Wrong Turn Page 4

  As she waited for the elevator, she turned on her iPhone. Stepping inside, the cell pinged at her several times. Four calls from Jake. I guess he’s heard about the identification, she thought. She certainly didn’t want to talk to him – or anyone – right now; but knew he’d keep calling if she didn’t.

  She punched in his number as she walked into her office and slumped into the chair at her desk.

  ‘Special Agent in Charge Jake Lovett,’ he answered.

  ‘Did you call to gloat, Special Agent?’ she snapped back.

  ‘Gloat? Why would I gloat?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me. You all are in charge of the Mack Rogers case. I know you’ve heard about the latest body identification.’

  ‘Yeah. What about it?’

  ‘Are you telling me the name meant nothing to you? Do you want me to believe that you don’t know how this is impacting my job?’

  ‘Lucinda, I swear to you, all I know right now is that I am very confused.’

  ‘If you didn’t know, then why the hell were you calling me this morning?’

  ‘I wasn’t calling about the Mack Rogers case at all, I swear.’

  ‘Really? Then, why did you call?’

  ‘It’s about another case.’

  ‘Which case?’

  ‘It’s complicated. Can we please sort out one case at a time?’

  Lucinda sighed as a surge of regret climbed into her throat. ‘I’m sorry, Jake. I just had an ugly encounter with the DA over the body identification and I took it out on you. I was out of line.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  Lucinda gave a synopsis of the case that led to Martha Sherman’s wrongful conviction. ‘And now the DA is stalling about Martha’s release from prison when we should be turning everything upside down to get her out of there as quickly as possible.’

  ‘It’s political, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Andrew Sherman, Emily’s father and Martha’s former husband, is a major contributor to Reed’s campaign. He’s still insisting that Martha was involved in Emily’s murder.’

  ‘That sounds like a real stretch to me.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Lucinda said with a sigh. ‘So, what case did prompt your phone calls?’

  ‘Remember US Representative Chris Phillips?’

  ‘I’ll never forget that bastard,’ Lucinda said. ‘Oh, no, Jake, don’t tell me that – oh, please, please don’t say his appeal was successful.’

  Jake didn’t respond.

  After a moment, Lucinda said, ‘Oh Jeez, that’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Lucinda, I’m sorry. The judge released him on bond to await a new trial.’

  ‘I wonder why Reed didn’t beat me over the head about that, too.’

  ‘I don’t think he knows yet. Someone from the state AG’s office will be informing him at some point today.’

  ‘Wait a minute. How do you know all this?’

  ‘A guy from the AG’s office paid me a visit this morning.’

  Lucinda’s chest tightened. ‘And why is that, Jake?’

  ‘Well, it’s—’

  ‘Complicated, Mr Special Agent in Charge man? You’re taking over this case, too, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, Lucinda, I’m not taking it over. They’ve just given me oversight . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, give me a break. Oversight means you’re taking over.’

  ‘No! They want me to work with you because Phillips was a federal employee when he committed the murder of his third wife. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Right. Got ya. You’ll come in and if he’s acquitted in the second trial, it’s all on me. If he’s convicted, the mighty Feebs will soar again.’

  ‘You sure are in a pissy mood this morning.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you be if you just found out you were involved in two cases where the defendants have had their verdicts overturned?’

  ‘Listen, Lucinda, Sherman’s not on you – it’s on Boswell. And Phillips isn’t your fault either; he’s walking because the prosecutor made a bad call at trial. Besides, Phillips’ guilt is obvious. His taste of freedom will be short-lived and he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.’

  ‘Maybe he shouldn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean? The man attempted to kill three wives and succeeded with two of them.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not guilty after all.’

  ‘What? How can you entertain that thought for even a moment?’

  ‘Because, as it has become painfully obvious to me this morning, my judgment is not very reliable. My detecting skills are clearly in question. I was certain Martha Sherman was guilty. I was wrong about Martha Sherman – maybe I was wrong about Phillips, too. Maybe I refused to consider the questions that should have been asked. Maybe I had tunnel vision and just plowed forward with my personal theory on the case and just ignored any information that contradicted that theory.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you, Lucinda?’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe anymore, Jake.’

  SIX

  Lucinda drove over to the building housing the police department archives. It had all been moved a few years ago from the basement of the old police headquarters into a separate warehouse, with climate controlled sections for fragile evidence. She continued to be amazed that the city had won the federal grant against stiff national competition and was now one of two state-of-the-art facilities of its kind in the country. The real irony, she thought, was that Representative Chris Phillips played a major role in making that possible.

  At the front desk, she received codes indicating the location of all the evidence in both the Sherman and Phillips cases. She went first to the refrigerated area where forensic evidence, with the potential to contain DNA, was stored. She didn’t intend to pursue any of that in depth at this time but wanted to be aware of what was available.

