Benefit of the Doubt: A Novel

by Neal Griffin

  Plate stepped in front of McKenzie. “Shut up, Doyle. I told you I’d handle this.” He turned to Ben and softened his tone. “We just need to have her account for her whereabouts this evening. Say over the past several hours?”

  Ben was on the verge of responding until he ran the day through his mind. Alex had not been at home when he’d gone to bed. She’d been with her father. What’s going on?

  “She’s home. Home and asleep in bed. Now can I ask why that’s any of your business?”

  “So you can vouch for her, then? She’s been home all night?”

  Ben felt vulnerable, standing in the doorway while the two police officers looked into his dark, quiet house. He stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him. He noticed a light frozen rain had begun to fall. Barefoot, in flannel shorts and a T-shirt, he worked hard to ignore the cold and to sound direct in his answer. “Yes. She’s asleep in bed.” Ben could tell that both men picked up on his evasive response.

  “What can you tell us about this?” McKenzie pulled a heart-shaped glass picture frame from the brown paper bag. In the picture, Alex was smiling, looking past the camera, her hair blowing gently in the wind. “This is your wife, isn’t it?” McKenzie asked.

  Ben found he had no voice. He tried, but nothing came out. Finally he mustered, “Where did you get that?”

  Boyd began to speak, but McKenzie talked over him. “The guy that owns that coffee shop downtown, Java and whatever. He’s dead. Stabbed in the gut in his apartment over the store. This picture was on his desk. Couple more on the bulletin board. So like I asked you before: Is this your wife?”

  Ben could only stare at the photograph in McKenzie’s hand. Somewhere in the far distance, McKenzie kept talking.

  “We also found a couple of wineglasses, broken, on the floor. Looks like our victim was entertaining, then it must have got ugly.” McKenzie paused to drag cigarette smoke into his lungs, then exhaled as he spoke, releasing a puff of smoke with each word. “By the way, the dark green minivan in the driveway—anybody been driving it tonight? Say in the past two or three hours?”

  Ben couldn’t tear his gaze from the photograph. “What are you guys getting at? This is insane.”

  Boyd chimed in, his voice sympathetic. “All the same, Ben, we’d like to have a talk with your wife. Probably best we do that tonight. Mind if we come in while you wake her up?”

  Ben came to life. “I got a better idea. Let’s go down to the scene. I want to walk through it myself.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t let you do that, Ben,” Boyd said. “Chief Jorgensen’s orders.”

  “Jorgensen? Who called him? For Christ’s sake, Plate, am I the detective sergeant of this department or not?”

  “You ain’t calling the shots here, Ben. Now go wake up your wife. Tell her we want to talk.”

  McKenzie stepped toward the door, and Ben blocked him. “Go to hell, McKenzie. Get a warrant—if you think you know how to write one.”

  Boyd tried to interject. “Ben, calm down. Listen to me for a minute. We got a call of screams coming from the apartment and a blond woman in a green minivan hightailing it out of the area. The door was wide open and we find a guy stabbed to death inside. Looks like he had some kind of relationship with your wife, who happens be a blonde and drives a green van, right? Of course we need to talk to her. You can see that, can’t you?”

  Ben’s head was reeling as he processed the information. “Got a call from who? When did all this happen?”

  Before Boyd could answer, the front door opened and Alex stepped outside, wearing Ben’s robe. She saw the two strangers on her porch and pulled the robe tighter. Her voice was sleepy. “Ben? What’s going on? Who are these guys?”

  Ben turned to her. “Alex, don’t say anything. Go back—”

  McKenzie butted in. “Detective Doyle McKenzie, Mrs. Sawyer. We’re investigating the murder of Louis Carson.”

  In that instant, Alex came fully awake. She grabbed Ben’s arm but looked straight at the detectives. “Louis? Killed? Oh, my God. What are you talking about? How—”

  “Alex, go inside. Right now.” Ben held Alex by her shoulders and began to push her back across the threshold, but she pulled away from him and stepped farther onto the porch until she stood between Ben and the detectives.

