Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (41 page)

“Ms. Madison also testified that she’d met Abby on several occasions, but Abby said they’d only met once. Okay, I can’t prove to you that Ms. Madison was lying about that, or that Abby was telling the truth, but when you look at the totality of the evidence you can see that the truth most likely lies with Abby Lester. Not Tori Madison.

“We know who killed Nate Bannister. Agent Wes Lucas of the FDLE was a rogue agent. He killed Mr. Bannister. Linda Favereaux saw him standing over the corpse holding a revolver. Lucas killed her later that night. Now, I grant you that we don’t have direct testimony about the murder of Mr. Bannister, but we can put it together. Jim Favereaux saw the man who killed Linda, the woman he identified as his daughter, and testified here that the murderer was Wes Lucas. Linda told Jim Favereaux that a man named Wes had killed Mr. Bannister.

“Why did Lucas ask his boss to assign him to this case before, I repeat, before Mr. Bannister’s body was found? There’s only one explanation. Lucas knew about the murder. How did he know about it if he hadn’t been part of it? And why did he insist that he head up the investigation if he wasn’t trying to cover something up? How better to disrupt a murder investigation than to have the murderer in charge of investigating it?

“Let’s look at the evidence that points to Abby Lester as the killer. First, the emails. They’re obviously fraudulent. They didn’t come from her computer. The only thing that ties them to Abby is the typed name on the bottom of the emails. Anybody could have typed those words, but it would take a person who is highly skilled in Internet technology to be able to post them through foreign servers, as was the case here. Abby didn’t do that.

“We have to ask ourselves why she would have, even if she had the skills to do so. And if Abby and Mr. Bannister were having an affair, why would she have to sign the emails? It doesn’t stack up. I think we can strike that bit of evidence off the board.

“Mr. Swann’s theory was that Abby and Mr. Bannister were having an affair and she was angered by the fact that he wanted to break it off. On the other hand, Mr. Swann would have you believe that Abby had sex with Mr. Bannister the night he was killed. Abby was painted as a black widow of sorts; have sex and then kill your partner. That theory exploded when the DNA from the sheets told us that shortly before he was killed, Mr. Bannister had sex with Linda Favereaux, not Abby Lester.

“The wine glass in the bedroom. Now that presents a dilemma. How did it get there? Abby says she was never in that condo. The only person who placed her there was Tori Madison. The glass of wine with Abby’s fingerprints would buttress the claim that she was in the bedroom, drinking wine, and presumably having sex. But it turns out that the wine glass was not from Mr. Bannister’s set. His glasses were monogrammed. And if Mr. Bannister was drinking wine that night, and he surely was because the autopsy showed the remains in his stomach, what happened to his glass?

“There were two of his monogramed glasses found in the dishwasher, washed clean of fingerprints. Were those the glasses used by Linda Favereaux and Mr. Bannister? If so, who put them in the dishwasher? Does it make sense that if Mr. Bannister was going for more wine, as was testified to in this courtroom, that he would put his glass, and not Abby’s, in the dishwasher? Where did the other extra monogrammed glass in the dishwasher come from? Who used it?

“The glass in the bedroom was plain, like the ones used in most restaurants and bars, like the one that Abby probably drank out of on the day of Mr. Bannister’s murder, when she met Tori Madison for a drink in downtown Sarasota. How easy would it have been for Tori to slip that glass into her purse and then place it on Mr. Bannister’s bedside table? And there was a smudged fingerprint on the stem of the glass. One that was not clear enough to be identified. One that may have belonged to someone other than Abby Lester, someone who placed the glass on the bedside table.

“I submit to you that the killer put the two glasses in the dishwasher, the ones used by Mr. Bannister and Linda Favereaux, and placed the glass with Abby’s fingerprints on the bedside table. Was this the same glass that Abby had drunk from at the restaurant where she met Tori Madison the day before the murder? How did that glass get on that bedside table?

“Let’s talk about Robert Shorter for a minute. You remember he was the man who assaulted Mr. Bannister a couple of years ago and actually served jail time for doing so. His fingerprints were in Mr. Bannister’s condo. Why didn’t the investigators follow up and at least talk to Mr. Shorter? He would have been the logical suspect, certainly a better choice than Abby Lester.

