Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  “Okay, fine.” The judge opens her hands. “But why didn’t he just kill this O’Shea the same way he killed Mr. Garrison and this other person—Cosgrove?”

  The prosecutor looks at me. I let her field this one. “We have spoken to people close to Mr. O’Shea,” she says. “O’Shea was told that he was working for someone very powerful, an old friend of his.”

  “Senator Tully,” says the judge.

  “That’s what Ben wanted us to think,” I say. “It turns out, Ben got away with the crime. It was an open-and-shut self-defense. But if he hadn’t, there would have been an investigation. And sooner or later—probably sooner—the police would have talked to his friends and gotten a bead on Senator Tully.”

  “We did have a different theory,” says Johannsen. “The police were under the impression that Brian O’Shea tried to harm Mr. Carey because Mr. Carey had prosecuted O’Shea’s brother, when Mr. Carey was a county prosecutor here. Sean O’Shea was convicted of possession with intent to distribute heroin. He had argued that Mr. Carey and others had framed him. Planted the evidence. His final appeal had just been denied before Brian O’Shea broke into Mr. Carey’s home.”

  “So you thought it was an act of vengeance, the break-in.” The judge inhales deeply. She is quite impressed by all of this. And she’s seen a lot, no doubt, some pretty horrific things and some brilliant stuff as well. “And is your office considering the possibility, now that we know what we know, that maybe Mr. Carey did plant that evidence?”

  “We’ve been looking into it,” she says. “We don’t think it was a frame-up. There would be too much to plant. There were all kinds of indicia of possession with intent—scales, pagers, blades, baggies. The police had been looking at Sean O’Shea for months. He was a real dealer.”

  “So it was just coincidence?”

  “Well, I’m sure that Mr. Carey was more than happy to be part of the team going after Brian O’Shea’s brother. But I don’t think he framed him. Judge, I understand the concern, but I checked over this file personally. I talked to everyone, including Mr. O’Shea’s defense counsel. I want to make sure as much as you do.”

  That I can believe. I think this lady’s all right. Erica Johannsen wasn’t a part of the seedy side of this prosecution. She didn’t know that the blackmail note could turn against Lang Trotter. She didn’t know about Trotter’s problem with the statement of candidacy. After the former prosecutor on the case, Dan Morphew, dropped out, she was thrown in with little preparation and handed her instructions.

  “Bennett wouldn’t have framed O’Shea’s brother,” I add. “That’s not him. He limited his payback to the people who deserved it.”

  The judge shakes her head and tells the prosecutor to continue.

  “Once O’Shea was killed, next on the list was Cosgrove’s lawyer, Mr. Garrison,” says Erica Johannsen. “And he set up Mr. Soliday in the process.”

  The judge holds up a finger. “I understand that, but how—who called Mr. Soliday here back into his offices?”

  “Bennett did,” I answer. I remove the tape which Bennett gave me before leaving me that day in court. “You have a Dictaphone, Judge?”

  “Sure.”

  “Play this, if you would.”

  The judge inserts the tape.

  “We have a transcript of the tape as well,” says Johannsen. She hands a copy to the judge. “Some of the words were cut off. We did the best we could.”

  The judge activates the recorder and sets it, speaker up, on the desk. She reads along with the noise.

  “Dale Garrison.”

  [Static for 4 seconds]

  “Run up for a minute?”

  [Static for 5 seconds]

  “Let’s talk about it.”

  [END OF TRANSCRIPT]

  The judge looks up at me. “I take it this was the conversation on the cellular phone that sent you back to Mr. Garrison’s office.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “This call was recorded? I only heard one voice.”

  “That’s Dale’s voice,” I say. “Tape-recorded. I don’t know how Ben got that tape but it wouldn’t have been hard. It was probably cut from several conversations.” I smile weakly. “I was talking to a tape recorder, Judge.”

  “Mr. Carey called you?”

  “Yes. He was hiding in Garrison’s offices. When I left, he went into Dale’s office and strangled him, then called me. He put the tape recorder up to the phone. From my cell phone, it just sounded like a bad connection. And Bennett gave himself some time. I was about two blocks away.”

