by Dan Decker
“I dunno, maybe.”
“Did he ever bring her gifts?”
“Yeah, he would give her flowers or candy, stuff like that.”
“And she rebuffed all of his attentions?”
“Yeah, she hated that guy.”
“How would she treat him?”
“She was nice enough, I guess,” Tony said, glancing over at his father and stepmom. He was torn, obviously wanting to represent that Mason had felt spurned by his stepsister, but at the same time, he did not want to paint her in a negative light either.
Careful, Tony, I thought, I’m going to get you.
“How did she reject him?”
“I don’t know. I was never there when he asked her out.”
I nodded. “Okay, what was she like?”
“She was a wonderful woman,” he said quickly while avoiding eye contact with his parents. “She was going places. I can tell you that.”
“Did you get along with her?”
I could tell that Frank was agitated, but didn’t glance over; it was just something I noticed from my peripheral vision.
“Yeah,” Tony said, “we got along okay.”
“When was the last time you and your stepsister fought?”
“Excuse me? I just told you that we don’t fight.”
“Come on, you two are siblings. Siblings fight all the time, particularly in blended families. I always fight with my sister. When is the last time you guys argued?”
Tony looked down at his hands. “I don’t know.”
That was a lie.
“Did you guys fight the day she died?”
“No!”
“What did you guys fight about?”
“Objection,” Frank Ward got to his feet slower than I had anticipated, “he’s badgering the witness.”
“Sustained.”
I glanced over at the judge, thinking of requesting a break, but decided against it when I saw the impatient look on his face and knew that if I was going to get to the truth, it was now or never.
Without glancing over at Mason, without even really knowing what my plan was going to be— something I hated to do, but sometimes found necessary—I continued asking questions about his stepsister. I asked about her favorite hobbies. I asked what she liked to do. I asked a lot of different questions, and then finally I slid in the one question I had not yet asked as casually as I could, hoping to elicit a response from him before he thought about it.
“Did your stepsister ever do drugs?”
Tony swallowed, glanced over his parents, and then shook his head. “No, never.”
“Never.” I frowned. “She never did drugs with you guys?”
“Never, I resent even the suggestion that she did.”
Mason stirred but I did not need to look over at him to know that Tony had lied.
I could stop right here, and then put my client on the stand to have him testify against Tony, but then it would be his word against Tony’s word, I didn’t like that strategy.
I wanted more.
“Was she in the room with you guys that night you started to do drugs?”
“No!”
“Was she home?”
“I dunno, maybe.”
Right there, I had him. I knew the truth beyond a shadow of a doubt.
How did I get him to talk about it?
I flipped through my notes, looking at the workup my private investigator had done for me.
“Did your stepsister have a car?”
He scowled but immediately smoothed his face. “Yes, she did.”
“Did you have a car?”
“How’s that relevant?”
“Objection,” Frank Ward said, getting to his feet. “This is getting ridiculous. Mr. Turner is clearly on a fishing expedition—”
“I want to hear the witness answer the question,” the judge said.
Tony hesitated for a long moment, then finally shook his head. “No. My parents refused to let me have a car.”
“Why was that?”
“I dunno.”
His resentment was obvious.
Motive.
The jurors probably saw it too, but I could not leave it to chance.
“And just why did you resent your stepsister so much? Was it just the car?”
“I didn’t resent her. I loved her.”
Never before had a statement been uttered where the truth was obviously the opposite.
I didn’t even need to glance over at the jury to know that they didn’t believe a word he was saying.
“Would it be fair to say that it is primarily your testimony that pins the murder of your stepsister on my client?”
“Excuse me?” Tony said.
“Objection!” Frank said with gusto, leaping to his feet.
“Sustained.” The judge looked at me. “Counselor, I recommend you be succinct with your questions.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Let’s start again,” I said to Tony. “Are you older than your stepsister?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“And you graduated from high school before your stepsister died, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
The fact I was getting one-word answers now told me that I was getting close to something, and he knew it.
“Your stepsister, she was in her senior year, isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“Was she accepted to college?”
The witness didn’t want to answer, but he did.
“Yes. Stanford.”
“Are you in college?”
“How is that relevant?”
I glanced over at Frank. He knew where I was going. One glance at Frank’s face told me all that I needed to know.
Frank knows the truth too.
I wondered why Frank had not objected to my line of questioning as often as he could have.
I’d taken a bit of leeway with this witness, and Frank had almost sat back and let it happen, only objecting when I started to push beyond bounds.
I gave Tony a curious look. “Are you going to answer the question?”
“No, I’m not in college.”
“Did you apply to college?”
