The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (15 page)

“Leave me alone,” the man yelled back. “I need a drink.”

“Would you people keep it down!” another woman yelled out an open window.

“I’m trying to sleep over here,” someone else yelled.

“Mind your own business,” the man who had just stormed out of his apartment yelled back.

Andy got back in his car and drove home. The next morning he was back at the complex, but this time on duty. From the day Loraine told him about the argument she’d had with John while dropping off Gabe the night of his death, something hadn’t sat right with him. He had been so busy running with what she told him, that he never stopped and paid attention to the uneasiness floating around in his brain. That is, until his late-night listening session. Reading back over his list, he’d felt uneasy. Then the night sounds of the lovely Madison Park Apartments sharpened the uneasiness into a full-blown question, one that he should have asked himself a long time before: if Loraine and John had argued at the door of John’s apartment that night, why hadn’t anyone else reported hearing it? He’d talked to nearly every resident of the complex and asked them so many questions about that night that most of them locked their doors and pretended not to be home when they saw his car pull into the parking lot. But no one, not any of the neighbors or anyone from anywhere else in the complex, had said a word about hearing an argument earlier in the evening. Why?

Now, the fact that no one reported hearing the argument didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Most people are so caught up in their own little world that a nuclear bomb could go off next door, and they wouldn’t notice until the walls blew in. Quite a few people reported hearing Gabe screaming in the night, but that happened around two in the morning when he didn’t have a lot of other sounds with which to compete. Loraine said she dropped Gabe off around six in the evening. Six o’clock on a summer night is a crazy time for most families. The fact that no one noticed two separated parents arguing over their child’s visitation schedule didn’t mean much.

However, as Andy walked from his car to building three, he knew he would feel a lot better if he could find someone to back up Loraine’s story. Any defense attorney worth his fee would jump on the fact that she had not included this detail in her original statement to the police. She claimed she left it out because she was ashamed of her past actions. Considering some of the things she’d done with him, Andy wondered if she even knew what shame meant. “Okay, Loraine, let’s see if anyone can back you up.”

He started at the door he’d avoided up to now, apartment 321, home to one Crazy Cathy. He only had to knock once, and the door swung open wide and there stood Crazy Cathy in what appeared to Andy to be the same oversized shirt she’d worn the night of Gabe’s death. She held a Schlitz Malt Liquor in one hand, and a cigarette hung off the other. “Wadda you want?” Crazy Cathy asked. “Don’t tell me you’re here to run me in again.” Now that I think about it, I don’t think Andy ever told me her real name. She had to have one, but no one ever told me what it was.

“I would like to ask you a couple of quick questions about the night earlier this summer when you called the police about the disturbance next door,” Andy said.

“You mean when that kid got his brains bashed in? Yeah, wadda ya wanna know? I’ve already answered so many questions from you damn cops about that kid that you’d think he was related to the president or something. What makes that kid so special, huh?”

“It’s an ongoing investigation. However, we have made an arrest and are trying to finalize all the details in the case . . .”

“Well, whoop-dee-crap,” Crazy Cathy said. “You made an arrest. What’s the matter, sweetheart, ya run outta old ladies to hassle?”

Andy could see this was leading nowhere. Crazy Cathy was already on the D.A.’s witness list. He didn’t see much point in further antagonizing her. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, ma’am. My questions, they aren’t that important. Thank you for your time,” he said as he started walking away from her door.

“If they weren’t that important, then why in the hell did you come knocking on my door? Geez,” she said as she turned to close the door, “you would think that the damned police department that my tax dollars supports would have better things to do than . . .” The door slammed behind her.

Weeeelllll, that was certainly productive,” Andy said as he walked farther down the hall. He could hear a television blaring from apartment 323. A new tenant had moved in on the first of the month, a sixty-eight-year-old man with severe hearing loss. Crazy Cathy would love that. He paused at the door for a moment, then turned to the apartment directly across the hall and sniffed a couple of times. The distinctive odor of burning rope could only mean one of two things. Either a rope fire had broken out and he needed to contact the fire department, or the people in apartment 324 had decided to get stoned at five after nine in the morning.

