I laughed as I hugged her again.
She’d been my first New York friend. She was my next-door neighbor in the crappy apartment I’d gotten on 117th Street in Spanish Harlem two weeks after I’d gotten off the Greyhound at the Port Authority.
Being the only single women and non-Spanish-speaking people in residence, we gravitated toward each other. Especially when we had to do laundry in the Silence of the Lambs–style basement laundry room. She’d helped me find a waitressing job and a pediatrician for Em. She was actually the one who’d encouraged me to become a paralegal all those years ago.
“It’s been way, way too long, Mary Ann,” I said.
Mary Ann smiled. She still looked more like an Iraq War news anchorette than a combat Iraq War vet and ex-NYPD cop. She’d parlayed her toughness and good looks into a plum international-law-firm investigator job.
“That’s fine,” Mary Ann said. “I know you greedy, capitalist corporate-lawyer types. Not a minute to spare counting all that filthy lucre. No time for the peasants.”
“Well, Mary Ann,” I said. “We can’t all be keeping it real in the hood up there in Scarsdale with our dentist husband and two toddlers.”
“It’s Bronxville, OK?” Mary Ann said. “Get it right. Bronxville eats those soccer-mom bitches from Scarsdale alive. Anyway, what are we doing here again?”
“We’re here to save some lives, that’s what,” said a short, friendly-looking man with an unruly mop of black hair, who burst into the conference room with a legal box.
“Welcome to Mission Exonerate NYC, everyone,” he said, dropping the box onto the table with a tremendous thud. “Since time is money, I won’t waste any. I’m the initiative cofounder and director, Carl Fouhy. You are the brightest legal minds in New York City, I take it. Or at least, New York’s currently most dispensable legal minds. Whatever the case, I need you and, more important, the men and women who are right now facing imminent execution need you even more.”
He hit the lights as a bright PowerPoint board hummed out of the ceiling.
The faces of tough yet defeated-looking men and women began to slideshow.
“You would not believe the amount of witness misidentification and forensic-science misconduct that we’ve found in some of these capital cases,” Fouhy explained. “That’s even before getting into some of the flat-out shitty defense lawyering we’ve uncovered.
“There are cases of counselors failing to investigate witnesses or call experts. Of defense lawyers actually being intoxicated and falling asleep during trial. That’s where you folks come in. You will level the playing field for these mostly poor, mostly uneducated men and women.”
He lifted the lid of the box, took out thick yellow envelopes, and began to drop them one by one in front of us.
“These are your assigned cases. You can open them momentarily, when you leave. On the first page, you will find the accused’s current attorney. We want you to work in conjunction with him. Your job is advisory, to go and do a face-to-face with each defense attorney. See that everything has been covered, the police report, the appeals. We’re looking for mistakes, people. Catching a mistake may save someone’s life.
“Now, if someone will hit the lights, I’ll go over a couple of test cases in which we’ve overturned executions. We’ll review the process and then, basically, you’re on your own. Any questions, myself or the initiative’s policy advisers, Jane Burkhart and Teddy Simmons, can be reached. Otherwise, I’m confident you guys will figure it out. Improvise and overcome, people. Save a life!”
Chapter 56
“AND I THOUGHT speed dating was fast,” Mary Ann said as we unloaded at Starbucks on Third Avenue half an hour later with Jane Joyce, a lawyer at Mary Ann’s firm.
“On your mark, get set, go,” I said as we all pulled out our assigned cases.
I flipped through a thick mound of pages. My case concerned a man named Randall King who was on death row for murdering two armored-car guards in a Waterbury, Connecticut, holdup. I showed Mary Ann the mug shot of the bullnecked, malevolent, cornrowed convict.
“Wow, they gave me a bank robber,” I said. “Lucky me. This is going to be fun.”
“I got a drug dealer who killed his family!” Jane Joyce cried out. “In Texas!”
“You think yours sucks?” Mary Ann said, gaping at her case. “I got a loser they caught on a cold homicide case in South Florida!”
As always, my stomach tightened at the mention of Florida.
“A fricking serial killer, no less,” Mary Ann said. “Check this out.”
I almost bit through my latte cup. A burning line of coffee sprayed from my nose onto my chin.
In Mary Ann’s hand was a photocopied Miami Herald article. She gave it to me.
It had a three-word headline: “Jump Killer Caught?”
Chapter 57
May 17, 2001
JUMP KILLER CAUGHT?Palm Beach County cold-case detectives placed a state corrections officer into custody for the 1993 murder of a Boca Raton woman Monday night. Police sources confirm that a DNA match led to the arrest of Florida City resident Justin Harris.Murder victim Tara Foster was still in college in June of 1993 when she was reported missing after volunteering as an office worker at the Homestead Correctional Institution in Florida City. Her remains were found wrapped in plastic in Everglades National Park a year later.With DNA evidence originally retrieved from Foster’s body, cold-case detectives restarted the investigation this month with an effort to obtain DNA from likely suspects. Because she’d been tied with paracord, the same ligature linked to the infamous Jump Killer disappearances in the early 1990s, cold-case officers cross-referenced original witnesses in the Foster case with former paratroopers.Justin Harris, a veteran of the 101st Airborne and a guard at the Homestead prison, provided DNA that matched samples found on Foster’s clothing.He is currently being held without bail.
My pulse hammered in my throat, against my temples. The photocopied article in my lap wavered in my vision like something seen through old glass.
As I sat there with Mary Ann and Jane, the traffic beeping outside on Third, the shouted coffee orders, the jet engine whoosh of the milk frother, all began to fade. In their place came a rush of images and sensations I’d thought I’d successfully blocked from my memory.
The Jump Killer’s strange dark eyes, the pungent smell of cologne in his car, the ache in my arms as I hung on for dear life as he crashed through the surf behind me.
“Hey, Nina,” Mary Ann said, looking at me with worry. “You OK? You look almost as pale as me.”
“Fine,” I heard myself saying. I braced myself and thumbed to the next page. I found another newspaper article that listed all the women whose deaths the Jump Killer was believed to be responsible for. I scanned the faces until I got to the second one from the bottom.
Above the caption “Victim 20” was a vaguely familiar face. I guess it should have been, since it was my high school yearbook picture.
Sitting there, I felt like you do in that dream where you’re back at school, and you have to take that one last test you never studied for. That sour, pit-of-your-stomach, panic-attack realization that the jig is up. The worst thing of all has happened. You’ve been found out.
“Earth to Nina,” Mary Ann said. “Hey, if you’re so interested, why don’t we switch? Connecticut’s what? Two hours away at the most. How am I going to arrange everything with my kids if I have to go to Florida? Besides, I’ve got red hair. Fluorescent bulbs give me blisters. Do ol’ Mary Ann a favor. This is a media case as well. Think of the publicity for your firm. You’ll make partner.”