Gates of Power

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “And did you discover any of Brian Gates’ blood anywhere other than his dressing room?”

  “Yes, Ma’am we did.”

  “And where was that?”

  “All over the clothing of Alfie Rose.”

  “All over?” she asked, looking once more towards the jury.

  “Yes, there was a lot. On his shirt. On his pants. Even on his shoes.”

  An older woman on the jury cringed.

  McIntyre was looking straight at the juror and played directly to her for effect, hitting home the point.

  “Even on his shoes. It sounds like he was almost…” she paused again for theatrical tension “… soaked in blood!”

  “Objection, your honor!” Alfie’s defense jumped up once more. “This is a wholly inaccurate expression to use. It paints an unfair and untrue picture of the amount of blood recovered from the items. I’m sure council for the prosecution isn’t claiming the literal truth of her words in relation to my client’s clothing, that they were literally soaked in blood.” “Indeed, I am,” responded McIntyre. “For blood to have stained a garment it must have, in effect, soaked into the material. Hence soaked in blood is entirely accurate.”

  Judge Clifton pondered the arguments for a moment.

  “I’m inclined to side with the prosecution on this one,” he announced. “If someone has significant blood on three items of clothing, I think the colloquialism ‘soaked in blood’ is fair. So, objection overruled.”

  McIntyre smiled, ever so slightly, then took her time and spoke clearly and methodically to the jury.

  “Soaked. In. Blood.”

  She practically spelled it out now that she’d been given the all clear to use it, letting the phrase hang in the air, to be thought over by the jury.

  She paced about as if pondering the words’ meaning, letting the silence of the room underscore its significance.

  It was classic McIntyre, I’d read an interview with her once where she’d expressed how she liked to identify every case with a hallmark, a memorable phrase that was repeated often throughout the trial, so as to create a vivid image in the jury’s mind. And here was one for this trial.

  Finally, she turned to Officer O’Reilly.

  “And were Alfie Rose’s blood-soaked garments sent away for DNA testing, Officer?”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “And what did the results of that analysis show?”

  “The results came back with a positive match.”

  “A positive match for?”

  “For the blood of Brian Gates.”

  It was dramatic McIntyre pause time again, before she turned to address the jury.

  “The blood of Brian Gates, was not just merely on the accused, but, in the words of a very experienced officer of the law, ‘all over.’ That’s a significant difference worth noting. Officer O’Reilly, do you think there is another credible reason to explain why Alfie Rose was soaked in the blood of the very man whom he had had a very public feud with, soaked to the extent that it was embedded in the very fabric of his shoes?”

  “I don’t.”

  “In your professional opinion, do you believe that it is more credible that Mr. Rose’s blood-soaked attire was the result of direct involvement in, and attempted concealment of, the murder of Brian Gates?”

  “I do.”

  She stared at the jury, letting them think long and hard, before finally turning to Officer O’Reilly, almost as an afterthought.

  “Thank you, officer. No further questions.”

  Chapter 17

  “Grief is a country where it rains and rains but nothing ever grows.” The great writer Simon Van Booy said that, and today, of all days, it was truer than ever for me.

  Today was August 12, Claire’s birthday, at least it would have been if she hadn’t been stolen from me. It was a very special day to have been born, and one that we always celebrated together in the same manner, for it coincided with a magical event: the prolific annual meteor shower, the Perseids.

  On that night, every year, thousands of shooting stars streak across the sky, the result of the earth passing through the debris trail of a comet’s orbit. Those tiny bits of debris, most the size of a grain of sand, become something exquisite when they enter the earth’s atmosphere. Traveling at speeds of roughly 130,000mph, they collide with air molecules, exciting a long thin column of atoms along their path as their high level of kinetic energy rapidly ionizes the air, which bursts into brilliance to become what we colloquially know as a shooting star. What a marvel, we used to comment together, that such awe could come from something so tiny and seemingly insignificant.

  Every year, Claire and I would get out of Chicago on her birthday, away from all the light pollution to somewhere wild and pure, somewhere we could watch what I would always call her shooting stars.

  It was a sacred time, we’d be up together in the middle of the night until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes on a mountainside, other times beside a lake, but always somewhere wild that provided a clear unobstructed view of the night sky, where we could watch the display, arm in arm, while most people were in bed, unaware of the brilliance above them while they slept.

  Claire used to call it the world’s best kept secret.

  And she would always be my shooting star girl.

  I hadn’t watched those blessed meteors since her murder. I couldn’t bring myself to do so alone.

  What would be the point?

  I knew how it would play out, it would bleed my heart and soul dry to be without her. It wouldn’t bring back happy memories; but rather what had happened, and of what I’d lost. And so now, even that sacred night was marred, ruined by the hatred so wantonly cast about by her killer, Alexander. It was always the same, I’d see something good and joyous which would remind me of Claire, and then the images would flash before me: of identifying her defiled body lying on that cold slab in the morgue, and of what I knew must have occurred beforehand, both to her and the tiny children she had tried to protect. It was like black paint poured into a tub of pure brilliant white, leaving a resulting mess of horrible tarnished gray, the two distinct colors intermingled forevermore, now indistinguishable from one other and impossible to separate.

