Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  “No, that most certainly is not true, that I went to her house.” Grant casts a look in my direction. I have no idea of the expression I return. I have no idea of anything anymore.

  “Rick drove Jon, right? And you and Lyle followed? Isn’t that how it went?”

  “No, Mr. Carey.”

  Bennett moves toward the witness. “You and Rick were inside Gina Mason’s room, too, weren’t you?”

  “No, sir. That is completely false. This is”—he looks up at the judge—“this is preposterous.”

  “Oh, you let Jon have his privacy, first. One of you went to get him and found him in Gina’s room passed out. Right? And one of you pulled him out through the window, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying. I went home.” Grant slams a fist on the railing.

  “Then,” Ben continues, turning toward the gallery now, “once Jon was done, it was someone else’s turn.” He turns back to Grant. “Who went next, Senator? You? Rick?”

  “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to take this.”

  “Listen, Senator, if you have something to hide—” Bennett turns to the judge. “I suppose, Your Honor, we should make Senator Tully aware of his right against self-incrimination.” Then back to Grant: “You wanna take five, Senator?”

  “I’m not taking the Fifth,” Grant says. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “So, what, Rick went next?” Ben asks. “And in the course of things, it got a little rough, right? And Gina died.”

  Grant collects himself a moment. He’s working out his options and reaching the same conclusion I did—he has nowhere to run. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “But Jon”—he wags a finger in my direction—“Jon was passed out in the car. He barely made it out of Gina’s window.”

  “Again, Counselor, I don’t know anything—”

  “So Jon became the patsy.” Bennett moves away from Grant, again addressing the entire courtroom. “The son of a senator can’t be involved in something like this. So you had Lyle stand up and say he was there with Jon.”

  “No.”

  “You and Rick had sex with Gina, so you two had to be left out of it. Lyle, there was no evidence implicating him, so you put him with Jon.”

  “No. No.”

  “How’d that work?” Ben asks. “Did you pay Lyle? Did Rick offer him free cocaine the rest of his life?”

  “Objection. Your Honor, ob—”

  “Sustained.”

  Bennett is quieted only momentarily. “You made the plan that night,” he says. “There you are, Lyle and Rick and you, with Jon asleep in the car, and one dead girl. You tell Lyle to say he was there outside—just there, didn’t do anything—and the story will be that Grant Tully and his pal Rick went home. Just went home.”

  “Not a shred of that is true.” The senator’s eyes dart in my direction but don’t hold.

  “In fact, the police never even heard about Rick, did they?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You made sure they didn’t, right, Senator? Because Rick meant cocaine, and you couldn’t be anywhere near cocaine. And then you pulled all the political strings you could. You had the coroner make an inconclusive finding. You had the prosecutor take a pass on the case. You set up your best friend to take the fall but then made sure he’d walk.” Bennett points a finger at me. “You made him believe that he had done something wrong. Your best friend.”

  Grant swallows hard. The prosecutor rises and objects to the compound question, to the fact that Bennett Carey is making speeches. The judge sustains. A quiet falls over the courtroom.

  It is Grant who speaks next, clearing his throat first. “Are you suggesting that your client perjured himself at that trial—at that hearing they held? Did Jon not testify that he went to that woman’s home, that he kissed her goodbye, that he got in Lyle’s car and left? And that I was nowhere to be seen?”

  “I am suggesting that my client didn’t remember anything that night other than going into Gina’s room and having sex with her. I am suggesting that the rest was spoon-fed to him by you and the people working for you.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  Bennett nods. “You dispatched Dale Garrison back in 1979 to keep Lyle Cosgrove on the same page with you. Keeping you and Rick out of it, and clearing Jon.”

  “No, sir.”

  “And that’s the ‘secret that nobody knows,’ isn’t it, Senator? Dale Garrison knew it. Lyle told him the truth, under the veil of attorney-client privilege. Dale knew that Lyle’s story to the prosecution was hogwash. He knew you were involved in Gina’s death.”

