The Innocence Game (2 page)

“Looks like it’s from a shirt,” I said.

“It was in with the note,” Havens said. “I think it’s got blood on it.”

Sarah had taken the piece of cloth from me. Now, she let it slip from her fingers.

“My guess,” Havens continued, “is that it was cut from the shirt the victim was wearing.”

“How do you know what the victim was wearing?” Z said.

Havens placed a hand on the file. “Case number 98-2425. The victim’s name was Skylar Wingate. According to the cops, he was wearing a black-and-white cotton shirt. Seems to match what we’ve got here.”

Z sighed like she’d heard it all before. “You’re leaving out a few facts, Mr. Havens.”

“You remember the case?” I said.

“It was a pretty big deal in its day.”

“What did he leave out?” Sarah said.

“As I recall,” Z said, “they did DNA testing on blood found on the jeans James Harrison was wearing when he was arrested. Came back as a perfect match to the victim.”

Sarah and I turned our gaze back to Havens.

“The DNA testing was done postconviction,” Havens said. “Harrison demanded and paid for it himself.”

“What does that matter?” Sarah said.

“Why does a guy who’s filing an appeal pay for DNA testing that’s going to remove all doubt of his guilt?” Havens said.

“Desperation,” Z said. “Do enough of these stories, and you’ll learn all about it.”

I picked up the piece of torn fabric. “Would they still have the shirt in evidence?”

“If this guy was killed in prison,” Sarah said, “why would they keep anything?”

We all turned again to Z, who seemed to think long and hard for a moment. She scribbled something on a legal pad and pushed it over to Havens. “The Cook County Clerk’s Office takes custody of trial transcripts and physical evidence once a case is closed. Transcripts and related trial documents are stored off-site, in a permanent records center. Actual physical evidence is kept in the county’s warehouse. I’ve given you both addresses and a couple of names. I doubt there’s anything left, but if there is, they’ll have it.”

“Will they let us in?” Havens said. “I mean if we just tell them we’re from Medill?”

“Not likely. I’ll make a call this afternoon and e-mail you if I get an okay. Assuming I do, you guys go down there and see what you can dig up on the shirt. Show me something substantive next time we meet, something that gives us a way around the DNA match…or we move on. Fair enough?”

We looked at one another and nodded. Z tucked the torn piece of shirt into the gray envelope and pinched it between her fingers. “Meanwhile, this stays with me. Now, does anyone else have anything they want to share? A Christmas card from John Wayne Gacy? Richard Speck’s bra and panties? No? Good. If it’s all right with Mr. Havens, I’d appreciate ten minutes of your precious time to talk about the five hundred or so other cases we’re working here at Medill.”

I ordered a pint of Harp, took a sip, and exhaled. All in all, the first class hadn’t been too bad. Z seemed a little whacked. And then there was Havens and the letter. But that was for another day. Right now, I was sitting in Tommy Nevin’s, Evanston’s best Irish pub, sipping a beer, munching from a bag of Tayto crisps, and waiting for Sarah Gold to return from the bathroom.

“Sorry.” She slid into her seat and smiled. “How did you know I drink Guinness?”

I shrugged. How did I know she drank Guinness? The same way I knew she liked her fries salted with vinegar and three miniburgers instead of one big cheeseburger. The same way I knew she took four early morning classes during the first quarter of her senior year. The same way I knew her favorite jeans were a ripped pair of Levi’s she wore with an old checked shirt. The same way I knew she used Ivory soap, wore her hair up off her neck on Fridays, and liked to sit under an umbrella sometimes and watch the rain fall. I knew more about Sarah Gold than I knew about myself. In the end, maybe that wasn’t saying very much. But there it was.

“Took a guess,” I said.

Sarah sipped from her pint. There was a silky line of froth on her lip. I gestured to my own face.

“Sign of a good pint,” she said and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I didn’t see you around much in undergrad.”

“I was away a lot.”

“Away?”

“I studied abroad for a year.” I hadn’t gone any farther than the library to study during my four years at Northwestern, but I wasn’t going to tell Sarah Gold that. Besides, I kind of liked the man of mystery thing.

“Really. Where did you study?”

