. He’s adjusting. He harbors no bad feelings.” Laura reached over the coffee table to take the woman’s trembling hand. “You are a compassionate person, Mrs. Lambert. Are you still working as an RN?”

  “Yes. At the Eden Community Clinic. Doing my part.”

  Laura paused before treading on new ground: “Mrs. Lambert, I have to ask you this: Have you given any thought to who may have killed Erin? Now that you know it was not Eddie Nash?”

  “My husband has been turning it over in his mind,” she replied. “He wants to tell you what he thinks. He believes he knows who did it. He’d love to get your opinion. He respects you so much.”

  Laura hesitated for a brief moment before speaking. “Maybe I should drive out to see him.”

  89

  As Laura pulled away from the curb, she left Josie Lambert standing at the door, looking up and down the tree-lined street. Laura drove out of the neighborhood and turned onto Industrial Drive. Auto-parts stores, machine shops, and used car dealerships whizzed by. She checked her rearview mirror. A black SUV was behind her.

  Laura turned onto the curving entrance road to the Erie County Recycling Center. She passed a huge dumpster, overflowing with yard waste. A man was heaving a bag of lawn clippings into the bin. She passed the glass recycling center and cringed at the sound of bottles being ground into sparkling shards. She watched an industrial trash compactor flatten mounds of trash.

  She parked outside Building C. Paul Lambert ran the scrap metal reclamation operation in the sprawling, yellow, corrugated tin structure.

  Laura walked toward the southwest corner of the building. She followed signs pointing to the office. She passed stripped cars, rusted refrigerators, broken air conditioners, and stacks of copper pipe. She saw Mr. Lambert waiting at the office entrance, holding open the door, smiling out like an old friend.

  “My wife called and told me you were coming.” He ushered her in—his long, muscular right arm stretched out in a grand gesture. “After you.”

  Such a gentleman.

  Laura glanced at his rugged face, thick neck, broad shoulders, and salt-and-pepper hair. The man was one of those young sixty-somethings—the ones you saw in TV travel ads. The physically-fit ones who pissed off overweight thirty-year-olds.

  Lambert extended a calloused right hand. Laura grasped it and shook. Hell of a handshake, she thought. Laura widened her smile to hide her skepticism. “How can I help you, sir? Your wife told me you have information to share. She said you have an idea about who may have killed Erin.”

  “I have something to show you.”

  “Oh?”

  He opened a steel door that led into the plant, where useless throwaways were shredded, twisted, and melted for rebirth. He motioned her through with another sweeping gesture. “Step right in. It’s right here.”

  Laura stalled at the sight of the stripping and crushing machines.

  “After you,” he said. “I insist.”

  She thanked him and passed by him.

  The automatic lock self-activated behind them. No employees were at work. It was just the two of them. Alone together. With the scrap metal and grinding machines.

  Laura scanned
the interior of the building. Twisted steel and mangled aluminum overflowed from large, green bins. Dismembered cars and kitchen appliances that had been trashed by their owners awaited mangling. Destruction before resurrection. The automated crushing and shearing machines—idle for the moment—were set to flatten, cut, and spew out reclaimed iron, steel, nickel, and copper.

  Laura coughed into her sleeve. The air was toxic. It dripped with chemicals used to strip rust. She looked from the concrete floor to the high ceiling. Four hardened steel rafters ran from north to south. She clutched her cell phone like it was a weapon, even though she knew there was no service in this tin coffin.

  “Congratulations, Laura.” Paul Lambert’s voice was low and firm. “You performed well at the trial. You proved your client’s innocence. You exonerated him. You won the day.”

  “The facts were on my side.” Laura fought back the waver in her voice. “All I did was let the truth reveal itself.”

  “We had Eddie Nash all wrong. We persecuted an innocent man. We made a terrible mistake. We owe him so much.”

  “It’s history now.” Laura forced a smile. “Time to move on.”

  “Is it?” Lambert retorted. “A killer is still out there.”

  “The police are on it. They’re closing in on him. The Hangman of Eden is going down. Justice will be done.”

  “I know who did it.” Lambert smiled with wide eyes. “I know who killed my little girl.”

  90

  “How do you know?” Laura feigned surprise. “How can you know?”

  “Come on, Laura.” Lambert’s inflection was as flat as the aluminum sheet under the industrial press. His eyes gleamed like the bright sun, reflecting on polished steel. An odd smile was fixed on his face. “Tell me, Laura, what do you know about me?”

  Laura shrugged. “Just the basics. Paul Michael Lambert. Born in The Bronx, 1962. Served in the U.S. Marines. Special Intel Officer for twenty years. High-level, elite service. Top-secret work in Afghanistan. So secret, your military record was sealed. For a time.”

  “Very good.”

  “Retired in 2000. Settled in Eden with your wife and young daughter. You went to work here. Bought that nice big house. Erin was your only child.”

  “She was.” He looked to the oil-stained floor. “I lost my only child. I guess I was a good soldier, and a bad father.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lambert, for your loss.”

  He paused. His smile widened and waned, then widened and waned again. “Let me share a simple truth: What you know will save you. What you don’t know will kill you. You know I was in the military. You know my service was secret. Congratulations. You don’t know what I did in the military.”

  Laura smiled back at him. Damn, she thought, I hate to be underestimated.

  She saw Delilah Cole in her mind’s eye, the sweet and brilliant paralegal from the Council Against Wrongful Convictions. Her former assistant and protégé. What a friend. She was so nice to conduct all that research as a parting gift to her old boss.

  “Well, Mr. Lambert, you’re wrong about that. I know quite a bit about you. I know you served in Special Forces in Afghanistan. You were secretly attached to the Afghan armed forces. The military records for those missions were declassified last year. Fascinating reading. Despite the redactions.”

