Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  Ben stands at his chair. “It took you ten seconds to know that Mr. Garrison wasn’t sleeping.”

  “Yeah, about that.”

  “You had to wait to see if he was breathing, if his chest was expanding and contracting.”

  “Right.”

  “There wasn’t any blood, was there? Mr. Garrison wasn’t bleeding.”

  “No.”

  “No gaping wounds.”

  “No.”

  “No external signs, from your perspective, that Mr. Garrison had been wounded.”

  “No.”

  “Sitting in his chair as Mr. Garrison was—his arms folded, his head down—you couldn’t really see his chest at all, could you?”

  “No. I guess what I mean is, when someone breathes, they move up and down.”

  “But you couldn’t see his chest, from your perspective.”

  “No.”

  “And my client had that same perspective, standing just about exactly where you were.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if my client had walked back into the office just a moment before you had, my client would not have had ten seconds to look at Mr. Garrison, true?”

  “I don’t know how long he was in there.”

  “But if he had just returned to the office,” Ben says. “He sees Mr. Garrison for a moment, then you walk down the hall and he’s looking at you, right?”

  “Right. He was.”

  “So when you join him in the office, that’s the first time my client would get a full ten seconds to look at Mr. Garrison. Right?”

  “If his story is true, yeah.”

  “And you can’t state for a fact that his story is false, can you, Mr. Hornowski?” Ben opens a hand. “You have no idea, do you?”

  “I have an opinion.”

  “But you have no factual knowledge, do you, sir?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  Ben drops his palms on the table and looks up at the witness. “You never drew your gun, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So when you told my client not to move—after you discovered Mr. Garrison was dead—he didn’t resist you, did he?”

  Hornowski considers the question. “I think he knew better.”

  “The point being, you weren’t required to draw a weapon.”

  “No, I didn’t draw my weapon.”

  “My client didn’t run.”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t try to fight you.”

  “Fight me?” The witness smiles broadly. The notion seems preposterous to this weight lifter.

  “He didn’t fight you, did he, sir?”

  “No, sir.”

  “In fact, he tried to save Mr. Garrison’s life, didn’t he?”

  “He pulled him off his chair and put him on the floor,” says the witness. “He altered the scene and put his hands all over Garrison so he could explain later—”

  “Judge.” Ben waves at the witness.

  “Let’s continue,” she says.

  “He was trying to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, wasn’t he, Mr. Hornowski?”

  “He was—making like that.”

  “Making like that?” Ben moves from the table and approaches the witness. “He was pumping air into his mouth, pounding his chest. Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “More than you can say, isn’t it, sir?” Ben jabs a finger at the witness. “You just stood there, while my client tried to save his life.”

  “I was calling on my radio, trying to secure the scene.”

  “Here was a man dead, and Jon Soliday’s trying to revive him, and you’re on your radio.”

  “I was calling for an ambulance, and the police, and additional security.” The witness’s face has reddened. He braces himself in the witness stand.

  Ben takes a seat. “That’s all,” he says.

  47

  BENNETT INSISTS THAT I have something to eat, but I don’t want to leave the courtroom so he smuggles in a sandwich. The courtroom is relatively empty during the seventy-five minutes the judge gave us for a lunch recess. I am on my feet most of the time, doing a slow pace around the tables and the jury box, even whistling at one point. That’s a nervous habit of mine, the whistling, but I’m aware that it gives an impression of casualness, even confidence.

  I am neither casual nor confident. I thought once the trial started, the nerves would ease a little, but the truth is, things haven’t gone particularly well. Not that there’s been anything earth-shattering. No smoking gun. The medical examiner didn’t really hurt, I guess. Just because Garrison was strangled doesn’t mean I’m the one who strangled him. And the security guard, well, he hurt a little. If the judge believes that I was telling a bullshit story, then I guess I’m cooked. But by itself, it’s not unreasonable for me to assume that Dale was simply asleep. It’s the who-strangled-him part that hurts me.

