The Price of Justice (18 page)

C
HAPTER

31

D
ani was thunderstruck by Mrs. Melton’s admission. None of this made sense to her. If Mrs. Melton knew who the real killer was, why hadn’t she gone to the police with that information? Why bribe someone to take the fall?

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why the hell not?” Tommy shouted.

Mrs. Melton’s back stiffened. “Please, language. We’re still civilized in this house.”

If this were true, it changed everything, Dani realized. Sure, it was important to stay within the law. She’d been a lawyer long enough to believe chaos ensued when people acted independently, engaging in their own unlawful behavior to accomplish what they believed was a just end. But when the law failed—when someone you loved would die because of that failure—how could anyone sit back and do nothing when they had the means to change the outcome? Dani took a deep breath. “I’m trying to understand. Help me out.”

“I can’t tell you how, but I learned the identity of the man responsible for Carly’s death. He refused to come forward and insisted he would deny it if I went to the authorities. If I didn’t, he’d provide details that would help me if I found someone else to confess.” She looked over at Tommy. “Since I didn’t have any proof, what choice did I have?”

“But Win is free now,” Dani said. “Whoever this is, he shouldn’t get away with it. Why not go to the police now?”

“And turn myself in at the same time? You said it—I committed a crime.”

“The police don’t need to know about the bribe. You can say you recently learned this.”

She shook her head sadly. “It’s not that simple. The man in question arranged it so that he would have proof of what I’d done. Insurance, so to speak. So that I wouldn’t do what you’re suggesting after Win was freed.”

Was she telling the truth? Dani wondered. What better way to deflect the spotlight from her grandson than to invent a fictional villain. Dani leaned back in her chair and thought about Tommy’s investigation. “How did you arrange it? Tommy checked it out—the only visitor to Sanders was his mother.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I had someone visit his mother and present the offer. She relayed it to her son on her next visit.”

“And Sanders? How did you choose him?”

“It was really rather simple. Most prison websites list the names of every inmate on death row. I had my investigator research the crimes they’d committed, specifically searching for anyone who’d been convicted of rape and murder. If Sanders hadn’t agreed, I had several other names on my list.”

Dani felt a sense of relief. For the first time, Mrs. Melton’s voice was soft, not haughty. She seemed like a grandmother who was genuinely grieved by what her grandson had endured, and by the Faustian bargain she’d made with the man responsible for his incarceration. Dani was 95 percent certain that Win was innocent. There was no reason for Mrs. Melton to lie to them now. Winston couldn’t be tried again, and Tommy couldn’t turn her in without also turning in the hacker. Maybe even himself for soliciting the hacker to perform an illegal activity. Her remaining doubts could only be satisfied by finding the real murderer. And the survival of HIPP might depend on them doing just that.

“Thank goodness,” Dani said after she and Tommy had left the Melton household. “I know it sounds foolish, but I really haven’t slept well since you told me about the money.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve had an acid stomach ever since then.”

Dani laughed. “What a pair of goody-goodies we are. So self-righteous over the possibility we helped a guilty man.”

“Sure, you can joke about it now that we’re comfortable he’s innocent. But we both come from the law-and-order side of the fence. It’s hard to put that behind us.”

“So, what now?”

Tommy glanced over at the beach. “I’m staying down here a few more days. Think I’ll nose around a bit.”

“Okay. I’ve got to get back. I’ll let Bruce know where you are. And if I can do something, just holler.”

Tommy dropped Dani off at the airport. As she waited for her flight, Dani thought about what lay ahead. It wouldn’t be easy—trying to find a murderer seven years after the crime. They couldn’t even go to the police who’d investigated. As far as everyone was concerned, Earl Sanders murdered Carly Sobol. Asking to review files or talk to the investigating detectives would raise too many eyebrows, possibly leading to the discovery of Amelia Melton’s “donation” to Letitia Sanders. She drummed her fingers on her chair as she tried to come up with a solution. And then it hit her. She pulled out her netbook, and after fifteen minutes of research on Lexis, she thought it would work. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Jack Donahue.

