Girls Like Us(53)

“Take a seat, hon.”

I nod in thanks. I’m surprised to find Ann-Marie Marshall already nestled in the corner. She smiles up at me, her red lips parting over perfect white teeth.

“Did I startle you?”

“No,” I say, though she did. “Nice place to meet. All very cloak-and-dagger.”

She shrugs. “I have my spots. In my line of work, it’s sometimes complicated to find a good place to chat.”

“I know the feeling.” I slide into the booth opposite her. I eye her cup of steaming black coffee. The place is cold, and I cross my arms against my chest, wishing I’d brought more clothes to Suffolk County. I thought I’d be here for just a few days. But this is my second week, and my wardrobe of one pair of jeans and my father’s old sweatshirts feels thin. The waitress comes over, a pencil tucked behind her ear.

“Can I get you something, hon?”

“Coffee would be great.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black is fine. And hot, please.”

“Coming up.” She disappears and returns almost instantly with a mug and the pot. She tops off Ann-Marie’s cup before whisking away again.

“I’m glad you called,” Ann-Marie says once we’re alone. She dumps a packet of sugar into her mug and stirs. “You know, I’ve thought about reaching out to you in the past. But I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.”

“I wouldn’t have. Frankly, I’ve always hated your guts.”

She smiles, unfazed. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t, then. Why did you call me?”

“I saw you at the news conference with Glenn Dorsey. You mentioned Sean Gilroy. From my mother’s case.”

Her face hardens. “If you’re here to tell me to shut up about that case, you could have done that over the phone. And I would’ve told you the same thing I tell the SCPD. Absolutely not.”

“That’s not what I want. To the contrary, actually.”

That catches her by surprise. “You want to know about the Gilroy case?”

“You said there was forensic evidence that contradicted Gilroy’s statement.”

“There was. The coroner’s report stated that your mother’s assailant was left-handed. Gilroy is ambidextrous. He writes with his left but plays sports with his right. So it stands to reason that he would have used his right hand if he was to stab anyone.”

“That’s conjecture.”

“It is. But the forensic pathologist agreed with me. Conveniently, his entire report was lost shortly after the trial. And then he retired to Florida. Or at least, that’s what I was told. Anyway, he became unreachable. That seems to happen to a lot of people in Suffolk County. They just disappear.” She spreads her fingers wide as if to say poof.

“Gilroy’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon,” I point out. “Were the prints from his right hand or his left?”

“His left. Look, I don’t doubt he picked up the knife with his left hand. He said he did. But it’s possible he did so after he’d found the body. You know he recanted once, right? He said he saw her through the window and that she was already dead, and he broke into the house in order to help her.”

“And you believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe. I still don’t know who killed your mother. But I don’t believe Gilroy’s confession. It was filled with small inconsistencies. The timeline didn’t quite match up. He couldn’t explain how he got ahold of the knife, and he said he stabbed her once by accident, when in fact she’d been stabbed multiple times. I think he was pressured into confessing, and then any evidence that contradicted it disappeared. Maybe Gilroy was the killer. But that case was never as neat and clean as Glenn Dorsey wanted people to think it was.”

“But why? What possible motive would Glenn Dorsey have for framing Sean Gilroy?”

Marshall sighs. “I can think of a few. I’m sure you can, too.”

“You think my father killed her.”

“You’d know better than I would about that. You were his alibi after all.”

I shift against the hard seat and wonder if coming here was a mistake. “I wouldn’t have lied about something like that.”

“He was your father. You were young. Maybe you didn’t even know he was gone.”

“We were camping in a two-person tent, thirty miles from our house. I would have noticed if he had left. And he wouldn’t have abandoned me in the middle of the woods at night.”

“Fair enough.” Ann-Marie raises her palms. “Look, Nell. Can I call you Nell? I’m not saying Gilroy didn’t kill your mother. He very well may have. But he is still entitled to due process. I think he was intimidated into giving that testimony. I don’t believe he was properly Mirandized. I think there was substantial evidence tampering to make the whole thing go away as quickly as possible, and Gilroy didn’t have—doesn’t have—the resources and the mental wherewithal to defend himself. Dorsey decided he was the guy and he made sure he went down for it, no matter what. That’s my point. That’s always been my point.”

“So you think the SCPD is corrupt.”

“Yes, I do. Gilroy is not an isolated incident. This has been a chronic, systemic problem in Suffolk County for decades. I’ve talked to men who’ve been hit with phone books and had their testicles squeezed during interrogations. Because those things don’t leave bruises, see? I’ve talked to officers off the record in Nassau County who say it’s an open secret that the cops in Suffolk County do whatever they want, that they’re total cowboys, that they skim off the top whenever there’s a drug bust, that they accept bribes from gang leaders and drug dealers so that they can keep doing what they do, that they frame people all the time. Everyone says this has only gotten worse since Glenn Dorsey became the chief of detectives.”