Trace of Innocence (13 page)

L
ewis and I closed up the lab and went out to the security guard station, where Mikey was waiting, fast asleep.

“Mikey,” I said, nudging him awake. “We can go now.”

“Well?” he asked, stretching and standing up, rubbing his face.

“It’s a match.”

“Come here, baby sis,” he said, enveloping me in his arms, rock hard from prison workouts to combat the boredom.

I leaned my face against his chest and took
a few deep breaths. There was only one person on earth who understood what it meant to lose my mom as a child, and that was Mikey. My father lost a wife, a lover, a friend…but Mikey was left motherless, just like me. He had guarded me fiercely when we were still children, and though we were both grown, he was still my protector.

“Mikey’s here for you, baby sis. I’ll rip that guy to shreds.”

I looked up at him, a single stray tear trickling down my face. “Don’t. This once we’re letting the authorities handle things. Jack’s not worth it. He’s not worth the tiniest of parole violations. So don’t. You let Lewis and his FBI friend handle it.”

Mikey clenched and unclenched his jaw, finally agreeing.

The three of us went out to Mikey’s car and headed back to Joe’s. Everyone was asleep—except for Joe, who was in his office working furiously, his fingers flying across his computer keyboard.

He turned around when we entered the room and looked right at me. I gave a single nod.

“You okay?” Joe asked me.

“As okay as I can be right now.”

“You look beat…why don’t you go catch some z’s. I’m working on a contract for one of
my NFL guys—I actually have to make money sometimes to support this pro bono stuff.”

“Tough thing, earning a living,” Lewis said.

“Yeah,” added Mikey.

I shot him a look. “Michael Anthony Quinn, you’ve never worked an honest day in your life.”

“I know. Still a tough thing earning a living.”

I shook my head. “You going back home? Marybeth will be worried.”

“I’m not leaving your side until Jack is in cuffs.”

I knew it was futile to argue. “All right, then. I’m going up to bed.”

I trudged up the stairs to the guest room with my things in it. David was sleeping on top of the blankets, fully clothed. I watched him sleep, his breaths deep and even. His face reminded me of a statue my grandmother once had of a Raphaelite painting, very classic. Around his eyes were a couple of tiny crow’s-feet, but he was remarkably not worn down by prison. For the hundredth time, I wondered how he had survived the living nightmare of being there unjustly. I knew I would never look at DNA the same again after this case. I would always know that the science of my job could free the wrongfully accused or imprison the truly evil, and now that I had gone through both ends of that spec
trum with people I cared about, science would be more alive than ever.

I lay down next to David and snuggled into the crook of his arm, resting my head on his chest. He stirred.

“Hey, gorgeous. I was waiting up for you, but I guess sleep got the better of me.”

He rolled onto his side and kissed me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. The DNA was a match. That cloud of suspicion over your head? It just evaporated.”

“I wish it could have evaporated without you going through so much.” He stroked my face. “I decided what I want to do with my life. You know how you and C.C. said I should take some time, absorb what I’d been through, then figure it out?”

“Yeah.” I touched his cheeks, which were prickly with stubble. “I remember.”

“Well, I’m going to take that book deal and use the money to pay for law school. He doesn’t know it yet, but someday I’m going to work for Joe.”

“That’s a fabulous goal.”

“And I plan on learning how to make you smile. I’ll practice every day. Promise.”

He kissed me on the lips, and though I was exhausted, I squeezed against him and kissed
him back, pouring my grief over Jack and my fears into the moment.

We made love, and then, truly falling asleep with my eyes open, I murmured something about being so tired and passed out.

Lewis knocked on the guest room door.

“Billie? David? Tommy Two Trees is here. I need y’all to come downstairs.”

I was in a deep sleep, the kind in which you drool and lose all track of night and day. I woke up and had no idea what day it was, what time it was, or even
where
I was.

Eventually, events started coming back to me—like the DNA match. I shook my head to wake up more fully and said toward the door, “Be down in a little bit. Ten minutes.”

I climbed out of bed after waking David with a kiss and a little hug. I went into the bathroom and washed and dressed, pulling my hair into a ponytail for simplicity. David came in a minute or two later and started the shower.

“I’m going downstairs,” I told him. “Come down when you’re ready, okay?”

He nodded, stripping out of his boxers and stepping into the shower. Since prison, he said his lone vice was very long, very hot showers.

