“Right now, he is in his office, going through police reports on the triple homicide that happened last week in Osage County. I’ll go tell him you two are here.” Harrison came back a few seconds later, followed by Ackerman.
“Booger, how the heck are you?” Ackerman asked as he went in for a big hug.
“I’m great, other than having to deal with this rookie over here.”
“He’s young, but that just means he still has a lot of fight in him.” Ackerman turned and hugged Steve. “And how the heck have you been, Steve?”
“Doing well. Always good to see you, Frank,” Steve said.
“You boys come on back to my office.” Steve felt his office cell phone vibrate in his pocket as Ackerman led them down the hallway.
CHAPTER 23
The office itself looked like that of a traditional country lawyer portrayed in a Norman Rockwell painting. Bookshelves full of statutes and legal treatises lined the south wall. Numerous plaques, awards, and signed jury verdict forms from winning cases covered the east wall. The north wall contained two large, framed pieces. One was a lithograph depicting Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address. The other was a copy of the United States Constitution on weathered and torn paper.
Ackerman’s desk, a large piece of glass held up by metal replicas of two deer antlers, was positioned to the west. The leather chair behind his desk was covered in a cowhide print, and behind where Ackerman sat was a sketch of him giving the closing argument in his first death penalty trial. Before judges started allowing cameras in the courtroom, a sketch artist had rendered the drawing to be used by the media to show courtroom action. After Ackerman had won the trial, the artist gave him the original as a trophy of sorts for his victory.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company this afternoon?” Ackerman asked as they all sat down.
“We just left Deputy Blackburn’s office while investigating the Pinkerton case,” Steve said, “and we wondered if there is anything you might be able to tell us about the case or Deputy Blackburn that we couldn’t find in the record.”
“I doubt there is much I can tell you about your case that you don’t already know, but I can tell you something about Deputy Blackburn. He is one of the bad cops,” Ackerman said seriously. “I’m sure you heard about him shooting that young man last month. I would bet he was in the wrong on that one. There is no doubt in my mind that man is racist. On top of that, he is one of the few cops I have caught lying on the stand. He believes that the end justifies the means. Doesn’t matter what rules or laws he has to break to put the ‘bad guys’ in prison as long as they end up in prison. He somehow thinks that is good police work—that the Fourth Amendment and other laws don’t apply to him because he is a ‘good guy.’ Mind you, not all police officers act that way, but I’ll tell you the ones who do are what drive me to get out of bed every morning and come in here to this office to work my tail off for the downtrodden.”
“Never ceases to amaze me,” Booger said with a slow shake of his head, “the number of police officers who think the law doesn’t apply to them. They think that because they are putting away the bad guys, as you called them, then they can do whatever they want to make sure that happens.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “Don’t they realize the Constitution is the most important law in the land? It is what makes our country great, and without it, all these other laws wouldn’t matter.”
“Just make sure you keep your eyes on him,” Ackerman said. “He is capable of just about anything. That case is what made his career. The investigation and subsequent conviction put him on the map in the police world as a big-time cop. I would bet the farm that Deputy Blackburn will do anything to protect his reputation and make sure your client is executed—whether he truly believes Scottie did it or not.”
After some time discussing the other details of the case, Steve and Booger thanked Ackerman for his advice and returned to Tulsa. They decided to go downtown to the Main Street Lounge for a drink and strategy session.
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
The Main Street Lounge was an upscale bar in the Blue Dome District of Tulsa that featured mixologists rather than bartenders. It was just dark enough to still be swanky and the odor of cedar barrels prevailed. Steve liked their version of an old fashioned. Booger ordered a Bud Light. On the television above the bar, the big news of the day was the Department of Justice’s decision to drop their lawsuit against Apple to unlock the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone.
“Have you gotten anymore Snapchat messages.” Booger asked. “Yes. A few more. All still vague threats but nothing substantive.”
“Make sure you start keeping an eye out around you.”
“Got it. So, at this point in the game, what do you think of our case, my friend?” Steve said.
“The way I see it, we have four suspects: Walters, Whitmore,
Scottie, and the X factor.” “Scottie?” Steve said, shocked.
“Yes. He still has the most evidence against him. Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe him when he says he didn’t do it. But I also think there is something he is not telling us. It would be foolish of us to completely discount him just because we want to believe him.”
“What do you think he is hiding?”
“I don’t know. I just have a gut feeling he is hiding something. The more I think about it, if it wasn’t Scottie, whoever it was had to be in the house, or very close by, at the time Scottie left for the hotel. According to the police radio logs, it was exactly six minutes and forty-seven seconds between the time Deputy Blackburn received the call to respond to a domestic violence situation at the Scottie house and the moment he radioed for assistance with Ashley. Now that we’ve been to the house, if you consider the length of the driveway and the fact he would have cautiously entered the residence, I think we can reasonably deduce he would have seen a car leaving the residence at least a minute before he radioed for help. That leaves approximately five minutes and forty-seven seconds for whomever it was to kill Ashley and leave without being seen by Deputy Blackburn.”
