by Lis Wiehl
Mia blinked and felt tears run down her cheeks.
“It was another day before the baby came. A perfect little boy.” She looked at Mia with red, brimming eyes. “It hurt so, so much. Death would have been better. If I had not already had another child, I would have let go and died.”
“I am so sorry.” Mia’s words felt so inadequate she might as well have not said them. But she had to say something.
“After that, the authorities found ways to make an example of me so that no one would try to do what I did. So my relatives helped pay for me to come here, to America.”
Bo had gotten asylum here, but was that really a happy ending? She had had to leave her family behind.
“But now I know that America is no different from China. If you have money, you have justice.” She shook her head. Her eyes were flat, unfocused. “No money, no justice.”
“That’s not true,” Mia said. “What happened wasn’t because Leacham is rich. It was because at least one of the jurors was not convinced he was guilty. For better or worse, that’s how our system works.”
“It was the man with the ugly hair.” Bo put her hand up to her own hair, black and shiny as a crow’s wing, caught up in a thick bun.
She meant Warren’s two-toned mullet. If the circumstances hadn’t been so tragic, Mia might have smiled. Instead, she simply said, “Yes, I think it was that man.”
Bo nodded. “Because he was paid to do that.”
“What? No. That’s not how it works, Bo. In this country it is illegal to bribe jurors.”
“There is the law that is written, and there is what really happens.” Bo’s tone was fatalistic. “The same as in China.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just before the trial started, I saw the man with the ugly hair talking to another man in the hallway. Talking very quietly. As if they had a secret. When they saw me noticing, the other man walked away.”
“So?” Mia said. “That doesn’t prove he bribed him. Did you see money changing hands?”
“No. But two days later, I went to a restaurant to get something to eat. I saw Leacham’s wife. She was talking to this same man.”
Mia’s headache came surging back. “Are you sure?” She could hear Frank’s voice in her head. Don’t bring me speculation. Bring me proof! “Who else saw this man talking to that juror?”
“I do not know if anyone did. The hallway was nearly empty.”
“What did he look like? Tall, short, fat, thin?”
“A short, white man with a thick body. And with a round face, like the moon.”
It was nothing. Mia knew it was nothing. The man Bo had seen could have been Warren’s old co-worker or neighbor. Someone who just happened to also know Marci. He could have just been asking directions to the nearest restroom.
But what if Bo was right? What if someone had bribed Warren, bribed him so that Leacham’s jury would hang?
She needed more than a distraught woman’s imaginings to go on.
“It’s not like you saw money exchanging hands. You saw two men talking. There’s no law against that,” she said. “We need to be able to prove that’s what happened.”
And how much good would Leacham have thought a hung jury would really do him? If the end result was a retrial, there was no guarantee that another jury might find him not guilty. Leacham would have had no idea that Frank would balk at the idea of a retrial.
Mia froze. At least, he should have had no idea that Frank would balk. But what if her suspicions in Frank’s office hadn’t been too far off the mark? What if Leacham had paid a juror to hang the case—and then found a way to persuade Frank not to refile?
Maybe Frank hadn’t been angry at her because he felt betrayed. Maybe he had been angry because she had connected the dots.
CHAPTER 20
FRIDAY
THE SEATTLE TIMES
HUNG JURY IN CASE OF MURDERED PROSTITUTE
The case of Dandan Yee, a prostitute who authorities charge was murdered by her client David Leacham, has ended in a hung jury that split eleven to one. Leacham claimed that Yee’s death occurred during a struggle after she held a knife to his throat and tried to rob him. The trial has been dubbed The Lethal Beauty Case.
The jury of nine women and three men deliberated more than a total of sixteen hours over the course of three days before finally declaring that they had reached an impasse that could not be broken. Under Washington state law, all twelve jurors must find a defendant guilty in order to convict him. When it was over, eleven angry jurors—some of them in tears—pointed to a lone holdout who wouldn’t vote to convict.
Jim Fratelli was the foreman of the jury. “It was a tough case. It was long and it was hard and it was grueling,” an emotional Fratelli said afterward. “We gave it our best shot. It is what it is, I guess.”
According to juror Samantha Streeter, “The atmosphere in the jury room was positively poison. One juror refused to listen. People were yelling, even threatening him. But he didn’t let it get to him.”
Another juror, Naomi Jennings, said, “It seemed like he tuned us out, just like he tuned out the whole trial. Anyone could see that David Leacham was guilty. But he wouldn’t even talk about it.”
Warren Paczkowski confirmed to the Times that he was the lone dissenter but declined to comment further as he left the courthouse by himself.
Leacham, who has been out on a million dollars bail since he was first charged, told the press, “I continue to have faith. Faith in God and faith in the jury system.”
On the steps of the courthouse, Leacham’s attorney James Wheeler said, “The State, with all its might, had the simple task of convincing twelve—just twelve—people of the guilt of an individual beyond a reasonable doubt. And they failed. The jurors in Mr. Leacham’s case heard every word of the evidence. Why should the government get another bite at the apple when they couldn’t prove their case the first time? Mia Quinn’s relentless pursuit of Mr. Leacham, an innocent man, has already cost the county tens of thousands of dollars. And now she wants to do it all again?”
