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“You said you had three reasons you believed Eldon is innocent. The first was the witness at the pizza parlor. Is the second the fact that Eldon grieved for Justin?”
“Oh. No, I understood Project Justice wanted facts, evidence, not feelings. I was just answering your question.”
“What are the other two points?”
Her heel caught on a rock and she stumbled again. This time she was the one who reached out for his arm to keep from falling. When she’d righted herself, she started to release him, but he grasped her hand and wrapped it around his bare forearm. “Maybe you better hold on till we get back to the parking lot.”
She didn’t argue, and for the next couple of minutes, Ford found himself annoyed that he could not stop focusing on the feel of her warm, soft hand against his arm. How many times in high school had he vividly imagined sex with her? Yet he’d never thought about the experience of holding her hand, or listening to her talk, or the faint scent of that light, teasing perfume.
“The second point I would like to bring up is the wig fiber,” she said, sounding more like an attorney than a…he didn’t know what she was now, other than I rich man’s ex-wife. “The cops combed Eldon’s car bit by bit, and they found one lone fiber that didn’t belong—a blond, synthetic wig fiber. They claimed it was insignificant, but I can’t think of a single person Eldon or Justin came in contact with who wore a blond wig.”
Ford loved fiber evidence. In years past, forensic scientists could declare one synthetic fiber “consistent with” another. But as testing became more sophisticated, precise matches were more commonplace, particularly with something like a wig fiber. That was something he could sink his teeth into. “I like it,” he said. “But as I recall, the cops found blood evidence in Eldon’s car, too.”
“A few tiny drops. Justin frequently had nose-bleeds.”
“Okay. What’s your third point?”
Robyn took a deep breath. “I believe Eldon was with someone that night, someone who could clear him. I know there’s something he’s holding back. There’s a certain look he gets in his eyes when he’s lying…about a woman.”
Ford couldn’t think what to reply to that. He had a healthy respect for a woman’s instincts, but this was hardly hard evidence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she rushed on to say. “But if I could just talk to him, I could convince him to come clean.”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
“They won’t let me. And Trina—she knows nothing about the woman and I’ve hesitated to say anything to her. I don’t want to be the one to tell her Eldon was cheating.”
“I could probably get you an interview with Eldon,” Ford found himself saying. The Project Justice lawyers were experts at negotiating prison regulations. “But why in hell didn’t he speak up about this woman, if she exists?”
“He must have a reason. But I’m positive she exists.” Robyn sounded like she was trying to keep the edge of desperation out of her voice.
“Maybe she’s the one with the wig,” Ford said.
“Exactly!” Right about then, Robyn realized she was still holding on to Ford’s arm, and she pulled her hand back self-consciously. She wiped her damp palm on the leg of her jeans. “I’m sorry. I forgot I was holding on to you like that.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He still felt the ghost of her touch, like a brand on his forearm. “It’s okay.” He opened his mouth to tell her she could touch him any old time, then thought better of it. She’d come to him in a desperate frame of mind, and he would be lower than slime to take advantage of that.
“Robyn, it sounds like you’ve got some sound reasons for reopening the case. Have you talked to the original investigators? The District Attorney who tried the case?”
“Yes on both counts. They’re like brick walls. Maybe you’ve never noticed this, but cops and D.A.’s don’t like to admit they made a mistake. They particularly don’t like to admit they sent an innocent man to death row. No matter what I hit them with, I get the same company line.”
“‘We’re positive the right man is behind bars’?” He’d uttered that one once or twice himself when he was on the other side of the fence, and at the time he’d meant it.
“That’s the one.”
He’d once been that arrogant, believed himself infallible. He was a smart cop, everyone said so. Careful, conscientious. And still, he’d helped send an innocent man to prison—then, two years later, freed a guilty one.
He refused to make any more mistakes.
“I suggest you submit Eldon’s case through the normal channels at Project Justice,” Ford said. “I’ll put in a good word for it.”
“I’ve already done that.”
Then why was she talking to him? Before he could voice the question, she answered it.
“The application process can take months. Do you know the date of Eldon’s execution?”
It wasn’t something Ford kept up with. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“July 18. Exactly two weeks and one day from today. He’s running out of time, and you’re his only hope.”
“Ah, hell.” If Ford hadn’t been sober before leaving the bar, he was now. He walked back toward his big Crown Victoria—the same type of car he’d driven as a cop, purchased at a police auction. Old habits die hard. “You’re not making this easy, you know.”
