Every Last Fear Page 44
“You’re right, I don’t want to talk about it,” Matt said. It came out more sharply than he’d intended, reminded him of the outrageous newspaper story from that morning suggesting he and Danny had killed their family for insurance money. He needed to shake it off. In a softer tone, he said, “After the funeral, I promise.”
Cindy looked like she was going to protest, but stopped herself. Purposefully changing the subject, she said, “So what did those assholes the Adlers want?”
She’d asked him the same thing on the car ride over, but he’d shrugged it off. “I guess they’re making a sequel,” Matt said.
Cindy’s expression turned to disgust. “I’ll never forgive myself for letting them interview me. The way they treated your father. And now they want to put everyone through it all again? It makes me sick.”
Cindy’s eyes were misty. The first sign of emotion other than irritation or anger Matt had seen in his aunt since he’d arrived in Adair. He reached across the table and put his hand on hers.
Cindy gave a sardonic smile. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Matt didn’t know what she meant by that.
“All we’ve got is a guy who doesn’t recognize us, and another guy in prison for life.” There was dark humor in her voice, masking the pain.
“No,” Matt said. “We’ve got each other.”
It was the right thing to say, the kind thing to say. But the truth was, Matt felt alone. And he wondered if he would always feel this way. Wondered if the loss and pain would always consume him. Wondered if he’d ever recover from the magnitude of it all. Eyeing his frail grandfather staring out at nothing in his beat-up La-Z-Boy, Matt decided that Cindy was right. Grandpa was lucky he’d never know the truth.
CHAPTER 46
SARAH KELLER
Since watching the video at the Adlers’ farmhouse, Keller had thought a lot about Charlotte’s cousin and the theory that Charlotte was alive. It just didn’t ring true. For one, if it wasn’t Charlotte who was murdered, who was the young woman with her skull crushed in at the creek? And how did the police and prosecutors screw that up? Charlotte’s father might have been abusing her. And she might not be the innocent cheerleader portrayed in “A Violent Nature.” But that didn’t mean she was alive. Even if she was, what would it have to do with the death of the Pines?
Still, Keller wasn’t drowning in leads. She was playing the waiting game now. Waiting for the report on the DNA sample, waiting for the report on the facial rec of the man and woman in the photo Maggie Pine had sent her brother, waiting on a report from Carlita Escobar. So, Keller decided, she might as well confirm that it was Charlotte buried at that cemetery.
Short of digging up the body, Keller thought the best place to test the theory was with those who’d lived the case. Ordinarily, she’d confer with the local prosecutors and detectives. But they’d been under attack since the documentary aired, and had circled the wagons. That left Danny’s lawyers. Not his hippie lawyer at the trial, whom the documentary painted as borderline incompetent, notwithstanding the fortune the Pine family had paid him. And not the new white-shoe appellate lawyers the Adlers found too boring to carry the documentary’s sequel. Keller wanted to talk to Louise Lester, the passionate attorney who’d taken Danny’s case before the cameras were rolling. Who by all accounts was a skilled advocate.
Keller pulled her rental car into the strip mall in North Omaha. It had a payday loan company, a Dollar Store, and a nail salon. She scanned the address on her phone to make sure it was the right place. This was it, all right. Then she saw it, at the far end, a plain storefront with a small sign that read THE INSTITUTE FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS.
Keller found Louise Lester at a cluttered desk hemmed in by piles of paperwork. The place had no walls, no separate offices or even cubicles. Just a large room with about ten workstations, the hum of chatter and clicking keyboards filling the air. It reminded Keller of an old-time pressroom.
These weren’t reporters, though. The Institute for Wrongful Convictions was staffed by volunteers—law students, retirees, social justice warriors—which was why Keller had assumed it was open on a Saturday. She felt an electricity in the room.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Keller said. She’d been saying that a lot lately.
