Miscarriage Of Justice (27 page)

Then another thought occurred to him, why not use the hoard of contractors he’d scheduled to his advantage? They were stopping at Mariana’s house on a daily basis and by now she was, no doubt, quite used to them knocking. He would be just another one—the last one.

He’d been a contractor and knew how to play the role. With the right clothes and a few simple accessories, a clipboard and pen, he could easily pull it off. Mariana would be caught off guard, giving him all the edge he needed. By the time she figured it out, it’d be too late. Then, he could finally force a confession out of her.

Coerced confessions or disclosures under duress may not be admissible in court, but he wasn’t so particular. For him, any admission of guilt would do.

From the get-go, he’d sworn he would have no personal encounters, no contact with the woman. Everything was to be done in a disconnected manner, from a distance. But, things had changed. Now, he was looking forward to the face-to-face meeting.

Anxious to get the preparations underway, he made a quick trip to the mall. His list was short; a work shirt, boots, a clipboard and a couple of tools to hang on his belt, just for that authentic look. Finished in less than an hour, he left the shopping center, and stopped at what had become his new favorite cafe,
The Onion Patch
. Seated at the corner table, he ordered his usual dinner.

“Don’t you ever eat at home?” the waitress asked.

Laughing, Ethan shook his head. “Not for quite a while now.” Not since going to prison, he thought, which had indeed been quite a long while. More than six months had passed now since the day he made the ride in the white transport van from Granite Hills to Fulton, and he had yet to cook a single meal. He hadn’t even bought groceries. The necessary chore of eating was much more easily accomplished if the actual work was left to someone else. All the shopping, the chopping, cutting, cooking, and of course, the cleaning, were so time consuming.

Some would snidely suggest this attitude was a sign of laziness, but Ethan chose to think of it as being more productive. More important tasks waited and he couldn’t be wasting time on such frivolous matters. That’s what money was invented for, to pay someone else to do the work.

Of course, there was the distinct possibility of running out of money, which always threatened to rear its ugly head. Gloomily, he knew his free ride would soon come to an end.

As his food arrived, Ethan was again mulling over the details of his new plan. If he could squeeze a confession out of Mariana, coerced or not, he’d be happy. And he could gladly forget about her. Just put the whole thing behind him, for good! Get a job, earn a modest living and live out the rest of his days in contentment. Maybe with Lacy by his side. He hadn’t seen her for months now but he still was hung up on her, something in her eyes, or her smile. Whatever it was, he couldn’t keep her out of his mind.

His fantasy of a life of ease all seemed like a lofty ambition, a valiant goal, and one that sounded vaguely familiar. A life he’d dreamed of and had tried to acquire once before, long ago, in what now seemed like a distant world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mariana had stayed in town at a no-name motel, not even calling her friend. On Friday morning, she reported to work as if nothing were wrong. Though she couldn’t avoid the talk of Arimante’s arrest, she limited her involvement as much as possible, remaining in her private office. Resisting the urge to make a hasty departure and hightail it to Jessi’s house, she determinedly remained firmly ensconced behind her desk.

As the morning progressed, she half expected the FBI, or agents from any other of the various federal law enforcement departments, to come calling at any moment. By mid-afternoon though, the anxiety had started to fade, Frankie had now been in custody for a day and a half, giving him ample time to spill his guts, if he were so inclined. As far as she knew, he hadn’t. Maybe he knew she’d had nothing to do with his arrest after all. Not usually the superstitious type, she crossed her fingers anyway, just for luck.

Staying at the office until well past her usual time, the D.A. tried to concentrate on her upcoming case, but her mind kept drifting back to the current problems, namely a quickly decaying body in her shed, and as always, Ethan. With Frankie Arimante out of the picture, Ethan was still free to conduct whatever mayhem he came up with to antagonize her. On the other hand, Frankie being in jail removed one of the major compelling arguments in favor of confessing her misdeeds and offering her resignation. She made a mental note to call Jessi later that night.

