Next of Kin

by L. F. Robertson

  I remembered that exchange from the trial transcript. “Yeah. We argued that as a claim of error in Sunny’s appeal,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “I felt strongly about that. The judge’s ruling really hurt us; Eason’s testimony was the strongest evidence the DA had. We could argue away the check Sunny wrote to Betts. You don’t use a check if you’re paying someone for a murder. But Betts’s confession to Eason made everything fit. It pointed right to Sunny.”

  “How was that?” Carey asked.

  “Well, if you assume Betts was the killer,” Craig said, “the question became, who put him up to it? No one was going to believe Betts did it on his own; he didn’t have any motive to kill Ferrante. And who would hire him for something like that? He was just a dumb kid, someone you’d have mow the weeds in your field or help pull a stump—not something like this. So if it wasn’t Sunny who hired him, who did?”

  “Maybe Brittany,” I said. “The thought did occur to me back when I had Sunny’s appeal.”

  “Right. I thought of that, too. But it would have been a hard sell—she was sixteen, and Todd was twenty. And Sunny wouldn’t go there—what mother would?”

  “Todd was working for Greg’s father and brothers, wasn’t he?” Carey asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What about them?”

  “Again, what would be the motive?” Craig explained. “They’re probably better off than Greg was. Ferrantes have been ranchers on that land since the 1800s, and Bob and his sons have turned it into a very profitable concern: wine grapes, olive oil, prime beef. Put it this way—even if they wanted to get rid of Greg for some reason, they wouldn’t have to hire someone like Betts.”

  “Do you think Greg’s family will be willing to talk to us?” Carey asked.

  “It depends. Greg’s mother decided Sunny was guilty and wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Joan Simon interviewed his father and brothers, though. His father liked Sunny, as I recall. Greg’s brothers weren’t really close to Greg. I recall they thought he was a little shady. One of them told Joan in confidence that he had doubts about whether Sunny really did it. But none of them had much to say. Joan thought they were afraid of antagonizing Mrs. Ferrante. None of them testified at the trial, only Greg’s parents and his kids.”

  “Huh,” Carey said. “You’d think the DA would want them all as victim impact witnesses.”

  “Yeah. Joan said Sandy probably thought they wouldn’t say they missed him that much.”

  “You said Greg was a bit shady. What did you know about him?”

  Craig sat back in his chair and thought for a few seconds. “We got that impression, too, when we asked around. We got the feeling folks involved with him in business dealings didn’t like him. I remember we found he had some trouble with the city over some rental properties, about upkeep and such. And he’d been sued a few times over real estate deals. He was leveraged when he died, lot of mortgages, a lot of debt; after all the business creditors were paid, there wasn’t much left of the estate.” Another pause, and then he went on. “And he wasn’t a great human being on a personal level, either, is my guess. Sunny was reluctant to say anything bad about Greg, but you get hints, you know, from the way she talked about him.”

  “Was he physically abusive to her?”

  “She said no. We asked, naturally. But she was firm, said he never hit her. There was something there, though. If you ask me, the abuse was more psychological. Brittany said he was ‘mean’ to both of them, and I recall Joan Simon interviewed some friends of Sunny’s who said he bossed her around and was rude to her in public. We didn’t pursue it that much; we had to be careful what we said about Greg at the trial. You don’t want to trash the victim, usually, and talking about him treating her badly could backfire; it would just be more evidence that she had a motive to get out of the marriage and make him pay. Maybe that was a mistake; I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyone in particular who it would be helpful for us to talk to?”

