Murder in the First

"Tell me Mister Challiner," I looked into those eyes, those steel hard, blue eyes, set in that smiling face, the face that told me that she thought she had me right where she wanted me. "Tell me," She was making this a personal question not one for the Judge, not one for the jury, this was between myself and her. "On the night of the 23rd of August, where exactly were you?"

The she who was making life uncomfortable for me was my attorney Judith P. Slattery. The 'P' she would never admit, stood for Petunia, and anything less like a flower at this moment would be hard to imagine. And why was she making life uncomfortable for me when a normal Defence Attorney would be coddling me through my evidence? It was part of a strategy to show that I didn't have enough anger in me to murder my wife.

"On the 23rd of August, let me see," I was stretching. I wanted to keep those eyes focused on mine. I knew that I could hold the stare longer than just about anyone and this was becoming a competition between myself and her, a competition that I just had to win. "The 23rd, Oh yes, I didn't get home that night until 1:30 in the morning. Up until then I had been with a friend. We had dinner together until around 11:00 and then I took her home, to her place."

"You were dining until 11:00 and then you took her home, is this correct?"

"Yes."

"Yet you didn't arrive back at your house until 1:30 in the morning? What were you doing between 11:00 and 1:30 Mister Challiner?" Again the stare.

"I was saying good-night to her."

"For two hours?"

"For two hours."

"And this friend, she will verify this," there was a deliberate pause, "under oath?"

"Yes she will."

"You seem confident of that, Mister Challiner?"

"She will swear it under oath, even if in doing this she will lose a great deal of money."

"How so, Mister Challiner?"

"Because my friend and I have been having an affair for some time and if her husband, when her husband, finds out about it he will divorce her and, under the terms of their pre-nuptial agreement she will stand to lose a considerable amount of money."

"And yet, knowing this, she is prepared to support you, to risk a large sum of money, to provide you with an alibi that will clear you of this charge of murder?"

"Yes, she will?"

"And what have you promised her in return?"

"My love, I have promised her that I will love her, and that when this is over I will marry her."

"How nice for her." The smile was in her eyes only.

My mind was immediately transported back to that day, several months ago.

There I was, seated in the waiting area of a lawyer's office, tossing over in my mind what is was that I needed to say. She, a vision in pinstripe, appeared before me. "Good morning Mister Challiner, would you come this way."

Her voice said it all, it was low pitched almost husky, the accent was somewhere mid-Atlantic but I suspected that it originated in England. While her voice said it all, her walk and the way that her hips swayed from side to side with each step filled the gaps in the commentary. She wore black stockings and black shoes with a three inch heel that tightened her calf muscles and transformed her legs into the most beautiful that I had ever seen.

The view from the front was equally spectacular, especially when she leaned forward, which she seemed to do often, particularly when talking to me, she had this habit of leaning on her forearms which allowed me a clear view of her cleavage which was made more spectacular because her arms pressed against the sides of her breasts and pushed them together.

It took a great deal of effort to maintain my concentration and she was very much aware of the effect that she had over me, so much so that I came to the conclusion that this was a normal tactic that she used. It took some effort on my part to get through the interview and find out what I needed to know and somehow, I managed to survive. I thanked her and left, thinking that this would be the last time that I would ever see her. How wrong I was.

I was just shutting up shop and preparing to go home, not that I was looking forward to going home, particularly after yet another talk with my Bank Manager, when I heard the front door open and there she was, again.

"I was on my way home and saw a car parked out front so I thought that I'd drop in and see what it is that you actually do. I hope you don't mind?"

"Not at all." Not at all? Are you kidding me? If there was anything that could brighten up my day it was this. But then, was she genuinely interested in what I did, or was this just an excuse to see me, dare I hope?

"Actually that's not true, I am more interested in you than what you do. From your demeanour this morning, there is more bothering you than you were revealing, so I did a little checking around and find that your financial situation isn't all that healthy and it's not due to your business or your extravagance, it has something to do with your wife. It would appear that all the charges against your personal credit card have been made by her. Am I right?"

