At his trial, Mr. Sawyer tried to insist that Lamont Gadsden had pictures which proved his innocence. The photographs attached to this letter raise serious questions, at minimum, about the chain of custody of evidence at his trial.
Before you ask the State’s Attorney’s Office to file charges against me in Larry Alito’s death, I suggest you revisit this 1966 murder, the 1967 trial of Steve Sawyer, and, in particular, that you discover the identity of the officer wearing badge number 8396.
For my protection, I am sending a copy of this letter to my lawyer. I am notifying Judge Arnold Coleman, who served as Steve Sawyer’s public defender during his trial, and Steve Sawyer. I am also notifying Greg Yeoman, who is John Merton’s current counsel.
You may leave a message with my attorney about what next steps you wish to take in resolving both the 1966 murder and your baseless accusations against me in the death of Larry Alito.
While Theo made up a dozen copies of my storyboard, I called Freeman Carter, my lawyer, and told him I had evidence so hot that it needed to be in a vault.
“I wondered when I would hear from you, Warshawski. The cops have been to my office already demanding that I produce your body, so I knew it was only a matter of time before you remembered you had a right to counsel.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that, Freeman. But let me give you a quick thumbnail of what’s happening.”
I explained as much as I knew, about Lamont and Steve-Kimathi and Dornick, Krumas and my uncle. I even reported finding the Nellie Fox baseball in the trunk of my family’s possessions.
“So what do you want me to do with all this?” Freeman asked.
“Hold on to the pictures and the baseball. Hold off the cops. I need to find Petra now if I can, and then I’ll worry about everything else.”
Theo, who’d heard my end of the conversation, said Cheviot could store the negatives and the extra prints for me, but I explained that the state could compel Cheviot to produce them. My lawyer had certain privileges that could keep the government at bay, at least for a few days. I did ask Theo to use their messenger service to deliver my storyboards to Bobby, Judge Coleman, and Greg Yeoman. I would drop a copy off at Fit for Your Hoof myself, if I could do so without a tail, but I wanted to watch Freeman Carter put my originals and the hundred prints Theo had produced in his office safe.
By the time Karen and I got back on the tollway, we were in the middle of the oozing Chicago rush hour. Slow hour, it should be called. While we drove, Karen reported on the repairs to Sister Frankie’s apartment at the Freedom Center.
“The men doing the work are doing a terrible job. After tearing the place apart, all they’ve done is put up some studs. They started to work on the wiring and blew the circuits for the whole building. And the sisters couldn’t even get the building management to restore power until they offered to send pickets to the owner’s home.”
“Yes, I think those are phantom builders, sent by Harvey Krumas to make sure any evidence of the fire bombing got destroyed.” It was one of my nagging worries about Petra. Had she really texted Dornick or Alito or Harvey himself to come get the bag of bottle fragments I’d collected from the fire bombing?
Karen moved on to a piece of encouraging news: Miss Claudia was a little stronger today. Karen had sent a pastoral intern to check on her and other high-needs patients, and she’d heard from the intern while we were waiting for Theo to develop the pictures.
“It’s as if turning over the Bible to you took enough of a load off her spirit that she had some strength left for her own life,” Karen said. “It makes me wonder if she knew all along that those pictures were in there.”
“Don’t you think if Miss Claudia knew about the pictures, she would have pulled them out and had prints made?” I objected. “What I imagine happened is that Lamont went to consult Johnny about what to do with the pictures, whether he should risk trying to testify at Sawyer’s trial.
“Maybe Lamont had prints made, prints that disappeared when he did, but he was smart enough to stash the negatives with the one person who really believed in him: his auntie. He couldn’t count on Rose Hebert. She was too much under her angry father’s control. And he couldn’t count on Johnny, who might barter them to save his own skin in some plea bargain down the road. But Claudia adored him and stood by him. So he peeled open the endpaper, inserted the negatives, and gave the Bible to Claudia. She must have noticed the cover was lumpy. And, at some level, she might have suspected he had something hidden in there. But she probably was afraid to find out what it was.”
“Why?” Karen inched forward toward the Deerfield Toll Plaza. I fished in my wallet for exact change.
“She didn’t know about the pictures, but Ella kept claiming Lamont sold drugs. Claudia might have thought she was holding a packet of heroin or some acid or something.”
We were both quiet for a few car lengths, but Karen kept glancing at me, biting her lips. She finally blurted out, “There’s something you need to know, but I’ve been worrying about how to tell you. When I talked to my intern, she said some men had been around looking for me. They heard from the head nurse that you and I were both visiting Miss Claudia last night, and they thought I would know where you were.”
“Cops?” I demanded.
Karen shook her head. “My intern wouldn’t know something like that. She assumed they were, but she didn’t think to ask for any ID. And, after everything you’ve said today, I do wonder if they could be with George Dornick’s company.”
I rubbed my forehead. “That means they could be at your home. After we go to my lawyer’s, you’d better let me come back with you to check for an ambush. If it was Dornick’s people, he may also have dug up your cellphone number, which means they could be tracking us.”
I smiled bleakly. “No one is safe if they are around me. Dornick is doing an excellent job of driving that point home. Perhaps you and Bernardo could move into an empty room at Lionsgate Manor until this mess gets cleaned up.”
“I’ll be okay, Vic. They’ll believe me when I explain I’m just the pastor who’s been too naïve to see through you.” She made a soft O of surprise with her rosebud lips, and I laughed.
“It’s my Victorian face,” she added. “No one ever thinks I understand the big bad world. It’s you who’s in trouble and in danger.”
The traffic began moving marginally faster. I kept checking the road, using the makeup mirror in the sun visor and peering into the right wing mirror. The same cars crawled around us. I couldn’t tell if any of them were paying us special attention. It was when we oozed off the Kennedy into the Loop that I began to wonder about a certain gray BMW. It had an impressive collection of antennas, and for the last few miles on the expressway it had seemed to be trading places with a black Ford Expedition. Karen’s turquoise Corolla was easy to pick out in a crowd, and they hadn’t needed to stay close to us until we exited. But then the BMW swooped around two cabs and a bus and landed in front of us. The Expedition was moving in from the side.
“We have company,” I said. “I’m jumping out before they pin us. I’ll try to send a cop your way.”
Before Karen could react or speak or even slow the car down, I had stuffed the envelope of negatives and prints into the back of my jeans and opened the passenger door. I held on to it tightly, got my feet and myself out and running alongside the car, then slammed the door and tore off down LaSalle Street toward Freeman’s office. I heard whistles, screams, the screech of tires, and then a messenger bike was on the sidewalk, doing wheelies around me, while another one came at me from the south.