“Uh, yes?”
“The kind you’d wear to ride a motorcycle?”
“Maybe?He wasn’t carrying a helmet or anything.”
“There was a Harley parked in the visitor lot,” Dawson said.“A Softail or a Fat Boy, looked like.It was there when we arrived, but when I came back from postering, it was gone.Are you thinking there might be a connection between the guy in Sophy’s apartment building and Raelene Holtz’s ‘bodyguard’?”
“Possibly.But it gets weirder.She filed the petition for the police file on February twentieth, but the first time she met him was on February sixteenth in the hospital.To make a filing like that one, she’d have to investigate the facts, review the available evidence, draft the motion, and get whatever approvals she needed from Sykes.Does five days—including a weekend—seem like a reasonable timeline for that?”
Finally, a question I knew the answer to.“Nuh-uh.Maybe it’s different for pro bono work, but Ridge drew out the process for as long as possible because then he could bill more hours.He’d take months to file a petition.”
“How do you know she didn’t make more visits to Levi?”Dawson asked.“What if the formal appointment came later?”
Alexa coughed into her hand.“Visitor logs.”
“Dammit, Alexa.”
“The Justice Project is a not-for-profit.They must get a hundred applications a month for representation, and I checked out their past cases—they only take the ones they think they can win.”
We all looked at each other.Why would they take Levi’s case?Everyone said it was cut-and-dried, that there were no doubts about his guilt.The only other good suspect was Justin, but Justin had a good heart.I wasn’t sure of much in life, but I was certain of that.
“This is fucked up,” he said.
“Did you know you can’t just show up at the prison if you want to visit an inmate?”Alexa asked.
“It isn’t something I’ve given much thought to.”
“Well, you have to be on the inmate’s visitor list, and this is where it gets more interesting.Levi only has one person on his list other than Raelene.Her name is Serafina Hennessy, and he added her at the end of last year, not as a legal representative, just as a regular visitor.Does that name ring any bells?”
Dawson shook his head.“Can’t say it does.”
“Exactly.We lived with Levi for two years, give or take, and he never mentioned a woman named Serafina.So where did she come from?”
“No idea.”
“England.”
“England?”
“Yup.She moved from England to New York two years ago, and she was dating a cellist named Rudd Bester.Her BuzzHub shows pictures of them together until last October, and then Bester popped up in photos with his hand on Zara Michaels’s ass.”
“Zara Michaels, the rock star?”
Alexa turned her laptop to face us, and sure enough, it wastheZara Michaels.Rudd Bester looked like a cross between a goth and an investment banker.
“Yikes,” I muttered.
“So Bester possibly does the dirty, and then Hennessy begins visiting Levi.Which didn’t make much sense until Ari saw her walking into the offices of the Justice Project this morning.”
“To meet with Raelene Holtz?”
Alexa shrugged.“She was carrying a laptop bag, and she hasn’t left again.”
“You think she’s working there?”
“Maybe.She also has a shadow on a motorcycle, and the guy knows Raelene’s pet thug because the two of them are chatting in the parking lot.”
“Wait, so Serafina Hennessy is the lawyer?”Violet asked.“Then why is Raelene Holtz’s name on the filings?”
