Maggie and the Whiskered Witness

by Barbara Cool Lee

  The district attorney, with a single assistant beside her, sat at the prosecutor's table, and the defense attorney sat next to Gabriel at the defense table. Two against two. Evenly matched.

  Gabriel had put on the cheap gray suit his mother had brought for him to wear. It was too large, obviously fitting the man he had once been, before he had shrunk down to this smaller person. He had a stillness about him, sitting with his hands folded on the table in front of him and his face holding the shuttered, unbelieving expression of a man who had given up hope a long time ago. He didn't believe this was happening. Believing was too hard after so many disappointments. Now he hardly even seemed to be listening to the proceedings.

  But the judge listened. He listened to the defense attorney recounting the story of a straight-A college kid who'd been found with drugs and money and the murder gun in his dorm room. How everything pointed to him killing the roommate he barely knew who had only been assigned to his dorm a few weeks earlier. How the roommate was a known drug dealer on campus with no ties to Franklin until the dorm lottery had stuck them in the same room together. And how the only testimony in his murder trial had come from the officer who had uncovered the evidence and singlehandedly solved the case.

  The judge listened to Lieutenant Ibarra as he testified about what they learned in Lauren Douglas's files, and as he read into the record all the notes she had gathered to build her case against Randall. This was the moment for the prosecution to object, to make sure all this uncorroborated, hearsay evidence was thrown out, banished from the courtroom before it could be entered into the record.

  But the district attorney instead sat, lips pursed tightly together as if wanting to make sure she didn't interrupt, listening and absorbing all of the painstaking gathering of evidence Lauren Douglas had done in her amateur attempt to find out what had really happened.

  Then the judge listened to Maggie as she testified to every word Randall had said in those last minutes before he was stopped, as he had confessed to killing Lauren to prevent her from exposing how he had framed Gabriel Franklin. And again the district attorney didn't question Maggie's memory, or do anything at all but sit with lips tightly closed and eyes focused on Maggie's mouth, as if she could see the damning words hanging in the air in front of her.

  And then finally the judge listened to the district attorney as she said that their office wanted to see Gabriel Franklin's conviction vacated because Kent Randall, the sole witness for the prosecution, had planted evidence and lied on the stand, and brought shame to their office, and caused a miscarriage of justice that they were anxious to remedy as quickly—and with as little publicity—as possible.

  The judge did not leave the courtroom to consider the evidence. He just sat there, writing a couple of notes on a pad in front of him.

  Everyone waited in silence.

  The judge looked up, and said simply, "the impeachment of the credibility of the sole prosecution witness is found to be of such completeness, that under New York CPL 440.10(1)(g), the conviction of Gabriel Malak Franklin is hereby vacated."

  The gavel came down, and Maggie jumped at the sharp rap of it on the wood.

  There wasn't any cheering. The room was silent, except for the sobbing of Gabriel's mother.

  Maggie turned to Ibarra, who was sitting next to her in the back of the courtroom. "Is it over?" she whispered.

  He hushed her when the judge spoke again, asking if the prosecution wished to re-file the murder charge against the defendant.

  The district attorney seemed to shrink down into her chair, as if hoping she—and this whole case—would disappear as quietly as possible. "No," she said quietly. "We do not wish to file any charges against Mr. Franklin."

  "This court is adjourned," the judge said, looking right at Gabriel. "You're free to go, young man."

  "Now it's over," Ibarra said.

  The judge shook Gabriel's hand. As did the defense attorney. The district attorney did, too.

  And then he was free. Just like that. And all it had taken to get to this point was Lauren Douglas's murder.

  Maggie then noticed a familiar face was waiting in the very back of the courtroom, near the exit. Maggie had called Alyssa Douglas-Jones to give her the news, and she had come all the way to New York to see the reason for Lauren's secrecy.

  Alyssa hugged Gabriel, then hugged Maggie, and then quickly excused herself to go home to her husband and kids, and to her grief for the sister she now understood.

  Maggie and Ibarra stayed a little longer.

  "Thank you," Gabriel said to them when they met in the hallway outside the courtroom. His voice was hoarse, almost as if he had been silenced for years, and now could speak.

  His mother clung to his arm as if she would never let go again, and his brother kept slapping him on the back and then, with his other hand, wiped away the tears that kept falling and falling.

  Gabriel didn't cry, though. He just stood there.

  He wore glasses, like he had in the childhood picture in Lauren's locket. But now the glasses were heavy black plastic, issued by the prison, and they hardly did justice to his eyes. Up close Maggie could see the eyeglasses framed black eyes filled with so much pain and sorrow it hurt to look in them. But there was happiness there, too, as the reality of what had happened finally began to sink in.

  Gabriel's eyes reminded Maggie of Reese's. They were sad and wise, having seen far too much at too young an age.

  "What will you do now?" Ibarra asked.

  Gabriel shrugged. "I don't know. I could train dogs for a living, I suppose. I had wanted to go to medical school a long time ago, but now…?"

  "But now you can," Maggie said. "When the state settles the lawsuit your attorney is filing on your behalf, you'll have the money to pay for college, and you can do or be whatever you want."

