The Disappearance

by J. F. Freedman

“The date on both these pages—this is the night that Mr. Allison was arrested, isn’t it? The night you stopped him for suspicion of a DUI.”

  Another tight nod. “Yes.”

  “With your permission, Your Honor, I’d like to give a copy of these pages to each member of the jury, so they can follow along with us.”

  Ewing nods. “So ordered.”

  Luke hands the clerk two stacks of pages. She crosses to the jury box and crisply hands them out, one of each, to the twelve men and women, returning to her seat in front of the bench. Luke waits a minute for the jurors to look them over, then goes on.

  “On the switchboard sheet, we have a call from an anonymous citizen. Correct?”

  Caramba’s nod is one inch. “Yes,” he answers in a pinched voice.

  “This stellar citizen—the log doesn’t say male or female, and the caller doesn’t ID him- or herself—has seen someone driving a car towards the vicinity of Coast Village Road, a few minutes after midnight. Anonymous stellar citizen tells the switchboard operator that the driver of the car appears to be intoxicated, is that correct?”

  Looking at the sheet, Caramba answers, “Yes.”

  “This wonderful person was aware enough to record the make, model, color, and license plate of the car in question, is that also correct? On a dark, cloudy night.”

  “Yes.”

  Luke now holds up the second sheet. “Now this is the record for that same time frame—shortly after midnight, the night Mr. Allison was detained by you—of calls made by the central dispatcher in the police department to officers in the field. Which at that time included you. Is that also correct, Officer Caramba?”

  Caramba nods, almost imperceptibly

  “Please answer vocally,” Ewing reminds him.

  Like sucking a lemon: “Yes.”

  “According to the time code on these pages, that call was broadcast less than a minute after the anonymous tip was called in to the switchboard, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were the responding officer. You were, fortunately and coincidentally, smack dab in the path the driver was taking.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Luke turns to the jury box. “That’s a yes.” Turning back to the witness, he now says, “So when Mr. Allison came into view, driving down Coast Village Road—at an acceptable rate of speed, I might add, you’ve testified that he wasn’t speeding—you were waiting for him. You were primed to go after him, regardless of how his driving appeared to you objectively. You were going to pull him over, and then figure it out.”

  Caramba shakes his head in denial. “He was weaving on the road. I would have pulled him over if I hadn’t gotten the call.”

  “I’m sure you would have, being the wonderful policeman that you are—” Luke says.

  “Objection!”

  “—the protector of society—”

  “Objection, damn it!” Logan, on his feet, is pounding on his table with his fist.

  “Sustained!” comes the judicial lion’s roar. “Stop attacking this witness like this, Mr. Garrison!”

  Luke steps back. “Sorry about that, Your Honor. But there’s a point where the truth gets bent so badly and recklessly that a reasonable man and conscientious lawyer would be derelict if he didn’t call attention to it.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained!”

  Luke puts up both hands in a gesture of supplication. Almost backing away, he declares, “I’m sorry. I won’t do this again—with this witness, who I’m done with.” He looks at Caramba. “I’m done with you—for now.” Then rudely turning his back on the man, he says to Judge Ewing, “I am now, again—”

  Ewing interrupts him. Looking down from his perch, he tells Caramba, “The witness is excused.”

  Stiffly, the police officer gets up, walks down from the stand, and strides out of the room. The judge turns to Luke, then to Logan. “Approach the bench.” They stand at the judge’s post. Luke speaks quietly so the jury won’t hear.

  “I am again asking the court, given this clear evidence that Officer Caramba did not stop the defendant because he looked like he was driving under the influence, but because of an anonymous telephone call that smells suspiciously like a setup to me—”

  “Objection!” Logan says immediately.

  “Sustained. Please save your editorializing for your summation, Mr. Garrison.”

  “Given the circumstances surrounding the initial search and seizure of Mr. Allison and his vehicle, I ask that any and all material and information gathered from said search and seizure be declared inadmissible in this trial.”