Tony snorted. “Like I would get accepted.”
“Was Mason accepted to college?”
“Yeah, he is in school.”
“But you are not, correct?”
“Yeah, what of it? I’m not the one who murdered my sister. He is!”
I studied Tony for a long moment. “Why do you feel the need to say that you did not murder your stepsister?”
Tony was pale now. He hesitated and looked over at Frank Ward as if expecting help from him, but nothing came.
“I... It just came out that way.”
“Isn’t it true that you killed your stepsister? That you were jealous because your parents treated her better than you? You were jealous that she was going to college and you were not?”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“Isn’t it true that you killed her in a fit of jealous rage while you were high? And then you came to yourself and realized what you had done, looked over at your passed-out friend, and decided to make it look like he did it?”
“That’s not what happ—”
“By your own admission, you had set him up before when he was blackout drunk, didn’t you?”
“That’s ridiculous! I never would’ve done anything like that. I loved my sister.”
“Isn’t it true that you killed her and that my client Mason Smith had nothing to do with it?”
“I didn’t kill my sister!” Tony screamed.
The judge banged his gavel. “The witness will please exercise a sense of decorum.”
The judge looked over Frank Ward as if expecting an objection, but Frank sat there with a grim look as if determined to see this through.
I glanced back at the family and saw that the mother’s face was pale, but the stepfather’s face was red.
All the pieces clicked t
ogether, confirming my suspicions. He was politically active. He was a member of the mayor’s same political party.
I now understood why Frank had objected in the way that he had, making sure to make token objections but also making sure that I had a path to the truth.
“Isn’t it true that your father’s protecting you right now?”
Frank Ward was on his feet. “Objection!”
“He loved her more than me!” Tony’s voice was high pitched and angry. I didn’t think “her” referred to his stepsister. “He’s not doing this for me. He’s doing this for her! He’s only protecting me for her!”
Frank Ward hid a satisfied smile as he sat down.
The judge banged his gavel again and then looked at me and then looked at the witness, clearly uncertain what to do next.
I claimed the moment.
“Is it your testimony that you killed your stepsister, and your father helped cover it up?”
Tony hesitated for a long moment. He had slipped up.
He was caught and he knew it.
“He dipped Mason’s fingers in her blood.”
6
“I have no further questions, Your Honor.” I sat down, thrilled and chilled at the same time. I had never before gotten a witness to confess to murder on the stand. This was one story that was for sure going into my memoirs.
“Your Honor,” Frank Ward was on his feet, “based on this new admission, I recommend that we adjourn for the day so we can further investigate the matter.”
There was something in Frank’s voice that almost said that this was what he wanted.
The judge studied me as if considering a rebuke for the way I had acted in his court, but then he shook his head.
“The request is granted.” He brought his gavel down. “Court is adjourned.”
When I looked over at Mason, he was struggling with conflicting emotions.
He stared at Tony. “I thought he was my friend.”
I patted Mason on the shoulder. “It looks like you’re getting out of jail, just take consolation in that.”
I slipped my binder into my briefcase, glanced over at the stepfather, who was even redder in the face then before. The victim’s mother was gone.
The stepfather looked like he wanted to attack me.
I smiled at him as I slipped out of the courtroom without another word, refusing to answer any of the reporters’ questions.
The Ghost Suspect
1
“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said to Thomas Warner as I stepped inside his apartment and looked around, my skin crawling because the place was filthy. My client Fred Samuelson had insisted that I speak with Thomas about his case, begging me to go in person, rather than send my investigator.
“Thomas can prove my innocence!” Fred had insisted. Seeing my skeptical look, he went on. “Please, just spend five minutes with him.”
I had finally conceded, just before the officer took Fred back to his prison cell.
“I don’t intend to take much of your time today,” I said to Thomas, “but my client Fred Samuelson wanted me to speak with you.”
“Of course, of course, I’m glad you came. I sent Fred that letter weeks ago, it must’ve taken him forever to get it.”
Why didn’t Fred mention the letter? I wondered.
It was difficult to not gag as I looked around the apartment. Thomas pointed to a chair and offered me a seat, but after spying a black mark on it that I could not identify, I declined.
“This is about that letter,” I said before Thomas could insist again. “I understand you might have seen something on the night of the murder. Can you tell me what you saw?”
Thomas’s face became stern. “I can prove that Fred is innocent.”
Fred’s case was open and shut as far as I was concerned.
The evidence against him was ironclad, and the only thing left to do was convince my client that it was time to negotiate a plea deal. The murder weapon had his fingerprints all over it. I was not gonna get around that.
