Nearly Found (22 page)

It was corked.

I crouched down beside it, shining the light through the glass.

A single playing card had been curled to fit inside.

The door creaked open behind me. Beams of light spilled into the room, and the crackling of footsteps of the others as they circled behind me.

I set my light down. Withdrew the cork. Held the playing card in the light they shone over my shoulder. A nine of clubs. Written across it was a message in blue ink.

Are you clever enough
 . . .

I knew how the message was supposed to end. It was the exact same question TJ had asked me in a
Missed Connections
ad back in June. The ad had posed a challenge. To solve the riddle before something terrible happened.

Are you clever enough to find me in time?

Was this a challenge too? And in time for what?

Find the missing player, and the truth will come to light.

A terrible feeling took hold of me. I had already failed this test. The fire was weeks ago. Emily was the missing member of the club. And I was supposed to find her. Before he killed her. And I was too late.

Unless . . . I looked at the group, all of them hovering around me, their lights bright in my eyes. I counted us. All of us.

Wiles, Boswell, Miller, DiMorello, Fowler, Reinnert. There were only six members of the original group. But the card in my hand was a nine of clubs. Something didn’t add up. There had to be something I was missing. I turned the card over and held it under the light.

The club,
it said,
isn’t what you think.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was Columbus Day, which meant school was closed. I paced the small interview room at the police station, waiting for Lonny’s attorney to show up.

Alex opened the door and gave me a hard stare. I had called him every hour after sunup. Even had him paged several times while he was out shopping with Gena. I’d basically nagged him to the point of submission.

I looked past him into the hallway. “Where’s Lonny’s lawyer? You told me you’d arrange a meeting.”

Every muscle tightened under the hard line of his jaw. “Court-appointed public defenders don’t like to work on federal holidays. And they don’t get the luxury of charging their clients by the hour. He’ll get here when he gets here.”

“Court-appointed?”

Alex stared at me, his gunmetal eyes firing with both barrels. “Would you take his defense? Risk your career?” He knew as well as I did that I already had.

“I have information that might help Lonny’s case.”

His lip curled with a knowing smile. “Don’t confidentiality disclosures mean anything to you?”

“I said I
have
information. I never said I was
sharing
it,” I snapped. “I’m here on a fact-finding mission. That’s it.”

“The fact that you’re here at all is a conflict of interest. If Nicholson or Benoit find out, game’s over. All bets are off.”

“I never anted. This is about finding the truth. I can’t sit back and watch them gamble with Lonny’s life. It isn’t a game.”

Alex laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Maybe the life you should be defending is the one that was taken.” He pulled the door shut behind him, leaving the ghost of Adrienne Wilkerson in his place. I rubbed my eyes, pushing her pale face from my memory.

The door opened again, and a large man waddled in. His thin ivory dress shirt pulled tight around his middle and revealed the silhouette of an undershirt beneath. He wasn’t wearing a tie. He looked around the confined spaces of the interview room while he blotted sweat from his forehead with a folded hanky. His puzzled expression settled on me. “I’m sorry, I must be in the wrong place,” he said between labored breaths. “I was supposed to be meeting someone from the forensics lab?”

“You’re Lonny’s attorney?” I guess I had always imagined Lonny’s lawyer as someone slick and formidable in a tailored suit. Someone who wore a Rolex and signed his name with a hundred-dollar pen. I hadn’t yet wrapped my brain around the fact that Lonny’s future rested in the hands of a public defender.

He raised his chin, as if to make himself taller. His beard was threaded with gray and needed trimming. “I’m Philip Vernon, Leonard Johnson’s attorney. And you are?”

“Leigh Boswell. I’m a . . .” My brain scrambled for the right introduction. One that wouldn’t make me look like a child. Or a flake. “. . . an acquaintance of Mr. Johnson’s.”

He looked me up and down, starting at the hole in my pocket tee and ending with the black powder stains on the tongue of my sneakers. “Detective Petrenko said I was meeting with a representative from the lab.”

“I’m an intern.” Philip Vernon arched an eyebrow. “But that has nothing to do with why I’m here,” I added quickly.

