by David Grace
Ned pulled into his garage a little before six.
“Hey, Dad,” Jake called without looking up from his iPad.
“Hey, Jake . . . Jan, I’m home.” Danes headed for the kitchen.
“We’re having pizza,” Janis told him as she grabbed a stack of plates from the cabinet. “Sorry, I had to work late, reports.” She turned and gave him a quick kiss. “It should be here in about fifteen minutes.”
“No problem. It’ll give me time to catch the news.”
Jake was sitting Indian fashion in the middle of the couch. Ned tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to slide down. Jake glanced up and when Ned turned on the big LG Jake plugged in a pair of earphones. A picture of flames and smoke filled the screen.
“ . . . fire was brought under control by nine this morning. Sixteen tenants have been moved to a temporary shelter. The fire department has not yet determined the cause of the blaze.”
The image of a forties-something white man with thinning hair and perfect teeth filled the screen. Behind him flashed a graphic of a silhouetted body beneath a length of crime-scene tape.
“The trial of accused killer, Howard Fraschetti, concluded its twelfth day of testimony this afternoon with the prosecution’s final witness, the gas station attendant who was the last person known to have seen Angela Anders alive.” The graphic changed to a clip of the defendant being led into court for his arraignment over six months before. “Howard Fraschetti’s attorney, Samuel Mortensen, is scheduled to call his first witness tomorrow morning. It is not known if the defendant will testify.”
“Dad, can I borrow mom’s Fusion on Saturday?” Jake asked, pulling off one of his earphones. Not getting an answer, he looked away from his iPad to find his father staring at an image frozen on the TV. “Is it broken?” he asked.
“I paused it,” Danes said, staring at the picture.
“Is he one of your guys? I mean, did you arrest him?” Jake pointed at Howard Fraschetti’s sad-eyed face.
“No,” Danes said, standing and moving closer to the set. There it was, the same no-neck, bowling-ball head, the same pale cheeks, the same puffy lips. Danes moved closer. He recognized the close-set ears and the droopy eyelids. This was the same guy whose face he had seen not half an hour before on the surveillance video. The video that had been in the Anderson file. Fraschetti was accused of murdering Angela Anders. Anders, Anderson, Danes thought. “Can you get Google on that thing?” Danes asked, pointing at Jake’s iPad.
“Sure, why?”
“Can you find out the date and time that Angela Anders was killed?”
Jake was about to ask why but one look at his father’s intent expression drove the question from his mind. “Sure, give me a sec.” Danes had always found typing on a touch screen much harder than on a keyboard but years of text messaging had turned Jake into something of a savant. “OK, . . . it looks like she was killed on November 17th, the year before last . . . umm . . . the time of death was between seven-fifteen and eight forty-five p.m.” Danes stared blankly at the image frozen on the TV. “You need anything else, dad?”
“What? No, no that’s good.” Danes paused for a long moment then headed for the hallway. “Jan, something’s come up. I’ve—”
“What?” his wife called from upstairs.
“I’ve got to go back to the office. There’s something I’ve got to check.”
Danes pulled on his coat and hurried out to the garage, his mind spinning. Angela Anders had last been seen at six-thirty in Brighton, west of town, when she filled up her car after cheerleader practice. Her body was found in a ditch fourteen miles farther west around eleven that night. If Howard Fraschetti had been in the mini-mart in Highland Hills at 7:55 there was no way he could be the killer. If the video was real, Howard Fraschetti was an innocent man, which meant that Angela Anders’ murderer was still on the loose.
Danes turned right on Hardwick and pressed a little harder on the gas.
CHAPTER TWO
When Ned Danes was thirteen years old his father was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The doctors had advised him to put his affairs in order and gave him four to six months to live. Frank refused to go. “My boy’s starting high school in the fall,” Frank told the oncologist. “You have to keep me alive until he finishes.” The doctor, Lawrence Hammel, stared at Danes and thought, if wishes were fishes. . . .
“Mr. Danes, we’ll do all we can, but our options are limited.”
“I need you to keep me alive until Ned graduates high school,” Frank Danes insisted.
“Well,” Hammel shrugged, “We’ll do the best we can.”
Over the next four years Frank Danes had four surgeries, three courses of chemo and two courses of radiation. His body was cut, poisoned and burned, but on the day that Ned graduated from high school Frank Danes was there to see it and on that afternoon he considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Frank hung on until mid-November, four days after Ned graduated from boot camp and became a full-fledged United States Marine. Convinced that he had finally done his duty and seen his son into manhood, Frank Danes released his tenuous hold on life and allowed the world to slip away. Frank Danes’ determination and his courage were lessons Ned never, ever forgot.
It was around seven-thirty when Danes got back to the deserted squad room and again loaded the surveillance video. This time he went through it almost frame-by-frame. There was a 7-Up-logo clock above the front door and its time matched the video code to within three minutes. It was dark outside, clearly p.m. rather than a.m.