  The judge’s eyebrows rise. She closes her eyes a moment.

  “It wouldn’t have taken long. Dale was ill. He was old. And you’ve seen Mr. Carey. He’s built like a commando. He did it quick. Then he went back out the side entrance.”

  “Well, this seems incredibly risky,” the judge says. “And not entirely plausible.”

  “Well, Judge, as Bennett said while he was defending me”—I almost smile at the irony—“that was the point. To make it implausible. My story sounded far-fetched. I looked guilty.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Soliday. What I meant was, it was risky to assume you wouldn’t catch him.”

  I nod. “Agreed. But I think Bennett was ready for that contingency.” The judge looks at me. Her lips part as she catches my meaning. I feel a shudder as I say the words. “Yeah, he would have killed me, too. Two dead lawyers, connected to Senator Grant Tully, the only ones who knew a dark secret about his past. It would have been easy to point the finger at Grant Tully.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  I start again. “That’s not what Bennett wanted to do. He didn’t want to kill me. He wanted me on the hook. Then he wanted all of the evidence to point to Grant Tully. He wanted to see what I would do—if I would go after the man I’ve called my best friend.”

  “I see.”

  “All these years since his sister’s—well, I guess his cousin’s death, Bennett thought I was covering for Grant Tully’s participation. He thought I confessed to being the only person in Gina’s house out of some loyalty to Grant. Maybe I was expecting him to carry me on his coattails through his career. But the truth was, I believed I was the only person. I didn’t remember anything. And Grant knew that. So he got all of these people to agree that I was the only one there, and everyone fell in line.”

  “So at some point,” the judge says, “Mr. Carey learned that you were—duped, so to speak.”

  “Right,” I say. The moment at my house, when I spewed forth the revelations about 1979 to my lawyer, crystallizes now. How upset Bennett became, causing him to leave in a trance—not because of a possible rape or murder, not because of drugs, not because of perjury. He became upset when he realized that I didn’t remember anything after leaving Gina’s house. He made me swear it to him, over and over. That’s when he figured that I was just a pawn, a patsy, set up by Grant and the others.

  “That,” I continue, “and the fact that he liked me, are the reasons I’m alive today.” I watch the expressions on the judge and prosecutor. “But all these years, Bennett thought I was part of a deal, showing loyalty to Grant. So he put me in the soup on Garrison’s murder, let the evidence line up against the senator, and watched to see what I would do. He gave me another chance to implicate Grant Tully.”

  “Mr. Carey stole the cell phone?”

  The prosecutor nods. “We think so. Put on a red wig and wear a denim jacket and you fit Lyle Cosgrove.”

  “And he sent all of the rest of this woman’s purse back to her,” I add. “That’s what I mean—he didn’t want to hurt anyone else. He was probably sorry as hell he had to steal her phone. I’ll bet you anything that when he returned the rest of her purse, he threw some extra cash in there, too, to cover the cost of the phone.”

  “That’s quite a set of priorities,” says the judge. The same reaction I had. She places her hands on the table. “Okay. So now Mr. Carey is in control. He’s murdered Dale Garrison and he’s repres
enting the accused. Then, I take it, he killed Lyle Cosgrove.”

  “Yes,” both Erica Johannsen and I answer. “And,” I add, “he placed that bag with Gina’s underwear in Lyle’s apartment.”

  What I do not mention is my break-in of Lyle’s home, where I found the incriminating letter from Garrison to Lyle, begging Lyle not to dredge up the past. That letter, of course, was written by Bennett and sneaked into Lyle’s apartment for me to find—after Ben conveniently planted in my head a good way to break into Lyle’s place. Tell them you’re from the Department of Corrections, he had told me, and they’ll hand you the key.

  “So he was turning up the heat,” the judge says. “Sprinkling new evidence into the story.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Still,” says the judge, “very risky. Once Lyle Cosgrove is in play, anyone could discover the case in 1979. And they’d start looking at witnesses from back then, and it wouldn’t be long before they discovered that the boy was Bennett Carey. Especially when he hadn’t bothered to conceal his name.”

