[Oppose,Allies,Lazily,Soft,Graceful]
We left the county jail, I was deep in thought when Aiden asked me.
“Laura, why do you think Detective Jones arrested Monique after reading the graphic novel.”
“Because he thinks Monique is the axe wielding killer, not the little girl. He completely misread it. Can’t we just go to him and point out that he misread it and get Monique released?”
“No, even if Jones would agree to that, which I highly doubt from what I know about him, once the charges are filed the district attorney is in charge of the case. Jones couldn’t dismiss the charges even if he wanted to. Now it’s up to the district attorney and the judge.”
“How does that work?”
“So the district attorney can move to dismiss the case but the judge has to agree to that. They have to be careful, if the case is dismissed with prejudice , the charges can never be filed again. Even if she writes a book claiming she murdered him, they could never charge her again, it’s double jeopardy.”
“Well can we start with the district attorney and try to get them to at least ask the judge to dismiss the case.”
“I will this morning and I can also ask the judge for a dismissal, but not until arraignment, tomorrow morning.”
“I understand, it’s just this poor girl has been through hell, I hate to see her confined because of it and because I gave them the piece of evidence that they were too stupid to grasp the significance of.”
“I get it, sometimes I hate being a public defender, because I know that I’m not giving my clients all that they deserve. They deserve an attorney who can spend the time on their case that is required to mount an adequate defense. Instead we’re forced into a bargaining role, bargain for the least amount of time that the assistant district attorney can and will accept. Sometimes I feel like I work in a giant bazaar, but instead of hawking rugs or the like, I’m bartering with peoples lives. It’s not what I went to law school for, I thought I’d be defending justice. But the more time you spend in the system the more you realize it’s all controlled through money. I make plea bargains for petty criminals who’ve often hurt no one and wind up in jail. While the white collar criminals get fancy attorneys and either walk away or do far less time than a two or three time convicted shoplifter. The shoplifter hurt one store for at most usually a hundred dollars, while the white collar criminal steals thousands to millions and hurts a whole chain of individuals and gets probation and maybe restitution. But they just declare bankruptcy because of course the money is gone.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Yes, well I was going to say don’t commit a crime in America, unless you have money. But the real fact is, don’t get arrested in America unless you have money. You don’t even have to commit a crime to find yourself in an untenable position just get arrested for it. Then you either have to hire an attorney, or get a public defender who can’t devote the time to your case that it deserves.”
“Or have a friend who has an attorney on speed dial.”
“Laura, you are lucky you can afford an attorney to defend you.”
“I can’t really, Eve is doing my case pro bono, as a favor for a friend of mine. If I had to hire an attorney, I’d need to sell the bookstore and probably the collective as well. So just getting charged with the crime would pretty much ruin my life financially, at the very least even if things weren’t so tight right now I’d have to borrow thousands to tens of thousands of dollars on the property I own. Which would bankrupt me. The system should be set up so if the state loses, they have to pay the accused back for lost wages, attorney fees, and all the financial damages that the wrongfully accused was put through. Even if they did that, still just being arrested creates a stigma, so your reputation suffers win, lose or draw.”
“They could never afford to do that, plea bargains would probably just go out the window in at least fifty percent of the cases. Sometimes it’s pretty clear that the person did actually commit the crime, either there is video or multiple witnesses, so those defendants are just trying to minimize the time they will spend in jail. But the other fifty percent, where it could go either way if brought to a trial, the courts would be flooded with trials. Trials cost time and money. Time and money that the state and local governments don’t have.”
“Just because the government can’t afford it, it shouldn’t force the burden onto the private citizen, who’s committed no crime. What about if you win your case the jury finds you not guilty, can you sue them for false arrest?”
“No, not if the police had probable cause to assume that you have committed the crime.”
“Is drawing a comic book six years ago, having it stolen. Having the thief get murdered in your proximity probable cause?”
“Laura, they think it’s enough, I’m going to argue that it isn’t and ask the judge to dismiss the case. It’s rare but it does happen that the judge will look at the evidence and decide that the cop didn’t have probable cause and dismiss the case. But don’t get your hopes up, they don’t like doing that because it makes the police department vulnerable to a charge of false arrest.”
“So I guess that we’d better uncover the real murderer and do it soon.”
Aiden dropped me off back at the store. I went into check on Lucy, before heading to my next bit of investigation. I found her polishing an old three by three bookcase behind the counter.
