The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 6)

by John Ellsworth

  Which raised a reasonable doubt.

  Enough of a reasonable doubt to set Largent free. Enough reasonable doubt for the defense to argue that Ruben Washington had in fact been the shootist and that after the murder, he had planted the gun on Ansel Largent.

  But what about motive? Why would some South Side gangbanger murder Suzanne Fairmont? There was a glimmer of hope for O'Connor. That connection made no sense.

  His hope was only temporary. It dissipated with the news that Ansel Largent himself had recovered the law firm's missing trust funds and the firm had been made whole.

  O'Connor called the FBI to confirm this. He normally hated the FBI and wouldn't call them for anything, but this time he was in a serious corner. After all, return of the money was death to any embezzlement case because the crime required proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, an intention to permanently deprive the rightful owner of his property. With the money coming back home where it belonged, the key element of embezzlement had sprouted wings and fluttered right out the window.

  That was depressing. O'Connor planned to use the embezzlement to illustrate that Largent was someone predisposed to committing crimes and someone who, in helping himself to two hundred million dollars that didn't belong to him, would think nothing of putting a bullet in the brain of someone innocently at the office that night when the theft took place.

  These threads were all woven together to present a complete, logical picture. O'Connor had found that tapestry cases were the easiest cases to make.

  Why? Because juries were, for the most part, not very bright. At least not in Jake O'Connor's worldview. How could they be? They were comprised of voters, who insisted on re-electing the same con artists who had screwed them last term. That, O'Connor knew, was your average juror. Not very bright but inclined to vote. The failure of the embezzlement case threatened to totally unravel the murder case.

  But the mandatory leaks had been made and the indictment announced, so a patrol officer and her sergeant were dispatched to arrest Ansel Largent and lock him up.

  They arrived at Ansel's house at five o'clock in the morning. He was still in bed and only as the result of some furious shouting and threats over the intercom system were the police officers allowed onto the premises and inside the home. The officers accompanied him upstairs for pants, shoes, and shirt. Then he was handcuffed and taken back downstairs and out to the waiting patrol car. It was freezing in January, so he was returned inside and a wool topcoat from the hall closet draped over his shoulders.

  In the back of the patrol car he spoke for the first time. "Wait! I haven't had my meds!"

  "Relax," said the sergeant, "the jail doctor will make sure you get what you need."

  "Yes but I really need my meds first. I'm at a huge mental disadvantage without them."

  The two police officers traded a look and burst into laughter.

  "Brother, you're at a huge mental disadvantage even with them!"

  "Please," he pleaded.

  At that point the sergeant merely waved his hand at the prisoner and turned back around to stare out the windshield as the other officer drove.

  "Relax. We're coming into some heavy traffic."

  Ansel was taken to the Cook County Jail and booked.

  He was then incarcerated in a day room where a TV blared and inmates wandered around, bumming cigarettes and giving off threatening looks. Medication-deprived, Ansel's mental acuity went from ten to about a three over the next several hours. Then he went into a slump and a fog. He was depressed and seriously losing touch with reality as the lack of the antipsychotic in his system began to manifest. He imagined he was at a carnival and couldn't find his way off the midway. He imagined that he was aboard a cruise ship and the passengers had been quarantined due to the Ebola virus. Then his reality began shifting in and out as imaginings took flight to greater heights and greater loss of control set in. At two o'clock he wet himself. He had thought he was at the urinal when in reality he was facing into a corner and had relieved himself there. A guard was called and not much made of the incident. The guard returned to the windowed outer station and made a brief entry in the day sheet that one of the inmates had wet himself. He didn't give the name, just the date and time. At four o'clock a deputy came for him, cuffed him, and led him away.

  "Where are you taking me?" Ansel asked.

  "The Chief of Detectives wants to talk."

  "Thank goodness," Ansel said. "Maybe he'll see how preposterous this whole thing is."

  He was shown into a nine-by-twelve windowless room with indoor-outdoor carpet from the 1970's. A worn wooden table and four conference chairs came with. Jake O'Connor greeted him and shook his hand. He was smiling and immediately apologized to Ansel for the arrest. The jailer rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.

  "Maybe we can clear this up here and now," said the detective.

  It had been over twenty-four hours since Ansel had ingested his medications. As sometimes occurred when facing great stress, the part of Ansel's brain that sorely missed the medicine, took over. He imagined the police officer a potential client. He relaxed and prepared to listen to yet another hurting heart.

  "There's something I've been wanting to ask you," the detective said to Ansel.

  Whereupon Ansel heard, from the potential client, "I want to ask you to help me with a problem."

  Not quite the same thing, but fairly close.

  The detective drew a silver revolver from an inner pocket. He laid it between him and Ansel.

  "Ever see this before?"

  Ansel stared at the gun. Evidently he was being asked to defend an insurance case where firearms were involved. So...he picked up the gun and looked it over.

  "Nice," he said, and balanced the gun in his right hand. "Just the right heft."

  "Exactly," said the detective, who was astonished at his good luck. The guy had actually touched--no, make that "tried-on"--the murder weapon. Joyous day!

