“Lucid!” Leo growled. “She’s fucking Boo Radley on acid! I have to go into Bob’s office and tell him that we practically bulldozed this guy’s house into the ground-into the ground -based on the accusations of a lunatic!”
“It gets worse,” Paula said, and opened her briefcase.
She laid a series of audiocassettes on the table.
“What are those?”
“Remember you wanted her original call? Well, they fed her name into the system and pulled every call she ever made to the hotline. There were over fifty.”
“What? You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I haven’t had time to listen to all the tapes, but in each call she accuses another suspect.”
“I just don’t understand why this was ever taken seriously.”
“It was just an unlucky coincidence. If you remember, Bob demanded that every call be followed up on, no matter what. It was just a coincidence that the call in which she names Guaraldi came in at the same time we started looking at Guaraldi because of the Peters and Easton children. Any other time, the call would have been tagged as a nutcase, but because Guaraldi was being investigated by us at the time, someone took the call seriously. It was just a coincidence.”
“Just a coincidence. Christ.”
Bob stared at the stack of tapes on his desk.
“Has defense heard them?”
“No. Not yet.” Leo stood in front of Bob, felt the rage coming off the man like a fever. Paula stood off to the left.
“Not yet? What do you mean, not yet?”
“I figured you’d want to hear them first.”
“You’re goddamn right I do. But we are not, let me repeat that, we are not giving these tapes to the defense.”
“It’s discovery. We have no choice.”
“Sure we do. Bury the tapes. Lose them. Erase them. I never heard of these tapes. Paula lost them before she got a chance to listen to them. Right, Paula?”
“Yeah. Sure, Bob.”
“We’ll put the woman on the stand,” Bob said.
“Look, I’m telling you, she’s a basket case. She wears a hat made out of Reynolds Wrap!”
“We’ll shoot her full of Thorazine! One way or another, she’s going on the stand.”
“Bob, think about what you’re saying. We’ve got nothing on Guaraldi. Nothing.”
“We’ve got one of the dead girls’ DNA in the man’s car. DNA. You call that nothing?”
“It’s diluted. It has no value. There’s blood, spit, prints, and hair from nine of the day-care kids in that car. All alive.”
“All but one.”
“This is ludicrous.”
“No, Leo, this is critical mass. It’s fuck or walk. Where do your loyalties lie?”
The two men stared at each other like tyrants on a playground. Leo looked to Paula for some backup, but she was of no help. She had, quite clearly, shown where her loyalties lay.
Leo picked up the tapes off Bob’s desk. “Bob, the case is over. It’s over.”
Bob jumped to his feet so quickly and violently that Leo had been sure the man was going to hit him. His face had gone from an angry red color to an apoplectic purple. “Like hell it is. Put those goddamn tapes back on my desk.”
“Look, you’re not thinking clearly. We can’t put a man who’s obviously innocent in prison just so your resume will remain unblemished.”
“You had best think about what you’re doing here, Leo. I would hate to see you ruin what could be a brilliant career. Think about it. You know he’s innocent? You know?”
“It doesn’t matter. We don’t have a case against the man. I’m turning these tapes over to the defense team. They’re discovery. We’re legally obligated.”
“No, we’re not. They have the same access to the hotline tapes as we do. We are not legally obligated to give them something that they in fact already have.”
“It’s wrong and you know it.”
“We are not legally obligated.”
“We’re morally obligated.”
“Fuck morally! Fuck you! Give me those tapes!” Bob lunged across his desk and grabbed at Leo. He got hold of the cuff of Leo’s suit jacket, and Leo jerked away, tearing the jacket. Leo backed slowly away from Bob, who was sprawled out across his desk, a thin thread of saliva dangling from his chin. “If you walk out of this office, that’s it! I never want to see you again!”
“You won’t. I quit.”
After listening to the tapes, Judge Duran ordered the charges dropped. Frank Guaraldi was set free and Monty filed a seventy-million-dollar civil action lawsuit on Guaraldi’s behalf for wrongful imprisonment. Bob Fox held a press conference that culminated with his stating that in the wake of his monumental mishandling of the Guaraldi case, Assistant District Attorney Leo Hewitt had voluntarily resigned his position. This statement was interpreted, as Fox knew it would be, that Leo was forced to leave. The media, and more important, the voters, accepted Leo as the scapegoat and Fox was ultimately reelected for another term as district attorney and named Paula Manning as his assistant DA.
Leo lived well with his decision to turn over the Conners tapes. He knew his actions were appropriate.
Two months after being acquitted of all charges, Frank Guaraldi was stopped late at night for a routine traffic violation. The patrolman deemed Guaraldi’s behavior suspicious. As the neighborhood in which he had stopped Guaraldi was notorious for high drug trafficking, the patrolman searched Guaraldi’s car. He found nothing in the interior of the car and asked Guaraldi to pop the trunk. Guaraldi ran. The officer caught him easily and restrained him with handcuffs. He opened the trunk of Guaraldi’s car. Inside he found the limbless, headless torso of a seven-year-old girl.
Guaraldi was taken into custody and retried. Paula headed the prosecution team, and there was no doubt that Guaraldi would be convicted, but he never was.
Late one night in his jail cell, Guaraldi tore open his wrists with his own teeth, biting and tearing the flesh until he reached the artery and severed it. He jammed his wrists into an open toilet and quietly bled to death in his cell in the middle of the night, and thus saved the taxpayers of the city the cost of another trial.
Leo succumbed to depression and felt that he was responsible for the death of the last child. He could not find a job anywhere in the country (much less Fulton County), and a brief attempt at a private practice proved to be a folly. Even the most desperate of clients felt that they could do better than the man who had set a child murderer free. He grew poor and found that he missed having money. He took a low-rent apartment in a bad neighborhood. When the lease expired on his Lexus, he purchased a used Nissan pickup truck. He fell into the habit of driving through tony neighborhoods and dreaming of the prosperity that being a successful trial lawyer might have brought him. He imagined what might have happened had he destroyed the Conners tapes as Bob had suggested. He could see himself as the district attorney. He could see himself resigning the position to accept a full partnership in a prestigious law firm. The reality was that he took a job as a data entry clerk. He showed up every day and pushed buttons on a keyboard and dreamed his dreams. The job was functional and paid the rent, but the law was all he knew, all he had ever cared to know.
One day, he went to the criminal courts building and hid out in the parking garage. When Paula spotted him waiting near her car, her eyes widened and she reached into her purse. Leo was sure she was reaching for a can of mace, but she only pulled out her keys. She opened the car door and told Leo to get in. Without shame, he begged her to help him get back. To go to Bob and somehow get him back in. She agreed.
Two weeks later Paula contacted him. She had talked to Bob. He would take Leo back. As a junior deputy prosecutor. Traffic cases only. Take it or leave it.
He took it.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Leo, please, Mr. Lee. Just Leo.”
“And I’m Adam. How can I help you?”
“This is a hell of a nice office, Adam. Is that desk mahogany?”