“Hey Lucy, what are you doing?”
“I’m cleaning up this bookcase for Project Marginalia.”
“Ouu, catchy title. I like it. You’ll also need a posterboard explaining the borrowing conditions.”
“What are the borrowing conditions?”
“Whatever you decide they are, but one you already told me was the borrower must create at least one item of marginalia, but more are certainly encouraged. But you have to determine the rest, like length of lending period. Do the borrowers just take the book or do they need to bring them to a sales clerk to authorize the loan, like at the library. How many can be borrowed at once?”
“Only one book may be borrowed at a time. We’re not going to have that many books to start with, we don’t want one person or family to wipe out the whole library at once.”
“Good idea, and brace yourself for the fact that some of the books will never make it back.”
“No, I know, it’ll suck if they have been lovingly annotated. But I can keep looking for cheap to free non-fiction books for the shelf. To keep it going.”
“Yep and you can make up some flyers and bring them to the library, I’ll bet they will be interested to know that they are going to have some competition. But for now I have a few things I need to do to get Monique out of jail, hopefully, at least.”
I walked over to Claire’s. I was sure that Tyson wasn’t our murderer but my aunt thought that the world would become a better place after the hippie movement. Instead a large portion of hippies became yuppies. In other words they sold out, they became the ‘man’ the very thing that just a few years before they were fighting against. So just because we believe something to be true, doesn’t in any way affect whether it actually is true. That’s a good thing too, just imagine living in a house with little kids, monsters under the bed would be real, they might be in the closets too. Every December twenty fifth, a fat man in red would invade your house. In Texas, communists and immigrants would be literal monsters running loose across the state.
I knocked on Claire’s door. After just a minute, she opened it.”
“Laura, come in, come in. You haven’t changed your mind, and decided to press charges against me have you?”
“No, Claire, not at all. Why would you think that.”
“When I went to the police they told me that you probably would change your mind and charge me.”
“No, Claire, I’d never do that. Did the police take your statement, did you tell them about the man in brown? Did they make you sign anything?”
“I did tell the police, Detective Jones, but I didn’t sign anything.”
“That means they don’t have your sworn statement on file. I might have to ask you to tell a lawyer about it. You don’t have to mention why you noticed him hiding, just that you did. Unless you are asked under oath, specifically why you noticed. I don’t want you to commit perjury. But the police are suppressing evidence. Well maybe not all of the police, just one in particular. An innocent twenty one year old girl is sitting in jail accused of murder. ”
“That’s horrible, Laura.”
“Yeah, but we’re going to get her out, Claire. By not taking your sworn statement, I think that is suppressing evidence, which can only help our girl's case. Do you mind if I call the attorney and ask him?”
“No, go right ahead, would you like some tea?”
“No, I don’t want to put you through any trouble, Claire.”
“It’s no trouble Laura. I was going to make some for myself anyway. I’m just so relieved that you aren’t pressing charges.”
Claire went into the kitchen to make the tea. I took out the card that Aiden had given me and called his number.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Hello?”
“Hello Aiden, it’s Laura Eriksson. I just have a question, a woman I know from the store told me that she saw a man dressed all in brown, hiding in the shadows of a house observing the store. I told her to go to the police. She went in and told Jones, but he never had her sign anything. I thought that sounded like he didn’t take her sworn statement. Am I right?”
“Yes he would have to have her sign, for a sworn statement.”
“So isn’t that suppression of evidence?”
“No, it’s up to the police to decide what the evidence is. But he’s not required to take a sworn statement. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t. If this ever gets as far as a trial, that kind of information can sway a juror, knowing that an unrelated party tried to supply information about the case, but the police chose to ignore it, because it didn’t fit the narrative they were trying to establish. It can really attack their credibility. Just give me the person’s name and contact info. Good work.”
“Thanks Aiden.”
Claire came back with the tea. I got her contact info and texted it to Aiden and while we were having our tea.
“Claire, could you look at a picture that Anais took of me and a man who might possibly be the man in brown.”
“Sure Laura, let’s see.”
I opened my phone and scrolled to the picture that Anais had taken last night of Tyson and myself. Handing the phone to Claire.
“No, I’m sorry Laura, that’s not the man. This man is quite heavy, the one I saw was of medium build.”
