“I assure you that my wife did not burn to death. She was dead before the fire swept through the dungeon.”
“What do you mean?” If it was true what he was saying, that she was dead before the fire got to her, then that would be better facts for me. Marginally better, but better nonetheless. “Are you telling me that something else killed her besides the fire?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. I can tell you that there was a preliminary autopsy done on the body, however, since my wife’s body was severely burned, in that she was pretty much ashes and bones, there wasn’t much that could be ascertained about how she died. You’ll find out all of this when you get the file. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how my wife died. I have no idea.”
I sighed. “Okay, please explain what you mean. Are you saying that –”
“I’m telling you that my wife and I were being intimate, and, I will admit, we typically do things that skirt the line of what is safe and what’s not. I can also tell you that we never crossed that line, and we never came close to it. For instance, we were involved with body bag bondage. Are you aware of that term?”
“I am.” I had a little bit of knowledge as to the concepts in BDSM, because I had once taken a case where a child was in the house when his parents were involved in the practice of BDSM, and the child’s actual father was suing for custody, because he didn’t want his son being exposed to that in the home. I had to do as much research as possible on the lifestyle for that case, so I felt reasonably informed. I knew that body bag bondage involved putting one’s partner into a body bag and suffocating them to the point that they would almost pass out. This act apparently gives the participants some kind of a high. The theory was that, whenever you restricted your air in that way, you get lightheaded, which induces mild euphoria. Men often strangled themselves with a belt while they masturbated, and this practice was called auto-erotic asphyxiation. Sometimes they ended up accidentally killing themselves when they did that. Allegedly, the famous actor David Carradine, of Kung Fu fame, and Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS, died that way.
“Well, if you’re familiar with the concept of body bag bondage, then you know about the level that my wife and I went to when we would play. In this case, I did have her chained to a wall. That was something that we did often. And, we were intimate that way.” He paused. “She asked me to put a plastic bag over her head, which I often do. I know how long I can do that before it gets dangerous. I timed it perfectly the way that I always have, but, when I took the plastic bag off her head, she was dead.”
I made notes as he spoke. “So, this was something that you two did habitually, and it was never a problem before?”
“Right. So, I didn’t know how she died. I am trained in CPR of course. That was something that was mandatory for both Ava and me - we both had to know how to revive one another if the time came. So I was going to unchain her and perform CPR, but then I saw that she completely stopped breathing, and I found no pulse. She was dead. I had no idea how. But I was going to go ahead and revive her anyways, so I went to get the key to the lock for her handcuff, when the fire suddenly just came out of nowhere and swept through our dungeon. It was a conflagration. I had no idea how it got to be so much of a wildfire in such a short period of time. I don’t know where it came from.”
“So I would imagine that’s the reason why you were charged with her murder. Because it sounds like there was some kind of accelerant in the fire. Is that what happened?”
He nodded his head silently. I could see pain in his expression, and the fact that he had emotion behind those light eyes made me feel slightly more comfortable with him. “Yes. That’s why I was charged with her murder. Yes, when the investigators came to the house, they did find that there was an accelerant. I was barely able to get out of the dungeon myself. I was barely able to outrun the fire. It was that swift. I’m lucky to be alive. But yes, that is a reason why investigators decided that my dungeon burned down because of arson, and because she was chained to a wall at the time, they just assumed that I burned down my own dungeon while entrapping her, because I wanted to kill her. And, of course, the fact that her parents were pushing the police to charge me with her murder, did not help matters any. They’ve always hated me. They’ve never thought that I was good enough for their daughter. They didn’t even know about our lifestyle - they just didn’t like me because I came from nothing. I think that they wanted her to marry somebody whose last name was Vanderbilt or Carnegie or something along those lines. So, when Ava died in such a way, they were pressuring the police to make an arrest. And that’s how I got arrested.”
I made a note about this. I was going to have to talk to Ava’s parents, and find out what the real story was. I needed to find out if it was true that they just didn’t like him because he grew up poor. I did know that he was telling the truth when he said that he didn’t grow up wealthy. I had read in the paper that his mother worked as a waitress and an office cleaner and his father worked at Walmart and as a cook. Of course, I wasn’t necessarily going to take him at his word that the only reason why Ava’s parents hated him was because he wasn’t “good enough” for her. It was entirely possible that the newspaper article was true – Silas might’ve been a wife abuser. I was going to have to get to the bottom of that before I made a decision or judgment on this case.
For the moment, however, I was just going to have to take him at his word. If he told me that the only reason why Ava’s parents hated him was because he grew up poor, then I would just have to take that as gospel, until I found out differently. “Okay, so Ava’s parents were the ones who were pushing for you to be arrested for her murder.”
“Yes. Although, it wasn’t murder. I still don’t know how she died. I have no clue. We were doing our usual playing, and as far as I know, she wasn’t even sick.” He shook his head. “It was as if she had a heart attack, a massive heart attack, and died. However, she was only 32 years old. And, as far as I know, she did not have a heart problem.”
