David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

Ipromise not to make a habit out of having you come to my house,” Allison says to Paul Riley. She stretches, after two hours of preparation for the preliminary hearing this coming Thursday, March 4.

“Not a problem,” Paul says. They are in the living room. Allison told Paul that she didn’t want to spread out at the kitchen or dining-room tables. She wanted something more comfortable, she told him. For the most part, they just talked, anyway, didn’t cover many documents, so the living room worked just fine.

The state will call a forensic pathologist to confirm death by homicide and to fix the time of death near seven p.m. on the night of February seventh of this year. Roger Ogren will call the two detectives who interrogated her and searched her house-the first time, not just recently-to authenticate the physical evidence and to testify that she lied to them about being linked romantically to Sam Dillon. There will be testimony linking the hair follicle, the fingernail, and the single platinum earring to Allison and the blood on her sweatshirt to Sam. The judge will hear about Allison storming into Sam’s office in the capital the day before his death.

The state’s second search of Allison’s home, which took place over this past weekend, was directed at looking for what the prosecutors believe to be the murder weapon, a small gold statuette with a marble base, presented to Sam Dillon by the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association only two years ago. An award, authorities have finally figured out, that has been missing from Sam Dillon’s mantel since the night of the murder.

It was a sufficiently small item that it could have been hidden anywhere, which meant that the prosecutors had leave to literally take her house apart looking for it.

“They find that trophy,” she tells Paul, “and I’m finished.”

“Well, then, let’s hope they don’t.” Paul is not looking at her as he says this. It must be difficult to hear a client acknowledge such things. Even someone who has spent his entire adult life in criminal law must find some revulsion in representing people who have done wrong. It is harder to focus on your important role in the system of criminal justice when your client all but tells you that she bludgeoned a man to death.

“Paul,” she says, “I’ve been in your shoes. I want you to know, I don’t expect the impossible. At the end of the day, I did what I did. If I can’t beat this, it won’t be for lack of having a good lawyer.”

“I appreciate that, Allison. But obviously, it won’t stop me one beat from doing everything I can.”

“Oh, I know that. I have no doubt. But doing everything you can is different from being able to sleep at night. I killed him, Paul. I wish I could take it back but I can’t. The truth is, I loved him, and I’d do anything to bring him back. But without him”-she takes a breath-“this may sound like an odd thing to say, but life just isn’t the same without him. I’ve had almost a month to think about this. I am more or less resigned to whatever happens. I want to fight this with everything I have, and I will. I don’t want to go to prison. It’s just-if things go badly, I don’t want you losing sleep over this. I don’t want you thinking an innocent person is rotting in jail. Because that wouldn’t be the case.”

“You are something else, Allison Pagone.” He closes up his briefcase. “I appreciate you trying to put me at ease, but believe me, I’m a professional. I’ll tell you what would keep me from sleeping at night,” he adds.

“Not doing the best you can.”

“Exactly.”

She gets up to see him out. “The judge is going to find probable cause, isn’t she?”

Paul nods. “Yes, she is,” he says.

Allison sits in her living room, stirring a cup of tea aimlessly, as the workers go through each of her rooms. There are actually companies that specialize in cleanups of crime scenes. This doesn’t qualify, exactly; there is no blood or guts here, but the place has been tossed to the state of being almost unrecognizable since the county sheriff’s deputies searched her house Saturday.

Men and women in blue uniforms are restoring everything to where it was, leaving the obvious question of how they wouldknow where everything was. She imagines that when they are finished, she will have to improve on their work. But it’s still preferable to give them the first shot, picking up everything off the floor and putting things back in drawers.

Okay, to be fair: The cops tried not to obliterate the place when they came through. The sheriff’s deputies didn’t whip clothes out of drawers but just felt around. A marble statuette hidden in a lingerie drawer could be detected without having to pull out all of her bras. But they pulled the drawers out, moved furniture, pulled up the edges of some of the carpeting, even took a loose floorboard in her hallway and yanked it out. Plus, they didn’t wipe their shoes very well when they came in. The place was a mess. At the end of it all, they walked away empty-handed.

What, she’s dumb enough to hide that trophy in her house?

She hears two vacuum cleaners shut off, almost in sync, upstairs. There must be ten of them, which makes their work go quickly. It’s not yet noon, and the leader-foreman?-approaches her with an invoice. He doesn’t look her directly in the face. He knows who she is. It’s hard to live in this city right now and not recognize the nameAllison Pagone.

“All done, ma’am,” the man says.

“Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel old.”

“You don’t look old-Ms. Pagone.” He smiles at her as he hands her the invoice on a clipboard. “Five hundred even.”

“Can I pay with a credit card?”

“Oh-yeah, okay. We prefer checks.”

“I prefer credit.”

“It’s out in my truck.”

“I’ll go with you. Anything to be out of the house for two minutes.”

She goes without a coat and instantly regrets it. She walks up to the white van, with the nameAAA -AFTERMATHemblazoned on the side, and smiles to herself. These guys will do anything to be first in the phone book.

“Door’s unlocked,” he says. She gets into the passenger seat, he takes the driver’s side.

Once inside, the man leans in to her. “It’s what’s called an Infinity transmitter,” he says to her. “Very, very high-tech stuff. There’s one in your bedroom and one in your living room. Right where you were sitting just now, on that purple couch.”

Allison’s mother, God rest her soul, would hate to hear that couch described as purple. “What does that mean?” Allison asks, gathering her arms around herself. “What’s an Infinity transmitter?”

“Well, for your purposes-think of it two ways. First, anything you say on your phone will be overheard. But it’s a dual-purpose-think of it as a microphone, too. They can hear anything you say in the house, pretty much. It can probably cover about three, four hundred feet. So I’d say”-the man raises his chin, purses his lips-“the living room and the kitchen. Anything you say in either of those rooms, and obviously anything you say on the phone in there, will be heard and probably recorded. Then, your bedroom. Anything you say in the bedroom or the master bath, they can hear. I can’t give you a guarantee beyond that. The hallways, the foyer, I don’t know. But they’ve got both phones covered. And they’ve got the main places in your house where they’d expect you to have conversations. You really want to talk in private, go outside, and even then, keep your voice down.” The man nods. “These guys know what they’re doing.”