Trial and Error

By Michael Banister

Chet Holmes was a frustrated man. He had spent over a year trying to track down Douglas Armitage to present him with a sizable check from the estate of Holmes's client, but had no luck. Except now. He learned that an associate of his client had been killed in an auto accident while giving Douglas a ride to the airport so Douglas could fly to New York for college. The other vehicle was transporting an inmate to prison. Holmes knew that his client's associate had a passenger. But the accident report had to be mistaken, because it listed three persons killed without mentioning the passenger in the other vehicle. When Douglas's former roommate, Scott McCabe, saw Douglas on campus he called Holmes, who believed he could prove the inmate had survived the accident and was impersonating Douglas. Holmes convinced the campus police to arrest the man Holmes claimed was an imposter who had not only escaped lawful custody, but was defrauding the college. Trouble was, Holmes had never met McCabe's former roommate. And in the span of a year the alleged imposter no longer resembled McCabe's former roommate. At the preliminary hearing, would the prosecution be able to prove its case based on such slim evidence?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Banister
• Release date: May 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463579664

Book preview

Trial and Error

By Michael Banister

Copyright 2021 Michael Banister

Table of Contents

prologue

From Trieste with Love

Passport to Trouble

Trouble at Rutgers

Probable Cause

Obsession

Surprise Witness

A Close Call

About the Author

Prologue--A note about characters from Stolen Identity.

Danilo Sandor & Dushan Sava were the main characters in Stolen Identity. Dushan, born in Belgrade to a Serbian father and Slovenian Mother, became a refugee with his father during the Yugoslavian civil war. His mother had been kidnapped and forced to work in an army camp. Dushan and his father settled in the Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown Dependency. His mother eventually escaped, fled to the Isle of Man and rejoined her husband.

But in the meantime, five-year-old Dushan had been stolen from his father and sold to the Sandor family in Southern California. Ten years later, he and his stepbrother Danilo Sandor ran away from home to escape continued abuse from Dani’s father. They decided to hop a freight train to Los Angeles. But the train was headed northeast to Utah, and only Dani managed to climb aboard. He ended up stranded in the Utah mountains for the winter, along with Claude Prejean, a geologist who was injured skiing.

After Dushan was unable to jump aboard the train, he returned home alone. His violent, paranoid stepfather, who hated Dushan, accused him of murdering Dani. Dushan was convicted and began serving a prison term. His father informed the authorities that Dushan was an illegal alien, and Dushan was ordered transported to a deportation prison in Arizona. The vehicle taking him to Arizona crashed into a convertible, killing both drivers and the passenger in the convertible. Dushan managed to get out of the prison vehicle, changed clothes with the dead passenger, Douglas Armitage, and decided to impersonate him. Armitage had a scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York, so that’s where Dushan went. His roommate was Scott McCabe, who had a bit part in Stolen Identity, but features prominently in this book.

Eventually Dani returned home to Southern California and discovered his father had committed suicide after accusing Dushan of Dani’s murder. Dani eventually found Dushan at the CIA and the two of them flew to England to find Dushan’s real parents.

At the time of this story, Dani is 22 and Dushan is 21.

Chapter One: From Trieste with Love

Claude Prejean was pretty sure the letter he was holding in his hand was the real thing, the thing that last week’s email alerted him to. According to the email, the certified letter he would receive was a job offer. Assistant Professor in the Geology department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, he said to himself. He remembered applying for the position, but it was so long ago and the other applications he had submitted resulted in rejections, so he assumed this application would turn out the same way.

Claude choked up at the good news. Then he recalled his conversation with Danilo Sandor last year in Trieste, Italy, when Dani suggested that Claude’s career—a series of two-year gigs here and there around the globe with no job security—was not a good fit for him. At that time, Claude had a contract with an Italian university on a project developing strategies for preserving limestone cliffs on the Adriatic coast opposite Italy. Dani had paid him a visit in Trieste as Dani was on his way back home to Liverpool where he would embark on his new career as a college student. It was uncanny the feeling that came over Claude when Dani suggested Claude get a job as a professor somewhere. It felt like Dani was already working on it, he recalled. As soon as Dani left Trieste for Liverpool Claude began canvassing the job market for highly qualified PhD’s in geology.

As Claude set the letter down, the project manager knocked on Claude’s office door and entered. "Here’s the latest update on the environmental report and some expense projections. It looks like, with