The Case of the Missing Department Head

by David Staats

  “You’re not going to waste my time with a trick like this,” said Preston. He palmed the phone with his large hand and put it in his pocket.

  “I didn’t come here to waste your time or mine,” said Dure.

  “I should also point out,” the prosecution’s computer expert spoke up again, “that we’ve tried a number of common unlock codes, so that the quota of ten quick attempts has been used up. Right now, we’re at one hour between tries.”

  On Dure’s side of the table, everyone but Dure himself blanched at this information.

  “You led me to believe that you had the unlock code,” said Preston, using his best jury-argument mode of indignant accusation.

  “I think we do have the unlock code,” returned Dure, “it’s just that we also have some others. It’s going to be a simple matter of deciding which of our candidates is the most likely to be the right one. We’ll agree, to be considerate of the other demands on your time, to make only one attempt. If that doesn’t work, we’re done.”

  Again, on Dure’s side of the table, everyone but Dure himself blanched at this offer.

  “I’ll agree to that,” said Preston, “if you’ll give me your list of candidates if the one you pick doesn’t work.”

  “No,” said Dure. “Your tech here obviously will try them out at leisure, and when one of them works, you’ll have the contents of the phone and we’ll have nothing. Besides, as I said before, these communications are attorney-client privileged.”

  “How can a supposed unlock code be attorney-client privileged?” demanded Preston.

  “Just to speak hypothetically,” said Dure, “possible unlock codes might be a significant date, or place name, or some other piece of information that you might use for investigation – not to mention that if I gave you this information you might claim waiver of the attorney-client privilege and seek more attorney-client communications.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” sniffed Preston.

  “It may be ridiculous, but I noticed you didn’t say you wouldn’t do it,” said Dure.

  The temperature in the room was starting to rise.

  “Look,” said Dure, in a calmer tone of voice, “you want to know what’s on the phone, otherwise, you wouldn’t have had your technician try to open it. We’ve got eight people assembled here. The phone is here. Possible unlock codes are here. It won’t take but thirty seconds for us to try one, and if it doesn’t work, we’re out of here. Why waste eight people’s time?”

  Preston reached in his pocket and brought the phone back out.

  Dure took from one of his pockets a slip of paper. He turned to Ralph on his left and motioned the computer tech to huddle with them. In very low tones they debated which of the codes to try. After a few moments, Dure pointed to a particular entry on the paper and asked the technician, “Got it?”

  “Yeah, got it.”

  Dure refolded the paper and put it back in his pocket. The huddle broke up.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” said Dure.

  Preston nodded to his technician who got up and went around the table to stand behind Dure’s technician. Preston gave the phone a little shove, and it slid across the table to the technician. Dure also got up and stood behind the technician. Dure was looking over the tech’s right shoulder, and the prosecution’s technician was looking over his left.

  Josh, Dure’s technician, took up the phone and pressed the start button. A virtual keypad appeared on the phone’s screen.

  Preston now also got up and came around the table. He was tall enough that he could look over his own technician’s shoulder to see what Dure’s technician was doing.

  The technician had already pressed three numbers. He had three more numbers to go. The room was quiet and all eyes were watching him.

  He pressed a three. He pressed an eight.

  “No! It was a seven,” said Ralph. “The fifth number was a seven.”

  The technician stopped. “It was an eight,” he said. He looked to Dure for confirmation.

  “I think it was an eight,” said Dure. He pulled out his slip of paper. “It was an eight,” he said.

  The technician punched in the last number, a seven.

  The screen went blank momentarily. Then, the virtual keypad re-appeared on the phone’s screen. The code had failed. Groans of disappointment sounded. “Let me see that,” said Dure, and before Preston could object, he reached down and took the phone out of his technician’s hands. He carefully placed his right thumb on the start button and rested it there. The screen went blank again. In a moment, colorful icons appeared, as if floating to the surface of a pond. “It works!” he said.

  “What!”

  “How the hell . . .”

  “What are you doing?” said Preston, suspiciously.

  Dure pressed the icon to bring up recent calls. Then he put the phone on the table so that everyone could see. “Last phone call,” he read out loud, “Nine thirty-two p. m. . . . June 5! That’s the day she was killed. This changes everything!”

  Josh was opening his laptop computer and attaching a cable.

  “My tech will take a copy of the phone, then you can have it,” said Dure.

  “What’s the unlock code?” demanded Preston.

  “I don’t know,” said Dure. “But why do you need it? The phone is unlocked.”

  “Yes, but it will lock up again,” said Preston. “We need that code.”

  “I don’t have the code. You saw that the one we tried didn’t work.”

  “It did work. The phone’s open. This is another of your underhanded tricks. I’m not going to put up with it.”

  “In the first place,” replied Dure, “you can keep it from locking up again. Just have someone swipe the screen every two minutes.” He laughed.

  Preston growled.

  “In second place,” said Dure, “your tech can make a copy just like mine is doing.”

  “I want that code,” said Preston in a cold, menacing voice.

  “Alright,” said Dure. “If you’ll give me your word that you will not treat my giving you the code as a waiver of the attorney-client privilege, I’ll give you the code that my tech just used.”

