Presumption of Guilt (7 page)

Tommy remained seated. “You were chair of the appropriations committee in the legislature back then, right? Didn’t that committee approve the budget for the jail?” He smiled up at Reynolds. “Well, actually, I know the answer to that.” He looked through his papers and pulled one out. “Your group approved payments that were over fifty percent higher than the original seventy-million-dollar budget, didn’t they?”

“Look, Mr. Noorland. This was all settled years ago. The state investigated the payments for the jail. They approved all of them. If you have a problem with it, talk to them.”

“Oh, I will, Mr. Reynolds. You can count on that. Thanks for your time.” With that, Tommy stood up and walked to the door, a smile on his face.

“Wait.”

Tommy stopped and turned around.

“I don’t know anything about the Singers’ murders, that’s the God’s honest truth.” For the first time since he’d showed up in the man’s waiting room, Tommy didn’t feel like he was being played. “For twelve years, I’ve believed Molly killed them. But Molly is my granddaughter’s mother. If she’s innocent, I hope you find who’s responsible.”

Tommy nodded. “I hope so, too.”

An hour later, Frank Reynolds sat in Bryson’s office. Unlike his own office, with its cut-rate furniture, this one was replete with rich wooden appointments: a large mahogany desk in the center, floor-to-ceiling wooden bookcases against two walls. On the desk, a Tiffany lamp emitted a soft glow. Bryson sat on a plush leather chair that looked like it would work fine for a quick catnap.

“Did Molly Singer kill her parents?” Frank knew he should have approached the question with more finesse, but his nerves didn’t allow it. All he could think about on his walk over from the county office building was the possibility of Molly being innocent. And of his complicity in her conviction.

“A jury said she did,” Bryson answered. “Why are you asking now? Did that investigator spook you?”

“You haven’t answered me. Forget the jury. Do you think she was guilty?”

“Of course I do.”

Frank breathed a sigh of relief. The tightness in his chest he’d carried since his meeting with Tom Noorland whooshed out in a burst, like a balloon stuck with a pin. He sat back in the chair, spent. That whole business of the jail had been a disaster from day one. He hadn’t wanted any part of it. But he knew he couldn’t buck Bryson. Not if he wanted a political future.

“Anything else on your mind?” Bryson asked.

Don’t say anything. You got your answer, leave it alone.
Frank dropped his head down and stared at his shoes. He knew he should thank him, stand up, and leave. Molly was rightly convicted, that’s what Bryson had said. It saddened him, though. At first he’d tried to keep her away from his son, but only because they were too young. Now he had a granddaughter. Sophie deserved her real mother, not the witch she got stuck with.

His tension, so briefly absent, had seeped back in. He lifted up his head and met Bryson’s icy stare. “I know we were relieved when Molly was arrested. It meant they wouldn’t go looking into Joe’s stake in the jail. But this guy, he’s going to dig up the business with the jail now anyway. Molly taking the fall won’t stop it. So, I just need to know—”

Frank stopped. He couldn’t will himself to say the words.

“Know what?” Bryson’s voice dripped with disdain.

Frank’s gaze drifted back to his shoes. With his voice barely above a whisper, he asked, “Was he killed to stop him from talking about the jail?”

Frank could feel the heat of Bryson’s eyes on him, like lasers burning holes in his chest.

“None of us murdered him. That’s all you need to know.”

C
HAPTER

12

D
ani had driven up to Andersonville—with fifty thousand residents, the largest town in Hudson County—that morning. The New York State Thruway was flanked with trees displaying the full regalia of orange, red, and gold that tourists flocked to see each year during the peak fall-foliage season. She’d smiled, thinking what Jonah would have said about the show. He might have described the colors as “deluxe” or “commanding.” Typical of children with Williams syndrome, he often used complex words that were close to what he meant, but slightly missed their mark. It was as though someone had dropped a thesaurus into his head and he repeatedly picked the wrong synonym from it. This was one of the countless things Dani loved about her son: his capacity to surprise her, even in the simplest conversation.

