The Hallows, page 5
“What do you mean?”
“Look at it from the jury’s point of view: Two kids that went to high school with her, that knew her, knew her family, and just suddenly, after knowing her their entire lives, decided to kill her? And not just kill her, but brutally abuse and kill her? That kinda thing doesn’t happen out of nowhere. I saw Anderson’s got a prior sexual assault that was dismissed, but there were no details in there. You need to get those reports right away and see if there was violence involved. Don’t get me wrong, these boys did it. But I could have these kids acquitted with my eyes closed.”
“You think someone else was involved?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The Ficcos were rich even when I was here, so someone that grew up filthy rich could potentially view other people as expendable, and Anderson does have that prior rape allegation . . . but this is just blind violence. Fury and hatred. The defense will argue that this kind of fury would’ve expressed itself between the boys and Patty before this, but I didn’t see anything in the file to indicate they didn’t get along. In fact there was that statement from Patty’s father that Patty liked Anderson and Steven. They probably liked her, too. Why kill her like that just for fun?”
“There’s evidence Anderson was out of his mind on drugs that night. People do all sorts of insane things in that state of mind.”
“Yeah, but Steven was there, too, and he wasn’t high. So to buy your theory, the jury’s gotta believe that they killed someone they’ve known almost their whole life for fun—and after being seen with her by witnesses. And then they just handed us their convictions on a silver platter.” I shook my head. “It’s too easy, and when it’s too easy, something else is going on.”
“You haven’t watched the confession yet.”
I nodded. “True, but I’ll bet you anything it’s not much of a confession. I mean, probably enough for a jury, but, I’m telling you, the defense will argue this was personal. Someone was either hurt by Patty or scared about something she knew and wanted to send a message to others that know it, too. Could also be just a random psychopath who stumbled across her, but I don’t think so. The body wasn’t hidden well. This is someone filled with rage masked as lust. Again, yeah, I think you got the right guys, but that has nothing to do with a court of law. A good defense attorney is going to have a field day with this case.” I hesitated and felt my heart in my throat as a nervous energy shot through me, an energy from a memory that was still too fresh to analyze without intense pain. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
She sighed. “You don’t think I knew all that? It is what it is. We go forward with the case we got, not the one we want.”
I closed the file. “You gotta start over. From square one. Get some real detectives down here and reinterview all the witnesses, get some people from the state crime lab, and a blood expert—but only to look at photos since the scene is deteriorated—and you got to have a medical examiner go over the body with a fine-tooth comb.”
“We can’t, she was buried months ago.”
“Then you gotta exhume the body.”
“Her father is very religious, no way he would allow it.”
“Well, then get ready for these boys to walk. Your only hope is a terrible attorney that pleads them out.”
She shook her head. “That’s not going to happen. During the interview when one of the detectives told him he’s going to prison, Anderson Ficco said, and I quote, ‘Rich people don’t go to prison.’”
“Sounds like a charming lad. Who’s his lawyer?”
“He hired one of those celebrity lawyers from New York. Russell Pritcher.”
I chuckled. “Russell Pritcher? As in the Russell Pritcher that once defended one of the Saudi princes?”
“You know him?”
“We’ve met. Where are you in the case?”
“We’re going to have the preliminary hearing next week and then a trial after that.”
“Oh, forget the trial. He’ll get this dismissed at prelim. The guy’s good. Not as good as me, granted, but the best your money can buy if I’m not available. Is he representing both boys?”
“Just Anderson.” She glanced out the window. “If I lose this case, Horace will have it plastered in every store window, on every billboard, and running on every radio station. I’ll lose my seat.”
“I mean, it comes with the territory, right?”
“Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to rise to this position in a county like this? The men here still think it was a mistake to allow women the right to vote.” She shook her head. “All that time, all that work . . . for nothing. To lose to a man who just happens to have a lot of money.”
I stared at her a long time. “Wish I could help.”
She took the file and opened it up. She removed a photo of Patty’s body lying in the ditch. A necklace hung around her neck, half a heart. Something young girls share with their best friends.
I started to reach for it, then realized my hand was trembling for the second time in only a few days. I shoved my hand under the table and held it steady with my other hand, hoping Gates hadn’t seen.
“I don’t know who you are now, Tatum, but I know who you were. And the boy I knew would never have allowed this”—she pointed at the photo—“to happen if he could do anything about it. I’m asking for your help. But I understand if you can’t. If you just want to run away.” She rose. “It’s what you do best, right?”
15
I sat outside on the steps of the City and County Building. Most of the men coming in and out wore suits with cowboy boots, some with hats to match. The women, down to the person, wore skirts. Except for Gates, of course. She never cared what men or society expected of her. I remembered how once—at a bar we had gotten into with fake IDs—she got into a drinking match with a burly Hells Angel. Shot for shot, she drank him under the table. On the tenth or eleventh shot, the tequila came shooting out of his mouth and he puked.