  “Hey, Doyle.” Ben looked up to see a uniformed officer he recognized as a perennial graveyard slug walk around from the back of the house. “Look what I found in the trash can.” The cop held up a kitchen knife—a large, nondescript knife that belonged on someone’s countertop, not in his garbage can. The cop went on. “Looks like it might have some blood on it.”

  This time Ben grabbed Alex by the waist and pulled her back toward the door. His voice was elevated and desperate. “Alex, get inside the damn house.”

  McKenzie reached toward Alex and grabbed for her arm. Ben pushed his wife aside and stepped in to deliver a full punch to McKenzie’s jaw. The blow hit solidly, and McKenzie fell backward off the porch, landing in the half-frozen mud. Alex screamed her husband’s name but Ben ignored her. He jumped from the steps and stood over the prone detective.

  “You keep your goddamn hands off my wife, McKenzie.”

  “Damn it, Sawyer.” McKenzie’s voice was fierce with anger as he pulled himself up off the muddy ground.

  Uniformed officers began to pour onto the lawn, coming from down the street and around the house. It seemed to Ben half of Newberg PD had descended on his home.

  “Hold him,” McKenzie barked. Ben spun around and tried to climb back onto the porch, but three officers were on him. Ben struggled but couldn’t break free. McKenzie managed to get to his feet, breathing hard. The rain kept coming.

  Plate tried to reestablish some level of control. He turned to the officers who were working hard to keep Ben off the porch.

  “You guys back off,” Plate said. “Let’s just all calm down.”

  McKenzie would have none of it. “Shut up, Plate. I got this.” McKenzie turned to the officers who had their hands full.

  “Hold on to that bastard. Sawyer, I’ll have your ass for that, but right now I got more important matters.”

  Alex shouted from the porch, “What’s wrong with you people? My husband is one of you. He’s a police officer. Why are you treating him this way?”

  Ben did his best to break free, calling out to his wife, “Alex, get inside the house. Lock the door.”

  Alex turned to the door, but McKenzie climbed the three porch steps and stood in front of the bewildered woman. Ben could only watch. McKenzie struggled for breath but with what struck Ben as excitement, and his voice sounded labored. “Mrs. Sawyer, you are under arrest for the murder of Louis Carson.”

  Ben roared, “McKenzie, stop. Plate, do something.” He tried to jerk free, but the men holding him kept a strong grip. Ben watched as McKenzie pulled Alex’s hands behind her back and handcuffed her. McKenzie began a recitation of her Miranda rights.

  Alex looked at Ben as if she was finally ready to listen to him. “Ben, what are they doing? Help me. Where are they taking me?”

  McKenzie took Alex by her elbow and led her off the porch. She passed within inches of him and Ben again tried to pull away. His bare feet slipped in the mud that was growing thicker with the rain. He fell onto the cold ground and could only watch as his wife was led to a nearby patrol vehicle. As they approached the car, Alex began to resist in earnest, screaming for Ben to help. She fought and thrashed, refusing to walk. McKenzie pulled and shoved Alex toward the open door and into the backseat of the car. Ben’s oversized robe fell away from her shoulder showing her bare skin. Jake shot out the front door wearing only his pajamas. He jumped from the porch and ran past his father. He reached the police car just as it pulled away with his mother inside, her face pressed against the window screaming his name.

  “Mom! Mom!” Jake turned to a uniformed patrol officer who stood statue still in the rain, dazed, as if overwhelmed by the scene that had just occurred all aroun
d him. Jake shoved the officer with his hands, knocking the man back a couple of feet. He screamed out, “Where are you taking my mom? Bring her back!”

  Blood rushed to Ben’s head, flooding his ears. He looked toward his son’s face, contorted in fear and desperation. Finally the uniformed officers released him, but Ben found he didn’t have the strength to stand. His body was spent. He struggled to his knees. The rain was pouring now. The uniformed officers began to regroup. Car doors slammed and the remaining police vehicles sped away. Jake ran to the edge of the road, and once again Ben could hear the boy’s screams as the last car disappeared into the night.

  Then the only remaining sound was the falling rain and Jake’s softer pleas. Ben and Jake were alone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Harlan arched his back as the hefty woman bounced on top of him.

  “Come on, bitch. You can go harder than that.”

