One Life for Another, page 14
Steve asked, “Did you play for OU?”
“Yes, I was a walk-on for Coach Stoops. I played my way into a scholarship and was eventually voted a captain by my teammates.” The deputy picked up a picture from the shelf and handed it over. “This one was from one of the greatest days of my life—six receptions for eighty-seven yards and a touchdown against Texas. I’m there, in the center of the team, wearing the Golden Hat; that’s the trophy for winning the Red River shootout. Whenever we won the game, everyone on the team took turns getting a picture with the trophy on their head.”
“But enough about my football days,” Deputy Blackburn said abruptly, taking the framed photo back and shifting the conversation to more serious matters. “I would love to hear what evidence you have found that exonerates your murdering client.” He said with a smirk.
“Well, Deputy Blackburn,” Steve said as he pulled the photos out of his briefcase. “If you take a close look here, I think the evidence will speak for itself.”
Steve stood and spread the photos out on the desk in front of Deputy Blackburn. “This one shows it best. You can see here, here, and here. The bedroom door in the Scottie home was not broken on the day in question. That means Ashley Pinkerton lied on the 911 call, and if she lied about that, then maybe there is more to this story than meets the eye.”
Deputy Blackburn began to chuckle under his breath. “And?” he asked loudly.
“What do you mean ‘and?’” asked Steve, somewhat flustered.
“These pictures—”
“I know you aren’t about to disparage the victim in this case and start calling her a liar to save your murdering client from the needle, are you?” the deputy interrupted him sharply. “We saw those pictures in our original investigation. Hell! I took the damn things. In every crime scene investigation, there is something that doesn’t fit, but when you take all the parts that fit and they all point to one thing, you disregard the outlying evidence as germane. Whether or not he broke the door doesn’t matter. Maybe he just opened it and barged through. Maybe she said ‘broke in’ on the call because she was scared, he was about to kill her. Either way, it doesn’t matter when you look at all of the other evidence that points to your client as the one who did it.”
Blackburn scowled at both men in turn. “If this is all you have, then you really need to go back to arguing about some bullshit constitutional loophole you damn defense lawyers are so good at and quit trying to be an investigator. If there isn’t anything else you have discovered, then this meeting is over, and I am going home. It’s been a long day.”
Steve was troubled by this response. He thought everyone would see the case his way, that this evidence created doubt in the state’s version of the story. He hadn’t considered the possibility that others had figured out the same thing and disregarded it as immaterial. Steve internally gathered himself. “Then, can I see your notes from the investigation?”
“As a matter of fact, I told First Assistant District Attorney Battel you were snooping around the case and planned to meet me today. He told me to let you know that if you want to see the police investigative files, you will have to get a court order. He told me not to turn them over without one. He actually didn’t even want me talking to you at all. I told him that, with my experience in interrogation, I could get out of you whatever information I needed without telling you a damn thing, which I think I just did,” Deputy Blackburn finished smugly.
“I see. Thank you for your time, Deputy Blackburn,” Steve said as calmly as he could, considering the anger that now surged through him. The two men quickly exited the deputy’s office.
As Steve and Booger walked back to their car, Steve said, “I was a bit surprised about how quickly he rejected our theory.”
“I wasn’t,” Booger said with a snort. “Did you honestly think he would admit a mistake? Remember, a lot of the time the police do an investigation, they already have a perpetrator in mind. Then, as they investigate, they gather evidence that points to that person and ignore evidence that doesn’t. There was a good podcast recently called Serial that discusses what I call the ‘police blinder’s mentality’ pretty well. You should listen to it.”
Steve drove away from the sheriff’s office, still thinking over the less-than-pleasant exchange.
Booger patted the young attorney’s shoulder. “Anyway, this is the main reason you defense barristers hire me to do the exact opposite of the cops. I find the exonerating stuff and put the incriminating information aside. I honestly don’t blame these police detectives, though. They are overworked and underpaid. You just need to remember they are human and make mistakes sometimes, just like the rest of us. Hell, you might even be wrong about something someday.”
“Very funny. Regardless, we need to see his file. I’m not 100 percent sold he ever noticed the intact door before, and I want to see if he is lying. First thing in the morning, I will file the motion asking the court to order him to provide the material. I should have it done by noon.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Booger said. “Since it is not quite five yet, let’s go see Frank. I bet he has some insight on our case.”
CHAPTER 23
Sharyn Harrison, a seventy-two-year-old woman, was sitting behind the reception desk just inside the entryway. She rose to greet them as soon as she saw them enter, giving them both a hug, “Booger, I haven’t seen you in forever! How have you been?”
“I’ve been great. I can’t believe you are still working. Isn’t it about time you retire and take some time for yourself?”
“Thirty-six years and counting,” Harrison said proudly. “The old warhorse back there needs me too much. As long as he keeps going, I’ll keep going. You know he couldn’t do anything without me here.”
“Truer words have never been spoken,” Booger said.
The three of them shared a laugh.
“Not that I don’t like seeing you, Sharyn, but we were hoping to have a word with Frank. He available?”