  Ewing stares at Luke even as Logan once again strenuously objects. Then he shakes his head. “No. I’m not going to do that.”

  Luke nods. This is the only ruling Ewing can make. For him to do otherwise would be grounds for a mistrial. No superior court judge in this world would have the guts to do that. Judges live in the real world. But Luke’s deflated, nevertheless.

  “Receiving a tip is not grounds for dismissal of an otherwise legal search and seizure,” Ewing tells Luke, almost apologetically.

  Luke knows the judge is in turmoil over this. The judge knows he’s making a good case.

  Judge Ewing turns and checks the ornate wall clock situated high behind his head. “We’ll break for lunch until one-thirty,” he notifies the assemblage. To Ray Logan: “Have your next witness prepared to take the stand.”

  Logan’s direct of Detective Terry Jackson is meat and potatoes. Jackson ingratiates himself with the jury, which makes him a good witness. Luke, watching the examination, can see that the jury likes the man, and believes him. Logan doesn’t tarry on anything, so in a little more than an hour, not much longer than the actual interrogation itself took, he’s turning Jackson over to Luke.

  Luke strides to the podium. He has the transcript of Allison’s interrogation in his hand. “Good afternoon, Detective Jackson,” he says, friendly today. “How’re you doing today? You’re looking good. Fit.”

  “Thank you.” Jackson smiles. “You’re looking good your own self.”

  “I’m hangin’ in,” Luke says. He opens the folder containing the transcript. “When did you read my client his Miranda rights?”

  “I didn’t,” Jackson says without missing a beat. “He was read his rights in the field, by the arresting officer.”

  Luke shakes his head. “No, he was not. He was read his rights—as regarding a misdemeanor DUI, not a felony death-penalty murder charge.”

  “That’s not my department,” Jackson says with ease. “The man had been arrested in the field, he’d been sitting in a jail cell, me and him talked. I asked him did he want a lawyer, he said no. It’s right there in your transcript you’re carrying around in your hand.”

  Luke gives Jackson a skeptical eye. “Terry. That’s not how it was.”

  “It sure was,” the detective comes back with vigor. “Read it, man, it’s in the transcript. And the name is Jackson. Mister.”

  Luke leafs through a few pages of transcript until he finds the one he’s looking for. For obvious reasons, the district attorney didn’t place the transcript in evidence—so Luke did, before he began his cross-examination. He wants the jury to have it in their hands when they go into the jury room to deliberate.

  “You tell him he shouldn’t be in there?”

  Jackson nods.

  “He was suspected of murder. Why did you tell a suspect facing a murder charge he shouldn’t be in jail?” Luke asks. “That doesn’t sound like good police procedure to me, and everyone knows you’re a good detective.”

  Jackson smiles and shakes his head. “Hardly anyone knows who I am, let alone if I’m good at my job or not. But thanks for the plug,” he says, almost laughing. “I’m gonna hit my boss up for a raise.”

  “Emma Lancaster’s key chain was found in his glove compartment. Doesn’t that automatically make him a suspect?”

  “Of course not,” the cop says. “She could’ve tossed it
in there herself and forgot about it,” he says.

  Same old same old. “So he was just in there on a DUI charge and you were shooting the breeze with him until his time period for sobering up expired and he could leave.”

  Jackson shrugs, but he doesn’t respond directly, because he knows what’s coming.

  “Except you told him he couldn’t leave until the morning.”

  “It was three, four by that time,” Jackson says. “Morning was right around the corner.”

  “Right.” You’re lying through your teeth. “So he wasn’t a suspect until his shoes showed up, the shoes that had the sole print found out at the Lancaster house that afternoon after Emma disappeared, and later where her body was discovered. It wasn’t until they showed up from his house that you decided he was a suspect after all. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” the detective says deadpan. “One built on the other.”

  “And that’s when you told him he was a suspect in the Emma Lancaster kidnapping-murder case.”

  “That’s when he was notified.”

  “And read his Miranda rights as they pertained to that charge.”

  “That’s—” Jackson catches himself. “He already had been.”