“Are you sure about that? Are you sure that she didn’t have a heart problem?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No, I’m not sure about that.” He blinked his eyes a few times. “I do know that my wife was seeing a doctor at the time that she died, however, as far as I know, there was nothing wrong with her.”
“What do you mean, as far as you know, there was nothing wrong with her?” I wondered how much Silas really knew about his wife. It was entirely possible that she did have a heart problem, but didn’t tell him about it. After all, if she enjoyed participating in bondage games with Silas, maybe she didn’t want to tell him that she had a heart issue, because she figured that if she did tell him about her heart issue, he wouldn’t have wanted to play those games with her. That would be a reason for her to hide any kind of health issues from him.
“Exactly what I said. I don’t believe that she had any health issues. However, I’m not positive about that. I would always ask her if there was any kind of health issues I need to know about, and she always told me that she was fine and healthy.” He shook his head. “That said, I suspected that maybe there was something wrong with her. I never saw any prescriptions around the house. But when I got back from Europe, I noticed that she had lost a lot of weight and seemed very tired and fatigued. I guess it’s possible that she was suffering from some kind of heart issue, or some other kind of undisclosed health issue, and that’s what killed her.”
“But you never saw any prescriptions, correct?”
“That is correct.”
I bounced my pen up and down on the page, as I thought about what he was telling me. “Did you travel with her?”
“I used to. I used to travel with her all the time. As you probably know, I travel quite a bit for my work. In fact, I was overseas in Europe for six months. I had just returned when this happened. From Europe that is. And she did not go with me.”
“She didn’t go with you? So I guess it’s possible that
she was suffering from some kind of health issues, and you might not have known about it because you were overseas.”
“That is definitely a possibility.” He clenched his jaw. Tapped his fingers on the desk. “I suppose that you could probably get her medical records, and find out if there was anything wrong with her. There must’ve been something. There had to have been some reason why she died the way that she did. All that I can tell you is that she was dead before the fire swept in, and I did not do anything to bring about her death.”
I knew the prosecutors probably were aware that Silas and Ava were involved in BDSM. And, because of that, they probably reasonably thought that maybe Ava died during some kind of hard-core playing, unless they just assumed that Silas had set the fire in his own home to kill his wife. “Now, let’s get back to what the newspapers say about your relationship with Ava. It indicated that you were abusive with her. Is that true?”
He straightened up in his chair and glared at me. “I told you that was not true. I told you that earlier. In no way, shape or form was I abusive to her. Some people don’t understand alternative lifestyles – they think that people who are involved in these lifestyles are abusive to one another. Or, especially, that the man is abusive to the woman, because the woman likes to be beaten, or whipped, or degraded. By the way, our relationship did not involve any of those things. I did not whip her, I did not beat her, and I did not degrade her. I did not humiliate her. We were more into bondage than anything else. The body bags, the chains, the feeling of latex. She enjoyed being confined. I sometimes put her into a small box, the size of a coffin. I would put her in there for a very set period of time. Just like I would put her into a body bag for a very set period of time. I knew my limitations, and I knew hers as well. And I’ve never come close to the point where I would have accidentally killed her. You have to trust me on this. So, when she died, there was nothing that I did that brought it about.”
“You do know that I’m going to be speaking with her friends, and her parents, and people who were aware of her situation with you. I need to know from you what kind of story I’m going to hear from them. What kind of words am I going to hear from her friends and family and people whom she held dear?”
“Her parents are going to tell you that I was abusive to her. That’s what they’re going to tell you. That’s what they told the newspaper. But you have to understand, they have their own agenda. They want to see me fry. They’re convinced that I murdered my wife and that I did it in cold blood. There are a variety of reasons why they are so convinced about that. So, fair warning, that’s the kind of story that you are going to get from them. As for her friends, I don’t know what kind of story they’re going to give to you. I don’t know what it is that Ava told them about her relationship with me. I don’t think that they believed that I was abusive to her, however. They have no reason to believe that.”
“But her parents do have a reason to believe that? Why would they have reason to believe that, but her friends do not?”
“Because they have an agenda.” He rolled his eyes. He tapped his fingers on the desk and took a deep breath. “She did have bruises.”
I made a note of this. “She had bruises? But you told me that you didn’t beat her. So why would she have bruises?”
“I didn’t beat her. And that’s the truth. However, other people did beat her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Silas made a steeple with his hands. “I allowed my wife to stray. By that I mean that I allowed her to see other people. She had very singular desires and fantasies, and I admit that I was not able to fulfill them. I had a problem with beating her and whipping her, but she needed that in her life, so I allowed her to see people who would do that for her. And she allowed me to see other people as well.”
“So you had an open relationship, then.” It wasn’t a question on my part. It was a statement.
“Yes. We definitely had an open relationship. So, that would be the reason why she had bruises on her arms. But her parents did not understand that, and there was not any way that Ava was going to tell them the truth. She was never going to tell them that she was into this lifestyle, and that she would leave the home to get beaten and whipped. Her parents would never understand such a thing. Most people would not ever understand such a thing. So, the upshot is, her parents just assumed that I was beating her, and they had no idea that it was consensual, and that it was not from me.”