“Right now, he is in his office, going through police reports on the triple homicide that happened last week in Osage County. I’ll go tell him you two are here.” Harrison came back a few seconds later, followed by Ackerman.
“Booger, how the heck are you?” Ackerman asked as he went in for a big hug.
“I’m great, other than having to deal with this rookie over here.”
“He’s young, but that just means he still has a lot of fight in him.” Ackerman turned and hugged Steve. “And how the heck have you been, Steve?”
“Doing well. Always good to see you, Frank,” Steve said.
“You boys come on back to my office.” Steve felt his office cell phone vibrate in his pocket as Ackerman led them down the hallway.
CHAPTER 23
The office itself looked like that of a traditional country lawyer portrayed in a Norman Rockwell painting. Bookshelves full of statutes and legal treatises lined the south wall. Numerous plaques, awards, and signed jury verdict forms from winning cases covered the east wall. The north wall contained two large, framed pieces. One was a lithograph depicting Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address. The other was a copy of the United States Constitution on weathered and torn paper.
Ackerman’s desk, a large piece of glass held up by metal replicas of two deer antlers, was positioned to the west. The leather chair behind his desk was covered in a cowhide print, and behind where Ackerman sat was a sketch of him giving the closing argument in his first death penalty trial. Before judges started allowing cameras in the courtroom, a sketch artist had rendered the drawing to be used by the media to show courtroom action. After Ackerman had won the trial, the artist gave him the original as a trophy of sorts for his victory.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company this afternoon?” Ackerman asked as they all sat down.
“We just left Deputy Blackburn’s office while investigating the Pinkerton case,” Steve said, “and we wondered if there is anything you might be able to tell us about the case or Deputy Blackburn that we couldn’t find in the record.”
“I doubt there is much I can tell you about your case that you don’t already know, but I can tell you something about Deputy Blackburn. He is one of the bad cops,” Ackerman said seriously. “I’m sure you heard about him shooting that young man last month. I would bet he was in the wrong on that one. There is no doubt in my mind that man is racist. On top of that, he is one of the few cops I have caught lying on the stand. He believes that the end justifies the means. Doesn’t matter what rules or laws he has to break to put the ‘bad guys’ in prison as long as they end up in prison. He somehow thinks that is good police work—that the Fourth Amendment and other laws don’t apply to him because he is a ‘good guy.’ Mind you, not all police officers act that way, but I’ll tell you the ones who do are what drive me to get out of bed every morning and come in here to this office to work my tail off for the downtrodden.”
“Never ceases to amaze me,” Booger said with a slow shake of his head, “the number of police officers who think the law doesn’t apply to them. They think that because they are putting away the bad guys, as you called them, then they can do whatever they want to make sure that happens.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “Don’t they realize the Constitution is the most important law in the land? It is what makes our country great, and without it, all these other laws wouldn’t matter.”
“Just make sure you keep your eyes on him,” Ackerman said. “He is capable of just about anything. That case is what made his career. The investigation and subsequent conviction put him on the map in the police world as a big-time cop. I would bet the farm that Deputy Blackburn will do anything to protect his reputation and make sure your client is executed—whether he truly believes Scottie did it or not.”
After some time discussing the other details of the case, Steve and Booger thanked Ackerman for his advice and returned to Tulsa. They decided to go downtown to the Main Street Lounge for a drink and strategy session.
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
The Main Street Lounge was an upscale bar in the Blue Dome District of Tulsa that featured mixologists rather than bartenders. It was just dark enough to still be swanky and the odor of cedar barrels prevailed. Steve liked their version of an old fashioned. Booger ordered a Bud Light. On the television above the bar, the big news of the day was the Department of Justice’s decision to drop their lawsuit against Apple to unlock the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone.
“Have you gotten anymore Snapchat messages.” Booger asked. “Yes. A few more. All still vague threats but nothing substantive.”
“Make sure you start keeping an eye out around you.”
“Got it. So, at this point in the game, what do you think of our case, my friend?” Steve said.
“The way I see it, we have four suspects: Walters, Whitmore,
Scottie, and the X factor.” “Scottie?” Steve said, shocked.
“Yes. He still has the most evidence against him. Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe him when he says he didn’t do it. But I also think there is something he is not telling us. It would be foolish of us to completely discount him just because we want to believe him.”
“What do you think he is hiding?”
“I don’t know. I just have a gut feeling he is hiding something. The more I think about it, if it wasn’t Scottie, whoever it was had to be in the house, or very close by, at the time Scottie left for the hotel. According to the police radio logs, it was exactly six minutes and forty-seven seconds between the time Deputy Blackburn received the call to respond to a domestic violence situation at the Scottie house and the moment he radioed for assistance with Ashley. Now that we’ve been to the house, if you consider the length of the driveway and the fact he would have cautiously entered the residence, I think we can reasonably deduce he would have seen a car leaving the residence at least a minute before he radioed for help. That leaves approximately five minutes and forty-seven seconds for whomever it was to kill Ashley and leave without being seen by Deputy Blackburn.”
“But if it was Whitmore on his four-wheeler,” Steve said, “he could have driven off from the back of the property. Deputy Blackburn may not have seen him as he pulled up to the front of the house.”
