Naive

by Charles Royce

  New friend? WTF?

  11:37pm, Frank:

  Dude says to meet him at 3am down by the river. Says he’ll be in a fucking wheelchair.

  11:40pm, Talbot:

  No. Don’t do it. Not worth it.

  3:03am, Frank:

  Got it. And get this. It was Ghost guy! Creepy AF dude, all freckly and shit. Iconic.

  3:07am, Frank:

  Swear to God, he had that heroin with the ghost thing on it. I’ve got some good shit.

  3:08am, Frank:

  Had to snap a pic of the Ghost before he vanished haha! I’ve got the shit baby. Come join me!

  “Then he sent a blurry pic of the wheelchair dude,” Talbot says.

  Instead of using the monitor, Shawn pulls a giant cardboard-backed photo that had been leaning against the side wall, and proudly places it on the giant easel in front of the jury.

  “Is this the photo that Frank texted you?” Shawn asks Talbot.

  “Yes, sir, that’s him, I guess. Fucking stupid what Frank did.”

  “Thank you, Talbot. Now I know this next part might be hard, but can you tell me what happened to Frank the very next morning?”

  “It was all over the news.”

  “Yes, but can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what happened to Frank?”

  “He was in the middle of OD’ing, roaming the streets, and got hit by a taxi and died.”

  “Yes. Wait—he died?”

  “Yeah. Yesterday.”

  “Jesus,” Shawn says. “Apologies to the court. I’m sorry, Talbot.”

  Shawn sits back down.

  Astrid stands up. “Mr. Lexington, I’m Astrid Lerner.”

  “Excuse me, I’m not done yet,” Shawn interrupts. “Gimme a second, please.”

  Astrid sits back down.

  Shawn takes a moment to compose himself, allowing the feelings of guilt to pass through him. First Jenna, now Talbot. He sees his single-mindedness of winning has infiltrated his core beliefs, slowly ripping them from the inside out. How could I have missed the fact that Frank died? He shakes his head.

  “The bag was never found, so it couldn’t be analyzed, but here are the toxicology results from his doctor.” Shawn waves a sheet of paper at the jury. “Turns out he was poisoned. Poisoned with a fatal mix of heroin, crystal meth, and cyanide. And, according to the text exchange that Mr. Lexington just read to you and the photo you see here today, he was killed by the same man whose heroin was found inside Lennox’s apartment.”

  Shawn remains seated.

  “If that’s all, then your witness, Ms. Lerner,” says the judge.

  Astrid approaches Talbot. “Hi, Mr. Lexington. I’m so, so sorry about your friend. I was talking with his parents this morning, and they were asking about you. Are you doing okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Staying close to the program. Haven’t done any drugs or drank or nothing.”

  “I’m so proud of you. That’s awesome. I just have three questions for you. The first one is, can you tell me what other drugs that you and Frank would do together?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We did crack, heroin, and crystal meth.”

  “Thank you. Next question. Do you know or do you suspect that Lenny was doing drugs in the weeks or months before his death?”

  “Oh, absolutely not. I could tell if he was. Trust me. Lenny was clean.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Ma’am, I may be young, but I’ve been around. I can tell if somebody’s doing heroin. I woulda asked him for some if I thought he was using.”

  “Thank you, Talbot. Last question. How do you feel about that guy right there?” Astrid asks, pointing to Micah.

  “Objection. Relevance.”

  “Goes to motive, if you will allow the witness to continue.” Astrid crosses her fingers.

  “I’ll allow,” rules Judge Wilson.

  “Micah is a fucking jealous faggot,” Talbot says.

  The judge bangs his gavel. “Watch your language, young man.”

  Talbot swallows and hunches over even more. “Yes, sir.”

  Astrid walks toward him. “It’s okay, Talbot, just tone it down a little. You were saying…”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He sits up in his chair. “I loved Lenny like a brother, but that guy, Micah? Fucking jealous, sorry, freaking jealous as hell. My friend Frank was one of them pretty boys, swung both ways. Whenever Lenny would hang out with Frank, Micah would be all up in their business. Asking where they’d been, fucking calling Lenny all the time.”