Someone came and sat next to me. I looked over to Will, who put his arms on his knees as he said hi to one of the cops going into the building.
“You leaving?” he said.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Sure could use your help. Anderson’s pretty nuts. I heard he once put a cigarette out on a kid in gym class that ticked him off. If I lose and he gets off, I don’t think he’s done hurting people, and everyone will blame me because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Takes a big man to admit something like that. Most lawyers would never say it. It’s also stupid. The Art of Jury Trial as War, chapter nine: ‘Never admit you don’t know what you’re doing. Weakness attracts weakness, and strength attracts strength. You portray weakness and you entice people to attack.’”
“The Art of Jury Trial as War?”
“Book I’m writing. Trials are a war, Will. And wars have rules. Things that have worked over and over again. You gotta learn the rules if you wanna win. Without it you’re just flailing in the wind.” A woman walked past me and smiled. “What’re you doing here anyway? Most kids your age can’t wait to get outa this town.”
He shook his head. “Not me. I love this place. My father was born here and his father and his father. It’s in my blood.”
“You only think that because you haven’t seen the rest of the world. There’s a lot out there, you know.”
“I got my little corner of the world and it’s enough for me.” He looked at me. “Sure do wish I could get that girl a bit of justice, though.”
I chuckled. “Justice? Forget that word if you want to be a good trial attorney. It’s a concept invented for philosophers to debate. You are at war, and you’re a general trying to win for your side. That’s it.”
“I like to think it’s more than that.”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah? Then why’d you quit after your client killed that girl?”
I stared at him a second and then turned away.
“Did Gates ever tell you how she was attacked?”
He nodded. “Up by the farm, right? Like twenty years ago?”
I looked out over the parking lot. “A guy rear-ended her on that empty road up by McCaleb’s property. When she got out, he jumped her. She fought like an Amazon warrior, but he beat her until she was unconscious. Luckily another car came by, and the guy booked it before he could toss her into his car and take off. Anyway, she was in the hospital. I visited her, and you know what I remember most? Her nail polish.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was . . . pink and sparkly. Something a kid would pick out. I stared at it a long time.” Someone brushed past me up the steps. “And then a day later, I left, without saying goodbye. I was planning on leaving that year anyway, but I just . . . I don’t know. Froze. Something clicked in my brain. Turned off. And I left.” A deep breath escaped me. “I saw that nail polish on the girl my client killed.”
“Look, Mr. Graham, I don’t know you, but I can’t imagine that feels very good to have a guy you got acquitted go out and kill a young girl. I’m going to feel the same way if Patty’s killers walk because of me. And maybe you will, too, because you had a chance to help us and you didn’t.”
He rose and went inside.
When he was gone, I sat on the steps awhile longer, exhaled loudly, and then rose and followed him in.
16
I came into the office, and Gates, Jia, and Will were sitting around a desk speaking. I shut the door behind me and said, “Will, task number one: get my employment paperwork drafted up ASAP and get me a badge.”
He stood in shock a second.
“Should I send a stripper-gram to you?”
“Oh,” he said, “sorry.” He grabbed a legal pad and pen and began writing. “Um, we also get guns.”
“Don’t need a gun. Just get me my district attorney badge. Task number two: call Wilford Snow. He’s an auto expert out of Arizona, so it’s not much of a drive for him if he has to come testify. Send him the photos of the tire tracks. Tell him I need the make of the tires that made those tire tracks, and castings approximating the treads in case we need to match it to someone’s car. Assuming of course he can even tell from those crappy photos. Task number three: I need the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone Patty Winchester saw the day she was abducted, and then I need to know the names of the owners and everyone that worked at Skid Row that day. I would normally say send out the detectives to interview them, but looks like we’re going to be doing the brunt of the work ourselves. We’re going to interview every employee at Skid Row and then anyone else they remember was there.”
I turned to Jia. “Jia, first task: call Linda Burt in Sacramento. She’s the top expert on blood spatter analysis in the country. Send her all the photos and the police reports and tell her I want the best guesses she can make without actually seeing the scene. Task two: call the Utah State Crime Lab. Tell them we have a murder down here that we want them to gather further evidence on, and we need them to look at a body ASAP.”
“We don’t have a body.”
“Sure we do. It’s just sitting in the graveyard.”
Gates said, “I’m not sure exhuming a young girl is going to play very well with the mayor and sheriff.”
“Hey, are you the county attorney or are they?”
She grinned. “You need her father’s permission, and as I said earlier, I doubt you’ll get it.”
“Leave that to me.” I slapped my hands together. “All right, get to it, boys and girls. We got a battle in front of us.”
17
The next day, I drove out to see Hank.