Reminded of it again now as she glimpsed the trees outside the window across from her, she fought back a small smile and turned her attention to the man seated before that window, and across the large walnut desk from her. His appearance suggested he was in his fifties, as did the graduation date listed on the diploma from Albany Law School, which hung on the wall, nestled among reprints from the Museum of Modern Art. A well-tailored suit covered his small frame. Dani thought his eyes looked kindly behind his thick-lensed glasses.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. McDonald.”

“Call me Bob. And I’m happy to meet with anyone who wants to help Molly.”

“I’ve read the file, but maybe you can tell me in your own words about the case.”

McDonald opened up the thick folder on his desk but didn’t glance down at it before speaking. “Well, you know Molly doesn’t remember that night.”

“I do.”

“Even so, I didn’t believe she was guilty then, and I don’t now.”

Dani felt relieved to hear that. After meeting with Molly and reviewing her file, she believed in her innocence yet wondered if her own maternal instincts had infiltrated her judgment. “Can you tell me why?”

“For starters, there wasn’t any forensic evidence tying her to the murders.”

“But the police testified that she had showered before they arrived and washed away any blood.”

“They tested the shower drain. No blood in it.”

That surprised Dani. She hadn’t read it in the trial transcript.

“The judge wouldn’t let that in. He claimed it wasn’t dispositive of anything.”

“You said, ‘for starters.’ Were there other things that convinced you she wasn’t guilty?”

He nodded. “The weapons. The Singers were bludgeoned with some heavy object, then repeatedly knifed. The police found neither weapon.”

“But their house bordered the Hudson. The police claimed she dropped the weapons in the river before she made the call to 911.”

“Yes, that’s a possibility. But let’s look at the police reconstruction of the case. The medical examiner said a heavy object knocked them out first, and that’s why there was no sign of a struggle when they were knifed. Don’t you think, though, that hitting one of them hard enough to knock them out would have awakened the other? The perpetrator would need to have moved to the other side of the bed to knock out the second victim. That should have given the other parent enough time to get out of bed, maybe struggle with the perpetrator. Both Singers were found in their bed, on their respective sides. Mrs. Singer had made it just partway out of her side, but still, I think there had to be two people committing the murders.”

That made sense to Dani. She knew McDonald presented that theory in his closing arguments. Clearly, the jury hadn’t bought it. “Were there any other reasons you believed in Molly’s innocence?”

McDonald picked up the coffee mug sitting on his desk and took a sip. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“Thanks, no.” She’d already drunk three cups on the drive to Andersonville.

When he put his mug down, McDonald said, “I’ve practiced criminal law over thirty years. Even though I don’t ask them, I can tell most of my clients are guilty. By and large, the police do their jobs. When defendants come in to meet with me, or when I see them in jail, I can usually tell there’s something off about them. Sometimes big, sometimes hardly noticeable. But it’s there. I didn’t see anything in Molly. Sure, she was spoiled. And I’m sure she complained about her folks to her friends. What teenager doesn’t? But she got all As in school, ran on the track team, sang in the chorus. This was a kid who did everything right. It didn’t make sense to me that she would suddenly murder her parents.”

“But it happens, doesn’t it? Some kid who neighbors never suspected of being a monster commits an unspeakable crime and everyone shakes their head in disbelief.”

“I suppose so. But if people looked closely, there were usually signs.”

“Still, a sociopath can be very clever.”

McDonald looked through the opened folder and slipped out a slim file, then handed it to Dani. “I had the same concern. So I had her evaluated by a psychiatrist. That’s his report. He concluded she was a normal teenager. No hidden demons.”

Dani leafed through the document, scanning the pages until she reached the conclusion.

Molly presents as a young woman of above-average intelligence. She displays no abnormal ideation or inappropriate responses to visual or auditory stimuli. Her affect is within normal range. Testing revealed no underlying psychosis or neurosis.

Dani handed the report back to McDonald. “Were there any other suspects the police considered?”