Lester gave her a fleeting smile. She wore no makeup, and wore a threadbare suit that was too large for her frame. Keller suspected there was an attractive woman hiding in the boxy attire. Her look screamed, There are more important things than looking pretty.
“Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for the Pines,” Lester said, her tone melancholy. Like the loss wasn’t just professional.
“Did you know them well?”
“Mostly Evan. He was a real advocate for us. A wonderful man.”
“I saw him in the documentary. He was really passionate.”
Lester nodded. “Those fucking filmmakers made him seem unbalanced. I would’ve never participated if I’d known what they’d do to him. They had the nerve to ask me to help with the sequel, and I told them where they could stick their movie.” Lester took a cleansing breath, as if she were stopping herself from getting worked up. As if it were something she’d learned to do as a child to temper the fire naturally blazing through her veins. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The Adlers just aren’t my favorite people. Evan was one of the finest humans you’d ever hope to meet. He didn’t deserve what they did to him. And Judy and Ira, they used him in the worst kind of way. They couldn’t care less about him or Danny or the thousands of other wrongfully convicted.” She waved her arm around the room. “They just wanted the ratings. To hell with the truth. They just wanted to tell a good story.”
“You think the documentary was just a story?”
“Absolutely.”
“But you represented Danny Pine.”
“Of course. But not because of the half-assed theories in the documentary. Because his confession was laughably unreliable. I’ve got two dozen other cases that are even worse. But those kids weren’t white hometown football stars, the victims not pretty white girls.…”
Lester’s eyes flared. They had a vibrant intensity. Keller usually didn’t care for true believers. She thought they often suffered from tunnel vision, saw conspiracies that didn’t exist. Exhibit A was the Adlers back at the farmhouse. But as she eyed the woman across from her, Keller could only hope her twins would live life with such zeal.
Lester continued, “So do I think the Unknown Partygoer or Bobby Ray Hayes or the boogeyman killed Charlotte? No.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The Unknown Partygoer is based on the hazy recollection of one kid at the party. He’d been drinking, and he’s since had a car accident that left him with a brain injury, so there’s no way to test his recollection. Also, someone else would’ve noticed if some guy in his late twenties was at a high school house party. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. You’re in the FBI, you know.”
“I know a lot of DNA exonerations involved mistaken eyewitness testimony,” Keller said, trying to find common ground.
“Try seventy percent. Seven in ten of people freed by DNA had been convicted based on bad eyewitnesses. Most of the rest, were…”
“False confessions,” Keller said, finishing Lester’s sentence and trying to regain control of the conversation. Keller’s eyes couldn’t help but lock onto the poster behind Lester’s desk. It was a disturbing black-and-white photograph of an African American boy strapped into the electric chair, his round cheeks streaked with tears as someone tightened the chin strap of the metal helmet that was too large for his head. Under the photo it read:
GEORGE STINNEY JR.
EXECUTED IN 1944 AT THE AGE 14 FOR KILLING TWO WHITE GIRLS
EXONERATED IN 2014
Keller ripped her eyes from the image. She needed to focus. “So who do you think killed Charlotte?”
Lester coughed a laugh. “I’m not going down that rabbit hole anymore. Trust me, it will consume your life.” The case had taken its toll on Lester. Keller remembered a critical scene in the documentary, Lester at the lectern, arguing Danny’s case to a panel of appellate judges, her plea both measured and impassioned.
“Charlotte’s head was crushed like Hayes’s known victims,” Keller said.
“Yeah, precisely. But the Smasher’s MO was reported in Kansas newspapers before Charlotte was murdered,” Lester said. “And the Kansas police had put out a notice to law enforcement in Nebraska and other neighboring states hoping that they might identify more victims, which is ultimately how they caught Hayes. The prosecutor in Danny’s case should’ve turned over the notes about the anonymous tip identifying the similarities to Charlotte’s murder, but the fact that there was a killer crushing young women’s skulls was in the public domain.”