60

Thanks to Atlanta traffic, I had a four-hour drive home to think about what Bill Masterson had said. Before I left, he agreed to leave the overall investigation of Caleb Tate open but said we had to nol-pros the pending case since we were only three weeks from trial. If we obtained new corroborating evidence linking Tate to the drugs, we could reindict.

I called LA as I approached Alpharetta, and he agreed to meet me at a local Starbucks. I thought I owed him a face-to-face explanation.

He sipped on a latte and listened without expression as I described my meeting with Masterson. There was a long and awkward silence when I finished.

He ringed the top of his glass with his finger and said softly, “I thought we agreed to keep that information to ourselves. At the very least, I didn’t think you’d go to Masterson without letting me know.”

I shifted in my seat. I was tired of apologizing to everybody for doing the right thing. And I was still thinking about the letter I had been handed in the Peachtree Road Race. Was LA really disappointed, or was he just acting the part?

“The letter from Marshall changed things. It made me realize that I couldn’t just sit on this information and let him get the needle. That’s not the way I do things.”

“But that’s what’s going to happen anyway. Except now your boss is going to sit on it, and the price of him doing that is that Caleb Tate walks free.”

“It’s out of my hands,” I said.

“Is it? I don’t know much about the politics of the DA’s office, but I do know one thing: you’re the biggest story in that office right now. If the press had its way, they’d just declare you a saint and get it over with. Even judges who hold you in contempt get skewered. If you insisted on something, Masterson wouldn’t cross you.”

I thought LA was overestimating my popularity, but I could see his point. I also knew he had worked so hard on nailing Caleb Tate that he couldn’t let it go. And frankly, neither could I.

LA had interviewed more than forty witnesses. We had put together a compelling case of financial motive, marital disputes, and eerie similarities with the Kendra Van Wyck case. Trial was only three weeks away. But it still all hinged on the testimony of Rafael Rivera.

“We can still make the case if we can get some corroborating evidence on Tate’s access to the drugs,” I said.

LA frowned. “That’s just a bone Masterson threw to you. Doing that is impossible, and he knows it.”

I spent nearly an hour with LA at the Starbucks before I excused myself. I had to go home and take care of Justice. I left feeling unsettled, and I could tell that LA felt the same. The chemistry from our prior times together was gone. It had been replaced by a battle of wills between two professionals who no longer seemed to entirely trust each other.

I couldn’t shut my brain down that night even after taking an Ambien. I was tormented by the thought of Caleb Tate winning this legal battle without ever going to trial and even more by the possibility that my father had been walking on the dark side of the law. But those concerns, grave as they were, took a backseat to the one vision that literally made me sick. In five days, I would be standing in a small room at the Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, watching medical technicians inject a deadly mixture of sodium thiopental, pancuronium, and potassium chloride into Antoine Marshall’s veins. How could I stand there in silence, knowing that there was evidence that might provide a legal defense? But how could I turn over that evidence when I had been ordered by the DA not to and when I knew that doing so might free my mother’s killer?

I had nightmares about the execution on both Thursday and Friday nights and woke up in a cold sweat Friday and Saturday mornings. Even during the day, I couldn’t get my mind off the impending execution of Marshall. It wasn’t just my dad’s reputation or my obligation to the system that kept my stomach in a knot; it was my belief in a God who rewarded those who honored him and punished those who didn’t. Even if we never tried Caleb Tate and the allegations about my father never came out, God would know that I had this information and had stood idly by while Antoine Marshall was put to death.

Late Saturday afternoon, I called Masterson and shared my concerns. “Whether or not we try Caleb Tate, I think we’ve got a duty to share this information with Mace James,” I said.

“You’re too close to the case to make that call,” Masterson said evenly. “You did the right thing by bringing it to me. I’m having some people double-check your results. If the data holds up, I’ll share it with the AG’s office first thing Monday because they’re the ones handling the appeal. I’ll let them know I’m concerned about jeopardizing the investigation of Judge Snowden, but if they decide it’s exculpatory and material evidence, they should disclose it. In my view, the appellate courts have already ruled that Snowden acted appropriately in this case. I don’t view this as exculpatory evidence. I think it would be just another red herring for Mace James to carry on about.”

“Shouldn’t we at least ask the AG’s office to agree to a stay pending the results of the Snowden investigation?” I asked.

“Jamie, you’re the last person I thought I’d be saying this to, but this man’s had plenty of stays over the last eleven years. There’s always going to be some new piece of information or a different angle the courts haven’t considered. At some point, we’ve got to let the authorities finish the job.”

When I hung up, I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Masterson was playing this like the ultimate politician—taking his time and then passing the buck to the AG’s office. By the time they got the information on Monday morning, it would be too late to verify much of anything, and they would probably decide the information wasn’t material.

On Saturday night, I called my brother and asked him to explain again why he had signed an affidavit trying to get Antoine Marshall’s death penalty commuted to a life sentence. This time, I was ready to listen.

He said a lot of things, but my mind was racing so fast that I couldn’t really concentrate on most of it. It was the usual stuff about our duty to forgive and the state’s inconsistent application of the death penalty and the fact that he believed Antoine Marshall was a changed man. All of that I had heard before. But he quoted a Bible verse I never knew existed, and it was the one thing that stayed with me long after our conversation: “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

At eleven o’clock on Saturday evening, I picked up the phone and did the unthinkable. I called Mace James and asked him for a meeting first thing Sunday morning.