“I didn’t intend to make it easy. An innocent man’s life is at stake.”
“Robyn, I no longer work for Project Justice.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What? Since when?”
“Since this afternoon. I quit. But I could try to get Eldon’s case at the top of the pile—”
She shook her head. “I want you to handle it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? I don’t understand.”
He wasn’t going to explain it, either. But when he’d seen Katherine Hannigan lying in that hospital bed, literally black-and-blue, nearly murdered by a man Ford had helped to free, something had clicked inside his brain. He wasn’t going to take people’s lives into his hands anymore.
“I’ll plead your case tomorrow morning, first thing,” he said. “Give me your number. Someone will contact you within forty-eight hours.”
“I want you to handle it.”
In her chin-forward, clench-fisted stance, he caught a glimpse of that belligerent girl he’d known in school, the one who had so steadfastly maintained her innocence when she’d been accused of a theft.
The one he’d wanted to believe.
“Why me?” he wanted to know. “I thought you hated me.”
She flashed him the ghost of a smile, then sobered. My personal feelings for you are irrelevant. I know you’re determined. I know when you get a case in your teeth, you don’t let it go. And after years of being lied to by lawyers and scammed by private investigators, after having cops and D.A.s cover their butts rather than get at the truth, I want someone on my team who will work hard, stay the course. You’re the ideal candidate.”
Ford could hardly believe his ears. Why would Robyn Jasperson put so much faith in him? “How do you know that about me?”
“I pay attention.”
They stared at each other, sizing up each other’s resolve in the dimly lit parking lot as rowdy music from the bar’s jukebox drifted out each time the front door opened.
“I’ve changed,” he said softly, looking away.
“People don’t change that much. Can you really walk away from a man who’s going to die by lethal injection in little more than two weeks? If there’s even a chance he’s innocent?”
Damn it. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure how she knew that about him, but she did.
“I’ll think about it.” He wouldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep.
FORD DIDN’T TRUST MANY people, but Daniel Logan was someone he did.
Daniel had no training as either a lawyer or a cop. But six years in federal prison maneuvering through the ins and outs of his various appeals had provided him quite an education.
With the help of his billionaire father, Daniel eventually had found a way to prove he was innocent of his business partner’s grisly murder.
Given his freedom and a full pardon, Daniel had wanted nothing more than to help others who didn’t belong in jail. Thus Project Justice was born. His father had financed the foundation and Daniel ran it, though the employees rarely saw him.
“I never liked the looks of that Jasperson case,” Daniel said after Ford had spent all day reading the trial transcript, then presenting his evidence to Daniel. They were in Daniel’s study at his River Oaks mansion, which looked like NASA’s ground control, given all the computers and research paraphernalia.
Daniel, tall and lean with a world-weary look that made him seem older than his thirty-six years, sat behind one of those computers rapidly tapping at the keys as he spoke. “The death of a child brings out the best and the worst in people. In this case, the people wanted blood. The cops and the D.A. gave it to them.”
“The case was badly mishandled from the beginning.” Ford sat in a leather wingback chair, Daniel’s one concession to comfort in his high-tech lair. “A guy like Jasperson could have afforded the best lawyer in the country, and he chose some school buddy who couldn’t tell his ear from a leaf of cabbage.”
“Jasperson was an arrogant idiot. He wasn’t worried enough to hire the best. He was so sure he would beat the charge—maybe because he was innocent. Maybe because he thought he was clever.”
“I can’t help thinking that if he were clever, he’d have done a better job staging a crime.” Once Ford had started checking things out, he felt his blood thrumming. He loved the challenge of a complex case, ferreting out the tiny points of illogic, the in consistencies everyone else overlooked.
“You know as well as I that intelligent people do stupid, stupid things, especially in the heat of the moment.”
“So what’s the bottom line?” Ford asked, intensely aware that the evening was slipping away. He wanted to have an answer for Robynas soon as possible.
Daniel tapped a finger to his chin. “I think there’s enough to warrant an investigation.”
Yes! “I’d like Raleigh to take the case. She has experience with—”
“Raleigh just took on the Simonetti case, the guy who supposedly shot his girlfriend.”
“Well, Joe Kinkaid, then. He’s been asking for—”
“I gave him the Blanchard case this morning.”
