Justice Delayed (Innocent Prisoners Project)

by Marti Green

  Harry leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. With a defiant tone, he said, “You’re wrong about that. Maybe I did once, but it’s been used.”

  “That was a lot of money to use up.”

  “Used it to start my business. The rest paid for my kids’ college.”

  “You have other children?”

  His expression softened. “Two daughters. Bright as can be.”

  “You can put up ten percent and give your house and business as security for the rest. That way, Jack could get out.”

  “And go where? He has no one.”

  “He has you.”

  Harry bent his head down and shook it slowly. After a minute, Maria put her hand on Harry’s arm. “It’s the right thing to do, honey. You know it is.”

  Harry just kept shaking his head.

  “You know that money rightfully belongs to Jack,” Dani said.

  Harry looked up. “What if I come up with the ten percent? Can you find someplace else for him to go?”

  Dani thought about it. Jack had no other relatives that she knew about. There had to be group homes that he’d qualify for, and frankly, he’d be better off there than with this man. Problem was, they often had waiting lists. “I’ll look into it. But on two conditions.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you pay the fees for it. And you visit your son. He needs you.”

  Harry took a deep breath. “Okay. Make the arrangements.”

  As soon as Dani returned to the office the next day, she began looking for a bail bondsman in Gwinnett County and a group home for Jack. There were halfway houses for prisoners released on parole, but she didn’t want him in that environment. Since he was on death row, he’d been sequestered from the rest of the prison population. Now wasn’t the time to throw him in with what might be a rough crowd. Instead, she searched for homes that catered to those with a developmental or intellectual disability. Jack Osgood might not need such a home on a permanent basis—he wasn’t so impaired that he couldn’t care for himself—but after twenty-two years behind bars, it would likely be too frightening for him to be cast out on his own. A group home would give him a chance to acclimate to a technological world that was in its infancy when he was first convicted. And, perhaps more important, it would provide him with a social environment, something that would no doubt be difficult for him to find on his own after so many years locked up. There was one big hurdle, Dani knew. Most group homes would be reluctant to take someone who’d been convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

  Finding a bail company was easy. She’d located someone with a quick search on Google. She told him to hold off until Osgood had a place to go, and after three hours of searching, she had come up empty. Even where there was an opening, they wouldn’t take someone from prison. There were just two more on her list to try. She dialed the number for Kenny’s Place and was put through to Amy Shore.

  “My name is Dani Trumball, and I’m calling to see if you have room for a forty-six-year-old man with an IQ of sixty-eight.”

  “Where’s he been living up till now?”

  Dani paused. This was always the stumbling block. She took a deep breath, then went on. “He’s been at GDCP for twenty-two years.”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t take anyone who’s been convicted of a crime.”

  “I’m an attorney with the Help Innocent Prisoners Project in New York City. I’ve looked into his case and believe that he was wrongly convicted. A judge has just ordered a new trial for him, and he can make bail, but he has no one left. He needs someplace safe to live.”

  “Twenty-two years. He must have been convicted of something serious.”

  “Murder.”

  Dani heard a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, my. I wish we could help you, but it wouldn’t be fair to our residents.”

  It was the same answer she’d gotten from every facility she’d called. “I’ve met with him many times. He’s a gentle soul, and over the years has always maintained his innocence. The evidence against him was minimal, and the primary witness, a five-year-old girl, has now recanted her testimony.”

  “Still—”

  “Please.” Dani stopped, just long enough to control the quiver in her voice. “Please, he’s been punished long enough for something he didn’t do. Don’t punish him again because of those false charges.”

  There was silence on the other end for a beat. “How certain are you that he’s innocent?”

  “Ninety-nine percent.”

  More silence. Then, “We do have room.” Dani could hear a sigh. “We’ll take him on a probationary basis, at least until his new trial. After that, we’ll see.”

  Dani thanked her profusely, then placed a call to Osgood’s father. “It’s a go,” she told him.

  Winning Osgood’s permanent freedom was still far away, but now, he would at least be free in the weeks leading up to his trial.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Jack Osgood has been released from prison,” she told her brother. “Did you know?”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I want you to be careful.”

  “Don’t sound so melodramatic. Why would I care if Osgood is free?”

  “I know what you did.”

  There was silence on the phone. A minute passed, then, “What is it you think I did?”

  “I’m your sister. I know you.”

  He asked again, “What do you think I did?”

  “It was you. You killed her.”

  He laughed loudly. Too loudly, she thought.

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I found it,” she said, her voice just a whisper.

  “Found what?”

  “Your shirt. With blood on it.”

  More silence. “I cut myself shaving.”

  “No. You killed her.”

  There was silence on the phone, just the sound of her brother breathing. Finally, she asked, “Are you still there?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. You’re my brother. I love you. Just be careful, that’s all.”

  “I always am.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  A week after Osgood moved in to Kenny’s Place, Dani called him. “How are you finding things?”

  “Everything is strange to me.”

  “Like what?”

