Reclaim: A Recovered Innocence Novel (7 page)

A test. To see if I can handle giving him free rein. I know he’s right. I shouldn’t go with him to that motel tomorrow. This is going to be really hard. I had no idea when I decided to take this case that it would make me examine who I am as a person.

“Okay,” I say. “We can meet up later and go over everything.”

“It’ll probably be late by the time I get back. Why don’t we meet up Monday after work?”

“What about everything we found today?”

“We’ll start on it tonight and see where it takes us. If we need to we can meet up again tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why not in the morning?”

He gets a funny shy smile. “It’s Sunday. I go to mass at nine.”

“You go to church?”

“What? Are you surprised that someone with seemingly no moral compass would be religious?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Wow. This really highlights how little we know about each other.”

“I would’ve pegged you for a fellow Catholic.”

“My strong moral character comes more from living most of my life as an illegal immigrant than from catechism and Sunday school.”

He gives me a long, considering look, but he doesn’t ask what most people would:
Are you still in the country illegally?

“My family and I got our documentation when I was fifteen.” I don’t tell him how or why. I’m ashamed to. It’s not a pretty story. It’s not a happy ending.

I cried when our paperwork finally came through. Not because I was glad, but because it didn’t matter who I was or how hard I had worked. It wasn’t my good grades in school, my part-time job after school, or the volunteer work I did at the local Boys and Girls Club that changed my status from undocumented immigrant to documented immigrant.

Nothing I did or could ever do would have the same power over my family’s fate as what happened that hot July night. That’s an incredibly sad thing to contemplate. The days after receiving our paperwork were the darkest of my life. I didn’t share that with my family. I didn’t want to take away their joy. Our lives changed. We didn’t have to live in fear anymore. For that I’m grateful.

Since then I’ve made fighting for the rights of the undocumented my mission. I understand them. I
am
them. Carla and I are more alike than we are different.

“That’s great,” he says. “Why don’t we go to mass together tomorrow so you can see the other side of me?” He winks. “I’m not totally morally corrupt, you know.”

I know. And I’m more than who I used to be or what happened to me. I should cut Nolan a break. He’s not a bad guy and he got us into Martin’s office. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do. I owe him an apology.

We pull up to the window to pay. I give Nolan money for my half of the bill. A few minutes later we’re headed back to his apartment with steaming bags filled with burgers and fries. He unlocks his front door and I’m struck again by how harshly and wrongly I’ve judged him based on what little I know of him.

The apartment is neat and clean. Not as tidy as Debbie’s house, but it’s definitely cleaner than mine. I’m struck again by the differences between us. Dread washes hot over me followed by panic. Pushing my secret shame away, I force myself to look around. His furniture isn’t fancy. It’s serviceable and comfortable. I guess that’s all a guy really needs. He watches me, no doubt trying to gauge my reaction.

“Nice place,” I say.

He gives a half laugh. “That’s high praise coming from you. Come and sit at the table. I’ll get us some plates.”

“Am I really that harsh?”

“You’re that particular.”

I watch him move around his kitchen like he spends a lot of time in there. The image of him in an apron and not much else flashes in my mind and I sit down hard in a chair at the table. This day has really screwed with my head. He’s screwed with my head. I can’t pin him down. Just when I think I’ve got him all figured out he does or says something that throws everything out the window. I can’t find a compartment in my brain to slot him neatly into.

And that could be a very dangerous thing for my resistance.

“What wine goes with cheeseburgers?” I ask Lila.

She looks like she could use a drink. This day really shook her. I’ve never met anyone like her. I want to say she’s naïve, but she’s not. She’s world-weary in a way I never will be. Where that comes from I don’t know. She grew up undocumented. There’s a whole story there, an entire unpublished novel I’d imagine. I can’t ask her about it. I have a feeling it’s not something she talks a lot about.

We seem to have turned some kind of corner. She’s not outright rejecting me like she was before. Maybe it was the shared experience of going through Martin’s things. She thinks we have very different thoughts and feelings about the experience. They’re not as different as she wants to believe.
We’re
not as different. I’ve gotten used to what I do, but I’m not entirely comfortable with it. It’s what I do, not who I am. I think that’s the major difference between us. I can separate the two. She can’t. That’s going to make it difficult for her to see past what I do to who I am.

She looks up at me and I can still see the war going on behind her beautiful eyes. “Red, I think, since we’re eating beef.”

“Red it is.” I pull a bottle from my wine fridge, open it, and pour us each a glass. I set hers next to her plate and join her at the table.

She takes a big sip. Bigger than I imagine she normally would. “Mmm, that’s good.” She downs another gulp.

We dig into our food, each of us absorbed in our thoughts. Something’s bothering me and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I do a mental finger snap. Carla.

“You didn’t seem surprised when Carla told you she was a prostitute,” I say, circling back to our interview with her.

“Not really. I’ve seen it before. People do what they have to do to survive.”

“So can you separate who Carla is from what she did to support herself and Diego?”

“It’s not like she had much of a choice, being undocumented. Plus, with her background…” She lets the thought trail off, closing down her expression.

