My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(79)

Clark rose. “The State does not, Your Honor.”

Meyers nodded. “Then we’ll be in recess.” Without further explanation why he had recessed instead of summarily ending the day’s proceedings, Meyers quickly left the bench. The moment the door leading to his chambers closed, the courtroom burst to life, and the media came at Tracy. Just as swiftly, she moved for the exit before it could become completely blocked and saw Finlay Armstrong clearing a path to facilitate her escape. “I need some fresh air,” she said.

“I know a place.”

Together they descended a back staircase and stepped out a side door onto a concrete deck on the south side of the building. Tracy vaguely recalled standing on the deck during Edmund House’s trial.

“I just need a minute alone,” Tracy said.

“You’ll be okay?” Finlay asked. “You want me to guard the door?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll let you know when the judge returns.”

It was numbingly cold, but Tracy was perspiring and her breathing labored. The finality and the magnitude of the proceeding stunned even her. She needed a moment to take it all in.

Scott’s testimony that the hair samples found in the red Chevy belonged to both Tracy and to Sarah raised serious doubts about the integrity of that evidence. Then there was the added fact that the earrings presented at House’s trial had not been worn by Sarah the day she was abducted, as well as the presence of plastic and carpet fibers calling into serious question Calloway’s testimony that House had confessed to killing and burying Sarah quickly. Not to mention the job Dan had done discrediting Hagen. It seemed a foregone conclusion that Meyers would grant Edmund House a new trial. Now Tracy needed to think ahead. She needed to get the investigation into her sister’s death reopened and she needed to get people talking. In her experience, nothing was more likely to cause conspirators to begin cannibalizing one another than the very real threat of criminal prosecution and going to prison.

The frigid cold, initially invigorating, began to burn her cheeks. The tips of her fingers had become numb. She started for the door and found Maria Vanpelt watching her.

“Will you be making a statement, Detective Crosswhite?”

Tracy didn’t answer.

“I understand now what you meant about this being personal. I’m sorry about your sister. I overstepped.”

Tracy mustered a nod.

“Do you have any idea who’s responsible?”

“Not with any certainty.”

Vanpelt stepped toward her. “It’s television, Detective. It’s about ratings. It was never personal.”

But Tracy knew it was personal, for her and for Vanpelt. A homicide detective getting a murderer a new trial was good television. When the victim was the detective’s sister, it was great television. And that meant not just better ratings for the station, but exposure for Vanpelt, and exposure was everything to someone like her.

“For you it’s about ratings,” Tracy said. “Not for me or my family. Not for this community. The impact of a murder is very real. This is my life. It was my sister’s life and my parents’ life. It was Cedar Grove’s life. What played out here twenty years ago impacted us all. It still does.”

“Perhaps an exclusive to tell your side of the story.”

“My side of the story?”

“A twenty-year quest that looks as though it’s coming to an end.”

Tracy considered the first snowflakes falling from an ever more angry-looking sky, a sky that gave every indication that the weathermen had gotten it correct this time. She thought of Kins’s and Dan’s questions about what she would do when the hearing had ended.

“That’s what you don’t understand, what you’ll never understand. When the hearing ends, you’ll move on to the next story. But I don’t have that luxury. It will never be over, not for me and not for this community. We’ve all just learned how to live with the pain,” she said.

Tracy stepped past Vanpelt and pulled open the door, heading inside, eager to hear what Meyers had to say.



Tracy sensed a change in Judge Meyers’s demeanor as he retook the bench, shuffled pages, and moved a stack of documents. He picked up a yellow pad, holding it at an angle and looking out at the half-empty gallery over the rim of reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Many had decided to leave and get home before the storm hit.

“I took the opportunity to check the weather report as well as to review the law to confirm the extent of my authority over these proceedings,” Meyers said. “First things first. I’ve confirmed that a severe winter storm is scheduled to hit this evening. Knowing that, I cannot in good conscience delay these proceedings a single day further. I am, therefore, prepared to issue my preliminary findings of fact and conclusions of law.”

Tracy looked to Dan. So did Edmund House. Both Dan and Vance Clark had cleared their tables during the break. Like those who’d left the gallery, they’d anticipated the proceedings had ended for the day, except for Meyers perhaps providing them with an estimated timeline for rendering his decision. Now they scrambled to get out notepads and pens. Meyers only briefly accommodated them.

“In my more than thirty years on the bench, I have never been witness to such a seeming miscarriage of justice. I do not know for certain what transpired some twenty years ago—that will be a matter, I presume, for the Justice Department to decide, along with the fate of those responsible. I do know the defense has proven in this proceeding that there are substantial questions as to the validity of the evidence put forward to convict the defendant, Edmund House, in 1993. While my written findings will detail those seeming improprieties in detail, I take this opportunity now because I cannot in good conscience send this defendant back to prison for even one more day.”