Beyond A Reasonable Death: Crime Fiction & Legal Thriller (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 2) Read online

  Beyond a Reasonable Death

  John Ellsworth

  Subjudica House

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  About the author

  Also by John Ellsworth

  Afterword

  Copyright © 2014 John Ellsworth

  All rights reserved.

  For Debra, Noel, RJ, Lynn & Elizabeth

  Acknowledgments

  The Author gratefully acknowledges the teachers, educators, novelists and poets who have given this work thought and voice. Any success is theirs, any mistakes are my own. Special thanks to all the lawyers writing fiction for showing me how it’s done.

  Foreword

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the by-product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  1

  She was standing at the kitchen sink when she jammed the chisel against her second molar and swung the hammer. The pain shot through her jaw and snapped her head back. Sluggishly, she looked in the mirror over the sink. Nothing. The second mandibular molar was still intact. Maybe a hairline fracture just above the gum, maybe not. She swung the hammer again. “Thud!” Pain shot through her jaw and head like a rocket. Tears came to her eyes and she shuddered and couldn’t bring herself to do it again. She would need something to take away the pain of the process.

  She started over. She trolled the drugstores in her area and found a likely looking candidate at the CVS drugstore. He worked behind the pharmacy counter at CVS. She waited for him to come off his shift. She bought him for $1000. He stole an ampoule of Novocain and a syringe came with.

  She made a trip to the library one bleary, snow-spitting afternoon. She searched the index of Sturdevant’s Art and Science of Operative Dentistry and read about cavities and their repair. She decided tooth rot was too difficult to reproduce. The cavity would look faked if she went that route. So she had a better idea: a broken molar.

  Back to the index she went, where she located pages and studied tooth fractures. Then she read about the steps required to repair such fractures. The book told her how to inject the molar.

  She made her notes and rode the L Train back to her home. A chisel and hammer would produce the broken tooth.

  With the Novocain loaded in the syringe and her mirror angled on the kitchen sink, she judiciously attacked.

  First, she injected the recommended dosage and waited twenty minutes. She could feel the side of her face turning numb. She took a swig of 7-Up and it dribbled out the corner of her mouth as things became totally numb.

  Next, she placed the chisel at the base of the second molar and swung the hammer. The hammer caught the chisel dead-on. “Thwack!” pounded through her head. She peered into the mirror and examined things. Nothing cracked. She tried again, this time harder. The effort produced a small black scrape and ringing ears. Not so good. Plus it was hurting like crazy. A dull ache set in after the second attack, so she re-injected the gum with the remaining Novocain and waited twenty minutes.

  When the tooth and bottom lip numbed up beyond all sensation, she swung the hammer again, this time with all the force necessary to sink an eight-penny nail. The tooth cracked and bits and pieces stung the roof of her mouth as it exploded off the root.

  She leaned over the kitchen sink and spat the tooth fragments into the swirling water. They went right down; there would be no evidence of what she had done here tonight, only a fractured molar in need of repair.

  The prospective dental patient’s name was Edwina Moltinari and she lived in Chicago. She was twenty-four and made her home in an ambiguous condo along the Metra railroad tracks. She was unmarried but open to the prospect, just hadn’t found Mr. Right. She worked as an R.N. at Chicago University Hospital, psych ward. She had her own life and she hadn’t wanted to help the mobster escape. But he was her father and he would be sent to death row after conviction for murder at the federal level. So she was left with no choice but to jump in, however reluctant she was at first. They devised the plan of escape and it terrified her. Still, he was her father and she felt bound by love to do whatever she could. She was promised a new life in Mexico with all the money anyone could ever spend. After a year, she could obtain a new identity and move anyplace in the world, which had a certain appeal. It was an acceptable proposition, considering. But barely. Most of all, her father would survive.

  The plan required her to spend ten minutes in the dentist’s chair at Orbit Dental. In the room, alone. The usual wait while Novocain took hold would give them maybe ten minutes. It would be enough.

  The father was Ricardo “Bang Bang” Moltinari and he was locked away in the Hickam County Jail in Orbit, Illinois.

  But Moltinari wasn’t an ordinary prisoner. He owned the Chicago mob.

  As godfather, his rank guaranteed there would be extraordinary efforts by mob soldiers to free him from his cell—or so the authorities feared.