“I need a favor,” Dani said to him after they’d exchanged greetings. “I want you to file a complaint on behalf of Winston for a pure bill of discovery.”

“A what?”

Dani laughed. Most lawyers hadn’t heard of this arcane rule in Florida law that dated back to the eighteen hundreds. She’d only vaguely remembered it from a convoluted question on her bar exam. “It basically allows for pre-litigation discovery so that a prospective plaintiff can assess whether he has a case.”

“What case does Winston have?”

“I’m thinking violation of his civil rights, malicious prosecution, wrongful incarceration. If I tried, I’m sure I could come up with others.”

“And Winston wants this?”

“He doesn’t even know about it yet.”

“You’re confusing me.”

If they were to have any chance of finding the real killer of Carly Sobol, Tommy needed access to all of the original investigation notes, not just the official police reports. Fat chance the Palm Beach Police Department would turn that over to him unless they were compelled. So, Dani figured, find a way to force them.

“We believe Winston didn’t kill Carly. But neither did Sanders. We want to find out who did.”

“Is that what Mrs. Melton wants?”

“I doubt it. I suspect she wants the whole sordid mess to go away.”

“You need a plaintiff.”

“I think we can convince Win to do it.”

“No one in that family does anything without Mrs. Melton’s approval. And I can’t imagine she’d want the papers to run with a story that the family is seeking monetary damages from the police.”

“I suspect after seven years on death row, Win probably feels he’s earned the right to make his own decisions.”

“There’s Frank Lesco. He knows the case. Why don’t you use him?”

“Because the fewer people who know the truth about Sanders’s confession, the better. Look, Mrs. Melton tricked me into taking this case, and you went along with it, so I figure you owe me one.”

Dani heard a deep sigh on the other end, then a cough. “If Winston goes along with it, I’ll file the papers.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she said, then hung up with a big smile on her face.

C
HAPTER

32

W
in’s hands shook as he held the letter, reading it once again. It felt like he was reading the words of a ghost, a dim apparition from his past.

Dear Win,

I was overjoyed when I read the news of your acquittal. I’d always known you were innocent but feared that it wouldn’t matter, that you’d be put to death anyway. Thank heavens that awful man finally told the truth. I don’t know how you feel about hearing from me again. I know you’d told me to stop writing, but I always felt I should have pushed harder, that when I stopped, I’d abandoned you.

I finished medical school at NYU last summer, and I’m now doing my internship there. I feel like I’ve had my head in books the past eight years. I know you wanted me to move on with my life, but my life has been studying, first to make sure I’d get into med school and then to do well once there. So, I’ve had no boyfriends since you. No serious ones, at least.

I don’t know if you ever think about me. I’ve thought about you often. I know we’d only been together a few months, but when I was with you, it felt like you understood me more than anyone else I’d ever known. I miss that. I miss your smile. I miss your hand holding mine. I miss you.

Will you be coming back to New York? If you do, I’d really like to see you again. I know I’m being forward, but you always liked that in me. I hope you still do.

Yours, Sienna

Sienna wanted to see him again! Each time he read her letter, his heart beat a little faster. He’d thought about her many times over the years, even when he’d tried to forget her. It didn’t surprise him that she’d gone on to medical school. That had always been her goal. He was different now, though. He felt like the old Win had shattered.

His time in the county jail, waiting for his trial, hadn’t prepared him for prison, much less for death row. “The evidence is flimsy,” his lawyer had assured him. Because it was a death-penalty case, bail wasn’t available. Still, he’d made it through the indignity of strip searches, communal showers, and life in a small cell. And then the verdict came. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that he’d be found guilty. Juries didn’t convict innocent men. So, he was still in a state of shock when he’d been transported to the state prison in Raiford, marched past the rows of cells with ordinary prisoners, through the door that led to death row.