  “Objection,” Shawn says. “Hearsay.”

  “I know what hearsay means,” Talbot says, looking up at the judge. “And Frank didn’t just tell me that shit, I was there.”

  “Overruled,” says Judge Wilson.

  “I have nothing more for this witness.”

  “Mr. Connelly, you may call your next witness,” prompts the judge.

  “The defense rests.”

  “Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 9:30am,” says the judge.

  “Thank you, Talbot.” As Talbot walks by him, Shawn tries to make up for his lack of empathy and follow-through. “I’m so sorry about Frank. Hang in there. You got this.”

  Talbot leaves the room in silence as the jury completes their exit. Astrid begins packing up while the jail escort begins to take Micah back to the Tombs.

  “Could I have just a quick moment?” Shawn asks the jail escort.

  “Sure.”

  Shawn grabs Micah’s arm and sits him down.

  “Now, that last part didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped,” Shawn says, “but most of these last few days have gone pretty well. I’m still confident you’ll be acquitted. But I need to know if you are interested in a plea deal, to the lesser charge.”

  “Do you think it went that badly?”

  Shawn makes a flat hand and moves it sideways left to right. “So-so.”

  “Whatever you think is best, Shawn, I trust you,” Micah says, hoping that the situation won’t come to that extreme. “Wait, what’s the jail time for the what’s-it-called?”

  “We have to go,” says the jail escort.

  “Criminally negligent homicide. With no prior record, it could be anywhere from one to four years.”

  “Do it.” Micah is halfway out the door.

  Astrid watches him leave, then addresses Shawn.

  “Ready to make a plea deal?” Astrid asks, with a post-eavesdrop snicker.

  “Haha. Nice move making buddy-buddy with our witness’s parents. And his friend’s parents, geez. Too bad you didn’t end up calling him as your witness, you could have knocked it outta the park.”

  “Ahh, you underestimate me, Mr. Connelly. Could have been my plan all along.”

  “So what about that deal? Criminally negligent homicide, two years.”

  Astrid laughs. “You know, you’re pretty good, Shawn. Yesterday, I might have been inclined to take that deal. Today, mmm, not so much.”

  She grabs her bag and begins to saunter toward the door.

  “See you tomorrow,” she says.

  “So that’s a no?” Shawn replies.

  C h a p t e r 4 1

  “Yes, baby?” Shawn asks.

  Haylee has been giving her husband Shawn some space ever since he got home from the long, emotional day. Noticing that he has relaxed into a more peaceful state, she seizes the moment.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “You finally remembered where you saw the Ghost logo?” Shawn says, leaning upward in his chair. They’d talked about this so often, it had become a running joke.

  “God no,” she says, defeated, as if the wind had been knocked out of her gut.

  Shawn, still reeling from his earlier self-observation with Talbot, recognizes his mindset is still exhibiting a need to win, this time with his own wife. He stands and walks toward her with both hands outstretched.

  “Baby.” He invites her to come closer to his arms.

  She takes his hands.

/>   “Funny that you call me baby right now.” She pulls his hands and places them on her stomach.

  Shawn looks at her. His mouth drops.

  He begins to touch her belly, staring at it. He begins to weep. He falls to his knees, his hands dropping from her stomach to her thighs. He pulls her closer, pressing his face into her abdomen.

  “Honey.” She places her hands on his head. She plays with his hair. “It’s gonna be okay. Shhh. It’s gonna be beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  He continues to cry. Objection! he thinks, I’m an awful human being who essentially accused Jenna of murder, who didn’t know that Talbot’s friend Frank had died, who doesn’t deserve to be a father.

  “And you’re going to be an awesome father,” Haylee says, as if reading his mind.

  He looks up at her and tries to smile. She smiles and continues rubbing his head, taking some of his hair in her finger and twirling it.

  “Case closed,” she says.

  C h a p t e r 4 2

  “You may begin your closing argument, Ms. Lerner,” Judge Wilson announces.