He knocked once. No answer. He knocked again, firmer this time. The door opened just a crack and a woman said, “Now’s not a real good time.”

“I don’t care. Open the door. Police,” Andy said.

“Why the hell did you answer the door?” someone yelled from farther back in the apartment.

“You know, Officer, I was just getting ready for work,” the woman’s voice said through the crack. “If you could maybe, like, come back later this evening, that would be great.”

Andy pushed the door open. “No, I think now is a real good time,” he said. A heavy brown haze hung in the living room, which was illuminated by a single lamp with a beat-up shade. Three shapes that appeared to be human beings were flung over the sofa and love seat. Jefferson Airplane played in the background. The woman who’d answered the door shifted her weight from side to side like she was trying to regain her balance. Her Kansas concert T-shirt was stretched out of shape, while her faded jeans with holes in the knees were partially unzipped, revealing more than Andy wanted to see. From the looks of her clothes, she’d been wearing them for a couple of days. Her eyes were red and bloodshot.

“All four of you live here?” Andy asked.

“No,” the woman replied. “Just me. I live here with my daughter.”

Andy’s head snapped around to her. “You telling me you have a kid in here with you now?”

“No, man, she’s at her dad’s. I’m a good mother. I don’t do this crap when she’s here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure of that,” Andy replied. The shapes on the couch and love seat started moving. Andy glanced around the room. Empty pizza boxes covered what might have been the dining-room table. The apartment floor had a layer of beer cans, cigarette butts, and other assorted trash. He walked over toward the shapes on the couch, when his foot slipped on something that could have been a used condom. “Nice party you have going on here,” he said. “Hey, sleeping beauties,” he shouted to the shapes lying on the living-room furniture. “Time to go home. Party’s over.” The shapes began moving, tugging at their clothes, and struggling to get up on their feet. By the time they made it to the door, Andy could tell the shapes belonged to two men and one woman. All three of them reeked of pot, alcohol, and BO.

“Hey, Em, I’ll call you later,” one of the male shapes said as he stumbled out the door.

“Don’t do her any favors, Ringo,” Andy said as he placed his boot on the male shape’s backside and helped him out the door.

“What’s your problem, man?” the male shape said.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Andy said as he pushed the door shut in his face. Then, turning to the woman who lived in the apartment, he said, “Call it a hunch, but I’ve got a feeling you have some things here in this apartment that you would rather I not find. Would that be a safe assumption?”

“All right, fine. What do you want?” she asked.

“I came by just to ask you a few questions. And your name is?” Andy said.

“Emily,” the woman replied without giving a last name.

“How long have you lived here, Emily?”

“Six months. Why?”

“A little boy was killed right across the hall from your apartment a couple of months back,” Andy said.

“Yeah, I remember that night. So,” Emily said. From the look on her face, it appeared she wouldn’t be able to keep standing much longer, but Andy didn’t offer to let her sit down. She kept standing while he continued his questions.

“A witness said that earlier that evening the man who lived in the apartment, John Phillips, had an argument with a woman that became rather heated. I’m just having a little trouble finding any other witnesses who also heard them arguing. I was wondering, did you hear anything like that on the night of the murder?”

Emily’s body had started to sway. She looked like she would be down for the count any second now. “What do you need to hear?” she asked.

Andy just smiled in return.

Chapter 12

J
OHN’S PRELIMINARY HEARING
took all of ten minutes, and for Andy, they were ten of the more disappointing minutes of his life. The D.A. seemed pleased the case would go to trial; Andy was anything but. The hearing began with two deputies escorting John into the courtroom, his hands cuffed and his feet shackled. Both restraints were removed prior to the judge walking into the courtroom. Unlike the trial phase, which was to come, John was not allowed to dress for court. He had on the same county lockup orange jumpsuit that Andy had seen him in a couple of days earlier. The deputies led John to a table where a heavyset, gray-haired, balding man sat. The orange jumpsuit would have been an improvement over this guy’s lime green blazer, grayish shirt, which was probably white at one time, and red-and-blue-striped tie. He stood as John came over, revealing a pair of yellow slacks. Apparently, this was John’s court-appointed attorney. From the sound of things, John was in real good hands. Again, I’m being sarcastic.

