EIGHT

IT HAD BEEN A LITTLE OVER A WEEK SINCE EMILY HAD ASSUMED RUSSELL WHITE’S PRACTICE, JUST UNDER A MONTH SINCE SHE HAD LEFT BOSTON, AND JUST ONE WEEK SINCE SHE HAD STUMBLED UPON THE BODY. She hadn’t expected finding the body would create a problem or even cause her to feel stressed. She had seen numerous dead bodies in her career, so many that she had lost count. Death never bothered her. In fact, she saw death as a relief. The dead were no longer lonely or in pain. As far as an afterlife, she figured she would find out eventually. She didn’t hold to any actual belief, other than the belief that some type of hell had to exist. Dante’s vision of hell satisfied the demons that haunted her. Wandering upon this dead guy soon after moving to what she thought and hoped would be a quiet little town away from the garbage of her prior life had thrown her a curve ball.

It was close to three a.m., and she was wide awake, staring in the dark at the ceiling. Lately she had started taking Ambien to help her sleep. It worked great at first; she’d been able to sleep a few hours. But now she found herself doubling up on the dose and waking after only a couple hours of sleep. Since she was awake again now, she decided to go for a walk.

Emily lived close to the beach, actually very close to where the floater had been found. In spite of the time, the moon was full and bright, and the sky clear. She could see very well without a flashlight. She walked toward the beach, engrossed in thought, trying to convince herself the floater hadn’t looked familiar. The coroner hadn’t identified him yet.

No one from her previous life knew where she had moved, not even Eric. She had deleted her Facebook account and blocked every connection from her phone. Even her former coworkers knew little to nothing about her personal life, and she wanted to keep it that way. Leaving Eric was the hardest part of leaving Boston, but she had to go. After the accident, she couldn’t face him without thinking that he was somehow involved.

She met Eric during her last year of law school, during a Moot Court competition. They both competed for their schools. He played the part of opposing counsel for his school, and she was on the defense team. She was instantly attracted to him. He was adorable, with his sandy-brown hair and blue eyes, but when he spoke he went from adorable to absolutely sexy. He had a slight Midwestern accent, and his voice carried nicely in the courtroom. Outside the courtroom his voice was softer, almost as if a different person were speaking. What attracted her most to him was that he was brilliant. He had been a child prodigy. He completed college and law school in record time and passed the bar exam with very little prep, when she had to study for hours. He not only knew the material but could also correctly apply it for the benefit of his clients.

Emily and Eric were inseparable during the competition, and afterward their relationship continued to grow. Once they both passed the bar exam, they moved in together and settled into a nice routine. The eventual plan was to get married and start a family; however, they were both busy focusing on their careers. She was hired by the prosecutor’s office and eventually became a legal correspondent for the local news. Eric immediately started a private law firm and spent the bulk of his free time learning to fly at Krannert. He soon became business partners with his flight instructor, Brad.

After her best friend Rachel’s death, Emily wasn’t able to get past a feeling that Eric either knew more than he was admitting or that he was somehow involved. This growing suspicion tore apart whatever attraction she once felt for him. In the end, the very sight of him made her ill. His voice was a constant reminder of how much her feelings had changed. The only thing she kept from their relationship was a chunky, twisted dark-gold bracelet he gave her after one of his charter flights to Italy. He told her he’d had it made for her out of a handful of gold nuggets he had purchased with his first paycheck from the charter. Leaving her practice and life behind was painful enough, but this bracelet was her last hold on her prior life and one she wasn’t ready to put away. It was a reminder of how good her life had been before she allowed her career and her choices to be influenced by money and greed.

While she walked she played with the bracelet, remembering the times with Eric that had been decent, before her news anchor position, before his involvement with Brad, and before Rachel and the kids died. Eric wasn’t the only one to blame for their breakup. Emily had loved her dual roles as prosecuting attorney and as a legal consultant for the local news. She loved the limelight, being the center of attention, and getting requests for her opinions, as well as being able to verbalize her opinion without being asked. She thrived on the banter between herself as a prosecutor and the defense attorneys who also served as legal counsel for the television station. Soon she became a local celebrity, which she thoroughly enjoyed. But her opinions hadn’t always been factually correct, and she soon stopped caring if she was right or wrong. She was paid to give her opinion, and in law, one side always loses. Although rare, she’d had her losses, but her wins were what drove her. And when she won, she gloated.

There was one case in particular that had gained national attention and for which she had been lucky enough to be the lead prosecutor. She had gladly and eagerly held press conferences regarding “catching the deviant and obtaining his voluntary confession.” After he was sentenced, she gave her opinion to anyone with a camera, but this time she was wrong. In fact, she had evidence that would have exonerated the defendant. But to her it wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter; she had a confession. She was completely caught up in the attention she was afforded as a celebrity.

The defendant’s name was James Johnson. He was barely seventeen years old, a young, skinny white kid charged with aggravated rape of a minor. His IQ was around eighty, perhaps low but legally still average. He knew the difference between right and wrong; he knew what a lie was and that sex without consent was wrong. He even knew that sex with a minor was wrong. He admitted to all of this and was tried as an adult, found guilty, sentenced to twenty years, and placed in an adult maximum-security prison. Initially he was held in protective custody, but eventually he was moved into the general population. There he became a target and was brutally beaten, raped, and murdered. He was found crumpled at the bottom of a stairwell. His face was barely recognizable; he had numerous broken bones, stab wounds, and lacerations. Several of the wounds were postmortem. Prison officials had no explanation as to how he ended up in a stairwell. Emily didn’t feel any guilt over his death; he was just one less inmate for the taxpayers to support and proof that there is justice, even in prison. But his death didn’t end the case. It was just the beginning of her fall from grace, leading to her eventual feelings of remorse.