  “Thank you, your Honor,” Astrid says. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your time and patience, and commitment to this community and its process for justice.

  “The facts of this case are overwhelming and indisputable. Blood spatter results show definitively that the defendant was at the scene of the crime at the exact moment the victim was originally stabbed. DNA also places the defendant, and only the defendant, at the scene of the crime when the victim finally gave in to his thirty-three fatal wounds and his last breath was literally pounded out of his body by the defendant.

  “Gaps in both the defendant’s recollection of the evening and proven video and GPS surveillance of the night show clearly that the defendant had enough time to dispose of the murder weapon, which incidentally is the same type of knife found in their apartment, and any sort of other evidence that would link him to the crime. Testimony revealed a propensity toward violence, an actual threat of murder, an incongruence of a ‘Good Micah, Bad Micah,’ a questionable psychopathic tendency, and a frightening rage that could often be triggered by unrelenting jealousy.

  “And keep in mind that we also have a confession. We have the exact moment, on video, of the defendant realizing what he had done.”

  She grabs the remote and pulls up an image of Lennox. He is smiling a crooked grin, with creased dimples engulfed by the perfect amount of scruff. His face is skinny, but his body is well defined even through his tight shirt and suit.

  “Now, imagine with me for a moment. The defendant’s husband, Lennox Holcomb, age 37, as you can tell quite a handsome man, a successful vice president of finance, a loving and giving partner, has just taken a shower. He is naked, walking around his home, as many of us do from time to time. He decides to fix some cereal, sit down at his desk, maybe read the paper, look at his phone. With not a care in the world, he is simply passing time before he meets his sponsee. He loves his recovery work. He has devoted his life to helping others through the addiction that he has overcome, just as others have helped him.

  “Suddenly he feels a sharp pain in his back. Then another in his abdomen. Still fueled by rage over an affair, his money-obsessed, so-called loving husband begins to stab Lennox in his chair over and over, over and over, eventually dumping him on the living room carpet like a bag of trash. However, this strong young man is still alive, despite the attack from his partner of four years. After leaving his husband lying on the floor, bleeding out from thirty-three stab wounds and a collapsed lung, unable to move, unable to call for help for three agonizing hours, the defendant comes home from a party, turns on the lights, and realizes he has to finish what he started. Rather than call 9-1-1 immediately, he chooses to take matters into his own hands. He administers what he calls CPR, but in actuality was the continuation of a truly maniacal torture that ended in pounding on his husband’s chest, over and over, over and over. Finally, it was done. He calls 9-1-1. Arguably, his affect is one of acting. He is replaying a scene from a play he was in months before. That would be a horrible scenario, ladies and gentlemen, would it not?”

  Some of them nod in agreement. Astrid walks in front of the jury, her voice widening to fill the entire room.

  “Now, as promised, the defense tried to distract you with corrupt corporations and even his own friend of many years, Jenna, whom he threw under the bus to protect his client. And then there was this Ghost character. In a wheelchair. Did anyone stop to think how a man who is in a wheelchair could have allegedly attacked friends of Lennox, according to Jenna’s testimony describing the alleged contents of the alleged letter, allegedly linking Ghost to the murder? Now, moves like these reek of desperation. And make no mistake, the defense was desperate. Mr. Connelly tried to tarnish the reputation of an esteemed detective by suggesting he did not do his job, and Mr. Connelly also tried to discredit decades of blood spatter analysis techniques, simply to try—and the key word here is try—to plant a reasonable doubt in your mind.”

  Astrid is almost back at her table. She turns around.

  “Oh, Micah Breuer killed his husband. There’s no doubt about that. The evidence is indisputable and overwhelming. And let’s not forget the motives: the jealousy over the affair with Josh Harrison and the one-point-five-million-dollar insurance policy and seven-million–dollar condo he stands to gain if you acquit him.