Hank Winchester’s mechanic shop was near the outskirts of town. One garage, and it looked like one employee, Hank himself. He was doing something under the hood of an old Toyota when he saw me. He grabbed a rag and wiped the grease off his hands and watched me as I approached.
“I took auto shop in high school,” I said. “Nearly cut my hand off in a fan on a Ford truck and decided it best to let the experts do their jobs.”
He grinned. “Not for everybody. Me, I love it. The smell of the oil in a hot engine, the way the engine purrs when you get it going when it wouldn’t work before. Something about that, fixing something with your hands. I think these generations coming up aren’t going to get to experience that.”
I nodded, looking at a picture of several children in a laminated photo hanging from the car’s rearview mirror.
“I have to ask you for something, Hank, and it’s not pretty.”
“What?”
“Probably didn’t know, but I’m a criminal defense attorney and I’m jumping sides for this one case. I’ve decided to help Gates with the prosecution of those boys that killed Patty. We’ve got to rework the case from the beginning. Start from the ground up. The detectives on this case are inexperienced. They didn’t do a lot of the things they would’ve done if they’d been working homicides awhile. The defense attorney Anderson Ficco hired is one of the best in the world. He probably charged upward of a million dollars for this case. He’s the guy you hire when you got the money and you do not want to go to prison.”
He nodded, continuing to wipe his hands, though the grease was already off. He leaned against the car and stared at the ground. “What do you need from me?”
I hesitated. “I need to exhume Patty’s body.”
He shook his head. “Isn’t there another way?”
“Afraid not. I need the forensic techs and a medical examiner from the crime lab to go over the body and see if there’s anything the coroner missed. Can’t do it without Patty.” I stepped closer to him. “Hank, these boys might very well get away with this. You need to put your personal views aside and do whatever you can to make sure they don’t do this to anyone else’s daughter.”
He stared at me a second and then nodded. “Okay.”
We got an exhumation order drafted, and the judge signed off on it. I knew the judge: Beatrice Allred. She had been the district court judge in this county since I was a kid, and I pegged her age now at midseventies. Judges didn’t have to retire unless they wanted to, and it sounded like she was going to be a lifer. And why not? You just sit there and say yes or no to lawyers all day. Mostly no.
The exhumation couldn’t wait: it had to be done as fast as possible to preserve evidence—if there was any left. Jia said the crime lab had told them it’d be six weeks before they could get someone out here, so I told her to call back and ask to speak with a supervisor. I listened while she told them that unless they sent someone out here immediately, her next call was to the news outlets to let them know the crime lab was risking two boys getting away with rape and murder because they said they were too busy, and then the call after that would be to any legislator that would answer to point them to the news story. The crime lab said they’d have an ME out there tomorrow. It made me smile.
“Will, Jia, Skid Row is in Vegas. We got a drive. Let’s go.”
18
Before heading out to Vegas, we drove over to the sheriff’s station. The building had been constructed by the first pioneers out here and looked like a massive log cabin. Didn’t appear to have been many upgrades over the last century and a half.
We went in, and I had Will flash his badge at the front desk.
“Detective Howard, please.”
She directed us to offices in the back. Most detectives in major cities were crammed into a bull pen. The detectives here got their own plush offices complete with a shared secretary. In one office were two men, one young and skinny—with a desk plate that said Brett Vail—and the other middle-aged, bald, and thickly muscled, with faded burn scars on his neck—Mark Howard, I guessed. Dopey looking, guys you’d see at a frat party every night when they were in college. I stepped inside with Jia and Will and shut the door behind me. I folded my arms. The detectives didn’t scream at me to get out, so clearly they knew who I was. Probably a secretary or someone at the County Attorney’s Office had warned them there was a new prosecutor in the office. The two detectives glanced at each other, and Howard rolled his eyes. He had a marine corps tattoo on his forearm and was smoking; he blew out a puff of smoke toward me.
Vail said, “We’re in the middle of something right now, so if—”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said shut up. Listen, son, we’re not playing nice here. Let’s be straight up. You two screwed up this murder investigation worse than I’ve ever seen. The defense attorney Anderson Ficco hired is going to file a motion to dismiss this case and turn both of you into ground beef on the stand. And he’s going to invite at least a few reporters to court so that your embarrassment can be captured for everyone in the state to enjoy.”
Howard rose and got within a few inches of me. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Mark Howard, right, lead on the Winchester investigation? Well, I’m the guy that’s trying to save your ass.” I stared him right in the pupils, my gaze hard. “Those boys are going to get away with rape and murder because of you. So drop the macho act, take responsibility for your shit investigation, and let’s figure out a way to get this done.”
Vail laughed. “Get out of our station.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll go to the sheriff’s office right now and tell him how many reporters are going to be at the motion to dismiss and how his detectives are going to look like bumbling idiots, and how two murderers, whose blood the voters are screaming for, are going to walk free. Isn’t there an election coming up?”