Reached by telephone, King County prosecutor Mia Quinn said, “While the defense can spin the facts of this case any way they want to, it was my job as the prosecutor to present those facts. And we think the facts overwhelmingly indicate the guilt of the defendant.” She added that a final decision hasn’t yet been made about trying Leacham again.
CHAPTER 21
Oh, hello, Mr. Carlson.”
Emily Barlow, Sindy Sharp’s foster mom, did not look surprised to see Charlie standing at her door. She stepped back and motioned him in. She was about sixty, with straight, blond hair cut in a style Charlie remembered from his childhood, like a bowl had been placed on top of her head and the hair cut to match. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen or heard anything from Sindy. I would have called you if I had.”
“I know you would have. But we really need to find her.” Charlie followed Emily inside.
The last time Sindy had posted anything on her Facebook page was the day before she disappeared. The phone number she had used to set up “dates” had been disconnected. Charlie had checked homeless shelters and cheap motels. A BOLO—be on the lookout for—had been issued to all law enforcement agencies. And with her shocking pink hair, she certainly stood out. Still, a girl like Sindy had learned at her mother’s knee how to fly under the radar. At least that’s what Charlie told himself. When he wasn’t picturing her body left in a shallow grave scratched out in the woods somewhere.
“Could I make you some coffee? Tea?”
Charlie waved a hand. “No thanks. I’m good. Did you hear about what happened at the trial?”
Emily settled on a green velvet recliner, and he took the plaid couch. The living room was surprisingly neat for a house where a half dozen teenage girls lived.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t been following it, but it’s been busy here. We just got a new girl a couple of days ago. She came with only the clothes on her back.”
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br /> “Does that happen often?”
Emily gave him a pained smile. “More times than I can count. If you had asked me years ago, when we first started to foster kids, I would have said it was enough just to give them the things they need and try to love them. But just trying will not take care of their problems. You can buy them a whole new wardrobe, you can buy them everything, but if you do not love them unconditionally, then in the end it means nothing. Of course, we let them know there will always be food available, there will always be a clean bed to sleep in and clean clothes to wear to school. We show them that it’s possible to disagree without screaming and yelling and hitting each other. But what’s key to making this work is that I do not criticize, I do not condemn, and I accept them for who they are.”
Charlie thought of Sindy, with her pink hair, her defiant eyes ringed with black liner. “That must be harder with some than others.”
“I’m not saying it’s not a challenge. But all children need a family. At eighteen, when they age out of foster care, where do they go? When Thanksgiving or Christmas rolls around, who do they eat with? My husband and I will always be here for them, they know that even if they know nothing else. If they get a good job or things are going well, they always know they can pick up a phone and say, ‘Hi, Mom.’ ” Her sigh was heavy. “And when things are not going so good, they know I’ll tell them, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
“Have you thought any more about where Sindy might have gone?”
Emily’s mouth twisted. “She didn’t trust me yet. With some of these kids that can take years, and she was only here for a few weeks.”
“It really hurt our case that she wasn’t there to testify. The jury hung. If we’re going to have any hope of convicting David Leacham of that girl’s murder, we need her.”
“Her old life may have come calling for her. These kids, most of them have never known love. They don’t know what to do with it and they don’t trust it. And according to Sindy, she didn’t need anything or anyone else. She thought she was perfectly capable of looking after herself.”
“She’s only seventeen,” Charlie said. But maybe all seventeen-year-olds thought that way.
“If she went back to what she was doing, it’s true that she could make enough money to support herself physically.” She smiled sadly. “David Leacham’s not the only one who likes girls that young.”
“Could she have gone back to her mom?”
“I heard her mother’s back in jail now for soliciting.” Emily grimaced. “I try not to be judgmental about the parents. Maybe they didn’t have good role models themselves. But what she let happen to Sindy . . .” Her words trailed off.
“I’m worried Sindy might not have left of her own free will,” Charlie said.
“Do you think she’s come to harm?” Emily’s gaze never wavered.
He didn’t sugarcoat it. “It’s possible. It’s a little too convenient that she disappeared the day before the trial began.” At first Charlie had chalked it up to stage fright or the girl’s general skittishness, her unwillingness to do anything she was supposed to do. “Or someone might have paid her to get out of town.”
“Sindy? All she knows is Seattle. We took the girls to Leavenworth the first weekend she got here. She was almost”—Emily hunted for the right word—“frightened. Lost. She looked like the little girl she is.”
Leavenworth was about three hours away—a bit of a tourist trap, in Charlie’s opinion—and billed itself as a faithful reproduction of a Bavarian village. Even the McDonald’s was fashioned to look like a chalet, albeit one made of brown plastic.
“Can you think of any place she might be? Anyone she might be with? Anyone it might be worth reaching out to?”
“One of the girls she shared a room with is home sick today. You could try talking to her.”
Emily led him down a long carpeted hallway, then knocked on a door. “Teal, a policeman would like to talk to you about Sindy.”
