“That’s not what I’m doing. The evidence—”
“Who’s next? Rape victims?”
“That’s not fair, Emily.”
“You don’t think Keeley abused her?”
“That’s not the legal standard for self-defense. Her life needed to be in immediate danger at the time she killed him. In this case, it’s not clear she was in any danger. She had no bruises. He had no marks on him. The rock had no prints. His daughter and ex-wife say he got help and changed. I even met his sponsor from Domestic Violence Anonymous.”
“Men like that don’t change,” Graham said.
Jessie looked down at her food and felt ill. There was a tension in the room she hadn’t felt since the early days of their relationship, before they’d come to trust and respect each other. She could feel Graham’s stare, judgmental and offended.
“This isn’t about men in general, or domestic abuse,” Jessie said. She felt the need to choose her words carefully now, even with her friend. “This is about two individuals and the facts of their case. Can’t you set aside your preconceptions?”
“Apparently you can.”
“I have mixed feelings, too,” Jessie said, “but the law is clear. Even if he’d beaten her on other occasions, there was no legal justification to kill him that night. It was murder.”
Graham leaned back in her chair. “When you called, you said you needed my help.”
“That’s right. But if you don’t want to get involved in this, I understand. I didn’t realize how strong your feelings were.”
Graham waved her chopsticks. “Of course I’ll help.”
Jessie stared at her. “I don’t get it. You just told me how morally opposed you are to the whole case.”
“Yes, but I’ve also known you long enough to know you wouldn’t be prosecuting this woman without a good reason. What do you need?”
Jessie felt incredibly grateful, but also pretty guilty. “This case has the potential to ruin a lot of careers. Not just Fulco’s.”
“All the more reason to help you. The last thing I want is a change of regime at the DA’s office. You’re one of the only lawyers I can stand. Let’s start from the beginning. What did you find that made you question Fulco’s report?”
“You want to start now?” Jessie’s gaze went to her clock. “Don’t you have anything better to do on a Friday night?”
Graham arched a pale eyebrow. “No offense, but do you think I would be sitting with you in the DA’s office, eating Chinese food from the container, if I had a hot date?”
“You might be, yeah.”
Graham laughed. “Point taken. Now stop keeping me in suspense. Let’s do this.”
“Thanks, Emily.”
Graham left hours later, and Jessie carried their empty cartons of Chinese food to a garbage can down the hall that wouldn’t stink up her office. Graham was going above and beyond for her, but chances were she wouldn’t be able to find anything in the short time they had, especially over the weekend, when people were harder to reach. Jessie had to assume the detective would come up empty.
What else could she do to bolster her case? How do you prove a negative—that circumstances justifying self-defense didn’t exist?
Maybe that was the wrong way to look at it. She didn’t need to prove that something hadn’t happened. Something had happened. Brooke Raines had shot Corbin Keeley in the parking lot behind Bistro Cannata. The questions were how it had happened, and why it had happened. If only there had been a witness to the shooting itself, someone who could testify about exactly what had happened in that parking lot.
She remembered the video taken from a surveillance camera of a neighboring jewelry store. After watching it, she had agreed with Fulco’s initial assessment that it was of zero value. The angle barely captured the parking lot at the edge of the frame, and the footage was so grainy that, even if the shooting had occurred in view of the camera, she might not have even been able to tell what the grainy footage showed. Finding any suspicious details in the video—or any details at all—seemed highly unlikely.
Then again, she’d reached a point in the case where “unlikely” might be the best chance she had. It was better than nothing, at any rate.
She knew a man named Tito Vallez who worked as a video forensic specialist in the Philly PD’s Digital Media Evidence Unit. If anyone could find value in the video, it would be Vallez. Glancing at her clock, she saw that the time had slipped to 9:14 PM. He’d probably be home, or out, enjoying his Friday evening like a normal person. Then again, he was young, single, and ambitious, and had been known to burn the midnight oil on interesting cases before.
She picked up her phone again. It was worth a shot.
22
Jessie arrived at the Roundhouse at 9:30 PM and was not surprised to find the place a ghost town. Most of the detectives were off-duty at this hour, and any who were working were out in the field, staring at crime scenes that had ruined their Friday evening plans.
But video forensic specialist Tito Vallez was working. He greeted her with a warm smile and ushered her into the video lab of the Digital Media Evidence Unit, saying, “Welcome to my workshop.”
“Thanks for sticking around to meet with me.”
“For you, Jessie? Any time.”
Vallez was young and good-looking, pleasant to talk to, and, most importantly to Jessie, a smart and hard worker. He had a unique fashion sense. Today, he wore a blue suit that must have cost two-thousand dollars over a video game tee shirt that had probably set him back five bucks, black Vans shoes, and trendy glasses with black frames. Hardly standard cop attire, and she knew it irritated some of the old guard. But she admired his insistence on self-expression. He worked in a lab all day and rarely came into contact with the outside world. As long as he helped solve crimes and convict criminals (and wore a real suit and tie if called into court), why should anyone care if he deviated from a dress code established almost a century ago?
