The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (14 page)

You would think after so much questioning, John would have figured out that the police had him in their sights, but he didn’t. It didn’t dawn on him until four state police cruisers pulled up in front of the window factory where he worked on Highway 8, between Crosse and Indianapolis. A Harris County sheriff’s car pulled in behind them, along with a couple of Crosse city cops. One of the guys John worked with, some stoner named Sonny, thought it was a raid and shot up to the rafters to hide. I don’t think he came down for a couple of days. But John never moved from his workstation, not when he saw through the large windows in the front of the plant police cars pulling up, and not when he saw the parade of police officers come through the factory’s doors and start walking toward him. And not when he saw Andy Myers looking directly at him as he made his way toward John with the rest of the crowd.

“John Phillips?” Ted Jackson said as he walked up to John.

“Yes, Detective Jackson, you know that’s who I am. We’ve talked several times,” John said. And then he added something that shows just how clueless he really was, “Hello, Officer Myers. It’s good to see you today.”

“John Phillips,” Ted Jackson continued, “I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Gabriel Phillips.”

Andy lived off the high of that moment for a long time. He said John’s face went completely white and his jaw nearly hit the floor. “What?” John asked. “There has to be some kind of mistake. I didn’t kill my son. I’ve told you that many, many times. My son died when he struck his head falling out of bed . . .”

A state trooper walked behind John, pulled his arms back, and handcuffed him as Ted Jackson said, “Mr. Phillips, you have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, the state will assign one to your case. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Phillips?”

“I don’t understand how you can think I killed my son. Officer Myers, you were there that night. Tell them. You saw how my son had fallen out of his bed and struck his head against a drawer.” John’s voice had a pleading quality to it, but he didn’t sound desperate. Andy wanted him to sound desperate. He didn’t answer John’s request. Andy just stood back and took the whole thing in, like a Yankee fan enjoying a September sweep of the Red Sox.

“I’m afraid you gentlemen have made a terrible mistake,” John said.

“Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you, Mr. Phillips?” Jackson asked.

“How did you ever conclude that I could have harmed my little boy? I love my son,” John said.

“Mr. Phillips, do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?” Jackson asked again, firmer this time.

“Yes. Yes,” John said. “I understand them.” He turned and looked at Andy. “Officer Myers, please. You knew my son. Tell them that this is a mistake. Tell them that I would never do anything to harm Gabe.” Andy ignored his request. Instead, he walked toward the door, following the lead of the other police officers.

The state trooper who’d cuffed John took him by his shoulder. “Please come with me,” he said as he led John out the factory door. As soon as they walked out into the sunshine, camera crews from all three local network affiliate Indianapolis television stations jumped in front of them. The cameras followed John down the sidewalk from the factory door to the parking lot, across the lot, and up to a waiting police car. Their microphones recorded the trooper saying, “Watch your head” as he pushed down on John’s head, placing him in the backseat. Unlike the classic arrest scenes that play out on the local news, John didn’t try to hide his face or block the cameras with his hand. He walked with his head held high, a confident look on his face. Andy took the look on his face as one more example of John’s arrogance, as though he’d covered his tracks so well that no one would ever be able to prove what he’d done.

Once John was in the state trooper’s car, one of the reporters yelled, “Mr. Phillips, do you have anything to say about the very serious charges brought against you?”

His response became his basic defense throughout his trial. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and I have nothing to hide. The people who know me know I could never do anything like this. But ultimately, God is my judge. He’s in control. He will take care of me through this.” Andy remembered that line because this wasn’t the last time he heard it. Far from it.

The camera crews were back out in force for Reginald Chambliss’s news conference, along with print reporters from both Indianapolis papers, as well as the daily papers from Adamsburg and Crosse. The owner/editor/chief reporter from the weekly Trask paper also showed up. Good ole Chambliss; he was quite the politician. He went out of his way to take questions from the little Trask one-man operation. I guess he wanted to bill himself as the friend of the little man in his still-unannounced, but already planned, upcoming campaign.