“Good point. If it was Whitmore, then he may have had an extra thirty seconds or so. Either way, I think the person was in the house when Ashley called 911 and before Scottie left. Then, he or she killed Ashley and got out of there quickly… I also think that our killer is the one who talked Ashley into making the fake 911 call in the first place. It was a total setup for the murder.” Booger said this as if he had just put this piece of the puzzle together at that precise moment.
He continued after a swig of beer, “You know, young man, the only way to get away with murder is to have a fall guy. You have to give the police someone to arrest and the district attorney’s office someone to convict. There has to be a picture on the front page of the local paper showing they got the guy. Otherwise, they will keep looking until they find you.”
“How do we figure out who else may have been in the house?” Steve asked.
CHAPTER 24
“Short of a surveillance video, we have to do some hard work. I think we start with who we know for sure was there: Scottie and Ashley. We have to go back to prison and talk to Scottie,” Booger said. “I told you I think there is something he isn’t telling us, and it is high time we find out all of his secrets.”
“Okay. Back to your list,” Steve said. “Why don’t you have Deputy Blackburn on it? He was the last person to see her alive and Ackerman said he is crooked. He could have done it.”
“Yes. I would put him in the X-factor column. I’m not quite ready to call him a clear suspect. Him being a dirty cop doesn’t make him a murderer of young white women. Of course, if he killed that young man a few months ago in cold blood, maybe he could do it in this case too. Only problem is there is no reason. I can see a racist cop taking the opportunity to kill a black man just because he thinks he can get away with it. But I don’t see him killing a white woman in her home and then blaming the husband without some additional motive.”
As Booger finished, a phone rang. Steve patted his pockets and pulled out a phone, then pulled out a second phone, checked it, and paused. Seeing Booger’s expression, Steve explained briefly, “It’s my personal phone but an unknown number.” Then he answered the call. “Hello, Steve Hanson. How can I help you?”
“Hello, Steve Hanson.” The woman on the other end gave a slight laugh. “Wow, that sounded very official and lawyerly. This is Dr. Emily Babbage. Jennifer told me your guy pled to the embezzlement charge and gave me your number. Case closed, right? Which means I’m available for dinner, assuming you are still interested.”
“Of course!” Steve said a little too excitedly. He tried to calm his voice down and asked, “Is tomorrow night good for you?”
“Tomorrow is great. Pick me up at my office around six thirty. See you then.” Emily hung up without giving Steve a chance to respond.
Booger looked at Steve and raised an eyebrow meaningfully.
“You look happier than a fox loose in the hen house. Good news?”
“Yeah, a girl I have a little thing for. She agreed to a date tomorrow night,” Steve said with a wide smile on his face and a flicker of mischief in his eyes.
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
For Steve, the next day dragged on like a poorly acted monologue. As soon as he arrived at his office, he wrote and filed the motion asking to see the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office’s complete investigation file. In the pleading, Steve laid out his theory about Scottie’s innocence, weaving in other legal jargon he hoped would sway the court to grant his request. Upon receipt of the motion, the court gave the state three weeks to respond and set the matter for a hearing three weeks after that date. Steve had hoped the issue hearing would be set sooner but knew from experience that the wheels of justice turned slowly.
Steve also set up a meeting with Scottie. Luckily, Gilcrease was able to get him in quickly because another attorney had called earlier in the day and canceled his appointment for next week.
He spent the rest of the day working on other cases and planned to spend his weekend catching up on more of them. He had nearly a hundred files that had been mostly ignored because of Scottie Pinkerton’s case. They definitely needed attention, but tonight, Steve finally had a date with Emily. As the evening drew close, his growing excitement made it hard to concentrate.
Steve arrived at Emily’s office around 6:15 p.m. In college, his soccer coach at Oklahoma City University, Brian Harvey, had drilled the need to be on time into all the players’ heads. It only took a few times of running extra sprints for tardiness for Steve to learn that it was much better to be fifteen minutes early than one minute late. Since then, he always arrived fifteen minutes early to every appointment, date, meeting, or whatever he had on his schedule.
He played Chess with Friends on his smart phone while sitting in his car. Although he liked to be timely, in this instance he didn’t want to seem overanxious to Emily. At six thirty on the dot, Steve walked up to the entrance. Since the office closed at 5:00 p.m., the glass door was locked. He peered through it and couldn’t see anyone in the reception area. He knocked. Shortly after, Emily came out and said hello. She locked the door behind her and walked toward his car. Steve hurried ahead and was holding her door open when she arrived.
“Wow, an old-fashioned gentleman,” she said with a look of pleasure and surprise. “Thank you.”
From there, he took her to Mi Cocina, an upscale Mexican restaurant on Cherry Street. The restaurant had a modern interior, giving it a very different vibe from the other Tex-Mex restaurants around town, all of which had sombreros and Mexican blankets on the walls. Mi Cocina was the type of place that sold specialty cocktails made from top shelf tequila or mezcal rather than pitchers of premixed drinks that tasted more like a green Gatorade than a true margarita.