“Mr. Shorter was lured to the Bannister condo by Tori Madison, and an appointment was made for him to return on Sunday evening at, as it turns out, the same time that Mr. Bannister was killed. Mr. Shorter called Ms. Madison on Sunday and canceled because he had another meeting he had to attend, a meeting with thirty or so alibi witnesses. But the FDLE wouldn’t have known about the alibi because its agents never interviewed Mr. Shorter.

“Who would be a better patsy for murder than Mr. Shorter? Was that the plan all along and when it fell through, somebody, perhaps Tori Madison, went to plan B? The framing of Abby Lester? It is clear that Abby has been framed. I don’t have a plausible reason as to why, but somebody, most probably Tori Madison, tried to make it look like Abby killed Mr. Bannister. The evidence is strong, even overwhelming, that Agent Wesley Lucas murdered Nate Bannister. And there is no credible evidence that Abby Lester had anything to do with it.

“That last witness? Ms. Bramlett? She’s a liar. She lied on the witness stand to get a reduction in her sentence for dealing in drugs; a deal that only the state attorney for this judicial circuit could make; not a deal that a prosecutor from another circuit has the authority to make. And Jack Dobbyn, the state attorney for this circuit, did not grant Ms. Bramlett any kind of immunity. I submit that the last witness was an act of desperation by a desperate man.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you do not have to find that Abby is innocent of this crime, although I think you will. It is not my burden to prove her innocence. It is Mr. Swann’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Abby Lester committed this crime, that she did, in fact, kill Nate Bannister, and that she did so with malice aforethought; that she had thought about the murder, planned it, went to his condo, shared a bottle of wine with him, had sex with him, and then shot him dead with a gun that has disappeared. The state attorney wants to send Abby to the death chamber, to execute her, to use drugs to suck the life out of a high school history teacher on evidence so flimsy that it ought to embarrass the prosecutor to bring it into a court of law.

“If you find that you have a reasonable doubt as to Abby’s guilt, it is your duty to acquit. You don’t have to believe in her innocence, only in the fact that the state did not prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Our society, our system of justice, puts a heavy burden on juries. Most of us will never have to weigh the life of a fellow citizen, to decide whether that citizen goes from this courtroom to death row or walks out into the sunshine a free person. It is a heavy burden, one that you did not seek, but one that you have accepted. I know you will do your duty as you see it, and I implore you to find Abby Lester not guilty. Thank you.”

Swann waived rebuttal. Judge Thomas charged the jury with the law that they should apply to this case and sent them out to deliberate. It has been said that courts treat jurors like kindergartners when they dribble out only the evidence the judges think they should hear, and then charge them with legal principles that would boggle the minds of third-year law students. But the juries, day in and day out, in courtrooms all across the country, get it right. That fact alone boggles the minds of most trial lawyers.

We stood as the jury exited the courtroom. This is the time when opposing counsel usually shake hands and congratulate each other on having tried a good case. Not this time. Swann abruptly left the courtroom, leaving his entourage to pack up his documents and other detritus left at the end of a trial. I wasn’t surprised.

I was packing up my brief case when the young woman lawyer and the intern from Stetson Law School came to my table. We shook hands. The lawyer said, “Mr. Royal, I think you just ruined old George’s perfect record.”

I smiled. “I hope so. He could still walk away with this one.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Maybe a loss will take some of the arrogance out of him.”

“He might be harder to work for,” I said.

“This is my last case,” she said. “My last day working for the state attorney. I start at a private firm in Jacksonville on Monday. I’ll probably face George in court someday. I’m looking forward to it. And I’m not sure he has a career after that stunt he pulled with the last witness. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t get disbarred. I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that.”

I smiled. “That never crossed my mind. What makes him tick?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. He’s a much better lawyer than you saw in this case, but he always takes the easy way out. I think his main problem is that he’s lazy and narcissistic. It’s too bad. He could have been a really good lawyer.”

I turned to the intern. “What about you? Where do you go from here?”