She pointed at his tee shirt. “Legend of Zelda?”
“Too hipsterish?”
“No, you wear it well.”
“Thanks. Buttering me up isn’t going to improve the quality of that video, though.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
He laughed. “Come on, let’s see what we can do.”
She followed him to a workstation in the lab. He dropped into a chair in front of a monitor and gestured for her to take the chair next to him. The swift transition from small talk to work talk didn’t surprise her. Beneath his funky clothing and flirtatious manner, Vallez was all business.
“I know it’s not great quality,” she said, “but I’m hoping—”
He raised a hand. “Hold on. Just to set expectations. The video isn’t just ‘not great quality,’ okay? The video was pulled from a VHS tape—you know, the kind you rented in the 80’s to watch Sixteen Candles at your sleepover party, and you had to remember to Be Kind, Rewind?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Well, you did recognize an 8 bit image from The Legend of Zelda.” Vallez laughed. “Anyway, the video was recorded onto the VHS tape by a Scout Z900. Ever heard of it? No? That’s because the company that made it, Quanto Systems, ceased manufacturing two decades ago. And I don’t mean they just ceased manufacturing this model. I mean, they ceased manufacturing, period. They went out of business in 1997.”
“I get it,” Jessie said. “The video was recorded by outdated equipment, onto an outdated storage medium. Can you clean it up at all?”
“Not really. This isn’t a TV cop show, where I can just stare at the screen, yell, ‘Enhance!’ and magically get 4K visuals. I have software that can help a little, but from a starting point as bad as this….” His voice trailed off.
“Okay,” she said. “You’ve set my expectations appropriately low. Now, let’s do what we can.”
Vallez turned on the equipment in front of them. The monitor flared to life, showing what looked like a typical Windows d
esktop. “I digitized the video and saved it, so at least we won’t have to dig a VCR out of storage.” He opened a software application and started navigating its menus. The pointer moved almost too quickly to follow, so Jessie sat back in her chair and waited.
The video opened in a window at the center of the screen. It displayed the sidewalk just in front of the doors to the jewelry store from which they’d obtained the tape. A small area of the neighboring parking lot was visible at the very periphery of the screen.
“These security cameras from the 1980’s had terrible resolution and low frame rates,” Vallez said. The disgust in his voice was almost comical. “So you’re not going to be making out any fine details. By the way, what details are you even looking for? Based on the time code, the incident should be happening right … about … now.” The watched the screen. A figure moved in and out of the frame—probably a woman, but it was hard to tell. A second figure followed her a moment later. In and out of view, and then they were staring at the static image again. “Bang. I guess.”
“The shooting is happening right now?”
“Best guess, based on the time code.” Vallez paused the video. “Not very exciting when you can’t see it. I can think of a lot of better movies we could watch together on a Friday night.”
“Can you make the video any clearer? Can you zoom in on the parking lot?”
“I can zoom in,” Vallez said. “Won’t help much, though. I can’t turn the camera.” Working the mouse, he dragged a square over the visible area of the parking lot, then clicked through some menus. The square grew to fill the window. The image became larger, but the blurriness also increased. “You want me to run the video again?”
“Yes, please.”
He did. She watched the static image of the parking lot, and, as before, saw the two indistinct figures and then nothing. Vallez paused it again. “Maybe if you tell me what you’re looking for….”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Should I play it again?”
She was about to say yes when something caught her eye. In the corner of the zoomed-in video window, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before. She pointed to the front of a car parked in the lot.
“Is that what I think it is?” she said.
Vallez squinted at the image. “Nissan Sentra, I think. My sis drives one.”
“Not the car. The driver.”
“Driver?” Vallez leaned closer to the screen. “Holy crap—you’re right. Looks like a face behind the windshield. Or a dinner plate. Or a balloon.”
“No, that’s a person, Tito.” She felt enthusiasm buzz through her. “Dinner plates and balloons don’t sit in the driver’s seat of a car.” If there had been a person in one of the cars in the lot, that meant she might have a witness. “Can you zoom in on him?”
“This is as much zoom as the source can handle. Any more, we’ll be looking at pixels the size of Lego bricks.”
She was sure the blob visible behind the windshield of the car was a face, but beyond that, she couldn’t discern anything. The person could be male or female, black or white, nineteen or ninety. There had to be a way to identify him or her.
Her gaze ticked from the face to the car, searching for an identifying characteristic. She was pretty sure Vallez was right about the make and model. The car looked like a recent model Nissan Sentra. But the video was black-and-white, so she could not determine the color. There was no license plate to read, because front plates were not required in Pennsylvania—a rule she now cursed as she stared at the blank front of the car. There was a small, square sticker in the upper corner of the windshield—maybe some kind of parking pass—but it was an illegible blur. “Anything you can do with that sticker?”
Vallez looked at her like she was joking.
“I need to find that car,” she said.
“Well, there are other surveillance cameras in the city, right? You know you’re looking for a Nissan Sentra, and you know the date and approximate time. You could check other cameras in the area, like traffic cameras, and see if any of them picked up a Nissan Sentra driving by before or after the time of this video. If one of them picked up a plate number, then bingo.”
