[2010] The Ghost of Blackwood Lane Read online

  “Then he said ‘John, you are very good at what you do, and I want to reward you. I think you deserve a raise, and maybe a little vacation with that nice family of yours.’ I answered him, saying that I did the best job I could, but I was concerned about those extra funds. And I asked him if he was involved in any illegal activities, because if he was, I wouldn’t be able to work for him anymore.”

  The courtroom was quiet for a long moment. “And what did he say when you asked him about these activities?” the prosecutor asked.

  John shifted a little in his seat. The prosecutor had told him to stay calm, but that a little nervous apprehension would make his testimony seem more believable to the jury. At this moment, however, John wasn’t faking anything.

  “Well, he said that those funds came from other areas of his business, areas that I was not privy to. He assured me that the income was perfectly legal.”

  “And you believed him?”

  John nodded. “Yes, because I knew very little about some of his operations, especially those in other states. I really only did his books for the businesses in St. Louis and southern Illinois, so it was very possible that the money came from somewhere else and that he was investing it in different accounts.”

  The prosecutor nodded. “Okay, so—did you get a raise or a vacation?”

  O’Toole smiled. “Yes, actually. I got a nice raise, and Mr. Luciano sent my family and me to Disney World. That was in the spring.”

  “Okay. What happened after that?”

  “Well, when I got back, Mr. Luciano called me into his office and we had a discussion. Evidently, one of the other accountants had left his employment, and Mr. Luciano asked me to take his place, mentioning his appreciation of my skills. There was another raise involved, and my son was in his junior year of high school, and I felt that the additional money would help fund his college. That wasn’t the only reason I took the job—I have to say that I was very curious.”

  The prosecutor leaned in. “Curious about what?”

  “Well, I still felt that some of Mr. Luciano’s activities might be illegal, and I didn’t like the way he treated some of his people. His family and his associates made me very uncomfortable, and there were just too many suspicious things going on in O’Fallon. On the surface, he seemed like a successful businessman, but I wasn’t sure.”

  One of the lawyers started to stand and object, but the judge shook his head and pointed the lawyer back down into his chair.

  “So you took the job?”

  “Yes. I was to oversee all of the business accounting, and after only a week or two, I found several accounts that he seemed to be funneling money into, money that seemed to come from nowhere. Money simply appeared in the other business accounts with no paper trail, with entries like ‘Petty Cash,’ but for amounts like twenty or thirty thousand dollars.”

  “And did you ask him about these monies?”

  “No. I started moving the money into another account.”

  There was a quiet murmur though the courtroom.

  “Mr. O’Toole, why did you do that?”

  John shrugged, looking at the floor of the courtroom. “Well, looking back on it, I know that it was stupid. I thought I could siphon some of this money off and either use it myself or hide it and force Luciano to tell me what was going on. It started out not as a conscious decision to confront him or steal from him—I only wanted to know what was going on, what I was getting myself into. After a while, the money in this ‘secret’ account I had created started to pile up, and no one noticed or asked me about it. I started to entertain ideas of taking the money and disappearing with my family. In less than seven months, the balance in ‘my’ account was up over $830,000.”

  The prosecutor let that sink in, not speaking for a long moment. “You say you managed to hide that much money without anyone noticing. How much money did Mr. Luciano have moving through his accounts over that seven-month period?”

  The jumpy defense lawyer again objected. “Mr. Luciano’s financial standing in the community is not on trial—we are willing to concede that Mr. Luciano is financially solvent and owns several successful and legal businesses that turn a healthy profit.”

  “Your honor,” the prosecutor countered, “I am simply trying to compare the amount of money in this additional account—the figure of $830,000 is pointless unless we have something to compare it with, such as Mr. Luciano’s overall assets. And Mr. O’Toole can easily speak to that question.”

  The judge nodded. “I’ll allow it, but the jury should remember that amounts of money made by legitimate means should not be considered unless they are used to hide illegal activities.”

  The prosecutor nodded to O’Toole, who continued. “Well, in those first seven months, at least forty million dollars moved through the hundred and twenty-six accounts I was overseeing. Most of that money came from businesses that I knew to be legitimate, but other money was shuffled around so quickly from one account to another that it was very difficult to track where it came from originally. Or where it ended up.”

  “Did Mr. Luciano have any offshore accounts?”

  “Not that I knew of,” John said, “but I was not privy to all of his information.”

  The prosecutor glanced at the jury. “Okay, what happened next?”

  “Well, I went to Mr. Luciano. I’d decided that taking the money could put my family and me in considerable danger. I thought at the time that if I told him about what I’d been doing, he would understand that I was simply trying to teach him a lesson about being more careful about where his money came from.”

  The prosecutor moved to the table and pulled up a large color picture mounted on a piece of white cardboard. The front of the picture was labeled “State Exhibit 22-A.” He set it on an easel near the court reporter, angling it so that it could easily be seen by everyone else in the room.

  “Okay, so you went to Mr. Luciano and told him what you had been doing. Weren’t you concerned about possible illegal activities, or facing the moral dilemma of working for someone who might be involved in activities that you could not condone?”

