Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller (17 page)

Based on my notes:

In county vehicle #7, until we reached the turnoff from state Route 133 through Main Street in the town of Carbondale, and from there via Catherine Store Road to Route 82 heading eastward to Aspen, the conversation between myself, Beatrice Henderson, and Scott Henderson was of a general nature. We discussed matters such as the weather, the proposal to increase the acreage at Snowmass by enlarging the skiable terrain at Burnt Mountain, and then the matter of whether or not it was feasible to widen Route 82 into a four-lane highway leading into Aspen in order to accommodate the increasing traffic flow in the valley. Mr. Henderson told me he was against four-laning, that it ruined the environment, and he was in favor of the proposal to install a railroad line along the old bed of the Rio Grande Railroad.

When I asked Mrs. Henderson for her opinion on these matters, she told me she had not been listening to our conversation. She stated, “I’m feeling terrible today. Not well. I guess I have other things on my mind.”

I asked her what it was she had on her mind.

(Note: Beatrice Henderson, at the time, occupied the front passenger’s seat in county vehicle #7, and Scott Henderson occupied the back of the vehicle by himself. Before beginning the journey I had offered Mr. Henderson the front seat, because he is a very tall gentleman, but he stated to me at the time, “No, actually I prefer the backseat, because I can stretch out there more comfortably. You never can get these front seats to run back far enough for me to stretch out. In my own Jeep I have the seat track unbolted and moved back four inches so I can slide the seat way back and be really comfortable. That little operation turns my Jeep into a luxury car.”)

In response to my question as to what she had on her mind, Beatrice Henderson stated, “I keep thinking of poor Susie and Henry. How they always wanted to go to that island near Hawaii, and they never got the chance.”

I said, “Susie and Henry? Do you by any chance mean Susan and Henry
Lovell?”
(Note: These are considered the probable identities for the victims currently known as Jane Doe and John Doe.)

At the same time, in the backseat of the vehicle, Mr. Henderson loudly uttered his wife’s name. (He said, “Bibsy!” which I am told is Beatrice Henderson’s nickname.) He seemed to be cautioning his wife not to say any more of what she was saying to me.

But Mrs. Henderson nodded in an affirmative manner to my question and stated to me, “Maybe that’s where they were going. We never found out. We never even asked them.”

Mr. Henderson sat up and said loudly, “Bibsy, shut up!” I could see him clearly in the rearview mirror. His tone was forceful and his facial expression was one of anger.

I said, “Mrs. Henderson, if you want to talk to me about it, you certainly can. But I must explain to you that if you make any kind of admissions to me, they could be used against you.”

She said, “Oh, I know I’m not supposed to talk about it. But what does it matter now? Susie and Henry are gone, and I don’t have much time left either.”

She turned to her husband in the backseat, who was still trying to quiet her down. She stated to him, “You don’t either, Scott. I hate to lie. I just hate it. It’s a sin. God may forgive all of us for what we did up there at Pearl Pass but I don’t think he’ll forgive us for lying about it now. I can’t lie. I won’t lie to the police. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. Neither did you. We just have to have the courage of our convictions.”

Mr. Henderson said, “Bibsy, you’re not well. You’re under a strain. You’re ranting.” He said to me, “Deputy O’Hare, you’re taking advantage of my wife’s physical condition. She suffers from an ailment that makes her hallucinate out loud. Please stop interrogating her. I insist on it. I also insist you disregard what she said to you.”

I said, “I’m not interrogating her, sir. She made her recent remarks freely and without any coercion on my part, and this is not a custodial interrogation. You’re a lawyer. You know I can’t disregard anything.”

Mr. Henderson began talking to his wife forcefully in a language other than English, but a few of the words, which I do not recall, were recognizable to me, and seemed like some sort of slang in the English language. I believe in Springhill, in Gunnison County, where the Hendersons are from, the local people call it Springling. But I did not understand the meaning of what he said to her.

After that Mrs. Henderson declined to talk to me further. She closed her eyes and either slept or pretended to sleep until we reached the Sheriff’s Office on Main Street, Aspen, where I parked by the side entrance.

We entered the basement office in the courthouse building, wherein I placed Mr. and Mrs. Henderson in the custody of Deputies Hermine Fuld and Jerrod Pentz for the purpose of fingerprinting. I retired to an office down the hall and there at my desk made handwritten notes of the prior conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Henderson.

