Chapter 15

“Tawny!“ gasped Murdock into the microphone of the phone he had been given access to. His cell phone had been seized. He was told he could make multiple phone calls, within reason, and had been given a pad of paper and the stub of a pencil that wasn’t long enough to be used as a weapon. “They’re sending me to trial! I need you to get me a lawyer, a good one, the best one!”

“Of course,” came the voice of his wife. “The police searched our house, Murdock. They tore everything apart! They said they were looking for pictures of girls! They took the computer! What’s going on, Murdock?! They said you raped five of your students!” She didn’t mention that she had discovered his secret financial accounts, or that she and Bobby had copied all his passwords listed in Firefox, so she could use her laptop to replace the computer the police had seized.

“It’s all lies!“ gasped Murdock. “It’s all a misunderstanding. You have to believe me! I need a lawyer and you’ll have to find one for me. I need to clear my name!”

Tawny took a deep breath. She wasn’t ready to confront him, yet. She had to continue her act of the confused, scared wife.

“I’ll try. Can we afford a lawyer? Aren’t they expensive?”

“We have the money,” blurted Murdock. “There’s a check book beside the computer in the spare bedroom. I need the best lawyer you can find.”

“We have that much money?” asked Tawny, sounding confused.

“Yes! I’ve saved some money for our retirement. Come see me and I’ll tell you how to get to it.”

“We have money you didn’t tell me about?”

“Don’t worry about that, now. I’ll explain later. Just get me a lawyer. I need to see a lawyer now!“

“When are you coming home?” whined Tawny. “I don’t know how to do all this.”

“Talk to the school district lawyer. I don’t know why he hasn’t been here already. He’ll tell you what to do.”

“Aren’t they supposed to give you bail, or something?” complained Tawny. “Can’t you do this?”

“No. The judge wouldn’t give me bail. Just talk to the school district lawyer.”

“Okay. I’m not happy about this, Murdock. They’re saying you did terrible things.”

“I didn’t. I’m innocent. You know me. I need you, Tawny. This place is awful! I’m walking around among murderers and they all want to know why I’m in here. I can’t tell them because they’ll kill me if I do, even though I’m completely innocent. Get me a lawyer so I can get out of here!”

Tawny hung up the phone and tapped numbers on the surface of the device.

“Bobby?” she said, when he answered. “Murdock just called. They didn’t give him bail. He wants me to hire him a lawyer. He said he needs me. Too bad he didn’t need me when he decided to sexually assault all those girls!”

“I have a class in ten minutes,” said Bobby. “After that I’ll come over and we can decide what to do. At a minimum you need to hire him a lawyer. Either that or tell him he’s on his own.”

“Take your time,” said Tawny. “I’m not ready to cut him loose just yet. I’ll find a lawyer, but I have a feeling doing that is going to take a while.”

“We’ll talk when I get there,” said Bobby.

“You want me to wear something sexy?” she purred.

“Definitely,” he sighed.

Since Murdock’s arrest, Bobby had been sleeping at the principal’s house most nights. Once Tawny had calmed down, after her husband’s initial arrest, she had become quite passionate in her relationship with the young man she wouldn’t have believed she could feel so strongly about. For the first four nights they got very little sleep, as she writhed under that young man, holding his naked body against hers as they made love.

When she hung up the phone after talking to her husband and her lover, Tawny poured herself a glass of orange juice. Since it was confirmed she was carrying Bobby’s baby, her diet had changed a bit. She no longer drank wine, and her exercise regimen had expanded to include calisthenics, in addition to her normal runs. She felt more alive than she had in years. She patted her abdomen, which was no longer as flat as a board. She didn’t have a baby bump, yet, not a proper one, but she ran her hand over the slight swell that was there.

“Your daddy is coming over in an hour or so,” she said, looking down. “Let’s wear something interesting for him, what do you say?”

Lisa Murkowski was the single reporter for The Julian Announcer, a local newspaper that was struggling to maintain enough subscribers to compete in a world where many people got their news via the internet. The Julian Announcer, in fact, had their own web page, which was maintained by the son of the pressman. Lisa was doing what she did every day, reviewing the public records of the Julian PD. It was Monday morning and she didn’t expect to find much; maybe a drunk driver, or a fender bender. There had been a rash of burglaries of sheds and detached garages, recently, and the newspaper had an agreement with the police to publish lists of stolen property in the hopes that someone would see some of it and generate a lead.

Her eyes scanned the records and passed over the word “rape” before they jerked to a halt and she went back. Murdock Stevens? That name sounded familiar.

“Who’s Murdock Stevens?” she asked her boss, who was looking over that morning’s edition.

“Why do you ask?” inquired Gerald Livingston. He had taken the paper over from his father when he was twenty-eight. He was now approaching fifty.