  John shook his head. “Actually, no. I’d spent several months thinking about it, and I’d begun to rationalize the activities, if there were any, as simply business. Mr. Luciano was a very good businessman, and anything he was involved in, illegal or not, made money. A lot of money. I guess, after a while, I became more flexible, morally speaking. And seeing all that money in my secret account may have swayed my thinking, too.”

  “So what happened when you told him about the money you had skimmed?”

  “Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell him. We sat down and I expressed to him my concerns about the hundreds of thousands of dollars going through his accounts from unknown sources, and he started to get angry. He said that we had already had this conversation and that he would not have it again with me. He also said that where his money came from or went to was none of my business—I was only to take care of it while it was in my accounts, and not concern myself with other details. I began to get upset too, saying that I had worked for him for a long time and deserved to know where the money came from, or if any of it came from illegal activities. That was when I let it slip about how easy it would be for someone to make some of that money disappear.”

  John O’Toole glanced at the jury and the prosecutor, trying to avoid the eyes of the man he was talking about, sitting ten feet away at the defense table.

  “Evidently he had known about the secret account all along,” John said. “As soon as I said that, he came around the desk and grabbed my arm, hard, and demanded to know where the money was. I told him, but he didn’t let go of my arm. He just kept squeezing and squeezing, and that’s where I got the bruise,” he said, nodding at the picture of his bruised arm that the prosecutor had set up on the easel.

  The prosecutor pointed at the picture. “Is this the bruise?” he asked, pointing at a large black and blue and yellow, vaguely hand-shaped form.

>   “Yes. That’s the bruise. My wife took that picture.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking about Gloria and the concern she’d had for him when she’d seen his injuries.

  The prosecutor nodded.

  “Well, the man was very upset. He wanted to know exactly how much money was gone, and he didn’t let go of my arm until I swore that all the money I had moved was in that one account. He told me he was very disappointed with me. He walked back around his desk and sat down, and didn’t say anything for a long time. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but I started to worry about my safety, and that of my family. I had no idea what this man was capable of.”

  John paused for a moment and sipped from a glass of water before continuing.

  “After a few minutes, he picked up the phone and called in a couple of men who worked for him. He thanked me for telling him about the money, and assured me that I needn’t concern myself with where it came from, only do with it what he asked. And that was when the men came in, and Mr. Luciano said that I needed to be taught a lesson about loyalty. The men led me out of the room, and that’s when I started to get really scared. They took me into another room in the back of the building and beat me up pretty badly.”

  At this, the prosecutor replaced the color picture with another one, which caused a series of gasps in the courtroom.

  “Your honor, I would like to mark this as State Exhibit 22-B. Mr. O’Toole, can you tell me what this is?”

  John nodded. “Yes, that’s a picture of me after they beat me up.”

  The picture clearly showed John O’Toole, looking like he had been worked over pretty good. Bruises blackened his face and upper chest, and one eye was a bloody red. There was blood on his chin and around his eyes and nose.

  The prosecutor replaced it with another group of pictures, all mounted on one backing. “Your honor, I would like to mark this as State Exhibit 22-C. Mr. O’Toole, do you recognize these pictures?”

  He nodded again. “Yes. The first is a close-up of my hands—both of my thumbs were broken, and most of the other scratches and cuts I got when I was trying to defend myself. The next three are of my back and chest, showing the bruises. The last one is my left leg, which was broken. The doctors said it was broken in three places and that I will probably always walk with a limp.”

  The courtroom was utterly silent—this was easily the most riveting testimony so far in the three-week trial. Big color pictures of a bloodied victim always quieted a jury.

  After a few long moments of silence, the prosecutor started up again. “What happened after that?”

  “Well, the account I had opened was closed out, and the money disappeared back into Mr. Luciano’s general accounts. Mr. Luciano restricted severely the accounts I was allowed to work on, and that was when I was contacted by the FBI. They met with me, saying they had been monitoring associates of Mr. Luciano and had read the hospital reports of my injuries. They shared their concerns over illegal activities by Mr. Luciano and asked me to cooperate with them, and I agreed. Over the next three months, I did what I could to gather damaging or incriminating information. Between me and Mr. Sanders, another individual they had managed to place inside Mr. Luciano’s organization, they gathered enough information to begin a prosecution.”

  “And the information you gathered proved that Mr. Luciano was involved in illegal activities?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will delve deeper into the accounting paperwork secured by Mr. O’Toole and Mr. Sanders at a later time. No further questions.”

  The judge nodded and called for a recess until the next morning.

  The cross-examination wasn’t as bad as O’Toole had expected, but it was still pretty bad. His personal life was laid open and examined like a cadaver. Jones, the lead defense attorney, brought up John’s drinking days back in college, and all of his family relationships were scrutinized for the slightest imperfections. The defense attorney’s tactic was simple—besmirch this witness by any means necessary. The whole case hinged on the testimony of this man and Mr. Sanders.