I went downstairs. Lewis and Tommy Two
Trees were sitting in the den with Joe, C.C., Mikey, Ginger and Harper. Lewis and Tommy Two Trees stood. I was in awe of how
huge
the FBI agent was. His legs were like two tree trunks, and I wondered if that was at the root of his name.

“T-cubed, may I present the woman responsible for this prematurely gray hair of mine—Billie Quinn.”

I stuck out my hand, and Agent Two Trees took it in his mitt of a hand, and then leaned down and gave a little half bow. “Pleased to meet you, Billie. Any woman that can give Lewis gray hair is a woman I’d like to buy a drink for.”

“Why, thank you.” I smiled at him. He stood about six feet six, and his skin was copper colored. He had a shaved head, which only made his ebony eyes stand out more—like shiny black pieces of mica. He wore a suit in dark blue, with a tie—and a pocket handkerchief. I hadn’t seen one of those in years. In a nod to his Native American heritage, he wore a bear claw on a black leather cord around his neck. The claw was enormous. Rather like Two Trees himself.

“Lewis has filled me in…along with Ginger, Joe and C.C. You have quite a team assembled.
Don’t know as I have
agents
as hell-bent on uncovering the truth as you bunch.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, it’s only half a compliment. The other half would like to stick you all in handcuffs and throw away the key. You don’t go off with some crazy idea on a serial killer or multiple murderer, no badge, no backup. You could have ended up dead.”

“But instead we caught the guy who did it,” C.C. said.

“Well…we need to tie up a few loose ends first.”

“Like what?” Joe asked.

“Like,” T-cubed said, “we don’t know who did this for sure.”

“What?” I snapped. “We busted our butts to get the DNA evidence. The DNA says who did it.”

“Maybe…maybe not.” Tommy Two Trees turned to me. “Lewis told me you were…a spitfire. If I
had
hair I’m sure you’d be making it gray by now.”

“So what do you mean
maybe?
”

T-cubed walked over to the coffee table and removed several glossy books from its surface, along with a stone statue of a Buddha head. Then he lifted the coffee table, made of heavy
dark wood, himself, with no help, as if it were made of toothpicks.

“Lie down,” he commanded me.

“What?”

“Lie down.” He pointed to a spot on the floor.

I shrugged and obliged.

“Ginger,” he said to our newfound friend. “You take the little girl upstairs. We’re going to be reenacting a murder.”

Ginger nodded and signed to Harper. The two of them left the room. As they went up the stairs, David came down, his hair wet and slick from the shower.

T-cubed crossed the room in three strides. “Tommy Two Trees. Pleased to meet you.”

“David Falco.”

“I’d like to express my…sorrow to you for your unfortunate incarceration. You know, we in law enforcement like to think we’re all on the same side, all doing the right thing.”

David nodded. Then he looked at me lying on the floor.

“Indulge me,” T-cubed said.

Lewis came over to me and stared down. “Pretend you’re dead.”

“No,” T-cubed said. “Pretend you’re alive for the moment…. Lewis, you be Jack Flanagan. Joe, you’re going to be bad cop #2, Mike
is bad cop #3, and David, you can be bad cop #4.”

Lewis said, “We did this reenactment thing in New Orleans.”

“Lewis has a way of thinking like the criminal mind,” T-cubed added.

“If I’m Jack Flanagan, I make love with this girl…and then what? Skewer her brain with a knife?” Lewis said. “Doesn’t make sense. I rape her and skewer her brain with a knife? When we’re dating? Is it power?”

T-cubed nodded. “Keep going, Lewis. Stream of consciousness. Let it go…talk aloud.” He stood off to the side as Lewis began to pace and think and talk aloud.

“I go to her house and we make love. I wear a condom, because I’m married and I don’t want to get her pregnant.” Lewis spun around. “We argue, and I…hand me that pen, will you, C.C.?” C.C. handed him a Cross pen from the roll-top desk.

“We argue,” Lewis continued. “And I try to stab her. Resist, Billie…”

He knelt at my side and pretended to come at me with the “lethal” Cross pen. I wrestled with his arm.

Lewis looked up at Tommy Two Trees. “Im
possible. She would fight like mad, there’d be stab wounds on her hands—there were none in the M.E. report. There would also be blood all over the place. Spatter.”

Joe said, “None of that in the report, either.”