Later in the day, referring to these notes, I reported the conversation orally to Sheriff Gamble. He instructed me to transfer my notes verbatim to a file in the computer, plus anything else I could remember. I did so.

It is from those typed notes that I have completed this report.

Subscribed to and sworn on this 5th day of December 1994,

Queenie Anne O’Hare

Deputy Sheriff

Pitkin County, Colorado

Chapter 15
Judge Florian’s Domain

OUTSIDE THE PITKIN County Courthouse, under a cold gray sky like an immense dome of steel, Dennis said, “I never should have let her go without me.”

“You couldn’t foresee it,” Sophie said.

“That’s no excuse.”

“It’s done, Dennis.”

He had returned home to Springhill and handed Queenie O’Hare’s report to Bibsy. His mother-in-law had scanned it, sighed, and said, “It’s true that I said those things. Perhaps not those exact words, but something like them. And it’s true that Scott was a little harsh when he told me to be quiet—when I think about it now, I don’t blame him. But I will tell you just one thing. I’ve thought a great deal about it, and I truly believe it’s the only thing you need to know in order to act properly as my lawyer. And that thing is this: I did not murder those two people. I didn’t assist them in suicide. I did not inject them with anything. I want you to believe me, Dennis. Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” Dennis said uneasily.

But belief in innocence did not rise to the level of religious faith. You could have it one moment, and it could be gone the next. If Bibsy were innocent, how to account for what she had said to Queenie O’Hare? And why had Edward Brophy lied? Dennis had difficulty accepting the dentist’s simple explanation of wanting to help his old friends. The whole matter of the false burial was ugly The empty graves in the cemetery were not proof that the victims at Pearl Pass were Henry and Susan Lovell. But proof was one thing, knowledge another.

If it was euthanasia, why carry it out thirty miles away and well above 12,000 feet? Stricken with a fatal illness, the Lovells might have said, “We want to die in the wilderness we love.” But there was plenty of wilderness only a few miles away from their home. And why the arrow through the heart of their dog? Had the killers wanted to approach silently? Or was the death of the dog a mischance unrelated to the deaths of Jane and John Doe?

Dennis wondered about all this.

“But do you believe my mother?” Sophie asked him, standing outside the courthouse.

“Her fingerprints were on the pillbox. Your father’s fingerprints were on the Remington rifle found near the graves. There has to be a theory for a rational defense. I haven’t come up with one.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

He stamped his foot on the pavement. “Sophie, what do you expect me to believe? I
want
to believe her. It’s not easy.”

Sophie measured him carefully. “Nevertheless, you’re going in that courtroom to win this case for her.”

“There’s no case yet to win or lose. There’s just an accusation.”

“You’ve got to believe in her!”

The force of Sophie’s cry startled him. “Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll do all that’s humanly possible to get her and your father out of this mess. Guilty or innocent makes no difference. I’m her lawyer. I let her down by abandoning her the day she came down here for fingerprinting. I had a lot on my mind. I had other things to do, but I made the wrong decision. I owe her. If there’s a case to win, I’m prepared to go all the way to win it. For her, Sophie—and for you.”

Judge Curtis Florian gazed down from his leather chair behind the high oak bench. On the wall over his head in Pitkin County’s only courtroom was affixed the blue-and-gold seal of the state of Colorado. Next to the seal hung an electric wall fan that the judge’s court clerk would switch on two or three times each summer. It never grew seriously hot in Aspen, and even when the temperature soared into the eighties there was barely any humidity. But it was January now. The temperature on Main Street was twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

The spaciousness of the high-ceilinged courtroom added to the atmosphere and presumption of authority. The judge’s domed forehead shone brightly under the fluorescent lighting. Judge Florian was a man well into his sixties, with sagging ears and narrow cold eyes. His downturned mouth gave rise to the notion that justice might be bad-tempered. For a while he gazed down in silence at the three lawyers standing in the well of the courtroom.

Ray Bond, powerful arms akimbo, pink face seemingly about to burst like a party balloon, represented the state. He was the deputy district attorney in the Ninth Judicial District and the prosecutor. Dennis Conway, the new boy on the block, was one of the two defense lawyers. The other defense lawyer, Scott Henderson, had double billing: he was one of the two defendants.