  “Okay,” said Preston, after some hesitation.

  “Josh, write down for Mr. Preston the code you just used – but remember,” said Dure, turning to Preston, “it doesn’t work. You just saw it.”

  “I’m not sure what I saw, other than some of your trickery,” said Preston.

  * * *

  In the elevator on the way down, Dure’s computer technician asked him, with a wonder of admiration in his eyes, “How did you do that?”

  Dure made a subtle gesture with his eyes and pointed a forefinger held at waist level towards a woman in the elevator who was not of their party. The technician got the message and said nothing more.

  Once they were outside the Justice Center, and walking towards Dure’s office across the street, Dure said, “We have urgent work to do. We’ve got to get all the leads off that phone and follow them up before the prosecution gets to those witnesses. We’ll set up a war room in the office, I’ll call Kurt Kniffe off whatever else he is working on. That last phone call that we looked at, that must have been to someone in her contacts list. It said ‘R. Parker.’”

  “Right,” said the technician.

  “That’s got to be the same Rhys Parker that Kniffe mentioned to me.”

  By this time they had arrived at the door to Dure’s office.

  8.

  Once inside, Dure held an impromptu meeting with the four of them standing right there in the reception area. “The first order of business is to talk to this Rhys Parker. If he can say that he talked with Mrs. Houlihan at 9:32, that will go a long way towards exonerating our client.”

  “This could win the case for us,” said Kara excitedly.

  “Not by itself,” said Dure. “It’s going to be really hard to overcome a confession. But if this information pans out, the prosecution will have to argue some
thing like Houlihan driving back in the middle of the night, and then returning to the gun show. The more we can make the prosecution have to twist its arguments into a pretzel, the better. And, we could search for evidence that would show that Houlihan didn’t drive back. This could be a a major development in the case.”

  “I always thought the son did it,” said Ralph.

  “But we have to hurry,” said Dure. “If the prosecution gets to Parker first, they may scare him off from talking to us, and they will probably seize his phone. Preston is probably having a search warrant drafted as we speak. Good thing is, that may delay them by twenty minutes or so, so we have a little head start.”

  Dure handed out instructions. “Kara, you find out the office and home address of this Rhys Parker, and as many phone numbers as you can. See if you can find out where he is right now. Don’t disclose where you are calling from – we don’t want to scare him off.

  To the computer tech he said, “Josh, get me all the details about that last call on Mrs. Houlihan’s phone: start time, end time, see if you can get the actual number that was called, whatever there is. Get that to me right away. Then, make a list of all the calls, incoming and outgoing, and all the text messages in the twenty-four hours before . . . let’s make it back to Thursday noon.

  “Ralph, you’re going to come with me to visit Mr. Parker – just as soon as Kara tells us where he is.”

  The little group broke up and each went to his work space.

  * * *

  In Prosecutor Preston’s office in the Justice Center, the relatively inexperienced Jessica Tinder was being given direction by Preston. “Dure said that a conversation by the victim at nine thirty would change everything. I think he’s grasping at straws. I’ve never lost a case with a confession in it. I’m not going to lose this one either. Nobody confesses to murder unless they’re guilty, especially not someone who lives in a neighborhood like Sunderly Chase. This guy is not some scared fifteen-year old. I want you to go over Houlihan’s confession and see if anything in there is inconsistent with a nine thirty conversation. Have Shawn make a list of all the contacts in that phone for the week preceding the murder and get that list to Lt. Wisdom.”

  Ms. Tinder was scribbling notes in her rounded handwriting on a yellow legal pad which she supported, while sitting with her legs crossed, on her left thigh. “Okay, got it,” she said. She stood and left Preston’s office with an earnest demeanor. She had never been on a murder case before.

  In her own small office, she pulled up a copy of the transcription of Houlihan’s videotaped confession on her computer screen:

  My name is Howard Houlihan. I am making this statement of my free will. I have been advised of my right to remain silent and my right to legal counsel, and I hereby waive my rights.

  I live at nine Cherry Lane in Sunderly Chase. On Friday, June 5, I left my home to drive to Belleterre to go to a gun show for the purpose of selling Hawaiian shave ice. As I was leaving . . . uh, going out the door, around one o’clock, [by Detective Johnson: that’s one in the afternoon?] right . . . my wife and I got into an argument. She became very violent and abusive. Somehow, I hit her in the head with my fist and she fell down. I did not mean to kill her, but she became dead. I panicked and to cover up what had happened, I cut off her head and put the body outside the house to make it look like a Muslim had killed her.

  After this, my memory is a blank and I cannot remember what I did with the head, nor with the knife I used to cut it off. The next thing I do remember is setting up my vending trailer in the parking lot at the gun show in Belleterre on Friday afternoon, about four o’clock.

  When I returned home Monday morning, I was at first surprised to find that my wife was dead. I called the police. When the police came, I showed them the body. They questioned me. At that time, I was nervous and didn’t want to say anything, and said nothing to the police about what I had done.

  Now I want to admit what I did so that the community will no longer worry and so that innocent people will not come under suspicion.

  I make this statement freely, without any compulsion.