“No, Claire, I’m glad it wasn’t him he was quite nice actually. I want to catch the guy who it was and get Monique out of jail, it’d be worse if another innocent person was charged with the crime.”
We chatted and I finished my tea, I thanked Claire for her help and I walked over to our beautiful public library. It’s right on Main St. with a pretty view of Mirror Lake on the one side. Next year will mark the one hundred and fortieth year of operation, all at exactly the same location. Sarah Doyle, our head librarian, was seated at the circulation desk, checking out books for a mother with two small children. I got into line behind her and waited.
“Well, well, what does a bookstore owner want in a library?”
“Come on Sarah, I get all of my non-fiction from you. But my intern has dreamed up a scheme that will put us in a head to head competition.”
“That’s it, rub it in. You have an intern, every time I go down to that store I find you in the reading nook reading. What’s the intern do for you, turn the pages?”
“Ouff, that’s hitting below the belt Sarah. No, it’s been quite lively up there recently.”
“Yes, Laura, I heard about your troubles. I’m really sorry.”
“Thanks Sarah, I appreciate it. That’s why I’m here actually, I need to find information on a murder from two thousand and seven. I thought I could search your archive of the Adirondack Daily Gazette. Tell me it’s been digitized?”
“No, so far we’re digitized back to two thousand and nine, two thousand and seven is still on microfiche. We are always looking for volunteers to help speed up the digitizing process, it’s labor intensive and unfortunately we just don’t have the labor.”
“What about the high school, aren’t there any student intern positions anymore? I know that Amy and I did it when we were in school.”
“If there are any Laura, they must be going to someplace sexier than the library.”
“You take that back, Sarah, the only place sexier than a library is a fiction only bookstore. Although that is about to change.”
She laughed. “But what do you mean about to change?”
“My intern will be down to fill you in with all the deets, see I’m even learning the new groovy slang. You really need an intern of your own.”
“Yes, just what I want to learn, how the English language has been altered today. By the time I’m ready to retire, I won’t even understand it anymore. Your not learning just new slang, when was the last time anyone else said groovy, I think it was thirty years ago and they said it ironically ”
“That’s what all the old people said when they still spoke ‘Old English’ by those damn ‘Middle English’ kids who are corrupting our language.”
“You got me, speakers have been corrupting their languages since language was invented. Besides in this fast paced world, who has time to pronounce the two syllable details, when you can make the one syllable deets do all the work. Just think of all the syllables we could save in a day if we did that with all our multiple syllable words.”
“I still like groovy, I looked it up online and from what I found it originated from jazz musicians who were in the groove. But when I was a kid, I always thought of records, when I heard groovy. I wonder if that’s what jazz musicians were referencing by, in the groove?”
“Laura, I’d love to continue this philology discussion, but people want to check out their books and you are holding up the line.”
“Sorry, I’m just trying to avoid the microfiche machine.”
“Here’s the key to the room in the basement, make sure you lock it up again, when you are done.”
“I will thanks, Sarah.”
I went down into the basement and once the door was opened I searched around in the dark for the light switch to the small reference room. I turned on the microfiche machine and then went looking through the many small drawers for the files from two thousand and seven. I decided to go in calendar order, one because it would help me reacquaint myself with the machine and I was most likely to make a mistake or miss something in the beginning. It was also unlikely that Monique’s parents had dragged her camping in January or February. So better to practice in those months as I relearned how to scan a microfiche file efficiently.
As it was even with all of January to practice, I still almost missed a serendipitous article. In early February two thousand and seven three time champion Harry Kirby handed out the trophy to the winner of the Eastern Snowshoe Championships. It showed a great picture of Harry, he looked just like he had in high school, except for a little bit of gray in his long hair. I clicked a picture on my phone to show him and made a mental note to ask him why he ever cut his hair. He looked cool with that rock star mane.
It’s a slow process, load the spools with the film then turn a knob on the side of a machine to present several pages at once on a slide projector like screen. Then you use your eyes to scan through those pages. It’s easy to get distracted and have your eyes drawn to an interesting article. In March of two thousand and seven a couple of articles really slowed me down, two vacation homes were burned down. My once eidetic memory, had held those details precisely for almost two decades, now my memory was jogged by the article which I didn’t take the time to read. But I remembered it was the talk of the town at the time and most of the residents considered it to be suspicious at the time.
