Sullivan's Justice (26 page)

 

 

 

 

 

D
r. Michael Graham had been a free man for two years. He was standing on the front porch of his brother’s house in Brooklyn, having celebrated the holiday with him and his family. Elton had suggested they talk outside before his wife, Sally, made him clean up the dishes. The ground was covered in snow, the air frigid. “Women,” Elton grumbled, placing his collar up and rubbing his hands together to warm them. “Sally orders me around like I’m one of the damn kids. Shit, I’ve been in the doghouse so long, I’ve started to piss in the backyard.”

A tall, lanky man, Dr. Graham had the stooped and ashen appearance that came from sixteen years of hard labor behind prison walls. His brother was shorter, and had gained thirty pounds since the last time he had seen him. His stomach now spilled over his waistband. “I should take off, Elton,” he announced. “I have to work a graveyard shift tonight at the hospital.”

Elton looked up at the night sky. The day had been overcast and the stars weren’t visible. He lived in a row house, with a zero lot line. Seeing his neighbor backing out of his driveway, he yelled to him, “Yo, Jimmy, I got some great snow tires for you. Stop by the store on your lunch hour next week. I’ll sell them to you at cost.”

“Things are hectic at work, Elton,” the neighbor said. “I’ll catch you later.”

When he drove off, Elton turned back to his brother. “Guy’s an asshole,” he said. “Thinks he’s a major executive ’cause he got promoted to assistant manager at the bank. They got kids fresh out of school working the same job. It’s better than mine, though. I hate selling stupid tires.”

Dr. Graham asked, “Isn’t there any way you can get another teaching job?”

“I’m a convicted sex offender, Mike. My teaching career is history. After all these years, I still can’t get over what happened to our family. You were my hero. I remember the day you graduated from medical school. Mom was so proud. I’m glad she didn’t live to see you go to prison. It would have broken her heart. Of course she would have disowned me. You were always her favorite. Teaching didn’t pay much, but at least I got a little respect from my students. And it was all because of that lying little bitch. I bet you wish she’d never been born.”

“She’s my daughter, Elton,” Michael told him, his voice laced with intensity. “Besides, I’m the one who was negligent. I kept a loaded rifle where my children could find it. Jessica was only nine. The state didn’t punish an innocent person. I’m guilty, don’t you understand? I told her I was to blame. That’s why she told the police I shot Phillipa and Jeremy.”

“That’s not my situation,” Elton insisted. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve never forced a woman to have sex with me, let alone a kid. Anyway, it’s an icebox out here. We can talk in the basement. It’s the only place I have any privacy outside of the bathroom. I’ve got something I think you should see.”

“We need bread and milk,” Sally called out when the two men entered the kitchen. “You’ll have to go to the market. And don’t think you can shirk your chores, Elton. I work, too, you know. Tomorrow night, you’re cooking dinner.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” her husband said. “I’ll stop at the store later.” He removed his key ring from his belt, unlocking the door leading to the basement. Reaching in, he flipped on the light switch, then began descending the steep steps.

The damp, musky odor of the basement reminded Dr. Graham of the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility in Staten Island, where he’d been incarcerated. Two tattered brown vinyl recliners were positioned around a paint-splattered oak desk.

“Sit,” Elton said, turning on a portable space heater. He collected some papers from a drawer in the desk.

“What’s this?” he joked, picking up a homemade wooden paddle from the bookcase with three holes in it. “Some of your teaching tools.”

“Not anymore,” his brother said. “I gather you haven’t been following the news lately.”

“I don’t have a television and I seldom read the paper,” Dr. Graham told him, taking a seat in the other recliner and placing the paddle on top of a box his brother was using as an end table. “I guess I lost interest in what was going on outside while I was in prison. I’ve also been working a lot of overtime. Manhattan rents are exorbitant. I have to pull down extra shifts, or I’ll have to move out of the city.”

“Why? You’ve got money tucked aside.”

