Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

  “Sounds like somebody a jury will like.”

  “Which is nine-tenths of the battle. They’ll be pulling for her by the time I’m done with them.”

  “So we tell them she tried to retreat but he grabbed her and pulled her back down.”

  “Which takes the duty to retreat completely out of the picture. He made retreat impossible.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Shit, boy, sounds like the truth, to me.”

  “If you say so, Shep.”

  “I do, son, I do. Not only that, why should a woman have to turn her back on a man and try to retreat from him in the first place? Turning your back on an aggressor is a good way to get killed. From behind!”

  “I can’t argue with that. And one more thing I’ve been thinking about. The gun. What if the husband went for the gun first and she got it away from him? What about that?”

  “Damn, fella, now you’re making sense. Were his prints on the gun?”

  “Don’t need to be. He went for it and she wrestled it away first. She beat him to it—which indicates he meant to kill her.”

  “Oh yes, I like that!”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re coming through, now. I knew I thought the world of you. Now you’re proving me right.”

  “Just trying to save our client.”

  Thaddeus went cold inside. There, he was complicit. He had joined in the game and was helping concoct a story that would set their client free. Stop overthinking this, he commanded his brain. The DA’s office is just as busy concocting their own version of the facts right now, with all their power and money and cops and experts. They’ll be using everything they can to put the needle in Angelina’s arm. They’re out to kill her. This is no time for your damn mental games. Let it go, he told himself. And leave it there.

  “I want you to spend some time with Angelina. Get to know her. Feed her the story in bits and pieces. See if she’ll grab on and let us work our magic. Or see if she’s going to fight us, which I highly doubt, but we need to nail her down.”

  “Hell, if she bit herself with his mouth don’t we have our answer already?”

  “You cannot over-prepare, Thaddeus. Now do what I say, please. I hear she likes to cross-country ski. Go skiing with her. You got skis?”

  “Cross-country. Everything I need.”

  “Then get on it, hoss. Get on it.”

  31

  He arrived home that night to learn that Katy had gathered and removed from the trailer all six Turquoise diaries. Thaddeus was ecstatic. Katy had retrieved the keys from the girl’s nightstand. The girl said to please read them but she didn’t want to be there when it happened.

  They were seated at the kitchen table and in the center was Katy’s fat red book bag containing the diaries. The husband and wife looked at each other. Who would go first?

  “Let’s make coffee,” said Katy. “Then we’ll open the first one.”

  Thaddeus nodded. He had changed into Levi’s, moccasins, and a black tee. Katy was wearing the khaki pants she had worn to the reservation, with a pink tee that featured a silkscreen of Woody Woodpecker and the words “That’s all, folks!” Sarai loved the shirt and was wearing one just like it. The little girl was watching a Barney video and munching corn chips in the family room. They had tried to seduce her with carrot sticks but her penchant for corn chips had won out. The carrot sticks were stacked in parallel on a small plate, a dollop of ranch dip on the side. They were all untouched.

  Katy ran the Keurig and returned with steaming mugs. She placed one before Thaddeus. In serving him from the side she allowed her hand to rest momentarily on his shoulder and he felt a warmth creep into his soul from her touch. Oh wow, he thought, how he loved her touch! Then she sat beside him, casually sipping her coffee and staring, with him, at the book bag. What would the first diary tell them?

  He opened the bag and pulled out the smallest, oldest book. It had a white, imitation leather cover with a gold-embossed title of “My Secret Diary.” A frayed clasp was held in place by a small gold lock, which in part had given way to rust spots. Inserting key after key, he turned the lock clockwise. On the sixth try, the tongue slipped free and he lifted the cover. Remarkably preserved, the first item was a turquoise butterfly mounted inside a glassine cover. He would later Google and find its name: Sonoran Blue (Philotes sonorensis). Indigenous to the Sonoran Desert.

  “The butterfly, like her name.”

  “Turquoise.”

  “Exactly. Totally charming,” Katy said.

  “You’ve gotta love this kid.”

