Chapter 3: I'm in Hell

"Who are you, and why are you in here?"

"I'm William Henry Harrison, and I need water, badly. I have been here for three days with no food, no water, and I have not been allowed to contact my attorney."

"Just a minute, you say you've been here for three days?"

"That's correct. By my count, it should be sometime late Sunday evening, or early Monday morning, the fifteenth."

"Wrong, Mister. It's Wednesday afternoon, the eighteenth."

"Then I've been here for seven days," I choked out and fell to the floor.

I woke up in a hospital bed, in a room with bars on the windows, with a huge burly guard standing at the door. The guard opened the door and said something to someone outside and I struggled to see if I was alright. I tried to move my arms or legs and found I was strapped to the bed. My mouth had that cottony feel when you've had some heavy duty drugs.

I croaked out, "Water?"

The guard shook his head and said, "Wait 'til the doc gets here."

I tried again, "Lawyer!"

"Later, don't try to talk just yet."

I closed my eyes again, and then I was shaken awake.

"Mr. Harrison? Mr. Harrison ... good you're awake now. I have to ask, how did you survive for seven days with no food and no water?"

"Toilet," I managed to say, then, "Water, please," I begged.

"Oh, yes," he grabbed a Styrofoam cup with a straw and put it to my lips. "Go easy at first. If you take too much, your system will rebel."

"Lawyer, now!"

"Yes, of course. Who is your lawyer?"

"Jerry Gardner or Mike Fuller ... call my company." I managed to croak out

"I'll see what we can do about that. You gave us quite a scare. You have been in a coma for almost three weeks. There were several times that we thought we were going to lose you, but you always came back. But we'll soon have you up and around and back in a cell where you belong."

"Lawyer, NOW!!!"

"You can't demand anything here, Mr. Harrison, beside you asked for your phone call already, remember?"

"No!"

I never remembered making a call. I remember asking for my lawyer when I was in that cell when the cop found me, but nothing after that until now. How could that be? Someone or somehow I was being railroaded into a murder charge and I don't even have a clue who I was supposed to have killed.

Sometime later, I don't know when, I was shaken awake again and this time it was Mike Fuller with another older man.

"Bill, it's Mike, Mike Fuller. I have Harold Lloyd, here, with me. He's a criminal attorney we hired for your defense. We need to talk to you about what's going on."

I waved at the guard and weakly said, "Him go."

The guard stood right there as I glared at him.

"I'm supposed to stay right here."

Harold looked at him and said, "This is attorney-client time, Son. You are neither of those two parties, so leave before I call your supervisor, understood?"

"Yes, Sir, Mr. Lloyd," he said and left, but didn't close the door. Mike went over and slammed it shut.

I had finally gotten some of the cobwebs cleared from my mind. With a little more water, I was able to talk in short sentences.

"What's going on? I got call from Monique ... and she says I promised her ... something and then hung up. Then cops come and arrest me. They threw me in cell ... for seven days ... later, I'm found. What happened?"

"Bill, you are accused of killing one Bradley Johnson. He was found murdered four days after Monique left you. He was brutally beaten with a blunt instrument, probably the bloody bat found near his body. He was just getting home, late that night, after a long session at work."

"Probably bangin' Monique. She had affair with him. I was going for divorce. On my puter at home is video, and audio, too."

"Not anymore, Bill, the cops confiscated all of that. According to the DA, there is just some work stuff, and a bunch of e-mails from you telling Monique that you are going to kill Brad."

"Have they let you see puter?"

"No, they did give Harold the printouts of the e-mails."

"All fakes. Get Sean to go over machine. If they refuse, hit them ... with suit for evidence tampering. Also sue city for treatment ... received in jail."

"Bill, I've already done that. Everything is on hold until after your trial. They are waiting for your hearing until you are well enough to be there for it." Harold said.

"How's Monique?"

"She's coping, but not well. She really does think that you might have killed Brad. But she also loves you, too."

"Where Brad killed?"

"Outside his apartment in the hallway, why?"

"Where is apartment?"

"The five hundred block of West 37^th Street"

"What floor?"

"I'm not sure. It says apartment 305, that's a third floor apartment."

"Have elevator?"

"There's no mention of one. Why?" asked Harold.

Mike said, "Because, Bill can't do stairs. He can't walk up stairs. That's why he has a power chair or uses a walker to get around. He can use a cane in some cases, but not for very long or very far. Bill couldn't have killed Johnson. He couldn't have climbed to the third floor."

"Bill, we actually have a very distinct case where being handicapped by your weight could get you off, scot-free. Of course, they'll try to come back and say that you bribed someone to do the job, but they'll have to prove it, first. This is great news, Bill."

"The next question is, who hates you this much?"

"Sam Goodman ... Dan Stark ... Ted Lorenzo," I said. They immediately came to mind as the only people that would hate me this much to do this to get back at me and Monique. They also had the connections to have me thrown in jail and forgotten.

"Mike, my first job for John ... Stevenson. Look in the files."

I had to call a halt to all this talking, I was just too tired. I kind of drifted off for a while, and there was a different guard standing at the door when I woke up again. I noticed that I had a new bag of liquid dripping into me and I went back to sleep.

I was supposed to have killed Bradley on the sixth of June. It was the second of January when I finally got out of the hospital. I had lost almost a hundred and fifty pounds in the hospital and I was a mass of flabby flesh. I was rushed into court once I came out. My hearing was short. The state presented their case of my supposed e-mails, the divorce papers, and had Monique testify that I knew who she had the affair with.

Monique almost fainted when she saw me as she came into the courtroom. I was in prison orange, and I had flab sticking out all over the coveralls. My face was so drawn that she hardly recognized me. She answered the DA's question, but she just stared at me the whole time she was on the stand.

Harold cross examined her and asked if I seemed upset when I told her I knew about the affair.

"He looked so sad. He had tears in his eyes, and yet he was very calm, just like he is during a presentation. He let me know he knew all about it, and had videos and audio tapes of our conversations..."

The DA, shouted, "Objection, your Honor, that's hearsay evidence and not admissible."

"Sustained. Ma'am, you can't say that he had these videos and tapes if you never saw them. Go on, Mr. Lloyd."

"Yes, your Honor."

That was about it. He did have her tell about calling me, then hanging up on the day I was arrested.

The DA did bring up that if this evidence was real, why was it that they could find no trace of it either on my computer or in my home during the search for additional evidence.