Still deep in thought about James, Emily found herself walking toward the location where the body had floated ashore. She stopped, looking across the water, and noticed how loud the ocean sounded in the silence. The water glistened in the moonlight. There simply wasn’t any way she could have known this man. There could not be a connection! Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something very familiar about him, that she somehow knew him. As she gazed at the water, it suddenly came to her. She did know him. Not personally, but professionally. He had been the police detective in Boston who had gotten the confession out of James. Or rather, he was present when James confessed.

“Connard,” she barely whispered aloud. His name was Detective Connard! She did know him! She remembered when he had come to her with the signed confession. She had heard rumors that Connard was very good at getting confessions out of subjects. She didn’t care how he got the confession, just that she had one. She didn’t ask him about the details. She made it a point to never ask how a confession was obtained. That was the job of the defense. Once she had the confession, she quickly notified the media, held a press conference, and announced the state’s position on prosecuting the defendant. She stopped all further investigations of the case and pursued James as the only suspect, and eventually the only defendant. James’s entire trial, including jury deliberations, had lasted only two days. Sentencing was held thirty days later. James was found dead sixty-two days after that.

The sun was starting to come up, and Emily slowly stood and brushed sand off her legs. She had spent the better part of the early-morning hours sitting in the sand, staring at the water, thinking about James, his confession, his death, and the detective. In her core, she knew she was responsible for James’s death. She had prematurely halted the investigation, prosecuted the easiest defendant to convict, and ignored the evidence that pointed in a different direction. She couldn’t blame the media or the state for pushing his conviction, because they didn’t. She did.

The state had wanted the right defendant convicted, not just anyone. But she had wanted to prove herself as a new prosecutor, and she had needed to be the attorney who prosecuted this case. She was elated when Detective Connard brought her the confession, and when she presented it to the press, she conveniently forgot she had exculpatory DNA evidence that not only was James innocent in this case, but that the actual offender had been arrested and charged with a different rape and murder. After James’s death, the DNA evidence was leaked to the press.

In the end the Johnson family sued the state, collected a couple million, and moved away. Emily was terminated from her positions as chief prosecuting attorney for the city and legal counsel for the news program. After a year of hiding from public view, Emily purchased a law practice from a family friend who was retiring. The absolute last topic or case she wanted to remember or be reminded of now was James. She wondered if the detective’s death had anything to do with James’s death. But what frightened her more was the thought that finding the card on her car was somehow connected to Detective Connard and maybe even the Johnson case.

Emily turned away from the water, took her cell phone out of her pocket, and called Sheriff McNeil. He answered on the first ring. Before he could say hello she started talking, fast at first but then forcing herself to slow down. “Sheriff, I’m sorry to call you at this hour. This is Emily Bridges. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the person who found the body on the shore.”

“Uh, yeah, I remember,” muttered the sheriff. “What do you want that couldn’t wait until eight o’clock?”

“I need to tell you I think I know who he is. The body, that is… I know him.” Emily paused, nervously waiting for him to say something.

After a few seconds to process this new information, he said, “OK, Counselor, who is he?”

Emily hesitated, knowing it would be hard to explain why she hadn’t recognized the floater when he was found on the beach. She also knew she couldn’t tell the sheriff about the photo she’d found on her windshield. If she did, he would think she was somehow involved in this murder.

“He was a police detective I once worked with. I didn’t work with him directly, and only on one case. He was loosely involved in an investigation of a suspect I prosecuted,” she replied.

“So, Counselor, you’re telling me the body you found in the water is none other than a police detective you once worked with and knew? How did you miss this?” he yelled into the phone.

Emily tried to explain how she hadn’t remembered at first that she had worked with him. “Boston is a big city with thousands of police officers. It’s impossible to remember each one. Even the officers don’t all know each other!” she said.

“Counselor, tell me, what case was he loosely involved with when he worked for you?” The sheriff was now fully awake, and his voice did not hide his irritation with Emily.

“Well, uh, Sheriff, he didn’t work for me. I said he was loosely involved in a case that I managed.”

“I see. My mistake, OK? Now, how about you tell me what case he was ‘loosely involved’ with? Can you do that, Counselor?”

Emily responded softly, “That would have been the Johnson case.” She found it very difficult to say James’s name.

“Let me guess: the James Johnson case? I remember that case, as do most people in this country. If I understand you, this is the police detective who acquired the ‘confession’ you used to convict an innocent, mentally deficient kid who was later brutally murdered, and whose family sued the city and caused you to almost lose your license to practice law. And you expect me to believe you forgot who this cop was? Lady, I am not that stupid!”

“Sheriff, I don’t expect you to believe me, but if I had anything to hide, I wouldn’t have called you to tell you I remembered who he was!” Emily said. “I tried very hard to forget everything about that case, the confession, and the detective. It destroyed my career and almost my life. I just wanted to move forward and put that awful part of my life behind me so I could practice law the way I first intended, with no drama and no media.”

The sheriff was silent for a few seconds and then sternly replied, “I am sure James’s family wishes they could move forward and put it behind them too, but they can’t because their son is dead, and he didn’t need to die.” The line went dead.

Emily turned back toward the water. For the first time in her adult life, she didn’t know what to do. Part of her wanted to call Eric and tell him everything, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She desperately wanted someone to confide in, and with Rachel gone, there was no one. She walked back to her house still wondering if the detective’s body had anything to do with the photo she had found on her car. Deep down, she knew it did. What scared her most was that she had no idea who was behind the dead body or the photo, and there was no one she could trust or turn to for help.