I took the newer image of Dad with me over to the Howard Johnson’s on the beach in Deerfield. How pitiful he was, how weak, how in and out of himself. Todd didn’t care. I wasn’t even sure Mom did. Or if she did, how she could handle the health care maze.
Did I care? Somebody needed to care. It was the right thing to do, coming here. I might not have felt like the best daughter at that point, but at least I felt righteous. I reminded myself to find out who his doctor was and get in touch first thing in the morning in case some Quinn attitude was necessary.
I had regretted agreeing to meet Laura Coleman, and I felt torn. But there she was, punctual as ever, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel waiting for me. In her left hand she held the case that contained my weapon of choice, the snub-nosed FBI revolver, that I had overnighted to her address. Her right hand almost made a fist. Her stance looked like she was preparing to get punched in the gut with a log. She hadn’t changed a bit, other than appearing more tense, more level nine than her usual level six.
I gave her a hug instead of shaking hands and then, stepping back to take a better look at her, said, “It’s good to see you. You look healthy. But tense.”
She had hugged me back, but her first words were, “I just got a call from Will Hench. The defense attorney? He wanted to make sure I was coming into the office first thing tomorrow. He sounded like he was trying not to be upset but didn’t say why, like he didn’t want me to lose sleep. So I’m a little stressed.”
“What you heard in the attorney’s voice might not even have to do with this case,” I said.
I got my roller bag out of the trunk and balanced on it the case she handed to me. As always, the closer I got to my loaded weapon, the better I felt.
She walked in with me to register. While the reception clerk took my credit card and handed me a plastic key card for a room on the second floor, I examined Laura in my peripheral vision. She had cut her hair shorter than I remembered it. Now the tight curls clung to her skull, making her head look like a Persian lamb coat my mother used to have. She had gotten buff, too. Even her forearms were defined.
“You been working out?” I asked.
“Nothing better to do while I was taking time off.”
When we turned away from the counter and walked to the elevator I could feel rather than see her limp, not pronounced, but there. The result of her wounds. But even with the limp she walked like someone you better not mess with, her shoulders purposeful, committed to forward movement even if the route was over your corpse. I didn’t remember her quite this way.
“How long are you here?” Laura asked as we walked.
“About a week. I hope.”
“Did you read what I sent you?”
Half my mind was still at the hospital, and I was a bit testy. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“So what did you think?”
“I think you’re not listening.”
Laura stopped walking and stared at me, realizing finally we were on different pages and neither of us the kind who turned them easily.
In a second I remembered how much and how little I knew Laura’s story. Daughter of Mormons who had uncustomarily stopped at two children. Happy childhood, probably. Ballet lessons and tutus. Learning how to be a homemaker. Groomed to be a good wife. So she goes into the FBI instead. What was it with that? Who was she really? Did she know?
She touched her fingertips to her upper lip as if stopping the words. She said, “I’m sorry. I’ve got that call from Will on my mind.” She forced herself off her own track and onto mine. “How is your father?”
“I understand, believe me,” I said. “Tell you what, how about you let me put my bag in my room first. Get a little something to unwind. Seeing Dad in the hospital was weird; he’s always been so robust.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and I knew she meant it.
Laura left me at the elevator. I got to my room and dropped my bag, knowing enough not to push my advantage by stopping to unpack it but at least taking the time for a quick pit stop and washup after the flight. I unlocked the case, drew out my pistol, and loaded it with some rounds that I’d sent in my checked baggage. I put the gun in my sizable tote bag, thick canvas with a plastic bottom so you couldn’t see it sag too much where the gun rested. Slung the tote over my shoulder. Better and better.
When I came back down Laura was waiting at the elevator, leaning against a chrome and glass table with a monstrous turquoise ceramic vase holding those foofy things that aren’t found in nature.
“I haven’t taken a look at the ocean in a while,” I said. “Care to walk out onto the pier?”
We stopped at the outside bar, where music blasted louder than I ever remembered. We got our drinks in plastic cups, me a Scotch over ice and her a lemonade.
“I thought you were a vodka drinker,” she said.
“You’re not an alcoholic if you like variety,” I said.
“All due respect,” she said, “bullshit.”
The entrance to the pier was just fifty feet or so north of the hotel. We took our drinks there, and I paid the three-dollar fee to a guy at a counter behind which hung light fishing tackle in case you forgot anything. We went through the turnstile and walked over the rough wooden boardwalk on pilings that had miraculously survived every hurricane for as long as I’d been around. The pier extended straight over the water a good football-field in length. Benches as rough as the pier itself were placed in the center at equal distances, and a two-slatted railing ran on both sides, splattered with pelican poop and fish guts. Dingy pelicans with beaks down to their bellies waiting around for handouts completed the scene.
Laura pointed to one of the benches now and then as a good place to sit, but I made us walk all the way to the end and stopped to smell and feel the salty onshore breeze, more noticeable here than when I first arrived. I put my tote bag safely between my feet and leaned on the rough wood armrest grooved by tropical storms and bugs. I looked down at the incoming tide that nibbled at the barnacle-covered pilings. The sun was setting at our backs, and the breeze finally felt a little cooler, a little dryer.