  “Lennox Holcomb was a young man. He was a good man. He was giving back to his recovery community, making living amends with his husband after a brief affair, and being a loving and caring friend and son. He didn’t deserve to be tortured, left for dead, and brutally murdered. I ask that you find the defendant, Micah James Breuer, guilty on all counts so we can keep this diabolical and sadistic man from ever doing this again.”

  Sitting in the back of the courtroom, Elaine Holcomb has been grabbing her husband’s hand while listening to Astrid’s closing arguments. The grip becomes so strong that Wallace tries to remove his hand.

  “Sorry,” Elaine whispers, removing her hand from his.

  Wallace then places his hand on top of hers. “It’s okay, sweetie.”

  “Counselor?” Judge Wilson motions for Shawn to begin.

  “Thank you, your Honor,” Shawn replies.

  He stands up, buttons the top button of his suit jacket, and begins his closing argument.

  “This case should have never come to trial. The prosecutor knows it. We know it. And the real killer who is still out there definitely knows it.

  “There’s no murder weapon. There’s no motive. There’s no indisputable evidence. There’s no real confession. But you know what there is? A multitude of suspects and angles that the prosecutor and police never fully explored. Why? Because they were getting pressure from the mother of the victim’s son. That’s right. Elaine Holcomb, Lennox Holcomb’s own mother, who used to have that job right there.”

  He points to Astrid, who does not give him the satisfaction of looking back at him. Shawn grabs his remote and turns on the monitors. He reveals his first slide, a close-up of the heroin bag sticker with the ghost emblem.

  “That’s why they ignored the half-used heroin that was found in the victim’s possession.”

  His next three bullet points begin to pop onto the same PowerPoint slide, the first bullet point above the ghost logo, the second one to the bottom left, the third one to the bottom right.

  “That’s why they ignored the drug dealer’s past of violence, threats toward the victim, and the possible poisoning of one of the victim’s sponsees.”

  Red arrows appear connecting the three bullet points, encasing the ghost logo in a triangle.

  From the audience, Jenna squints. Her eyes widen. She pulls out her phone and does a quick Internet search for “European intersection signs.” Up pops a photo of a red triangle encasing a pointy silhouette of what looks like a skinny house, with a thick line through it.

  “That’s why they ignored the corruption o
f a corporation that was using Lennox for God-knows-what.” Shawn clicks through the slides one by one. “That’s why they ignored the motion-sensor camera hidden in a carved box in the victim’s living room.”

  Jenna looks up from her phone and is about to wave her hand to get Shawn’s attention, but is distracted by her own face on the screen.

  “They even ignored the jilted employee living right across the street,” Shawn says, “whose Wi-Fi access is available from the victim’s home. Is this all coincidence? I mean, that’s a lot of coincidence, don’t you think?

  Jenna puts down her half-raised hand, turns off her screen, and rests the phone in her lap.

  “Desperation, plain and simple,” Shawn says. “The prosecution needed a win, to uphold some sort of high esteem of the office, to prove a new reputation with a new regime. Something.”

  He remains perfectly still. He does not walk the floor. He stays standing in front of his table, facing the jury.

  “There is no murder weapon. None. It was from the same type of knife set that was found at Micah and Lennox’s apartment, but that set was complete, tested, and found clean.

  “There is no motive. Micah has a jealous streak. So what? So do I sometimes. So do many of the people in this courtroom. The good thing about Micah is that he was in therapy, even dealing with the repercussions of the spiritual abuse he was subjected to as a child. Hey, he’s used to it, right? People abusing him, ganging up on him, the church, the prosecution. He’s tough. He can take it. He’s a strong man, resilient, as evidenced by that fact that his own therapist was happy with his progress. He had made amends to Josh Harrison, even after the alleged threatening confrontation, enough to where Josh and Micah were laughing and hanging out arm-in-arm at the beach just a few short months ago.

  “Plus, I was the one who suggested the life insurance to Lenny. Me. Their lawyer. Because I knew they were continuing to travel and to take part in all these crazy adventures like hiking and bungee jumping and falling out of airplanes. They needed to protect each other, in case something happened. And one-point-five is nothing in relation to their lifestyle.