  “How very touching,” Katy marveled. “What’s next?”

  Thaddeus set the butterfly aside and turned the blank page. A paperclip held three grainy photographs of a much-younger Turquoise. The child was wearing heavy red lipstick, clumpy mascara, and rouge on her cheeks that lent a clownish look. Except the look—the photograph—was meant to be taken as a serious attempt to look the part of the attractive young woman.

  “Ten years old,” Katy whispered.

  “I know,” Thaddeus said. He shook his head. “Unbelievable. Let’s read.”

  They turned several pages. Then came the first entry, written in blue ink, faded, and dated June 10, which, they would learn, was the girl’s tenth birthday.

  Four sentences into the entry and Katy’s eyes moistened. Thaddeus blinked hard. For the girl told the story of her tenth birthday, how she had come awake that morning, excited to at last be in “double digits.” She had quickly dressed in her customary shorts and T-shirt and Wal-Mart tennies with gold toes. She went from her bedroom in the trailer to the living room. Her father told her to look out the screen door.

  There, leaned on its kickstand, was the new bike she had asked for. It was a girls’ frame, red, with a silver basket and luggage rack. She had specifically asked for the basket and rack to hold the cans she found on her daily canning excursions along the highway that stretched for miles in either direction from their trailer. Soft drink cans and alcoholic beverage cans were tossed from whizzing cars and trucks and she retrieved as many as she could each morning. She recited how she daily scavenged a hundred cans and plastic bottles and earned five dollars. It was money she would spend on food. There were no savings, only can money for food when dad would disappear for several days on one of his benders. She said little about this, though the first entry in the diary covered just about every facet of her young life, as if she had been waiting to gush.

  She had headed west on her new bicycle that morning and was amazed at how quickly her basket filled with cans and bottles as she worked the highway shoulders. “Crested Blue Butte,” her father told her, she couldn’t go beyond that.

  But she wasn’t the only one out to celebrate her birthday. Uncle Randy came along in his truck. He pulled in behind her, slowly following as she made her way along. She stopped several times to wave at him but he neither returned her wave nor made any effort to go around her and continue on his way. She became nervous, then felt frightened. It “seemed like a dream,” she wrote.

  Finally he beeped the horn and motioned her to pull over and wait. She complied with his order. Without a word he climbed out of his truck, marched smartly up to her, and took her by the arm. He yanked her from the bicycle and it spilled onto the sandy shoulder. Pulling at her arm, he dragged her behind a Palo Verde tree and down into an arroyo. With very little description, she documented the sexual assault and her huge feeling of shame. She cried and couldn’t stop. He abruptly tweaked her shoe and climbed up out of the wash. She heard his truck fire up and accelerate down the highway.

  She was left with a mess in the wash. Sand had been worked up between her legs and, as she described it, she had to urinate immediately. The next portions made the tears roll down the cheeks of her readers. Thaddeus and Katy were shocked. Stunned.

  The little girl described picking her bicycle up off the ground and angrily tossing all the bottles and cans, flinging them from bike basket to the
desert sands. She said she was crying and turned her bike around and rode home, unable to stop crying.

  Uncle Randy was waiting for her at the trailer. Her father had told him to tell her that he was gone to town for the day. Uncle Randy didn’t say anything when she came inside and she went to her room. She drew the curtain across her doorway and flung herself across the bed. She buried her face in the pillow and proceeded to weep until the pillow was wet.

  She cried herself to sleep and awoke to find Uncle Randy rubbing her leg. “This is for you,” he told her and gave her a tube of Revlon lipstick and a small makeup case. “It’s for your birthday. Put it on.” She did as she was told, even though she had never been schooled in makeup magic.

  He took pictures of her smeared with her makeup. The pictures were for later, he told her. But he promised he would provide her prints for her new diary. The diary was a gift from her Aunt Juana, who had dropped it by while Turquoise was canning. She had left it on the shelf below the tiny window in the girl’s bedroom.