"If it's any business of yours."

"It will be if you allow it to be. I can help you."

"And how can you do that?"

"I can advise you on how you can limit your wife's spending. Now the card companies are not going to tell you about this because they have a vested interest in allowing a maximum spend, hoping that you won't be able to meet your full repayment at the end of the month, so that they can charge exorbitant interest. They don't make money if you pay on time."

We sat and talked for some time, during all of which I had a feeling that she had something else on her mind.

"Can I get you something to drink, coffee maybe, or would you prefer something a little stronger?"

"Coffee will be fine, I don't usually drink anything stronger until dinner. Speaking of which, allow me to invite you to have dinner with me."

"I really should be getting home, my wife has a meeting to attend and I should go, home, to her, or something." I was confused, here was this beautiful woman inviting me to dinner, why?

"Why don't you ring her and tell her that you have an urgent business meeting with a client who is in town only until the morning, and the only time he can see you is this evening."

"You seem experienced at this sort of thing." I said it, but for some reason I took her advice and called. The lack of interest that came from the other end of the phone steeled my resolve. Fuck it, why shouldn't I go to dinner.

I think the meal was great. The company I was with held my attention to the extent that I remembered little of what happened. What happened after that is indelibly etched on my frontal lobe.

There was a hotel room. There was a large bed. There was a beautiful woman. There was a beautiful naked woman extending an invitation to me to join her on that bed, naked, her, bed, woman, sex, breasts, pussy, oh what the hell.

I learnt more about the art of lovemaking that night than I had managed to glean from several years of marriage, many books on the subject, and several hopelessly inadequate porn videos. I learnt that you don't have to bang away like a shithouse door in a gale to get satisfaction, more can be gained by a subtle approach. I learnt that a position that works fine for one party may not necessarily work for the other and that the essence of successful enjoyment lies in experimentation.

By the end of the night my teacher gave me an A+ for effort and enthusiasm but a failing grade for technique. She proposed that further lessons would be required if I was to gain a passing grade in all subjects and, seeing as this was to be extra-curricular, an after hours appointment was arranged for the following week.

Try as I might, I never seemed to manage that passing grade. My teacher, my lover, always found some small area of criticism. A month after we had begun our lessons she informed me that I would never get that passing grade because she was in love with me and I would continue to fail because she did not want to stop.

"I think that it is time that we stopped this charade. You say that you love me and I certainly love you. We don't need to pretend, to play act any longer, we can achieve the same results by being ourselves." So we became ourselves and it was better than either of us had expected.

Being ourselves also involved opening up to each other, telling each other our deepest, darkest secrets, mine being that for some time I had been having thoughts of divorcing my wife, not only because she was spending more money than I earned, but that I suspected that she was having an affair, and had been for some time. I don't want to sound like a hypocrite here, getting all upset at her affair while having one of my own, it's just that I view the fact that hers began long before mine as a signal from her that the marriage was over, but divorce was not an option at that time because she had no valid reason, our differences were not irreconcilable, just that she wanted no part of any reconciliation.

I was not the only one with an unsatisfactory marriage. I was regaled with a tale of affairs and betrayal on a grand scale, of visits to sleazy bars, liaisons with pole dancers and strippers, of the humiliation of having these episodes flung in her face, of constant attempts by her husband to denigrate her in front of her friends, of the continual boasting to his friends how he treated her, the physical abuse and humiliation of having to appear at functions and at her work with the marks of his abuse obvious. She had applied for an AVO but he had enough clout with the judiciary that these applications never succeeded and she had been threatened with being charged as a 'contentious litigant' if she should continue with these applications.

