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“Too risky. The police are reluctant to give a platform to a murderer. The FBI only released the Unabomber’s manifesto in order to generate leads when they’d run out of options,” Jo said.
Bernard pointed to her. “That must be it then—they want someone hungry enough to push their agenda.”
“But why not carpet-bomb the media with the texts?” Lopez said. “Everyone they can get their hands on. That’d at least help justify the cost of dumping a burner every time they need to get a message out.”
“And what are they going to do, threaten everyone? No, they wanted to give an advantage to one person, to guarantee that person had motive to react to the texts.” Jo scoured Bernard’s face, and made a quick decision. “After you told us about the other texts earlier, we looked into your background.”
“You don’t say,” Bernard said.
Jo recapped what they’d learned. “You moved to Buffalo for university and got married there. After you graduated, you were a jack-of-all-trades for a small paper. In 2018 you left that job, divorced your husband, and your sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. If I had to guess at the causal order of those things, I’d say your marriage wasn’t great, you had ambitions for a better career, and when your sister got sick, you reevaluated your life, pulled up roots, and moved back here to be with her.”
Bernard tilted her head at Jo. “All that in less than a day. I see why you made detective.”
“Once back here you freelanced. And a recurring topic we found among those pieces was Cooper Ossokov.”
The significance of the name settled on Bernard quickly. “Sandra Ashville led his prosecution. And the judge was Winnie Sakurai.”
“You win the bonus round.” Lopez shot her a look as she boxed up her tamales.
“Your articles about Ossokov all had an underlying passion rather than the professional neutrality of your other articles. Given this”—Jo gestured to Bernard’s phone—“I need to know why that is.”
Bernard seemed to consider her answer, then took a deep breath. “No offense, but we all know the justice system isn’t perfect, and even less perfect for some of us. I support innocence projects for that reason, so when I realized there was a case regarding someone from my own home county who’d been wrongly incarcerated, I decided to do what I could to help.”
Jo pushed down her knee-jerk reaction. She was well aware of the problems with the justice system, and was a strong advocate for reform. But it was like family—you might want to strangle them, but when an outsider criticized them, your first instinct was to defend.
She cleared her throat. “I found your take on it interesting. You were almost more concerned about justice for the other people impacted than you were for him.”
Lopez sat forward in her chair. “I read a few of those articles myself. You basically called out the families of the murdered women and told them they had a moral obligation to sue.”
Bernard’s chin lifted. “I surely did, and I still think they should.”
“What we do isn’t an exact science.” Lopez’s face went taut. “Should people sue every time we aren’t able to put someone behind bars before they kill again?”
Bernard’s gaze flitted around the table before she answered. “No, of course not. In Ossokov’s case, your unit made mistakes. Actual errors.”
Now Marzillo’s face turned dangerous. “You’re referring to the purported cross-contamination of the blood evidence.”
Bernard’s eyes flicked between them all. “I’m sure it’s easy to accidentally touch something you shouldn’t when running a variety of tests, and I understand we’re all human. But don’t you think when someone’s freedom hangs in the balance, someone should be held accountable?”
Marzillo sat disturbingly still. “Do you know how these tests are run?”
“I don’t,” Bernard said, palms up. “But I’d love to learn.”
“The first thing you should know is that I don’t test DNA in my lab; specialty labs do that. And depending on the backlog we have, which is usually considerable, it’s often outsourced to facilities that are privately owned. Nothing whatsoever to do with the law enforcement agency in question.”
Bernard’s chin bobbed. “I did know that.”
“And do you know who ran the test in Ossokov’s case?” Marzillo asked, still not moving.
“I don’t.”
“Don’t you think that, if your argument is whoever made that mistake should be held financially responsible, that piece of information would be a crucial place to start?”
“Fair enough.” Bernard shifted in her seat. “But I’m fighting for a principle that transcends this one case.”
Lopez took over. “If you want to fight for that principle, fight for more funding dedicated to adequate resources to enable accurate, timely evidence processing,” Lopez said. “All over the country there are funding shortages and backlogs, so bad detectives and CSIs have to pick and choose what tests they request.”
Bernard nodded vigorously. “The backlog of rape kits across the country is horrifying. I wrote several articles about that when I was freelancing, too, because it’s absolutely shameful, especially when you’re up against statutes of limitations. Which is another ridiculous truth—how does Massachusetts still have a fifteen-year statute of limitations on rape?”