“Turkey.” Turkey. Where did that come from? I tried to think of what I knew about the city. Until I realized it was a country. Then all I could think of was Thanksgiving. Jesus. I took a breath.

“That’s exciting,” Sarah said. “I spent a couple of months in Istanbul.”

I smiled thickly and drained what was left of my pint. She’d barely dented hers. I put my hand up for the waitress who took my order.

Sarah just shook her head and the waitress left.

“What did you think of today?” she said.

I didn’t know what to think about today. Not that Sarah was waiting for an answer.

“I thought it was a little odd,” she said. “I mean just turning us loose on the files. But I heard that’s how Zombrowski is. Real sink-or-swim type of stuff.”

We were sitting in a booth by a set of windows that looked out over Sherman Avenue. I had my back to the bar and could hear a low, pleasant chatter behind me. A floorboard creaked, and there was suddenly someone at my shoulder. Sarah’s eyes widened, and she ventured a cautious smile.

“Hey, Kyle.”

Kyle Brennan was a year behind us at Northwestern and a starting cornerback on the football team. I’d hated him for two years. The same two years he’d dated Sarah Gold. She’d dumped him a few months before she graduated. I thought it was a great move. From what I heard, Brennan didn’t agree.

“Hey.” Brennan was maybe six two, with dark eyes, short black hair, and, best I could tell, purple lips. He slid into the booth beside his ex. Essentially, right on top of her. Sarah gave herself a little space and gestured toward me.

“Kyle, do you know Ian Joyce?”

Brennan shook his head without looking at me and took a sip from a large plastic cup. Summer practice started next week, and a lot of the football types were getting their drink on while they could. Brennan appeared to be leading the charge.

“Ian graduated with me,” Sarah said. “We’re in a seminar together.”

“Some of us are headed into the city,” Brennan said. “Street festival in Wrigleyville. Why don’t you come?”

“No thanks, Kyle.”

“We can hang out.”

“No thanks.”

“I said we can hang.”

I leaned across. “And she said, ‘No thanks.’ ”

Brennan slammed his hand on the table and spilled some of his drink. It was purple, which explained the lips.

“Who the fuck was talking to you?”

The buzz around us grew quiet. I could feel the tension ripple across the room and tried to play it off.

“Relax, pal. I’m thinking you’re about thirty seconds from getting tossed out of here.”

“I’m not your pal. And do you think I give a fuck?”

I gripped the edge of the table and felt the flush up into the roots of my hair.

“Kyle.” Sarah grabbed her ex by the arm. “Look at me.”

He did.

“You’re drunk. And you’re embarrassing me. Leave now and I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll grab some lunch.” She touched the side of his face and gave him a quick kiss. I almost threw up. But Brennan left.

“Asshole,” Sarah said, and waved as Brennan walked out of Nevin’s with two of his pals.

“You gonna call him?”

“He won’t even remember talking to me. I just wanted to make sure he didn’t tear the place apart.”

“You don’t think I could have handled him?”

Sarah looked at me—all six feet, hundred seventy pounds—and shook her head. “He’d kill you.”

“You’re probably right.”

Sarah lifted her pint. “Enough of that. What were we talking about?”

“The seminar.”

“Oh, yeah. Tell me this. What do you think of our classmate?”

“Havens?”

“You know anything about him?” Sarah spoke like she knew a lot and was waiting to unload.

“I heard he went to the University of Chicago.”

“Law school. Top of the class. Editor in chief of the
Law Review
.”

“So what’s he doing here?”

Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism was probably the best in the world. Or at least in the top two. Still, it was journalism. The average pay coming out of Medill was thirty to fifty K a year. And that’s if you landed in a big market. Editor in chief of the
Law Review
at Chicago could easily triple that. I knew the numbers. Mostly because I’d managed a nearly perfect score on my LSAT. So I’d thought it through.

“Havens doesn’t want to be a lawyer,” Sarah said. “Just did it for kicks.”

“Number one at U of C Law School…for kicks?”

“Actually, there’s more to it than that. He got involved during his third year with a legal aid clinic on the South Side. Worked on a child abuse case. From what I hear he freaked out some people with his intensity.”

“I could see that.”

“Yeah, well, I guess he decided the law wasn’t his thing.”