A stalemate existed between the two and she needed a way out. Fleeing to another part of the country was out of the question because his influence was widespread, leaving her with no place to hide. She could not flee overseas because he held her passport under lock and key in a safe to which she had no access. He would not file for divorce because to do so, he stood to lose a very large sum of money, as did she if she filed. He was, not to put too fine a point to it, a sadist.

I think that both of us were thinking more and more about divorce, looking for the best solution.

"Mister Challiner, Would you come with us please." It was a polite request delivered in a less than polite manner, which, combined with the person making the request being, unmistakably, a policeman as it turned out, I had little choice but to comply. I was placed in the back of a police car and driven to an apartment building on the other side of town.

"Do you mind telling me what this is all about?"

"All in good time, would you follow me please." Obviously I followed.

There was crime scene tape everywhere and he held it up so that I could enter the door of an apartment. He didn't prepare me for what I was to see next. A body sprawled face down on the bed. There was blood all over the place and the person had obviously been shot through the head from close range. Detective Bentley grabbed the hair of the deceased person and raised the head, "Do you recognise this person?"

"Bloody Hell!" I was looking at what was left of the face of my wife, my dead wife. "That's my wife." I sat down in a chair that was in the corner.

"Mister Challiner, what was your wife doing here?"

"I don't know. She said that she had a meeting."

"Did you know with whom, or what this meeting was about?"

"No. I assumed that it was some sort of committee that she belonged to, at least that's what she told me when she first started going out on a regular basis on Wednesday nights."

"And you believed her?"

"Yes. I saw no reason not to."

"I'm sorry. But I don't believe that for one minute. I think that you know very well what your wife did on Wednesday nights."

"Are you accusing me of murdering my wife?"

"Can you think of anyone with a better motive?"

"How about her lover?"

"Bzzzzzz. Wrong answer! We already checked with him, he has a watertight alibi."

"So, you confirm that she did, in fact, have a lover. I wasn't sure. If I am being accused of murdering my wife I want my lawyer present."

"Fine. You can use that telephone over there."

I made the call and as soon as I put the phone down it was dusted for prints, very clever.

"Tell me Mister Challiner, do you own a pistol?"

"I used to. I sold it recently."

He picked up a pistol, holding the trigger guard between his thumb and forefinger. "Is this the gun?"

"It looks a lot like it."

"Would you take a closer look."

"What and get my prints all over it? It looks to be the same type as the one I used to own. They are relatively common."

"Okay, let's go down to the station and talk further."

I was arrested and placed in a holding cell until my appearance before a judge in the morning. My Lawyer was going to apply for bail.

The hearing the next morning was short. "Peter James Challiner you are charged with the wilful and premeditated murder of Dorothy Challiner at or about 11:00pm last evening. How do you plead?"

"My client pleads 'not guilty'.

"Mister O'Brien?"

The ADA rose to his feet. "Your Honour, we allege that the accused had the means, a Glock hand gun, the murder weapon, was registered in his name, the motive, an unhappy marriage, and the opportunity, he has no alibi for the time that the crime took place."

"Is this true?" The judge looked directly at me.

"I have an alibi, it's just that I choose not to use it at this time."

"You could save the court a considerable amount of time if it could prove your innocence."

"Your honour it involves another person who I do not want to involve at this time, at least not without discussion."

"Your Honour," my Attorney rose, "The evidence that the police have is purely circumstantial and could apply to any number of people."

"Circumstantial or not I find that there is sufficient evidence for this matter to proceed to trial."

"Your Honour, we would apply for bail. My client is a businessman with strong ties to his community and is not a flight risk, he does not even possess a passport."

"Bail is set at $50,000."

"I hope I don't have to use my alibi."

"So do I. But we have to be prepared to use it as a last resort. We have to get the evidence that can clear you. We have to find out who bought that gun. We have to find out who rents that apartment, if it is in your wife's name, does she pay for it or is her lover paying? Who is her lover? We have a lot of work to do, but not right now. Do you realise that you are a free man and I can be almost open in my love for you, we only have to worry about my husband, but I think not for much longer."