  Craig thought for a minute. “I don’t know, offhand,” he answered, slowly. “Maybe Brittany, now. We didn’t talk to her much back then. Joan said it was hard to get anything out of her. She was traumatized and depressed—not surprising when you consider what she’d been through. And Sunny asked us to leave her alone; she was afraid Brittany was going to harm herself.” He paused again. “I have two daughters; I sympathized with her. Let’s see, who else might there be? Bob Ferrante Senior died a few years ago. He was in his nineties. I believe his sons, Bob Junior and Tony, are both still alive; they run the business, live outside of town on the old ranch property. And they knew Greg and Sunny. Braden, Greg’s son by his first marriage, was somehow in the picture when it happened. He was staying with the Ferrantes, and there was some scuttlebutt that he was doing drugs with Todd. And there were some young guys, friends of Todd’s, down in Beanhollow. Joan will probably be able to help you; she knew the case inside and out. Harry Wardman, my other investigator, lives here in Harrison. He’s retired now, but I run into him once in awhile. There were a lot of people we interviewed. I don’t remember all their names, but they’re probably in the files I gave you.”

  He stopped talking and reached for the bottle of water on his desk. He opened it, took a drink, closed it again, and brought his attention back to us.

  “Look.” His eyes met Carey’s and then mine. “If you find there was anything I did wrong, or didn’t do that I should have, let me know, and I’ll sign a declaration for you. I want the best for Sunny out of this. I hope you can get her a new trial; she doesn’t deserve to be where she is.” He took a breath and moved to an easier subject. “How is she doing, by the way?”

  “All right, all things considered,” I said. “We’ve seen her a couple of times recently, and she seems to be getting along well. Getting older, like all of us, but doing okay.”

  “That’s good to hear. She sends me a Christmas card every year, usually with a little note about something. I guess Brittany is married now and has a couple of kids.”

  “She told us,” I said. “Brittany stays in touch, visits her mother once or twice a year.”

  He seemed pleased to hear that. We didn’t know enough yet about the case to begin asking the tough questions, the ones about stones left unturned, what could have been done but wasn’t. Those were never comfortable conversations to have, but they were still in the future—whatever future there was between now and when the petition had to be filed. For now, I was relieved at Craig’s professionalism about the likelihood that we would at some point be making an argument that there were deficiencies in the way he had represented Sunny.

  Craig shifted in his chair, and we all stood as if on cue, including Alison, who’d been quietly taking notes. He walked around from behind his desk and shook hands with Carey and then me; there was genuine warmth in his handshake. “I wish you good luck,” he said. “If there’s anything I can help you with, let me know.” Carey and I thanked him.

  Alison, to one side, said, “Nice to meet you,” a little shyly, and turned to the door. “Here, I’ll show you the way out.” Carey and I followed her down the hallway, and I glanced through a couple of open doors: an outside office for another lawyer, smaller inside offices presumably for paralegals and secretaries. As she opened the door to the lobby, Alison said, “I really admire the work you do.”

  “We do what we can,” Carey said; and with another round of handshakes and goodbyes, we stepped out into the large, quiet room and walked toward the massive doors. “Have a good afternoon,” the receptionist said, and I nodded thanks to her over my shoulder.

  “Man, times have changed,” Carey said, outside. “Can you imagine anyone twenty years ago saying they admired what we did?”

  “No way.”

  There had been a time when telling a stranger you defended people on death row usually got you an enthusiastically vituperative lecture on why certain people should be written out of society. I remembered seeing young men at law conferen
ces wearing T-shirts that said, “Don’t tell my mother I’m a public defender; she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.” I tried to find ways of avoiding telling strangers what I did for a living. Exonerations through DNA evidence began to change people’s thinking; now, to at least some of the public, we had been elevated from shills of a system that elevated criminals over victims to noble defenders of the innocent. I reminded myself not to be cynical; most of the men I knew on the row weren’t innocent, but they benefited from the new perception, too, as people on the outside learned about the flaws of the justice system. Whatever works, I thought.

  As we reached the parking lot and Carey’s car, I asked, “What now? Anything else we can do while we’re here?”

  “Natasha got an address for Harry Wardman, Craig’s investigator,” Carey answered. “I figured we might go see if he’s around.”