Once again, McDonald rifled through the papers in the folder, pulled out a sheet, and handed it to Dani. “Here’s the police report. They latched on to Molly right away and that was the end of their police work. As far as they were concerned, there wasn’t any need to look further.”

“Why were they so certain it was Molly?”

“They checked all over the house and found no evidence of a break-in. Molly opened the front door for them but she insisted she’d locked it when she came home the night before. And all the other doors and windows were secure. Nothing was missing from the house either. Since Molly was the only other person in the house, she quickly became their primary suspect.”

All of that was so, but it still didn’t add up for Dani. A young woman with no apparent psychiatric issues doesn’t suddenly kill her parents. “Did you do any investigation on your own?”

Bob nodded. “Fortunately, the family had sufficient resources to hire a private detective. He couldn’t find anyone who recalled Molly saying she hated her parents, much less wished they were dead. Just normal teenage resentment, the kind my own kids probably feel toward me every time I tell them no.”

“But what about other suspects? Did the police look into whether anyone had a vendetta toward the Singers?”

Bob pulled another letter from the folder. “Here’s the investigator’s report.”

Dani noted the letterhead—Henry Aster Investigations. It was five pages long. “Can you summarize it for me?”

“Bottom line—some questions about Singer’s partner, Quince Michaels, but nothing that panned out.”

“What were the questions?”

“Quince and Joe had been in business together for a long time. Quince was the public face of the company, the one who schmoozed everyone to get business. And he managed the business as well. Joe was the hands-on guy. He supervised the work, made sure any building that had their name on it was constructed right.

“Molly told me her dad and Quince had a volatile relationship sometimes. So, naturally, I had the investigator poke around the business, see if there had been any hanky-panky with the books, that kind of thing. But he came up empty.”

“Do you know what project they were working on when Molly heard them fighting?”

“Sure, everyone knew. It was in the papers practically every day because of the cost overruns and delays. They were building the new county jail.”

There it was again. The county jail. The anonymous letter that prompted the investigation into Molly’s conviction pointed to the county jail project as the motivation for the murders. But why? Dani couldn’t figure it out. She’d read the report from the state concerning the cost overruns. Routine adjustments, it concluded. Shortage of lumber led to higher prices. Weather delays led to unexpected labor expenses. Blah, blah, blah. One hundred pages of numbers and excuses that led to nothing.

She finished up with McDonald, thanked him for his time, then started on the drive back to HIPP’s office. She took her time. She wanted to luxuriate in the Indian summer weather before entering the mostly treeless streets of Manhattan. Instead of heading south on the New York Thruway with its mass of cars and trucks, she exited onto Route 9W, a meandering and little-used road lined with tall oaks and maples exploding with autumn colors. As she drove, she thought about Molly’s case.

The meeting with McDonald had reinforced her feeling that Molly was innocent, but proving it would be a challenge. McDonald had already appealed those trial-court rulings that had been questionable, including the exclusion of testimony showing the lack of blood in the shower drain. His representation of Molly had been professional and thorough, so a claim of inadequate counsel was out of the question. The letters about the jail were interesting, but not probative. She needed to learn more about the jail, but Tommy’s efforts on that front were going nowhere. Did the county executive cut short his meeting with Tommy because he had nothing to offer, or because he was involved somehow? They needed to investigate the jail angle further, push a little harder. Maybe speak with Joe Singer’s partner, if he was still around.

Dani turned on the radio and tuned to the classic-rock station on Sirius/XM. There were no other cars on the road, and she let herself get lost in the music, oblivious to the large black SUV with tinted windows moving closer and closer behind her. It came as a shock when it tapped her rear bumper, just hard enough to rattle her.

The SUV fell back then, and she slowed to move onto the road’s shoulder to exchange insurance information. Just as she began to pull over, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Instead of seeing the SUV moving off the road with her, she found it barreling toward her just an instant before it rammed into her car, sending it careering off the roadway and straight toward the massive tree in her path.

C
HAPTER

13

F
inn gripped the newspaper tightly in his hands as he read the story on page twelve.