The Crimson Trial

by Freya Atwood

  I hung up before Nic could object further. Then driving with one hand and checking through my emails with the other, I picked out another number. It was the landlord of the vacant storefront that Khan had been using.

  “Mr. Levinson. I need access to your property at 1890 Vale and Duke. I’m an attorney for Hunter Watson, who was accused of murdering Dr. Adil Khan.”

  “No, no, no lady. I just got that property back from the police. I need to rent out that space. No, I ain’t opening it up for no one,” came a drawling reply.

  “I just need to look at the room the murder happened in.” I persisted. “I believe it’s at the rear of the property. I won’t interfere with your business.”

  “I’m not going all the way down there just to let you in, lady. I’m ten miles away,” came the next obstacle.

  “Fifty bucks.” I offered.

  The freeway was carrying me into wooded hills, gray clouds were descending to meet the road and a haze of rain misted the windshield. There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment.

  “Hundred. Come on, I’ve gotta travel like fifteen miles to get there.”

  “Seventy-five and I won’t have my firm file a lawsuit against you for impeding on Mr. Watson’s constitutional rights.”

  A logging truck tore past, throwing up spray that momentarily blinded me. I hate rain! Probably shouldn’t have picked Washington then.

  “OK. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. It’s a seventy mile round trip, you know? You got five minutes to look around…” Levinson spouted belligerently.

  “You’ll wait for me until I arrive and I’ll have as long as I need.” I hung up, stabbing at the screen.

  It took another forty-five minutes of rain and spray from trucks before I was pulling into Duke Street. I stopped at the corner of Vale and tried to gauge the place from the dry safety of the car. The store stood to my left on the corner. Vale was the main street on which the store had its front, white-washed windows boarded up where they were broken. Graffiti stained the concrete sides of the building. Duke was a side street. What would have been the rear entrance to the store was across the street from me, a small doorway covered in a metal grill, itself secured with a chain and padlock.

  There was some traffic, both car and foot along Vale with a smattering of businesses and apartments along it. Cars splashed through potholes and pedestrians either moved with a pained shuffle or else hurried by as though keen to be out of the neighborhood. The EPD eye witness, Mr. Kellag, lived in a second floor apartment on Vale. I could see it, a concrete block swathed in neon daubings and gang tags at street level, and a damp, scabrous brown-gray higher up. Windows were small and many. People crammed in, as many as the developer could get away with.

  A man came around the corner, wearing a brown raincoat, collar turned up against the rain. He held a newspaper over his head and looked up and down the street, then at his watch. I got out of the car, grabbing an umbrella from the trunk and crossed the street.

  “Mr. Levinson?” I put out a hand.

  Levinson was rotund and balding, with a thick layer of stubble on his cheeks and jawline. Beneath the raincoat he wore an open-necked shirt.

  “Let’s get this over with!” He snapped, ignoring the hand.

  He hustled to the side door, taking a set of keys out of his pocket.

  “Place stinks. I’ve got to get a professional cleaning crew in here. Know how much they cost, huh? Don’t have time to be giving guided tours unless you’re a buyer.”

  I ignored his complaints as he pushed aside the grille and then unlocked the plain, wooden door. Inside was pitch black. I waited on the street as Levinson went inside. I heard him banging into something in the dark, heard something fall and break and heard him swear. More bangs, more swearing. Finally a stark light came on. I cautiously stepped inside. There was nothing much to see.

  The room was a large storeroom with double doors to my right, chained shut but presumably leading to a loading bay. There were boxes and crates scattered around, seemingly at random. There were no windows. A door opposite the loading bay must let into the rear of the storefront.

  “Is this the room Dr. Khan ran his clinic from?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah I guess so. Must have been. This is his stuff, mostly. Couldn’t do it from the front, no way to keep it secure with those big windows.”

  “Not a great selling point.” I muttered sarcastically.

  “Hey, lady. I’m doing you a favor here!” Levinson complained, pointing belligerently. “I don’t gotta be here.”

  “Constitution says you do.” I shot back, looking around the room.

  A thought occurred to me. “Where’s the light switch?”

  “Over there, by the door.” Levinson pointed to the door leading to the store. “Where else would it be? Jeez.”

  He flipped his paper open, leaning against a crate and pretending to immerse himself. I caught him glancing at me as I walked past, or at my butt maybe. I took my phone from my pocket and began to film the room. Anyone coming in from Duke Street would be in darkness until they crossed the room. An idea blossomed in my mind. Could be important. The random layout of the room, the location of the light switch, and the time of the killing. And the order of events. I need to speak to Kellag.

  I was becoming excited. It wasn’t just the emergence in my mind of a defense that was beginning to seem robust. This was more than that. It was the possibility of evidence that proved…What? Police corruption? Conspiracy? It was too amorphous right now. Too many variables and all in the wrong order. All I had was an instinct. The jury wouldn’t buy it. I needed proof.