  Ansel then replaced the gun on the table.

  "What kind of injury did the plaintiff suffer?" Ansel asked, inquiring about the state of health of the adverse party in the insurance case.

  "Not bad," said the detective. He took out a handkerchief and plopped it over the gun. Ever so carefully he then lifted the gun, taking great care not to touch it with his skin. He enfolded the hankie like a diaper around the firearm, and replaced it in his inner pocket. Just that easy. It had been just that easy.

  "Okay, Ansel," said the detective. "Thanks for coming in today."

  Ansel waved aside the thank you. "Not a problem. Feel free to call me anytime. My secretary will give you my card on the way out."

  "Perfect," said the detective. "I'll put it in a safe place."

  The detective rapped on the door and the jailer returned inside.

  "Thanks again," said Ansel. He stood and allowed himself to be steered away by the jailer.

  Whereupon Jake O'Connor personally delivered the murder weapon to the Chicago Police Department's new forensics lab.

  "Prints and DNA," he told the receiving clerk. "I need a report by tomorrow morning."

  The gun was bagged and personally hand-carried by the clerk to the nearest laboratory technician.

  "Put whatever you're doing aside," the clerk told the lab tech. "This just came in from the Chief of Detectives himself. Prints and DNA. Stat!"

  The clerk confirmed that she would personally see to it that the lab report was emailed to Jake O'Connor's departmental email first thing in the morning.

  O'Connor left to find Wainwright. It was time for a celebratory drink. Maybe two.

  And it was time to bury the first lab report on the gun. The one that reported no prints, no DNA.

  Two phone calls were all that took. The report was wiped from all hard drives.

  Just two calls.

  He met Wainwright on Michigan Avenue at a bar called Fleet's. It was a nondescript place that couldn't make up its mind whether it was football themed or baseball themed, with a c
rashing confluence of past stars from both sports intermixed on the walls. O'Connor loved the place because nobody with a brain ever went there, making it a safe hangout. Wainwright turned up just after nine o'clock. She had been taking witness statements from the lawyers and clerical staff office on the same floor as Suzanne Fairmont. It was boring, repetitive, and she was exhausted.

  "Never have so many known so little," she complained to her partner. "How these people remember to get home is beyond me."

  "The affluent don't need to know how to get home. Their Porsches and Jaguars all have GPS that remembers the way. Bread crumbs."

  "I'm beat. What are you drinking?"

  "Tap. Tastes like Bud. Maybe Miller's."

  "Give me what he's having," she tossed off to the bartender. When her mug arrived they found a booth and settled in. Peanuts in a basket looked enticing and the rules required shells to the floor, so both officers of the law helped themselves.

  After several mouthfuls and a second mug of beer for his partner, O'Connor couldn't keep it to himself any longer.

  "Guess who I did?"

  "You mean guess what you did?"

  "I mean guess who."

  "It's late, Jake. At least give me a clue."

  "Ansel Largent."

  "That's a clue? That's the end of the game. Unless you have more to tell me."

  "He's a strange cat. A good half bubble off level."

  "I picked up on something like that just talking to him. We're all here because we're not all there, kind of guy."

  "Exactly."

  "So you arrested him. I saw the sheet."

  "Not only arrested, I went to see him."

  "How'd that go? Probably not well, since he's a lawyer and knows better than to talk to the police."

  "You would think that, but you'd be wrong, Lucinda. Let me back up. They bring him in the room and I'm all chummy and handshakes. You know."

  "Good cop."

  "Exactly. So we shoot the breeze for a minute and then I take out the gun we retrieved from his office. Just take it out and put it on the table between us."

  "You took it out of evidence lockup?"

  O'Connor winked at her. "Friends in high places. So I show him the gun."

  "Of course he'd never seen it before."

  "Didn't get to that. Next thing I know, he picks it up. Picks it up and squints down the barrel and makes the bullet sound. Bam!"

  "You're giving me goose bumps. He actually touched the murder weapon? Do I know where this is going?"

  "You sure do. He puts it back down and I pick it up with my handkerchief and take it to the crime lab."

  "Beautiful. So now we have two lab reports on the same gun. In the first report, there's no evidence linking him. No prints, no DNA. And now, in the second report, we have prints and DNA. All over the murder weapon. So now we've got two conflicting reports. How's this help with anything? I mean, you're all bubbly and all, but I'm not getting it."

  "You're not getting it because I haven't told you what comes next."

  "Which is?"

  "I call the system administrator and have him wipe the first report."

  "No effing way!"

  "Yep. We're down to one report. And it puts the murder weapon in the hand of the guy whose office the gun came from. Smooth, eh?"

  "Like silk."

  She caught the bartender's eye and had two more sent over.

  "We're not going down that road, are we?" she said after the refills had arrived.

  "Honey, we're so far down that road we need GPS just to get back out."

  "I don't like it."

  "What's not to like. We know the guy's a thief--he made off with two hundred million. That tells me he's a guy with a criminal mind. Shooting Suzanne Fairmont was just more of the same to him."