I leaned back in my chair. His story was not sitting well with me. There were just too many holes in it. “You told me when you walked in that the only reason why that her parents hated you was because you came from a poor background. But now you’re telling me that her parents had good reason to suspect that you were beating on her, their daughter. Wouldn’t that be a better reason for them to hate you then the fact that you were poor at one time?”
“Yes. I agree. But they hated me long before they ever saw the bruises on her. I guess that it’s possible that they suspected that our relationship was unconventional, right from the start. I don’t know. All I know is that they’ve never accepted me, right from the very beginning.”
“And why didn’t Ava set her parents straight? Why didn’t she tell them that you weren’t beating her? Why didn’t she try to hide her bruises from them, if she didn’t know what to say to them?” That was another niggling fact rolling around in my brain. Ava had to know that her parents hated Silas, so why throw fuel on the fire? Why allow them to believe that he was physically abusing her?
“Ava did not deliberately let her parents see that she had bruises on her arms. She covered up her arms whenever she went to visit them. However, she had the misfortune to have her parents visit her unexpectedly one day at our home. She was wearing short sleeves, and they saw them. She told me that she told them that she fell down during the night when she was sleep-walking, but she said that they didn’t seem to believe her. They asked her outright if I was beating her, and she denied it, but they didn’t appear to believe her.” He looked away. “They would never give me the benefit of the doubt.”
I studied him. I was not at all sure if I could believe him, or should believe him. In fact, I was inclined not to believe him. I was naturally skeptical anyhow, when it came to my clients. I had to be. When you are a criminal defense attorney, you had to go into your cases assuming that your client is lying to you. You had to be cynical in this job.
I decided to briefly change the subject, because I was really curious about one thing. “Why did you single me out for this job?”
“I looked into your background. It seems like you’ve won a lot of your cases. That in and of itself is quite unusual. It seems like you have the special touch for picking the right jury that will exonerate your clients. And you had quite the impressive list of clients. There’s no other reason why I would choose you.”
I had to admit that he was making some kind of sense, but that still didn’t answer the question that I had about that. He was so adamant about my representing him. The way that he sounded when he first came into my office was that he was going to hound me until I said yes.
I narrowed my eyes at him. Why was there a question in my mind about why he was so keen to have me represent him? Why did I think that there was more to the story? As I looked at him, with those light eyes that were now staring at me again, with no emotion behind them, I felt the earlier chill up and down my spine. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t feel that you are telling me the entire truth. I think that there’s more to the reason about why you want me to represent you. I’m getting a sick feeling in my gut, and my gut is rarely wrong. As you noted earlier, I am very good with picking a jury, because I go with my gut when it comes to choosing the right panel. I can usually tell if people are lying. And I think that you are lying right now. So please tell me the real reason why it is that you want me to represent you so much. And know this – what you don’t tell me, I will find out on my own. Sooner or later, I will find out. So y
ou might as well just come out with it.”
He studied me, silently looking at me from across the desk. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and that unnerved me. “Are you going to take my case?”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“I already did.”
“Not honestly.”
“Perhaps you think my answer wasn’t honest. I can’t help that. Now are you going to take my case?”
I decided to test him. “My fee is $1000 per hour. I demand a retainer of $100,000 upfront.” My actual fee was normally only $400 per hour, and I imagined that this guy knew this. If he did his homework on me, he would know what I usually charge. I was just testing him to see exactly how much he wanted me to represent him. Was he really going to allow me to name my price like that? Or was he going to call me on it? If he really wanted me to represent him, desperately wanted me to represent him, he would pay my fee without question. After all, he clearly could afford it. Writing a check for $100,000 was going to be nothing to him. It would be like me writing somebody a check for $100. However, with him being a businessman, I was sure that he would object to being price-gouged, which was exactly what I was trying to do.
I saw in his eyes that he understood what I was doing, but he calmly brought out a checkbook. “Do I make it out to you? Or do I make it out to your firm?”
I cleared my throat. “You may make it out to our firm.” I was still an associate, although I was in talks with Harper to make me a full partner. That decision was going to come soon, maybe within the next few days. Most of this fee, of course, was going to go into my trust fund. That’s the way it always had to be – whenever you would receive a retainer from your client, you had to put all of that money into a trust fund, and then, as you did the work, you could withdraw money from the trust fund to put into your operating account. Of course, at the rate of $1000 per hour, I would definitely go through his retainer in no time.
I held my breath as I saw him writing out a check. “Here’s my check for $200,000,” he said. “That will get you through about 200 hours worth of work. I understand that I’m going to probably have to replenish this, as this case is going to be tangled, to say the very least. I also understand that you are going to have investigators and paralegals and researchers working on my case. We are going to have to go over how much their time is worth as well.”
The Hate Crime Page 23