“Okay,” a girl’s voice called.
Before Emily opened the door, Charlie said, “Would you mind if it was just us? She might tell me more if she doesn’t have two adults staring at her.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be in the living room.”
Teal was on her feet next to the bottom bunk she had clearly just vacated. She had dyed black hair that fell to her shoulders and two tiny gold rings in her left nostril. Looking at her, Charlie realized he didn’t need to worry about catching the sickness that was keeping her home from school. Teal looked like she was about five months pregnant, her belly high and tight on her thin frame.
She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
She saw him noticing and crossed her arms over her abdomen, carefully not making eye contact. She took the only chair in the room, a wooden one in front of a small matching desk. There was another bunk bed in the room, both beds neatly made. Charlie didn’t want to perch like a hunchback on the other lower bunk, and he didn’t want to loom over the girl either. There was only one other place to sit, an orange beanbag chair. He crossed his ankles and managed to sit down without plopping too much. He just hoped he could get back out of the darn thing without looking like a fool.
Behind her hand, Teal hid a smile.
“So Sindy shares this room with you?”
She guessed what he was thinking. “Mother Emily already went through her things. She didn’t leave any clues about where she went.” After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “You’re not the only one who’s come looking for her. There was a man who asked me about her when I was walking to the bus stop. I told him the same as I’m telling you: I don’t know where she went.”
“Can you tell me about this guy?”
“He was old.”
“Old as me?” Charlie asked.
“No, you’re way older.”
He tried to let that one slide off. “When was this?”
“A few days ago?” Teal said. “Maybe a week?”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. A white guy. Really big. Like . . . hulking.”
The word hulking sounded almost exotic coming out of Teal’s mouth. “What did you tell him?”
“Just that no one knew where she was.” She raised her shoulders and shivered. “Something about him was creepy. I didn’t let him get too close, and I was ready to scream if I had to.”
Charlie was glad for her sake that she hadn’t had to find out if anyone would actually respond. “Did Sindy say anything to you before she left?”
Teal rolled her eyes. “Sindy was always talking. She thought she was all that and a bag of chips. She said she didn’t need a pimp. She was so proud of herself because she said she didn’t need to share her money with anyone. But she wasn’t as smart as she thought. When she showed up here she had bruises on her throat and her arms. She said some guys like to tie her up before they had sex, even pretend they were going to kill her. I was like, ‘What’s to stop them from just doing it?’ but she was so sure she knew what she was doing.” Teal snorted. “Guess she didn’t.” Her face belied her harsh words. She looked frightened. “Right before she left here, she starting saying she was going to get rich.”
“Rich?” Charlie sat up straighter, which was not easy to do in a beanbag chair. “What did she tell you about getting rich?”
“Not that much. She just started talking about how her life was going to change. That she was going to come into a whole lot of money.”
Had someone representing David Leacham offered Sindy money not to testify?
Or, Charlie wondered bleakly, had it been a bait and switch?
Had they offered her money—and taken her life?
CHAPTER 22
And what are we doing today?” The hair stylist swirled a black plastic cape around Bo’s neck and then snapped it into place.
Bo pulled the pins out of her bun and shook her head. A black river of hair tumbled down, falling past her shoulders, past the arms of the chair, and finally ending only a
foot from the floor. For a moment, everyone in the shop went silent, just looking at it.
“Chop it all off,” she said bluntly. “Cut it to here.” Bo put the blade of her hand against her neck, right below her ears.
“Are you sure?” Looking reverent, the stylist gathered the weight of it in his hands. His own yellow-tipped black hair stood up in short gelled spikes. “It must have taken you a really long time to grow your hair this long.”
She lifted her chin. “All my life.”
His brows drew together. “Then why do you want to cut it off?”
The answer she gave was doubly true. “I don’t want to be me anymore.”
In the mirror his eyes met hers, and she saw a muted understanding. “Okay, then. Let’s make you not you.” From a drawer he took a black hair elastic and made a low ponytail. It took a long time for him to pull the yard of hair through. “If you want, I could donate your hair to Locks of Love. It’s a charity that makes wigs for children who are sick and have lost their hair. They could really use hair that’s this long.”
Bo imagined a girl who looked like a younger Dandan, the Dandan she had only seen in a few snapshots. She pictured her with a drawn face and a vulnerable, naked head. Imagined how the warmth and the weight of the wig would cradle her. As if someone had laid their two hands on top of her head, like a blessing. For a moment, the thought comforted Bo. But only for a moment.
She nodded. The stylist picked up his scissors in one hand and the ponytail in the other. He began to cut just above the hair elastic. A few minutes later, the hank dropped into his hand. Freed from her, it looked like a horse’s tail. Bo’s head suddenly felt weightless, like it might float up to the ceiling. She closed her eyes.
She was doing this for Dandan, she thought as the hairdresser began to comb and snip and ruffle. She would do anything for her. When she had seen her daughter’s body in the funeral home, seen her daughter for the first time in sixteen years, she had promised her justice. But the courts had failed her.