  Moltinari had been convicted of Conspiracy to Commit First Degree Murder by a state court jury and was looking at life imprisonment. Then, he was convicted of capital crimes in federal court and was facing the executioner’s needle for those. The mobsters would pull out all the stops to make sure execution never happened. An all-out assault on the jail was anticipated so preparations were speedily made. The governor stationed a small squad of National Guardsmen to show presence at the jail night and day. As the sense of threat evaporated with each quiet night that passed, by midnight they could usually be found fighting off sleep in their Humvees. They were armed with automatic weapons and tear-gas for the heavily armed assault that could be expected, and they were gung-ho—at first. But, like most soldiers prepared to fight and die, they slowly lost interest when the attack didn’t materialize immediately. After two weeks on deployment they were lost to the world by midnight, snoring and fighting to stay aware when the watch changed. Added to that staffing was a lightly armed contingent of Illinois State Police, Hickam County Deputi
es, and Orbit City Police, all on high alert.

  The first attempt came after midnight, just at shift change inside the jail. Deputies Mullen Washburn and Ike Howard were on duty, with two state policemen, and they were all seated around the receptionist’s desk playing Blackjack. It was assumed the prisoners were fast asleep as that’s how the inmates spent most of their days and nights—asleep.

  Two Lincoln Navigators screeched to a stop out front and four ski-masked intruders jumped out, shotguns leveled and charging the jail. Problem was, they could only enter the door one at a time and by then guns were drawn inside and defensive shots were fired. The first two lay dead in their tracks, blocking the entrance, and the remaining two suddenly turned and ran for one of the cars. By now the Guardsmen were fully awake and locked and loaded and caught the two stragglers in crossfire. In less than ten seconds the twosome lay shredded in a pile of arms and legs and bloody torsos on the sidewalk. The Guardsmen broke into a cheer, and shouts of “Hoo-rah!” echoed around the small town square.

  The Thursday edition of the Hickam Press ran a huge headline and color pictures and the attempted jail break was captured and replayed for all to read about and enjoy. Talk was swelling in the coffee shops and restaurants and the general consensus was that the Chicago sons-of-bitches wouldn’t try that again.

  Since his conviction in state court, Bang Bang Moltinari had been lodged in the Hickam County Jail, awaiting sentencing to the State Penitentiary at Pontiac. If all went as District Attorney Quentin Erwin planned, Moltinari would soon find himself a lifetime resident of the penitentiary. He would then be presented in U.S. District Court for sentencing for capital crimes that could result in the death penalty. His cases on appeal would then creep through State and Federal appeals. They would hungrily devour tens of thousands of pages of print, twenty thousand hours of lawyers’ time, the efforts of no less than fifteen paralegals and a dozen secretaries, the Death Row Project, and the attention of no less than fourteen judges, ranging from trial court to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. There would pass seven years of Death Row single-cell confinement while—along with his other 47 death row inmates—he was expected to find Jesus.

  Moltinari didn’t plan to stick around for all that, however.

  So the breakout attempts erupted (another, larger band of hoodlums was intercepted by the State Police at the east end of Orbit and forced to turn and speed away when the roadblock proved impenetrable).

  There came an attempt to smuggle a gun to the prisoner. When that attempted bribe was reported to the authorities, another story appeared in the Hickam Press, this time extolling the virtues of Henry Lomax, the minimum-wage jail orderly who rejected the offer of $10,000 cash for delivery of the gun to Moltinari and who instead reported the attempt to the sheriff. Lomax was hailed as a local hero and received a raise of $1.50 an hour, for which he was grateful. He was also switched to days, to his huge relief, after three years working the night shift.

  So Moltinari and daughter Edwina devised a different plan for his early release. They needed something without armed intruders, without shootouts, without the gorilla efforts of mob soldiers storming a stronghold.

  They met three times over a two week period.

  The jail had none of the classic visitor amenities like Plexiglas and phones through which visits were made. Instead, the prisoners and their guests were allowed to meet, one at a time, in the Visit Room, which was a 12’ x 12’ room painted mint green, with checkerboard linoleum, a picture of Abraham Lincoln, a picture of John Kennedy, and a coffee pot that forever emitted the smell of burned coffee. Inexplicably the table used to separate visitor and prisoner came equipped with a yellow legal pad and Bic pen for notes. In the case of Bang Bang and his visitor, the yellow pad was used to draw up a plan of escape.

  A layout of the dentist’s office was sketched by Moltinari, who had received the description from a fellow prisoner, a youth whose Meth-riddled teeth were in constant need of attention. The dental surgery chair was here, the hygienist’s chair here, cabinets here, the doorways here, here was the hallway, here the waiting room, and behind this glass partition toiled the office help.

  The plan evolved.

  There had to be a way out of Orbit, a town of 4500, which, to its credit, did offer an airport capable of handling small jets. The purpose of the extended length of the runway was the once-a-day commuter propjet that ferried passengers to Chicago, Springfield, and Peoria for boarding on larger aircraft bound for more distant destinations. Edwina learned this as she scouted the area.

  The escape plot soon involved a planted gun, a kidnapping, and a Learjet.

