David Ellis - The Wrong Man

Manning walked to the doorway of the conference room, looked back once at Stanley Keane, and disappeared.

I sat on the hotel room bed and read over some notes I’d made on the witnesses the prosecution would call tomorrow, the first day of the trial. I liked to outline my cross-examinations by topic matter only. If I write down specific questions, I become wedded to them. Regardless, the endeavor wasn’t a difficult one. I didn’t have much I could do with the prosecution’s case. The responding police officer, the forensic pathologist, the ballistics expert, the detective in charge? Those were probably the only four witnesses Wendy Kotowski would call. They would be all she needed before she punted the case to me.

It was a circumstantial case. But it was a pretty decent one. Tom was found with the murder weapon and the victim’s possessions. He ran when the police confronted him, though it wasn’t particularly hard to explain away. He admitted the gun belonged to him and, according to the state, at least, he confessed to the murder. And the place he carved out as his home in Franzen Park was nearby, so it’s not like he had to travel long and far to commit this crime.

What made their case better was the lack of a defense. My client wouldn’t deny killing Kathy Rubinkowski, and I couldn’t explain away his lack of memory on post-traumatic stress disorder because the judge wouldn’t let me.

Jeez, the judge had really screwed me on that ruling. He had a little law on his side, but I really thought he made a mistake. The appellate court would take a hard look at that one, I felt sure. But no defense lawyer made his money counting on a reversal of a murder conviction.

I jumped at the sound of a knock at my door. It was ten o’clock, and I hadn’t ordered room service. I reached into the nightstand and removed my gun. Then I walked over to the door.

I stood away from the frame of the door and called out, “Hello?”

“Room service,” said a woman’s sweet voice.

I was pretty sure I recognized the voice, even in disguise, but I checked the peephole.

I opened up the door. Tori was wearing that wonderful long white coat and, yes, another pair of knee-high boots.

“Hello, Ms. Martin.”

She raised her hands in mock surrender. “Please don’t shoot me. I come in peace.”

“We’ll see about that.” I let her in and returned my firearm to the nightstand.

“Nice digs,” she lied. One room, plus a bath, crappy view, and peeling wallpaper.

Bradley was staying in a hotel a block away. He had a suite, and his security guard slept on the couch. Shauna also had a suite but with a locked door between her and her detail. Me, I had this crappy room, but I’d slept in worse places, like my house growing up.

I had offered Tori the same deal as Bradley and Shauna-a hotel and bodyguard-but she had declined, because her condo was very secure and, she noted, I couldn’t threaten to take her off the case if she refused, since she wasn’t really on it to begin with.

Since the night Tori broke down and gave in to my irresistible charms, things had been weird between us. She was still helping out on the case but the wall had gone back up. There was some remorse there, I sensed, or fear, or both.

She stood near the bed-it was hard to stand anywhere in the room and not be near the bed-and looked a little awkward as she gathered her thoughts. “I wanted to… say something,” she said.

“Shoot.”

She walked over to me, took my face in her hands, and planted a warm kiss on me. It started as something quick, but then it lingered, and our mouths parted, and then our fingers were running through each other’s hair and we were tugging at clothes. Actually, I was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers, but she required more work. As I’ve mentioned, I normally enjoy that part, the undressing, but this time the clothes seemed to be an annoyance. I lifted her onto the bed and pulled down her panties and wasted little time exploring every wonderful angle and curve of her body.

I’ll bet it was the best seven minutes of her life.

Afterward, we caught our breath and stared up at the ceiling, her head tucked against my chest. There was a berry scent to her hair that stirred a memory I couldn’t place, but it was a happy one. Her body was like an electric blanket against mine.

“Please don’t cry again,” I requested.

She laughed. “I’ve been acting weird. I do realize that, if you’re wondering. I’m not sure how to handle this. I just want to be careful. That’s really all I came here to say. I know everything starts tomorrow and you need to focus.”

“Focus is not my problem,” I said. “Lack of evidence is. Lack of time is.”

She adjusted herself, turned so she was facing me, supporting her chin with her hands. “Would you like me to stay?”

I looked at her. “I would like that very much, Tori. You may not have noticed, but I’m not as conflicted as you are about our relationship.”

She took that in without comment.

“Okay, okay,” I assured her. “Not meant to pressure you.”

A smile crept across her face. She didn’t seem too comfortable with happiness, but I got the sense she was warming to the concept. “You want to order some room service? You can bounce ideas off me or whatever. That’s fun when we do that.”

It was fun. It had been the best part of this case, and not just because I was insatiably attracted to her. The truth was, Tori had helped this case immensely with her comments and ideas.

The truth was, I had to admit, I was letting this woman get inside me.

“Kathy Rubinkowski was a twenty-three-year-old college graduate who wanted to be a research scientist. It was her passion. And so while working a day job as a paralegal at a law firm, she went to school at night to get a master’s degree. She was like so many other young people living in our city-ambitious, dedicated, hardworking. She was chasing her version of the American dream.”

Wendy Kotowski was dressed in a simple gray suit. She spoke slowly to the jury in her opening statement, with her customary blend of nine parts clinical and straightforward, one part emotion and outrage. She had to make sure the jury saw that she cared about what happened to Kathy Rubinkowski, but otherwise she didn’t want to be the focus-the facts would be.

“January thirteenth of this year should have been no different than any other day. Kathy woke up that morning in her condominium in Franzen Park, at the intersection of Gehringer and Mulligan streets. She went to work at her downtown law firm and stayed until five-thirty. Then she went to her organic chemistry classes at night school from six to ten.

“She drove home and parked her car at some time approximating eleven that night. We’ll never know exactly what she had planned for the rest of that evening. Maybe she was going to study. Maybe she was going to veg out in front of the television. Maybe she was going to sleep. Or maybe she was thinking about tomorrow, which would be her twenty-fourth birthday, and the plans she had with her friends.

“But as I said, we’ll never know. Because she never saw her twenty-fourth birthday. She never saw her condo again. She barely made it past getting her bag out of the trunk of her car. Because on January thirteenth, at approximately eleven o’clock at night, Kathy Rubinkowski was accosted by that man, the defendant, Thomas Stoller.”

Wendy pointed at Tom, who was sitting next to me. His aunt Deidre had purchased a suit at a secondhand store that fit him, more or less, and I had thrown in a tie that I haven’t worn in ten years. I wanted him to look decent so he didn’t appear disrespectful of the proceedings, but by no means did I want him to look polished or buttoned up. It was one of the many artifices of the courtroom. The jury was forming initial and perhaps lasting impressions of Tom based on an appearance that bore absolutely no resemblance to reality.