  That’s what ate me up the most, the desecration of my own memory.

  I used to try harder to keep Claire alive there, to preserve my internal image of her, but whenever I did, my own mind attacked her with unwanted thoughts of her murder, overlaying the pure with the grotesque and hideous. I had little control over it, eyes open or closed it didn’t matter, and it had gotten progressively worse, to the point where, in desperation, I decided to block Claire out too, lest she drive me insane.

  Only today it wasn’t working.

  I’d been my own worst enemy, and for some stupid reason had watched the documentary Hugh Guthrie had made about the school shooting. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, but like the recovering alcoholic who knows the harm a drink will do to him yet reaches nonetheless for the bottle, I had done the same with the documentary. It was almost a compulsion, but one that brought nothing except misery and pain.

  As I sat there watching it in the office, my mind writhed with rage. The footage on the screen on one wall of my office continued to fuel the fire, but like a wild forest burn, I had no way of stopping it.

  If I normally managed to keep the rage on a leash, then today it was rampaging free.

  Laura was right—someone gave that kid a gun, and they needed to be held responsible for the agony they caused. Alexander had no access to the weapon; his family hated guns and he had no contacts to get the firearm off the black market. He shouldn’t have had the gun, plain and simple.

  But someone put it in his hands; someone gave him the chance to kill my Claire, and so many innocent children.

  My personal philosophy was simple: I didn’t believe in an eye for an eye, I believed in two eyes for an eye.

  And I thirsted for revenge, not just to hold someone accountable but
proper retribution. Hearing eyewitness testimony from those at the scene—teachers, police, first responders—and then the effect the shooting had had on family members of the deceased tore me up inside.

  I was angry for myself but also for them. One parent talked movingly of his determination to keep his daughter’s light alive, through a foundation he had set up in her name to help disadvantaged children. It was a poignant moment, for I knew that less than a year after the interview had taken place, it had all become too much for the man, and he had killed himself by driving his car off a ravine.

  Around the same time, I had also contemplated suicide. For me, it was like being trapped on the tenth floor of a burning building—the fires that raged in the building, my uncontrolled thoughts, left me no option. The closer the flames came to burning me, the more I looked at the window as a way out. The way I saw it, the way I felt, was the flames were going to kill me eventually, only with a lot more aching to go along with it.

  On that night, in the middle of a harsh winter, in the face of another sleepless week, I had to make a choice—face the flames, the indescribable pain of grief, and perhaps die from the burns, or jump out the damn window.

  As much as the window was appealing, I chose the flames, and it almost killed me in the process.

  I didn’t see Casey walk in, but she found me staring, fixated on the screen, with tears in my eyes. I fumbled with the TV remote on spotting her, hitting pause instead of stop, trying in vain to hide what I was watching, for some reason embarrassed as if it were elicit contraband.

  “Oh Jack,” she said sympathetically, gently taking the TV remote from my hand and putting it down. “Why are you tormenting yourself like this?”

  If I’d have known she was coming over I would have held it together, but she caught me unawares, with my defenses down.

  She put an arm around me and I let go, sobbing uncontrollably.

  You can only bottle it up for so long and although I was distraught, the release gave me a semblance of peace, albeit briefly.

  She fetched me a coffee afterwards and sat down to chat, while I apologized for embarrassing her, which she graciously dismissed.

  It was the first time she, or anyone for that matter, had seen me like this, but I guess she always knew.

  Most of the time I had my mental and emotional suit of armor on, it was rare that it came off, and, until now, unheard of for me to unburden myself in someone else’s presence.

  We sat and talked for some time, I can’t really remember about what, in a sense it didn’t matter, and I felt better afterwards.

  But those damn flames were still burning.

  Chapter 18

  After my moment of vulnerability, I left the office, walked into the nearest bar, took two shots of cheap bourbon, and puffed hard on two cigarettes. It was late, and I very well could’ve kept going home, but it was still Claire’s birthday, and the thought of being alone in my house, only a bottle to comfort me, wasn’t appealing. I had already done that too many times.

  Walking back into the office with my head down, hopefully avoiding eye contact, I asked Casey what she had. She was sipping on her coffee, feet up on my desk, reviewing notes on her laptop. Me, I much preferred paper files, something solid in my hands, something to hold onto. Who knows where the computer files could go, up into the clouds or the rain or wherever they put those files?

  The work I did was sensitive, and security was paramount. A year ago, Casey hired a security expert to look at our systems. Now, when she said security expert, I immediately thought of someone who had done a tour of Afghanistan, all beef and muscle, and was now consulting in civilian life. I expected tattoos, forearms as thick as a tree trunk, and a scar on his face. I expected him to come into the office, beat his fists on the keyboard, grunt twice and then leave.

  Turns out, I was wrong. Who would’ve thought?

