The Trial

by Robert Whitlow

  “I’m Ray Morrison, a private detective. Could I talk to you for just a minute? I have some questions about a man named Harry O’Ryan, a former employee.”

  The woman lost her pleasant expression and looked to the ceiling for help. “Not again. Come back to my office.”

  She led Ray through a labyrinth of hallways and offices. Punching in a security code on a grid panel, she opened a heavy brown door and Ray followed her into the suite of offices used by the security department of the bank.

  “Have a seat. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thanks. Black with one sugar, please.”

  Ms. Meadows handed him the cup. “Why are you asking for Harry O’Ryan?” she asked.

  Ray took a hot sip. “I’m not the only one?”

  “No, just the most recent.”

  “I’m at the beginning of my search. How can you help me?”

  “I’ll tell you what I told the others. Harry O’Ryan floated out of town two years ago in a boat of bad checks on a river of cheap vodka.”

  “Not a good recommendation for a future employer. How well did you know him?”

  “Too well. He’s a charming guy on first appearances, but you know what they say about first impressions.”

  “That they’re lasting?”

  “No, that they’re deceptive. But I feel sorry for Harry. If he’s still alive, he’s probably lying in a gutter.”

  “Why would other people be looking for him?”

  “Probably more bad checks. The bank covered his bogus paper here in Corbin, but he didn’t change his ways after he left town. We’ve been in contact with skip tracers and collection agents from California to New York.”

  “Do you know his first stop after he left Corbin?”

  “He went to the Fort Pendleton, California, area.”

  “The Marine base?”

  “Yes. Harry was an ex-Marine having trouble re-entering normal society. He liked to hang out with active duty and former Marines.”

  “Did he ever mention a man named Walter Monroe?”

  “He had a friend named Buster Monroe, probably the same guy. Buster came to see him before leaving to go overseas somewhere.”

  “Okinawa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you meet Buster?”

  “I think Harry brought him by the office for a minute, but it could have been one of his other friends.”

  “How about another Marine named Peter Thomason?”

  “No, I never met him,” she said. “But I heard Harry talk about him.”

  “What did he say about him?”

  Nicole looked quizzically at Ray. “Did you tell me why you’re looking for Harry?”

  “No, but I will. I’m working for a lawyer representing Pete Thomason. Pete is charged with first-degree murder in Georgia.”

  Eyes open wide, she asked, “What does Harry have to do with it?”

  “That’s a long story. It’s something that happened between Harry, Pete Thomason, and Buster Monroe when they were in boot camp together.”

  “Start your version of the story. I’ll compare it with the account I heard.”

  When he finished, Nicole shook her head. “What a jerk.”

  “No doubt about that.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “What’s not true?”

  “It makes more sense now.”

  Ray waited.

  “I never heard the whole story, but Harry admitted that he and another Marine, who must have been Buster Monroe, double-crossed a fellow recruit named Peter Thomason and got him kicked out of the military.”

  “What did he say about it?”

  “For obvious reasons he didn’t tell me all the details you mentioned. Harry and I dated a few times, and one night when he was in the process of getting drunk, he started confessing some of his sins to me. There were many, but one he felt bad about was lying to the camp commander so that an innocent man named Pete took the rap for something another Marine had done.”

  “No other specifics.”

  “No. Have you talked to Buster Monroe? Is he in Okinawa?”

  “No and yes. He’s on the State’s list of witnesses, so we have to assume he’s going to tell the original story and help convict Thomason. That’s why we need to talk to Harry.”

  “Did your client kill someone?”

  “That’s not my call; I’m just doing my job.”

  Nicole wrote “Harry” on a notepad on her desk and drew an X across it. “This is a lot more serious than a few bad checks. How long are you going to be in town?”

  “How long do I need to be?”

  “I could do a search on our network and see if I can establish an up-to-date bad check trail on Harry.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Two or three hours. All the information I need is in our personnel files.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get a bite to eat and come back. Where is the original KFC?”

  Ray decided that an extra-crispy four-piece meal was the same at the original KFC in Corbin as at the local outlet in Dennison Springs. He sat in his truck listening to a country music station until a full three hours had passed. Then he meandered into the lobby of the bank and found a comfortable chair to sit in. He didn’t want to rush his blonde helper.

  In a few minutes, Nicole appeared with a folder in her hand.

  “Come into the conference room,” she said.

  Closing the door, she put the folder on the shiny table.

  “This has everything I could find. Harry wrote some bad checks two months ago to a bar in Columbus, Ohio. Here’s the name and address. That’s the last place he turned up in the system. I also made a color copy of his employment photo. Whether he still looks as clean-cut is doubtful, but it may help.”

  “Very helpful.” Ray held up the picture. Square head, close-cut brown hair, firm jaw, impassive, dead stare. “He looks every inch a Marine except for his eyes.”

  “Alcohol had knocked the life out of him. When liquor wasn’t around, he was someone worth knowing.”

  “Do you need me to return any of this information?”

