eleven
GREG COULDN’T READ HER FACE; it was as impassive as granite. But she’d cried so hard that her eyes were swollen, and he could only guess at an acute tension headache. She came to a stop beside the table and picked up her phone. “Ann found my pocketknife, and tests showed it had Andrew’s blood on it. Ann reasoned Tanya did the murder because she had possession of the murder weapon and had motive because of the family trust money. Then Ann considered what had happened to me and determined the evidence against me had to have been planted by Tanya, who set me up to take the blame. I have it right?”
“Yes,” Greg said.
“I want to see the case file.”
He nodded. “It’s in the conference room—past my office, second door on the right. Some of it’s video interviews, various investigators’ notes, the trial transcript. The photos are not there—I’d like us to talk before you look at them. Do you want me to walk you through the material? Would you like Ann to do so?”
“It’s written down, how the pardon conclusion was reached?”
“Start with the blue folder with Ann’s card stapled on the front. Her pardon note runs about sixty pages.”
“I’ll come find you if I have a question.” She hesitated, then handed him the phone. “So I won’t call a reporter, do something I might later regret.”
“Thank you.” He pocketed her phone.
“They’re wrong about Tanya.”
“I know you honestly believe that. You’ll find Tylenol and Ibuprofen in the cabinet with the coffee filters. I’d recommend you guzzle a sports drink after your choice of painkiller. I’ll bring you food in a few hours that you can share with Marco if you can’t stomach eating anything yet.”
She looked at the dog, swishing his tail at the sound of his name, politely sitting beside her. She gently ruffled his fur. “I’ll bet he puts on weight around your more emotional clients.”
Greg smiled. “He loses it just as quickly by tagging along when they go exploring.”
She turned toward the house, but then stopped, turned back to face him. “I didn’t kill Andrew,” she said simply.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He’d read the transcripts, watched the videos of the interviews, had just seen Janelle’s immediate reaction to the idea Tanya was the guilty one. There were two women in this case. One was a liar, the other loyal, honest but bewildered. Janelle hadn’t stabbed her boyfriend.
“I know it, Janelle.” He tried to offer her some safe ground. “My job is to help you, not be another investigator. I’m officially neutral to the question of whether Tanya did this, or if it was a robbery committed by a stranger, or something else entirely. But for your own well-being, denial can’t be where you stop. If Ann is right, the implications going forward are very dangerous. You don’t have to agree with her conclusion, but you do need to accept the possibility.” And Greg could tell that acceptance was still a long way off. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk.”
Janelle nodded and went into the house.
Janelle had been reading through the materials for several days, and Greg hadn’t interrupted. He thought it was now time, however. She was brooding, edging toward being stuck. “I’ve got clam chowder simmering. Come eat.”
Janelle left the conference room to join him in the kitchen. She’d lost most of Christmas to those case files, along with her smile, that joy he’d found so delightful. He’d been able to pull her attention away only for an abbreviated hour on Christmas Day. She’d opened the packages with her name on them with pleasure—a watch and earrings from Ann and Paul, cowboy boots from him—and accepted his lavish thanks when he opened her gift and found she’d made him a cheesecake. But the case details had sucked her right back in. The one saving grace: she was still eating and sleeping, and letting Marco tag along as her shadow.
Janelle settled onto a stool at the counter, blew on the first spoonful of chowder, then reached for the canister of crackers. “I don’t buy it. I understand their theory; they’re just plain wrong.”
Greg slipped Marco a piece of salami as a way of thanking the dog for keeping Janelle company. Her anger was abating, which was good. Yet the stubborn certainty was still there, set in stone. At the moment, he put Tanya’s guilt at around seventy percent. The professional in him recognized a skilled liar in the interviews, and all kinds of flags had gone up. Still, he was willing to discuss with her either side of the argument as needed—a reasoned conversation was the only way to help Janelle, rather than offering a particular set of facts.
“I can tell you what Ann is going to say.” Greg didn’t say anything further. Instead, he just waited.