Long after everyone else had gone home, Mariana turned out the lights, locked the door and wearily walked to her car, still wrestling with herself over what to do. Taking time to fill her Corvette with high-octane gasoline and then do some long-overdue grocery shopping, she didn’t reach home well until after eight o’clock. Again, as every day lately, she found several notes taped to the door.

“More junk,” she said through clinched teeth. She was growing tired of this. Two weeks now she’d spent turning away dozens of the middle-aged, overweight guys, explaining she hadn’t called, hadn’t set up any “consultations,” and didn’t want, or need, any plumbing, electrical, or carpentry work done. She’d never realized that many businesses were in Cedar Springs.

Without bothering to check the shed, knowing the body would still be there and not wanting to see or smell it, Mariana wearily pushed through the door and then tossed the notes into the trash. Ethan was a lunatic. A dangerous and twisted, evil lunatic. At one time, she allowed, he’d been an innocent victim, but now he was decidedly guilty—a full-fledged criminal. Indisputable proof that he was a murderer was currently creating a horrible odor in her shed. The man belonged behind bars!

She cringed, knowing he was probably relaxing somewhere, laughing at her inability and her unwillingness to get to him. While that assessment may be true as far as the law was concerned, and though her attempt at hiring a hit man had failed, she still planned to do something about him. Just what, she wasn’t exactly sure. But continuing to sit idly by while he slowly drove her crazy, or eventually killed her, wasn’t an option.

She hadn’t thought Ethan was capable of actually harming her, and she hadn’t perceived herself to be in any real danger until the day she’d peered into the shed. That had been her defining moment. The moment of truth.

Eating a supper of soup and a tossed salad, her mind turned a bit more evil. So, the deal with Frankie hadn’t quite panned out, she smiled deviously, that didn’t mean she was left out in the cold. Slamming her fork down roughly, she said, “I’ll just kill him myself.”

Shocked by her sudden uncharacteristic outburst, she frowned. She’d threatened to do that before, but never had acted on it. Sort of like her continual threats concerning the neighbor’s cat, which still prowled through her yard day and night. This time though, the words came out so adamantly, so forcibly, that it almost scared her. She was equally surprised that she hadn’t immediately dismissed the possibility. Was she ready to go down that road? So far, she’d managed to hold on to some piece of her sanity. Or had she? Jumping at every sound, seeing things in the shadows, unable to sleep, frequently feeling scared, alone and vulnerable in her own home; none of these were exactly a shining example of a sane person. And constantly looking over her shoulder and tensing up every time the phone rang didn’t really say much for her mental health either.

“Doesn’t sound like sound-minded person to me,” she said aloud. “And here I am talking to myself again. And considering murder!” She shrugged and then rationalizing her way out of the guilt, continued talking to herself. “I can’t go on like this. It’s me or him. And him definitely sounds better than me.”

The self-preservation instinct inherent in humans is just as strong as with any other species. Maybe more so, though the trait isn’t usually revealed until a person faces a dire and severe situation. When it does surface, most people have a stronger character of ethics governing their behavior, which prevents them from acting immorally or illegally.

For Mariana, it wasn’t a matter of ethics—she had none. With her, the question was one thing only, the likelihood of getting away with it. That’s what presented her unique dilemma.

Being a prosecuting attorney, she was reasonably sure she could avoid the usual pitfalls and problem areas; the common mistakes made by the average criminal. That wouldn’t be too difficult. Instinctively, she also knew certain things are virtually impossible to hide. There is no perfect crime. Every nefarious act leaves a trail behind with many traces of evidence—DNA, fingerprints, and a litany of other clues. Through careful observation, cunning skill and a meticulous attention to detail, investigators were quite capable and remarkably proficient at re-creating crime scenes and solving unexplained events. Usually, it took only one key piece of information to unravel a mystery. Still, with a little forethought, Mariana believed she could drastically reduce the odds of being caught.

Then, recalling a lecture by one of her law school professors, Mr. Thomlin, she winced. He’d said the reason there is no perfect crime was simple. First of all, the perpetrator cannot physically be in more than one place at any given time. So, already they have an alibi problem. Secondly, by definition, a crime will disrupt the normal flow and natural order of things. For instance, a murder victim doesn’t continue to go to work, attend school, stop at their favorite coffee shop or do any of the literally hundreds of other things which make up their daily routine. Humans are creatures of habit and therein lies the next problem. Regardless of how stupid or ignorant we may think the average person to be, eventually, someone will notice when another person is missing.