Danes took a tape measure over to the big, county map on the back wall and measured the distance from the store to the mall where they figured Angela had been kidnapped and from there to where her body had been found, then he ran the numbers again to see if there was any way Fraschetti could have killed her within the medical examiner’s time line and still have been in the mini-mart at 7:55. No matter how he figured it, short of driving through city streets at a sustained speed of about seventy miles an hour there was no way Fraschetti could have done it. So, why had the case ever been set for trial? Danes opened the department directory.
Art Wayman had been the lead detective. Involuntarily, Danes frowned. Wayman had about as much imagination as a carrot. If you wanted a plodder who would put one foot in front of the other until he marched right off a cliff Art Wayman was your man. Danes dialed Wayman’s home number. It was answered on the fourth ring.
“Art, Ned Danes. You got a minute?”
“A short minute,” Wayman snapped.
“This is about the Anders case—”
“That’s in the hands of the D.A.”
“Yeah, Art, I know that. The trial was on the news tonight.”
“So, why are you calling me?”
Danes bit back a curse and took a deep breath.
“There was a video of your guy, Fraschetti, in a mini-mart. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Wasn’t it taken around the time of the murder?”
“No, he had plenty of time, and, anyway, what’s that to you?”
“It’s just that—”
“Do I call you and complain about the way you handle your cases?”
“I’m not complaining, Art, I’m—”
“It sounds like complaining to me.”
“Art—”
“Look, we ran the case just like any other case. I turned all that stuff over to the D.A., Worthington. If you have any questions, call him. We’re just sitting down to dinner here.”
“OK, Al—” the phone clicked and went dead.
Ned Danes stared at the phone and a slow fire began to burn in his gut. With forced calm Danes pulled Terrence Worthington’s home number from the office directory.
“Yes?” a woman, District Attorney Alphonse Gagliardi’s daughter, Marie, answered. It had been the biggest wedding of the season, the joining of handsome, Princeton Law School grad, Terrence Worthington, and Marie Gagl
iardi, the D.A.’s sweet but plain daughter. A trophy husband for her, a guaranteed career for him. This year, felony prosecutor and with a couple of big cases under his belt in no time at all he was going to be Assemblyman Worthington, then maybe Congressman Worthington, then, who knew how far a photogenic man with all the right connections might go?
“Hello, this is Detective Ned Danes. Can I speak with Mr. Worthington please? It’s about the Anders case.”
“Danes? What’s up?” Worthington asked a moment later.
“I’m down in the squad room. I ran across something from your case. It looks like it was misfiled. I thought you might need it.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“A surveillance tape of the defendant in a mini-mart. I thought if you’re going to put that into evidence—”
“Evidence? No, that’s, uhh, bogus. Worthless.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s your interest in this, Detective? I don’t recall seeing your name on the investigators’ list.”
“I just ran across it and I thought it might be important. But, now that you mention it, why is it bogus?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but we determined that the video camera’s clock was off. That’s actually a tape of the defendant the day before the murder. We considered putting it in to show the defendant’s state of mind, you know, that he got all excited looking at that porno mag and that worked him up into doing the killing, but we figured we wouldn’t be able to get it past Judge Kling.”
“So, the defendant’s attorney’s seen this?”
“Since when do I answer to you, Detective? Look, you just do your job and I’ll do mine. Was there anything else or are you done sticking your nose into my case?”
“Sorry to bother you counselor. I just thought you might need this for court, that’s all.”
The phone went dead. The camera’s date was off? Danes ran the clip back to the beginning then forward at half speed. Ten seconds into the sequence Fraschetti approached the magazine display. Against the near side of the shelves was a newspaper rack. Danes froze the picture and zoomed in. The top paper was the afternoon Tribune. The headline was fuzzy but he could read it: Four Killed In South-Side Crash.
Danes opened the Tribune’s website and clicked on “Archives.” The headline for November 16th was Mayor Denies Charges and for the 18th it was Missing Girl’s Body Found. The headline for the 17th was Four Killed In South-Side Crash.
The newspaper’s headline in the video matched the one for the date on the recording. Worthington was full of shit. Which meant that he’d probably never delivered the clip to the defense attorney. No wonder he was so pissed. He obviously thought that the video had been safely dumped in the Anderson file, that he was off the hook if anyone ever found out that he had never given it to the defense, that he had knowingly prosecuted an innocent man.
Danes popped the disk from the machine. Five cents worth of plastic — a man’s life — a killer still free to kill again. He could put it back in the drawer. Technically, he had done his duty. He had called the D.A. and been told that everything that needed to be done had been done. Technically, he was off the hook. Or, he could blow up the trial, maybe wreck Worthington’s career, make a mortal enemy of the D.A. and probably get himself demoted or fired. Danes considered his options for about two seconds. It wasn’t even a close call.
He used the department computer to get Samuel Mortensen’s home number. It took several repetitions of the words “urgent” to finally get Fraschetti’s lawyer on the line.
“I assume you’ve got a good reason for this call, Detective,” Mortensen said in an irritated voice.
“I’m calling to ask you for a favor.”
“I’m in the middle of a murder trial and you want a favor?” There was a long silence, then, in a suspicious tone, Mortensen asked, “What favor?”