It's funny you know, making love to a person that you love is almost like the first little drink to a recovering alcoholic, the first, the tiniest taste can lead to a total loss of control. So it was with me, the touch, the taste, of her lips on mine led to the touch and taste of her the silky smooth skin of her breasts, her body, the slightly rough feel of her pubic bush that I encountered en route to the taste, the glorious taste, of her pussy. It opened to my tongue, it opened to my cock, and it opened to me. It was then that I lost control, the recovering sexaholic was off the wagon again. It wasn't until the bottle was empty, my cock was drained, that I stopped.

She held me as I held her, our lips softly touching. My cock was still embedded inside her, as reluctant to emerge, even though it was no longer hard, as her pussy was to release it. I was not going to jail to have her seated on the other side of a screen, so close yet so distant, when we can be as close as we are forever. I have to, we have to, prove my innocence.

Even before my wife was killed I felt little guilt making love to my lover, now there was no guilt at all, well just a smidge, I was supposed to be at work although after what had happened I'm sure that my staff would understand it if I was late.

The police have obviously decided that I am the murderer and everything that they do, as part of this investigation, will be to confirm that presumption of guilt. They are either lazy or they are protecting someone more powerful than me, but who?

It didn't take long for us to determine that, while the apartment was leased to my wife, payment came from a different source, but the address of that source was a mail box, an accommodation address for that purpose, to conceal the source. While we couldn't find out who was actually paying for the apartment we could, from my banking records, prove that it could not have been me. That, at least, was a beginning.

The next line of enquiry was the murder scene. Were there any witnesses who saw someone other than my wife entering the building? If there were, could we get a description? At first we thought we had some success but the 'witness' identified me as the person that he saw. It wasn't until further enquiries were made that we discovered that this witness saw nothing of the sort, he was nowhere near the murder scene but had been paid to identify me as the person he'd seen. This was a rather clumsy attempt at a frame so we delved deeper into this man's background and discovered a link between him and a person of interest to both of us. Could this be the person that the police had already investigated and cleared?. A cursory check of his supposed alibi revealed it to be false, and provably so. More ammunition for the Defence.

We decided to allow the police to continue with the prosecution, reasoning that, if we presented them with our evidence they would merely find more to incriminate me.

"Lieutenant Bentley, can you explain what happened on the night of the 23rd of August?"

"A patrol responded to a 911 call from the building supervisor and found the body of a deceased person, a white Caucasian female, lying face down on the bed in one of the apartments. The Patrolman immediately called for Homicide attendance and I was dispatched to the scene. I examined the body and found that she had been shot at close range, the bullet passing through her skull and lodging in the mattress beneath her. A search of the room found the murder weapon."

"Is this the weapon?" O'Brien handed the Lieutenant a plastic evidence bag in which was a Glock pistol.

"That is it."

"The Prosecution would like to enter this in evidence as People's Exhibit P1."

"Lieutenant Bentley, what did you do next?"

"We also discovered while searching the premises a purse in which we found items which identified the victim as one Dorothy Challiner. A patrol car was sent to her address. The defendant was not at home at the time so the Patrol waited for him to return, which he did at 1:30am. He was asked to accompany the Patrolman to the murder scene."

"You questioned the Defendant about his whereabouts, could he confirm his whereabouts at the time of the murder?"

"He refused to do so."

"Then what did you do?"

"I allowed him to call his Lawyer."

"Did you show him the murder weapon?"

"Yes, and he confirmed that it was in fact registered in his name. We took him to the station where he was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree."

There was a whole raft of witnesses paraded before the Judge and Jury, all confirming the Police version of events, the questions asked were designed to educe the appropriate answer. We saw little point in challenging the evidence at this time, we saved our challenge for when I was in the stand, reasoning that a whole range of evidence that refuted the Prosecution evidence in one hit would have more impact than chipping away at it and we had a couple of aces up our sleeves.