(Chapter ONE)
# # Caroline's Choice # #
(PROOF COPY -- Not for distribution.)
Caroline's Choice
Monday, January 8, 1990 - Point Park University
Caroline Friday was not sure what she was getting into when she enrolled in Professor Bill Murdock’s Investigative Reporting class. After all, she heard from other students he was an asshole. How bad could he be though? He certainly couldn’t be worse than Pete Gardner at Burger Empire?
In itself, being an asshole was not a bad thing. She wouldn’t hold that against Professor Murdock (or anyone for that matter) because people called her that word a lot too. What worried her more was that the investigative reporting class sounded like a lot of work and Caroline had too many things going on in her life now.
After she quit her job at Burger Empire, she gave in to her father’s wishes and decided to attend Pointless Park College. She entertained, if not resigned herself to, the idea of a business degree, and a predictable safe career in the family restaurant business. Jubilant, her father promptly added her back to the rotation at the restaurant, where she now pulled three full shifts a week (and the hair out of head). Though she detested her role as a hostess, she had to admit that the money helped. Still, twenty four hours of work plus five classes? The last thing she needed was a super busy, demanding course, and she was skeptical if this class would be easy. She heard this professor could be demanding. Compounding matters, her father would certainly not approve of this course. If it was not a business course, it was a waste of money in his opinion.
Nevertheless, investigative reporting piqued her interest and she wanted to take at least one class that was outside her wheelhouse. She felt her Dad at least owed her that. Although she thought she had made a wise decision by caving in to her father’s wishes to go to college, what choice did she really have? After quitting Burger Empire her options were limited. She had no car. No job. She couldn’t do anything but agree to her father’s wishes. She suspected her father knew that but acted like she was a making a good choice all on her own accord. Her father meant well although he was patronizing to no end. Therefore, if she took this course, it would be all Caroline’s choice--and that made her feel good.
Still, she had to be careful. As interested as she was in the investigative reporting course, the last thing she needed was another ball-breaking professor who piled the work on--let alone a professor who espoused an egocentric theory of the universe where his or her great mind illumined all with its intellectual brilliance. They all felt like they should be up the hill at Carnegie Mellon University. Moreover, since she was taking the class as an elective she did not want to break a sweat when there were other classes that appeared much easier. There was the art appreciation class she had considered. Word had it that it was a walk in the park, literally.
So here she was, unusually early: the only one sitting in the makeshift computer lab at the head of a series of a uneven conference-style table arrangements. She shuffled through a thick syllabus and a chock full of Point Park University registration papers.
Caroline was dressed in bright red, over-sized flannel shirt. Underneath this getup, she sported a black-ribbed tank. Her neck was hung with two silver chains, one of which featured a amulet of Gothic design. Her purple-streaked, dark long hair was still wet from her morning shower and most of it was still tucked up and under a gray cotton beanie. She wore her favorite black denim jeans today. Her army green parka was slung over the back of her chair. Wrapped around her hips, a dark gray hoodie brought her layered look together. As she completed the papers, she nibbled on the frames of her wayfarer black sunglasses (a Christmas gift from her prospering, humble-brag brother Sam). Her lips were rouged in a less attention getting color of pink. Not one to spend a lot of time outside, no matter what time of the year, Carline’s smooth and drawn out cheeks were pale as was her overall complexion.
She continued to fuss with the papers. The bureaucratic forms were redundant to the point that made her want to pull the hair out of her head. She sighed, tapped her dark red nails against the hard Formica table top, and settled down to the task of completing the forms.
Gradually, other students filtered into the room. About five minutes past the hour, and the room now a chatterbox, Point Park professor Bill Murdock entered the classroom. He shut the door behind him with a resounding thunk. The room chatter came to a loud silence.
This man was not what she expected: Murdock was a stout five-foot-eleven, give or take. He was fair-skinned like Caroline, with a circumference of dirty blond hair that curved around his balding, wrinkled dome. Rather built in the shoulders, Murdock would be athletic looking were it not for the enormous beer gut.
