Vindicate (Recovered Innocence #1)(2)

“I wasn’t going to tell you this because I knew what you’d say, but I think I might have a new lead.”

He holds up a hand. “Stop it. Stop it, right now.”

I ignore him and continue. “I think I found a witness who could—”

“Damn it, Cora! I told you to stop.”

His outburst has a couple of the guards coming off the wall where they’ve been leaning and looking at him hard. Beau waves them back and takes a deep breath, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“My life is ruined,” he finally says. I hate it when he talks like this. I refuse to believe that he’ll never get out of here. I refuse to believe that the criminal justice system that failed him won’t ever redeem itself by righting its wrong and setting him free.

“Your life isn’t,” he continues. “I don’t want any more of this to touch you. For f*ck’s sake, let it go.” He leans across the table at me. His look and tone turn threatening. “Let it go.” Then he gets up from the table and heads for the door that will take him back to his cell, ending our visit.

“Happy birthday!” I call after him. “I love you!”

He doesn’t respond or acknowledge me in any way. His mind is already back on the cell block. I’ve screwed up this visit and his birthday. I have to find a way to make it up to him, but I know nothing short of getting him out of this hellhole will make it right.

As I stand to leave, I wonder why I bother with these visits. He never seems to enjoy them, is never glad to see me. If anything, he appears to be annoyed and inconvenienced by my visits. He’s given up on himself just as our mother, then our father, gave up on him. Maybe, I think, as I burst out of the prison and into the blazing mid-afternoon sun, I keep up the visits to give us both something we haven’t had in a long, long time—hope.

But hope is a dangerous thing to court when there’s nothing to support it. Sometimes it almost feels as if I’m tipping headfirst into a kind of vicious insanity where I keep doing the same things over and over, expecting different results. It’s no way to live, but it’s my life. And it’s Beau’s until I can figure out a way to get him out of here.

I climb into my car and curse its lack of air-conditioning. I have the money to fix it, but it’s not my money—it’s Beau’s. So I roll down the windows and crank up the radio over the sound of the wind and head for home.

Some NPR talking head begins the hour with one of those feel-good stories that people like to repost over and over on social media. About how there really is good in the world and good in people. But with the prison behind me, and a long, hot drive ahead of me, I’m finding it hard to believe there’s anything good or just here or anywhere else in the world.

Something the host says has me cranking up the sound on my crappy radio as high as it will go.

“—your work with The Freedom Project led to the release of Maurice Battle after he spent nearly forty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

I jerk the wheel and skid to a stop on the shoulder. A cloud of dust comes up around the car and into my rolled-down windows. I cough, scrambling for the notebook I always keep in my bag, as the man being interviewed answers.

“Our agency takes on one pro bono case per year. We devoted as much time, energy, and effort toward this case as we do all of our cases. We’re thrilled that our work led to the exoneration of Mr. Battle.”

“What agency?” I scream at the radio, my pen poised to write it down.

They talk a little bit more about the case and the evidence the agency found that made all the difference, and I feel like I was meant to hear this story. That my fight with my brother was part of a grander scheme that put me in my car at the exact moment when the information I needed to help Beau would be handed to me.

The story is winding down and I still don’t know who this magician is who freed a wrongfully convicted man. A truck honks at me just as the host is thanking his guest and I catch only the last part of his sentence before they cut to the next segment.

“—Nash Security and Investigation.”

“What city? Where?” I yell at the radio. Something about getting lower insurance rates that I couldn’t give two shits about.

Nash Security and Investigation. I’m thankful to have that much, at least, as I grab my cellphone to test my Google-fu and see if I can figure out where in the U.S. this Nash agency is. But I’m in the middle of the godforsaken California desert and there’s no service.

I stuff my phone into my bag and pull back out onto the freeway, thinking about what I just learned. I never look for signs or believe in fate or angels or anything I can’t touch, taste, see, smell, or hear, but I can’t ignore the feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that I’m onto something big here. That finally there might be someone who can help me help Beau.





Chapter 2


Leo


The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since my dad was interviewed on NPR. Mostly it’s a lot of people wanting to get out of traffic tickets, child support, and probation. An occasional sob story gets thrown in the mix now and then, and I can see dad wanting to help, but the fact is he can’t pay Savannah, Al, Jerry, himself, and me if every case he takes on we do for free.

Not that I get paid much. I’m supposed to be learning the business from the ground up so I can take over when Dad retires. This means coffee runs, filing, trash duty, and the occasional fast-food pickup. Only Dad hasn’t taken the hint that I’m not going to law school just so I can stake out cheating spouses and fraudulent disability claims.