  * * *

  Harry’s address was a small apartment building on a quiet street. The building wasn’t new, but its tan stucco walls and dark green window trim were freshly painted, and the landscaping around it was simple but well tended, trimmed juniper bushes and creeping rosemary studded with blue flowers and buzzing with bees. Harry’s name and apartment number were on a row of metal mailboxes next to a walkway leading to an outside staircase to the second floor. We walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell for his apartment. No one answered, and there were no sounds from inside.

  As we turned to walk downstairs, we saw a middle-aged man walking up them, carrying a pair of handle bags of groceries. “Are you looking for Harry?” he asked.

  “Yes,” we answered together.

  “You probably just missed him. He works swing shift at the Vallarta Market downtown.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “Guess we’ll try back later.”

  Despite having been an investigator, Harry didn’t appear to see any reason to be cagey about where he could be found.

  7

  That evening, we decided to try the brewpub in the Old Town. The pub was a typical example of its type: warm lighting, a lot of rough wood paneling and posters on the walls, industrial-looking tables and chairs, a blackboard with the food specials and the day’s featured drafts, and a couple of big steel fermentation tanks behind a glass wall at one end of the room. It smelled invitingly of broiling meat and french fries and rang with the shouts of servers and the voices of the happy-hour crowd, mostly young, fit, and white.

  A server, a slender young man in a white shirt, black jeans, and a black apron with the pub’s logo on it in red, met us just inside the door, and when Carey asked if there was a table where we could talk, led us to one at the opposite end of the room from the tanks.

  “How did your afternoon go?” Carey asked Natasha.

  “Sucked,” she said. “There’s no one around anymore. I found one of Sunny’s high-school teachers, but his memory’s shot. He remembered Sunny’s name, but he didn’t recognize the photo I had. He said just about everyone he knew from that time has died or retired and moved away. The body shop is still there, but there’s no one around who knew Sunny or Todd Betts. The guy who owns it now said he bought it ten years ago, and the man he bought it from told him he was planning to travel the country in an RV.

  “I looked for her classmates, found one, but all she remembered was that Sunny was a sweet girl and was in 4-H for a while. She remembered the murder case in the papers, said she wondered how Sunny could have changed so much.”

  “We had a good meeting with Craig Newhouse,” Carey said. “Do you have plans tomorrow morning?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait till later in the day; why?”

  “Could you go to the courthouse and order the files on all the civil cases you find involving Greg Ferrante? Craig said he was always getting sued by someone or other.”

  “Sure.”

  Our drinks and food arrived, and the conversation stopped while we ate. By the time we’d finished, I was feeling a little sleepy from the stout I’d ordered. “I’m glad you’re driving,” I told Carey.

  Natasha seemed more relaxed, with less of a chip on her shoulder. “Me, too,” she said. “I should have paid attention to the alcohol percentage on that IPA.”

  “Not a bad day,” I said, as we watched the server leave with Carey’s credit card.

  “I don’t know.” Natasha shrugged. “I hope I’ll have better luck tomorrow.”

  “We’ve all had days like that,” Carey told her. “I remember once driving the length and breadth of Illinois for three days before we finally found any of the people we were looking for.” A thought struck her. “When we’re both back in LA, why don’t we arrange to see Linda? We know where she is, at least.”

  “Okay,” Natasha said, brightening a bit.

  Carey turned to me. “I can take care of talking with Joan Simon, too, when I’m back home. We’re old friends, and her office is in downtown Los Angeles. When do you want to meet tomorrow to see Harry Wardman?”

  “Nine, maybe? I don’t know how early he’d get up, since I’d guess he works until eleven o’clock or midnight.”

  We agreed on eight thirty, to give us time for breakfast. The server returned, and Carey paid the bill, and we walked, a little unsteadily on my part, out to the car. When I got to my room, I decided I’d wait until morning to pack my things. Instead, I undressed, leaving my clothes in a heap on a chair, and collapsed onto the bed.