  The woman stopped and draped herself over his chest, her ample breasts arriving noticeably sooner than the rest of her. “You’re gonna split me in two, honey. Give me a minute to rest.”

  Harlan grabbed the back of her neck and rolled them both over so that he wound up on top of her. She called out in mild protest, but she’d been in the business long enough to know better than to fight back.

  “If that’s all you got, you picked the wrong profession.” He worked it hard, ignoring her high-pitched yelps. Several minutes later, with a final thrust, he rolled off. The room was quiet except for her occasional gasps and whimpers.

  After a minute the woman said, “Mister, you got a lot of anger built up in you, don’t ya? I hope we aren’t gonna have no trouble, okay?”

  Remembering the last prostitute who talked too much, Harlan worked hard to control himself. Two killings in one night in this little town would not go unnoticed.

  The first had gone smooth enough. The coffee guy, Harlan heard folks call him Louis, was incapacitated by the rat poison and drain cleaner Harlan had slipped in his coffee earlier in the day. He could offer only cursory resistance. Harlan had gotten in and out without notice. The other actors—who didn’t know they were moving at Harlan’s direction—had played their parts beautifully. Harlan had watched the goings-on from a safe distance. Two hours after discovering the body, detectives went to the Sawyers’ home. Harlan had wondered if they would wait until morning but found it much more entertaining to know that the Sawyers’ neighbors had to have been woken in the middle of the night. He’d nearly danced in the street as he watched officers pull the screaming woman into a Newberg police car.

  “You got it wrong, little lady,” Harlan tried to sound hospitable. “I ain’t got an angry bone in my body. Just a little pent-up energy is all. Rest yourself. Go on and take a break for a minute.”

  Harlan stepped to the window and lit up. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and let it settle there as he thought back over the past few hours. Quick flight was best, but he’d needed to get high and get laid. Getting high hadn’t been hard, but this beefy middle-aged hooker was a far cry from his last, although less irritating.

  Harlan looked at the sizable prostitute, who was lying prone on the bed, still struggling to catch her breath. Pent-up energy, sure enough. He’d come out of the joint with plenty of that. A hooker, a joint, or a bottle of booze could be arranged through a crooked guard or other member of prison staff for a price, but Harlan prided himself on the restraint he had demonstrated through his years of captivity. If a fellow inmate arranged for the trick or bag of weed, Harlan would sure enough participate, but he stood firm in his conviction that he did not make deals with the law.

  Throughout his life, Harlan’s closest associates had exclusively been crooks of one sort or another. His father had been nothing more than a career moonshiner, an outlaw to the core. Their home was open to cat burglars, car thieves, and country drug dealers. Harlan shared home brew and swapped stories with a few hundred such men, and his loyalty to that lifestyle ran marrow deep.

  By the time Harlan reached his seventeenth birthday, he was running a marijuana operation that supplied most of the college campuses in Wisconsin, making life a little easier for his aging father. That was what had caught the attention of the likes of Lipinski, Norgaard, and others. They just couldn’t stand the idea of a kid like Harlan being that successful.

  The woman spoke. She seemed afraid to look at him directly—she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes and then stared at the yellowed popcorn ceiling as she said, “If we’re finished, I’d like to be on my way. My husband is gonna be waiting up.”

  Harlan wasn’t through, and the day’s success left him feeling generous. “How about we take it up to a hundred bucks’ worth and I’ll just lay back this time. You can go nice and easy on me for another round, all right?”

  Her face lit up at this turn of events. Harlan wondered idly if anyone had ever offered her that kind of payment before and guessed not.

  “A hundred bucks? Shit, for that kind of money, my old man can wait all night. Come on over here and let me show you how much a lady loves that sort of appreciation.”

  He returned to the bed. With closed eyes and an open mind, Harlan let the woman work a miracle. For a hefty gal she had a gentle sway, and before long she lulled him to sleep.

  He didn’t stir until the sun found a crack in the thick motel curtain. The woman was gone and when he quickly grabbed his wallet he found a hundred dollars missing. The rest of his diminishing funds remained. Harlan smiled, his heart stirred by the wonder of an honest whore.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In front of a five-story fortress that rose from the tundra, Ben stood with his back turned to the bitter prairie wind. Spring had been overpowered, winter had returned—in Wisconsin, cold never seemed far away.