  I returned to the evidential files I had downloaded, in particular a PDF containing crime scene pictures.

  “Mr. Levinson, I’ll pay you an extra twenty-five dollars if you’ll help me with an experiment.”

  The fat man perused my legs for a moment, not even bothering to be sly about it this time. Then he smiled a greedy, oily grin as he met my eyes. “Fifty.”

  “Screw it.” I retorted and strode for the door.

  “OK, OK. Thirty, it is.” Levinson called out, putting his hands up in surrender.

  I stopped and walked back. “Twenty-five. Now. As near as I can tell, the body of Dr. Khan was about…here.”

  I pointed to a spot about six feet from the doorway to the store. “Lying face down. Ballistics report says the shot was fired from between the Duke Street door and the back door. From this corner here.”

  I stood in a corner of the room where a cluster of wooden boxes, holding an assortment of trash seeming to range from piles of old clothes and fabric to broken shelves and signage, provided cover for a hidden sniper.

  “Could you start from that door, switch off the lights, then turn them back on and walk to the spot where the body was found?” I asked.

  “For twenty-five bucks? That’s all you want me to do?” Levinson shuffled to the door, muttering to himself. “Lawyers! My Ma was right, I should have gone to college.”

  He shuffled to the door. I was beginning to like the irascible little man. “Say when.” He sighed, standing with his hand on the light switch.

  “When.”

  The room was plunged into darkness for a moment. Then the lights came back on and Levinson started walking across the room. I made a gun shape from my two hands and drew a bead on Levinson as he walked.

  “Bang! You’re dead!”

  Levinson jumped in mock-surprise and put a hand to his heart.

  “Well? What did that prove?” Levinson said, taking a cigar from an inside pocket and clamping it between his teeth.

  “It may have proved a man innocent of murder.”

  Chapter 17

  I stood in the doorway watching the rain, which had become a fine, sleeting mist. I looked toward the apartment building that was home to Mike Kellag.

  “Mr. Levinson?” I called back over my shoulder. “You want to make another…” I took out the billfold I kept in my trouser pocket and che
cked how much cash I had. “Ten dollars.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You think I don’t have a home to go to. What d’you want?”

  “Just walk with me over to that apartment building.” I pointed. “I want to see someone who lives over there.”

  The scruffy man belonged to this neighborhood, wherever he actually came from. I thought it might attract less attention if he accompanied me than if I were to walk into a building like that alone. Levinson squinted around his cigar, then chuckled. It was a deep throated, rich sound. “Lady, you got some balls. I tell ya.” He shook his head. “No charge. I’ll walk you over just to watch your ass as you walk up the stairs.”

  Chuckling and shaking his head, he walked out into the rain, newspaper again doubling as an umbrella. I followed and he preceded me into the building through a set of doors with glass panes in the upper half, one of them replaced with a defaced board. If there had been a secure entry, it had been broken long ago. Levinson yanked open the door and went inside.

  “Who you wanna see?” He said, stopping in front of a wall of mailboxes.

  “His name is Kellag. He’s on the second floor.”

  Levinson spat. “Really? Well, stairs are this way. Elevator’s always out of order.”

  He slapped open a door next to the mailboxes and walked through.

  “You know somebody that lives here?” I asked as I entered the stair well. Levinson was huffing and puffing up the concrete stairs. A fizzing electric light cast an intermittent light. There was a dank smell heavy in the air.

  “Come on, sister. Let’s go see Mike,” was my reply.

  I caught up quickly, overtaking him by the time we got to the second floor and leading him out into the hallway. I strode down a narrow corridor with a dirty window at one end. I stopped at a door next to the window. Below I could see Vale. A large truck had pulled up across the street from my car. I knocked.

  “Who is it?” Came a suspicious voice from inside.

  I fished in my shoulder bag, taking out my driver’s license. “Mr. Kellag? My name is Laura Jones. I’m a lawyer. I’m defending Hunter Watson. You may have heard of him.”

  “Get lost.”

  “Hey, Mikey. Come on, give the lady a break.” Levinson said, still breathing heavily from the climb.

  “That you, Al?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Come on pal, open up.”

  I gave Levinson a look and he took the cigar out of his mouth, grinning. “Betcha glad you asked me, right?”

  “Right.” I said with a wry grin.

  There was a rattle of chains and locks and then the door opened. A tall, thin man with graying hair and cheeks riddled with broken veins, opened the door. He wore a bathrobe with a shirt and cravat underneath. A hot water bottle peeked out too.

  “Hey, Al. What’s new?” He said, ignoring me.

  “Not much, Mikey.” Levinson replied jovially.

  “Can I speak to you for a few minutes, Mr. Kellag?” I put in.

  He looked down his nose at me. “Won’t change my mind about what I told the police.”

