Carla had discovered that Michael Lines was in his third year of incarceration at a jail in New York state but he’d retained a local county-supplied defence lawyer. Larry Foster was as hard to get hold of as Franklin had been before their meeting, but Carla, after discovering an online news report of a current trial, eventually tracked him down to the courthouse. She found a seat in the room and sat through the final stages of a domestic abuse trial. In dismay, she watched the defence attorney argue that the victim had provoked her boyfriend by flirting with his friend. It put Carla in a foul mood as she left the room, hanging around the watercooler as she waited for the session to adjourn. Larry Foster eventually exited the courtroom, his expression neutral.
‘Did you win or lose?’ Carla asked.
He cast a brief glance in her direction. ‘Win. They’re low-life. I’ll be seeing both of them back here before the year’s out.’
He was in his sixties, probably near retirement, and his crumpled suit hadn’t seen the inside of a cleaners for a long time. Carla revised her assessment of the Iris Chan case. Michael Lines didn’t have a hotshot lawyer arguing for his release, which was the impression Viv Kantz had given. Instead, he was represented by this world-weary attorney who felt passionate enough about his client’s case that he was pushing for a mistrial. The thought gave Carla hope. If this man was willing to call his clients low-life, why wasn’t he letting Michael rot in jail?
‘I’m here about Michael Lines.’
Larry stopped in his tracks and turned to her. ‘Who are you? Press? I can spare you half an hour for an interview, but I get to see the copy before you run it.’
‘I’m not a journalist. I’m an academic working at Jericho College and I think your client is innocent.’
He ran his eyes over her corduroy dress and flat shoes. ‘You do, do you? Well, like I said, I got half an hour for you.’
Larry took her to a van parked on the roadside selling coffees through a side window. ‘I know it’s chilly outside, but I want to smoke. I’m interested enough in what you have to say to buy the drinks.’
Coffee in hand, she followed him to a nearby picnic bench and took a seat, wiping raindrops from the slats. Even with her coat on, she was freezing.
‘So, what’s a professor at the college doing getting involved in the Michael Lines case?’
She told him about Tiffany Stoker and the other women before her. The ‘unsolveds’ as Viv had called them. Then she moved onto Iris Chan.
‘I went to Shining Cliff Wood. It’s quite a place.’
Larry nodded. ‘I used to play there as a child. We loved the name but were always sure to come home before dark.’
‘There were stories about the forest?’
He shrugged, drawing deep on his smoke. ‘Maybe, but I didn’t hear them. The place was enough to give me the chills and my friends must have felt the same because, when the sun set, off we went. There was a witness who saw Iris go into the woods with a man. The first thing I want to tell you is that I believe her. She impressed the jury with her account and I consider her essentially truthful. What I argued was that the man wasn’t Michael.’
‘Was she able to identify him?’
‘Not at all. He was wearing a black coat. Probably a worker’s jacket and black jeans, plus a hat pulled down over his head. When they arrested Michael, they found items matching the description in his wardrobe, but I’ve got them in mine, so has my son. The clothes tell you nothing.’
‘He was working in a bar, I believe.’
‘Was there all night. The problem is that there was half an hour they couldn’t account for, which tallied with the time the witness saw the pair enter the woods.’
‘It was still light at nine-thirty?’
‘It sure was in June. The problem was that he was Iris’s ex. The consensus was that he was punching above his weight anyhow and nobody was surprised when she dumped him. The break-up hit him hard and he was a little, let’s say, intense.’
‘Could you clarify intense?’
‘OK, well, he wouldn’t leave Iris alone online even though she blocked him and made her accounts private. When she failed to respond, he’d deposit money into her accounts with threatening messages. It’s a classic stalker tactic, I’m afraid.’
Carla sighed, her heart going out to women such as Iris Chan who were victims of men who didn’t appreciate that their girlfriends were entitled to call an end to things when they wanted. She still needed to push how dangerous Michael might have been to his former girlfriend.
‘You know stalkers do kill their victims,’ said Carla.
‘I’m aware of that, but I consider Michael to be a lost soul rather than a physical threat.’
‘So how come people thought Iris would have walked into a wood with him if she was so desperate to finish things?’
‘Her friends were telling her to have it out with him. Emphasise that she’d found someone else.’
‘Had she?’
‘We think so, but I was never able to identify him, which was a setback for our defence. Prosecutors argued she’d agreed to go for a walk with Michael that evening while he was taking some time off his shift. It’s bullshit, of course, but hard to disprove.’
‘How did he come across during his defence?’
‘I never put him on the stand. The prosecutor would have decimated him. He’s not the brightest bulb in the box.’
‘According to police, he confessed.’
‘After being questioned on and off for twenty-four hours. He’d changed his mind by the trial, pleaded not guilty. Told me straight away he hadn’t done it.’
‘And you believed him.’
‘Not sure if I did at first. It makes no difference to me. Everyone deserves a fair trial whether they’re guilty or not. Tensions were high. The college sent along a legal representative and I’m pretty sure there was stuff going on behind the scenes too. Then students were picketing outside the courthouse. “Leave our women alone.” Finally, there was Michael, who changed his story about half a dozen times during the legal process. But apart from the confession, which I’m telling you was extracted under duress, he never again admitted to the killing.’
‘And you believe there has been a mistrial.’
‘The thing is, I do have a possible witness that Michael was at the bar in the missing half hour. He stood in the garden and saw a man smoking a joint. The smell of cannabis wafted over to him. That’s unmistakeable, isn’t it? Michael admitted to liking the odd joint and in one of his statements he said that he was probably standing in the trees near the bar smoking. I couldn’t make the account stick though.’
‘What makes you so sure he’s innocent?’
Larry stamped on his cigarette. ‘Gut feeling, the sense something isn’t right. You know the police were desperate for a conviction. So, come on. You’ve had your pound of flesh from me. Why are you here? You think you can link Iris’s death to the other girls who died?’
‘I do, but I don’t think I can tell you why. This isn’t something your legal knowledge will help you with.’
‘You’re going to need to give me more than that. I’ve bought your coffee, remember?’
Carla made a face. ‘All right. I think Jericho has a serial killer and there are other deaths, not all of them recorded as murder, which I think are relevant.’
He stared at her, a man who had seen and heard everything. ‘You are kidding me.’
‘I really don’t think so.’ As she said it, her gaze drifted towards a lump of trees opposite the courthouse where a retreating man hurried away. She stood, trying to catch sight of the figure, but he was gone in a flash.
‘Did you see that man across the road?’ she asked Larry, who was taking another deep draw on his second cigarette.
‘What man?’ he asked.