Murder One

by William Bernhardt

  “What had happened?”

  “We … lost our parents.” Again, the fact that she was not overtly emotional, that she was obviously fighting it back, made what she had to say all the more tragic. “They were young—early fifties—but there was a tragedy. A traffic accident. They were driving late at night and a truck came out of nowhere at an intersection and—”As she paused, Ben could almost see the strain, the furious energy it took to suppress her anguish. “They were killed instantly.”

  “Where did that leave you?” Ben asked.

  “In a mess. Kirk and I didn’t know what to do. I was only eighteen, then—I hadn’t even finished high school. We both worked at the Tanger Outlet Mall. For two kids living at home, that was fine. But once Dad was gone—and there was no insurance—we couldn’t make ends meet. And then after the tornado hit and destroyed the mall—” Her head drooped slightly. “Well, that just seemed to be the killing stroke. There was nothing left for us in Stroud. So we came to Tulsa.”

  Ben kept the pace of the questioning slow and easy. She was doing great so far, but he knew it would not take much to push her over the brink. “That must have been a difficult decision.”

  “To leave everything you’ve ever known and come to an unfamiliar city full of strangers? Yes, you could say that.” She looked up, and for the first time, a tiny spark of fire seemed to light in her eyes. “At the same time, it was an adventure, if you know what I mean. We were starting fresh, leaving the pain of the past behind.” She paused a moment. “I heard what that … psychologist said about me, about how the repeated traumas and the change of environment unbalanced my mind or something. But she’s got it all wrong. I still had Kirk, and I had my head together, and it’s not as if I was moving to the moon, after all. I had to get out of Stroud. If I’d stayed, I would’ve been much worse off. Even now, I still know that.”

  “What happened when you got to Tulsa?” Ben asked. He appreciated her unwillingness to play the martyr, and her defensiveness about being called crazy, but at the same time, if the jury was going to sympathize with her, they needed to understand the full horror of her situation. “Did everything go as planned?”

  “No. Nothing went as planned. Everything was harder than I anticipated. Couldn’t find an affordable place to stay. Couldn’t find work. It seemed like the only jobs available were minimum wage—burger joints, that sort of thing. We couldn’t make it in Stroud on that kind of money—what were our chances of making it in the big city? Plus, Kirk wasn’t working at all. He was having some serious emotional problems. He took the death of our parents hard, and the trauma of the tornado even harder. He still talked to Mom and Dad as if they were in the room with us, and he used to sleep in the bathtub at night—because he figured that would be the safest place to be if a tornado hit. He had always been … confused, and everything just seemed to get worse for him. He was in a bad way. So there was no chance of him working. I was on my own.”

  “That’s why you ended up working at a stripper club, isn’t it?”

  “It was the only thing I could find that paid a decent wage—not counting those jobs that were illegal and a lot more disgusting than stripping. Contrary to what you’ve heard, I never worked as a hooker and I never would. I didn’t like stripping—it was humiliating and, frankly, hard work. Dressing up like a nurse or a schoolteacher or whatever, then peeling off your clothes in front of a bunch of drooling men. But it did pay enough to get a small apartment for me and Kirk. And some of the other girls became friends. I can’t tell you what a difference that made. Say what you like about those girls—when you’re all alone in the big city, it’s good to have friends. Any friends.”

  “Were you happy at this time?”

  “Happy might be stretching it. I was surviving. I was eating regularly. At the same time, I had zero security. One missed check would’ve been enough to put us on the skids. I started having trouble sleeping, worrying about what might happen if I lost my job.” She paused thoughtfully. “No, I can’t say I was happy. I was walking a very thin tightrope, and I knew that the tightrope could snap at any moment. Still, it was better than before.”

  As always, Ben kept a careful watch on the faces in the jury box. They seemed attentive; they seemed to be absorbing what she had to say. There were no expressions of outright disbelief or contempt. At the same time, he knew that he was going to have to give them more than this if he hoped to undo the tremendous damage done by Andrea McNaughton and the rest of the prosecution case. “Keri, would you please tell the jury when you met Joe McNaughton?”