  The diary entry concluded with this: “Uncle Randi wants me to come to his room. He wants more pictures. I hat him. I doan lik him no more. Goodby everone.” She had then pressed her lips against the page, leaving an ambiguous red impression of her lips that had, over time, transferred onto the facing page as well.

  “That’s enough for me tonight,” Thaddeus announced. “Can’t take anymore.”

  “I hear that,” Katy agreed. “I’ll read the rest tomorrow.”

  32

  Thaddeus read over the CSI’s résumé again. He liked everything he saw.

  Lance Myer-Rothstein was available for consultation in homicide cases, including shooting scene reconstruction, crime scene evidence evaluation, bloodstain pattern analysis, and crime scene reconstruction.

  Past engagements were impressive, as he had provided testimony for both the prosecution and defense in state, federal, and military courtrooms. He had been active since 1977, beginning with small police agencies as a patrolman and then working his way up in rank. He had served as patrol officer, SWAT team member, police agent, crime scene investigator, crime laboratory detective, patrol sergeant, major task force member and, finally, commander of criminal investigations in Albuquerque. He received his graduate education in forensic sciences from The George Washington University (MFS) and received advanced forensic science training from the FBI, Secret Service, Smithsonian Institution, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science and many others.

  And he was available immediately. Thaddeus sent him a retainer and Myer-Rothstein caught the next flight out of Reagan National Airport.

  Thaddeus met him at the Flagstaff airport and was immediately awed by the man’s massive shoulders and bull neck. He looked like an O-line guard for the Cardinals. He had a round face, dark bushy eyebrows over green eyes, and black curly hair that he kept slicked back from his widow’s peak. He wore tortoise-frame eyeglasses and, Thaddeus noticed as soon as they were outside, worked a cigar in and out of his mouth like a plunger. First it was lit, then chewed until it died out, then relit, chewed again, then relit. The cigar was plugged into a yellowish-brown filter system that looked not at all like something Thaddeus would put into his own mouth. And he talked nonstop, about the police reports he had reviewed so far, the autopsy reports and gunshot angles, and his desire to “visit the scene immediately without delay.”

  So Thaddeus made arrangements for them to visit the shooting scene the very next day.

  33

  Katy called and made an appointment for them to meet with Garcia Begay at the trailer. He was the father of Turquoise and had been “away” (on a bender) when the shooting occurred. He was withdrawn and unwilling to discuss anything by phone, but she shared with him that she was Naabeehó Bináhásdzo—Navajo—and he agreed to see her.

  With Lance Myer-Rothstein secure in the back seat of the Escalade, the threesome drove out of Flagstaff at nine o’clock, following a quick breakfast at Little America, where the crime scene investigator spent the night. Thaddeus drove them eastbound on I-40 to 89 and then north to 160, through Tuba City, and east-northeast. All the way up, the forensic scientist worried the unlit cigar in his mouth, talking nonstop about his life and training, as if there were any doubt in anyone’s mind about his superb credentials. There wasn’t, of course, or he wouldn’t have been there.

  Later that morning, Thaddeus was parking the SUV in front of the trailer, next to Garcia’s Ford F150. The man’s pickup was red over white, dented and battered all along the driver’s side, and was missing its tailgate. In the bed was a large roll of fencing wire, a half-dozen green and white fence posts, and a tool box just behind the rear window. Thaddeus and Katy and Myer-Rothstein climbed the four steps and knocked on the aluminum frame of the outer door. No answer. They knocked again. No answer. Thaddeus cupped his hands against the small door window and peered inside. A man—presumably Garcia—was sleeping on the couch, his left arm across the face and mouth wide open. His boots were neatly placed side-by-side on the floor and several beer cans were strewn alongside the couch. As they listened they could hear the TV and Thaddeus thought he recognized the voice of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. He hammered his fist against the door and shouted. “Mr. Begay! Open up, please!” He hammered again. He saw the man stir and slowly sit up. He yawned, stretched, and wiped both hands across his face. He dried his mouth with his shirtsleeve, lunged upright, and came toward the door.