It sounded like a long shot, but it was something. “I’ll try that. Thanks, Tito.”
“Like I said—for you, any time.”
She pulled out her phone to call Emily Graham.
23
While Jessie was working late on the Keeley case, Leary was in his apartment, thinking about his own case. A knock at the door disturbed him. He knew from the sound of the knock—a hard, businesslike rap—that it wasn’t Jessie, and there was no one else he was interested in seeing right now. He left the chain hooked in place and opened the door a crack, ready to tell whoever was there that he wasn’t interested.
“Hey, Leary.”
Leary froze, caught completely off-guard. His visitor was Toby Novak, Emily Graham’s partner. That was unexpected, but not unwelcome. He liked Novak. He wasn’t sure about the two men Novak stood in the hallway with, though. Ramrod-stiff postures, close-cropped hair, ill-fitting suits, and facial expressions that could mean either serious concentration or serious constipation. Definitely cops. What were they doing here?
“Hold on, Toby. I’ll open the door.”
Once his visitors were inside, Novak made introductions. “Gentlemen, this is Mark Leary. As you know, he used to be a detective at the PPD. Leary, meet Dominick Chernin and Rupert Bertie, detectives from the Mendham Township Police Department Detective Bureau, out of Jersey. They need to speak with you about an incident in their township, and since we’re friends, I volunteered to coordinate.”
Mendham Township? Now Leary was definitely uneasy. But he shook hands and offered each man a friendly nod, despite the feeling that they were looking at him more like a suspect than a colleague. “What’s this about?”
“You’re familiar with Mendham Township?” Chernin said. “It’s a relatively small town in New Jersey. Police department only has fifteen people, including me and Bertie.”
“If you’re here, you must know I visited the town a few days ago.”
Chernin rocked back on his heels. “Well, we didn’t know you were there for sure, but thanks for telling us that.”
Leary cringed inwardly. It had been a while since he’d played this game, and he was getting rusty. “Let’s sit down.” He led them into his apartment to a small kitchenette with a table for four. Novak shrugged out of his coat, draped it over the back of a chair, and sat down. The two New Jersey cops stood stiffly for a moment, then did the same. Leary sat down last. “How can I help you?”
“One of our residents committed suicide. This was found on her body.” The detective pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to Leary. It was a photocopy of the slip of paper he’d given to Lydia Wax showing his name and cell number.
He tried to hide any surprise. The two cops leaned forward and watched him closely. He knew they were studying his face for reactions, just as he’d studied so many suspects. His hands, under the table, gripped his legs. Had Lydia killed herself because of his visit?
“The woman you’re talking about,” Leary said slowly, “what’s her name?”
“Lydia Wax.”
“Are you sure it was suicide?”
“That’s an unusual question to ask,” Detective Bertie said.
“According to the autopsy, it was,” Detective Chernin said. “Is there a reason to think it wouldn’t be?”
“Maybe.” As a former cop, Leary knew that if given the chance, these detectives would extract as much information from him as possible while revealing as little as possible of what they knew. He’d already slipped up once by admitting he’d been to their town. He didn’t plan to give them any more information without receiving some in return. “How did she do it?”
Bertie let out a quiet laugh under his breath. “Mr. Leary, we’ll ask the questions.”
�
��And I’ll answer them,” he said, “but first I want to know what happened.”
“Come on, guys,” Novak said. “You can relax. Leary’s one of us.”
Chernin exchanged a glance with his partner, then shrugged. “Nothing dramatic. She took a bunch of pills, went to sleep, and never woke up.”
“And you’re sure she took the pills voluntarily?”
Bertie sighed. “There were no defensive wounds. No signs of a struggle in her bedroom or anywhere else in her house. No strange visitors.”
“Other than you,” Chernin said.
“Leary, what were you doing in New Jersey?” Novak said.
“I was investigating one of my own cases.”
“What are you, a PI or something?” Chernin said.
“No, I mean one of my old cases, from back when I was a homicide detective. A murder case I worked three years ago. Lydia Wax killed her boyfriend, a man named Terence Resta. She stabbed him with a knife and claimed she did it in self-defense. He had been violent with her before, so her story seemed credible and no charges were ever brought in the case.”
“So why were you visiting this woman three years later?” Bertie said. “In connection with a closed case? When you’re not even a cop anymore?”
Leary heard the exasperation in the detective’s voice. He sensed that both men were annoyed to have to deal with a suicide in their peaceful little upper class township, and even more annoyed to have to drive two hours to Philadelphia because some former cop had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. Leary could explain the whole story to them—that a new self-defense incident had triggered his memories of the three-year-old case, and that he’d never been satisfied with its resolution, and that that’s why he’d made the trip to visit Lydia Wax—but he didn’t like the tone of either of these New Jersey detectives, and he didn’t feel like giving them an explanation.
“Did she leave a note?” Leary said.
“What?” Chernin looked even more annoyed. “You want to answer my questions, or what, Leary?”
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