"Sure, right this way," I said leading him to my office. Once there, I entered the combination and opened the large, heavy door of the gun safe.
"Sir, we are going to take all of the firearms to our lab for testing, we'll give you a receipt for the items we remove before we leave. Once the items have been cleared, they will be returned to you."
"Alright," I said knowing I didn't have a choice in the matter. Peters spoke into a small microphone, "Michaels, I need you and your team to come in here and start inventorying the owner's firearms."
"Alright, boss, be right there," I heard voiced through Peter's speaker. In moments, Michaels and his team were in my study with evidentiary containers and bags to inventory and remove the guns.
I looked at Peters and he nodded, then he cleared his voice. "Alright guys, we're here to search the premises for any items listed in the warrant. In particular, we're looking for any additional firearms. Michaels will assign each of you a search area. Let's get busy!"
For the next several hours, the team spread out and thoroughly searched our house and our two cars that were in the garage. While they weren't destructive, our house was certainly a mess when the search was called off. We waited about 10 minutes while the CSI team and the two officers conferred at their vehicles.
I kept looking at Alice, giving her my best "what the hell is going on" look. Officer Peters then knocked on the door. I answered and he handed me a receipt and thanked me for our cooperation with the search. As if I had a choice! I nodded, looking through the receipt noting that all they took were firearms, five long guns and four handguns.
He asked if he could speak to Mrs. Campbell for a moment, I again ushered him into our home. Alice was still at the kitchen table. Her head was down and it looked like she might have been crying. The officer gently said, "Mrs. Campbell?" to which she looked up. He handed her a copy of his business card and said to make sure she set up an interview at the station sometime this week when her attorney was available. She nodded and said "OK."
He then asked if he and his partner could interview me in my study and that I had a right to have a lawyer if I wanted. I said I didn't need an attorney as I'd never met O'Brien and I had nothing to hide. The interview was thorough but didn't last more than an hour since I'd never even met O'Brien. As the husband, they wanted to see if I might have an axe to grind with the asshole who was apparently banging my wife and check out any alibi that I offered. They asked about my whereabouts on the night O'Brien was murdered. I asked which night it happened and they told me the date, I opened my iPhone and looked at my calendar.
"I was visiting a friend of mine, Lee Rogers, out at his place. Alice told me that she was going to spend the night with her aunt in Fredericksburg, so I called Lee and he invited me over." When asked what we did, I said that we had dinner with Lee's wife Pat, we talked for a while after dinner, and then Lee took me up in his private plane as he is an avid pilot. I explained that his neighborhood, Breakaway Park Fly-in Community in Cedar Park, has a private runway and many of the residents, including Lee, have their own private planes and hangars. It appeared the officers knew of the neighborhood. I told him that we took off sometime around 8pm and returned about an hour or so later. They asked who flew the plane and I said that I was not a pilot, but Lee had been a pilot for years in the military so I was quite comfortable flying with him. They indicated that they might need to corroborate my story so I gave him Lee's full name, address and phone number. Later, I talked to Lee and found out that the officers interviewed Lee and Pat at their home who both corroborated my story. They also provided the officers with surveillance footage that they obtained from the HOA. The footage was captured by a camera pointed at the runway showing planes as they took off and landed at the airstrip. The footage confirmed that that Lee's plane took off at 8:05PM and returned at 9:15PM.
The officers thanked me for my cooperation and left. I returned to the kitchen and confronted my wife. "What the hell was that all about? You work for one of his companies, but I didn't think that you had ever met this O'Brien asshole? What the hell is going on, Alice? Were you having an affair with that asshole?" She looked up at me, her lower lip quivering and tears shedding from her eyes. She wailed, "I'm so sorry" as she jumped from her seat and bolted to our bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her.
Chapter 2
The next week was a whirlwind of activity. The local news stations found out about the executed search warrant and hounded Alice and I for an interview or comments. Conrad O'Brien's murder was the top local news. We said nothing, just like her attorney told us. My attorney had referred Alice to Ted Walker, a criminal defense attorney in town. For some reason, Alice didn't want me to be in the meeting she scheduled with Ted for Monday afternoon. Something sure wasn't right.
O'Brien had made millions in software and on-line ventures, his companies once employing over a thousand people locally before moving much of his development work to India several years ago to cut costs. Still, he was frequently in the news, often for some type of philanthropy, and he still employed quite a few people, including Alice. Rumor was, however, that old Conrad was a womanizer and he especially liked to bed attractive married women.
Walker arranged for a sit-down interview with Alice at the police station for Friday morning at 9:30AM. She relayed that Ted thought that the police were just fishing for information and that he doubted that anything would come of it.
Well, Ted couldn't have been more wrong. I received a call from a distraught Alice around 11:30 on Friday morning telling me that after the interview, the police placed her under arrest and charged her with Conrad O'Brien's murder. She was booked and put into a cell of the women's jail downtown with a bail hearing scheduled for the following Monday. I asked if I could come to the bail hearing and was told that it was not open to the public.
Late Monday afternoon, I received a call from Alice, sounded like she had been crying. She said her bail was set at $500,000 and she asked me to post bail for her. Since I'd never been involved in the criminal justice system, I Googled bail and learned that a bail bondsman would likely charge a 10% non-refundable fee for bail. Crap, $50,000 that we'd never get back. I had started a successful recruiting business several years ago and we were doing very well financially, but still $50k was a lot of money. I told her before I posted that kind of money, I wanted to meet with her and she needed to be honest with me about what was going on. She agreed, I guess she didn't have much of a choice if she wanted my cooperation. Walker set up an interview for us at an interview room of the jail and said he'd like to be present to explain things.
I arrived at the jail and they checked me over and made sure I didn't have any contraband or weapons, then I was ushered into an interview room usually used by defendants and their attorneys. Walker and Alice were both in the room, Alice was in an orange jumpsuit. It didn't look good on her.
Instead of getting answers directly from Alice, Walker was acting as her mouthpiece. He said that I'd likely learn of the facts anyway so he was prepared to tell me what I wanted to know. He said that O'Brien and Alice had an affair lasting for about six months which only ended at his death. I was shocked with this revelation and angrily looked at Alice. "You fucking whore! No wonder sex with you was so god-damned boring until that prick died, he was ringing your charms, wasn't he? You bitch!" Alice sat their looking stunned and sad at my outburst, bowing her head and crying.
Walker said he understood that this news was upsetting to me and implored me to take a few minutes and calm down. He said that he was certain that, while Alice had an affair with O'Brien, she didn't kill him.
"Really?" I responded, "if you're so damned certain, then why did they arrest her for his murder? They must have some awfully good evidence against her."
