My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(49)

He’d also had professional concerns. Tracy was not his client. Edmund House was his client. But Tracy had all the information Dan needed to prepare properly for the post-conviction relief hearing, should a court of appeal grant House that right. Under the circumstances, Dan thought it best to remove any undue pressure on Tracy and bow out of their date until they were both in a better place and time.

Sherlock grunted and twitched, asleep beside Rex on the throw rug in front of Dan’s desk. Dan had begun bringing the dogs to work after Calloway’s threat to impound them. He didn’t mind. They were good company, except for the fact that every noise caused them to bolt upright and race into the reception area barking. For the moment, at least, they were quiet.

He refocused on Vance Clark’s Opposition to the Petition for Post-Conviction Relief. His intuition that Clark had filed his opposition early in order to insinuate to the Court of Appeals that the petition had no merit had been correct. Clark had kept his arguments simple. He’d stated that the petition failed to show any impropriety in the prior proceedings that would warrant a hearing to determine if Edmund House should get a new trial. He reminded the Court that House had been the first individual in the state of Washington to be convicted of first-degree murder based solely on circumstantial evidence because House had refused to tell authorities where he’d buried Sarah Crosswhite’s body, though he’d confessed to killing her. Clark had written that House had instead tried to use the information as leverage to force a plea, and that he should not now benefit from that strategy. Had House advised authorities of the location of Sarah Crosswhite’s body twenty years ago, Clark concluded, any exculpatory evidence could have been introduced during his trial. Of course House had not done so because it would have been conclusive evidence that he’d committed the crime. Either way, House was guilty. He’d received a fair trial. Nothing that Dan had introduced in his petition for post-conviction relief changed that.

Not a bad argument, except it was completely circular, premised upon a court accepting that House had confessed to the murder and used the location of the body as leverage for a lesser sentence. DeAngelo Finn had done a poor job cross-examining Calloway on the lack of a signed or taped confession, which would have been any defense attorney’s first plan of attack. Finn had compounded his mistake by putting House on the witness stand to deny confessing, which had put his credibility at stake and allowed the prosecution to successfully argue that House’s prior rape conviction was now fair game, allowing them to question him about it at his trial. That had been the death knell. Once a rapist, always a rapist. Finn should have moved to exclude the introduction of House’s alleged confession as circumspect due to the lack of any supporting evidence and highly prejudicial to House’s case, avoiding the entire fiasco. Even if the motion had been denied, House would have established strong grounds for an appeal. Finn’s failure to do so, regardless of the exculpatory evidence found at the grave, was itself a basis for a new trial.

Sherlock rolled and lifted his head. A second later, someone rang the reception bell.

Sherlock’s nails clicked on the hardwood, Rex close behind, followed by a chorus of barks and baying. Dan checked his watch, started for the door, then paused to pick up the autographed Ken Griffey, Jr., baseball bat that he’d also started bringing to the office.





[page]CHAPTER 35





Sherlock and Rex had pinned an African-American man with his back against the door. The man looked and sounded seriously intimidated. “The sign said to ring the bell.”

“Off,” Dan said, and both dogs obediently stopped barking and sat. “How’d you get in?”

“The door was unlocked.”

Dan had taken Sherlock and Rex out earlier in the evening to conduct their nightly business. “Who are you?”

The man eyed the dogs. “My name is George Bovine, Mr. O’Leary.” Dan recognized the name from Tracy’s files even before Bovine continued, “Edmund House raped my daughter, Annabelle.”

Dan leaned the baseball bat against the side of the reception desk. Thirty years earlier, Edmund House had been convicted on a charge of sex with a minor and served a six-year sentence. George Bovine had testified during the sentencing phase of House’s trial, after his conviction for the murder of Sarah Crosswhite. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”

“I drove from Eureka.”

“California?”

Bovine nodded. Soft-spoken, he looked to be in his late sixties, with a gray, close-cropped beard and studious tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a maroon golf cap and a V-neck sweater beneath a jacket.

“Why?”

“Because this is a matter to be handled in person. I intended to try to see you tomorrow morning. I only stopped by to make sure I had the correct address, and saw the lights in the window. The door to the building was unlocked, and when I came upstairs, I noticed the lights that I’d seen from the street were coming from your suite.”

“Fair enough, but it doesn’t answer my question. Why did you drive all this way, Mr. Bovine?”

“Sheriff Calloway called me. He says you’re attempting to secure a new trial for Edmund House.”

Dan began to understand where this was headed, though he was surprised Bovine had been so forthright. “How do you know the Sheriff?”