  We all nod in silence for a moment.

  “It was risky,” I agree. “But Bennett’s overriding goal was to have the truth come out about 1979. His secondary goal was to inflict punishment. He killed the two guys and their defense attorney, he ruined Senator Tully’s chances at being governor, and”—I pause a moment—“he sure made me sweat.” I open my hand to the room. “What has to be understood, I think, is that Bennett Carey was not concerned with the details. He didn’t care how it came out. A lot of things could have gone one way or the other. Maybe even Bennett himself would have been caught. But all of that was secondary to the truth coming out, however it came out.”

  “We would have found that information about 1979 in probably another day or so,” says Erica Johannsen. “We had just learned about Lyle Cosgrove’s death. You recall I wanted the continuance.”

  Nice jab. She’s lost but she’ll go down swinging.

  “It probably would’ve taken more than a day to find Bennett’s connection to it,” I say to the prosecutor. “And even if you discovered it and caught Bennett, I don’t think he would have cared. He had gotten what he wanted.”

  “Speaking of,” says the judge. “Any idea where Mr. Carey is?”

  “No,” says the prosecutor. “He walked out of court that day and no one ever saw him again. We found a car he had rented at an oasis near the northern border. We aren’t aware of any plane trips he’s taken, but the truth is, he got a head start on us.”

  When Bennett walked out on me in court, I could have chased him. I could have called out to the judge and found a bailiff or police officer to restrain him. But I didn’t. And when the judge questioned me the next morning as to the whereabouts of my lawyer, I dummied up. I said I had no idea. Eventually, the judge was forced to recess for the day, with promises of a contempt citation for Bennett Carey.

  I waited until the next morning to inform Erica Johannsen. I told her I believed that Bennett was related to Gina Mason and that he might be on the lam.

  I gave Bennett that head start, in other words.

  We spoke with the judge and she agreed to put things over for another day. A day was all it took for Johannsen to get confirmation of Bennett’s identity and, combined with the fact that Bennett appeared to have fled the jurisdiction, there was ample reason to suspect that the county attorney was prosecuting the wrong guy. The trial was held over pending an investigation. It took the prosecutors a good three weeks to fill in all the pieces. A couple of days ago, Erica Johannsen called me with the news that they were dropping the charges.

  “Okay.” Judge Bridges looks at Erica Johannsen. “I take it this extortion letter was phony.”

  “Yes,” she answers. “We believe Mr. Carey mailed it to Mr. Soliday.”

  “And Bennett changed the appointment with Dale from Thursday to Friday night, too,” I say.

  “All right,” says Judge Bridges. “All right. And you’re sure of all of this.”

  “We’re satisfied,” says Johannsen. “We know Mr. Carey was Gina’s cousin—or brother, in their minds. We believe he walked in on the rape, which turned to murder.”

  “Assuming it was a rape and a murder,” Paul Riley says. “The evidence is inconclusive.”

  “Inconclusive.” The prosecutor rolls her eyes. Paul’s just being my lawyer, but regardless, he isn’t wrong about this. I tend to believe that something bad happened in that room with Lyle, Rick, Grant, and Gina. But three of those four are dead, and Grant will never come off his denial, no matter what, because he’s a public figure and he can’t. That’s the irony of Ben’s actions. The whole point was to bring out the truth but the only truth is, we will never know. We will have nothing but the perspective of an eight-year-old boy who probably couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. And even if we could ask Lyle or Rick what they truly believe, I’m not sure they would see it the same way Gina did. Each of them—the boys and Gina—was so intoxicated that the line might be blurry even to a dispassionate observer. I think what Ben believes is probably true but I don’t know.

  I draw a finger along my chest. “When Bennett—or Billy—was a child after his sister—or cousin—” I sigh. “You know what I mean. When he was a kid back then, he cut himself with a kitchen knife. On his arms and chest. I saw one of those scars when I went to Ben’s house after he shot O’Shea. In fact, he told me the scar was twenty years old.”

