The Verdict, page 27
It seemed her talents were naturally geared toward becoming an attorney, but she’d suddenly and inexplicably gone in a different direction.
I’d always planned to become a prosecutor, primarily seeking to administer justice.
Unfortunately, that hadn’t worked out because I was too headstrong and didn’t care for internal or external politics.
I could’ve understood her breaking up with me if I’d been planning at the time to become a defense attorney, especially considering how we would have been diametrically opposed in our careers.
That wouldn’t have made for a good long-term relationship.
But there was certainly something more to it.
I didn’t know and doubted I’d ever figure it out.
“I want to tell you again how sorry I am that the evidence pointed to Barbara,” Stephanie said slowly. “I was hoping we’d find something to exonerate her, but we never did.” She bit her lip. “And, in fact, it went the other way.”
“Foster Sutcliffe came out of nowhere,” I said flatly. If I had been talking with Frank Ward, I’d have accused him of withholding Sutcliffe until the final moment, making it difficult for Keith and his team to respond.
I barely refrained from doing so with Stephanie.
“Mitch—”
“It still doesn’t mean she did it.”
“I admire your loyalty to her.” Stephanie nodded, though her eyes seemed to say a jury had said otherwise.
“But?”
“I looked for you, Mitch. I put in long hours, going above and beyond on that case. It wasn’t for her. It was for you. I knew you were attached, and it seemed the two of you guys were good together, so I was trying hard to prove she didn’t do it. Much of my free time went into this.”
I was unable to immediately formulate a response.
“I appreciate it.”
“Tell me more about Kinsey,” Stephanie said.
“She was posing as a journalist. She kept asking questions about whether Barbara was pregnant, things like that. It seemed like it was gotcha journalism, at least at first.”
“She was hunting for a headline to sell a story.”
“That was my thought too, but as the trial proceeded and I noticed Judge Harris giving me hateful looks from the bench, largely because of how she’d make comments to me throughout the proceedings, I started to wonder if there was something more going on.”
“Judge Harris is clean. I’m telling you right now. Harris can’t be bought.”
I nodded. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just suggesting that Kinsey had been sent by Marc Guyton’s organization to mess with my head. She’d probably been told to find a way to interrupt the trial, hoping I’d take the blame. I suspect she was trying to get me thrown out of the proceedings. I figured Marc Guyton knew who I was and feared I might pierce the deception he’d built. They’d probably learned I was involved in Barbara’s representation—”
“Were you really involved?” Stephanie stared at me askance. “Frank and I were sure Keith brought you on to make it difficult to get you to testify.” She leaned forward. “The trial is over. You can tell me the truth. There’s nothing for you to lose.”
“I was heavily involved.” I didn’t feel the need to disclose that it had started out the way she suspected. She and I both knew Frank could have compelled me to testify, regardless of whether I was an attorney.
A judge might have been skeptical about some of our claims to attorney-client confidentiality, but it had never gotten that far because Frank had ultimately gone another direction.
“Really?”
I could tell she didn’t believe me.
“I reviewed every single document your guys sent over. I saw everything from our investigators, and I had Winston working on the case as much as I could afford to pay him out of my own pocket. I regularly met with Keith Williams and helped form some of his trial strategies. The man is stubborn, though, and didn’t take my advice on everything.”
“Would it have changed the outcome of the trial if he had?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “I don’t think so. It might have been different if I hadn’t been whacked in the head. We had bad facts. I recognized that, so I was looking for better ones.” I studied Stephanie. “So what can you tell me about Kinsey?”
“We’re still cleaning up her body.” Stephanie grimaced. “It’s a mess in there, Mitch. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen.”
“Are you warming to my theory about Kinsey’s connection to Thomas Guyton’s death?”
“I don’t hesitate to tell you I find this… concerning. Both the connection she had to Barbara’s trial and how she was brutally murdered, but it’s now almost two months after the fact.”
I nodded. “Best I can figure is Thomas Guyton’s organization discovered what she was doing. They pumped her for information about Marc, and she refused to talk. I suspect the current leader of Thomas’ organization is seeking revenge to legitimize his claim to the throne.” I shrugged. “Or vice versa. Who knows?”
Stephanie shook her head. “No, that’s not—”
“It makes the most sense. It could also be that Guyton’s biz—whichever side—brutally slaughtered her to send a message.”
“Who would they be sending a message to?”
“Me.”
Stephanie stared. “Maybe, but that’s a stretch. I admit this looks like a gang killing, but it doesn’t look like they were trying to get information from Kinsey.”
“They absolutely were—”
“They removed her tongue, Mitch,” Stephanie said, cutting me off. “It was the first thing they did.”
It took me a moment to process this.
She couldn’t control what family she’d been born into. Maybe she could have acted of her own accord on some things along the way, but she’d been a small pawn in a much bigger situation.