I stifled an impatient sigh. “What did you see?”
“Fred was set up by a ghost.”
2
I almost left right there, but Fred’s desperate plea was still fresh in my mind, so I decided to ask a few more questions before I considered this avenue of the investigation closed just so I could report back to Fred that I’d followed through on his request.
I know now why he didn’t mention the letter, I thought. Thomas is crazy.
And Fred was desperate.
I studied the man in front of me and decided that he was in earnest despite the crazy claim.
“A ghost?” I folded my arms and leaned back against the wall, cringing when I felt something stick to me. I managed to hide my disgust but could not hide my skepticism. “I’m not sure what you know about the court of law, but I certainly can’t put you on the stand to testify to that.”
Thomas shrugged. “It sounds crazy, but it’s true. The night before the police found that poor woman, I saw his dead brother go into Fred’s apartment. His name is George Samuelson.”
The name rung a bell, but only because Fred talked about him all the time. George had been killed in a car accident several years back. Fred had not been able to get past it and sometimes insisted on talking to me about it, even when I made it clear I had other things to work on, and it was time for me to leave.
I just waited, figuring the look of disbelief on my face was enough.
“I swear to you, it was him!”
“Fred’s dead brother was in his apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing?”
Why am I encouraging this man?
“He was rifling around the apartment,” Thomas said. “That’s when the girl came over.”
“Fred’s girlfriend?”
“Yes. George killed her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard them fight, and I heard her scream.”
This could have been the break in the case we needed, but for the fact that the witness was accusing a dead man.
“What made you think this man was a ghost?”
“Well, Fred’s brother George is dead, isn’t he?”
“Could you see through him?”
“No. He was corporeal.” Thomas shrugged. “But I know he is dead. I went to the funeral.”
Corporeal.
Interesting word to describe a ghost.
“Do you recall if it was an open casket?” I asked.
Thomas shook his head. “Closed. George was so scarred in the accident that they had no other choice.”
“After George killed the woman, what did he do next?”
“Nothing, although I think George lit up a cigarette. I smelled smoke after that. Nasty habit.”
I avoided a pointed look around at the man’s filthy apartment.
“Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”
“They never asked me.”
“Where were you when this happened?”
“I was sitting out front.”
“Did you see George leave?”
“Nope. I came back inside. I didn’t want to meet a ghost in person!”
I hesitated and thought about asking him other questions but decided to not waste my time further.
Thomas was crazy.
“Thank you for meeting with me, I appreciate your time.”
“I am telling you the truth, Mr. Turner.”
“I’m sure you are.”
3
After I stepped outside of Thomas Warner’s apartment, I looked down the sidewalk to Fred’s apartment. Fred was in jail, but I had his key.
I sauntered down and opened the door. I walked in and inhaled deeply, trying to detect if there was any remaining hint of cigarette smoke, but I smelled nothing.
I took another deep breath.
Thomas has lost his marbles, no two ways about it.
I would have to go over the criminal report a
gain, but if I recalled correctly, George’s fingerprints had been found in the apartment. At the time, I had thought nothing of it because George had been a regular visitor at Fred’s place before his death.
How long does a fingerprint last? I wondered. Particularly in an apartment that has been cleaned many times since George’s death?
Fred was the opposite of Thomas Warner in that way, his apartment was immaculate.
“A ghost,” I said to myself. “I finally got the break I needed in the case, and the witness is telling me that my prime suspect is a ghost.”
4
After I returned to my office, I leaned back in my chair, and rather than turning on my computer and getting to work, I just sat there in thought. I had heard it all during the time that I had been practicing as a criminal defense attorney.
Or at least I thought I had until today.
This was the first time somebody had fingered a ghost.
“People will say and believe anything.”
I was about to turn my attention to another case, but I could not shake Thomas Warner from my mind.
He had been adamant that he was telling me the truth.
“What if he didn’t see a ghost?” I mused aloud to myself. “What if he really saw somebody?”
I dialed a number on my phone. A few moments later, Winston, my private investigator, picked it up.
“I need you to look into something for me,” I said.
“Which case?”
“The Fred Samuelson one. I just met a man who claimed that he saw the ghost of George Samuelson, Fred’s brother, so I want you to take a look into George for me.”
“You want me to look for a ghost?”
“Of course not.”
I shook my head and could just imagine Winston laughing at me on the other side of the phone line.
“No, I want you to prove to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that the brother is dead and buried in the ground.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.”
5
Two weeks passed. I had put off talking to Fred about negotiating a plea bargain, primarily because I wanted an opportunity to make sure that my client’s brother was actually dead.