“He was arrested for rape, but there’s no listing of the victim,” she said.

“Rape? Are you sure?”

“It’s right here,” said Lisa, holding up the record she’d been reviewing. “It says he was arrested, and the charge is rape. It says the victim name is confidential.”

“Murdock Stevens is the principal at the high school,” said Gerald. “Let me see that.”

Lisa took the paper to him and he peered at it.

“Call them. Find out who the victim is and why it’s confidential.”

“If it’s confidential, they won’t tell me who it is,” said Lisa.

“Then find out why it’s confidential.”

Ten minutes later Lisa was on the phone with the records clerk at the police department.

Nobody had told the records clerk to keep things quiet. She couldn’t release the names of the victims.

But she could say there were five of them, and that they were all juveniles.

An hour later, that information was on the newspaper’s website.

News travels fast, especially juicy rumors about a pillar of the community who has been arrested for a despicable crime. While the police often have difficulty identifying witnesses, and getting them to divulge what they know, those who indulge in gossip are not so reticent to find and then spread information around, willy nilly.

By lunch on Monday the rumor mill had spread information all over town, some valid and some not so true. The kernel of truth in all that gossip, however, was that Murdock Stevens, who had that beautiful young wife, had been arrested, and that his arrest was for rape, and that there were at least five victims whose names could not be released because they were younger than eighteen. The import of “younger than 18” wasn’t hard to figure out, in terms of who Murdock Stevens had access to on a daily basis. “At least five victims” was where things began to get out of control, in terms of the truth of the rumors. If there were “at least five victims” then that meant there could be seven ... or ten ... or twenty.

Normally, rumors like this do not produce much, in terms of new information that will actually help the police.

In this case, however, as the rumors flashed around town, there were four women who heard it and were former students at Julian High.

They were also former victims of Murdock’s insatiable desire to fuck young, helpless girls.

Two of them were married, one with two children. The other two were taking college classes at The Alfalfa County Technical Institute. Ironically, one of them had a class with Bobby Martin, though she wouldn’t have said she knew him.

All four of these women knew exactly what Murdock had been arrested for. To them, it was plain as day.

The two college girls decided to go talk to the police immediately. Both had been free of Murdock’s clutches for more than a year, but neither was “over” the things he’d put them through. The two married women were less eager to go public about their past relationship with Murdock.

It was, in fact, when it came out in the Announcer that two more victims had been identified, this time with their names made public, that one of the married women talked to her husband (who was also a former student at Julian High) and then went to see the police.

Her name in the next day’s edition of The Announcer was enough to get the other married woman into an interview room with Detective Alicia Ironsides. Since all four new victims had not yet reached the age of forty-five, Oklahoma law allowed crimes committed against them when they were juveniles to be prosecuted.

It was a genuine once-in-a-lifetime scandal, at least in Julian, and The Julian Announcer blew the lid off that scandal.

Dick Tunley had no difficulty in getting his (now) nine victims in front of the grand jury. There were enough of them that it expanded into a two day hearing, but this was big doings for the members of the grand jury, too. They were accustomed to hearing evidence on white collar crime and government corruption. Once in a while they’d get a case involving drug trafficking, but this particular grand jury had only heard 89 cases since it was formed. None of them were as juicy as the Julian case. They were willing to spend the extra time interviewing victims.

To be quite truthful, the True Bill, or grand jury indictment, was already prepared before the last two victims were interviewed. Dick Tunley had it in his hand before the last victim was in her car and headed home. The parents of the original five victims, who had been getting both impatient and testy about the process, were called to a meeting by Alicia, who basically gave them a class on how the trial system worked. What they were really interested in, however, was what she saved for last.

“First degree rape is a felony and, in Oklahoma, is punishable by death, imprisonment for between at least five years to life, or life without parole. If convicted of nine counts, Mister Stevens could face at least forty-five years in prison. Trying to make it a capital case raises the bar quite high, and I’ll be honest with you, I doubt the prosecutor will try that. He will, however, ask for much more than five years per count, and will ask that no parole be possible.”

“You said nine counts,” Judy Green said, softly. “He did it more than nine times.”

“I used that number because it’s the number of victims. Of course more than nine counts will be charged. I don’t know, however, the exact number at this time.”

“So he’d get jail time for all of them, too?” asked another parent.

“I am convinced down to my bones that Murdock Stevens will never be a free man again,” said Alicia.

“That’s good,” came the growling voice of a man. “Because if he ever is, I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

Alicia’s voice was still calm.

“Comments like that, Mister Nichols, might get you barred from entering the courtroom during the trial. Do you want your daughter to have to testify alone, without you out there as a familiar, friendly face?”