The same goes for a kidnapped child. The concept is present in every crime. With a robbery, the property is no longer where it is supposed to be, and so on. The details are different but the pattern is the same. Sometimes the clues are rather obvious, other times the evidence must be carefully scrutinized, examined and interpreted, but always something will be out of sync. The very fact that a crime has been committed dictates there will be evidence.

Professor Thomlin had then offered a caveat to his previous statements. “The exception to the rule would be someone like, say a vagrant; a bum. Someone who wanders aimlessly from town to town. A person with no home, no family, no friends, no job and no schedule to keep. In effect, one who has no purpose in life and no structure, a person who has no impact whatsoever on society, or their surroundings. Such a person is unlikely to be missed. However,” the professor stressed, “this is merely one small facet of an investigation because, even then there would still be the difficult problem of physical evidence, such as blood, DNA, disposal of the body and possible witnesses to any of the activity.

But let’s face it,” he said, “that type of person is not usually the victim of a murder, or any kind of a crime. There simply would be no motive. No one would stand to benefit by killing or robbing such an individual. Incidentally, that is one of the key indicators an investigator must consider, who benefits. Answer that and you’ll usually have a good list of likely suspects.”

Mariana, seeing the many similarities between her professor’s hypothetical vagrant and her own nemesis, Ethan Rafferty, allowed her conniving mind to shift into high gear. Who would miss Ethan if suddenly he were gone? He had no family, at least none nearby, no job as far as she knew, and no friends. He was just an ex-con, that no one knew existed. A vagrant!

Fixated on her own interpretation of the lecture, Mariana dismissed the rest of the Professor’s comments. Ethan was about to become her own private study in criminology.

The key would be to lure him in. That shouldn’t prove too difficult given his unnatural obsession with her. But first, she needed to lay a trap. Of course, she could always just strangle him to death as he walked in the door. That would probably give her an intense satisfaction, and immense pleasure, not to mention a great relief, but she wanted him to know what was happening, and who it was squeezing the life from his worthless body. She wanted to see to the despair in his eyes and hear him beg for his life. After all the despicable things he’d done to her, to simply kill him was too good for the man.

There still remained the most difficult part of her plot; getting rid of the body. She already had one rotting corpse to deal with; God knows she didn’t need two of them decomposing in the shed. But she, better than anyone, knew the problems associated with that sort of endeavor. That’s why the first corpse was still lying outside. It was a very real problem but she wasn’t going near it. The gruesome sight with its repugnant odor was sickening. One encounter had been more than enough. She wasn’t sure how long it would take before the body dried up to just bones, but evidently; she was going to find out.

Maybe she could dump Ethan’s body in the other shed and just wait for nature to do its thing, she thought. Immediately, she knew that wasn’t a real possibility, just as she couldn’t leave the other body there indefinitely. Eventually, someone would discover it, either due to the smell, or purely by accident. She was going to have to think of something better than that, but so far, any real solution had eluded her.

Ethan was considerably smaller than the guy in the shed, but he still weighed too much for her to lug around. Even if she did somehow manage to move the bodies, where would she take them? Dead bodies tend to resurface in water and burying them in the open countryside was out of the question. Shallow graves notoriously attracted all sorts of animals, not to mention leaving telltale signs of the ground having been disturbed. She wasn’t about to bury them on her property; that would just be begging for trouble.

Neither did she dare dispose of the bodies in the garbage, not even one of the big dumpsters at construction sites. Due to a case a couple of years ago, she understood that modern waste systems were down to a science. Despite receiving several tons of garbage each day, landfill management knew precisely what was coming in on each truck, or boxcar, and knew exactly where every load was buried. She’d heard rumors of one place, which had located a woman’s wedding ring more than two months after it had been “lost.” Some big-time senator’s wife or something. So, the garbage was definitely out.