  “No, Mr. Carey. Absolutely not.”

  “Dale Garrison was threatening to tell the truth to your dad—the ‘senator,’ isn’t that the case, Senator Tully?”

  “This is completely wrong.” Grant is shaking his head, almost absently, punch-drunk from the accusations.

  “You had Lyle Cosgrove do the dirty work, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t even know him.”

  “You guys went back, didn’t you, Senator? You two used to party together back in 1979.”

  “I didn’t know Lyle after that time.”

  “But you kept tabs on him, didn’t you? You knew he was out of prison. You hired him to kill Dale Garrison, the man who was blackmailing you.”

  “No. No.” Grant looks up at the bench. “I—Judge, I don’t even know how to respond to this.”

  “Or maybe you did. Maybe you wanted to set up Jon for the murder.”

  “That’s completely, utterly wrong, Bennett.”

  Bennett waits a moment, standing near the jury railing. “Dale Garrison sent that blackmail note in the birthday card that accompanied the legal opinion, didn’t he? In that same messenger envelope.”

  “I’ve never seen a blackmail note.”

  “But you got the birthday card, right? I’m the one who handed it to you.”

  “I remember Dale sent a birthday card. I freely testified to that.”

  Grant freely testified to that because it locked down the date that Dale wrote the memo on the Ace. It gave a loose time frame for when Dale Garrison would have the opportunity to blackmail Lang Trotter. Bennett impressed on the senator the need to be forceful on this date.

  Grant Tully has been ambushed.

  “Sure,” says Bennett. “And the birthday card was opened already, as you said. I opened it without knowing, because it was part of the same package the memo came in, then I realized it was a birthday card for you and I gave it to you.”

  Grant shakes his head. He must be getting dizzy by now. That would make two of us.

  “And you wondered, didn’t you, whether I opened the card and read the note that went along with it?”

  “There never was a note. I don’t remember any of that.”

  “That made me a threat, too,” says Ben. “So you sent your other buddy from 1979—Brian O’Shea—to kill me.”

  “What?”

  “You remember my house was broken into, don’t you?”

  “I remember that.”

  “And the person who broke in was named Brian O’Shea.”

  “Okay. I’ve heard that—”

  “Brian O’Shea,” Ben repeats. “Rick. ‘Rick’ O’Shea. His nickname.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t remember Rick, Senator? Your drug dealer from 1979?”

  “That’s outrageous, Counsel. This is slander. None of this is true.” His last comment is delivered to the media in the gallery.

  “You thought I might be aware of the blackmail note, right? You couldn’t have me out there as a loose end, could you, Senator?”

  “This is—” Grant lifts off his seat. “This is preposterous and you know it. You’re just making this up.”

  “You got people you could count on to do the work,” says Ben. “People who proved their worth, when they covered for you in 1979. Lyle Cosgrove
kills Garrison, O’Shea is supposed to kill me. And just to keep things covered up, you frame your top aide, Jonathan Soliday, a man who has served you faithfully, so if anything comes back to you, he’ll protect you.”

  “I didn’t do that.” Grant is looking at me, not Bennett. “I wouldn’t.”

  “You raped Gina Mason,” says Ben. “You killed her.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Ben mimics. “She wanted to be gang-raped by three guys and choked to death?”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s what your father believed, right? That’s what Jon Soliday believed, all these years. And you had to preserve that belief.”

  “My father believed it because it was true.”

  “You know that Lyle Cosgrove is dead, don’t you, Senator?”

  The change of topics brings a small comfort, but only a small one. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Have you also ‘heard,’ Senator, that the police discovered a sealed envelope containing a woman’s underpants?”

  “I—no, I hadn’t.” The senator scratches his face.

  “Wanna bet whose undies they are?”

  “Ob—objection.” Erica Johannsen slowly rises. She’s been as blown away as anybody by this. She has allowed improper question after improper question, getting caught up herself in the snowball.

  “Think there’s still some DNA on those panties, Senator?”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Carey,” says the judge. “I am sustaining that objection.”

