Violence (34 page)

Peterson knew where Crotty was headed with this statement and he, Peterson, couldn’t wait for the knockout punch to be delivered.

“I got an eyewitness…” Crotty pronounced forthwith, letting this revelation roll off his tongue like the disclosure by itself had the power to toss Anderson headlong into a cell and slam the door shut behind him. “…who saw you leave your girlfriend’s apartment in the middle of the night and not return until
two hours later
.”

Anderson’s eyes widened the minutest amount.

Crotty searched his reaction.

So did Peterson.

Save for clearly reciting the Miranda warning, there are virtually no laws that prohibit law enforcement from practicing deception and lying to a suspect to elicit a confession. This simple reality even extended to interrogators being able to say they had someone who will testify against the suspect and implicate them in the crime. Anderson knew something about this. What he didn’t know was whether they were lying or not.

“Thought that would get your attention.” Crotty sneered smugly. “Now do you want to tell us where you were
for those two hours
?”

“I went out for a drink.” Anderson said firmly, returning to his automaton-like cadence.

“Not for two hours.” Peterson quickly confronted him.

“No, I went back to my girlfriend’s.” Anderson calmly answered, setting his gaze blankly on the far wall between them.

“This person saw you clearly, unmistakably!” Crotty hounded Anderson with a growing drumbeat rhythm, rapping his knuckles menacingly on the desktop, visibly irritated himself now. “This witness said you left the bar after only fifteen minutes and didn’t return to your girlfriend’s place for two whole hours!”

“I don’t know who would say such a thing, but they’re mistaken.” Anderson coolly continued. “I pray for whoever it is.”

“If you’re so fucking holy…” Peterson raged. “…have you ever heard the expression ‘only God can take a life’?!!”

“So, these men…” Anderson fixed Peterson with a flinty stare and came back in a voice that, while still composed, was also suddenly distinctly disdainful. “…who killed my wife and are responsible for my daughter’s death, these men are Gods?”

“’
So’…”
Crotty mimicked Anderson, probing his response. “
…you are angry towards them?”

As quickly as Anderson’s bitterness surfaced, it disappeared again.

“Was that a confession?” Crotty persisted.

“It’s an expression.” Anderson answered.

“Of anger. Of hatred.” Crotty asserted, expectant. “It’s understandable.”

“It’s an expression of a flawed way of thinking.” Anderson replied. “My fellow man is imperfect as I am.”

“So you did it?” Crotty eagerly asked, falsely sensing he was making headway.

“No.” Anderson answered, unyielding, putting his focus on the far wall again.

“Drop the charade!” Crotty exploded. “You’re using God! You’re using us! And you’re using that girl!”

“He doesn’t give a shit about anybody!” Peterson vehemently shouted, his face red with rage.

Anderson shifted his body and squared up to face Peterson directly again and said, “You can only see in others what is in yourself.” Anderson delivered this message with such a matter-of-fact quality that it stripped away the last vestiges of Peterson’s self-restraint.

“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” Peterson hollered as he sprang at Anderson, grabbing him by the shirt and knocking Anderson helplessly back on to the floor, all discipline gone now in an instant.

Crotty quickly pulled his partner off Anderson, upset that Peterson would cross the line and physically assault a suspect. Crotty helped Anderson up, and righted his chair.

“Do you want to file charges?” Crotty asked Anderson as Anderson sat back down. “This man assaulted you. Do you want to file charges?”

“Courts are an indictment to the forces of nature. People have no right to judge others. Only God can judge.“ Anderson, trancelike, answered Crotty, getting himself settled and staring off again, but not before turning to Peterson and adding, “I forgive you my brother in Christ, go in peace.”

“Fuck you!” Peterson spat back at Anderson and stormed out of the room.

Crotty looked hard at Anderson to try and get an accurate measure of the situation.

Peterson, in the observation area outside the interrogation room, angrily sipped some water at a drinking fountain as Crotty soon entered behind him.

Crotty shut the door behind him and shook his head reproachfully. “That didn’t help us.” Crotty commented, calmly upbraiding his partner.

“Sorry.” Peterson sheepishly apologized.

