Page 6 of Hard Heart

On Wednesday, we’d celebrated with fizz and cupcakes when Wendell Mackie was exonerated after three years of work. He’d been locked up for twenty-seven years until DNA evidence had finally proven him innocent. In this case, there would be no proper justice—the real culprit had passed away as a free man seven years ago after serving just six months in prison for an unrelated offence. The story left me feeling sick. Wendell would get compensation, but no amount of money could make up for those lost years. He’d missed seeing his daughter grow up, he’d been unable to walk her down the aisle, and he had two grandchildren he’d never even met.

I tapped my legal pad. “Got it right here. I’ve drafted letters to go to the definite noes for you to review, and I’ve split out the most promising applications.”

Raelene uncapped her own pen. “Okay, give me a rundown of those.”

“Elias Jones, fifty-seven years old, convicted of rape and murder. The crime took place in Culpeper, and he says he was home asleep at the time, but an eyewitness placed him near the scene. The eyewitness later went on to marry Jones’s ex-wife.”

“Huh. How about that?”

“Jones was convicted by a unanimous verdict from an all-white jury. He claims he didn’t know the victim, and notes there was semen found on her underwear that the prosecution used as evidence for the rape. It was tested for blood type but never for DNA.”

“Good work—that’s exactly the kind of case we can try to help with.”

“Next is Sam Stevens. Samantha. She was convicted of shaking her baby to death, and she confessed after being questioned for three days straight without food, sleep, or appropriate legal representation. She was eighteen at the time, and now she’s thirty-two. A cousin of hers has recently been diagnosed with Menkes Disease, which is a congenital disorder with symptoms that can be mistaken for Shaken Baby Syndrome. It also runs in families.”

“You should speak with Ryan about that one. He has a similar case, although not with the same disorder. A young mom browbeaten into confessing without an attorney present.”

“Ryan’s in court today?”

“He is, but he’ll be back on Monday.”

“Then I’ll speak with him next week. Third, we have Javier Montenegro. He claims he was framed by the lead detective, who bribed his cellmate into testifying against him. The detective was later fired for framing another murder suspect, plus he was convicted of perjury.” I blew out a breath. “Those are the three. There’s another file with the ‘unlikelies.’ I focused on the cases with the best chance of success for the first pass.”

“In a perfect world, we’d investigate all of them thoroughly, but we have to do what we can with what we have. Are you happy drafting FOIA requests for those three? The police will probably deny them, but we have to try.”

“I can do that.”

“And we’ll need to request the trial records from each Circuit Court Clerk. They’ll charge for the transcripts, but if you speak with Janice in accounting, she’ll make the payments. That’s everything?”

I hesitated. “Uh, there might be a fourth case. It’s…interesting.”

“What do you mean, interesting?”

“It’s another murder case. Levi Sykes, thirty-three years old, possibly a Satanist, convicted of raping and killing his roommate. She was a sophomore at Georgetown.”

Raelene sucked in a breath. “Possibly a Satanist?”

“That’s what the prosecution claimed, but when you look at the bigger picture, it doesn’t entirely fit.”

Sykes’s application stood out for three reasons. One, he seemed less concerned about his own freedom and more worried that a killer was walking around free, just waiting to strike again. Two, he claimed to know who really murdered Ruby Costello. Three, he was an actual genius. His form was more detailed than the others and set out like a scientific paper with an abstract, introduction, discussion, and conclusion. The grammar was perfect, and there were no spelling errors, unless you counted all the missing U’s and overuse of the letter Z. He’d obviously spent a considerable amount of time concocting his theories, even if he hadn’t presented any actual evidence.

“Doesn’t fit in what way?”

“He was a scientist studying for a PhD—also at Georgetown—at the time Costello died. Not the sort of person who’s usually into devil worship.”

“You’d be surprised, honey.”

“There’s a limited suspect pool, and he claims one of his other roommates is the real killer.”

“Any DNA evidence?”

“Yes, but he claims that came from consensual sex earlier on the same day.”

“We don’t take questionable consent cases.”

“This isn’t questionable consent. It’s him claiming they had perfectly normal sex, and then a third party raped her afterwards. He says he was framed.”

“By one of the other roommates?”