  In the Phillips case, the contents comprised clothing and hair samples, bloodstained pieces of glass, chunks of carpet from the stairs and swabs taken from the crime scene in the death of his third wife. Nothing was available from the stairway where his first wife, Melinda Phillips, died, since it had not been considered a homicide until suspicions were raised years later when his most recent wife passed away under suspicious circumstances. Lucinda would have to check the reports in the paper files for more details on the results.

  A few bulkier items were available in the Sherman case including a big chunk of the blood-soaked back seat and a major portion of the headliner from Martha Sherman’s car – the pivotal pieces of forensic evidence pointing to the stepmother as the killer of Emily Sherman. From that vehicle, technicians had collected an incredible amount of hair and blood samples.

  Neither case had any evidence in the weapons area. Chris Phillips, prosecutors alleged, had placed a sharp-edged, glass-topped table on the landing before shoving his wife down the stairs. They theorized that he additionally used a piece of the shattered glass to deepen the slice in her throat; but not one of the fragments recovered at the scene bore any fingerprints, as if the table had been wiped clean after being placed in the path of the victim’s descent, and then anything Phillips touched after the fall was removed before the 9-1-1 call.

  In the miscellaneous artifacts section, Lucinda found a bounty of trash and papers from the car connected directly to Emily Sherman or Martha Sherman, as well as two cellphones: one belonging to the stepmother, the other to her stepdaughter. It didn’t appear as if anything in the vehicle could be traced back to Andrew Sherman but she made a note to check that out in the paper reports.

  In the Phillips case, there was also a cellphone belonging to the victim as well as high-heeled shoes and a clutch bag that had been thrown clear of the stairway before any blood was shed.

  Lucinda decided to leave the exploration of the original audio and video tapes of the 9-1-1 calls and interviews recorded after the crime until later in her review. For the moment, she’d peruse the written transcripts and then listen t
o tapes for any vocal nuances or visual clues to hidden meanings behind the actual words. All of those documents should be on the department’s database but she was far more comfortable with the physical than the digital. She always worried she’d overlook something when she viewed reports on the computer screen.

  She entered the cavernous document room with its high ceilings, harsh lighting and unending stacks of metal shelves where labeled cardboard file boxes collectively contained enough paper to create a national forest. There, she was assigned a stack steward, a young, physically fit specimen – usually male – who was trained in the operation of the electronic, moving ladders and lift platforms designed to locate and retrieve boxes from the high shelves.

  Her steward was built like a pole-vaulter with muscular upper arms bulging against the sleeves of his T-shirt, prominently developed musculature in his thighs and calves, but with a thin, lanky torso whose sole purpose seemed to be to hold the all important limbs in place. Lucinda gave him the numbers relating to the Phillips case; knowing the stacks well, he went straight to the correct level near the top and zoomed down the tracks to the right spot without any hesitation. He loaded the three boxes onto the lift and lowered them to the ground. When he returned to the floor, he placed the lift contents onto a flat dolly and he was off again.

  The Sherman files were on a shelf that Lucinda could have easily retrieved on her own without a ladder or any other assistance. She started to reach for them but was stopped when the young man, who never had bothered to introduce himself, slid between her and the stacks.

  ‘Sorry, neither the insurance company nor the city attorney approve of anyone but stack personnel pulling document boxes.’

  ‘But, they’re right here,’ Lucinda objected.

  ‘Liability issue,’ he said as he turned to extract another three boxes and place them with the others on the dolly.

  Lucinda rolled her eye. As far as she was concerned, it was nothing more than bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo inspired by politicians’ overarching desire to cover their asses at any expense. She had to admit, though, it was nice having someone load the boxes into the trunk and back seat of her car. She hoped she could find a patrolman to help to take them out of her vehicle and into headquarters when she arrived there.

  In fact, thanks to two police officers who pulled into the parking lot of the Justice Center just after she did, Lucinda didn’t have to lift a box. They asked her to step aside, obtained a dolly and transported everything up to her office. Now she barely had room to maneuver; stacked two high, the six boxes occupied almost all the available floor space.

  She sat down on the one clear spot remaining on the floor and, one at a time, pulled the content inventory sheets and prioritized the material review. She thought for a while about where to start. On the one hand, she felt a desire to get to the body of the Sherman case to make right the travesty that had been committed in the name of justice; on the other, Chris Phillips was out on the street after attempting to kill one wife and succeeding with two others. That offended her sense of justice, too. But what if she was wrong about Phillips – just as she had been about Sherman? What if he, too, should be free?

  Finally, she decided to start with interview reports and transcripts from the witnesses in the Sherman case, judging it to be of the greatest urgency. The woman’s continued incarceration lay heavy on her conscience. She packed up a tall stack of documents into a smaller box and carried them out to her car just after nine o’clock.

  When she arrived home, Chester, her gray tabby, greeted her with a vocal interlude and a series of acrobatic maneuvers in, around and over the furniture. She served him a smelly cod, whitefish and shrimp combo that filled him with rapture. Why was his current greatest love the stinkiest excuse for food she ever found in a can? Her nose wrinkled and lips curled as she covered the portion remaining in the tin and shoved it into the refrigerator as quickly as possible.