“Welcome to Investigative Reporting, Two-oh-Two, eh, Four-oh-four, for the grad students,” Professor Murdock said. The groggy professor coughed, then snorted, which had the effect of retracting a yellow booger back into his right nostril, which she had not noticed when it was hanging.
Caroline found his low voice surprising. It did not seem to match the man’s face. His words carried deep, raspy, somewhat guttural and he was booming. Caroline moved her chair back. However, he projected like a sub-woofer: wherever you sat, you felt his voice full on. He was simply a loud guy.
“My name is Bill Murdock,” he shouted, passing out poorly copied and sloppily stapled papers. “This class will be unlike any you have ever taken. I promise you that. What we are all about here is proving the innocence of those already proven guilty. There are two million people incarcerated in the U.S. prison system... I have for the past twenty years covered the crime and punishment beat for the Post-Gazette,” he continued, while still passing around papers.
“I have seen government misconduct first hand and what it can do to wreck lives.... I believe about five-percent of everyone incarcerated in our prison system is innocent.... Out of two million people, you do the math. That means one thing: we have a lot of fucking work to do.”
What did he just say? Caroline’s attention perked up when she heard him drop the F-bomb. This was something that would never happen in some of the business classes, she was sure of it. Those business professors were buttoned-down and conservative. Murdock dressed like he didn’t care and apparently spoke like it too. She immediately liked that about the man whom--according to the bio she had in front of her--was a celebrated Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer.
She looked around the room. Most of the students seemed to be surprised at the man’s profane language and his less than professorial appearance.
“I am sorry class,” Murdock said. “You will have to forgive but I have an incurable case of irritable vowel syndrome.”
A general cloud of chuckles and smirks rose to the top of the class along with several confused looks.
“Anybody know what that means?” He asked.
There was silence. Caroline was loving this guy now. He was not a typical professor. Nobody spoke up. A lot of faces turned to each other.
“It means if you are offended by foul language you may as well get the fuck out of my class now,” He said. “Oops, another flare up.”
The class erupted in laughter. Caroline smiled. She was going to like Professor Murdock. He was her kind of guy and she loved his lack of pomp and circumstance. Murdock was a cool dude. She could see that working on his projects would be incredibly interesting.
Caroline finished reading his bio. Though he dressed like one, he was no slouch when it came to Journalism credentials. Professor Murdock, according to his food stained curriculum vitae, was once nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a muckraking series on the Federal Witness Relocation Program. She was immediately mesmerized by the man and the course objectives.
Murdock ranted about the wrongfully convicted, “The goal of The Innocence Institute is to overturn wrongful convictions! Now make up your mind if you can devote yourself to this class. It will be demanding. We will visit crime sites. You will go to prisons and interview hard core inmates, convicted murderers, rapists. You will interview their family members, reexamine evidence. You will go to their trials. You will have an experience unlike any other one you will have in college.
Moreover, you will make a difference and I mean that...” Murdock paused. “Now, we have a lot of work to do.... I want to dive in right away.... I am going to pass around cases. Some of these cases, which are already being worked on by students, have been mailed to us by inmates.... Now keep in mind that everyone in these folders have been proven guilty. Many of them are not innocent, so don’t go crazy about what some of these people were put away for. Some of it is grisly and disturbing.”
A large stack of legal brown folders plummeted onto the four or five conference tables and kept growing. Inevitably, the piles became unstable and toppled. Folders spilled everywhere. Students dealt the splayed folders across the table like playing cards. It was all the luck of the draw at this point. Caroline was filled with excitement at the down and dirty folders that came her way. What horrors might they contain? What reminders would they serve that her life was not that bad?
Each time Murdock left the classroom to go to his office, he astoundingly returned with more folders and reams of paper. The details of the cases were, as he promised: grisly and disturbing.