  Luke shakes his head. “You just said he wasn’t a suspect until the shoes turned up to buttress the key chain. So he couldn’t have been read his rights, because there was no reason to, since he wasn’t a suspect.”

  Jackson shrugs. “That’s how it happened, Luke. Excuse me—Mister Garrison. We got the killer we’d been looking for, and we did it by the book.”

  Luke spins to Ewing—he’s furious. “This man’s not the jury. He is not allowed to render an opinion on the guilt or innocence of my client. This testimony is outrageous and has to be struck.”

  Ewing nods. “The witness will refrain from stating anything other than known, observable facts.” He swivels around, facing the jury over Jackson’s head. “You are to completely ignore that last set of remarks. They are not going to be part of the record, and you should erase them from your minds,” he says forcefully.

  Now royally steamed, Luke continues: “When Mr. Allison was in the jail, Detective Jackson, when was he given a sobriety test?”

  Jackson shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “But he was given one, right?”

  Another shrug. “I said I don’t know. I don’t do them.”

  Luke paces around in the well for a moment, coming closer to the jury box. “We’ve got a conundrum here, I think, don’t you, Detective?”

  “We got a what?” He smiles over at the jury. Their faces coming back to him are blank.

  “A problem that doesn’t seem to have a solution.”

  Jackson doesn’t respond. He can see Ray Logan giving him the palms down sign, to cool it.

  “Because you didn’t know if Mr. Allison was drunk or sober.”

  “He was sober.”

  “How do you know?” Luke asks. This guy’s starting to talk too much. It’s a common disease among witnesses, particularly witnesses who have been around the block a time or three.

  “I could tell looking at him. And they wouldn’t have let me talk to him if he wasn’t sober, it’s against regulations.”

  “Ah!” Luke smiles. “Exactly my point. You can’t interrogate someone who’s intoxicated. But he was never given a test for that, so you didn’t know. No one knew.”

  Once again, he turns to Judge Ewing. “Have I made my point now, Your Honor? If he’s intoxicated, the police are not allowed to question him. And if he is sober, they have no grounds to hold him, unless they inform him that he’s a suspect in a crime, read him his rights pertaining to that crime, let him bring in his lawyer, and so on. Either he shouldn’t have been there in the first place, or he shouldn’t have been interrogated. One or the other.” He stares up at Ewing, challenging the judge to dispute him this time. “I move, once again, to strike all evidence taken from Mr. Allison’s car, house, and anywhere else, under the search and seizure applications of the law.”

  Ewing has been preparing for this for weeks—it’s cost him sleep, trying to figure out what to do. He can’t let this trial die on a so-called technicality, no matter how compelling and fundamentally right it might be. He has his ruling on his bench, right in front of him. It’s a beautiful job of finessing, a major-league curve ball. “Regardless of whether the defendant was legally intoxicated at the time of his arrest,” he reads, “by the time he was questioned by Detective Jackson, the effects of any intoxication, as commonly understood under the four-hour sobering-up period, would have worn off sufficiently that he could be interrogated and understand what was going on.” He looks up. “Motion to strike is denied.”

  Luke knew all along that Ewing wouldn’t end this trial on an interpretation of law—the man would be run out of town on a rail. But to basically endorse trashing the Miranda rule, that comes close to flouting the law.

  The ruling makes something crystal clear to him, which he’s known, floating around in the back of his brain, but he hasn’t allowed to surface, because it’s a bitch to face: He’s not going to win this fight on points. He has to win by a knockout. He has to find somebody else, other than Joe Allison, who is carrying so much guilt on his shoulders that no jury will dare convict Allison.

  He’s got his man. Doug Lancaster. He has to play every single card he has to make Doug look guilty—maybe not of this crime, he can’t prove Doug did it, but of everything else. Bribery. Threats. Lying to the police. Deflect the thrust from his client to Doug, as was done down in L.A. when O. J. Simpson’s defense team managed to make the trial a referendum on crooked cops instead of the prosecution of a wife-killer.