  “That’s not my job. I just need to understand exactly what you saw and, maybe see for myself?”

  He stepped aside, waving an arm. I took the invitation. The apartment was cramped. A reclining armchair that had seen better days thirty years ago took up a prime spot in front of a television. A couch was buried under neatly folded piles of laundry and a clothes horse stood in front of an electric heater. There was a strong smell of damp fabric.

  The room’s only window was in a corner of the far wall, next to an open door. Even from across the room I could see the truck parked on Duke, right in front of the side door Levinson had opened for me. The window was open and an ashtray sat on the sill, a cigarette in the middle, still smoking. As I approached the window I noticed the cigarette hadn’t been smoked, just lit. No nicotine stain on the filter. There was another aroma in his part of the room, almost hidden amid the smell of tobacco. Marijuana.

  “You called 911.” I stated.

  “Sure did. I saw that young fella go in, through that door down there. Then I saw the light come on and heard shots.” Kellag stated.

  He sat in the armchair, pulling a lever to spring the footrest out. I nodded, looking around the room. Photographs lined a mantelpiece next to the TV. I saw pictures of Kellag in a police uniform. A man with bright red hair and a crooked nose featured in three pictures with him.

  “You used to be a cop?”

  “Sure did. Nineteen years. Before I got cancer and had to take early retirement.”

  “Who’s that in the picture?” I asked.

  “That’s my buddy Ditz, Tony Ditzarella.”

  I looked closer at the pictures. An instinct was calling to me, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. But I had learned to trust my gut feelings. Hunches weren’t just for cliched cop shows on TV, sometimes it was the subconscious trying to get your attention on something important. I couldn’t see what could be important about Mike Kellag’s career in the police or…I stopped, suddenly peering close at an image of a woman in the background of a picture of Kellag and Dizarella in black ties at some function or another. A third man stood with him, blond and stocky, with a handsome face and a charming smile. I recognized the woman.

  “What’s this, policeman’s ball?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Those were some of my buddies. Good cops. They understood.” Kellag said. He took the picture from me, smiling fondly. “Men knew how to be cops in those days.”

  “Understood? Understood what?” I persisted, putting a hand to the arm of the chair and leaning forward to get into Kellag’s eyeline.

  His eyes were unfocused, but my movement brought him back to the present. He frowned, red cheeks creasing, gray eyebrows drawing down into a V. “Nothing. You wouldn’t get it. It’s a cop thing.”

  This close I could smell the weed on his bathrobe. I stood, stepping back and folding my arms. “How often do you smoke?” I asked.

  Kellag clutched the arms of his chair, kicking the footrest back underneath. Suddenly he sat up, tense and alert. I hadn’t mentioned marijuana, but his reaction told me he knew the kind of smoking I meant.

  “I’m not a cop. Or a prosecutor. All I care about is my client. If you want to smoke dope, go ahead. It’s a free country.” I waved my hand, dismissing the thought and walked back to the window.

  Levinson still stood there, watching me with a shrewd look on his face. His eyes darted to his pal and he took a long pull on his cigar.

  “Young lady…” Kellag began. That pushed my buttons and suddenly I was on fire.

  I rounded on him, closing with him in two strides. “The last person to call me young lady was the governor of the juvie hall I was in when I was fifteen.” I snapped. “I didn’t respond well to it then and I sure as shit don’t now. So don’t patronize me. You don’t want to talk to me. Fine. I think I got what I need anyway. If you were any kind of cop, you wouldn’t want an innocent man doing life at the Stone.”

  He took a step back, gulping, eyes wide. Levinson chortled and clapped. I glared at him. He stopped.

  “It helps the pain, OK?” Kellag said in a small voice. “Meds are expensive. The weed is cheaper. Adil put me onto it. Says in Europe you can get it from a doctor for pain relief.”

  I took a breath, walking back to the window to give myself a chance to shed the anger. Levinson edged away from me. I found myself staring at the high sided truck. It had the logo of a brewery on the side and men in overalls were carrying crates of bottles to a bar across the street from the murder scene. The rain had stopped. The world had a freshly washed look to it, as if the rain had scoured the streets clean.

  “Is that a bar across the street, Mr. Levinson?” I queried, looking up from the window.

  “Yeah, Bronco’s.” Levinson replied with a frown.

  “Regular deliveries, I bet.” I said to myself, thinking aloud.

  “At least they’ve delivered during the day this
time. Goddamned truck wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes.” Kellag grumbled.

  Both men looked uneasy at the grin that suddenly blossomed across my face. I couldn’t be that lucky!

  Chapter 18

  I returned to my car; the air felt fresh and clean. Vale was still as run down as it was when I arrived but there was an energy in me now. There had been a revelation up there in Mike Kellag’s apartment, a combination of factors which had clicked together in my mind. I had a case and could see my argument in court unfolding, how my new understanding of the events would cut through the prosecution evidence like a knife.