“What do you mean
her background
?”

“She had Diego when she was fifteen. There’s no father listed on his birth certificate.” She raises her brows like I’m supposed to infer something from that information.

“What are you saying?” I know I sound dense, but she’s back to talking in riddles.

“Diego was probably the result of rape.”

“Man. She hasn’t had it easy, has she? Welcome to America. Jesus.” I take a couple gulps of wine.

“No, she hasn’t.”

“I feel like I should apologize as a man and as an American, but that’s stupid.”

“It’s sweet but unnecessary.”

“If you can separate who Carla is from what she did, then why can’t you do it with me?”

She tilts her head slightly and frowns at me. “That’s not the same.”

“It is actually. Very much the same.”

“You can get another type of job. You don’t have to do what you do.”

“I know this may seem strange to you, but I
like
what I do. I’m proud to be a private investigator. I’m prouder still when I get to help out on cases like Carla’s. It’s the reason I became a private investigator instead of a cop. It’s the reason I applied for a job at Nash Security and Investigation. I wanted the chance to help free people who were wrongly convicted.” I take a sip of wine, contemplating the events that led me to be sitting here with her now. “Just like you. I may not identify with Carla in the same ways that you do, but I know what it’s like to make mistakes, to feel like the world is working against you.”

“When has the world ever worked against you?”

“Every damn day, it feels like sometimes. I don’t know what it looks like from the outside, but the truth is I’ve worked hard to get where I am. Nothing’s ever been handed to me. I have to try and try again. I fail. A lot. That’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s the truth. I screw up. Like today with the trunk and the camera. I should’ve checked for surveillance devices before we started searching that office. That’s a mistake I won’t make again.”

“Maybe it’s not so much the world working against you as it is you working against yourself.”

“That’s a fair summation. My point is that things aren’t always cut-and-dried. People aren’t what they seem like on the surface. There’s more to me—and you too—than it looks like from the outside. That’s all I’m saying. And if you can overlook Carla’s faults, why can’t you overlook mine?”

“You really care about what I think of you?”

More than I should.
“Why not? We’re friends or working toward it. We have crazy chemistry. Who knows where that will lead if we decide to follow it. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. And I’m…I’m going to shut up now.”
Before I dig myself in any deeper with my shovel of desperation. Idiot. Talk about working against yourself.

She twists the stem of her wineglass, then drinks the remainder of its contents. I refill her glass—her third—as she starts talking. Her manner’s a lot more relaxed than it was when we first walked in.

“You go to church. You took on Carla’s case with nearly the same enthusiasm as I did. You seem to have a good sense of right and wrong. At the same time you do things that ride the line, but somehow manage to stay barely legal, which tells me that you have morals that are important to you. You’re hot and you kiss like you took a master class in making out. And your apartment…”

“What about my apartment?”

“It’s cleaner than mine.”

“Can we go back to the kissing part?”

“What I’m saying is I don’t have a bad impression of you.” She sets her wineglass down after a drink and I notice it’s half empty. “I might even like you.”

I sit back in my chair, stunned. “Well, shit. I hope that’s not the wine talking.”

“It probably is and I probably shouldn’t have any more if I’m going to drive home.” She pushes her glass away from her.

“You could always spend the night.”

“You’re riding the line again, buddy.”

“Right. Okay. Shutting up now.” I stand and clear away the dishes and trash.

Behind me I hear something that sounds suspiciously like
And you have a nice ass.
But there’s no way Lila would ever say something like that, is there? The wine must be affecting me too. I grab the empty bottle off the table and toss it in the trash. I rinse our wineglasses and put them in the dishwasher, then grab a couple of bottles of water out of the fridge. The last thing I want is one or both of us getting drunk and doing something we might regret later.

“Follow me back to my office,” I tell her. “And bring your phone and charge cord.” It’s time I got my head back on business and not thinking about how she said I’m a good kisser. Although that was my favorite part.

She casually peels off her high-heeled boots and grabs her purse. She’s much smaller without them than I’d anticipated. I’m not a big guy, but I’m suddenly conscious of how much larger I am than her. It’s weird. I never thought a woman being so petite could be a turn-on, but with her it totally is. But then nearly everything about her does it for me. Like how she took off her shoes and made herself comfortable in my apartment. That has to mean something, right?

She follows me down the hall to my home office. I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to computers, but even more so when it comes to surveillance equipment—spy cams, bugs, computer and mobile phone spyware, GPS trackers, and bug detection equipment. That’s why I’m so upset with myself that I didn’t bring my hidden camera and bug detector. Another lesson learned—keep one on me at all times.

Behind me Lila gasps. I turn to look at her. Her eyes are wide as she takes in the room with its shelves and shelves of equipment. I try to see the room as she might. Some of the pieces blink and whir while they carry out their various tasks. Most are new, but some are old technology, like the CB radio and a PC that only accepts floppy disks.