He extended a tentative hand. I shook it firmly, the way I’d seen Alex and Lieutenant Nicholson do. It was hard not to be first to let go. Vernon tasted sour, skeptical enough to pucker my lips. I pulled out a chair and sat down. Under all that distaste, a dull, dry fatigue lingered. I gestured to the chair opposite me, certain he would take it.

The man stalled, drawing back his sleeve to check his Seiko. The chair legs creaked when he finally settled into it.

“Well, then, Ms. Boswell. Do you mind telling me why I’m here?” He pulled a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and uncapped a Bic pen.

“I need to know anything you can tell me about Lonny’s whereabouts the night Adrienne Wilkerson was murdered,” I said.

He blinked at me. Then he stood, put the cap on his pen, and began packing up.

I jerked to my feet, almost knocking my chair over. “Wait, you need to talk to me!”

“For what purpose, I have yet to make sense of.” He picked up his briefcase and reached for the door.

“Because,” I blurted, “I have information that might prove Lonny couldn’t have been at the crime scene when Adrienne was murdered.”

Vernon stilled.

“If I’m right, and if you can tell me where Lonny says he was the night Adrienne was murdered, then I will give you what you need—enough evidence to convince the police to drop the charges.”

“You are undoubtedly aware that evidence tampering is a felony.”

“What if I told you there wasn’t any evidence to tamper with?” The most damning piece of evidence in the case, Lonny’s phone containing the photos taken of Adrienne, was missing. Even if I couldn’t find proof of Lonny’s alibi, a missing piece of evidence had to be leverage for something.

Vernon turned. His eyes were razor-sharp, but there was something inside them. Something less cynical.

“Go on,” he said hesitantly, still rooted by the door. It felt like a challenge. To say just the right thing to lure him back into that groaning chair.

“The photos—the ones of Adrienne—they were taken minutes after she died. They were time stamped, which is how the investigators knew almost exactly when she was killed. So all we need to do is prove that Lonny wasn’t there at that time.”

Philip Vernon laughed derisively and turned back to the door. “If it were that simple, he’d already be a free man. But Mr. Johnson has no verifiable alibi for the night Ms. Wilkerson was killed.”

“Bullshit,” I said without thinking. “Everyone has a verifiable alibi. Because everyone leaves a trail. It’s the very principle forensic science is grounded in.” I pointed a hard finger at his empty chair. “You left a trail without even knowing it. The DNA in your sweat, the fibers from your pants, your fingerprints on the seat back . . . it’s all right there. Just because no one is looking doesn’t mean it can’t be found!”

Philip Vernon smiled. It was the same smile Alex wore. The one that said I was a sad, silly little girl who couldn’t possibly understand. “You’re right. We might find Mr. Johnson’s DNA, or maybe even a fingerprint, at the empty pier he says he visited that night when his so-called business associate stood him up and left him conveniently without an alibi. So maybe he brushed a piling and left behind a hair or a shirt fiber. But none of those bits of trace evidence will tell us exactly
when
he was there. And that, my dear, is precisely what I need to know in order to convince the judge to release him.”

I ignored Vernon’s condescending tone. “So Lonny went to the pier to make a drug deal, and his customer didn’t show up?”

Vernon stiffened, clearly surprised by my candor. I waited while he gathered himself. “The meeting had been prearranged,” he said slowly, as if hesitant to say this much. “Mr. Johnson claims his phone and lighter went missing from his front porch that afternoon, not long before his meeting. He didn’t notice them missing until it was time to leave. He was forced to leave home without them. According to Mr. Johnson, he arrived at the pier at ten p.m., on schedule, but his associate never arrived.”

Because the whole thing had probably been a setup from the beginning. To guarantee Lonny would be alone in a remote place. So he wouldn’t have an alibi.

“And he searched his house and car that night?”

“Several times, by his account.”

Which meant he might have called his mobile service provider from his home number that very night. Those calls “were recorded for customer service.” Which meant there might be a way to trace Lonny to his own trailer, or maybe a pay phone somewhere else. “When did Lonny order his replacement phone?”