  “No.” She paused. “If you find him and he’s sober . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell him I asked how he is doing.”

  Ray stayed on I-75 through Lexington, crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, and turned north on I-71. It was a hundred miles from Cincinnati to Columbus, and Ray enjoyed the well-kept Ohio farms that divided the rich, dark flatland into giant checkerboard squares. He passed sign after sign urging travelers to “Eat More Pork—The Other White Meat.” The sun was low in the sky when the Columbus skyline rose up out of the plain ahead.

  He took the High Street exit. Located in the midst of rundown factories and decaying retail stores, the South End Bar looked like a place where the going-home-from-work crowd could stop off for a cold one before spending the rest of the night vegetating in front of the TV. Ray shut off the engine, got out of the truck, and stretched. Photograph of Harry O’Ryan in his hand, he went inside. The jukebox was cranking out Garth Brooks, and a light gray cigarette haze hung suspended a foot below the ceiling. He went up to the bar.

  A man sitting with some friends at a small round table called out, “Butch, how about a couple of drafts down here?”

  The bartender dried two large mugs with a dingy towel and filled them with beer. After he served his customer, he came over to Ray.

  “What do you want?”

  Ray put a five-dollar bill on the counter. “To ask you a five-dollar question.”

  “Go ahead,” the man put the five in his shirt pocket.

  He handed the picture to the bartender. “Have you seen this man?”

  The man sneered, “Yeah, did that deadbeat write you a bad check, too?”

  “No, more serious.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Whatever. He doesn’t come around anymore. I finally got my money last
week with a little help from some friends with baseball bats, but he is no longer allowed to come in here. You know, he’s a person non gratuity.”

  “Okay,” Ray made a mental note to include the bartender’s last comment verbatim in his report to Mac. “Where else did he hang out?”

  “Hey, I don’t go to other bars. I own ten percent of this place.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “The meter is up on your five dollars.”

  Ray made himself smile and put another five on the counter.

  The man pocketed the five and wiped up a wet spot on the bar with the gray towel. “He was staying with some drinking buddies in an apartment at the corner of Front and Baxter Streets. The landlady is named Delores Potowsky; she lives next-door in a brown brick house. Tell her you got her name from Bernard at the South End Bar.”

  “Bernard?”

  “Everyone here calls me Butch, but Mrs. Potowsky knew me when I was a kid.”

  The apartment was a couple of miles closer to the center of the city, and it was dark when Ray pulled into Mrs. Potowsky’s driveway. He rang the doorbell and heard the deep-throated growl of a large dog on the other side of the white wooden door. The door opened three inches and a thin, wrinkled face peered over a thick metal chain.

  “Quiet, Popeye,” she said to the dog, who was trying to force his massive jaws through the door opening so that he could gnaw on Ray’s leg. “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Potowsky?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bernard at the South End Bar said you might be able to help me locate Harry O’Ryan.”

  “Harry who?”

  Ray slid the picture through the opening. “O’Ryan. Here’s a picture.”

  “Oh yeah. People come and go so much I don’t remember names. He’s staying in Apartment B-1. You may be too late, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Wednesday night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fifty-cent beer night at the Old Irish Pub down the street. If he’s not in his apartment, he’ll be at the pub.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check the apartment first.”

  Popeye made one last frustrated lunge as the door closed.

  The rooming house had four apartments on the ground floor and four on the second floor. Apartment B-1 was at the top of the stairs on the right. Ray knocked, and a voice yelled out, “I’ll be ready in a minute. Come on in.”

  Opening the door, Ray hesitantly stepped across the threshold. “Harry O’Ryan?”

  A stocky, bleary-eyed man came out of a bathroom rubbing his wet head with a towel. “Hey, who do you think you are coming in here?”

  Ray held his hands in front of him and stepped back. “I knocked on the door and you said, ‘Come in.’”

  “Well, back out of here.” The man threw the towel toward a chair. It missed and landed on the floor.

  Ray obliged and stepped back into the hallway. “Are you Harry O’Ryan?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’m Ray Morrison. I drove up from Georgia today to see you. Do you have a few minutes to talk to me?”

  “I’m in a hurry. I have an appointment.”

  “I know. It’s fifty-cent beer night at the Old Irish Pub.”

  Harry’s scowl disappeared and he grinned, giving Ray a glimpse of faded charm that once graced the young man’s face and had attracted Nicole Meadows’s attention. “Okay. Come in.”

  Ray came into the drab room and shut the door.

  “I don’t know anybody in Georgia.”

  “What about Pete Thomason?”

  Harry picked up the towel and draped it across a rickety wooden chair. “How do you know Pete?”

  “You could say I’m working for him. I wanted to talk to you about something that happened at the end of boot camp involving you, Pete, and Buster Monroe.”

  “Oh, that. Hey, the statute of limitations ran out on those charges a long time ago.” Harry pulled a navy blue sweater over his T-shirt. “I’m sorry about that deal, but I can’t help him now. It’s over and done with, and I have more immediate problems.”