  “All told,” says the prosecutor, “we’re confident of reasonable doubt. We don’t believe Mr. Soliday is guilty of any crime here.”

  These words should mean more than they do.

  “Very well,” says the judge. “Mr. Soliday—”

  “I lied,” I say.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I lied under oath in 1979. I had no memory of much of what I said. I committed perjury.”

  “Well.” The judge stares at me, then at the other lawyers. “I suppose I don’t know quite what to say about that.” She looks at the prosecutor.

  “It’s not in our jurisdiction,” says Johannsen, “but I would assume that the statute of limitations has expired.”

  “It has,” says Paul. He didn’t want me to say a thing about this.

  “I guess that’s something you’re going to have to deal with,” the judge says to me. “I hope it’s something that never leaves you.”

  It won’t. That much, I can promise. I get up, along with the other lawyers, ready to march into the courtroom and make the necessary stipulations before the county attorney officially exonerates me.

  60

  TRACY WALKS INTO the diner with a hanging bag over her shoulder and a suitcase in her hand. When she finds me in a booth, she greets me with a kiss on the cheek. This is the most overt affection she’s shown me, and this time it was on her own initiative. We take our seats in the booth but don’t bother with the menus.

  Tracy went back to work two weeks ago, after everything exploded at my trial and it was pretty obvious I was in the clear. We said a very quick goodbye then because, from what I could tell, she’d hit her limit with her bosses back east. She’d taken a good three weeks off, after she’d just been promoted. I insisted she leave. She said she’d be stopping over in the city on the way to Atlanta in a couple of weeks, and we’d have a proper goodbye then.

  “You look good,” she tells me.

  “Definitely better than the last time you saw me.” I smile into the table, but it’s time I looked up. “Listen, Tracy. Thank you.”

  “For what?” She fingers the glass of water before her. “For coming to town?”

  “For staying in town. Taking almost a month out of your life. Even though I barely had time to say boo to you.” I sigh. “Thanks for standing by me.”

  I see that I’ve offended her. “What did you expect, Jon?”

  “It’s exactly what I expected. I still appreciate it.”

  She waves me off. The waitress takes drink orders. We hold off on lunch.

  Tracy
has something to say. In some ways she’s a stranger now, in some ways she’ll never be. We dabble in small talk but I don’t help her out too much. She struggles a moment, as it’s clear to both of us she needs to get something out.

  “I changed,” she says. “You didn’t.”

  That could be read more ways than one. The blame could be on either party. But she’s not putting it on me. She’s saying, I was the real article from day one, she knew going in.

  “You grew,” I say. “No crime in that. I was supposed to grow with you.”

  She appreciates the comment. But she’s not content.

  “I made you feel like the second fiddle,” I continue. “That’s never the way I saw it. I never knew. I think you tried to tell me, in many ways.”

  Tracy looks into my eyes. We never seriously discussed the cause of our breakup. By the time it was over, it was so obvious that we just had to broach the topic and it was done. That’s my fault. Like I told her, the signs were there. I didn’t want to see them.

  “I married a guy in politics,” she says. “I knew you’d be downstate half the year. I knew you wouldn’t leave Grant. I knew how much you loved it.”

  I reach for her. “You had every right to ask for more. Things aren’t carved in stone, Trace. Relationships evolve. You just happened to marry a Neanderthal.” I smile at her. “You weren’t wrong here.”

  Her eyes narrow. Tracy can be emotional but she won’t be here. She’s a strong woman, and anyway, the well of tears from our divorce is long dried up.

  “Do you think we made a mistake?” she whispers.

  I force myself to maintain eye contact, to show resolve. Mistake is the wrong word. It’s frozen in time, back almost a year ago. The relevant question is, what do we do now?

  But I know my Tracy. She’s always had a gift with words, and she’s the bravest person I know. She’s worded the question to give me maximum room, even opened the door to what she believes I may say. She wants the truth from me. She wants to know how I feel.