  They finished with O’Toole in two days, and John quickly and happily left the stand. The other star witness was called, and that was when the court learned that he would not be testifying.

  Mr. Sanders was dead—evidently the victim of an “accidental” fall down the stairs of his own home.

  ------

  Less than a week later, the federal prosecutor offered Luciano a reduced sentence of eight years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea on tax evasion and money laundering. Under advice of his counsel, Luciano took the lesser plea in return for admitting to various money schemes, and the federal case in which John O’Toole was an essential witness was dropped.

  Of course, the dismissal and plea bargain did not remove the danger to the O’Tooles—they had crossed the Luciano family, and they would have to be protected.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation arranged for the move of the two-member family to a small town north of Sacramento, California, called North Highlands. There was an Air Force base nearby, so the people in North Highlands were used to seeing new faces as airmen were transferred in and out. The O’Tooles blended in easily.

  John O’Toole—now known as John Foreman—never arranged for any further treatment for his son. The memory blockage worked well, and the boy seemed to be getting along fine. John listened carefully, but Judy never seemed to resurface in the boy’s mind, and Gary expressed no interest in returning to St. Louis. The boy was healthy and happy, except for missing his mother.

  John Foreman was wary about telling his son the code words or taking him to see a psychiatrist—if the boy learned about his past, he might head back to St. Louis, and Judy. That would be dangerous for all of them. It came down to the fact that there was no way to tell the boy the truth and guarantee his safety, so John Foreman hid the truth away.

  The elder Luciano began serving his time at Waynesboro prison, a minimum-security facility, in August 1987, but the family business continued unimpeded, a juggernaut of legal and illegal activities that couldn’t be stopped, even by the FBI and a couple of inside men. Tony and Vincent, the two sons of Ginovese Luciano, took over the family businesses, running it for their father until he would be released.

  Two days after the testimony of John O’Toole, a contract was put out on the life of the man who had provided such damning testimony. The sons needed to avenge their father’s incarceration.

  And late on a Monday afternoon a few weeks after the plea bargain, someone knocked on Dr. Frank Martin’s door and was admitted. The police had no information on what happened after that, except that the doctor had evidently been asked some difficult questions for which he did not have the appropriate answers.

  After some time, the doctor was killed for his trouble.

  Only three people had heard the key phrase that passed between Dr. Frank Martin and his patient. The first, Dr. Martin himself, was now dead. The second, Agent Sims, had heard the words but had forgotten them almost immediately.

  The third, John O’Toole, locked the words away like a dangerous treasure. And after a few years, he forgot them completely.

  Chapter 3

  He sat up suddenly in his bed, wide awake.

  His heart was pounding and his face and body were covered in a thin layer of sweat. An ocean breeze blew through his partially open apartment window, but it didn’t cool him or calm his sleep.

  The dream left his mind slowly, reluctantly. It was the same one, every time. At this point, he prayed for a change—any change. But it never altered in any way, relentless in its repetition.

  Gary Foreman kicked free of the sheets twisted around his legs and sat up, climbing out of bed. He crossed to the window and looked out, feeling the salty air on his face. Sometimes it helped calm his racing mind.

  Rosa knew that he liked his room cold at night—it helped him sleep, so she had tolerated it. But she wasn’t here anymore. Somewhere along the line, she
’d stopped worrying about him, about the dream, about where they were headed as a couple.

  The breeze breathed in as he slid the window open further, realizing that it was almost 2 a.m. on that May evening in 1997. The cold must have helped—usually he woke several times each night as the dream replayed over and over. Tonight he’d woken only once.

  It never really gets dark in Los Angeles at night, Gary thought to himself. Gary couldn’t see any stars—even at two in the morning, all he could see was the orange haze of a million streetlights smoldering. It looked like the dull glow of a perpetual dawn.

  Los Angeles. Moving here had been a mistake. His job was going well, but his social life was rocky. He couldn’t seem to find anyone special—none of his relationships had lasted more than five or six months. And since the dream had started up, it had only gotten worse. Rosa’s complaints about it and how it disrupted their relationship were only an excuse—they had been falling apart for weeks.

  Her offers to leave him alone at night had slowly grown into leaving him alone during the day too—and then all the time. The dream had presented a perfect opportunity to end things between them.

  But Gary’s loneliness affected him more than he let on to his friends—one friend, actually. Gary thought of himself as one of those hopeful romantics—he liked the idea of being in a relationship more than the actual being in a relationship. He loved the flirting and the getting-to-know-someone part, but things never seemed to last after that.

  Rosa was just the last in a long, sad parade of botched relationships.

  Of course, he could never have let her very far in anyway, and that hadn’t helped either.

  A shriek of tires came up from below his window, and Gary leaned to look down. A car was trying to take the intersection in front of his apartment building way too fast, and as he watched, the car skidded sideways loudly, throwing up smoke from the tires as they tried to hold the pavement. The driver seemed to almost lose control, the path of the car wavering. The car slid all the way through the empty intersection and almost crashed into a brick storefront before the car righted itself and raced up Emerald.