Chapter 25
Bennett Cutler and Jamie Simmons practically melded their foreheads together as George Luke took the stand.
My heart dropped for a moment as George stumbled on the last step up to the witness box.
The bailiff was right there and caught him by the elbow, but as George turned and waved off further help, his skin had turned ashen.
“Are you all right, Mr. Luke?” the judge asked.
George put a hand up. He coughed for a moment, reached for the water bottle in front of him with a shaky hand, but answered the judge in a clear, strong voice. “I’m perfectly fine. Just old.”
But he was more than old. In the hour since Deena Landon took the stand and George heard her story in the jury room, it seemed to put twenty years on him. I worried about what the next hour would do. But George gave me a determined stare and the slightest nod. He was ready. So was I.
“Mr. Luke,” I said. “For the record, will you explain your relationship to the victim in this case?”
“Ellie was my daughter,” he said. “My firstborn. My baby girl.”
“You have another daughter,” I said.
“Yes. Erin. She’s three years younger than Ellie was.”
“Thank you. Mr. Luke, I want to make sure you’re okay. If at any time you need to take a break, do you promise to let me know?”
George was defiant, rod straight in his chair. “I will not need a break, Ms. Brent. I will not need anything. Ask your questions.”
“All right. Mr. Luke, I’d like to take you back to the year Ellie went missing. Where was she living at the time?”
“She lived with her mother, me, and Erin. Ellie was saving money to move out but she was a full-time student. She was paying her own way. And I mean paying her own way. She didn’t take any loans out. She worked to pay for her tuition. So we let her live with us rent free.”
“You must have been very proud of her.”
“I was. I still am. Ellie was a go-getter. Never any drama with her like we had with her younger sister before everything happened. Ellie was serious. Driven. Polite. Respectful. Everybody always says teenage girls can be a nightmare. Not my Ellie. She was just a smart, sensible, hard-working kid. Always got straight As. Earned her own money from the time she was old enough to babysit at twelve years old. And before that, she helped around the house. Never had to remind her to do her chores.”
“I see,” I said. “She sounds like a very special young woman. Mr. Luke, we’ve heard testimony that Ellie was a junior in college, pursuing a nursing degree at the time she went missing. Is that accurate?”
“It is. She was gonna graduate early that December.” George’s voice broke a little, but he quickly recovered.
“Mr. Luke, how familiar were you with Ellie’s routine, her friends, at the time she disappeared?”
“Well, she was twenty-one. A proper young lady, you know? She didn’t have a curfew or anything. And she had her own car that she paid for. Insurance too. So I didn’t require her to report to me like I did her younger sister. Erin was just eighteen at the time. Still in high school.”
He was rambling a bit. It would be tricky to strike the right balance. I wanted George to feel comfortable telling Ellie’s story. But I had to keep him focused as much as I could.
“Did you know her routine? When she had class, her work schedule? Things like that.”
“Oh, for sure. See I was semi-retired at the time. I worked as a sales rep for a flooring company. I got laid up for a while after I was in a car accident and hurt my back. So around the time we lost Ellie, I was only working out of the home two days a week. Ellie’s mother, Claudia, was working part time as a bank teller.
Anyway, Ellie and I had lunch together a couple of days a week.
She worked nights as a home health aide for this elderly woman over in Pine Ridge.
The lady had dementia and a heart condition.
She required twenty-four-hour care. Ellie worked there from eleven to seven five nights a week.
She had class in the afternoons. She’d come home.
Sleep for a few hours. My wife or I would make sure she was up by twelve-thirty.
We’d have lunch together. Then Ellie would go to class from two to eight a few afternoons a week. ”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s helpful. Was Ellie dating anyone that you knew?”
“Not that I knew. No. She said she didn’t have time for boys. I mean, she’d go on dates here and there. But nobody serious. I don’t think she’d had a date in several months before we lost her.”
“What about her friends? Did you know any of them?”
“Sure, Ellie had friends from high school she kept in touch with. But she mostly hung around kids in her nursing classes. There were three girls in particular that I knew she was close with. Sabrina, Lisa, and Shante. I met Lisa and Shante a few times. Real nice girls.”
“Okay. What about Jamie Simmons? Was he one of your daughter’s friends?”