  Bennett stares at the senator for a long minute. He’s attempting to make eye contact with Grant, who is not looking in his direction.

  “I’m done with this witness,” he announces.

  Bennett Carey stands in the courtroom as we adjourn, his chest heaving. The senator is calling out denials, angrily denouncing the ambush. The judge decides to recess for the day.

  Slowly, my attorney returns to the defense table. He delicately places the blackmail letter on the stack of papers before him and speaks to me as I stare at the table.

  “Now we’re done,” he says.

  58

  CALAMITY AROUND US. The prosecutor wheels and waves her assistants forward. Grant Tully, finally finished decrying these “ludicrous” suggestions to a court reporter who has ceased typing, to a judge who has left the bench, marches off the witness stand without looking in my direction and plows into a herd of feasting reporters. The bailiff hobbles over to the crowd, vainly trying to enforce the rule of no reporters’ questions in the courtroom. The press is hurling bombs at the senator, even some at me. Others in the crowd, not part of the media, are talking among themselves about the spectacle.

  It’s all over in less than fifteen minutes. This is probably because the senator has made it through the mass, and it is clear that neither Bennett nor I will be talking, so the reporters see little point in lingering in the courtroom. It’s like one of those old movies, all the reporters rushing to the pay phones to break the story, only now they’re using cell phones or sending e-mails.

  I look at Bennett. It’s coming in waves now, the realization, the clearing of the picture, so obvious in hindsight and so overwhelming that I struggle to keep my breath.

  “I guess it’s something I wouldn’t confront,” I say.

  “There was no point in bringing it up.” Ben says. “You never would have allowed me to go after him.”

  “Nice work,” I say. “You put all that together from that license revocation.”

  Bennett gathers his papers. “I knew you wouldn’t have been a part of that girl’s death,” he says. “And I knew Tully was capable. You always had a blind spot for the guy.”

  I nod. “Sure, that works. All of it worked, in the end. It made for a nice, tidy story.”

  Bennett is dropping stacks of paper on the desk to even out the sheets. “I suppose, yeah.”

  A hopeful reporter sticks his head into my view but I shake my head without comment, and he disappears.

  “Nice work,” I repeat. “We have reasonable doubt.” I offer a hand. “Have a nice trip, wherever you’re going.”

  Bennett, in the midst of stuffing a folder into his briefcase, stops. His eyes rise to mine.

  I let my unshaken hand drop to the table. “I assume that goodbye before court this afternoon was effective immediately.”

  “Huh?” Bennett Carey draws up. He measures me a moment, his eyes clear and intense. He is suddenly aware of the room. Try as he might, he can’t contain the sense of urgency in his eyes as they dart about. His finger waves a small circle. He grimaces in confusion. “Jon, we still have a day or two—”

  “Go,” I say.

  His expression hardens, his eyes search my face with a boy’s curiosity.

  “I’m not going to be convicted,” I say. “We both know that. These guys are going to find that file from 1979 in the matter of a day, at most. They’ll figure it all out.”

  Bennett nods slowly, looking confused.

  “All of it, Ben.”

  My lawyer swallows hard. He doesn’t seem to understand my point.

  “The way it ends up,” I continue, “everyone got their due. Garrison’s dead. Lyle and Rick are dead. Grant Tully’s ambitions are trashed. And I—well”—I shrug—“I pissed my pants a few times.” I raise a hand. “Deservedly so, to some extent. I did something awful, too, even if I didn’t kill her. It’s always haunted me, Ben. But I let it go for a while. I never will again. I’ll never forget the things I’ve done.”

  Ben says nothing to this, but simply stares at the judge’s empty bench.

  “It’s important to me that you know that, Bennett.”

  My lawyer turns to me with these words. There is a sheen to his eyes, the first sign of vulnerability he has ever shown me. His lips part but he doesn’t vocalize a response, simply nods curtly. I do not, I could not expect more from him.