  "What about motive?"

  "I've got that covered. She was shot the same night as he makes the money disappear. Obviously she knew something was up. Maybe she confronted him and he followed her back to her office. I don't know. We'll make that up as we go.”

  “Maybe they were lovers and had a fight.”

  “Autopsy produced no sperm, can’t go there. Now. Are you with me on this? Or do I need to find a new partner?"

  "I'm with you. I think you've got the right guy. He steals two hundred mil, he'll just as easily shoot someone. Evidently he knew enough to get his prints and DNA off the gun before he squirreled it away. So that tells us he was trying to hide his complicity."

  "Now you're talking."

  "So why does he touch it this time around?"

  O'Connor touched the side of his head. He raised an eyebrow. He nodded.

  "Nutzoid."

  "Bingo."

  "I think it just might fly."

  O'Connor's face fell. "Just might? Hello, Luce, we're got a guilty waiting in the wings right now. All we need to do is take it to the DA."

  "How do we explain our new evidence to the DA?"

  "Simple. Reports got flummoxed between two cases. The first report went with a different shooting. We discovered the mixup and saved the day. You can take credit for that."

  "I need something with the DA. They look down at me over there. I hate to claim the female glass ceiling thing, but I think that's it. This could make me look like a very competent dick."

  "I know that. That's why I'm handing it off to you."

  "My stomach's full. I hate beer. Let's try some whiskey."

  "I'm buying. Bartender!"

  Five minutes later, Lucinda Wainwright relaxed her back against the booth and sipped her Jack. The guy was guilty, she had been certain of it all along. It was just like the old traffic cop days. You made up a little stuff for court, something to prove probable cause, and before you know it the defendant was weaving in his own lane. Maybe crossing the centerline. She'd done it hundreds of times before she got her detective shield. What was one more little adjustment this time around? The guy was a lawyer and he was stupid enough to pick up the gun? He definitely had it coming, anyone that stupid.

  "He definitely has it coming," she said through her amber haze.

  O'Connor tipped his highball glass to her.

  "You're got that right."

  * * *

  At midnight that first night the jail physician interviewed Ansel, as was standard procedure for new prisoners.

  Libby had called four times and left four messages for the doctor about Ansel's need for his meds. The doctor confirmed the drug regimen with both the wife and the prisoner, and wrote out a prescription to the jail pharmacist.

  Ansel received his usual medications the next morning following his arrest and incarceration, forty-eight hours since his last dose.

  Over the next six hours the world began to come into focus for him. He dimly realized where he was and what had happened, and he placed a call to Thaddeus. As did Libby.

  Less than an hour later Thaddeus was there, admonishing him not to speak with the police.

  Would Thaddeus defend him, he was asked.

  Of course.

  Terms were set and Thaddeus returned to the family condo on the Gold Coast that night. Katy and the girls were back in Chicago where they would be better guarded, following the threats against Thaddeus’ family. He talked late that night with Katy and brought her up to date on what all had transpired that day.

  35

  Chapter 35

  District Attorney James Stephenson was a 2002 graduate of the University of Illinois School of Law, top third of his class, and anxious for a chance to snag the gold ring. This time around, it looked like it just might be his turn.

  Detectives O'Connor and Wainwright had just finished telling him about the administrative screwup over lab reports at CPD Crime Lab, none of which surprised him. The crime lab had only been around since 2011. Before that, all guns and prints went through the Illinois State Police Crime Lab in Chicago, but those fools were twelve months behind in everything. So the addition of the CPD crime lab, while removing a huge roadblock in the s
peedy trial requirement of all criminal cases, still had a wrinkle here and there.

  For one, reports got mixed up between cases. Check.

  For another, DNA testing, while essential to the successful prosecution of all non-eye-witness cases, sometimes was compromised because of marginal crime lab practices. Check.

  Finally, the crime lab was understaffed. There simply weren't enough techs on-board to handle the caseloads that were exponentially expanding with every new report. Check.

  It was not unusual for a tech to report to a courtroom at eight o'clock in the morning, sit around while the court did arraignments, and not shake loose until noon or later. For one measly case, out of the thousands pending. There were only twenty-seven techs in the entire lab, so things were slowing day-by-day, and wait times were growing longer. Which made DA Stephenson a little less suspicious of this report mixup he was hearing about on the Suzanne Fairmont case. Things were known to get badly shuffled over there. Evidently this murder case, even though high-profile, had not been immune. Still, the DA had his suspicions, because if it was a mixup, it was almost too good to be true. In short, it resurrected the Suzanne Fairmont murder case.

  "How did you get this report located?" he asked O'Connor. "I can't get anyone over there to give me the time of day, and I have seniority in this office."

  "Actually, it was misfiled. It happens."

  Stephenson nodded noncommittally. He wasn't quite buying O'Connor's story of a misfiling, but he was also seasoned enough to know when to push and when to back off. This was a time for backing off, so he let it slide.

  "Well, the DNA and prints make the case. You deserve a medal for breaking this one open, Detective."