Crotty sighed and looked through the observation window at the stock-still figure of Anderson.

“He’s a tough nut…” Crotty brooded before he stepped over to a coffee maker where he half-filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee and looked off deep in thought. “…but I got him.”

“What?” Peterson asked, a little surprised Crotty had come up with something so quickly.

“Just stay here.” Crotty ordered, assuring Peterson with a conspiratorial grin.

Peterson nodded obediently. He needed time to cool off.

Crotty reentered the interrogation room. He placed the coffee before Anderson and sat down next to him. “You all right?”

Anderson just stared straight ahead.

Crotty paused for a moment to as if to synchronize his breathing with Anderson.

“I feel for you. You’ve had a tough go of it… your whole life.” Crotty finally offered conciliatorily, seemingly going right back to the old tricks. “Some of this isn’t your fault. I know you had help tracking these guys and maybe this someone is using your situation to exorcise some of their own demons.”

Now this was a new approach. More psychological manipulation? Anderson didn’t know where Crotty was headed or what he was talking about.

“Al Ward, your private-eye friend, he’s a cagey old bird.” Crotty continued, staring carefully at Anderson looking for the smallest change in his behavior. “He had a bad break some time ago. He just got out of the service, was about to be married… one night he got a flat tire, couple guys stopped to help, raped his fiancé, killed her, shot Ward, and left him for dead. Big investigation. Never found out who did it.”

“That is a… bad break.” Anderson said thoughtfully.

“I doubt he ever got over it.” Crotty speculated.

“I
guarantee
he didn’t.” Anderson assured him.

Crotty’s eyes grew intense, keen. This news about Ward seemed to bring about some tiny shift in Anderson’s comportment. Was Anderson going to cave in and admit what he did? For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“But I don’t know what that has to do with me.” Anderson finally asked.

“He told you where those guys were, Roney and Gabriel Lysander.” Crotty divulged, again expectantly searching Anderson’s response. “He helped you find them. We have the reports. We found them in your motel room.”

“I was only worried at first, after the trial for my wife’s murder, that they would try and come after me…” Anderson solemnly explained, pausing with reflection.

And? And? And?
Crotty edged forward in his chair.

“…but then I had an awakening of my spirit self…” Anderson continued as if imbued with a newfound, even more effervescent grace. “…especially after learning of that young man Roney’s suicide. I had an awakening and realized there’s too much hate in this world, and I should instead find them, these men who had hurt me so deeply, and find out what made them do such a thing, to try and help them to form a reconciliation with whomever or whatever it was they held holy and help them. Now you tell me this other man, Gabriel Lysander, was murdered, and it genuinely saddens me. We are only energy. The cycle of violence must be broken. This life is a school, and love is the answer.”

“Ward’s in trouble now! Same as you!” Crotty growled irritably, his patience gone now. “You know a grand jury will make him an accessory under the accountability theory since he helped you commit the crime, and he’s going to be up for felony murder one just like you! Now I talked with some people from the State’s Attorney’s Office: admit to killing Ruben Roney and Gabriel Lysander and you’ll likely get twenty years. You’ll still have some hope of seeing the light of day outside of four walls. If you don’t work with us, you’re going to be locked up for the rest of your life!”

“You made a deal… for me?” Anderson asked bitterly.

“Do it for your girlfriend!” Crotty snarled. “We could make her an accessory, too!”

Anderson’s eyes at this instant filled with a contemptuous fire. He fixed Crotty with a look of what could only be construed as intense hatred.

“She’s a nervous little thing.” Crotty continued uncaring, eyeing Anderson with mutual scorn. “I went easy on her when I first talked to her but I think a little more pressure and she’d implicate herself and you, just like that?” Crotty gloated, snapping his fingers.

“Who’s the rotting piece of shit now?” Anderson hissed under his breath.

“We can make her life miserable!” Crotty warned Anderson, letting his resentment get the best of him. “Who knows, she might even get felony murder one, too! You know what a crapshoot courtrooms can be! And women’s prisons are no cakewalk, they’re even worse than men’s prisons in a lot of ways nowadays!”