“But if it was Whitmore on his four-wheeler,” Steve said, “he could have driven off from the back of the property. Deputy Blackburn may not have seen him as he pulled up to the front of the house.”
“Good point. If it was Whitmore, then he may have had an extra thirty seconds or so. Either way, I think the person was in the house when Ashley called 911 and before Scottie left. Then, he or she killed Ashley and got out of there quickly… I also think that our killer is the one who talked Ashley into making the fake 911 call in the first place. It was a total setup for the murder.” Booger said this as if he had just put this piece of the puzzle together at that precise moment.
He continued after a swig of beer, “You know, young man, the only way to get away with murder is to have a fall guy. You have to give the police someone to arrest and the district attorney’s office someone to convict. There has to be a picture on the front page of the local paper showing they got the guy. Otherwise, they will keep looking until they find you.”
“How do we figure out who else may have been in the house?” Steve asked.
CHAPTER 24
“Short of a surveillance video, we have to do some hard work. I think we start with who we know for sure was there: Scottie and Ashley. We have to go back to prison and talk to Scottie,” Booger said. “I told you I think there is something he isn’t telling us, and it is high time we find out all of his secrets.”
“Okay. Back to your list,” Steve said. “Why don’t you have Deputy Blackburn on it? He was the last person to see her alive and Ackerman said he is crooked. He could have done it.”
“Yes. I would put him in the X-factor column. I’m not quite ready to call him a clear suspect. Him being a dirty cop doesn’t make him a murderer of young white women. Of course, if he killed that young man a few months ago in cold blood, maybe he could do it in this case too. Only problem is there is no reason. I can see a racist cop taking the opportunity to kill a black man just because he thinks he can get away with it. But I don’t see him killing a white woman in her home and then blaming the husband without some additional motive.”
As Booger finished, a phone rang. Steve patted his pockets and pulled out a phone, then pulled out a second phone, checked it, and paused. Seeing Booger’s expression, Steve explained briefly, “It’s my personal phone but an unknown number.” Then he answered the call. “Hello, Steve Hanson. How can I help you?”
“Hello, Steve Hanson.” The woman on the other end gave a slight laugh. “Wow, that sounded very official and lawyerly. This is Dr. Emily Babbage. Jennifer told me your guy pled to the embezzlement charge and gave me your number. Case closed, right? Which means I’m available for dinner, assuming you are still interested.”
“Of course!” Steve said a little too excitedly. He tried to calm his voice down and asked, “Is tomorrow night good for you?”
“Tomorrow is great. Pick me up at my office around six thirty. See you then.” Emily hung up without giving Steve a chance to respond.
Booger looked at Steve and raised an eyebrow meaningfully.
“You look happier than a fox loose in the hen house. Good news?”
“Yeah, a girl I have a little thing for. She agreed to a date tomorrow night,” Steve said with a wide smile on his face and a flicker of mischief in his eyes.
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
For Steve, the next day dragged on like a poorly acted monologue. As soon as he arrived at his office, he wrote and filed the motion asking to see the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office’s complete investigation file. In the pleading, Steve laid out his theory about Scottie’s innocence, weaving in other legal jargon he hoped would sway the court to grant his request. Upon receipt of the motion, the court gave the state three weeks to respond and set the matter for a hearing three weeks after that date. Steve had hoped the issue hearing would be set sooner but knew from experience that the wheels of justice turned slowly.
Steve also set up a meeting with Scottie. Luckily, Gilcrease was able to get him in quickly because another attorney had called earlier in the day and canceled his appointment for next week.
He spent the rest of the day working on other cases and planned to spend his weekend catching up on more of them. He had nearly a hundred files that had been mostly ignored because of Scottie Pinkerton’s case. They definitely needed attention, but tonight, Steve finally had a date with Emily. As the evening drew close, his growing excitement made it hard to concentrate.
Steve arrived at Emily’s office around 6:15 p.m. In college, his soccer coach at Oklahoma City University, Brian Harvey, had drilled the need to be on time into all the players’ heads. It only took a few times of running extra sprints for tardiness for Steve to learn that it was much better to be fifteen minutes early than one minute late. Since then, he always arrived fifteen minutes early to every appointment, date, meeting, or whatever he had on his schedule.
He played Chess with Friends on his smart phone while sitting in his car. Although he liked to be timely, in this instance he didn’t want to seem overanxious to Emily. At six thirty on the dot, Steve walked up to the entrance. Since the office closed at 5:00 p.m., the glass door was locked. He peered through it and couldn’t see anyone in the reception area. He knocked. Shortly after, Emily came out and said hello. She locked the door behind her and walked toward his car. Steve hurried ahead and was holding her door open when she arrived.
“Wow, an old-fashioned gentleman,” she said with a look of pleasure and surprise. “Thank you.”
