Of Guilt and Innocence by John Scanlan Read Free Book Online

the detective spoke with Carlos he had yet to view the security video of Rebecca leaving in Carlos’s car, but Carlos didn’t try to hide it; he knew that detail would eventually come to light, and so he admitted he had driven her home that day. The detective looked surprised by that admission and began to press Carlos for details, which set Carlos on spinning the deceitful web he had so carefully created.
    He told the detective that when the two were walking to his car he felt like he was being followed, but the only person he noticed at the time was a hospital orderly named Mika Jackson, whom he knew and did not suspect. Still, he told the detective, he could not shake the strange feeling. Carlos then told of how he had parked his car and accepted Rebecca’s invitation in for a cup of tea. He stated he was inside the apartment for roughly fifteen minutes, describing a surgical procedure Rebecca was to have done and drinking his tea, before he left with her very much alive.
    Carlos’s gaze drifted from the detective’s eyes to a fixed place along the wall of the break room in which the interview was being conducted. He attempted to muster his best look of concern as he told the detective that when he returned to the complex’s parking lot and began walking to his car, he noticed Mika sitting in a black Chevy Impala in a parking space with the car still running. Carlos said when he recognized Mika he waved, and Mika rolled down his front driver’s side window as Carlos passed. Carlos asked Mika what he was doing at the complex, to which Mika told Carlos he lived there. Carlos told the detective he continued to his car, got in, and drove away without another word being spoken to Mika.
    Carlos said he thought nothing of it at the time, assuming Mika did, in fact, live there, but he told the detective that two things had just struck him as odd for the first time. First, why Mika would sit in a parked car, with the engine running, and not go into his apartment? If Mika left the hospital at the same time as Carlos and Rebecca he would have gotten there shortly after they did, so he must have been sitting in his car for a fair amount of time. And second, the look Mika had on his face when he told Carlos he lived at the apartment complex was one of concentration, of determination. It was a focused stare straight ahead, never looking at Carlos as he spoke or passed by.
    The detective seemed a bit skeptical of Carlos’s story but left him just the same to continue his investigation.  Sure enough, as the days and weeks unfolded, Carlos’s plan played out just as he had intended it to. Mika was questioned and denied ever being at the apartment or speaking with Carlos at all that day. However, the security video of Mika appearing to be following Rebecca and Carlos out of the building and the word of a respected doctor was enough for detectives to get a search warrant for Mika’s apartment, car, and the maintenance office at the hospital.  Despite being almost a week after Carlos had planted it, the knife was found in the desk drawer by detectives, and Mika was arrested and charged with first degree murder.
    The assumption was that Mika had begun to abuse drugs once again and had stalked Rebecca from the hospital to her apartment, planning to rob her for drug money. After the crime, Mika had panicked and hid the knife at work until he could dispose of it. Mika did have an alibi for the time when Rebecca was murdered. He had gone straight from work to his sister’s apartment to try to fix her garbage disposal. However, his sister proved to be of little help to him as she herself was a drug addict with a long criminal history. Her statement was disregarded as one family member, who was unreliable, covering for another.  
    The trial took a year to conclude, with Carlos involved heavily as the prosecution’s star witness. The prosecution did manage to find one other witness, an elderly