Two days later Dick Tunley went back before the magistrate judge and amended the charges. The magistrate judge forwarded the case to be tried in the district court.

With the news that her husband was going to be tried for an offense that could possibly bring the death penalty, Tawny’s thoughts of revenge moderated a bit. She wanted him to be punished ... but not killed. Her inquiries to Larry Herzenberger, the school district’s attorney, were met with cool unresponsiveness, initially, but he finally compiled a list of lawyers for her to approach.

“Don’t tell anyone I gave you this list,” he said, handing it to the astonishingly beautiful wife of the man the whole school board wanted nothing further to do with. He was processing the paperwork to fire her husband, but didn’t tell her that.

“I won’t. Thank you,” said Tawny.

The man she finally hired was named Duke Cunningham, who was a well known criminal defense attorney from Oklahoma City. He wanted a five thousand dollar retainer and she paid it with one of the checks in the checkbook Murdock had told her about. She told Duke where her husband was, and what she knew about his arraignment.

“I’ll take care of things from here,” he said. “Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

The first thing Cunningham did was contact Dick Tunley, who was more than happy to comply with the rules of discovery.

After reviewing the evidence and the true bill, Cunningham went to see his client.

“I need you to be honest with me, and I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “Did you do it?”

“Of course not,” said Murdock. “I would never do anything like they’re claiming I did. It’s all lies.”

“I’ve seen the evidence they have,” said Duke. He was used to clients lying to him. It made his job harder. “Have you?”

“No,” admitted Murdock. “They gave a CD to the judge, but I don’t know what’s on it.”

“What’s on it is video of you having sex with four girls in your office,” said Duke. “And they have video of you just before you were arrested. Now. I’ll ask you again. Did you do it?”

Murdock felt panic seize his heart.

“They wanted it!” he blurted. “They all wanted it.”

“Whether they wanted it or not isn’t the issue,” said Duke. “Only one or maybe two were above the age of consent. The law says it’s rape even if they begged for it.”

Murdock sat, stunned.

“I’ll still be honest with you,” said Duke. “I might be able to discredit one, or even two of the victims. I won’t be able to discredit nine.”

“But there weren’t nine!” groaned Murdock.

“Four have come forward who are no longer students.” He gave Murdock their names.

“What do I do?” begged Murdock.

“We try to make a deal,” said Duke. “You plead guilty to one or two. You spend ten or fifteen years in prison and then you go free.”

“I’ll be able to collect social security by then,” whined Murdock.

“You’ll be alive. This is an emotional case. They could go for the death penalty.”

“What?” gasped the man in the orange jump suit.

“I don’t think they will, but they could. The best thing for you to do is make it easy for them without going to trial. You need to cop a plea.”

“Fuck,” groaned Murdock.

“That’s what got you in this mess,” said his lawyer.

“Let me get this straight,” said Dick Tunley. “You want a plea bargain in which seven victims get no justice. What I’m thinking right now is that there are a whole room full of parents who would skin me alive if I make a deal for anything less than fifty years. You want him to serve a fifth of that? Have a nice day, counselor. No deal.”

Duke, who wanted to milk this client for as much as he could, went back to Murdock.

“I think I can get you less than fifty years. I’ll run with the idea that they wanted to have sex with you. We can say it was to get better grades, or something like that.”

“I can’t go to prison for fifty years,” moaned Murdock. “If I get fifty years, I’ll die in prison.”

“Chin up,” said Duke. “I’ve got a good record. I’ll see what I can do.”

What he did first, was contact Tawney and tell her to write him another five thousand dollar check.

What made it easier to live in the house while her husband was in jail was that, occasionally, Tawny didn’t have to sleep alone. Some in western society might have looked down on her for cheating on her imprisoned husband, but Tawny’s view of things was that, when Murdock violated his vow of fidelity, he gave up his husbandly rights.

What made life more difficult for her was that everybody in town now knew what her husband had done, and who he had done it to. There were a lot of people paying attention to her and that made it more difficult for Bobby to visit her on anything close to a regular basis. It also made it more difficult for her to research moving forward with her divorce.

She wasn’t worried about the fact that, by January, she had a baby bump that was quite noticeable when she was naked. Her obstetrician had set her due date as the first of July. That meant that she was about three months along. She didn’t care if the public saw she was pregnant. They would assume it was Murdock’s. They might even feel some compassion for her. What was important was that Murdock didn’t find out she was pregnant. Not yet.

She had plenty of clothing that hid her condition. She went to see her husband in jail once a week, but she never took off her coat. His trial date was in February and she was a little worried that, by then, she wouldn’t be able to conceal it from him. If she had to testify in court, the jig would be up. She wished her parents were still alive, so she could “go visit them in her time of grief and sorrow.” That wasn’t an option, though.

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