  Ben rocked on his heels outside a locked double door marked VISITOR ENTRANCE—an irritating reminder of his new place in the world. He could no longer slip around back and badge his way in, could not signal he was a friendly with a soft knock. His options for getting past locked jail doors were now like those of other mere mortals. Ben looked at his watch and saw that visiting hours should have started ten minutes ago. He had been waiting three days to see his wife, and he wasn’t in the mood to wait another minute.

  “Ah, the hell with this.”

  Ben walked briskly to the entrance of the jail, a thin layer of hard-packed ice and snow crunching under his boots. He squared himself in front of the door and with no thought toward the consequences, kicked the metal frame hard enough to shake it. He took a single step back and waited, feeling defiant.

  The Waukesha County Correctional Facility for Women, located twenty miles outside Newberg, was controlled by a private security company. When the door opened, a crew-cut blond appeared, dressed in a military-style black jumpsuit with a shoulder patch that read SCREAMING EAGLE SECURITY. With a look of righteous indignation, the jailer said scornfully, “Who the hell is kicking my door?”

  Ben wasted no time. “It’s fifteen degrees out here, pal. How about you guys quit dickin’ around in there and let us into the lobby.”

  The guard immediately recognized the husband of the facility’s most famous inmate.

  “Are you serious, Sawyer? We’ve already been over this with you. If you can’t play by the rules, you won’t be allowed visitation.”

  Because of his physical confrontation with the officers that came to his home, Ben had been denied the right to visit Alex. Now three days had passed, and Alex would be making her first appearance in court. After much negotiating over the phone and promises of better behavior, Ben was granted a thirty-minute “precourt” visit.

  Ben started to respond, but the jailer cut him off. “And if you kick my door again, you won’t have to visit your wife. You can bunk with her, Sergeant.” The reference to rank smacked of sarcasm and disrespect.

  Looking at the man’s Nordic features, Ben estimated he was about twenty-two. Accent and inflection indicated that he was a native of the area. The hard face and un
sympathetic voice brought out an anger in Ben that, mixed with his utter exhaustion, was nothing short of dangerous. But Ben realized he was in a no-win situation. Alex was due in court in less than six hours and this was his last chance to see her before the hearing. Ben took a deep breath and exhaled a cloud of frost.

  “I’m sorry about the door, officer, but it’s cold.” Ben looked over his shoulder at the crowd, now aligned behind him in tepid allegiance. “Can we wait inside? Just in the lobby?”

  The guard gave Ben a disdainful look, never losing eye contact. Not a moment of consideration passed before he responded.

  “You can come in when I say you can come in. Kick the door again and you won’t come in at all.” The guard shot a look at the crowd to discourage any feelings of solidarity among the rabble. “None of you will.”

  The door slammed. A brief stillness ended with a murmured voice from somewhere in the group: “Trash-talkin’ son of a bitch.”

  Another voice picked up, “Wouldn’t be shit without that badge.”

  As he stood in silent agreement with those around him, Ben realized he was in every respect on the outside looking in. Ben spun away and fought to control the tremble caused by days of aggravation and now the frigid air.

  What the hell have you gone and done, Alex? Murder, for Christ’s sake?

  A dozen or more men lingered nearby, some with children. The few women in the small crowd stood out, oddities. All were braving the elements for the same reason—to visit a wife, mother, sister, other relative, or friend.

  In Ben’s way of thinking, lining up to visit a spouse at a jailhouse belonged in the category of women’s work. Real men would never find themselves in such a predicament. The way Ben saw it, if one half of a married couple is called upon to go behind bars, by God, the man better be ready to step up. Looking around, Ben saw the shame lining the faces of his newest cohort: men with jailhouse wives.

  These were people Ben had always categorized as “them.” He had long since lost patience with the tired excuses of how a husband or a brother, or in rare cases a wife or sister, ended up doing time. Without fail the stories involved bad breaks and hard luck and rarely ended with “because the little shit deserved to go.” Ultimately the tales were all similar in one important way: They had always belonged to someone else. Now Ben had his own story to tell, and were he inclined to talk about it, he knew any listener would find it the most tantalizing of all.