Some guys are into computer games, some cars. I’m into electronics—how they work, what they can do, and how I can use them. I’ve been fascinated with computers and electronic devices since I was a kid. In fact, my parents’ old VCR sits on a lower shelf; hanging out the front is a tape of
ALF,
that old show about an alien stranded on earth who hides out with a family and tries to eat their cat. It’s a favorite of mine. I’m kind of a geek and I’ve just let the pretty lawyer lady see how big a dork I really am.

I focus on her and her reaction, which seems to be hovering somewhere between awe, confusion, and shock. She doesn’t know it, but when we entered my apartment we triggered the hidden cameras throughout much like the one we found in Martin’s office. Fortunately that screen is currently off. She walks the room, checking everything out. Holding my breath, I wait to see what she’ll say when she’s done.

“This is…
awesome.
How long have you been collecting?”

I let out the breath I was holding. This is a good response. The one I was hoping for.

“Since I was a kid. I’ve traded up as technology advanced, but I still like some of the old machines, like the two different kinds of VCRs, the cassette deck, and the reel-to-reel tape recorder. You never know when you’ll come across old film reels or cassette tapes and you’ll need something to play them on.”

“My parents still play records. They insist the sound is better than CDs.”

“They’re right to a certain extent.”

She glances around again. “This is really cool. You surprise me.”

“In a good way I hope.”

“This time, yes. Absolutely.”

I clear my throat, trying to dislodge the lump that’s suddenly formed. “Your phone and cord?”

“Oh, yeah. Here.” She starts to put them in my hand.

“If it’s password-protected I’ll need you to key it in.”

I look away when she punches in her code. She hands it to me and I plug it into the USB port on my computer. This machine is my baby, my most prized piece of equipment. I built the PC myself to the specifications I wanted. I log in and click on the icon to upload her photos. I could upload everything on her phone into my computer and she probably wouldn’t know. But that’s a line I would never cross.

“Pull up that chair,” I tell her, motioning to the office chair across the room that I use with my Mac computer. Yes, I have both a Mac and a PC. “And bring it over so we can look at the photos together.”

When her phone is finished I plug mine in and upload the pictures of the files that I took. I have no idea if any of it will help us or not. Lila will know more about these files than I do. There was a lot of legalese I didn’t understand. I just photographed everything I could find with either Carla’s or Diego’s name on it. I even shot the file Martin had with his own name on the tab.

Lila drags the chair over and sits, taking a long drink from her water bottle. She dabs her mouth with the back of her hand. “Are those the pictures you took of the files?”

“Yeah. I’m glad you’re here. You can help me decipher them. There was one in particular…” I scroll through until I find the one I want to show her. “This one.” I lean back so she can get closer to the screen.

Her eyes narrow. “
No.
It can’t be.”

“Is it what I think it is?”

“
Holy shit.
Why didn’t he file it? Can you print it out? Just the first three pages are fine. I want to see what his argument was.”

I do as she asks. In seconds the printer is done and I hand her the sheets of paper.

She scans the pages, flipping through them a couple of times. “This is a motion to dismiss the case against Carla. His argument was solid. He probably would’ve won.
Why didn’t he file it?
I don’t understand. He cites the coroner’s report declaring Diego’s death an accident and the judge’s misapplication of the burden of proof in Filipe Nuñez’s competency hearing as a witness in the case as well as his refusal to hear the testimony of an expert who would’ve shown that Filipe’s recollection of Diego wrapping the cord around his own neck was credible and consistent with what Carla said in her initial statement to the police.”

“In English?”

“It means that when the judge declared Filipe unfit to testify because of his age, he put the burden of proof on the defense to
disprove
the charges against Carla rather than putting the burden on the prosecution to
prove
the charges. He totally ignored the principle of
innocent until proven guilty,
the very foundation of our justice system.”

She shakes the papers. “Again, why didn’t he file this? He was right. Why did he choose to be incompetent and let the trial go on? Why did he let his client get convicted for a crime when he could disprove the entire basis of the prosecution’s case with the coroner’s report? There was no crime. There never should’ve been a trial, let alone a conviction.
Why?
I just don’t get it.”

“Doesn’t this give us what
we
need to free Carla?”

“Oh, yes. But I want to know what made him not file this motion. There must be
some
reason. I want to be really sure here. We need all of our ducks in a row. We may only get one shot at reversing her conviction and I don’t want to waste it going in with only part of the information. What else did you find in his files?”

“He had a file on himself. Let me see if I can find…Ah. Here.” I’m glad I took a picture of the file tab before photographing the contents inside so I know what goes where.

“Bank statements,” Lila says. “I wonder if Debbie knows about this account.”

“Huh, not likely. Look at the charges.”

“What do you mean? He could’ve bought anything from Two 2 Tango or Leah Unlimited.”

“Actually those are spank-by-the-minute websites.”

She turns to look at me at the same time I look at her and I suddenly realize how close we are. Closer than we were in the car. I can smell the mixture of wine and cheeseburger on her breath mingled with her perfume. The combination is like some strange aphrodisiac that has me semi-hard in an instant. Or maybe it’s just having her near that makes my whole body hot.

“Spank by the
what
?” Her words are breathy or else it’s me projecting because the way she says
spank
sets off flares inside me.