  Surprise registered on his face. He stared at her in silence.

  Laura pictured Charles Steel, the master investigator. Charles was so nice to tap his military connections to secure the records. Charles had also tracked down Lambert’s old commanding officer. Now retired. Their talk was revealing.

  Lambert’s upper lip curled. “Very good, Laura. Excellent work. The innocence lawyer has done her homework. Most impressive—as always.”

  “You were an observer at the Afghan National Prison, Pol-E-Charkhi. A hellhole east of Kabul. Surrounded by crumbling walls, razor wire, and mass graves.”

  “How did you—?”

  “It was the one prison sanctioned by the Afghan government to carry out executions. Taliban prisoners were put to death as terrorists. Hundreds of them.”

  “True. Put to death for good reason.”

  Laura locked her eyes with his. Cold as ice. “All the executions were carried out by the traditional method: Death by hanging.”

  Lambert grinned. “I witnessed the hangings. From high scaffolds. Sixteen-foot drops. Neck-snapping death.”

  Lambert stepped to a work bench and picked up a device. It looked like an industrial remote control. He hit a button. A buzzer blasted. The harsh noise was followed by the hum of polished steel, gliding on greased runners. Laura tracked the sound to the ceiling. She looked up at the source. She saw the steel ceiling beam with the greased runners. A three-foot iron hook was mounted on the beam. From the iron hook hung a rope.

  At the end of the rope was a noose.

  She showed no emotion as the hook, rope, and noose glided along the runners in her direction. She watched as it stopped in the space between herself and Lambert. The makeshift gallows was in place. She tried to count the loops above the knot but couldn’t. It didn’t matter. She knew there were thirteen.

  She stared into the soulless black holes that were Lambert’s eyes. He was still at the workbench. Twenty feet away. She saw those black holes narrow. She heard him mutter a curse. She felt hate emanating from deep inside of him.

  “Bitch,” he spewed. “You’re too fucking smart for your own good.”

  The hangman’s rope stood between them, the noose swinging back and forth, maybe six feet off the oil-soaked floor.

  Laura straightened as Lambert walked toward her. She retreated until her back hit the wall. She watched as he closed in and asked, “What else do you know?”

  She stared. Not so much as a blink. “I know about your sister, Charlene. Her suicide was so tragic. Hanging herself like that. Nice of her to name you her beneficiary.”

  Lambert grinned as she continued, “I know about the life insurance policy.”

  “Oh?”

  “The one you took out for Erin. The piano prodigy.”

  He sneered.

  “I know about the fifty grand you collected.”

  “I needed the money for a boat,” he admitted.

  “What about Nash?”

  “Nash was an easy scapegoat. A patsy made-to-order.”

  “So, a couple weeks before the murder, you invited Nash to your house. You give him a couple beers and talked about Erin. You thanked him for trying to save your poor, misguided daughter. And you saved the empty bottles.”

  “Go on, Counselor. You have the floor. For a moment.”

  “After you beat Erin with an iron pipe and strung her up, you planted the empties at the crime scene. Empty bottles with Nash’s DNA. Nice touch.”

  “I thought so.”

  “For the longest time, I struggled with the urine evidence. How did you pull that off? How did Eddie’s urine get on Erin’s body? Then, I remembered your wife. Sweet little Josie. Your accomplice. The registered nurse at the Eden Community Clinic. The clinic where Eddie got his physicals. It was so easy for her to swipe a urine sample, freeze it, and give to you to drip onto the body. The Big Lie was born.”

  Paul Lambert turned as crimson as blood. “You know too much.”

  “Of course, you never bet on Erin slashing you with that broken bottle the night of the murder. Inflicting a gouge and drawing blood. You never expected to have to go back to your truck—the one you rented with cash under a fake name—to retrieve the towel. You were so careless to leave the towel behind. With your bloodstains on it.”

  “Laura Tobias. The brilliant lawyer.”

  “Paul Lambert. The Hangman of Eden.”

  Lambert laughed. “I’ll tell you this much: I learned a great deal at Pol-E-Charkhi. Made the executioner my best friend. He was such a good teacher. He
showed me all his secrets. How to choose the rope. How to set the fall. How to tie the knot.”

  “Thirteen loops?” she asked.

  “That was my touch,” Lambert sneered. “My signature.”

  “Why Erin?”

  “My daughter. The drugged up stripper. The shameless whore. Whores deserve death.”

  “You’re a killer.”

  “I’m an executioner. There’s a difference.”

  Laura clutched her phone.

  “Your phone can’t save you.” Lambert laughed. “No service in here. You can’t call 911. Sorry. Too late.”

  Laura held it up like a prize. “It’s not just a phone.”

  Lambert stared with smug arrogance. “What is it?”

  “It’s a transmitter.”

  At that moment, the door from the office crashed open, and Laura’s accomplices joined the party. The man in the blue suit was a state police investigator. The two men in body armor carried automatic weapons. Charles and Lou were right alongside them.

  “Erin Lambert’s father,” Charles said. “The Hangman of Eden.”

  Lou grunted. “Fucking murderer.”

  Laura moved closer to the deranged executioner. She looked into his eyes. She waited for the handcuffs to click.

  “You’re going to need a good lawyer,” she said.

  He looked back with impotent fury.

  “And,” she added, “it won’t be me.”

  THE END

  Special Thanks

  John J. Lennon

  Currently:

  Sing Sing Correctional Facility

  Previously:

  Attica Correctional Facility

  More Thanks

  Readers

  Neva Bowers

  Lisa Klingburg

  Helen Bowers

  Bob Esselburn

  Denise Esselburn

  Natalie Esselburn

  Steve Schwadron

  Wynn Witthans