  A tiny involuntary shudder signaled to all present that this subject was more difficult, more unpleasant than what they had previously discussed. But she dutifully pressed forward.

  “It was about four months after I started working at the gentlemen’s club. He came in with a group of cop buddies. I’d seen him watching me while I did my act, but I didn’t think anything of it. They were all watching me. But there was something more … intense about Joe. Something that stood out in your memory.”

  “Did you contact him during your … work?”

  “Oh no. I finished my show in the usual way and forgot all about him. Until I left to go home that night, just after midnight.” A moment’s hesitation. “He was waiting for me in the alley behind the club.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Not at first. I ran back into the club and locked the door. I might be from Stroud, but I’m no idiot. When you find a man lurking in the alley, you run.”

  “But that changed.”

  “Yes. He talked to me, through the door. Assured me he wasn’t going to harm me or force himself on me. Showed me his badge. Said he’d seen me during the show and he’d been taken with me—that was his phrase. ‘Taken with me.’ He asked if I would do him the honor of allowing him to escort me to my car. He was really very charming. And in time … I gave into it.”

  “You let him escort you back to your car?”

  “Oh yeah. And the next night, he showed up at the club again. And this time he drove me home. And one thing led to another …”

  “And you became lovers?” Ben and Christina had spent about an hour and a half debating what was the best word to use, one that didn’t seemed coyly euphemistic but at the same time didn’t make it sound any worse than necessary.

  “We did.” Her head rose. “But bear in mind—I didn’t know the man was married. He didn’t wear a ring and he never mentioned it. He even talked about us getting married sometime in the near future. And Joe was such a comfort to me. I had been on edge, worried, uncertain, for so long. But Joe made everything better. It seemed as though he could fix anything. He was fun, comforting. He told me he had a lot of money. He said that once we were married, I wouldn’t have to strip anymore. He said he’d take care of me. He’d take care of everything.” Ben saw the tiniest crack in her facade, a deep and heartfelt twinge of pain. “You can’t imagine how good that sounded to me. You just can’t imagine.”

  “How long did this relationship continue?”

  “For a little over two months.”

  “And in that time …” Ben licked his lips and reconsidered. This was a delicate subject, and although it had to be addressed (better him than LaBelle) he had to be careful how he did it. “Was there any aspect of your relationship that bothered you?”

  “Yes,” she said bluntly. “The sex. I’m not pretending that I was some kind of prude. From Stroud or not, I knew the way of the world. Still, the things Joe liked to do … well, they shocked me. Horrified me, even. I guess I’m a small-town girl at heart. I’d never heard of anything like what he wanted to do—what with the whips and chains and leather and all. My mama never told me about anything like that, believe me. And he wanted to do it all the time, every possible opportunity. Which could be awkward. Especially when my brother was also in the apartment.” Her hands fell on the rim of the witness box, and she leaned forward slightly. “Of course, now I realize that he wanted to do those things wit
h me—because his wife refused. He was getting from me what he couldn’t get from her. But I didn’t know that at the time.”

  “Did you learn to … enjoy these activities with Joe McNaughton?”

  “No, never. I know what the prosecution witnesses have been saying. That I had all these weird kinky tastes. That I was some kind of sex addict. But it isn’t true. Joe was the one who wanted it that way. All I wanted—” Her voice dropped so low as to be nearly inaudible. “All I wanted was someone to take care of me.”

  “Keri, some of Joe McNaughton’s coworkers have testified that you were the instigator of these sexual activities.”

  “I know. But were they there? No. I don’t know why they say those things. I don’t know what Joe told his macho buddies when I wasn’t around. Joe lied to me; maybe he lied to them, too. Men have been known to brag about sex to their friends. Making it sound like he was such a stud I couldn’t get enough of him. That probably would’ve scored him some points down at the police station.”

  In the jury box, Ben saw an older woman on the top row slowly nodding her head. She understood what Keri was saying. But did she believe it?

