The defense attorney has an interesting way of starting conversations. Erin gave me the skinny on her. Stillman picked the best from the city. She was a former federal prosecutor before hanging out her own shingle as a criminal defense attorney handing big cases.
“Mrs. Strong, that FBI agent you worked with last year in New Haven said I should listen to you. She has quite the track record.”
I am blushing as my cheeks tingle like the time I spent too much time on a sunny day pulling weeds in my garden. “You are no slouch either, Attorney Rosenthal.”
“Call me Diane.”
I return the courtesy. “Gwen.”
“Well, Gwen, we have everything set for tonight. Mr. Spencer belongs to two excellent international private investigator associations and started the ball rolling last night to get the experts and the equipment here today.”
Diane Rosenthal is a visual person, I note from the metaphors she uses. I say, “It is better that we act out the timeline tonight and you’ll see where I am coming from. Not only will you be able to create reasonable doubt, but I will have a viable alternate suspect for you.”
Poor Ken had to sit through a dinner with his two favorite women yakking about their own true crime investigation last night. Erin gave me talking points on how to engage with a criminal defense attorney.
Both the attorney and her investigator sit up when I say, “As I point things out to you, Mr. Spencer can preserve the evidence and properly notate the chain of custody.”
“Are you sure you have not done this before, Gwen?” Diane asks me.
“Positive. You only got this case yesterday. I’ve been working on it for over a week.” I recount for her where I’ve been and who I’ve talked to, then give her a summation of my observations and conversations.
Both of them keep their heads down as they write furiously, Diane on a legal pad and Spencer in a detective’s notebook. The only sound is my voice and the flipping of pages. I talk for over an hour and end with, “There are advantages to working and living in a small town. I taught kindergarten to most of the kids involved and watched them grow up.” I hold off on telling who I think killed Jake and Brian. I want the evidence tonight to speak for itself.
Diane looks at her investigator and says, “When was the last time you heard such an excellent, non-biased recollection of the facts of an investigation?”
“Would you like to come work for me, Mrs. Strong?” Bill Spencer says. Silver-haired with an average build and a face you wouldn’t take notice of in a crowd, he has his own reputation as a teacher of investigative interviewing. His website carries links to headlines about murder acquittals and wrongful conviction exonerations. A heavy hitter and Rosenthal’s primary investigator, he’s a believer now too.
They take their time clarifying points with me. Bill concentrates on who else to talk to and what to ask them, while Diane wonders how all this would be presented in court. Both stare at the timelines on the wall in my office. Ken had lugged up a couple of dining room chairs for them to sit on and TV trays to set their briefcases on. Everyone has hot coffee to drink. Both snap pictures of the timelines with their phones.
“Now it’s our turn to tell you what we know,” Diane says.
Bill begins with, “Jason purchased the handgun at a gun show in Alabama last year. He says he gave it to Jake as a gift for the work they were doing on the Mustangs in the spring. He gave Brian one, too. Both were legally purchased. He has a concealed carry permit, but only transported them in the boxes they came in. His fingerprints and DNA are on the bullets, ammo clip, and the grip of the gun.”
“We do not contest Jason owning the guns,” Diane says.
“I think Sharon McGrath will vouch for seeing one in Jake’s bedroom dresser long before his death. I don’t know where Brian might have kept his,” I reply.
“Next is the Mustang.” Bill opens his notebook, flips back some pages, and says, “Since there was one there still being worked on at the shop, it was easy for the police to trace it back to its previous owner by the VIN number. He said that Jason contacted him to see if he would sell it as is. Jason offered him quite a sum of money, and they made a deal.”
“I am not sure if the body shop kept records of the Stillman vehicles, since they paid in cash,” I opine.
“We don’t think so,” Diane tells me.
“Jason had a car carrier come pick up the wreck, and the driver paid the owner in cash. They took possession of the title with the seller’s signature and delivered the wreck to J&B’s Auto Body,” Bill says.
Diane closes the loop on the red pony. “Technically, Jason is not supposed to sell the vehicle to a buyer on an open title. He is supposed to be the buyer and then becomes the next seller. He was allegedly avoiding paying sales tax on the resale. It’s a misdemeanor in this state.”