“I didn’t meet Jamie until after Ellie went missing.”
“How did that come about? Your meeting him?”
“He came to the house. I wanna clarify. That time … those weeks. It’s kind of a fog for me. So I don’t remember the first time I met him.”
“Fair enough. But let me ask this another way. You mentioned you knew three women Ellie was close with from her nursing classes. Sabrina, Lisa, and Shante. Did you know about Jamie Simmons as well?”
“No. Ellie didn’t talk about Jamie. I didn’t know him until after. I’m sure of that.”
“Okay. So let’s talk about after. How did Jamie Simmons become part of your life?”
“It was a bad time. A very bad time. I was … I’m ashamed to admit this now … but I wasn’t a very good husband or a very good father after Ellie went missing and everything that we learned after that. I couldn’t cope. Could barely get out of bed. I blamed myself.”
“For what?”
“Well, a father is supposed to protect his daughter. They said Ellie had a flat tire. I should have checked her car. I should have made sure. I should have been there when she needed me so she wasn’t alone on some country road in the dark like that where anything could happen.”
“I understand. And I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Luke. But back to Jamie Simmons …”
“Right. You asked me how he became part of our family. The best I can tell you is that he was just there. I think he came to the house once offering to help out. Mow the lawn. Claudia had him fixing a part of the fence in the backyard. Like I told you, I was checked out that whole summer. It got even worse after they found Ellie. After we knew she was really gone. And that it was as awful as we feared. By then, Jamie was a fixture. He came over almost every day. He brought me lunch a few times. Claudia invited him over for dinner.”
“Did you find that strange?”
George shook his head. “No. I didn’t have any opinion of anything at the time. I was just going through the motions. And … it got very dark, Ms. Brent. That Christmas, a couple of months after Ellie was found, I tried to take my own life.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Jamie was there even more after that. Claudia called him. They were afraid to leave me alone. It took a very long time for me to walk out of the woods, Ms. Brent. By then, Jamie was pretty much part of the family. He just … took over. Claudia and I had a pretty conventional, old-fashioned kind of marriage. I paid the bills. Did everything around the house. Maintained the cars. Claudia cooked and cleaned. Jamie just stepped in and started doing for us what I couldn’t do.
At the time, I was so grateful for it. Now … I see what was really going on.”
“What do you think was going on?” I asked.
“It’s like he was grooming us,” George said.
“Objection!” Cutler said. “Your Honor, this has gone on long enough. While I am, of course, sympathetic to Mr. Luke’s plight, I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning. Not to mention the witness is wholly unresponsive. Ms. Brent and the court are allowing him to ramble.”
“Your Honor, Mr. Simmons’s obsession with the victim and, by extension, her family is absolutely relevant in this case.”
“This entire narrative is about events that took place after Ellie Luke went missing,” Cutler said. “This is a murder trial.”
“Overruled, Mr. Cutler,” Judge Saul said, surprising me. “Mr. Simmons’s relationship with the victim and her family is relevant. You’ll be free to argue to what extent when the time comes. Proceed, Ms. Brent.”
“Mr. Luke,” I said. “You described Mr. Simmons’s relationship with your family as grooming. What did you mean by that?”
“I mean Jamie took over. We were vulnerable. In deep grief. I took everything Jamie said at face value. Claudia and I could barely function. We couldn’t be there for each other. For ourselves. For Erin. But Jamie was. Looking back, I can see now it wasn’t normal.”
“What wasn’t normal?”
“Jamie practically moved in. He was there almost every day. He cooked for us. Cleaned. Took my checkbook and wrote everything out for our monthly bills. He told me it’s what Ellie would want. He told me he’d promised her he’d take care of us if anything happened to her.”
“He said that?”
“Yes. And I believed him.”
“But you’re also saying that until Ellie went missing, you’d never met Jamie Simmons?”
“No. I mean, yes. I’m saying I never met him.”
“Ellie never mentioned him to you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“But you believed him that he and Ellie were close enough that she’d want him looking in on you if something happened to her?”
“That’s what he told me. And he was just so … competent. I was in such a bad state. It just felt easier to let Jamie take over. Claudia loved him. She said he was like the son she never had. I can see now she transferred feelings. It wasn’t healthy. But it was easy.”
“What about Erin?” I asked.