Dr. Graham said, “I need that money for my future.” He stared down at his hands. Having once been a skilled surgeon, he was now a sad middle-aged man who had to empty bedpans just so he could work inside a hospital. Prison changed a person forever, sometimes even took away the will to live. He had longed for the day he would be released, but for the past two years, he had been lost, finding it hard to cope with the pressures of the outside world. His left thumb had been mangled in the pressing machine while he was working in the prison laundry. Elton didn’t know, as he had stopped coming to visit him, even though Staten Island was not that far away. He had learned to keep his deformity hidden, probably more for himself than others. His fingers had once been long and dexterous, the perfect tools for a surgeon. His brother wouldn’t notice. Elton was a self-possessed man who hardly ever looked at him.

“If I ever get my medical license back, it will cost a fortune to open up my own practice,” Dr. Graham continued. “Another doctor won’t take me in, not with my background. And I may have to go back to med school. It’s been eighteen years since I practiced medicine, Elton. I tried to stay up on things by reading medical journals while I was in prison. Medicine has leaped forward in almost every area. I’ll never be able to operate again. That doesn’t matter, though. I’d be happy if I could set up a general practice.”

After his conviction for the murders of his wife and son, Dr. Graham’s license to practice medicine in the state of New York had been revoked. As soon as he was released on parole, he had filed a petition to be reinstated. The seriousness of the crimes made his chances of practicing medicine practically nonexistent. Since he had some money of his own stockpiled before the death of his wife and son, he had wanted to study full-time after his release, maybe try to get back into medical school. His parole officer put a halt to his plans. Regardless of his financial situation, the terms of his parole made it mandatory that he maintain full-time employment.

Even a skilled physician had trouble getting a job after spending time in prison. It was the crime itself, however, that caused the doors to slam shut in his face. Not many businesses were willing to hire a murderer, even at minimum wage.

He had finally called in one of his markers. Thelma Carrillo was now head of the personnel department at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Manhattan. Her ten-year-old son had needed a heart transplant shortly after she’d been hired as an admitting clerk. Dr. Graham had waived his fee. From then on, she wrote to him two or three times a year, thanking him for saving her son’s life and keeping him up to date on the boy’s progress. She had been saddened to learn the doctor was in prison, but she continued to correspond with him.

“This job is beneath you, Dr. Graham,” Thelma had said. “Are you sure you can handle it? You’ll be sweeping floors and emptying bedpans.”

“I swept floors when I was in prison,” he’d answered. “Believe me, being in prison is about as humiliating as it gets.” He surfaced from his thoughts when he heard his brother speaking.

“Your kid is up to her ears in shit again,” Elton said, handing him several newspaper clippings. “Sally made me promise not to tell you. I decided you should know. Maybe this time, they’ll throw Jessica’s ass in prison. Fitting payback, don’t you think?”

Dr. Graham stared at the photograph in the newspaper, then quickly scanned the text. “This isn’t Jessica. I know this girl. Melody Asher grew up in Tuxedo Park. Phillipa and I were friends with her parents. Melody used to come over to the house to play with Jessica.”

“Oh, that’s Jessica all right,” Elton said, stretching out in the other recliner. “I’ve been following her for years. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own daughter?”

Graham read through the other articles. One had two pictures of the murdered women, Laurel Goodwin and Suzanne Porter, then a close-up shot of the woman they identified as Melody Asher. He pulled the paper to his face, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. His daughter had been a redhead, and the Asher woman was blond, but now that he could see the image more clearly, he was certain it was Jessica. She had her mother’s chin and high cheekbones, along with her small nose. But it was her eyes that were unmistakable. He dropped the newspaper articles in his lap, appalled that his daughter was involved in these terrible crimes. “You’re right,” he said, “it’s Jessica. She must be living in Los Angeles. That’s why I haven’t been able to find her. The papers don’t say anything about her being a suspect. She was dating the man who owned the house where the second woman was killed, that’s all. You have to let go of this anger you feel toward Jessica. I learned that in prison. It does nothing to the people you hate. All it does is make you miserable.”

