“We find the defendant not guilty, Your Honor.”
“This is bullshit!” Binx shouted. “I saw it with my own two eyes!”
“One more word and it’ll be contempt of court, Ms. Binx,” Larch said, standing and glaring at her.
Binx shook her head in a rage, but she said nothing else.
“On count three of the indictment,” the judge said, “attempted murder of Claude Watkins, how do you find?”
“There was reasonable doubt. Not guilty, Your Honor.”
The courtroom erupted. I let out my breath long and slow and hung my head in deep gratitude, thanking God for my deliverance, before spinning around and reaching across the bar to kiss Bree, who was grinning through tears.
“Welcome back from the edge, baby,” she said.
“This is a travesty of justice!” Claude Watkins shouted. “I’ve got a piss bag and he’s frickin’ not guilty? He guns down three and he’s not guilty?”
Larch banged her gavel, said, “That’s enough, Mr. Watkins.”
“I reject this!” Watkins roared, and he spun his wheelchair around and headed out. “I do not recognize this jury or this court!”
“Neither do I!” shouted Binx, and she stormed after him.
The judge called to the officer at the door to the hallway, “Fuller, arrest them both. I want them held on suspicion of conspiracy, murder, and perjury.”
Binx whirled around and shouted, “You can’t be serious! This is insanity!”
“It’s government persecution, that’s what it is,” Watkins said. “They cooked up that whole pack of lies to bury us. It’s what the police state does! Shoots you down, then makes up a goddamn excuse for shooting you down!”
As Binx struggled against the zip cuffs around her wrists and a second officer restrained Watkins in his wheelchair, my gaze snagged on Soneji’s son. Dylan Winslow was on his feet, looking back at Binx and Watkins as they were taken from the courtroom. The fingers of the troubled teen’s left hand trembled as he tried to grip the bench in front of him.
He was part of it, I thought. He’s got something to hide.
The prosecutor was on his feet and furious as well.
“Your Honor,” Wills said. “The verdict is the verdict, but I echo Ms. Binx and Mr. Watkins. This is a travesty of justice, one you can undo by vacating this verdict and demanding a retrial.”
“What? And undo double jeopardy?” Anita cried. “On what constitutional grounds, Counselor?”
Larch held up her hand to stop further argument. Then she tugged her glasses down the bridge of her nose and gave the prosecutor a withering stare.
“Mr. Wills,” she said. “As far as the Court is concerned, this entire trial has been a travesty of justice. Because of the naked ambitions of yourself and Ms. Carlisle, as well as the government’s need for a scapegoat for the country’s rash of police-involved shootings, the two of you and your bosses not only bought into a sophisticated framing of the defendant, but fully participated in a rush to justice. I anticipate someone investigating both of you very soon.”
For once, the federal prosecutors were speechless.
“Dr. Cross?” Larch said.
“Your Honor.”
“I am sorry this happened to you.”
“Thank you, Judge Larch. I am too.”
“Go and enjoy your freedom. Take care of that son of yours.” She banged her gavel. “The jury is released. Case closed.”
I threw my hands up and whirled around to see Bree, Jannie, Damon, Nana Mama, and my dad cheering behind me.
Tears welled in my eyes as I kissed Anita and Naomi. Then I went around, picked up Ali, and hugged my boy like he was life itself.
Chapter 87
To be honest, despite the verdict, I was feeling mixed emotions sitting in a chair outside Chief Michaels’s office the following Monday.
My arrest, the trial, and even the verdict had forced me to do a lot of reevaluating about my priorities and my purpose in life.
I had always seen homicide investigation as a way to represent the slain and help the friends and family of the victims find not only closure, but justice. I think of it as an honorable profession, one that, until I was arrested, gave me a great degree of fulfillment.
But turning back to clinical psychology and counseling, my first loves, had reminded me why I enjoyed that work so much. Ultimately, my job was to help people trying to understand and improve themselves and their lives. Being a psychotherapist was as noble a calling as being a homicide detective, and fulfilling in an entirely different way. And yet here I was, ready to put an end to the counselor part of me again.
“Dr. Cross?” Michaels’s secretary said. “He’ll see you now.”
I went into the chief ’s office. Crossing the room to his desk, I watched Metro’s leader closely, trying to read his body language. The chief had played it political during the months I’d spent on suspension pending trial. In private, he’d expressed support. In public, he’d covered his ass.
So it was a bittersweet experience when Michaels summoned his politician’s smile, reached out his hand, and said, “I knew you’d be back, Alex. What would Metro do without you?”
I swallowed whatever uncomfortable feelings I’d had and thanked him for reinstating me on the Major Case Unit. In the squad room, Bree ended Sampson’s suffering by reassigning Detective Ainsley Fox to another partner and putting the two of us back together. That was good, really good, maybe even better than the verdict. No bittersweet feelings at all.
I spent the rest of that first day filling out forms that sought back pay in light of the verdict and doing a pile of other administrative nonsense. But on Tuesday, Sampson and I were back on the job, with the missing blondes the first order of business. We started early, leaving DC long before dawn and driving north.
Four and a half hours later, we left Interstate 180 for State Route 220 toward Muncy Valley, Sonestown, and Laporte, Pennsylvania. It was timber country. The road was narrow, winding, and flanked on both sides by state game lands and big leafless forest tracts.
We got coffee in Laporte before stopping in at the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office to talk with Detective Everett Morse, who was working with the Pennsylvania State Police on the murder of twelve-year-old Timmy Walker Jr. and the disappearance of Ginny Krauss and Alison Dane.
Morse was collegial enough and showed us the murder book, but it had been months since Ginny and Alison had disappeared and Timmy’s body had been found. The trail had gone cold. Morse told us not to bother trying to talk to the girls’ parents. They’d barely spoken with Morse or the state police.
When we stopped at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks on the north side of Laporte, Investigator Nina Ford largely confirmed Morse’s take on the case. She allowed us to look through her files as well, and, like Morse, discouraged us from trying to talk to the missing girls’ parents.
“What about Timmy’s parents?” Sampson asked.
“Big T’s out of the picture,” Detective Ford said. “Lenore’s at the house. You could stop at Worlds End State Park, where Timmy’s body was found. By the time you have a look around and get to Hillsgrove, Lenore should be up and almost coherent.”
From GPS coordinates Ford gave us, we were able to pinpoint the exact location where Timmy Walker’s corpse had been discovered — roughly a mile east of the parking lot at Worlds End State Park and several miles from where the missing girls’ car was found.
But for an older model white Chevy pickup truck with a toolbox in the back and decals on the window from the National Wild Turkey Federation, the park’s lot was deserted when we pulled in twenty minutes later.