Vernon’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry?” He looked lost. Like he’d never thought about the possibility that maybe Lonny wasn’t guilty. All this crap about “Mr. Johnson claims” and “by Mr. Johnson’s account” and “according to Mr. Johnson,” like he’d completely bought in to the idea that Lonny was making all this up.

“His replacement cell phone,” I said, dragging mine from my back pocket and slapping it on the table. “He would have ordered a new one the same night. He would have had the number immediately redirected. Hell, he probably paid extra for overnight shipping. Lonny’s a dealer. His phone is his lifeline. It’s how he conducts business. How he pays for his rent. Do you seriously think he’d just shrug it off, especially right after he’d thought he might have missed a critical meeting because he didn’t have it with him?”

Vernon eased to the table, his face drawn and thoughtful. The chair whined as he sat down and pulled out his note pad. He began scribbling notes.

“Okay, so you’re going to call his mobile service provider and see if there are any recorded conversations or activity that can be traced to a specific location the night of the murder.” I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. It was a long shot. By the look on Vernon’s face, he knew it too.

There was still time. I could change my mind and return the phone. No one would have to know.

“If the phone company doesn’t turn anything up . . . if you can’t find another way to prove Lonny is telling the truth . . . ask the prosecuting attorney to produce the cell phone. Tell them you want to see it. I have it on good authority that it’s lost.”

Vernon tipped his head. “Lost?”

Like my internship. Lost. Once Doc Benoit got the call, he and Raj would put it together and know that I was the last one to handle the evidence. That I was the one to steal it. “Use that as leverage to make them drop the charges.”

Vernon tapped his pen on his notepad. “It’s not enough,” he said thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t drop the charges for that.”

“But—” I started to argue. He shushed me with a finger.

“But we can use something like this to try to negotiate bail.”

“Bail? What good would that do? He’d still be charged. He’d have to come back for trial.”

“True, but maybe if we can get Mr. Johnson some time at home, between the two of you, you can come up with something that might help his case. The question is, does Mr. Johnson have an indemnitor—someone who would be willing to take the financial risk. If we’re successful, the bail amount will be steep.” And if Lonny skipped town, the loss would be unrecoverable. It was a gamble. A gamble on all I had left. But if I was right—if Adrienne’s murder was connected to Emily’s—a few days might be all I’d need to prove that the same person had killed them both. And I was sure that person was Reggie Wiles. I just had to convince Lonny that running wasn’t an option. Because if he ran, his wasn’t the only life he’d take with him.

“He has an indemnitor,” I said. The words barely had enough breath to carry them.

We were both quiet for what felt like a long, long while.

“Why did you agree to talk to me?” I asked. He wasn’t supposed to be discussing Lonny’s case any more than I was. And yet here he was, divulging it all to a stranger on the unverified assumption that Lonny and I were nothing more than acquaintances, even though he’d thought Lonny was guilty.

Vernon flipped the page of his yellow pad and turned it toward me. The sprawling handwriting didn’t match his. It was punctuated by deep, angry holes where the tip of the pen had jabbed in.

Philip Vernon has my permission to disclose the details of my case to my friend Leigh Boswell, of the Joseph Bell Regional Forensic Lab. I authorize Leigh to represent my interests as an expert witness, because she is a badass brainiac and she knows her shit. Please tell Leigh everything she wants to know.

Signed,
Leonard Johnson III

My laugh was panicked and breathy, like someone had just dumped the weight of the world on my chest. Expert witness? I was nothing more than an office gopher. The intern who’d misplaced evidence from the mailroom of a lab and then blabbed about it. I might as well not even be an intern anymore. And here I was representing the interests of a drug dealer wanted for murder in a case I wasn’t allowed to even discuss. What the hell was I doing here?

Vernon began packing up his briefcase. He paused to look at me, thoughtfully stroking his beard.

“You believe he’s innocent, even in light of the evidence against him. Why?” He tilted his head, as though genuinely puzzled.

I thought back to the first moment I knew Lonny was innocent. To the way his hand felt when I’d touched him through the bars. I gave him the only answer that would make any sense.

“It just feels right in my gut.”