Diane and Bill look at each other, and Bill says, “They weren’t dealing in stolen cars. That was just plain BS.”
“But on the other hand, what he paid for the cars and what he then paid to fix them up didn’t always get covered by what he sold them for,” I prod.
“Right. He made enough on some to cover some of the losses on the others,” Diane tells me.
I am sure there is more to where those cars went, but it doesn’t sound like the police will locate them. “Were the police able to find the records on all the buys and sales when they raided the compound?” I ask.
“Jason kept no records, I am told,” Diane says.
“So, the police only know about the one car, but they know that Jake and Brian fixed quite a few Mustangs for the Stillmans from word around town, and what Candace probably told them.”
“That’s about right, Mrs. Strong,” Bill says.
“And they have no alibi for the night that Jake died except they were watching a Rambo movie at home at the time in question,” I say.
“That’s true,” Diane says.
“Are they saying that Jason’s truck at the auto body shop just before Brian died puts Jason at the crime scene?”
Both nod.
“But what about the black older model Honda Accord?”
“They can’t identify the driver. We are told it was not at the scene for very long and that possibly the driver didn’t go looking for Brian and assumed that he went out for a coffee break.”
“Twelve minutes is an awfully long time to hang around an empty body shop. That’s weak.”
“We agree,” she says.
“Did Simon give you footage from the ATM across the street?”
Diane wiggles a disc at me.
I look at my timeline. “Jason’s truck was there for less time than the Accord.”
“You are correct.”
“But Jason has the time to kill Brian after Brian is seen moving cars on the lot, and Brian is not spotted by the driver of the Accord who spends more time on the site? That makes little sense. Unless…” I pause.
“Unless what?” Diane asks.
“They want him for something else,” I say.
“The murders give them probable cause to search and to look into their other dealings,” Bill says.
“That’s why if we can knock out the State’s case at the probable cause hearing, they would be hard-pressed to keep investigating my client.”
“And vis-à-vis, his twin brother.”
“Exactly,” Diane replied.
To be safe, I call and get permission from Mabel to visit the cabin tonight. Wouldn’t want to have old Mr. Chalmers calling the cops on me. My head is buzzing with the possibilities. If everything lines up as I hypothesize, I will chat with the person I think killed Jake and Brian the following morning. The lawyer and the private investigator leave me to my thoughts. They have to finish putting the props together for tonight’s show and tell.
My phone rings. I recognize the number.
“Hi, Dad. What’s up?”
“Are you sitting down, Gwen?”
My heart rate shoots to the moon. “Is everything okay?” I try to think what could be wrong with my father or stepmother. They are in great health.
“Yes, we are fine. I didn’t want to alarm you, but I received a Facebook message from a woman claiming to be your half-sister. Actually, she said she was Eleanor’s daughter and asked me if I was acquainted with Eleanor when she was a nurse in England in the Sixties and Seventies. I said I was, and she asked if she could FaceTime with me. I had one of the people here talk me through that. It is amazing how that technology works. We can do that with the great grandkids, you know. Anyway, she and I talked for about an hour. I gave her your name, and she probably made a Facebook friend request with you already.”
“What did she have to say?”
“She didn’t know about us until yesterday, when her mother told her.”
“I see.” My mind is reeling. I have more family that I didn’t know about. I honestly never got past my mother ‘abandoning’ me to think about what her life was like after she bailed on my father and me. Since my self-reckoning, I still needed to constantly forgive her for what she had done. I hadn’t gotten any further in that process. My meditation and yoga time got taken up by the Milford murders.
“There are some things better heard from her than repeated by me. Just keep in mind, she was just as surprised to learn about us as we were about her,” he tells me.
I hang up, then check Facebook, and sure enough, I see the friend request. We don’t look the same. She is younger, shorter, darker, and heavier than me, but I see she smiles in almost all her photos. Try as I might, I can’t find any photos of my mother on her feed. My heart rate is still thumping in my temples, and I respond affirmatively. She replies quickly and asks to FaceTime too, then my phone alerts me to the incoming call.
“Gwendolyn, that is a pretty name,” she starts. Her accent is noticeable, and it’ll take time to get used to.
“Hello Brenda, how are you?”