Every Last Fear(74)
“Okay.”
“And I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but we need to take care of your parents’ affairs. The house, their credit cards, the will, the life insurance, the—”
“You’re right, I don’t want to talk about it,” Matt said. It came out more sharply than he’d intended, reminded him of the outrageous newspaper story from that morning suggesting he and Danny had killed their family for insurance money. He needed to shake it off. In a softer tone, he said, “After the funeral, I promise.”
Cindy looked like she was going to protest, but stopped herself. Purposefully changing the subject, she said, “So what did those assholes the Adlers want?”
She’d asked him the same thing on the car ride over, but he’d shrugged it off. “I guess they’re making a sequel,” Matt said.
Cindy’s expression turned to disgust. “I’ll never forgive myself for letting them interview me. The way they treated your father. And now they want to put everyone through it all again? It makes me sick.”
Cindy’s eyes were misty. The first sign of emotion other than irritation or anger Matt had seen in his aunt since he’d arrived in Adair. He reached across the table and put his hand on hers.
Cindy gave a sardonic smile. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Matt didn’t know what she meant by that.
“All we’ve got is a guy who doesn’t recognize us, and another guy in prison for life.” There was dark humor in her voice, masking the pain.
“No,” Matt said. “We’ve got each other.”
It was the right thing to say, the kind thing to say. But the truth was, Matt felt alone. And he wondered if he would always feel this way. Wondered if the loss and pain would always consume him. Wondered if he’d ever recover from the magnitude of it all. Eyeing his frail grandfather staring out at nothing in his beat-up La-Z-Boy, Matt decided that Cindy was right. Grandpa was lucky he’d never know the truth.
CHAPTER 46
SARAH KELLER
Since watching the video at the Adlers’ farmhouse, Keller had thought a lot about Charlotte’s cousin and the theory that Charlotte was alive. It just didn’t ring true. For one, if it wasn’t Charlotte who was murdered, who was the young woman with her skull crushed in at the creek? And how did the police and prosecutors screw that up? Charlotte’s father might have been abusing her. And she might not be the innocent cheerleader portrayed in “A Violent Nature.” But that didn’t mean she was alive. Even if she was, what would it have to do with the death of the Pines?
Still, Keller wasn’t drowning in leads. She was playing the waiting game now. Waiting for the report on the DNA sample, waiting for the report on the facial rec of the man and woman in the photo Maggie Pine had sent her brother, waiting on a report from Carlita Escobar. So, Keller decided, she might as well confirm that it was Charlotte buried at that cemetery.
Short of digging up the body, Keller thought the best place to test the theory was with those who’d lived the case. Ordinarily, she’d confer with the local prosecutors and detectives. But they’d been under attack since the documentary aired, and had circled the wagons. That left Danny’s lawyers. Not his hippie lawyer at the trial, whom the documentary painted as borderline incompetent, notwithstanding the fortune the Pine family had paid him. And not the new white-shoe appellate lawyers the Adlers found too boring to carry the documentary’s sequel. Keller wanted to talk to Louise Lester, the passionate attorney who’d taken Danny’s case before the cameras were rolling. Who by all accounts was a skilled advocate.
Keller pulled her rental car into the strip mall in North Omaha. It had a payday loan company, a Dollar Store, and a nail salon. She scanned the address on her phone to make sure it was the right place. This was it, all right. Then she saw it, at the far end, a plain storefront with a small sign that read THE INSTITUTE FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS.
Keller found Louise Lester at a cluttered desk hemmed in by piles of paperwork. The place had no walls, no separate offices or even cubicles. Just a large room with about ten workstations, the hum of chatter and clicking keyboards filling the air. It reminded Keller of an old-time pressroom.
These weren’t reporters, though. The Institute for Wrongful Convictions was staffed by volunteers—law students, retirees, social justice warriors—which was why Keller had assumed it was open on a Saturday. She felt an electricity in the room.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Keller said. She’d been saying that a lot lately.
Lester gave her a fleeting smile. She wore no makeup, and wore a threadbare suit that was too large for her frame. Keller suspected there was an attractive woman hiding in the boxy attire. Her look screamed, There are more important things than looking pretty.
“Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for the Pines,” Lester said, her tone melancholy. Like the loss wasn’t just professional.
“Did you know them well?”
“Mostly Evan. He was a real advocate for us. A wonderful man.”
“I saw him in the documentary. He was really passionate.”
Lester nodded. “Those fucking filmmakers made him seem unbalanced. I would’ve never participated if I’d known what they’d do to him. They had the nerve to ask me to help with the sequel, and I told them where they could stick their movie.” Lester took a cleansing breath, as if she were stopping herself from getting worked up. As if it were something she’d learned to do as a child to temper the fire naturally blazing through her veins. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The Adlers just aren’t my favorite people. Evan was one of the finest humans you’d ever hope to meet. He didn’t deserve what they did to him. And Judy and Ira, they used him in the worst kind of way. They couldn’t care less about him or Danny or the thousands of other wrongfully convicted.” She waved her arm around the room. “They just wanted the ratings. To hell with the truth. They just wanted to tell a good story.”