“Tell me,” Janelle said moodily.
Greg couldn’t help but smile. He rather liked this person she was when pushed into a corner, asked to believe something she didn’t agree with. The backbone that had gotten her through the trial and subsequent mistaken verdict and sentence was still as strong as ever. She wasn’t about to cave to an idea she couldn’t accept. So he gently used that strength to help her.
“Ann would say you need to put aside the rose-colored glasses and realize the personal danger you’re in,” he replied. “You’re fully persuaded it was a robbery gone wrong that resulted in Andrew’s death. But what if you’re wrong? Then Tanya is a murderer, and you are the greatest threat she faces. The cops are looking into Andrew’s death again. Tanya is going to be in a panic about what you might remember, what you might know, what you didn’t say at the time. And a second murder is considerably easier than the first.
“Ann and Paul are two very experienced homicide detectives, skilled enough to figure out you’re innocent even after finding a knife that has your name on it, as well as traces of Andrew’s blood. Their instincts come from decades of solving murders. They’ve reached the conclusion that the full evidence supports, including your and Tanya’s behavior. And based on all that, Tanya is the one who killed Andrew.”
Though Janelle listened well, he watched the expressions flicker across her face and could read the continued denial. It was an emotional reaction as much as a logical one. The problem was simply the fact Janelle didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. She had the facts, she followed the logic, and yet she just didn’t want to believe it was true.
“How about this?” Greg changed his tack. “You’re innocent.”
“Someone put those bloody shoes in your closet. If a stranger robber did the crime, how would the person know your address, Janelle? The only one who had your key, who had access to your knife and could plant those shoes, is Tanya. And don’t forget—she had a strong reason to want her brother dead, rather than paralyzed for life with a broken back. She had an intense, felt need for the money his death would bring her, and that need led an otherwise good woman to commit murder. She likely convinced herself that her brother wouldn’t want to live the rest of his life in a wheelchair, that what she was doing was best for him.”
He slid the Kleenex box her direction. He was pushing because she was stuck, the one place he couldn’t let her stay. “I know the truth is miserable. You don’t want to believe it. That’s fair. But, again, you need to accept it as a possibility, then deal with the emotions that come as a result.”
“He was my boyfriend. He got nosebleeds. I never believed the blood on my shoes was from that night. It could have been there for ages. Tanya didn’t do it. I told you, I’m not buying that theory.”
She pushed aside her chowder, got up and started pacing the room, blew her nose. “I’m not helping them send another innocent person to prison. I was falsely accused, and now Tanya is being falsely accused. Don’t you see that? If they take her to trial, Greg, I’ll get on the stand and perjure myself, state that I stabbed Andrew and pushed him down the stairs. If they rip up the pardon, so be it. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’d have to in order to stop another miscarriage of justice of this magnitude.”
He took out an energy shake from the fridge, shook it, and passed it over to her. She needed something in her system if it wasn’t going to be the chowder. He doubted she could lie under oath, given she hadn’t done so when changing her story would have let her accept a plea deal and receive a lighter sentence. Even so, he believed she’d do what she could. “You honestly believe it’s not in Tanya’s character to commit murder.”
“That’s what I believe, yes. It’s not in her character.”
“Then convince them—Ann and Paul. She’d like to come down and have a conversation with you.”
He saw relief cross her face. “Tell her to come.”
“Yeah?”
“I can convince her Tanya didn’t do it.”
He nodded and said, “Sit back down, then, hand me that shake, and eat the soup instead. You’ll ignore that conference room until Ann gets here. What you want to tell her isn’t going to be found in there or you would have already shown it to me.”
She blew her nose one last time, sat and picked up her spoon. She obediently spooned in more bites. “It is good chowder. What did you use?”
For the first time in days, the knot in his back relaxed. “A secret family recipe.”
“Some cream, real butter, fresh clams. You called one of your restaurants for a delivery.”
“Guilty.”
She ate some more. “I’d give your chef a raise.”