“Exactly,” said T-cubed.

“Bad cops—” Lewis gestured “—you all hold Billie down. Billie—” he looked me in the eyes “—fight as hard as you can. As if your life depended on it.”

Mike grabbed one arm, Lewis another, Joe a leg and David the other leg. Lewis said to them, “Hold her down as hard and as strong as you can.”

They each applied pressure to me. I felt myself panic. I knew it was all a reenactment, that I wasn’t really going to be hurt, but instinct took over. I started fighting them as hard as I could. I kicked my legs and thrashed my head from side to side. I lifted my body off the ground, flinging my pelvis forward, straining and struggling.

As I struggled, I started sweating and my panic grew. I tried to kick my legs. I moved my head from side to side. I fought until I literally had no fight left. Slowly, I resigned myself to not escaping them. My muscles twitched and ached.

At that moment, Lewis came at me with the Cross pen. That reignited the panic and I wouldn’t hold still. After a few minutes, Tommy Two Trees said, “Stop, let her go.”

We were all out of breath.

“Lewis? Your take?” T-cubed asked.

“Even with all four holding her, she would be screaming and fighting. I don’t see it. Too messy, too…frankly, sick. One of them might be sociopathic, but four cops all sociopathic enough to do this to a woman? I don’t see it. I can see them committing gang rape or even harming a woman, but this was a bizarre crime.”

His friend nodded. “Ideas?”

Lewis stood. I lay there for a minute, gathering my thoughts. Suddenly I sat up.

“Special K.”

“What?” C.C. asked. “The cereal?”

“No,” my brother said. “She means the drug.”

“I don’t follow,” Joe said.

“Special K is made from a horse tranquilizer. I bet you one of those cops was in narcotics. Given enough Special K, someone’s going to be virtually paralyzed. Wouldn’t take nearly as much to stick a knife in them.”

“They may not have run the right tox screen
on Cammie way back when,” T-cubed said. “But we can run it on the woman killed in Atlantic City.”

“Doesn’t solve which of those fuckers really did it,” Joe said. “If we’re going to fry one of those cops, I’d like to be sure we fry the right one.”

“We haul all four in and see what shakes down,” T-cubed said, rocking back on his heels.

“No,” I said. “They’ll all flip on each other and create reasonable doubt. You’ll get them on the prostitution charges, maybe. But you won’t nail them for the big crimes. Let me confront Jack and wear a wire.”

“No way.”

“Come on,” I begged. “I don’t want them to walk.”

“Look…it’s out of the question. I’ll talk to the head of the field office here. Don’t worry, these four aren’t going anywhere. Now…did someone say breakfast was available?”

Lewis smiled. “I did inform Joe of your prodigious appetite. Seems that’s something the two of you have in common.”

“Let’s go,” Joe said. “I had stuff delivered.”

We all made our way into Joe’s immense kitchen. I could have turned several cartwheels in it and not hit a thing. The long table, with
seating for ten, was set up with two dozen or so bagels with four different kinds of cream cheese, a fruit platter, fresh pots of coffee, juice, champagne and doughnuts and pastries.

My mouth watered, but still, in the pit of my stomach, I was mad. I just didn’t want these four cops to have killed two women, ruined lives, locked David away, and then what? Serve time on lesser charges? I wanted whoever killed Cammie and Liz to get what was coming to him.

I tried to shrug it off, but it was hard. Eventually we all ate, although I’m not sure what I would call what Joe and Tommy Two Trees did.
Eating
seems like such an insignificant term for it. They devoured an amount of food that made me sick just watching.

“Mr. Two Trees?” C.C. said. “What do you like to be called? T-cubed? Tommy? Thomas?”

“Tommy is fine.”

“Which is why I call him T-cubed,” Lewis piped up. “Like to get right in his craw.”

“You?” I mocked. “Lewis…you’re usually so mannered.”

“Lewis is a character in his own right,” Tommy said.

“Tell us,” C.C. said. “Tell us something we don’t know about our Lewis.” Her eyes sparkled.

“Hmm,” Tommy said, taking a bite of a bagel—which meant he bit off half. He chewed and swallowed. “You all know about his tarantula. His blood spatter pictures. But do you know about his brain collection?”

I looked at Lewis, who said, drolly, “I tried to keep a few things about my private life secret. So…I have a few brains.”