  “Those police officers,” Keri continued, “those so-called friends of Joe’s—they’ve been out to get me from the moment his body turned up in Bartlett Square. I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but it’s true. They all knew about me, and they didn’t like me. I’m not sure why. Maybe they were jealous, maybe they were friends of Joe’s wife. I don’t know. They probably thought I was mistreating the wife I didn’t even know existed. I know this, though—they were at my apartment less than an hour after Joe’s body was found. They were determined to prove that I had killed him. And they haven’t let up since—even to the point of following me around, stalking my attorney, planting knives—”

  “Objection,” LaBelle said, for the first time breaking the spell Keri was weaving. “It has not been proven that the police planted that knife.”

  “Well, who else—” Keri began, but the judge silenced her.

  “She’s the witness,” Ben rejoined, “not Mr. LaBelle.”

  “I’ll sustain the objection,” Judge Cable said. “Let’s stick to the facts. What you actually saw and heard.”

  “Yes, your honor,” Keri said quietly.

  “Keri,” Ben asked, “despite your reservations, did you want your relationship with Joe to continue?”

  “Of course I did. Even in that short time, I had come to depend on him for so much. And he was talking about marrying me. It was like a dream come true. It was all I ever thought about.”

  “Would you say he was serious about it?”

  “We looked at rings!” Keri said, straining against the edge of the witness box. “We picked a church. We even talked about a date. He said he wanted to wait until June, because that was when his mother was married. Of course, now I realize he was probably just stalling. Stringing me on as long as possible until I learned the truth.”

  Ben stepped away from the podium. “Keri, when did you find out Joe was married?”

  “When Andrea McNaughton showed up at my door.”

  Ben paused a moment, letting the full horror of that moment sink into the jurors’ consciousnesses. “And before that, you had no idea she even existed?”

  “None whatsoever. I was stunned. Stunned and—shattered.” Her hand covered her eyes. “I didn’t know what to think,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What did Mrs. McNaughton say?”

  Keri sniffed, wiped her eyes, and carried on. “After she convinced me she really was who she said she was, she insisted that I break off my relationship with her husband.”

  “And what was your response?”

  “I’m not even sure. I was so totally overwhelmed. Please try to understand—I had pinned all my hopes, all my dreams, all my future, on that man. And now, this woman showed up at my door and wanted to rip it all away, everything I had, or everything I thought I had, in a split second. I—I just couldn’t deal with it.”

  “Did you agree to stop seeing Joe?”

  “How could I? I had my whole world wrapped up in him. But I didn’t say any of those awful things she claimed I said. Mostly I just stood there like a dummy, not knowing what to say.”

  “And what was her response when you declined to break off the relationship?”

  “She hit me,” Keri said. “Hard.” Once again, the slightest trace of an edge crept into her voice. “She knocked me down on the floor, then she started kicking me. Left bruises that stayed for days. I thought she’d cracked a rib, that’s how bad it felt.”

  “Did you fight back?”

  “I tried to, but she was out of my league. It wasn’t at all like she described. I wouldn’t attack her. She came after me. She totally lost control. I thought she was going to kill me.”

  Again, Ben surreptitiously checked the jury. This testimony directly contradicted what Andrea had told them. Who would they believe? “How did you get away?”

  “Kirk came home. And thank goodness for it. No doubt in my mind—I’d be dead now if he hadn’t shown up. He pulled her off me and shoved her out the door. Even as he did it, though, she was screaming and cursing, scratching at him, pummeling him with her fists. She was out of her head. I remember as she left, Kirk said, ‘If she isn’t locked up soon, that woman’s going to kill someone.’ ”

  “Your honor, I have to object.” LaBelle jumped to his feet. “That’s hearsay. Moreover, as much as we’re all enjoying the defendant’s little story, this nonsense is nothing but a blatant attempt to slander Andrea McNaughton.”

  “Your honor,” Ben said, “she’s entitled to tell the jury what really happened.”