“It occurs to me that you may be planning to subpoena me to testify tomorrow as a defense witness in the Fraschetti case. I would prefer that if you’re going to serve me with a subpoena duces tecum that you not do it at my home. I’m going to be at Vinnie’s Pizzeria on Decker in exactly one hour so maybe your process server can get me there.”
“A subpoena duces tecum,” Mortensen mused after a long pause. “And the . . . material . . . that I would want you to bring to court?”
“Oh, just the usual, what you guys always put in a subpoena, ‘You are instructed to appear in such and such a department at such and such a time and to bring with you all writings, materials, recordings and videos in your possession or under your control which may pertain to the guilt or innocence of the defendant.’ The standard language.”
“Certainly, the standard language. Videos, yes, I guess I would want any videos that might prove my client is innocent, wouldn’t I?”
“I would think you would.”
“Uh, huh. Thank you, detective. I mean that. Thank you.”
“I’m just doing my job, counselor.”
It took Mortensen a little over an hour to prepare the subpoena and race from his house all the way to Vinnie’s. Danes waited for him over the remnants of the dinner he had missed at home.
“Detective,” Mortensen said, half out of breath. “May I . . . .” Danes waved toward the empty seat across from him.
“Would you like some pizza? I’ve had all I want. The wife had to work late tonight so . . . .” Danes spread his hands over the remains of a pepperoni and mushroom pie.
Mortensen stared hard at Danes in a vain attempt to figure out what the hell was going on, then gave up and handed over the subpoena. Danes unfolded it and read it carefully.
“I guess I’ve been served.”
“I guess you have.”
“Well, the law’s the law. I’ll see you in court.”
Before Danes could stand Mortensen grabbed the detective’s hand.
“Please.”
Danes had intended to say nothing in the vain hope that he would somehow be able to cover his ass with the claim that he was just obeying a court order, but he couldn’t ignore the desperate expression painting Mortensen’s face.
Danes pulled a CD carrier from his inside pocket and handed it over.
“That’s a copy. I’ll bring the original tomorrow. For the record, Worthington claims that he’s already given that to you so, theoretically, you already have it.”
“What the hell is it? What am I supposed to ask you when I put you on the stand tomorrow?”
“Qualify me as a homicide detective with almost thirty years on the force, then ask me if I have any evidence indicating that your client is innocent.”
“Evidence that my client might be innocent?”
“Evidence that he is factually innocent.”
“And what will you say?”
“I will say that I do. Then you’ll ask what that evidence is and I’ll hand you the original CD and you’ll play it for the jury and then the charges against Mr. Fraschetti will be dismissed.”
“What the hell is on this?”
“Proof that your client couldn’t possibly have killed Angela Anders. Proof that Terry Worthington has had in his pocket all along.”
Mortensen stared at the CD, twisting it in his hand so that it reflected the light like a Christmas tree ornament, then carefully placed it on the table and stared at Danes.
“You know what they’ll do to you, don’t you?”
“I’m just obeying a subpoena. I’m just doing my job, upholding the Law.” The way Danes said the word it began with a capital “L.”
Mortensen shook his head and waved his hand as if dispersing a cloud of smoke.
“Crap, Detective. They’ll hang you for this. Worthington is Alphonse Gagliardi’s son-in-law. You screw him over and as far as Gagliardi’s concerned it’s the same as screwing over his daughter, and Al Gagliardi would do anything for his little girl. You know he’s got your Chief in his pocket. Gagliardi says ‘Jump’ and Jaworski asks ‘How high?’ They’
re going to kick you off the force for this, or, at best, bust you back to parking patrol.”
“What choice do I have?” Danes asked with all sincerity.
“What choice do you have? Do you have some kind of a vendetta against Worthington? Did he do something to piss you off and now you’re getting even?”
“I barely know the guy.”
Mortensen shook his head in frustration, then tried again.
“Look, detective, I need to know what I’m getting into the middle of here. I need to know what’s going to come out of the bushes to bite me in the ass. If you’ve got some—” he started to say “scam” or “plot” but bit off the words. “If you’ve got some ulterior motive here,” Mortensen continued in a more restrained voice, “I need to know about it. A man doesn’t give up his job, his career, for no reason.”
“It’s not for no reason,” Danes said.
“Fine, what’s the reason then?”
“Your client is innocent. The killer is still free.” Mortensen just stared at him, confused. “It’s my job to catch the bad guys, not conspire to send innocent men to prison. . . . I need to do the right thing here,” Danes said, finally.
“Detective, I appreciate what you’re doing, but I have to tell you, I think you’re a damn fool. And I thank God for fools like you. If you ever need anything from me, within reason of course, you call me.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. By the way, do you have any friends who might be able to help you find a new job?”
“Are you serious?”
“If I were you, detective, I would call them before I went to bed tonight, because my guess is that by sundown tomorrow you’re going to be unemployed. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“I don’t have any choice.”
“Do you ever watch the old movies, detective?” Mortensen asked as he stood and buttoned his overcoat.
“Sometimes. I’m not a big fan of black and white, except for High Noon. That’s one of my favorites.”
“No surprise there, I’m sure. Well, here’s a line from another old movie, slightly modified: ‘Fasten your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’”