“That’s horrible,” I said. “I guess there can be no doubt now they were sending a message.”
“Are you sure it’s to you?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t need to. I’d heard them loud and clear.
But I wasn’t going to listen to their warning.
I was coming for them.
72
I went back to my office before calling Winston. We didn’t talk long. He wanted to meet in person and said he’d be over in twenty minutes. I couldn’t help but feel hopeful we were turning the corner on Barbara’s case.
She’s in prison, I thought. It’s no longer my case.
I refused to let this thought unsettle me.
As far as I was concerned, Barbara’s case was still open, and it would remain open until she was out.
I was hoping Stephanie was starting to see the truth. I did take some comfort in how Stephanie had tried so hard to prove Barbara hadn’t done it, but not much. In some ways, it made it more difficult since she was still convinced Barbara was the perpetrator. It was also worse knowing Stephanie had done everything she could to prove Barbara wasn’t the culprit and had still come up empty-handed.
This brought me back to my theory that a hit had been taken out by Marc Guyton as an insurance policy. Marc was sitting in prison, Thomas was rotting in the ground, and somebody else had been blamed for the murder.
I could see Marc thinking that was justice and finding something sickly poetic about it.
I sat at my computer and ran an internet search for Barbara’s trial, starting at the most recent news article and working backward. I didn’t know that I was looking for anything in particular, but I was hoping something stood out to me that hadn’t before.
Kinsey’s death was a message.
Had there been other messages I’d missed?
I stopped on the sixth story, frowning.
It was a report written up on the jury, featuring the picture of Bobbie Makowski, one of the jurors.
The reporter had done a profile of the jury after the fact and had tried to interview everybody.
Nobody had talked to the reporter.
Some had even been hostile.
Bobbie Makowski was one of these. I studied her picture. She was in her mid sixties and looked like a grandmother. It seemed strange that somebody like this would be overtly antagonistic, but my impression of her from the picture could be completely wrong. I’d been focused on the courtroom drama and didn’t remember much about this juror.
I’d seen this story before and had thought nothing of it.
Is it strange nobody talked? I wondered. Many people just wanted to get back to their normal life, but inevitably, there was somebody who wanted to grab the limelight.
This certainly wasn’t another message, but it was an oddity. Perhaps it was just a random chance that nobody wanted to talk to the reporter.
But haven’t there already been too many coincidences? I thought.
I heard a knock at the front door, causing me to freeze. It reminded me of the night I’d been attacked.
I opened my desk drawer with the pistol and started to pull it out but figured I was being paranoid. Winston was more likely to knock than ring the bell. I pushed the drawer shut. I got up, cautiously looked out my door, and saw Winston waiting.
I locked the door as soon as he was inside.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to be working late like this?” Winston asked as we walked back to my office. “I expected I’d meet you at your home tonight.”
“I just finished dinner with Detective Stephanie Gray,” I said, ignoring his question. While I appreciated his concern, I wasn’t going to let shadows in the night prevent me from doing my job. “I told her everything we know about Kinsey.”
Winston blinked, surprised I’d revealed my cards. I’d never told him I’d spoken with her about Kinsey before I was attacked.
“How’d she take it?”
“She was interested. I don’t think she buys our theory Marc Guyton is the person who killed Thomas Guyton, but she might come around.”
“That’s part of what I wanted to talk with you about today, Mitch,” Winston said as we sat. “Look, you’re sinking thousands of dollars into this—”
“And I’ll spend thousands more.”
Winston nodded. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’m gonna stop billing you for the time I’m spending on Barbara’s case.”
I immediately shook my head. “Out of the question. I have to pay. That way, I don’t hesitate to ask you to do something. If I know you’re doing it for free—”
“How about this?” Winston said, cutting me off. “I’ll send you the bill for her work, but you stop paying. Does that work?”
“I’ll think about it. What did you find on Kinsey?”
“What did you find on Kinsey,” Winston said, turning the question back to me.
“They removed her tongue.”
He nodded. “I just learned that last bit before coming here. My source wanted me to guarantee I’d keep it under wraps until I heard it from a different source. I assured him I was being careful. That’s why I didn’t answer your calls earlier. I was meeting with him.” He snorted. “Word’s getting around fast.”
“Stephanie was free enough with that information.” I felt bad I’d been so brazen with Stephanie; hopefully, it didn’t blow back on Winston’s source.
There wasn’t anything I could do about it now.
If I were to call Stephanie and ask her to keep it on the down-low, that would only tell her they had a leak they needed to plug.
I hoped she just assumed that word was getting around.
“That’s good to hear,” Winston said, giving me a curious look. “Is she starting to think there’s a connection?”
“Any fool should see it, but she’s not a fool, and she has to consider the politics of the situation. Now that they have a conviction under their belts, it will be more complicated for them to go to court to get that overturned.”