  She took his hand. It was rough with calluses, but she shook it firmly. "You can be anything you want, now."

  He let go of her hand after shaking it. "But Lauren…," he said. His mother hugged him closer and cried on his arm, and he patted her gently with an awkward hand that had not touched her like that in years.

  "I didn't know Lauren was doing any of this," he said. "She never told me. When I met her through the training program, she was shocked to see me. But then every week she asked me questions about the case. It was when I was training a big German Shepherd. Totally unsocialized and vicious. He'd been horribly abused. He was going to be put down because he was so frightened of human touch he would attack anyone who came near him. I worked with him, with her help, for months. And then he finally graduated from the program. And after that, she stopped coming. She didn't tell me anything. She just left. And I wondered what happened to the dog. And to her."

  "You're talking about Hendrix?" Maggie asked.

  He smiled for the first time, a wistful little upturn at the corners of his mouth. "I called him Jimi Hendrix because he was a wild man who wanted to set the world on fire." Then he frowned. "But how do you know his name?"

  "Lauren adopted him. Didn't you know? He's now an absolutely perfect old gentleman of a dog."

  He shook his head. "I didn't know. She disappeared one day. Never came back. And no one told me anything. So I just moved on."

  Maggie imagined what he must have felt: Saving the life of an old dog that was then taken away from him. Meeting an old friend through the program, someone who believed in him and asked him questions about his experience, and treated him like the innocent boy he'd once been. And then she disappeared and left him alone with the endless years of prison stretching out in front of him and no hope that anything would ever change.

  "She must not have wanted you to know what she was doing," Ibarra said.

  "I would have stopped her," he said. "I… I loved her." It came out in a whisper. Then he added more firmly, "I wouldn't have let her do it if I'd known. I never would have allowed her to risk her life for me like she did."

  "That's probably why she didn't tell you," Maggie sa
id. "She loved you, too." She felt the catch in her throat as she thought of Lauren working on her mourning beads necklace, alone in the evenings, thinking of Gabriel in prison and vowing to save him, somehow. "When you love someone, you have to take risks." A shiver ran down her spine as the words echoed in the air in that cold courtroom hallway.

  But no one else seemed to notice. They were all so happy, and Maggie was happy for them.

  She motioned to Gabriel before the family left to go outside, where she knew a news crew had shown up to hear the story of the wrongly convicted man freed after all these years.

  He and she stepped aside from the group for a moment.

  She put Lauren's mourning beads necklace into his hand. She showed him how the locket inside the angel worked, and he stared for a long time at the tiny picture inside.

  "I thought I was all alone," he whispered. "I thought no one remembered me."

  "She remembered," Maggie said. "Lauren thought of you every day." She kissed his cheek, for Lauren, who couldn't. And then she and Ibarra watched as he and his family went out the door and started the new life Lauren had given to them.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Plane seats had gotten smaller recently. Or maybe Maggie just wasn't used to flying coach after all the years spent as the spoiled wife of a rich man.

  The plane took off from JFK on time, and she sat in her window seat and watched the immense cities beneath them get smaller as they rose up into the sky.

  The vast gray-blue of the Atlantic Ocean receded behind them as the big jet made its lumbering turn inland and headed toward the other side of the continent. Soon they were high above the earth. The world, and its problems, disappeared far below them until all they could see were the distant forms of mountains and plains.

  She leaned her head against the cold glass of the window and listened to the rumble of the huge jet engines, and ignored the chatter of the other passengers all around her, and watched the clouds.

  Flying still gave her a thrill. She couldn't help it. Her ex-husband used to tease her about it, thinking it a sign of her low-class upbringing. Being thrilled about anything was weakness to him. One must remain aloof. Dignified. Above mere peasants. First class all the way, and oblivious to the other 99% of the world.

  Now she flew coach. At least this time, when she was with a small-town cop who had managed to get these seats comped by the district attorney's office in their urgency to get this case resolved and out of the public eye as quickly as possible.

  So she'd sit in these cramped seats for the six-hour flight, and eat her complimentary peanuts and drink her nine-dollar drink from a little plastic cup, and share a single armrest with Will Ibarra, with their elbows touching, and silence between them as they absorbed what had happened.

  He was a big man, and handsome, in that burly cop way he had. And he was good, and kind, and absolutely unpretentious, and didn't give a fig about being dignified and above it all. And that was wonderful.

  He liked fishing from the Carita pier. And watching the Oakland A's. And eating her dad's chile verde.

  And he was good and he was funny and he was honest as the day was long.

  And most importantly, he was a decent man who cared about right and wrong and devoted his life to ensuring there was a tiny bit of justice in his little corner of the world.

  He was everything she liked in a human being. He was everything she needed in her life.

  And when he put his hand over hers on the crowded armrest, and thoughtfully said, "Ya know, Maggie. We never did have that romantic dinner I promised you," she could have said yes.

  So very easily.

  And if she did, her life would become so very uncomplicated and happy.