  God, it was great for her to have come to town. She knew I wouldn’t have much time to see her. She looked tremendous. She looked fresh. That’s the word. Different, which carries with it a certain distance, but in the end the same Tracy I came to love. She was gentle and kind and loving, even after everything. It’s all I can do not to pick up the phone and call her, schedule a lunch or a dinner. I feel like a schoolkid.

  But I can’t. I won’t. I’m not a schoolboy and we don’t have a clean slate. She’s moved on with her life and I’m glad for that. She needs to know she did what she could to get me through this. But that’s all she needs. She doesn’t need me anymore. She doesn’t want me anymore.

  I shake out of my trance and look over at my lawyer, who is sitting at the table reading over some papers. He is mumbling to himself. His steel-blue eyes are narrow, his concentration so intent that he appears not to be reading the paper in front of him but, rather, thinking of something else altogether.

  Ben’s a pretty strong guy, carries a lot of weight on his shoulders without showing much wear. But this must be pretty intense for him, defending a friend against a first-degree murder rap. To say nothing of the fact that, even with his criminal trial experience, this is still by far the biggest case Ben has ever handled.

  I haven’t put myself in his shoes. It hasn’t really occurred to me how hard this must be for him. Maybe it’s something I should have considered more. Maybe, as disciplined as he is, as prepared as he is, as talented as he is, Bennett Carey is in over his head.

  That thought finds a landing in the pit of my stomach, causing some chaos that makes me glad I ate a little lunch. Is Bennett over his skis on this case? Am I asking too much of him? And more to the point—why am I just thinking about this now?

  “Two minutes,” says a clerk who pops into the courtroom.

  I look over at Bennett again. His mini-prep session has ended. He is sitting with his back erect against the chair, breathing in with his eyes cast to the ceiling. He seems pretty calm. Intense and focused but calm. And really, his cross-examinations have been pretty good.

  “You’ve resorted to prayer,” I say to him as I return to the table.

  Ben smiles, pats my arm. “Things are going fine, Jonathan.”

  I start to answer, to engage in a discussion that I continually have with myself on the progress of the trial, when the clerk enters with Judge Bridges. “All rise.”

  The prosecutor calls to the stand Sheila Paul, the former secretary for Dale Garrison. Bennett spoke with her a few weeks ago and pronounced her testimony relatively harmless. She puts Dale in his office, alive, at five p.m. and recalls that I was the one who changed the date.

  Sheila Paul takes the witness stand and looks out with little interest over the courtroom. There is a gloss to her face owing to a summer tan. She looks like someone who has lost a good deal of weight. She is rather petite but there is slackness at the chin and cheeks. Her perfume is strong, something a little sweet for my taste, which lingers from when she passed me on her way to the witness stand.

  She fidgets until the prosecutor asks the first quest
ion. Then she settles down and speaks with a volume that belies her tiny size. “I worked for Dale for over twenty years,” she tells Erica Johannsen.

  “Can you describe Mr. Garrison’s law practice for us?”

  She nods without any affect. “Mostly criminal law, over the years. He lobbied, too. When the legislature was in session, he’d go down to the capital for clients.”

  “Did he have any associates working with him?”

  Sheila Paul shakes her head.

  “Ms. Paul, could you give a verbal answer?”

  “No,” she says. “Not at the time—not at the end. He had a lawyer or two working under him on occasion. There were other lawyers in his office; they’d share stuff sometimes but they weren’t partners. And there was a law firm down the way, three or four younger lawyers who started their own firm. Dale would hand stuff off to them if he didn’t want to do it. Or maybe he’d have them do some small work on cases he had. He really liked those guys. He said they reminded him of when he was young, just starting out.”

  “Okay.” The prosecutor jumps in to stop the narrative. “So—no associates at the time of his death?”

  “No.”