  * * *

  I woke up a little after five the next morning, with a guilty anxiety over everything I hadn’t managed to do the night before. Showered, dressed, and fortified with coffee from the pot in the room, I fluttered around, clearing clothes, bottles and tubes from the room and bathroom and fitting them into my suitcase. I spent the time left before I was to meet Carey scrolling through the pages and pages of Craig Newhouse’s files on my laptop. Harry Wardman’s files were in there somewhere—he had told me when I called nine or ten years ago that he had given everything he had to Craig after the trial—but I couldn’t be sure which papers were his. There were multiple copies of nearly everything—discovery from the prosecution, notes of witness interviews, records obtained from schools, hospitals, and courts. I saw pleadings from some civil suits against Greg and realized, resignedly, that Natasha would probably spend part of the morning making copies of documents we already had.

  When I brought my suitcase and backpack downstairs to the lobby, I found Carey at the desk checking out. After breakfast in the motel we walked together to our cars.

  “We can take mine this morning,” I offered.

  “Sounds good.”

  We headed back to the tidy apartment building where Harry Wardman lived. The wide window next to his door was partly open, and I could hear a vacuum cleaner running and faint music from what sounded like a radio playing inside. When we rang the bell, the noise of the vacuum cleaner stopped, and a few seconds later the door was answered by a man who looked to be perhaps seventy, wearing belted jeans with a white T-shirt tucked into them over a small paunch. His hair was a mix of gray and black, thinning at the front, and his face was tanned. His eyes, behind horn-rimmed glasses, appraised us with a glance that was both friendly and watchful. I’d read somewhere that he had been a police officer before he was a PI.

  “My neighbor said two nice young ladies were asking after me,” he said cheerfully.

  We both offered up a chuckle in recognition of his attempt at a compliment. “We are, if you’re Harry Wardman,” Carey said.

  “That would be me,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “We’re the lawyers representing Sunny Ferrante,” Carey said.

  A hint of surprise crossed his face. “My! Now, that’s a name from the past.”

  “I’m Carey Bergmann,” Carey said.

  “We talked on the phone once a long time ago,” I added. “I’m Janet Moodie, used to be with the state defender.”

  As he shook my hand, Harry gave me a questioning stare, as though he ought to recognize me, even though we’d never met fac
e to face. “Oh, right,” he said, finally. “I remember. That was a long time ago.”

  “Nice to meet you at last,” I said.

  “Good to meet you, too. Please, come on inside.”

  His apartment had a bachelor’s tidiness, with no clutter to speak of and everything in its place. A couple of library books in their plastic jackets were stacked neatly at one side of the coffee table. The patterned throw pillows on the brown sofa—probably a set that had come with it from the furniture store—were plumped and in their places. The wall-to-wall carpet was clean and freshly vacuumed. Behind a small island with two bar stools neatly set in front of it, the counters in the little kitchen area were bare except for the essentials: a coffee maker, a knife block, a dish drainer with a bowl and cup drying in it.

  “Have a seat,” Harry said. He walked over to a television stand, stooped, and turned off the radio on the shelf beneath the TV. “I can’t offer you coffee or anything for a bit; hope you don’t mind. I just finished mopping the kitchen floor, and it’s not dry yet.”

  “No problem; we just had coffee with breakfast,” I said.

  Carey and I sat side by side on the sofa. Harry pulled an armchair up to the coffee table and sat on the edge of its seat, leaning a little toward us. “So what’s up with Sunny?” he asked.

  Carey explained. “We’ve been appointed on her habeas corpus case, and we’re working on the investigation.”

  “Ah,” he said. “How is she doing these days?”

  “Pretty well, under the circumstances,” Carey said. “We saw her just the other day.”

  “She was a sweetheart,” Harry said. “Nice lady. Best client I ever had. What do you want to know?”

  “Well,” I said, hesitating. “To be honest, we’re not that sure yet. We’re just trying to get a clearer picture of her case and how she ended up on death row, what we can tell the court to convince them she should get a new trial.”