  “So get out of here,” I say. “Before they figure out who Gina Mason’s brother is.”

  William Bennett Carey considers my warning a moment, though he doesn’t seem especially worried. He reaches into the inner pocket of his suit coat and removes a small audiotape, which he places before me on the table.

  “That makes sense,” I say. “You better hurry now.”

  Bennett’s expression turns mild, even placid. He rises from his chair and straightens himself. Again, he starts to speak but cannot find the words. But I can read them on his face. Nothing is going to bring her back or erase the pain, but at least there is some rough sense of satisfaction. He starts to offer a hand but recognizes the impropriety. Instead he gives me a long look—harder and more worldly, but in many ways no different than the one he gave me twenty years ago—before grabbing his briefcase and silently leaving the courtroom.

  59

  JUDGE NICOLE BRIDGES brings the parties into chambers. I walk in with my new lawyer, Paul Riley, one of the elite defense attorneys in the city. Erica Johannsen, the prosecutor, comes in by herself.

  The judge is without her robe, wearing a burgundy blouse. Her hair is braided. Her hands are together on her desk. “I wanted to do this informally, first,” she says. “Consider it a proffer. Nothing admissible. You know the drill.”

  “Sure, Judge,” says Paul Riley. His salt-and-pepper hair is finely combed as always. His tie cost more than my suit.

  “The state is stipulating to a dismissal with prejudice,” says Johannsen.

  The judge nods. “So tell me. You first, Ms. Johannsen.”

  “Your Honor, you remember hearing at the end of the trial about the murder in 1979.”

  The judge laughs, and in response all of us at least smile. “Yes, I think I remember that, Counsel.”

  The prosecutor works her hands. “We now know that Mr. Soliday’s attorney, William Bennett Carey, grew up with the woman who was the victim, Gina Mason. After Mr. Carey’s parents were killed in a car accident when he was two years old, Mr. Carey went to live with his aunt, Gina Mason’s mother. Gina was his c
ousin.”

  “He changed his name?” the judge asks.

  “No, actually he didn’t,” says Johannsen, indicating her surprise. “He just went by his middle name when he became a lawyer. His last name was always Carey. He was never formally adopted. When the murder was investigated, he was mentioned in the report only as Billy Mason. It was an assumption. Gina had always called him her brother. He called Gina his sister. They both called Mrs. Mason ‘Mom.’ There was never any reason for the police to assume otherwise, I suppose. Why would they?”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “We believe that Mr. Carey set up a plan to, essentially, pay back the people who were part of the crime. Brian O’Shea was the first victim. We have learned that Mr. Carey contacted O’Shea and hired him to break into a house. He didn’t specify whose house it was, or if he did, he lied. But of course, it was Mr. Carey’s house.”

  The judge’s solemn expression breaks. For a moment I think she’s going to smile. Bennett was quite the cunning devil. “Mr. Carey hired someone to break into his own home.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. We have learned from a friend of Mr. O’Shea that Mr. Carey paid O’Shea five thousand dollars to break into the home and to steal something valuable from the bedroom. He described some heirloom, an ancient timepiece. That’s what O’Shea was going for when he went into the bedroom.”

  “I take it,” the judge says, “that O’Shea did not expect anyone to be home?”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor. Mr. Carey surprised the intruder.”

  “And looked reasonable in doing so.” The judge nods along. “No one’s going to tell a person he can’t shoot at a home intruder in his bedroom.”

  “His plan was to kill O’Shea in the bedroom,” I add. The prosecutor looks at me, but we’re informal here, so I don’t apologize for the interruption. “That looks the least suspicious. When the guy survived and ran down the stairs, Bennett had to follow him down. He couldn’t let the guy leave alive.”

  That must have been the strangest five minutes of Brian O’Shea’s life. He breaks into a house and finds the guy who hired him, pointing a gun at him. That’s why the detective kept asking Ben if he heard any shouting. The neighbors must have heard it. O’Shea was probably yelling at Ben, What in the hell are you doing, shooting at me?