Damn. Who did that leave? Project Justice wasn’t a large foundation. They received far more requests each month than they could take on, and regrettably had to turn down cases even when the evidence seemed strong.
“Who, then?”
“With your resignation—which I have not accepted, by the way—we’re running at full capacity and then some. While I feel strongly that the Jasperson case should get some attention, I don’t have anyone free. And I won’t have any of my people neglect a case they’ve already committed to. Nothing gets done half-assed around Project Justice.”
Ford knew that. No one got a job with the founation unless they were willing to work nights and weekends when called for. Daniel was passionate about his vocation, and he demanded that same dedication from his people.
“The fact of the matter is,” Daniel said, looking up from the screen, “if you don’t work this case, no one will.” He sighed. “I simply don’t have the manpower.”
If it had been anyone else, Ford would have felt manipulated. However, Daniel Logan didn’t play games, not with Ford anyway. If he said the personnel were stretched to the limit, then they were.
“Would you even want me to take this on?” Ford asked. “After the Copelson case…” He let that hang in the air.
“The Copelson case was a mistake,” Daniel said.
“It was worse than a mistake. Using my skills to get that animal out of jail was a crime. They should have put me behind bars.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Hyatt. The cops manufactured evidence on that case, and you proved it. He was unfairly convicted.”
“Unfairly convicted, and guilty as hell,” Ford muttered. He should have seen the guy’s rotten soul oozing out his pores.
“Better to let a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man—”
“I know the saying,” Ford said impatiently. It was emblazoned on the gold seal in the front foyer of the Project Justice offices. He wished he could be as calm and businesslike as Daniel, to simply admit a mistake, learn from it and move on. But Daniel hadn’t seen Katherine Hannigan in the hospital, the savageries done to her body. “So if I don’t take the Jasperson case, no one will?”
“That’s the truth, I’m afraid.”
Damn it. “Fine,” he gritted out. “I’ll take it.” But at what cost to his soul, he didn’t know.
CHAPTER TWO
“MS. JASPERSON!” CAME the panicked summons. “My pot keeps collapsing.”
Suppressing a smile, Robyn hurried to the aid of one of her summer school ceramics students who was using a pottery wheel for the first time. Yesterday, his “pot” would have meant something else entirely. Today Arnie was lost in the throes of creativity, the feel of the wet clay, the joy of creating something out of nothing.
Sure enough, the tall, thin vessel he’d been painstakingly working on had fallen in on itself and was now a formless lump of clay.
“That’s the fun thing about pottery,” she said. “If you ruin something, you can just add some more water and start over. No need to throw it out. I think for this first pot you might try making something a little shorter and the walls a little thicker.”
“But I was gonna make a vase,” he objected. “For my mama.”
“Vases come in all shapes and sizes.” She loved it when the tough-talking kids expressed their love for their mamas. Arnie was still just a baby. He’d been arrested twice for defacing public property, but it wasn’t too late for him to realize that creating something beautiful was a whole lot more fun than destroying something. She’d started this summer pro-gram after only a year of teaching. At first, she had donated her time. Now she received funding from a grant, enough to buy materials and pay herself a small stipend.
She showed Arnie an example of the kind of vase he might attempt. It was squat with thick walls, but it had a dramatic red glaze with blue streaks. “Can I make mine red like that?”
“Sure.”
“All right, then.” Satisfied, he followed Robyn’s instructions for getting the new vase started, then she left him to his own devices and went to check her cell phone again. It was almost two o’clock, and she hadn’t yet heard from Ford. His forty-eight hours would be up soon.
She didn’t know what had disillusioned Ford. He’d been a serious student and athlete in school, a hard worker. But he’d also had an infectious smile—especially around people who needed cheering up.
He’d had no smile for her last night.
She knew she was right about him. He might have been wrong about her back in high school when he’d laid out her punishment for supposedly stealing those art supplies. But she’d recognized even then that he operated under a moral guidance system that saw no room for compromise. He’d seen things in black and white, right and wrong, just and unjust. And that was exactly the sort of person she needed to free Eldon.
“Okay, kids.” She pulled herself back to the moment. “It’s time to put away our supplies and clean up.”
“What about my pot?” Arnie never took his eyes off the vessel he formed with clumsy hands.
Pleased that he hadn’t given up at the first suggestion that freedom was imminent, she said, “You can finish up. I’ll help you put things away.”