  “That’s fine.” Erica Johannsen clasps her hands together and directs them toward the witness. “Did Mr. Garrison do any work for Senator Grant Tully?”

  I edge forward in my seat but make a concerted attempt not to react to the sound of my boss’s name. Bennett does not react at all, just watches the witness.

  “Yeah, sure. He was an adviser, really, more than anything. He didn’t get paid. But he gave the senator legal advice on his personal affairs and on some political matters.” She shrugs. “The senator pays it back in different ways.”

  “Explain that, please.”

  I look at Bennett, who remains motionless. I start to elbow him but the judge speaks next. “Ms. Johannsen, what is the relevance of this?”

  My heart does a small leap. The judge, unprompted, is coming to the defense of the senator. She knows, everyone knows how the senator “compensated” Dale Garrison. Dale is a lobbyist, one of the chosen few in the capital who can walk into Senator Tully’s office and get things done.

  I never knew Garrison’s precise connection to the Tully family. I figured it was something going back with Grant’s dad, Simon, but I didn’t know the specifics. The reason was me. Garrison paid an ultimate favor to the Tullys—he kept some bad guys from pointing the finger at me and, to be fair, at least indirectly at the Tully family, too. That’s a cynic’s view, at least, but I’ve never been confused for an idealist.

  “I’ll withdraw the question,” says the prosecutor. It strikes me as quick surrender, especially in a bench trial, where your argument is made to the trier of fact. “Ms. Paul, can you tell us whether Mr. Garrison did any work with the defendant, Jonathan Soliday?”

  The witness does not look in my direction, a sign to me of hostility. I suppose that would be normal, except for the small fact that I’m innocent. “I had never met Mr. Soliday,” she says. “I know from Dale’s correspondence and from phone calls that they worked together.”

  Erica Johannsen reviews the notes placed on the lectern. “Now—to your knowledge, did the defendant ever have an appointment to meet with Mr. Garrison?”

  “Yes, he did. They were supposed to meet on Thursday, August seventeenth, for lunch.”

  “That would be the day before his death?”

  “Right.”

  “To your knowledge, was that appointment kept?”

  “No, it was not.” For the first time, Sheila Paul acknowledges my presence. “He called and moved the appointment to Friday night at seven.”

  “Objection.” Bennett gets to his feet. “Lack of foundation.”

  “Sustained.” The judge raises her eyebrows at the prosecutor.

  Erica Johannsen moves toward the witness. “Ms. Paul, did there come a time when you received a phone call about that Thursday lunch meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “I believe it was the day before—Wednesday, I think. Yes, Wednesday morning, I think.”

  “Did the caller identify himself?”

  “Yeah. He said he was Jon Soliday.”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Bennett on his feet again. “Hearsay. Lack of foundation. Move to strike.”

  “Hearsay?” the prosecutor says. “It’s the defendant’s statement.”

  “Sustained as to foundation,” says Judge Bridges. “You haven’t shown it was the defendant’s statement.”

  The prosecutor brings a finger to her lips. Maybe she did not foresee the evidentiary problem with this testimony. Or maybe, as with the medical examiner’s testimony, she was not expecting a fight. “Ms. Paul, regardless of how the caller identified himself, did you recognize the voice?”

  “Not particularly, no.”

  Try again. The prosecutor grinds her teeth and stares at the witness. Her outward appearance is stoic but I know she’s sweating a little. “All right, Ms. Paul. Aside from how the caller identified himself, can you tell us what else he said?”

  “Same objection.” Bennett stands as an after-the-fact gesture; he blurted out the objection before the witness could answer. “Hearsay.”

  The judge blinks twice. “I’ll hear the answer.”

  The witness is no longer entirely sure what the question was, only that there seems to be much ado about her response. She answers with trepidation, expecting one lawyer or another to pounce when she’s finished. “He asked to change the time of his meeting with Dale from lunch Thursday to Friday evening at seven o’clock.”