  The security expert was a former jockey, with the voice to match, and he looked like he struggled to carry his own backpack into the office. Casey told me he was the best, and I let him type with his super-fast fingers on my desktop computer. He was quick, I gave him that, and he really did seem to know what he was doing, but I still kept an eye on my bank accounts for the next month. He could’ve done anything to my computer, accessed anything, and I would’ve had no idea how to stop him.

  Casey assured me that the expert had upgraded our systems, and our firewalls were rock solid, but there was still something in me that didn’t trust the systems enough to upload sensitive documents.

  Before she caught me in an emotional mess, Casey had been on her way into the office with new information. I’d initially put her on the trail of Lizzie after what she’d told me about Packman.

  It wasn’t so much that I didn’t believe Lizzie, but I definitely didn’t trust her, and wanted to know what she was up to. Casey had staked out her house, but it had been unproductive, Lizzie had only left the house once to go to the shopping mall.

  “She’s one great flirt,” said Casey with a jealous look. “I’ve never seen someone look more the definition of a cougar than her.”

  “Cougar?”

  “An old lady hunting young boys. That’s what they’re called. Anyway, the poor eighteen-year-old boy in the kitchenware shop almost had a heart attack. She was rubbing his arm, squeezing her breasts together, playing with her hair, and I swear she rubbed the inside of his leg at one point.”

  “How’d the boy react?”

  “Let’s just say that he had to sit down.”

  “Oh, to be an eighteen-year-old boy again,” I smiled.

  “I’m sure you don’t have any problems there.” Casey pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Now, who’s the flirt?”

  “Sorry.” She looked back to the file. “So, I followed her home, and waited outside her house for four hours, but she didn’t reappear. I guess she was doing what all cougars do.”

  I smiled again but didn’t bite back this time.

  “But a horny young boy and the cougar aren’t the big news.” She typed into her laptop and my computer pinged with a notification. “I’ve just sent you a file to review.”

  “What’s it about?” I asked as I slowly, and heavily, punched the keyboard.

  As I read the file, it appeared that Casey had had far more luck elsewhere: new information on Packman’s business dealings had come to light.

  These included a large stock option for one of the production companies he’d penciled in a deal with. It would’ve kicked in if ratings for the new show were met, and would have been worth a lot of money, but Casey had more.

  Much more.

  “You look at Packman from the outside and what do you see? Other than an obnoxious bully, of course.”

  “Success.”

  “That’s right. You see a successful television producer with all the trappings of wealth: big house, flashy car, sailing yacht at DuSable Harbor—nice looking boat too, sixty foot, sleeps six—but when you scratch beneath the surface…”

  Casey raised a suggestive eyebrow my way.

  I returned one with a smile, beckoning for more information.

  “Well, all is not as it might appear. Packman’s business dealings are a house of cards, waiting to fall down all around him. To say that they are on shaky ground is an understatement. Behind the scenes he’s left a trail of bad investments, so much so that he’s on the brink of bankruptcy.”

  “You’re joking. How?”

  “Day trading stocks online, badly.”

  “No.”

  “Yep. He got into it during the ‘dot com’ boom of the late nineties. Made some sound, or maybe just lucky, investments back then, and with it made some good money, acquired a taste for it, or more likely an addiction, from thereon in. But things haven’t been going according to plan for quite some time. He’s bet the wrong way repeatedly and been pummeled by the market, and for huge amounts. Millions at a time. He’s been doubling up to try and make good on his losses and taken to us
ing margin—borrowing funds from his broker to buy even more stock, which is all well and good when the market goes his way, but when it turns, he’s in twice as much trouble. And trouble, he most certainly is in. The house, the car, the yacht, all remortgaged to the nth degree to try and keep the wolf away from the door. With the loss of income from Gates jumping ship he would have been bankrupted. However, one thing saved him…”

  “What?”

  “Gates dying.”

  “How did that help him?”

  “Oh, just a little matter of an insurance pay-out on Gates’ death.”

  “Go on.”

  “Entity redemption plan they call it, where a business purchases separate life insurance policies on its partners—in this case Packman and Gates’ joint production company, Alpha Productions. Then, if one of them dies, the business, or remaining partner, as in Packman, benefits from a pay-out.”

  “That’s practically a smoking gun, Packman kills the very person who, had he not died, would have triggered Packman’s financial oblivion, but by killing him he averts that financial mess. It’s almost poetic, a motive double whammy: revenge and self-preservation in one.”

  “I thought you might think so.”

  “And with Lizzie Guthrie, we’ve got an eyewitness placing Packman at the scene. There’s your opportunity too.”

  “It sure is. If we can somehow get Lizzie Guthrie to testify, then Alfie is off the hook and we’ve got the son of a gun.”

  “But how? That’s the question.”

  I was fired up, my melancholy and self-pity evaporated into thin air, replaced now by energy and determination. I was ready for action. We were close, really close, but close wasn’t good enough.

  Close enough doesn’t set people free.

  “Casey, I want you back on Lizzie,” I said, “We’ve got to find a way to get her to talk, openly, and on the public record. She’s going to be a key in this investigation, and we want her on our side.”

  “Will do, Jack. I’ll get straight on it.”

  She typed into her laptop again, and my notification went ping. “That’s all the files.”