There was the accountant who killed his wife with a gun he purchased at K-Mart and then turned it on his infant children. There was a teenager who walloped his shop teacher over the head with a ball peen hammer at Perrysville High School--that one hit a little close to home as Perrysville was near West View. How about the woman who drowned all her children--she was particularly loathsome to consider. Then there was the crack addict who didn’t remember stabbing a prostitute, chopping her up and stuffing her into a fifty-five gallon drum in his backyard. That one turned heads and tightened knotted stomachs.
Before long, an undulating sea of manila folders, containing poorly typed and misspelled letters from inmates, crime photos, depositions, witness interviews, crime scene diagrams, court transcriptions and a sea of other documents--covered the tables. Students passed the cases from hand to hand and it all reminded Caroline of dam workers hoping to stop a flood by passing along sandbag after sandbag--only in this case the sandbags were folders filled with unimaginable crimes and horrors.
As the students examined the cases, Murdock explained some of the more promising ones--at least in terms of their potential innocence. His current team was on the verge of getting the Solomon Milliron case reopened, he explained.
Milliron was a biker doing life for a double murder stemming from a drug deal that went bad. A government informant, and fellow biker who rode with the Pythons out of Cleveland, gave false testimony in eye-witnessing Milliron at the scene of the murder. Milliron rode with the Punishers out of Pittsburgh. Ostensibly, the gangs were at odds with each other. However, it turned out Milliron could not have been at the place where and when the murder went down because when it happened he was in an Alabama drunk tank--the result of a pistol whipping he delivered to a cocktail server that had shut him off. It was clear that that informant had lied.
As reprehensible as the Milliron was, he simply could not be at both places at the same time. Despite these facts, he was awaiting his turn at the executioner’s hand.
Caroline raised her hand. She was the first in the entire class to ask a question. The class became quiet. Murdock seemed eager to hear what she had to say.
“So how do you feel about the death penalty Professor Murdock?” Caroline said with a natural confidence. She didn’t even look up from the case file that she was reading when she had asked the question. Murdock pondered the question and studied Caroline with a slight smile evident on his face.
“Why do you ask?” Murdock said.
“This guy I am reading about right now... Bastard was convicted of hiring someone to kill his ex-girlfriend. Her poor kid died because he was standing with his mom. He was only eight. Eight! Mother fucker!” She paused. The class became quiet. “Honestly, I think this prick deserves to die--if he did it. I don’t see how a burglar would have accidentally wandered into her house at that time... ” She grew louder. “For Christ’s sake, there is a picture of the kid here.”
Caroline stood up abruptly and turned to the class waving a black and white photo of a young boy that had been shot and left on the kitchen floor of his house. Caroline huffed and sat back down with a look of gloom passing across her face. She slammed the photo on the table. Murdock and the class all focused on Caroline. Caroline was shaking her head and now slide back in her seat.
Only the snapping of a student’s bubble gum and the trance inducing ballast hum of the fluorescent lights, broke the awkward silence. The folders had stopped their rotation. Caroline pounded the table. Anger flashed across her face. “What do you guys think? That kid never had a chance. I would throw the fucking switch myself on whoever did that to him.”
No one said a word.
Caroline gazed around the classroom, becoming distinctly aware that someone passed gas. Murdock’s nostrils flared, but if he was the culprit, he gave no indication other than a brief pause and wry wrinkle at the corner of his pinkish, narrow lips. Well, this class is going to be laid back.
Murdock, in blue jeans, put a dirty white Reebok up on the table. Ah, the source of the offending smell was revealed. Mashed into the shoe’s tread was dog poop, a cigarette butt, and grass clippings.
Murdock scratched his blond goatee. Caroline guessed the chin hair was the magical switch that kick-started the man’s brilliant brain. Dog poop on his shoe and all, Prof Murdock moved right along.