  It slowly creaked open and the man looked out.

  “I’m Katy Begay,” Katy said. “We’re here for the visit.”

  The man nodded and pushed the door open and the trio entered.

  It smelled of stale cigarettes and something fried. Thaddeus would have preferred to leave the door ajar so the room could air out, but he knew it wasn’t his choice, so he followed Katy to the couch.

  “Hello,” said the man. He appeared to be mid-thirties, maybe 5’10”, angular brown profile with sharply parted black hair that, with sleep, had fallen low across his forehead. A thin white scar ran from his left earlobe along his jawline to his chin. Some remnant from some late-night brawl, Thaddeus guessed, for the man was clearly a drinker and, as Turquoise had related, was given to three- and four-day benders where he vanished from everyone’s radar, gone who-knew-where, but certainly not at home, where his own brother was having his way with his daughter. Thaddeus detested the man and made no real effort at friendliness, although he played friendly enough, knowing that the more information they could pry out of the guy about Turquoise, the better job he could do in defending her.

  “You’re Garcia?” Katy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Katy Begay and this is my husband, Thaddeus Murfee. Thaddeus is the lawyer provided by the court for your daughter, Turquoise. And this is Lance, who wants to see the bedroom where your brother was shot.”

  “It’s bad, what she did,” Garcia said. He shook his head and rubbed his sad eyes. “Very bad of her.”

  “We don’t know that,” the forensics man piped up. “We don’t know that she did the shooting at all.”

  They all three stared at him. “Well,” he continued, “I have serious doubts about it, based on what I’ve been given to review. But we’ll review the scene, take measurements and photographs, and run some field tests.” He patted the bag he had brought along. “Everything we need is in here. Please show me the room and then you can leave me alone for about an hour.”

  Garcia took him to the rear of the trailer.

  “Have you cleaned in here since the shooting?” Myer-Rothstein asked.

  “She has been in jail. No one to clean,” the father said.

  “Got it. Okay, you can leave now.”

  Myer-Rothstein waited until he was alone and then bent to his bag. It contained chemical agents, string lines, two plumb bobs with lines, two cameras, one with a close-up lens, and angle-measuring devices (inclinometers, angle-finders, special protractors) and other sundry tools of
the trade. Collapsible dowel rods were stacked neatly inside the bag to help establish bullet trajectory, as well as key portions of the autopsy report showing angles of entry and the like. The investigator was somewhat leery of what he had been given as assimilated by the Navajo PD CSI unit. He had never worked one of their cases before and, while he was keeping the scientist’s open mind, he would be extra careful in checking and rechecking their measurements, findings, and conclusions.

  He started with the doorframe and thought he saw immediately what he was expecting. He went for the chemicals and camera. If he was right, there would be no doubt about who didn’t fire the gun. He glanced back down the hall. Good, he was alone and no one had sight distance. He bent to his bag and retrieved a tape measure. He measured from the floor to the dark spot on the upper door frame. Seventy inches, he typed into his tablet. Exactly what he had hoped to find. Exactly what he thought he would find.

  While the gunshot expert/crime scene investigator went about his chores, Thaddeus and Katy kept Garcia busy.

  Katy went first. “We have been told by Turquoise that your brother was raping her. Were you aware of that?”

  The Navajo’s normally placid face was seen to tighten. His eyes darted between the husband and wife and found the far wall.

  “Oh—he was going to marry her.”

  Katy traded looks with Thaddeus. Then she tried again. “So, did you know he was raping her?”

  “As a wife. He was making her his wife.”

  “Mr. Begay, Turquoise was too young to be a wife. Your brother was having sex with her. Every night. Several times a night. Surely you knew about this.”

  “He was marrying her.”

  “No, he wasn’t marrying her. He was raping her. Did you know about it?”

  “Well—” His voice trailed off. His eyes found the front door and he focused on the far mountains twenty miles away. They were dark in the front, lighter the farther away he looked. He kept his eyes out there, as far away as possible.