It took every fiber of self-control for Anderson to not jump at Crotty, even with only one arm free.

Crotty, for his part, stood up and faced himself away from Anderson. He didn’t even want Peterson, who he knew was watching through the observation glass, to see him. Crotty looked into a corner, rubbed his brow and tried to hide the fact he was pissed at himself. He had become a threatening, ruthless inquisitor. Crotty was rule of law, anything that allowed him to do his job with a minimum of reflection. Whether something was right or wrong: that was all supposed to be worked out somewhere else. He was indifferent to moral questions.

“Please place your nose in the ass of the person directly in front of you and proceed in an orderly fashion.” Anderson uttered the strange phrase so mechanically it made Crotty turn with a real look of confusion.

“What?” Crotty asked, truly perplexed.

“Please place your nose in the ass of the person directly in front of you and proceed in an orderly fashion.” Anderson repeated the phrase using the same droning intonation.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Crotty demanded.

“It’s an image you provoke.” Anderson answered him. “It’s what comes to mind whenever I see complacency and corruption.”

“You’re going to be placing your nose in someone’s ass, my friend!” Crotty shouted, his irritation boiling over again. “It’ll be your natural position in life!”

“This interview is over.” Anderson stated succinctly.

“It’s over when I tell you it’s over!” Crotty howled, making a fist and stepping towards Anderson threateningly.

“Is that camera still on?” Anderson asked evenly while he stared directly at Crotty and pointed at an area of the ceiling across the room where a recessed lens was visible.

“It’s always been on!” Crotty spewed in reply, still seething.

“I want to invoke my right to silence now, and see about getting an attorney.” Anderson declared, speaking without a tinge of hostility and without moving a muscle in defense. “I’ve stated this desire to exercise my rights clearly and unmistakably.”

“Come on, do everybody a favor.” Crotty asked cheerfully, unclenching his fist, a picture of affability and reasonableness once again in an effort to take one last shot at eliciting a confession. “There’s a mountain of evidence against you. Admit what you did. I’ve built this case brick by brick, and now it’s a wall you can’t climb over.”

“Like you once said…” Anderson answered him calmly, looking Crotty right in the eye, unwaveringly. “…seems no matter what you build up… something always happens to knock it all down.”

Crotty stared back into the steel trap gaze of Anderson. The smile left his face.

This interview
was
over and Crotty knew it.

CHAPTER 33

         T
he electric heavy-steel security door trundled open to a flood of sunlight. The rumble of rolling metal casters never sounded so sweet as they did now to Derek Lysander’s ears. His appeal had come through. He was sprung. Conviction overturned. Stateville Penitentiary was behind him now as he smiled brashly at the guards, spun on his heels, and walked off with his parcel of belongings under his arm.

Derek had been on shaky ground from the beginning wanting to argue on appeal to have his conviction overturned based on his assertion his original attorney never informed him of the availability of the “voluntary intoxication” defense (again his attorney did inform him but Derek claimed otherwise).

However, Derek’s recently provided attorney did get the Illinois Appellate Court to overturn his conviction and remand for a new trial based on claims of “prosecutorial misconduct” and “prior ineffective assistance of counsel” when the latest attorney discovered Derek, Gabriel and Ruben’s original lawyers all failed to object during voir dire (jury selection) to the prosecution’s peremptory exclusion of the first 10 jurors who were all from lower-income backgrounds. A peremptory challenge is the objection to the seating of a proposed juror without having to give a reason for the rejection.

Indeed, Derek’s new counsel asserted that even as “the prosecutors for the State used seventeen of their twenty allowed peremptory challenges” the “defendant’s attorneys only exercised two of their twenty challenges.”

The appeals Court concurred and, while dismissing claims of “prosecutorial misconduct”, ruled “ineffective assistance does not require automatic reversal of the defendant’s conviction” but in this case “failure to make even one objection” in the face of “the State’s possible discriminatory use of its peremptory challenges” did raise questions regarding “effectiveness of counsel for the defendant, Mr. Lysander” and therefore “since the chance exists this prejudiced the defendant’s proceedings“ this court “reverses and remands for a new trial.”