“There was this guy Red Dog who got into the Federal Witness Relocation program. New life. New identity... New Red Dog. Well, Red Dog befriended an elderly lady, Theresa Clemenceau. Everything was fine... In fact, he used to come over and baby sit Theresa’s granddaughter on occasion. Then one day, Red Dog went back to his old ways. The police found Mrs. Clemenceau with her head cut off, her ten-year-old granddaughter raped and left for dead in the basement. Red Dog wasn’t done yet. Nope. He went on a seven-state killing rampage that ended when the State of Alabama put enough juice through this sonuvabitch that could have powered the lights at Three Rivers Stadium.”
Murdock looked at her squarely, nodding, pausing for dramatic effect. Then, he turned to the rest of the class. “The world was safer the day they executed Red Dog.” Murdock said loudly. “So, Miss Friday, to answer you question, I would have to say that when it comes to the death penalty, I am on a case-by-case basis.” He paused, lingering on her for a moment with a look of pride. “Great question--now when did I step in dog shit?”
The class laughed. Caroline held back a smile, feeling uneasy. For the first time she realized that all the eyes in the class had turned toward her. Wow. When she launched her rant, she had been totally oblivious to anyone around her. Now she felt the presence of the entire class staring at her.
Murdock looked around the classroom, while wiping the bottom of his shoe tread off the sharp edge of a chair back. “You know in over twenty years not one person asked me that question--do you believe in the death penalty?”
He laughed, shook his head, and gazed proudly at Caroline. “They assumed they knew the answer,” Murdock said, now pacing the room. He stared up, scratching his goatee once again. “Hell, even I assumed I knew my own answer, but sometimes an answer can be surprising, or not entirely what you suspect. There is never an answer to an unasked question. Sometimes the toughest questions we need to ask are the ones we should ask to ourselves.”
Caroline listened through the remainder of the three-hour class as Professor Murdock explained all tricks of the trade and how prosecutors routinely cut deals with crack addicts, hookers or lunatics simply to get testimony that might put somebody away for good. He described a fraud called “Jumping on the Bus” where convicts memorized details of privileged cases, leaked no doubt by privileged eyes, and gave prosecutors affirmations of unproven facts in exchange for leniency or reduced sentences. Caroline found it riveting and fascinating. It astounded her that the legal system worked in such a way.
Murdock left the room and the class to decide what cases they wanted to investigate for the semester. There were about five tables of students in all. Each table had about four or five students and would constitute an investigative team. The task at hand was for each to team to pick a case to investigate. In that regards, the members of each team were the result of pure luck. She looked at the students at her table.
Brad Church was tall, lanky, and nerdy. He appeared very cerebral in nature, but seemed tired and disinterested in picking a case. She noted he took the opportunity to get a head start on his accounting homework instead of focusing on the cases in front of them. Caroline was reasonably sure Brad was also in her Accounting 101 class.
Ryan Billings sat next to him. He was a cute and attractive jock type. Right now he was preoccupied making inappropriate jokes about the cases he read. He donned a Point Park baseball hoodie, jeans and a Pittsburgh Pirates ball cap turned backwards. It seemed his best qualities would be served up in being invited to a fun frat party. She turned to the other student, Carly Gucci.
Carly was cut from the same stock that made Caroline and she immediately felt a liking for her. She was slender, wore really tight dark jeans, and a teeshirt that revealed a slim midriff featuring a belly button piercing and several ornamental floral tattoos. Her hair was cut short like a boys and had red streaks in it. She chewed gum loudly and when Caroline made eye contact, she was already smiling back. This would be a friend for sure.
Carly slid her chair closer to Caroline and together they started taking notes on the cases. Meanwhile, the boys were goofing around laughing at stuff they were looking at. Mostly it was Ryan making the obscene jokes. Brad seemed like the typical wet blanket nerd who laughed when required by a much cooler friend. Ryan looked at her a couple times attempting to make eye contact with her, but Caroline only would return a skeptical, if not dismissive look. He was cute, but she wasn’t easy.