“Back to Jacksonville. I’ll finish the summer internship and then back to Stetson for my last year of law school. I’ll see what turns up then. It was a pleasure watching you work. Smooth as silk.”

I laughed. “That’s the beach-bum effect.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

The longest hours of a trial lawyer’s life are those spent waiting out the jury. He spends it in a conference room locked up with his clients, unless they’re back in a cell somewhere. It’s a time when he relives every minute of the trial, trying to decipher the jurors’ reaction to each bit of evidence, to consider the mistakes he made, because there are always mistakes, and wonder if one of them might have ruined the chance for an acquittal. He rummages around in his mind as the gastric juices rumble in his gut, producing yet another ulcer.

Abby and Bill sat across the table from me, saying nothing. I think they somehow knew that I needed some time to sort out the ups and downs of the past week. I was forcing myself to think pleasant thoughts that would push my fears about the trial into the back of my mind. I was enjoying an image of J.D., and my boat
Recess,
and a flat green sea as we cruised toward Egmont Key, when there was a knock on the door. The court deputy stuck his head in and said, “We’ve got a verdict.”

If I had been attached to a sphygmomanometer, one of those contraptions they use to check your blood pressure, it would have blown a gasket. The game’s over. The jury has decided. The fat lady is about to sing. Everything you’ve done in the past two and a half months to save your client either worked or it didn’t. It all boils down to one word, or hopefully two, on a jury form. “Guilty” or “Not Guilty.” In a matter of minutes, we’ll know whether Abby is going to walk out of the courtroom with Bill and me, and drive to the key and find a cool bar in which to imbibe a few drinks of relief and congratulation, or leave shackled to a deputy and start the process of taking up residence at a state prison.

I looked at my watch. The jury had only been out for twenty minutes. Hardly time to elect a foreman or forewoman. Lawyers have debated for years whether a quick verdict or a drawn-out deliberation is best for the accused. It’s a question that has never been satisfactorily answered, probably because there is no answer. Every case and every jury is different from another.

* * *

The jury filed back into the courtroom. Judith Whitacre was holding the verdict form. She was the forewoman. She looked at Swann, caught his eye, and smiled. Oh crap. What the hell happened? I thought surely she was one juror I could count on.

The jurors took their seats and the rest of us sat. The judge asked if they’d reached a verdict. Judith Whitacre stood and answered. “We have, Your Honor.”

“Please hand the verdict form to the deputy, Madam Forewoman.”

The deputy took the form and handed it to Judge Thomas. He looked at it and handed it down to the court clerk. “Please publish the verdict, Madam Clerk.”

The clerk stood and read the form. “In the Circuit Court of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit of Florida, in and for Sarasota County, case number 4856, State of Florida versus Abigail Lester. We the jury find the defendant Abigail Lester…” The clerk paused. Dramatic effect? Probably not. It was only a split second, probably not even noticed by most of the people in the courtroom. It seemed like hours to me.

I was holding my breath, my heart racing. I’d had the same reaction to every verdict I’d ever heard. Abby had grabbed my hand and was squeezing hard, a look on her face that I can only describe as one of hope and resignation. The next second would decide her fate and the course of her life from this point forward.

The clerk seemed to catch her breath, inhale and said, “Not guilty.”

Abby sagged against my shoulder. I looked at the jury. Judith Whitacre was grinning at me. She nodded, and I nodded back. The smile with which she had favored Swann when she walked in with the verdict in her hand had been one of derision, not congratulations.

Judge Thomas dismissed the jury with his thanks and they filed out of the courtroom. Swann and his crew left suddenly without saying anything to anybody. I was tempted to go after him, to rub in his loss and mention that never again would he be able to brag about a spotless record of triumphs. But I reminded myself that I was a better person than that. Or at least, I liked to think so.

Abby hugged me and sobbed. All the tension and fears that had permeated her senses since she had first been arrested were washing out of her system. She held me tight, wouldn’t let go. I hugged back. Bill Lester came through the rail and wrapped his arms around both of us. Tears were slipping down his cheeks. “Let’s go get a drink,” he said. And that’s what we did.

* * *