He hadn’t been prepared to be awakened each morning at five a.m., first from the sound of the locked doors to death row opening, then as the clang of the metal doors closing reverberated down the corridor, followed by the stomp of a guard’s boots as he wheeled the breakfast cart, stacked with trays of food. He hadn’t been prepared to have each meal thrust through a small slot in the bars. He hadn’t been prepared for the roaches that came out with each tray of barely edible food, responding to the warm odors. He hadn’t been prepared to eat his meals sitting on his thin, thirty-inch mattress, with the tray balanced on his knees.

He hadn’t been prepared for the concrete walls that made up his home for twenty-four hours each day. There was no common room, or communal dining room, or library, or television room. There was only his six-by-nine-foot cell, looking out into a corridor, one of fourteen along the same wall. A cot, a toilet without a seat, a small locker for his personal items. That was his world.

He hadn’t been prepared for the putrid odors from hot, humid air, mixed with the smell of stale cigarettes and sweating bodies. Even in the winter, when it was always cold in the cells because there was no heat, the foul air attacked his senses. Still, winter was better than summer, when the temperatures outside rose into the high nineties, making the heat inside the non-air-conditioned cells unbearable.

He hadn’t been prepared for the noise. Confined to their cells most of the day and night, the men on death row chattered constantly to inmates they couldn’t see, only hear. Some, mentally unbalanced, screamed for much of the day. Others shouted loudly enough to be heard down the whole row of cells about any subject they could think of—politics, sports, religion, law, sex. It was never quiet.

Most of all, he hadn’t been prepared for the isolation, the soul-crushing sense of being alone in the world, cut off from normal human interaction, hopelessness displacing all other feelings. It hadn’t taken long for him to learn that hope was destructive. It ate away at him inside until nothing was left.

His only salvation had been books and visits. Once a week, he was allowed visitors, so each week, his mother flew on the company jet to be with him. She was allowed to hug him when she arrived, and again when she left. All other physical contact was denied. Once a month, his grandmother joined her, and twice a year, his father visited. At each visit, his mother brought books, and when she left, he’d lose himself in the words.

Although death-row inmates were allowed a radio and a thirteen-inch TV in their cells—no cable, of course—and some kept those going all day for a tie to the outside world, for Win, books provided the needed distraction from what awaited him.

Each inmate was allowed to spend up to ninety-nine dollars a week in the canteen, once again on a cart brought to them since they couldn’t leave their cells. They could purchase cigarettes, sandwiches, juice, pastries, potato chips, even soap. Win quickly learned that most of his fellow inmates on his corridor came from poor families. He arranged for his mother to deposit ninety-nine dollars not only in his account each week, but in the accounts of the other death-row inmates. That insured his safety for the two hours allowed in the yard.

During his seven years, three men had committed suicide. They were men who’d been on death row more than ten years and welcomed death to escape the agony of their isolation, preferring an immediate end rather than the minute-by-minute death of their lives.

Two men had been exonerated and left death row to return to their families. One had been on death row for nineteen years, the other for twenty-three. The exonerations had given him hope. Hope that he would get a chance to prove his innocence. He’d learned from his readings that since the death penalty had been reinstated, one out of every four men on death row in Florida had been exonerated. Now that Florida was determined to kill its inmates more quickly, he’d wondered every day whether his chance would come before it was too late.

Win had told Dani he’d changed, and that was true. But he hadn’t let on to anyone the depth of the change. He was damaged goods now, unable to sleep through the night, awakened by nightmares of pacing around his cell over and over and over again.

He looked at the letter from Sienna once more, then shook his head sadly. He wanted desperately to write back, tell her he still loved her, but he knew that he wouldn’t. She deserved someone whole. Instead, he was Humpty Dumpty, who’d fallen from his great heights, and who couldn’t be put back together again.