After fifteen minutes or so, Caroline’s serious demeanor managed to finally get the boys attention and they all started rummaging through the folders. Caroline and Carly paid the most attention while the boys laughed at several nude photos of corpses. Ryan seemed to enjoy watching Carly take charge, and assume her role as a natural leader. Carly took meticulous notes. Finally, Brad put his accounting homework away and turned his focus to the task of helping out.
It was time to pick a case.
Although Murdock said any case across the nation was open to their Innocence Institute project, he preferred local ones. Local cases would be convenient in terms of resources and they helped politically too. It never hurt, Murdoch explained, when their efforts went noticed by the Point Park University board and the City of Pittsburgh. Towards those ends, he planned to pen a couple stories about their efforts and progress along the way. The school loved that kind of publicity and it helped when it came to funding and budget allocations, he explained.
Of all the cases that passed across her place at the table, one stood out in particular to Caroline:
Doverspike and Gibb, Death Row, 1983
There was something unusually familiar about those names. She had heard those names sometime before, long ago. She opened the folder and immediately remembered why the names sounded so familiar: both men were convicted of the murder of Lawrence and Eva Goodman-Bingham. It was a local case. She knew of the Bingham family.
Her Dad had catered a private party at the Bingham’s house a few years before he and his wife were murdered. Caroline was too young to care, but when this murder happened, it was big news in Pittsburgh. She remembered that was all her parents would talk about for one summer. They were such nice people, her Mom would say. Great tipper, her Dad had lamented. Of course, Caroline was thirteen when it happened.
"Let's do the Bingham murder,” Caroline said, to the students at her table. She slapped it down on top of the pile of folders. Once again that natural surge of enthusiasm and gusto percolated to the top of her personality. The other students at her table seemed to not really care too much about the case they selected. It seemed like Caroline had saved them work to do so they all agreed.
“Why that one?” Carly asked.
“I don’t know.” Caroline smiled, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “It sounds like a fun case I guess."
Carly laughed at her. “Fun? Okay, let’s have some fun then. I like a fun time.”
Caroline continued rummaging through grisly murder black-and-whites of burnt bodies. What a tragedy. The Binghams had it all and it was taken away from them by two locals--Rusty Gibb and Mark Doverspike. Of course, they both claimed they had nothing to do with the killings.
She looked at pictures of Gibb and Doverspike. Both looked like they could be any average working class, middle-aged males loafing in West View. Although, Rusty had more of nice guy appearance whereas Mark had mean look in his eyes. According to prosecutors, the men killed the Binghams because of a drug deal gone bad. However, there was no physical evidence connecting them to the crime. No clothing fibers, blood stains or other tangible evidence. Moreover, they claimed they both didn’t even know Veronica Westfall, the woman that claimed she knew about their plans ahead of time and was there when they did it. So this millionaire couldn’t pay for his weed? In a rather sad twist of fate, it looked like half their work was done. Mark was shivved in prison and died several years after sentencing. Rusty was on Pennsylvania’s Death Row waiting out his turn at Graterford State Prison in Graterford, Pennsylvania. He wrote letters often, proclaiming his innocence.
Murdock, who had been silently observing Caroline from the front of the room, smiled like he had discovered a long lost daughter. While most of the class seemed befuddled by her carefree and nonchalant perusing of the murder photos, Bill Murdock had a knowing look in his eye. Students like Caroline Friday didn’t come along often, not even once every ten years, but he knew when a gem had been uncovered.
Caroline studied the contents of the manila folder, her mind furiously working on the details, already taking notes, underlining text and dissecting testimony, breaking down the events of the murder in her mind. Little did she know it would be some time before she would ever close that manila folder again.
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Matt De Reno is a fiction writer living in Pittsburgh. He also works as a product manager for an aerospace and automotive publications company. When not writing fiction, you might find him chasing his disobedient dog down the street.
You can learn more about Matt and the Midas Protocol at
scratchwriting.com
So before I get into this issues awesomeness... A bit of an announcement first... Remember back in May when I went to my son's school to talk about the Holiday Cafe and then the kids shared what types of writers they would be??