I gave Winston a smile.
“That’s why we’ll do it for them.” My smile grew. “We’re gonna focus on the jury.” Bobbie Makowski’s grim look in that picture wouldn’t leave my mind.
I didn’t know if it meant something, but this was an angle I hadn’t yet considered.
I’d leave no stone unturned.
“If we can prove a single juror was biased, we’ll request a new trial, and then maybe we can get this whole mess sorted out. I have to believe if we look hard enough, we’ll find something. We need to look at all their social media posts. We need to examine everything they’ve ever said or done online. Somebody out there had a bias. We’ll find it, and then we’ll use it to get a new trial.”
“And then what?”
“We hope and pray by that time we’ve figured out who actually did it.”
Winston nodded. “Seems like the old Mitch Turner’s back.”
“Let’s hope so. He’s got a lot of work to do.”
73
Even though Winston had promised to start investigating the jurors right away, the first thing I did after he left was pull up the twelve questionnaires the jury had filled out.
I went through Bobbie Makowski’s first and then all the others, making comments on my notepad about each juror and whether I felt like any of them would be susceptible to a bias.
By the time I was done with that, I had a solid list of questions I wanted to ask each juror.
I then ranked the jurors, putting the people I thought most susceptible to bias at the top.
That was where I’d start my investigation.
My number one candidate was Bobbie Makowski.
Reading through her questionnaire a second time made me wonder if she had a strong preference for law enforcement. This could be significant because it would mean she was more likely to believe the cops when they said Barbara had done it.
It wasn’t hard for me to locate her social media profile on Instagram. Unfortunately, she kept her feed private, so I couldn’t take a peek.
But I used that account to locate her Facebook account, which was public.
I read through all her posts, going back ten years. By the time I was done with that, I’d located no fewer than fifteen posts where she’d made comments about crime in the city and how she thought the police were woefully underfunded.
I took screenshots of every single one.
It wasn’t the smoking gun I’d been hoping for because many in the city were fed up with the increasing crime rates; however, I was already thinking of the arguments I’d make in my motion for a new trial.
I’d argue she was predisposed to find Barbara guilty merely because she felt like the guilty were going unpunished and wanted to do something about it.
I didn’t know if this avenue would work, but I was sure gonna try.
It was thin.
But it was also a start.
I also tried to put my hat on as a drug dealer and found myself thinking about all sorts of horrible things they could have done to the jury to produce the desired outcome. This was far less likely, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, especially since the killer had sent somebody into the courtroom to mess with me during the trial.
Maybe that was why I was attacked.
Perhaps the killer figured that since I was onto Kinsey, it was time to go after the jury. It could also explain why they’d wanted me out of the way. I was sitting in the back of the courtroom and might have noticed if any of the jurors were looking stressed or afraid.
That was a stretch, but it was also worth investigating as long as I was talking to the jurors.
I checked my watch.
It was just past 8:00 PM.
I looked up the address of Bobbie Makowski and discovered she wasn’t far away.
74
The house was white brick and two stories, but it looked like the attic had been finished out as well because there was a window with an air conditioner that hung from a ledge. It was precariously balanced and might have fallen at any moment. A black metal fence with brick columns on either side of a gate had a “Keep Away” sign hung at the top. A dog came running around from the back, barking as I approached. I’d intended to enter to ring the bell but was now having second thoughts.
Saliva dripped off the dog’s jaws when it stopped on the other side of the gate, continuing to sound the alarm.
A drape in the house moved, and somebody looked out. It was immediately released, and I had a feeling that whoever was on the other side might have recognized me.
I waited for five minutes, the dog barking the whole time, thinking that at some point, the person inside would come out to talk to me or at least call off their dog, but nobody ever did.
“They aren’t gonna talk to you,” a woman passing by on the sidewalk said. “They probably think you’re selling something.”
Something inherent in the way she talked made it sound like a not-so-subtle accusation, implying I should just go on my way.
“I’d just like to have a word with Bobbie Makowski if I could. Do you know her?”
“Who are you?”
“Just somebody who wants to ask her a few questions if she’s available.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
I stifled a sigh. “My name is Mitch Turner.”
“Does Bobbie know who you are?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why are you bothering her?”
I hesitated and decided to take a risk. This was a shot in the dark anyway. “Bobbie was on the jury of one of my clients. I wanted to ask her a few questions.”
“You mean that Barbara Sampson case, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“I followed that trial. I didn’t think she did it. She didn’t look like no murderer to me. I even told Bobbie that.”
“How’d she respond?”
“She got pale, even looked like she might’ve felt a little guilty, but she refused to comment on it, telling me the judge had instructed her she couldn’t talk about the case.”
“That only lasts while the trial is active and they’re in deliberations. They can say whatever they want now.”