  “Maybe so,” LaBelle said, “but she’s not entitled to push guilt off herself by implicating an innocent woman.”

  “As I’ve said before and everyone in this courtroom knows, the defense is entitled to advance alternative theories of how the crime was committed.”

  “There’s right, and there’s wrong,” LaBelle answered, his voice ringing through the courtroom. “And what they’re trying to do here is wrong. Andrea McNaughton is a victim. This is nothing but a sleazy attempt by the defendant to get herself off the hook by suggesting that Mrs. McNaughton is the killer.”

  To the surprise of both attorneys, Keri spoke from the witness box. “Oh no, your honor. That’s not right. That isn’t it at all.”

  Judge Cable peered down at her, pushing his bifocals a few notches down his nose. “Excuse me? What isn’t right?”

  “What he’s saying,” Keri replied. “That I’m trying to blame Mrs. McNaughton for the murder.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, I’m not. I’ll admit, I did that before. Not that I ever actually accused her, but I suggested the possibility. But I know she didn’t do it. And as much as she hates me, I don’t want her to suffer for a crime she didn’t commit. I know what that’s like, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  Judge Cable followed up. “And how is it you’re so certain she didn’t kill her husband?”

  Keri swallowed, then looked directly at him. “Because I know who did. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Andrea McNaughton.” She paused, and the suspended silence in the courtroom was deafening. “It was my brother. Kirk Dalcanton.”

  45

  THE JURY WAS NOT alone in having stunned expressions plastered across their faces. Everyone in the courtroom—spectators, witnesses, and workers alike—evinced equal surprise. Half the reporters in the press row leaped to their feet and headed toward the back, cell phones in hand, to phone in this latest development. The judge pounded his gavel furiously, trying to bring the courtroom back to some semblance of order.

  “If I don’t have silence I’ll clear the courtroom!” he bellowed. A few moments later, Judge Cable peered down at the witness, his face a mixture of suspicion and concern. “Young lady, do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I do, your honor. But it�
��s true. I couldn’t say so before, but now that Kirk’s gone, I have to be honest. I don’t want to go to prison for something I didn’t do, and I don’t want Andrea McNaughton to go to prison for something she didn’t do, either. It was Kirk, God bless his soul. Kirk did it.”

  Ben returned to his position behind the podium to continue the examination. “Keri, perhaps you could step back a bit and explain to everyone exactly what happened. After Andrea McNaughton left your apartment. The night Joe was killed.”

  “Joe showed up at my place about an hour after she left. About midnight? Apparently Andrea’d gone home and pretty much read him the riot act. Left him with no choice. I don’t think he wanted to break it off—not yet, anyway. He figured he had several more months of… using me… before he’d have to end it. But Andrea forced his hand. So he came over and told me in no uncertain terms that he was ending it. That it was over. That there would be no marriage. That I would never see him again.”

  “And how did you take this news?”

  “Not well, obviously. But my reaction was nothing compared to Kirk’s.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Kirk was still there, and he was a little high from that encounter with Mrs. McNaughton. Ever since he tossed her out of the place, he’d been badmouthing both of them, really working up a froth. You see—Kirk and I were very close. Always have been. And he was very protective of me. He considered it his job to take care of me. And one other thing you should understand—just as I looked forward to marrying Joe, as much as I saw it as my salvation—so did Kirk.”

  “Had Kirk had any history of … emotional problems?”

  “Oh yes. That’s why he was thrown out of high school. He’d been picked up by the cops a few times, back in Stroud, for vandalism and other minor offenses. I knew he needed help, but how could we afford that? We could barely afford to eat.” She drew in her breath. “He had a hyperparanoid feeling that everyone was out to get him—or me. And he had a lot of … sexual issues, too. I never understood if he was gay or bi or what exactly—and I don’t think he did, either. He was confused. Add in all our other stresses and you had a bad situation. Much as I loved Kirk—he was very sick. And when Joe waltzed in and told me it was all over—well, that was just the end. He snapped.”