But the print guys weren’t Chambliss’s first concern. He held his news conference for the cameras, and once they started rolling, he hit his groove. After walking up to the podium—and he wore a much nicer suit than the one he’d had on when Andy met him—Chambliss introduced all of the “fine law enforcement officers” behind him “who worked so diligently to make sure justice was served for poor little Gabriel Phillips.” He then proceeded to brief all those in attendance on the basics of the case. If the version I heard of this day was correct, the guy used the phrase “poor little Gabriel Phillips” a couple dozen times before he ever took his first question. Poor little Gabriel Phillips was “a small boy who’d suffered a lifetime of abuse,” a boy “too small to defend himself,” and a child “who suffered the misfortune of becoming the means by which the man he considered to be his father exacted his revenge against poor little Gabriel Phillips’s mother.”

As if on cue, the reporters asked if the prosecutor’s office would seek the death penalty. “I believe the facts of the case will show that this appalling, vicious act of violence was a premeditated act that will, under the Supreme Court guidelines, qualify as a capital murder case. Therefore, yes, I will seek the ultimate punishment and deterrent the state of Indiana has to offer: the electric chair,” Chambliss replied. All in all, it made for great theater. Andy soaked it all in as he stood behind Chambliss on the podium. He’d waited for this day for a long time and he wanted to enjoy every moment of it.

One incident occurred later, however, that took some of the luster off that afternoon for Andy. After the news conference, he walked down to Ted Jackson’s office to try to talk his old friend into going out and getting a drink after they were both off duty. By this point, Andy had completely given up the charade of sticking to the twelve steps. Ted wasn’t in his office, and his secretary thought he may be over in the processing room checking on the status of a couple of prisoners from cases on which he’d been working. Andy went off to find him. As he walked through the main door of the processing area, his eyes caught those of John Phillips, who was in the far side of the room. John was now wearing the distinctive orange jumpsuit inmates love so much. Yeah, I’m being sarcastic. John was just standing there, his hands cuffed in front of him, although his legs were not in irons. He appeared to Andy to be waiting for one of the officers to finish some paperwork before taking him back to a cell.

The sight of John sort of surprised Andy. He hadn’t expected to see him again so soon. When their eyes met, a funny thing happened. Andy had hoped to see the pangs of guilt eating away at the guy. Instead, John gave him the kind of look that passes from one friend to another who is hurting to let him know he is there whenever needed. That’s how Andy described it when he told me about it. I don’t really know what that look might look like, but Andy apparently caught the message right off. Or maybe it was just his conscience talking. Guilt pretty much drove him throughout the investigative phase of the case. Andy reminded himself, though, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t go looking for any of this. All of these events found him. I guess that’s how life works out sometimes. Like I said before, life is funny. Just when Andy thought he had everything figured out, he was already starting to doubt himself. He should have let it go. But if he had, I wouldn’t be here now.

Chapter 11

A
NDY HAD JUST WATCHED
John’s arrest and the highlights of the press conference on the eleven o’clock news when his phone rang. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi, Andy. Loraine. I was wondering if you might have time to drop by this evening. I would like to thank you for all you’ve done for Gabe.”

He hadn’t had a phone call like this in what felt like a much longer time than it actually had been. Two months earlier he would have been out the door before she could get her words out. But not that night.

“There’s no need to thank me, Loraine. I was just doing my job,” he said.

“That may be true, but I really want to show you how much I appreciate all you did. I heard the D.A. mention you by name and how you’d taken the initiative to see this case through to an arrest. I think you should be rewarded,” she said.

Andy swallowed hard. Self-control had never exactly been his strong suit, but he could hear the sound of Ted Jackson’s voice in his head saying,
Don’t do something stupid and blow this case. Think like a cop, not with your pants.
And in spite of all the D.A.’s blustering, the case against John Phillips wasn’t exactly airtight. Most of it still came down to a matter of interpretation. The evidence could be made to say whatever a really smart attorney wanted it to say. Even Brian Paul’s testimony was anything but a slam dunk. Ted Jackson had already privately asked Andy if he’d coached the kid in what to say, and Andy didn’t think Ted was convinced when he said no. If some reporter or defense team investigator saw him going over to the dead kid’s mother’s house on the night the dad was arrested for murder one, the whole case could blow up.