Sophie and Edward Brophy were squeezed together in a rear pew of the courthouse.

The judge’s thin chest rattled audibly. He didn’t like it when a defendant insisted on his right to defend himself
pro se.
It usually meant that the court had to bend over backwards to help the “lawyer” proceed with his case, for it was generally agreed that such a lawyer had a fool for a client. In this case, however, the accused himself was a real lawyer, a member of the Colorado bar, albeit retired. He should not need help. The judge still didn’t like it. You never knew what might happen and how an appellate court would deal with the proceedings. Judge Florian’s sternness and lack of facial ease covered up a chronic indecisiveness. When he had to make up his mind about something he believed to be vital, he broke out in hives. In civil cases he always encouraged the adversary lawyers to come to a pretrial settlement. In criminal matters he encouraged plea bargaining.

Beatrice Henderson, the second defendant, sat alone at the long rectangular defense table. She looked at ease—Grace Pendergast had put her on twenty milligrams of Valium a day. Every now and then in the past few weeks since Dennis had read the deputy’s report and seen the results of the fingerprinting, he had said to her, “Are you all right, Bibsy?”

And Bibsy had unvaryingly replied, “Yes, Dennis, I’m on Valium, you know.”

Dennis worried about it but decided to let it be. If she were to take the stand as a witness in her own defense, that would be another matter. But they were a long way off from that possibility.

Dennis had made no decision yet about Bibsy’s testifying. He rarely did in a criminal trial until the prosecution presented its case. It was usually better not to have the defendant testify; the cross-examination could be crushing. But sometimes it was the only way to save a lost cause. Amend that, Dennis thought. To
try
to save a lost cause. He had seen too many defendants commit legal suicide on the witness stand.

Soon after he had begun practicing law in New York, Dennis had as a client a man named Lindeman, a city official accused of accepting bribes. Prior to trial, Dennis asked Lindeman, “What did you think when you were first approached with the proposition?”

Lindeman said, “I was worried. I didn’t like to break the law. I was hurting for money, but it didn’t seem right.”

Dennis told Lindeman to say it that way, and in court with his client on the stand, he asked the rehearsed question. Lindeman replied, “I thought, How do I know this guy’s not an undercover cop? And then I said to myself, ‘There just isn’t enough money in it.’ “

Dennis broke into a sweat and was afraid to ask any more questions. Later, Lindeman said, “I can’t believe what I did. It just flew out of me.”

What had flown out of him was the truth. The truth, struggling for air to breathe, for space, for supremacy and vindication. Lindeman had been found guilty and sentenced to five to ten years.

But Dennis believed he could win the Henderson case—unless something more were to happen that he didn’t know about and couldn’t predict. His attention drifted, as often happened when he was someplace he didn’t want to be. He certainly would have preferred not to be in this courtroom as lawyer for the defense. His client hardly talked to him. She was not angry at him. She was just distant, at ease under the influence of Valium.

The judge said, “You had a motion to make, Mr. Conway? Is that what you started to say a minute ago?”

Dennis’s mind snapped back into focus. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Proceed.”

Dennis moved forward into the well of the courtroom and looked up into the face of the judge. “Your Honor, even before any hearing regarding bond, I would like to move to dismiss the charge, the information, against my client, Mrs. Beatrice Henderson. I believe that Mr. Henderson will move also to quash the information against himself as codefendant.”

Scott nodded genially in agreement. Dennis waved some papers in the direction of the bench. “This information submitted to the court by the district attorney’s office,” he went on, slowly gathering momentum, “is compounded almost totally of circumstantial evidence, and flimsy circumstantial evidence at that. There are fingerprints found at the crime scene on a silver pillbox. We freely admit that a box answering this description once belonged to my client, but there is a glaring lack of evidence to indicate that this box was left at the scene at the time the crime was committed. Or for that matter, that it was left there—at any time—by Mrs. Henderson. There are fingerprints found on a rifle, and those prints are alleged to be those of Mr. Scott Henderson, the codefendant. But the rifle, Your Honor, had nothing to do with the crime. It was merely found at or near the crime scene. No one knows who owned that rifle. It did not belong to my client. It was never in her care or custody or in the codefendant’s care or custody. The state will be unable to prove any such allegation, and I’m pleased to note that they haven’t even attempted to make it. So the prints prove nothing. They are fluff and bluff.”