“Let me tell you something,” Elton said, a biting tone to his voice. “I’ve been tracking her since she concocted that story about me having sex with her. She married some fruity-looking dress designer around ten years ago. She was already a model. Her pictures were plastered all over the place. I was afraid if I told you I was keeping tabs on her, you might think it was for some kind of sick reason. I mean, I wasn’t entirely certain where you stood during my trial. You said you believed me when I told you Jessica was lying, but she was your kid.”

No wonder Elton had stopped coming to see him. “I tried to stand behind you,” Dr. Graham told him. “I was in prison. There was nothing I could do. Jessica never answered any of my letters. And you never brought her to see me.”

“Hey,” his brother said, defensive. “The little shit didn’t want to go. What was I supposed to do? I tried to give her a decent home. I have no idea why she told her teacher those lies about me. My shrink said she probably did it to get attention. You know, because everyone made such a fuss over her at your trial. She was also jealous of Dusty and Luke. The boys tried to win her over, but they could never replace Jeremy.”

Graham’s eyes moistened. Jessica and Jeremy had been inseparable.

“Not long after she married this Rees Jones,” Elton said, “I read an article that said the guy croaked. They called it a suicide. Maybe she killed him and got away with it. The police say the two women in LA were injected with some type of poison concoction. When Jessica moved in with us after you got shipped to prison, she made us buy her a toy doctor kit. She complained because the needles weren’t sharp. She said you taught her how to give shots using an orange.”

Dr. Graham remembered how eager Jessica had been to learn. She wanted to be a doctor like him, and pestered him to teach her. He had been certain she would become a surgeon. “I have to find her,” he said. “If I can get Jessica to recant her testimony in front of the medical board, I may be able to get my license reinstated. Do you know where she’s living? Los Angeles is a big city. I’m sure she isn’t in the phone book.”

“Call the cops,” Elton told him. “I lost track of her years back. I guarantee the police know how to find her.” He stood and picked up the newspaper articles, walking over to the desk and slipping on his reading glasses. “Here it is, Mike. Call the Ventura police and ask for Detective Hank Sawyer. Tell him you have important information about these murders. Oh, and what happened to the real Melody Asher, huh? Your girl is not only a liar, she may be a murderer. She’s your flesh and blood. Are you going to let her keep killing people, or are you going to stop her?”

An hour later, Dr. Graham was on the subway headed back to Manhattan, still reeling from the conversation with his brother. He found it ironic that Jessica would use the name of her childhood playmate, Melody Asher. She’d always been intensely jealous of Melody. Her brother, Jeremy, had told him that she named one of her dolls after Melody, then threw it around in her room and stomped on it. Back then, a nine-year-old girl with a voodoo doll was good for a few laughs at the dinner table. But Jessica had always been a problem. She’d been a manipulative, demanding child. The only person she had ever gotten along with was her brother.

Memories from the past flooded his mind. He blocked out the people around him, the sound of the track, the people talking, returning to the awful night eighteen years ago.

People who knew the truth would call it an accident, but they were wrong. The circumstances were always similar, yet no one ever learned. The worst part was that it wasn’t a problem without a solution. Most people read articles in the newspaper and promptly forgot them. They only understood when it happened to them. And it would happen. Almost every hour of the day, irresponsible people caused the deaths of their children and loved ones.

He could never forget. Jeremy would not allow him to forget. As in Charles Dickens’s Christmas novel, the ghost of his dead son paid him a visit every holiday season. He stared out the window into the darkness, seeing his nine-year-old daughter standing in the doorway with his rifle in her hands. Jeremy was leaning over his wife, Phillipa. He tried to take the gun away from Jessica, but it was too late.

 

 

“Oh, my God!” Dr. Graham cried, rolling Jeremy’s body off his wife. The boy had been kissing her good night. The bullet had passed through his body and lodged in her forehead. “Push the red emergency button on the phone. Hurry, Jessica! Do it now!”

Dr. Graham knew he couldn’t administer CPR to two people at the same time. Due to the amount of alcohol and tranquilizers Phillipa had ingested, she’d been semicomatose when the bullet had burrowed its way into her brain. Now she was in cardiac arrest. The chances that she could survive such a massive head wound in her condition were minuscule.