  She slapped together a butter, pickle, ham and Swiss sandwich, grabbed a glass of Merlot and settled at the dinette table with a pile of transcripts. She pulled out the first one but then remembered that she’d gotten an alert when she was in the warehouse that she had a voicemail message on her cell. She pulled it out to see if there was any reason to return the call that night.

  She winced when she saw that she’d missed a call from Charley Spencer. The two had bonded tightly a few years ago after the discovery of Charley’s mother’s body in the basement of the Spencer home and had stayed in touch ever since. Lucinda hit the message playback button.

  ‘Lucy, I think maybe somebody I know did a bad thing but maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was just trying to act tough. Maybe she was trying to scare me. Or maybe it’s just one big joke. I don’t know what to do. I need your advice. Call me anytime, day or night.’

  Lucinda smiled at the last sentence; Charley was definitely a drama queen. She looked at the time on the top of the screen: 9:43 p.m. Way too late to call an eleven-year-old on a school night. She made a mental note to try to catch Charley in the morning before she left for school. Back to the stack of papers. More than two hours of reading refreshed her memories of the investigation but brought her no new insights and not a single new fact to the surface.

  She looked up at the clock, yawned, and decided she could get through one more witness interview by midnight and then she’d have to get to bed. She picked up the transcript of the exchange between Lieutenant John Boswell and Sherman neighbor Lisa Pedigo.

  Halfway in, she encountered three heavily redacted pages. Her alertness snapped to high. Originals should never be redacted; only the publicly disseminated copies should have blocked-out material. Was this a mistake? Or was this the deliberate obliteration of information? Boz wouldn’t do that, would he?

  She grabbed one sheet of the adulterated document, pulled the shade off the lamp on an end table, turned it on, and held the paper over the bulb in an attempt to read the words behind the black permanent marker. Impossible. It had to be a mistake. Maybe the original had been accidentally distributed and these redacted pages inadvertently placed in the file. But if that had happened, wouldn’t there have been a media outlet taking advantage of the slip?

  She went to her computer and logged into the department site where she searched for the Sherman files. She went through the detailed list of transcript documents four times before giving up. Maybe, she thought, it’s in the wrong folder. She scanned through the complete list – still no sign of the Pedigo interview.

  Could it be mislabeled? She opened each document one at a time, viewing every one of them just long enough to determine that the contents were an accurate reflection of the file name. She reached the end of the list with no sign of the interview transcript. It simply was not there. What did that mean? And what did she need to do next?

  The first question troubled her deeply. Boz meant a lot to her and to her career. Not only did she get her job because of his death, but she learned an awful lot from him as she assisted him in the investigation – serving as everything from a backboard on which he could bounce ideas off, to a simple gofer, running hither and yon at his command. Did Boz make a mistake or did he intentionally make a decision that was, in all likelihood, illegal and a violation of his oath of office? No, not Boz. Anyone but Boz.

  She dug into her memory but could not even recall ever hearing Lisa Pedigo’s name or anything Boz said that could have related to the contents of her interview. Every other transcript she reviewed tinkled little bells of recall, stirring up at least some level of familiarity. But not this one. Not the beginning of the interview. Not the few words that remained intact on the redacted pages. Not anything in the final section. Did she simply forget or did she never know?

  Tomorrow, she decided, she’d return to the warehouse, find the audiotape or videotape of the conversation and get her answers. There had to be an explanation – a simple, ethical, legal one – for this situation. She hoped that she would be able to find something that did not smear Lieutenant John
Boswell with posthumous shame.

  SEVEN

  Jake knew Lucinda was being far too harsh on herself but she was right about Martha Sherman. That woman deserved to be released from prison immediately. The fact that she’d spent seven years behind bars for a crime she did not commit was an outrage. Every day she remained there compounded the injustice of it all. He also knew that governments often tried to find ways to avoid paying damages for wrongful incarceration and vowed to do everything he could to make sure that did not happen to Martha Sherman.

  He knew that the best thing he could do to speed up her release was to locate Mack Rogers. He began another round of calls to fifty-four of the fifty-six FBI field offices across the country; for now, he was not being proactive with the locations in Hawaii or Puerto Rico because nothing indicated that Rogers had obtained transportation outside of the continental United States. Wherever he went he had to have travelled by road.

  Most of the agents he called had nothing to report. Some did have leads that were followed up and then fizzled out to nothing. Jake struggled to keep the discouragement and weariness out of his voice as one fruitless contact trailed after another. Everything changed when he called the Salt Lake City field office.

  ‘We sure do have a lead, Lovett,’ the agent told him. ‘We got a call from our satellite office in Pocatello, Idaho. Three different individuals claim to have seen him on the Snake River. We’re scrambling now to get adequate personnel in place.’

  ‘In Idaho?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘You find it credible?’

  ‘As best I know, he’s never been known to be this far west but we’ve got three people who spotted him in roughly the same location and I understand there is a fishing connection. Is that right?’