  Not the way he prefers to work, but he has one job—to get Joe Allison off. By whatever legal means he can.

  Maria Gonzalez takes the stand. She’s poised, she’s prepared. She stands tall, taking the oath. She’s testifying in a court of law in the United States of America, her chosen country. She takes this very seriously.

  Logan elicits who she is, how long she worked for the Lancasters, her relationship with Emma, and so forth. Then Logan asks the question that gets to the heart of his case, and it’s stunning. “What did you see that night? Late that night, the night Emma Lancaster was taken from her room? Describe for the people in this court what you saw, Mrs. Gonzalez.”

  She adjusts her seat, shifting so that she is sitting absolutely straight. Eyes straight ahead, her voice crisp and clear, she tells her story:

  She had worked late cleaning up after Mrs. Lancaster’s party and was going to spend the night in the house, go home first thing in the morning. Sunday morning, her day off, she would be home before her own children woke up and she would get them all ready and they would go to church and have a family day.

  The telephone rang in her room in the middle of the night. She had her own telephone, so that her family could call her and not disturb the Lancasters. It was one of the perks they gave her, because she was so good at her job.

  Her youngest was sick. A terrible ear infection. He suffered often from them. Her husband was trying, but he couldn’t cope. The baby was screaming. She had to come home, she had to take care of her own children.

  She got dressed, she let herself out of her room in the servants’ section. It was a nice room, very well furnished. Like Emma’s room, it opened onto the backyard. There was a patio outside the door, which she could walk along to the side of the property, where she had her own car parked in the courtyard.

  As she began walking to her car, worrying about her baby, she saw a figure moving across the lawn, away from the rear, towards the front of the property, near where she had her own car parked. It was a tallish figure, wearing a baseball-style hat with a swoosh on the front and a thigh-length windbreaker.

  Whoever he was—she felt sure it was a man—he wasn’t supposed to be there. She moved into the shadows against the wall as she watched him.

  He passed by her on his way, about ten y
ards from her at the nearest distance. The moon was low but plenty full, casting enough light for anyone to see.

  As the man reached the gate that led out of the backyard, he turned one time, looking back into the property. In the general direction of the gazebo at the far end. And when he turned to look, she saw his face for a quick moment.

  If she had never seen this man, she wouldn’t have been able to know who he was, have him imprinted in her brain, she wouldn’t have been able, only a few days ago, to find the courage to come to the police and tell them what she saw that night. She wouldn’t have been able to tell them that she saw Joe Allison in the backyard that night, if she hadn’t seen him hundreds of times before. But she had seen him hundreds of times before, and that’s how she knew it was him. Joe Allison. Walking across the backyard of the Lancaster estate at three o’clock in the morning.

  Everyone in the courtroom sits in stunned silence. Ray Logan is motionless at the podium. Even the sheriff’s deputies, the toughest cases, are standing and staring in disbelief. No one moves, not even the hard-boiled reporters, who should be ready to bolt, even they sit glued to their chairs.

  Luke is stunned beyond imagining. Where in the world did this come from? And why didn’t he know? He looks at Allison, sitting a foot from him, their shoulders almost touching. Allison is staring straight ahead, eyes unblinking, body rigid.

  He did it. The bastard actually did it. I should’ve known all the time, the way he held everything back. The cynical, murdering fuck has taken Luke Garrison down—his lawyer, the man who had come back here to defend him, leaving himself open to every kind of wound imaginable and suffering most of them, leaving him dead now in this trial, a dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinking to high hell.

  “Ah, you bastard.” The words come out in a whispered exhalation. “You fucking bastard.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Oh, fuck you.” He slumps in his chair. He feels like he’s dying.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  From a far distance, as out of a chilly fog, the sepulchral, now maddening voice of Ray Logan: “Your witness.”

  Before the cross-examination begins, the lawyers and Judge Ewing meet in chambers. Maria Gonzalez is also in attendance, under judge’s orders. Anticipating Luke’s objection, Logan weighs in, starting to explain almost before the door is closed behind them.