Page 12 of Go Under

Darnell hung up just as the email notification popped up on his computer. He opened the attachment and read.

At first, Gerald Mace’s career appeared uneventful. His recruiter noted that he had a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, something forty percent of candidates possessed, so barely even worth mentioning, in Darnell’s opinion. He serves nineteen years, working his way through Philadelphia’s municipal court system before winding up in the Court of Common Pleas for the last eight years of his career. He was being considered for a position at the Third Circuit court of appeals when he retired abruptly in 1997 at the age of forty-one.

Darnell’s brow furrowed. Forty-one was extremely young to retire for anyone who wasn’t a professional athlete. People only retired that young when they were absurdly wealthy or when they were avoiding a scandal.

Gerald Mace lived in Kensington, and he didn’t make enough as a court clerk for that to be some sort of eccentric choice. Maybe digging into his financial records would reveal some vast degree of hoarded wealth, but Darnell doubted it.

That left scandal.

He looked up the final case Mace served on. The People vs. Armand Stockton was a grand theft auto case, pretty open and shut. Security footage showed Mr. Stockton hot-wiring a vintage Lamborghini from the valet parking lot of the Philadelphia Rose, a since closed five-star restaurant in Society Hill.

Nothing there. Darnell leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. Maybe he had money somehow after all. Maybe he was just thrifty and invested his savings until he had a nest egg that could allow him to retire early.

Very early. Early enough that Darnell still had trouble believing it. And living in a dumpy rowhouse. Sure, court clerk wasn’t the most exciting job, but at forty-one, few single men had an incentive to have nothing to do for the rest of their lives ever, especially if their only option was a small townhome in a bad neighborhood. If he’d retired for a few years, then found another job, even a part-time gig, Darnell would have bought it, but it looked very much like Gerald Mace was trying to avoid the spotlight.

He looked back through Gerald’s cases one at a time. Something was there. He knew it. People didn’t vanish like that unless they were running from something.

The night dragged on. The Philadelphia Field Office never quite went silent, but late in the evening, activity was light enough that the background noise in Darnell’s office dwindled from a moderate hum to periods of silence interrupted by the occasional clacking of footsteps on the tile floor or the shuffling of papers as another night owl pored over evidence for their own case.

Finally, as the clock rounded the corner into the a.m. hours again, Darnell found something, a 1991 murder trial that was briefly revisited in late 1996 after evidence came out that the prosecution had mishandled evidence.

Darnell still wasn’t sure what that had to do with a court clerk, a job that amounted to little more than secretarial work, but he pulled up the records.

The People vs. Daniel Avery was a homicide trial that enjoyed brief but sensational national attention. The defendant was accused of killing Narek Tankian, a clerk at a jewelry store in Rittenhouse Square during a robbery gone wrong. Part of the sensation the case enjoyed was due to the nature of the killing. Narek was shot three times, once in the forehead, killing him.

The other two shots came before the killing shot. One to the groin, bursting both testicles, and one to the abdomen below the belly button, severing the spine and paralyzing him from the waist down. Forensic examination suggested Narek was alive for several minutes before he was killed.

The two other perpetrators of the burglary disappeared into the wind. Unfortunately, Daniel Avery was caught a mile from the jewelry store with a handgun and blood and gunshot residue on his shirt sleeve. He resisted arrest violently, not discharging his weapon but breaking one officer’s jaw.

Darnell spent the next hour arguing with Philadelphia PD records for security cam footage of the arrest. When he received that video evidence, became clear that this wasn’t a case of police brutality. Officers tried repeatedly to talk Daniel down, and he repeatedly refused to give up his weapon or submit to arrest. When one officer approached, hands raised, fingers splayed and empty, Daniel stepped forward to pistol whip the man, earning his aggravated assault with great bodily injury charge.

He’d instigated the fight, and he’d resisted continuously, despite the officers’ continued reluctance to use force. They only tased him after a four-minute struggle when he proved to be too much for the other three officers to handle.

That was another part of the sensation. Daniel Avery was a young African American man who, allegedly, after murdering an innocent clerk, violently assaulted arresting officers. The early nineties was a time when police brutality against African Americans was far more flagrant and just beginning to be talked about in the media. A case where officers clearly tried hard to avoid violence only to be given no choice by the suspect was a gold mine for police unions trying to prove that it really was the violent Black gangsters who were at fault.

The lack of brutality in Daniel Avery’s arrest wasn’t proof that there was no racism later in the case, of course. The OJ Simpson trial with the famous accusations of planted evidence wouldn’t occur for three years, and again, forgive Darnell for being cynical, but police forces and prosecutors often chose to fudge minor details to achieve the results they believed appropriate. After all, the point was to put bad people away. If they were missing a few crossed t’s, so what?

Well, in 1996, one of those uncrossed t’s came back to bite the Avery case in the ass. Avery was originally found guilty of the murder and sentenced to forty years. During his trial, the defense consistently pointed to exculpatory evidence that they claim was unlawfully excluded from the trial. The judge ruled that wasn’t the case and insisted that the defense had neglected to file the evidence on time. The judge then denied a motion to reopen the discovery period. End result, a long stay at the big hotel.

Not very long for Avery. He was killed in 1994 when inmates jumped him in the shower and beat him to death.

Cut to the very next year, and it came to light through means not immediately apparent in the information Darnell had access to that the defense had delivered their evidence in time. It simply hadn’t been filed immediately. Instead, the deadline passed the morning after evidence was delivered.

The case was quietly reopened and the family of Daniel Avery awarded an undisclosed settlement. The week after that settlement was reached, Gerald Mace retired.

Darnell nodded. This was it. This was the motive.

He reached for his phone and called Grant. He wasn’t surprised when the call went to voicemail considering the hour. “Grant, it’s Darnell. I’m afraid six months has come to pass. I need everything you have on The People vs. Daniel Avery.”

CHAPTER SIX

Thursday, January 21st

You show up for family.

It was one of the tenets Carol Ames, nee Frick, held to her heart. Not dear to her heart. Her family was not the sort of people who endeared others, even other members of their own clan, but Carol held the truth to her heart all the same.

That was why, at five in the morning on a Thursday, Carol was driving to her sister’s home in Brandywine Village. Donna was perhaps the least endearing of all the Frick brood, but she was the closest in age to Carol, and the two of them had always shared a bond, even if that bond contained as much vinegar as blood.