  They wanted to keep it as simple as possible and totally unexpected in its execution. Along the way there would be a revenge killing of Thaddeus Murfee, the attorney responsible for establishing Moltinari’s connection to the murder conspiracy and for causing his conviction.

  The entire routine would take less than twenty minutes as planned, then it would be wheels-up. The plan would commence with the jail break, followed by a detour to attorney Thaddeus Murfee’s office and a gangland execution-style slaying, as the Hickam Press would report it. Then the mobster would head out to the airport where he would scamper aboard the Learjet and blast south. That was the plan and it was foolproof but required perfect execution.

  Broken tooth emitting a dull ache, Edwina drove from Chicago to Orbit one Friday.

  The trip took three hours and two stops, once for gas, once at a rest area.

  She pulled into town just before 3 p.m. On the west end of town, at the Red Bird Inn, she stopped to use the pay phone. She dialed the number for Orbit Dental. There was no need to look it up; she had it memorized.

  Her father had learned from the kid with rotting teeth that Orbit Dental was where all prisoners were taken for dental care. It was reportedly a two-chair office and so was very small. One chair was used for cleaning and hygiene, the other chair was for dental surgery, which she now required.

  The phone call was answered on the third ring.

  She told the accommodating receptionist that she was passing through town and that she had broken a tooth on a stone in a bowl of chili. Could she come in today and have it repaired?

  The receptionist consulted the calendar.

  Could she be there at 5:15? The dentist could prepare a temporary crown and at least get her back to her regular dentist. Edwina checked the time: 2 p.m. “Perfect,” she said, and gave her personal information to the receptionist—all fake.

  She then drove out to the airport, where she took pictures of the landing strip, the small terminal, and obligatory security measures, which were all but non-existent. She assessed the hangers and access routes and noted that the Learjet was already parked on the tarmac. It had filed a flight plan from Omaha to Tallahassee with a layover in Orbit for seventy-two hours.

  Edwina had been told the airport was the easy part, but she wanted to see the setup one last time, just to make sure. After all, Moltinari was her father and they would only get one chance at this.

  Paying cash, she purchased a Cosmo from the airport newsstand. She took a seat in the passenger waiting area. She gave all outward appearances of reading, while she secretly snapped pictures with her phone. Two passengers occupied the waiting area with her. They totally ignored her photographic efforts. She was glad for the pictures. They would prove very useful in the hours to come.

  She drove back into town, where she would scout out the lawyer’s office. She parked in front of the Colton State Bank and rode the elevator to the second floor. The hallway and the elevator gave off that peculiar bank smell of newly minted checks and money. She shook her head at the simplistic effort going on in the bank: Moltinari’s Chicago operation processed more cash in one day than the bank would process in one year. And he was vital to the operation because it was his name under which all drugs were muled up the Mississippi River from the Gulf. “These are Bang Bang’s packages,” would be whispered along the way and hea
ds would nod in complicity and payments would be made. Without the guarantee of his name the operation would quickly dry up. Getting him back in place was absolutely essential.

  She found his office and took pictures with her smart phone of the door, the hall, and the elevator location.

  She left the bank, full of anticipation mixed with dread. Still, as she made final preparations, she was starting to get excited about returning the father to his rightful throne. Which would also establish her, Edwina, as successor to the throne, the next in line, the putative heir, which she was rather beginning to enjoy in its prospects.

  Inside her coat she was packing a heavy, S&W 9-millimeter loaded with fourteen rounds.

  A small roll of duct tape completed the package.

  * * *

  Bang Bang Moltinari had been indicted in the death of Orbit General Contractor Victor Harrow. Harrow had been kicking back to Governor Cleman L. Walker. The governor had been joined as a party defendant in the same indictment as Bang Bang. Other associates had been named along with them.

  The FBI had arrested Moltinari outside his home on Chicago’s Gold Coast. He was immediately advised he was under arrest for a state homicide and for a dozen federal RICO crimes and federal murder charges.

  The Governor turned State’s evidence and pleaded no contest.

  For Moltinari, two murder trials followed.

  The first resulted in a hung jury when one juror lied about her willingness to convict a defendant where he didn’t do the actual murder, which he had not. She simply refused to vote guilty, which infuriated the other eleven jurors. There would be no unanimous vote of guilty and so the judge finally, against all his personal feelings, was forced to declare the jury hung.

  A second trial followed three months later.

  Between the first trial and the second trial, Bang Bang was sprung from jail on bail of one million dollars. His lawyer posted it in cash. It was during this time that Moltinari and the daughter formulated the escape to Mexico. Passing a yellow pad back and forth in the daughter’s apartment, they messaged each other and the plan was devised. Now all they needed to do was establish the details and follow through.