  Signed: Howard Houlihan

  On first reading through this statement, Jessica Tinder thought there was a problem. So she read through it again, slowly. Jeez, Louise, there’s a problem here – a big problem. And she was the one who discovered it – if she was right. But it was so simple, she couldn’t be wrong. Her named flashed in bright lights, her star was rising, and her breathing quickened. She printed out a copy of the statement and practically ran to prosecutor Preston’s office.

  His door was open. She slowed to a brisk walk and entered. He was sitting sideways, intent on his computer screen, upright in his starched white shirt and blue-and-red rep tie. Perhaps the noise of her entry or a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision caught his attention; he turned his head, but not his torso, in her direction. “Yes?” he said.

  “The confession says early afternoon. If she was alive at nine thirty, we’ve got a problem,” she announced.

  “Let me see.”

  She handed the paper to him. He glanced over it quickly, then pressed a button to activate his speaker phone. He tapped three numbers on the phone. A voice came out of the phone, “Shawn here.”

  “Shawn, get me all the details on the last calls made on Mrs. Houlihan’s phone.”

  “Got ‘em already.”

  “Are they in a form that you can e-mail them?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Send them now to Lt. Wisdom.”

  “Okay,” said Shawn.

  Preston clicked off the call. To Jessica he said, “Thank you. We’ll look into this. Things are not always what they seem.” While she was leaving his office, Preston was looking up Lt. Wisdom’s telephone number.

  * * *

  Kara walked into Dure’s office. She had in her hand a pink While-You-Were-Out slip on which she had written an address. She said, “Mr. Parker runs a real estate brokerage. He is spending this afternoon at the model home in a new development called Chestnut Hills. Here’s the address,” handing the pink slip to Dure. “I figured the streets might not be in the GPS database yet, so I also wrote down the intersection where the development’s entrance is.”

  “Smart girl,” said Dure. “Thanks.” He was putting on his suit jacket. “Call Kurt Kniffe and tell him to meet me there. I’ve already given him a heads up.” To Ralph he said, “Come on.” They hurried out of the office.

  Ralph drove Dure’s car. “I know where it is,” said Ralph. “Out Route 322. There’s lots of signs.” Chestnut Hills was six miles out of town. As soon as they were clear of town traffic and stop lights, Ralph bumped the speed to seventy, and they flew.

  “Ralph, I don’t want to get stopped for speeding for the sake of saving sixty seconds,” said Dure.

  “I don’t see no cops,” said Ralph.

  “Slow down,” said Dure.

  Ralph took his foot off the gas. The road was straight and level. They could see far ahead, and in the mirrors, far behind. There were no cars in sight going in their direction. So either the police and Kniffe were far ahead of them, or far behind.

  Ralph had been right. There were lots of signs. “New Homes starting in the low $400’s,” said signs flanked by attention-getting pennants, flapping in the breeze.

  If the people who write laundry detergent advertisements for the television could dictate their idea of suburban perfection, it would be the model home and sales office for the Chestnut Hills development. It had a smooth, macadam driveway, a neat lawn, a concrete walkway with a cute, superfluous curve leading to a front stoop over which was a gabled portico. The front door was oak veneer with an elaborate, translucent window and matching side panels. Immediately inside was a large, high-ceilinged foyer and a sales agent sitting at a small desk.

  Standing in front of the sales agent’s desk, apparently talking with him, was a man of middle height, a nondescript man in a gray suit. When Dure and Ralph entered the foyer, M
r. nondescript turned and greeted Dure. “Hello, Walter,” he said.

  “Hello, Kurt,” said Dure.

  “This is Rhys Parker,” said Kniffe. Turning to the sales agent, he said, “Mr. Parker, this is Walter Dure, the attorney I had mentioned to you.”

  “I’ve told Mr. Parker the basic situation,” said Kniffe to Dure. “He has surprising information.”

  Rhys Parker rose from his chair and shook hands with Dure. Ralph stood in the background, watching. Parker seemed to think there might be the prospect of a sale somewhere in this situation with two men apparently of substance and some kind of hanger-on, notwithstanding what Kniffe had told him and notwithstanding that no wives were present. Moreover, he was very uncomfortable talking about Tiffany Houlihan. Therefore, using a presumptive lead, he took a couple of steps towards the kitchen while saying, “Can I show you around the house?”

  Dure said, “I don’t want to waste your time. Mr. Kniffe has told you, I take it, that we’re interested in a telephone call Tiffany Houlihan made to you on the evening of June 5, shortly before she was killed.”

  Parker smiled nervously. He was perspiring. “As I said, as I said to Mr. Kniffe, I didn’t talk with her that evening. We can talk as we walk. The houses in this development are custom built,” he was speaking rapidly and continuing to walk towards the kitchen, “and are upscale in design and materials. Even if,” (he wanted to forestall the objection which in the circumstances was obvious) “you are not in the market, you may have clients who would be interested in a house here –” He turned his back now to them all and walked to the kitchen, forcing them to follow.

  The kitchen was spacious and flooded with light from the afternoon sun. Dure said, “Mr. Parker, we have seen Mrs. Houlihan’s phone, and it shows that a call of about six minutes duration was made to you at nine thirty that evening.”