I’d do an online search later to see if anything was ever determined whether it was natural causes or deliberately set? But it was the second article that really excited me, it was the spring music fest in the hockey arena headlined by moe. Amy and I had been there and it was wonderful. Although at the time we were probably the oldest people in the arena. I’d remind Amy tonight about this concert, it might have been the last, buy a ticket, sit in a seat or at least stand by a seat, concert I ever went to.
Then I slowed down the skimming pace once I hit April, when camping season begins. I scanned through May and the black fly season in June, but when I hit July I finally hit the article that I’d hoped to find. Man found, murdered outside of Tupper Lake, police believe he was killed in a Department of Environmental Protection campsite, but then his body was dragged into the woods. A camper noticed large amounts of blood and thought it might be a wounded deer and started tracking it. Instead they came upon the body. Police have not been able to identify the victim, but they believe it might have been a drug deal gone bad. As a backpack was located close to the victim's body, that had traces of heroin, crack cocaine and marijuana. Police are asking for help from the public. Please call the State Police Troop B.
I took multiple photos. I want to be sure my OCR software would be able to recreate the text perfectly. After I was completely satisfied I had the best possible copies, I slowly moved on. Looking for follow up articles. While a murder where there is never murder should be huge news, to the small community of Tupper Lake. There was only one small follow up article. The autopsy was done, the man still unidentified, had died of blunt head trauma. The murder weapon was never mentioned. Either the police didn’t know what had been used or they were withholding that information. I kept scanning month after month. But I couldn’t find anything more. I had the writer’s name of both the original article and the follow up about the autopsy, Nate Kelly. I’ll call the paper to see if he’s still there. I could call the State Police but after my recent contact with the police, I’ll leave them as a last resort. What I really want to know is was the man ever identified and was the killer ever caught.
I could have continued looking at the two thousand and eight microfiche, but it was getting late and the library would be closing soon. I wanted to check the archives that had been digitized to see if the case had ever been closed. If Monique wasn’t sitting in jail I would have found this to be really exhilarating, I love a good mystery, and a chase down a rabbit hole but now I really just wanted to get Monique home. But my search of the digital archives showed just two murderers in Tupper lake, one in twenty seventeen and one in twenty twenty two. So if I couldn’t get ahold of Nate Kelly, I’d come back and search the two thousand and eight archive tomorrow.
I still had to ask Sarah about Lachlan and was he here preying on library patrons like the pub. The library would be closed in ten minutes so the patrons who wanted to borrow something all stood in line. I went over and stood by the end of the line but distinctly apart. I wanted to be the last person in the library, when I asked Sarah about Lachlan. She wouldn’t want to be seen as a gossip, and I wouldn’t be asking unless it might be why Monique sat in jail right now.
The line inched forward. The parents with kids were checking out the largest amounts of materials. Music, DVDs, books. Crap it must be really hard to keep a kid entertained, unless you just plunked them down in front of a TV. I was as addicted as any of my friends when I was a kid. It was only later in my teen years that I saw TV as the same genre show, with different actors. In the sixties it was all westerns, by the rough and ready seventies the westerns were on the way out and cop shows were coming in hard. But even with a show as innovative as Star Trek, Gene Rodenberry the producer said he pitched it to the TV executives as Wagon Train in space.
Sarah checked out the last parent. Looked up at me.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes a murder in the woods in Tupper Lake in two thousand and seven but I went through all of that year's microfiche and there was nothing about any arrests or convictions. I have the article’s author’s name, so I’ll call the paper tomorrow. Do you remember if the killer was ever caught.”
“No, I don’t but what about your famous photographic memory?”
“I was pushed off a ladder and hit my head, so events in the past are fuzzy.”
“Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just I was always so jealous of you.”
“Yeah, well, I was jealous of everyone else who could reread the Lord of the Rings every year and rediscover something they’d forgotten or missed.”
“Two thousand pages of fairies, why would anyone do that to themselves on an annual basis.”
“Because it’s a classic and the greatest book ever written. BUt I have to ask you something serious. Lachlan, the writer who was killed in my store, did he ever come down here to write and maybe pick up blondes. I know you are not the town gossip, but I’m looking for a murderer and I can only figure that he was killed because he was sleeping with the wrong person. Possibly a bored mother, most likely blonde.”
“Yes there were two actually, both blonde. I don’t know them by name. But they have young children and usually just come in for story time. You might want to swing by tomorrow around one and I can point them out if they come in for this week's storytime.”