Sitting across from John Phillips’s crack legal team, Reginald Chambliss appeared to be the picture of professionalism and confidence. The contrast between him and the public defender assigned to John’s case couldn’t be starker. Two other younger attorneys sat at the table with the D.A., both sharply dressed. As he watched the way they worked, even in something as simple as a preliminary hearing, it quickly became apparent to Andy that these attorneys did the legwork, while Reginald Chambliss took care of the showmanship. Juries were his specialty.

The bailiff announced the judge’s arrival, and Andy stood up from his seat in the back of the courtroom, along with everyone else in attendance. The crowd was rather sparse, although several reporters sat in the row directly in front of Andy. At least he assumed they were reporters. All of them had small notebooks in which they took copious notes.

The Honorable George Houk ambled in, wearing the usual black robes over what appeared to Andy to be blue jeans and cowboy boots. His salt-and-pepper hair had a pressed-down indention that looked like Houk had been wearing a hat up until the moment he walked through the courtroom door. Andy assumed it was a cowboy hat. The cowboy image fit because Houk had a reputation as a no-nonsense kind of guy who didn’t suffer fools in his courtroom. Andy had observed this firsthand. About a year earlier, Andy had to testify against an eighteen-year-old kid who’d been caught breaking into homes where teenage girls lived. Apparently, the kid was on some kind of sex-offender-training program. For two summers the Trask police received complaints that the kid was peeping into bedroom windows. Finally he graduated from window peeper to underwear thief and junior stalker. Andy finally caught the kid late one night walking out of a house a couple of blocks from the police station with two handfuls of panties. In the boy’s trial the kid’s mother yelled and carried on from the back of the courtroom, challenging every witness and scoffing loudly at every piece of evidence against her son. Houk warned her twice, then locked her up for a week for contempt of court. She actually ended up spending more time behind bars than her son, although he did serve six months of house arrest.

“You may be seated,” the judge announced, and the courtroom complied.

“John Phillips, will you please rise,” Judge Houk said. John did so. His dapper attorney stood next to him. “Mr. Phillips, the state has charged you with one count of murder in the first degree. How do you plead?”

“Your Honor, my client—” the attorney began to say before John cut him off.

“Not guilty, Your Honor. I am completely innocent,” John said with a clear, firm voice.

“Let it be recorded that Mr. John Phillips has entered a plea of not guilty. Mr. Edmonds,” he said to the public defender, “have you had an opportunity to meet with your client?”

“Only briefly, sir. I’ve also had trouble obtaining all the pertinent documents from the prosecutor’s office that I need to begin to prepare my defense. In fact, I feel as though I should have had more time to study the prosecution’s case so that I could have fully counseled my client regarding his options with this hearing today,” Mr. Edmonds said.

“Duly noted, Mr. Edmonds. Now there’s the matter of—”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” John interrupted the judge.

“Excuse me?” Judge Houk said, looking up from the papers in front of him. He shot a look at John’s attorney that I think has been banned in thirteen states.

“It wouldn’t have mattered how much time my attorney would have had to go over the evidence. The fact is I did nothing wrong. I am not guilty. In fact, I wish I could represent myself in these proceedings. I believe—”

“Mr. Phillips”—now it was the judge’s turn to interrupt—“Indiana state law does not allow people like yourself to represent themselves in capital murder cases. I don’t think you grasp the gravity of the charges brought against you. If you are convicted, the district attorney here plans to push for a death sentence. Death, Mr. Phillips. I believe you need to listen to your counsel’s advice.”

“My life is in God’s hands,” John said.

“That may be true, but your ass is in mine” Judge Houk said. “Now, as I was saying, to the matter of bail. Mr. Chambliss, you had a recommendation to make.”

“Yes, Your Honor. The people request that bail be denied due to the nature of these charges,” the D.A. said.