“Please don’t think that I don’t appreciate your gratitude, Loraine. Lord knows there’s nothing I would like more than to see you right now, but it’s all a little premature. An arrest isn’t the same as a conviction. This case still has a long way to go before justice is served. I’m afraid if we saw one another now, we might needlessly jeopardize it. I hope you understand,” Andy said.

“We’ll call it a rain check, then,” Loraine said.

“You can count on it,” Andy said.

After he hung up the phone, a wave of anxiety swept over Andy.
An arrest is a long way from a conviction
, he thought.
And a conviction is a long way from a confession
. And that’s all he ever really wanted. He wanted John Phillips to confess. Deep down he thought it would have already happened. In his mind he pictured John’s arrest playing out like a scene from a television lawyer show, like
Perry Mason
. Perry would always figure out who the real killer was, and then he’d get the guy up on the witness stand to nail him. About halfway through his testimony, Perry would spring the real evidence on him, and the guy would crack. All the pent-up guilt would come pouring out and the guy would confess right then and there. Most of the time Perry could even get them to break down in tears.

That’s what Andy fantasized would happen when the police descended upon the window factory earlier that afternoon. He’d already played the whole scene out in his head. The second Ted Jackson said, “John Phillips, you are under arrest for the murder of Gabriel Phillips,” John was supposed to fall to his knees, crying. Then he would say, “I confess. I did it. I did it. I can’t live with the guilt any longer. I killed my son.” Andy was a little disappointed when it didn’t play out that way, disappointed but not surprised. After all, this wasn’t the movies. He hoped that by the time John’s preliminary hearing rolled around the day after tomorrow, John would realize that the jig was up, and plead guilty. If the case went to trial, the D.A. would press, and press hard, for a death sentence. Surely, John would value his own life enough to accept the inevitable and take responsibility for what he had done.

Are there any loose ends floating around that might trip this case up?
he wondered. He looked back over a list he’d made in his Big Chief pad of what he considered the strongest parts of the case against John. At the top of his list, Andy had written, “He did it. Case closed.” You have to keep in mind that this was a list he’d made for himself, and not anyone else. Below this, he’d listed key parts of Loraine’s testimony, with a big circle drawn around the statement “Argument at the door. Not his son.” He’d also underlined the word “not” three or four times. Farther down were the words “Brian Paul, earwitness.” I’ve read over this list several times, and I’m always amazed that Andy never called Brian an eyewitness, even though Brian told Ted Jackson and later testified in court that he saw John slam the drawer onto Gabe’s head. Down on the bottom of the page were the words “Not the man he claims to be.” Andy read through this list several times before pushing it aside, grabbing the keys to his patrol car, and walking out the door.

Would you be surprised if I told you he ended up at Madison Park Apartments? I didn’t think so. Andy pulled into the parking lot under the only working streetlight, just like the night Gabe died. He shut off the engine and lights, rolled down his window, and just sat there. Listening. At first, he didn’t hear anything except the sound of the occasional car going up and down State Street. He climbed out of his car, walked around to the front, and leaned against the passenger-side fender. This gave him a direct view of building three. His mind tried to go racing around to the events of the night Gabe died; then it jumped over to Loraine’s apartment and reminded Andy of how stupid he was to turn her down tonight. It kept jumping all over, until Andy finally quieted his thoughts enough to just listen to the night at Madison Park.

The night was a little cool for mid-September, but a few people had their windows open. Andy could hear Ed McMahon’s laugh and Doc Severinsen make up a ridiculous song as Johnny Carson played “Stump the Band” on NBC. A baby was crying over on the east side of the complex, and doors slammed on the west side. Another door slammed louder somewhere close by, which was immediately followed by the sound of the door reopening, and a woman yelling, “Don’t you walk out on me.”