  “The TVs are so big. It’s like a movie theater. And the phones are so small. And . . .” He paused. “I’m not used to being with other people. They’re nice, though. They try to help me. Especially Mrs. Shore. And Doris.”

  “Who’s Doris?”

  “A lady. She talks to me.”

  “Is she one of the residents?”

  “Yes.”

  It had been a long time since Osgood had interacted with a woman. A friendship with Doris could be very good for him—it could help bring out the socialization skills he’d need to live outside prison. Or, it could be very bad—engendering in him more excitement than he could handle at this time.

  “Have you done anything special since you got out?”

  “Mrs. Shore took a few of us to a movie.”

  “That’s great. What did you see?”

  “It was a new Star Wars movie. I don’t remember the name.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “It was really good. And it was in three-D. I’d never seen that before.”

  “What else have you done?”

  “I go for a walk every day. And last Saturday, there was a high school football game not too far from the house. It was good, but I really miss baseball. Maybe I’ll still be free in the spring, and I can watch the games on TV.”

  That was Dani’s hope as well. “Has your father come by yet?”

  “No.”

  Dani wanted to scream at the man. They’d had a deal. She wanted more than money from Harry. She wanted him to support his son, not just financially but emotionally. Jack should know there was someone
in the world who cared about him. Although his absence made it clear he didn’t.

  She chatted a bit more, then hung up. Not five minutes passed before her assistant buzzed her to say that ADA Chuck Davies was on the phone.

  “Tell me you have good news for me, Chuck.”

  “I do. The DNA excluded all three of the men. And”—he paused—“it pointed to someone else. A guy we caught for raping another woman in her home, in the same county, two years later.”

  Dani smiled. The magic bullet had worked again. If only DNA were available in every case. It certainly would have helped Osgood if the bite mark on Braden’s arm had left saliva. But, with her arm submerged in the creek for more than twenty-four hours, any saliva that might have been there was washed away.

  “So, you’ll join me on a motion to dismiss the convictions?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you, Chuck. I wish every prosecutor cared about justice more than racking up wins.”

  “Oh, I think most do. Every profession has a few bad apples.”

  As Dani hung up, she couldn’t help but think the legal profession had more than its fair share of those.

  Tommy was just packing up to head home when a call came from Captain Cannon.

  “Have you seen Bonetti yet?” Tommy asked.

  “Just got back from interviewing him.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. His memory wasn’t any better for me than for you. But Tommy, I still think you’re grabbing at straws. There’s no reason to think he’s responsible for the Braden murder.”

  “He was in prison for raping a girl.”

  “Braden wasn’t raped. And rape isn’t murder.”

  “Still—it’s a violent crime.”

  “He claims the girl’s father pushed the prosecution.”

  “Are you going to speak to the girl?”

  Cannon hesitated before answering. “Look, I told you I’d check out Bonetti. I did. That’s the end, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “At least give me the name of the girl. I’ll check her out.”

  “You know I can’t do that. They keep the names of rape victims private for a reason. I’m not going to violate that privacy because you’re off on some fool’s errand.”

  Tommy’s frustration was palpable as he hung up and left the office. If Cannon wouldn’t help him, he’d have his source track down the girl’s name. He knew Dani hated it when he went outside accepted lines, and using his hacker source was definitely in the no-no column. But he wouldn’t have found Bonetti without him.

  On his drive home, he kept thinking about Kelly Braden. He didn’t want to focus only on Bonetti and exclude other possibilities. That’s what the police often did: hone in on one suspect and forget to do their jobs. He still liked Johnson for it, but he shouldn’t stop with him, either. Since he and Dani were convinced Osgood was innocent, he needed to expand the search for possible suspects. Bonetti was one, Johnson another, but he needed to start from the beginning. Go back to Kelly’s friends, mine them for details of Kelly’s life. Whom she hung out with, who wanted to hang out with her but was excluded. Who didn’t like her. Who liked her too much. It was only a few weeks until the new trial. He needed to give Dani ammunition for it.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Thank goodness for the Internet. It made life easy in so many ways. Although he didn’t learn the exact address Jack Osgood had gone to after his release from prison, he learned enough. He found out that Osgood went to a group home in Atlanta. From that, he discovered only three such homes. One a halfway house for prisoners just paroled, the other two for developmentally disabled adults. He tried each, pretending to be a reporter. The first two said he wasn’t there; the third, that he wasn’t available for an interview. Bingo. Although he preferred small towns, he’d make an exception if it meant Osgood’s proximity would turn the police’s spotlight Osgood’s way. Osgood had taken the fall for him once. If he chose carefully, Osgood could take the fall again. It seemed serendipitous that the resurrection of his urge coincided with Osgood’s release from prison.