I thought about how Dad used to bring the three of us to this spot to fish. No matter how grouchy he was at home, he always seemed relaxed and jovial out here, and it didn’t even matter whether we caught anything. Just letting him teach us how to cut the mullet and double-punch it on the hook so the fish couldn’t take it easily was a fine thing. He didn’t get angry if we did it wrong. In later life I wondered if it was getting away from Mom that made him feel better.
Then I pointed to her ankles. “Is there much residual pain?” I asked.
“Some,” she said. “Come on, I thought we were here to talk about the case.”
“It’s only been a year, Laura. Someone your age thinks a year is a long time, but it’s not.”
“You’re doing that condescending thing,” she said, but not like she wanted to pick a fight or anything. It was just a friendly observation like Oh, you changed your hair. Maybe she really was okay.
I said, “All right. On point. How’d you get involved with all this?”
“Will told me he got a letter from Creighton, who found out online he does pro bono work. At first I thought the way you do. But do you know Tracy Mack?”
“Old Dick Tracy?” Some nicknames make more sense than others. “The fingerprint examiner. I saw him mentioned in the trial transcript.”
“Is that what they called him? Well, he had the leading piece of physical evidence in Marcus’s case, and he was indicted a month ago on multiple charges of erroneous, and likely fraudulent, findings.”
“Shit. We always knew he was a little confused about his role in the criminal justice process. He fancied himself as a crime fighter more than a scientist. How many cases are they looking at?”
“Thousands.”
“Good God.”
“Yeah. The Florida Innocence Project has been flooded with letters from inmates Mack put away. Creighton sent them a letter, too, but they didn’t answer, they’re so overwhelmed. Will wants to get ahead of them, at least get a stay of execution so we can recheck the evidence, and follow up on things that weren’t used in the trial.”
“How were prints damning evidence if the crime scene was in his own home?”
“One print. On the electrical plug on the hair dryer. You know those rectangular flat plugs about one and a half by two inches? But Marcus said he never touched his wife’s hair dryer. Ever.”
“Is the man stupid? It would have been smarter to testify that he used it all the time so it didn’t prove anything. Or at least that he didn’t remember.”
“It wasn’t actual testimony; it was more like a blurt the night of the crime. The detective asked if he’d touched the hair dryer, and he blurted that he never had used it, ever. After his arrest he was questioned about it and he stuck by that. Then when Mack said his print was found on it he tried to backtrack, but it didn’t sound good.”
“Where was his defense in all this?”
“He kept telling Marcus there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. The thing is, Will had shown the print as it was originally developed to an independent examiner, Frank Puccio, before he even agreed to take the case. Puccio said there aren’t enough matching points that you could prove the print is Creighton’s. Now that Mack has been indicted, they’ll probably let the guys with lesser convictions sit in jail. Most of them will just run out the clock and get released before the prints are even retested. But Marcus should get attention because they’re always real cautious with capital cases. Too high profile.”
“They don’t want to look bad, killing innocent people,” I agreed.
“Right. We get all our evidence together on Marcus and file an appeal for a retrial. And no, you don’t have to tell me I’m jumping the gun on that.”
That wasn’t what I was jumping to at all. Marcus, I thought. She kept saying that, not Mr. Creighton, or Creighton, but Marcus.
“What do you think of him?” I asked, taking a casual sip of my drink and staring at the horizon to avoid her thinking what I was thinking.
“Think of him?” she asked.
I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw her brush a hand over a copper-colored birthmark on her temple. I knew her well enough to know this was a tell when she was hiding something. I wondered if she was hiding this thing from me or herself.
“Yes, think of him,” I said, and nudged, “What’s your read?”
I could see her picking through possible responses in her head before choosing “He presents very well.”
I snarfed lightly. “You spend two years at Quantico and ‘presents very well’ is the extent of your profiling?”
Laura held up one index finger with which to indicate I should shut up. “I haven’t spent all that much time with him. Been focusing on the evidence.” She changed the subject. “Will is doing the paperwork. What I’m trying to do is get the hair dryer so our independent guy can redevelop the latent and examine the rest of the appliance. Now that Mack has opened the door for us, maybe we can find another print that would exclude Creighton altogether. Best case, point to the real killer.”
“Where’s the evidence?”
“There’s where you could help me. It’s being held at the Indian River County station. They’re stonewalling.”
“How?”
“They said they lost it. Then they said they destroyed it. Then they said they’ll look for it. Then the appellate judge said it probably wouldn’t prove anything.”
“Sounds like the legal shell game. You want to get what you need but play along so the judge won’t just say no dice. What you say, sounds like they didn’t destroy the evidence after the trial.” I considered her. “You really think it’s worth it, huh? You’re hot for this.”
Laura stared up at the sky a moment before answering. I think my nagging was wearing her out. “Brigid. Here’s what it is. Cold cases, you solve them and the victim’s still dead. Even economic crime, you seldom recover the money. But exonerations. Hey. You save a life.”
“But,” I said again. I had remembered Lancer’s summation of the state’s case, this mistress named Shayna Murry who denied he was with her while his family was getting murdered. “You’ve still got the fact that his mistress blew his alibi.”
Laura threw the remaining ice from her drink into the water, put the flimsy plastic cup on the wooden railing, and telescoped it with the flat of her hand. “Did I say we had other evidence besides the fingerprint? Oh, we’ve got Murry taken care of, too.”