  Well, we can play all the legal games we want, but the judge knows whom the witness is talking about—me. Nobody else would have called to change the time of the meeting from lunch Thursday to Friday evening. The thing is, that call never happened. They called me to change the meeting.

  Ben leans into me. “She’s been coached,” he whispers. “She wasn’t nearly so clear a few weeks ago.”

  “So what did you do, Ms. Paul?”

  “I asked Dale if Friday at seven would be okay.”

  “And how did he respond?”

  “Well, he said okay, but he wasn’t happy about it. I mean, who meets at seven o’clock on a Friday night?”

  My reaction exactly, at the time. I scribble a note to Bennett, that we need to talk again with my secretary to explain that this is wrong, that it was Garrison who changed the appointment. But that doesn’t explain Sheila Paul’s testimony here. For her to be wrong, she not only is mixing up which one of us changed the appointment; she’s creating in her head an entire conversation with Dale Garrison in which he was upset about the change of plans. Lyle Cosgrove must have made that call.

  The prosecutor turns now to the day of Dale Garrison’s death. “Do you recall Dale Garrison’s day, his work schedule?”

  Sheila Paul nods. “He had a court appearance that morning, a meeting with one of the attorneys down the hall—who was doing work on one of his cases—sometime that afternoon. Then he met with Mr. Soliday that evening at seven.”

  “Your Honor,” says Johannsen, “since we’ve brought the victim’s computer down at the defense’s request, I would ask if the witness could verify Mr. Garrison’s schedule that day on his computer calendar.”

  The judge looks to Bennett.

  “No objection,” he says, “other than chain of custody. Provided Ms. Johannsen can tie that up with another witness….”

  “Thank you, Counsel,” says the prosecutor. “We’ll do that.”

  Nice to see my attorney being so accommodating. This is partly out of some kind of ex-prosecutor kinsmanship, I suppose, but more than anything Ben seems to know which fights to pick. It only helps the judge’s estimation of him and, ultimately, me.

  The prosecution has connected the computer to a projector screen, so that we can watch the workings of the computer like a filmstrip instead of huddling around a little monitor. The screen is already set up, and
a clerk emerges from an adjoining room with the computer and hard drive resting on a stand with wheels. They take a moment to connect the whole thing and then we’re looking at the monitor of Dale Garrison’s computer on a projector screen. The background is a sky landscape, light blue with white puffy clouds. The various icons are on the left side of the screen. Dale had pretty much the same setup I do at the law firm.

  Sheila Paul gets out of the witness chair at the prosecutor’s urging and takes the computer mouse to direct matters. “Dale kept his calendar on the computer,” she says. “Or actually, I kept his calendar on the computer. I’d print it out for him every day.” The mouse moves to some icon and a new screen pops open, showing his computer calendar for the day.

  Apparently, Dale had a court appearance scheduled for today. But Sheila Paul moves the mouse around at a faster clip than I ever have and goes to the date of Dale’s death, August 18.

  “This is the day,” she says.

  A giant version of a day’s calendar is on the screen. It shows appointments on Friday, August 18, at nine, two, three, and with me at seven.

  “Dale had a hearing before Judge Radke on a motion to quash arrest,” says Sheila Paul. “That was at nine. Then he had a meeting with Jeff Caprice, one of the young lawyers down the hall. The ‘OC’ means ‘office conference.’ Then he had a conference call on another case at three.” She waves a hand. “Then he had the meeting with Mr. Soliday at seven.”

  “Ms. Paul, did anyone come into the offices between three and the time you left?”

  “No,” the witness says firmly.

  “And what time did you leave, Ms. Paul?”

  “Pretty close to five. I usually leave between four-thirty and five. That day, it was closer to five.”

  “So—no one came into the offices between three and about five?”

  “That’s right.”

  “As far as you knew, Ms. Paul, was anyone else scheduled to come into the office later that day?”

  “Besides Mr. Soliday, I don’t know of anyone.”