  He’d gone for so many years, keeping his craving in check. Only once after Osgood’s conviction did he weaken, and that was more than fifteen years ago. Since then, with a wife and children of his own, he’d controlled it. He wondered why it had come back so strong again. Was it just because of the investigator? Or was it because he was now middle-aged, saddled with a mortgage and credit-card debt, and feeling weighed down by responsibility? The feeling of empowerment that surged through him at that moment when the girl’s eyes locked on his own, when she knew her life was in his hands, when he made the decision to end it—the memory of that feeling had kept him awake at night these last few weeks. Maybe he just needed one more time, one more kill, and it would satisfy him. Maybe.

  He told his wife he’d be gone for the week, traveling for his job. The first two days, he watched the group home, watched for Osgood. The house looked like every other one on the block, maybe just a bit larger. A white, vinyl-sided, two-story colonial with a manicured lawn and blue shutters framing the front windows, the color matching the front door. Each day Osgood left the house and took a walk. That’s good, he thought. He can leave the house and go out on his own. That was important.

  The next day, he parked his car a few blocks away and waited for the school bus from the high school. The first day, no one got off that was worthy of him, so he quickly got in his car and followed the bus to its next stop, and then the one after. It was at the third stop that he spotted a potential target—long blonde hair and a trim figure, just like Kelly’s. He wasn’t close enough to see the color of her eyes, but he would’ve bet they were blue. He watched to see the house she went into, then waited to hear which room the loud music came from. It was always the same with teenagers, he thought. Straight into the room, slam the door, and turn on the music. She lived in a two-story, her bedroom on the second floor. He would have preferred a ranch. He decided to wait another day, start following the school bus a little farther away from the group home, maybe find a girl just as good who lived in a one-story.

  As soon as she stepped off the school bus the next day, his breath caught. The same blonde hair and trim figure as the others, but this one wore a cheerleader’s uniform, just as he’d seen Kelly wear. He knew it had to be her, even if she lived in a two-story, but when he followed her home and saw her walk into a ranch house, it confirmed that he was meant to do this once more. He was meant to take her life.

  CHAPTER

  32

  What’s that?” Jack asked Doris, pointing to a screen on her lap.

  “It’s an iPad.”

  Jack picked the beautiful, strange thing up and turned it over and around. “What does it do?”

  “Lots. You can look up almost anything. You can play games on it. You can read books on it. You can even watch movies on it.”

  Jack liked Doris. Of all the residents, she was the friendliest to him and didn’t make him feel stupid when he asked her questions. She was pretty, too. She had a heart-shaped face, with wide-set brown eyes that always looked friendly. Her brown hair was shiny and matched the color of her eyes. She wasn’t heavy, but she was a big woman, with broad shoulders and wide hips. He thought that fit with him, since he was a big man. She was younger than he was, by at least ten years, but that didn’t seem to bother her. “Can you show me how it works?”

  Doris smiled and invited him to sit next to her on the couch. For the next hour, she taught him how to use it. There were so many things he had to learn. Everything felt different from when he worked for Mr. Bennett. Everyone seemed to walk around with a phone in their hands. Even in the movie theater, when Mrs. Shore took some of them, he looked around and saw people punching letters on their phones. When they watched television in the house, someone could press a button on the remote control, and the TV show would freeze, and then magically start up again. One of the men in the house played games on the television with someone w
ho wasn’t even there. It made his head dizzy, the amount of things that were new.

  The biggest change, though, was his missing mother. Before Dani told him she’d died, he always thought of her sitting in their kitchen, baking his favorite cookies and waiting for him to come home. He missed her so much. Whenever he thought of her, his eyes would well up a little bit.

  At least Doris tried to make him feel better. He felt comfortable with her, more comfortable than he’d ever felt with the girls in high school. Yes, he liked Doris a lot.

  Once more, Tommy’s hacker had come through for him. He’d just given Tommy the name of the victim raped by Axel Bonetti. He was in luck. Although the rape had occurred when Becky Rostoff was a coed at Emory University in Atlanta, she now lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, just on the other side of the Holland Tunnel. He and Dani had already racked up high expenses on this case. He knew Bruce would frown on another flight for something that was just a hunch. Now, he’d be able to drive to her home.

  When he was finished at work, Tommy called Patty to let her know he’d be home late, then retrieved his car from the parking lot and headed west to the tunnel. When he got close to it, traffic slowed to a crawl. Par for the course. It was always impossible getting out of Manhattan after 4:00 p.m. Sometimes even after 3:00 p.m. He inched his way forward, the radio blasting classic rock to drown out the honking all around him. He never understood why drivers bothered to honk their horns when it was clear the cars in front weren’t able to go any faster. Still, in New York City, it was commonplace.

  He finally got through the tunnel and made his way to Rostoff’s apartment building, a new high-rise that overlooked the Hudson River. He hadn’t called in advance. He suspected she’d be reluctant to dredge up something so unpleasant from her past, and he didn’t want to give her the chance to brush him off. Still, when he saw the building, he knew he’d have to get past a doorman.

  He parked his car, then walked over to the entryway. A doorman held open the door, which led to a desk in the lobby with a concierge behind it. “I’m here to see Becky Rostoff,” Tommy said.