  And there would be none of the weird feeling that came from being poor and dating a rich man. No oddness of being with someone who, despite the fact that she knew she was attractive, was so much more beautiful than she could ever be. No agonizing fear that a single moment of weakness could wipe out everything with one fatal overdose. No paparazzo taking ugly pictures of her and spamming them all over the internet.

  And most of all, no worry that she would end up slipping back into being the shallow person she used to be. No tension between who she wanted to be, casual and free and truly herself, and the temptations of the phony, mercenary world of fame and fortune she'd chosen to walk away from.

  It would all be so easy. So easy to take Will's hand and say, yes, let's do that. Let's pursue the romantic feelings we have for each other. Let's see if we can turn this mutual respect and mutual attraction into a lifetime of easy, happy, comfortable love.

  She put her hands in her lap, clasping them together.

  "I can't," she said softly. She looked at her hands. Her nails were cropped short, and had a single coat of clear polish on them. She used to wear acrylic nails. They'd made her hands appear long and elegant, and they looked so good with the designer clothes she used to wear when she was one of the Hollywood crowd. But the long nails made it impossible to do her beadwork. She'd cut them off, and given up the vanity of being a pretty trophy wife so she could do the work she loved. Given up the easy superficiality for the harder work of being her true self.

  She looked into Will's brown eyes, saw the kindness there, the sweetness that he usually covered with a gruff exterior. But there was no bluffing from him now, only a vulnerability that was oh so tempting.

  "No?" he asked.

  She shook her head. She found herself smiling, seeing it as so very simple now, this choice she'd struggled with for so long. It had taken her such a long time to see it, but now it was so clear.

  "Love is a funny thing," she said. "Lauren found that out. You can see the practical choice in front of you. The choice to just get on with your life. Let go of something that could be dangerous. Could hurt you. Could even destroy you if you're not careful. You can walk away. Make a new life for yourself. One that's safe. And comfortable. And easy."

  "You can," Will said. He leaned toward her. "You really can. Just give it a chance."

  She shook her head again. "But Lauren was right, in the end. You can't. Not if you listen to your heart. You have to follow where your heart leads. You have to. No matter the cost. Even if it kills you. You can't deny what you really feel. It would be denying who you really are."

  Will nodded, accepting it. Then he reached over and clasped her hand. Lifted it to his lips. Kissed it.

  Then he let her go, and they were quiet for the rest of the long flight home.

  Epilogue

  Maggie found Reese at Casablanca. It was late afternoon, and she was exhausted from the long flight back to California. She imagined he was tired from his travels, too.

  It was still stormy, and he was standing at the open sliding glass door with his back to her, watching the rain pouring down on the swimming pool, and listening to the splatter of the drops on the patio.

  Casablanca's living room was huge, and he was a good twenty feet away from where she stood just inside the entry.

  And she didn't go over to him right away. She just watched him as he looked at the gray sky. And she wondered if he was thinking about his beloved astronomy, and how he wouldn't be able to look at the stars until the storm passed.

  Or if he was thinking about how he couldn't float around in the swimming pool, reading scripts, until the weather cleared.

  Or if he was planning his improvements to the broken-down campground he was working on.

  Or if he was fighting the craving for the drugs that had twice almost killed him, and still threatened his safety.

  Or if he was thinking about her.

  He must have heard her come in, because he finally turned around, and his expression was so carefully schooled to indifference that her heart broke at the sight.

  "I wasn't—" she started, realizing he had been listening to the sound of her behind him, waiting for her to come to him, and thinking she wouldn't.

  She ran to him then, wrapping her arms around him
and standing up on tiptoes to smother him with kisses.

  "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here," she said to him, over and over.

  He kissed her back, and then held her as she rested her head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

  He rubbed her back and said soothing words to her, and she realized he was doing his best to take care of her, thinking she was traumatized by everything that had happened. By Randall, by the trip to testify in court, by Lauren's death.

  "No," she said to him, pulling back. "No."

  He immediately let go of her. "I'm sorry," he said, putting his hands at his sides, being a respectful gentleman and making it clear he had no intention of pushing himself on her.

  "Oh, Stanley!" she said. "That's not what I meant at all."

  He nodded, taking the bad news with grace. "Okay," he said. "I just want you to be safe. That's all that matters now. Are you safe?"

  She shook her head. "I'm fine. I'm totally fine. But I don't need you to comfort me. I'm not grieving. Not now."

  She put her hands on his arms, and noticed how still his body was, how he didn't react to her touch at all.

  "I was," she said. "I was grieving everything. First I lost you. Then Lauren. Then Ibarra. Then even Hendrix. And then I shot a man. Someone who deserved it, sure, but I still lost something there, in being the one to make that decision. I lost my innocence then, a piece of who I am. And then I saw the man Lauren saved finally walk free, but she wasn't there to see it."

  "All in a single week, you poor thing." He didn't move, just letting her grip his arms while he stood there like a marble statue, perfect and unreachable. "But it's over now. You're safe, and it's all over."

  "You still don't understand," she said. "It's not over. I can lose everything, Reese. Everything in the whole world. But I can't lose you. I just can't."