  “It’s still very immediate for Pete. He needs your help.”

  “Like you said. It’s fifty-cent beer night, and I have to be on my way.”

  Ray didn’t budge. “You are free to walk down the street and drink beer in a few minutes, but I need to tell you where Pete is tonight.”

  “You’ve got five seconds.”

  Ray started, and Harry listened to the end. The young man shook his head. “Pete has always been a hard-luck guy, but this is unbelievable. Unless he’s changed, he’s not a killer.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Harry sat in the rickety chair. “The whole thing with the girls was Buster’s idea. He slipped them the drugs and dropped me off at another bar. I had to get a cab back to the base. Like an idiot, I agreed to back him up when everything hit the fan. Pete didn’t know anything. And Buster will lie. He’s still in the Corps and will say anything to keep his record clean.”

  “Which is why Pete needs you.”

  Harry waved his hand at the apartment. “Look at me and where I live. Do I look like a believable witness?”

  “I believe you. There are even people who care about you.”

  Harry snorted. “Name one.”

  “Nicole Meadows.”

  “Did she help you find me?”

  “Yes, and she told me to ask how you were doing.”

  “Lousy.”

  “Are you working?” Ray asked.

  “Are you kidding?”

  Ray knew he had to catch this fish but wasn’t sure which bait to use. He made a quick decision to spend some of Mac’s money. “If you’ll go back to Georgia with me, the lawyer I’m working for will put you up at the nicest place in town for a couple of weeks until the trial is over. All you have to do is tell the truth when your time comes on the witness stand.”

  “You came all the way up here to find me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a Marine,” Ray said. “Let me ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you look out for the other men in your unit in the Marine Corps?”

  “Uh, of course.”

  “If some local tough guys jumped one of your buddies in a nightclub, would you stay on the sidelines or help him out?”

  “Yeah, but that was a bunch of gung-ho stuff.”

  “And this is real-time. It’s not about a drunken brawl that no one remembers in a couple of weeks. Pete could be sent to the electric chair unless the people who can help step up.”

  Harry leaned over and closed his eyes. “This thing has eaten at me for a long time.”

  “It’s time to make it right.”

  Harry opened his eyes. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Good. When can you leave?”

  “If I start with the beer, maybe never. Let’s go now.”

  “Do you need to pack?”

  “Nothing except my clothes. Do you have room for two suitcases?”

  On the way out, they met a man coming up to the second floor. He stopped when he saw Harry and Ray. “Hey, man, sorry I’m late.”

  “I’m not going.” Harry said.

  “But it’s fifty-cent beer night.”

  “I know it, Sal, but something else has come up. Something more important than fifty-cent beer.”

  23

  Let me love river and woodland.

  VIRGIL

  Mac and David spent Thursday morning at Mac’s office. Fingers pecking on the keys of the computer, David did research while Mac worked on an outline of questions for the State’s witnesses. Midmorning, a very sleepy Ray Morrison stumbled into the room.

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he said. “If I don’t talk, I’ll fall asleep on my feet. Harry O’Ryan is in Room 315 at the Jackson Inn. I told the desk clerk to charge the room to you, Mac.”

  Mac started to speak,
but Ray held up his hand. “I’m warning you. You don’t want me snoring in here while you try to work. I found O’Ryan in a cheap boardinghouse in Columbus, Ohio. He is going to testify that Pete was not involved in the incident with the two girls in South Carolina. The whole thing was instigated and carried out by Walter ‘Buster’ Monroe. O’Ryan helped Monroe frame Pete. He’s sorry and wants to make it right.”

  Mac snapped his fingers. “Great work.”

  “Don’t celebrate until we’re able to keep O’Ryan in town and sober through the trial. He’s only a few gallons away from living on the streets or dying in a gutter somewhere. And don’t call me until tomorrow. Good night.” Ray turned around and left.

  David stood up. “I have a few things to do at my office before I leave to visit my folks this weekend.”

  Mac worked for another hour in his office. Putting down his legal pad, he propped his feet up on the edge of his desk and glanced at the picture of Jacks River Falls on the wall of his office. The preparation for the trial was moving forward. With David handling all the legal research and cranking out a series of well-reasoned memos, Mac was free to think and plan his trial strategy.

  He looked again at the picture of the falls. The leaves would be a bit past peak, but it would be a gorgeous time of year to take a walk in the woods. He picked up the phone.

  “Dr. Wilkes, please. This is Mac McClain.”

  He waited. A now-familiar voice came on the line. “Is everything all right?”

  “As well as can be expected. The trial is scheduled to start in two weeks. How does that fit with your calendar?”

  “Let me see. I have appointments, of course, but nothing that can’t be moved around. Just let me know the specific day I need to be there as soon as possible.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “That’s not all,” Mac said quickly. “Do you remember the photograph of the waterfall in my office?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you and Hunter like to see it on Saturday?”

  The phone was silent for a second “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’m speaking at a seminar.”

  Disappointed, Mac said, “Maybe another time.”

  “Would you like to take Hunter?”