“And what does the boy genius want now?”

“No one knows. Except he wanted into Medill, and specifically this seminar.”

“How do you know that?”

“I do my homework, Ian. Havens actually negotiated his admission into Medill. Told the school he’d enroll, but only if he was guaranteed a seat in Z’s seminar.”

“And Medill went for it?”

“Why not? Big-time student. And they were probably going to let him into the class anyway.”

The talk about Havens was interesting. So much so that I’d forgotten whom I was talking to. Now I caught a whiff of her from across the table. She wore a thin gold chain around her neck. A vein beat softly in the hollow of her throat.

“What do you think?” Sarah said.

“About what?”

“Havens?”

“Oh, yeah. He wanted in on the seminar. So what?”

“That letter he found was pretty strange.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably.” Sarah took a small sip from her pint. “Can I tell you something else?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t belong in this class.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone at school knows how smart you are, Ian. And, no offense, Havens might be even smarter. I’m out of my league.”

“Bullshit. You applied and got in. You belong.”

She lifted her chin a fraction. “You know
why
I got in?”

“I’m not sure why
I
got in.”

“Please. The only reason I got in was because of my work with Omega.”

“Omega?”

“It’s a women’s organization in Evanston. They run a shelter service for abused women. We set up safe houses and move women in and out of them. Hide them from the assholes trying to beat them up until they can make other arrangements.”

“And you work there?”

“I volunteer. One night we were taking a woman out of her house and the husband showed up drunk. Bashed in my windshield with a baseball bat.”

“Did you get her out?”

“You bet. I wrote a couple of articles about it for one of my classes.”

“Holy shit. I’d like to read them.”

Sarah touched my hand, and I felt my heart jump. “Thanks, Ian. I’ll show them to you. Anyway, that’s why I got into this seminar. My teacher loved the stories and pushed for me. Actually, it’s kind of ironic now that I think about it.”

“What’s that?”

“Me trying to help abused women and hooking up with a jerk like Kyle.”

“You can’t quit, Sarah. Not after one class.”

“Who said anything about quitting?”

“You just told me you weren’t good enough.”

“Oh. I was just venting. I’m plenty good.”

“So you’re not gonna quit?”

“And let Jake Havens get the last laugh. Please.” She tipped her eyes toward the front door. “Speak of the devil.”

I turned and looked. Jake Havens had slipped onto a stool and ordered himself a drink.

Havens was staring at a line of bottles behind the bar. Light glinted off the glass. I tapped him on the shoulder. It was a workingman’s shoulder, full of knotted muscle, tendon, and sinew. Havens turned a fraction.

“What’s up?”

“Thought you might like to come over for a drink?”

Havens nodded to the booth and Sarah, alone in it. “You two pals?” Up close his features were hard and clean, betraying no real interest in the question he’d just asked or whatever response might come back.

“We went to undergrad together,” I said.

“I figured that.” Havens picked up his pint and led the way back to Sarah. Like it was his idea and I could come along if I wanted.

“Sarah Gold. Like the name.” He slid into the booth and immediately owned it. I pulled up a chair. It was almost five now, and Nevin’s was filling with an after-class, happy-hour vibe. Everything seemed to dim, however, as Havens leaned across the table.

“That your boyfriend who was in here?”

“My ex.”

“You got a lot of ghosts following you around?”

“Excuse me?”

“Forget it.” Havens took a sip of his beer. “What did you think of today?”

“Honestly?” Sarah said. “I thought there’d be more guidance.”

“You mean hand-holding?”

She threw Havens’s condescension back at him with a smirk of her own. He’d have to do a lot better if he wanted to get under Sarah’s skin. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

“I’d think she might want to set up some parameters for our research,” Sarah said. “Maybe an overview. A little more background on cases she’d like us to look at. A section of the country to focus on.”

“I already have a case.”

“So you told us.” Sarah’s eyes brushed mine, then danced away.

“Why don’t you take a look?” Havens pulled his backpack onto the table.

“Actually, I’ve got to get going.” Sarah was on her feet, looking down at Havens, making him seem suddenly small. And being infuriatingly nice about it. Inside, I was tickled. Havens took it in stride.