Laurie did not like what she was hearing. Gunther was wielding her father’s stellar reputation as a weapon against him. On Nick’s digital screen, Laurie could see Gunther’s gaze shift off camera. He was looking at her, but then he directed his attention back to Ryan.
“I suggest you check into the timing of Leo Farley’s trajectory in the department. You’ll see that I’m right. Did you know I’m not the first prisoner to have accused Farley of fabricating evidence?”
Even in profile, Laurie thought she saw a flicker of doubt in Ryan’s reaction. He was probably thinking that in any other case—with a different police investigator, with a normal timeline for production—Laurie would have researched any possible pattern of complaints prior to conducting on-screen interviews. He recovered quickly, though.
“You’ve been in prison eighteen years,” Ryan said. “I assume you know how common wrongful conviction complaints are. Any police officer with thirty years of service will have multiple defendants accuse them of misconduct over the course of a career. It doesn’t make the allegations true.”
“The newly discovered DNA matches a man with a demonstrated pattern of threatening people with knives, including at least one known stabbing in a bar fight, the exact conduct at issue in my case. Did you know that the District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit has confirmed that Mason Rollins was living in Greenwich Village at the time Lou Finney was stabbed? His apartment was only a ten-minute walk from that bar. Rollins slammed the door in my lawyer’s face when she tried to talk to him, and my understanding is that he refused to speak to the DA’s investigator as well.”
“So what is your theory about why Rollins would stab a bar owner with whom he had no known grievance?”
“Because we all spilled out onto the sidewalk. I was trying to disengage, but the other guy from the bar, Jay Pratt, kept punching me and grabbing my shirt. We bumped into some other guy—hard—and he was the one who pulled the knife. The next thing I knew, Mr. Finney was falling. There was so much blood. And the other guy… He was long gone. There’s no doubt in my mind that man was Mason Rollins, and I have the DNA to prove it. You’re an excellent lawyer, Mr. Nichols. You tell me: If my case isn’t good enough to raise doubts about my guilt, whose is?”
Chapter 36
Gunther held Ryan’s gaze, as if daring him to suggest any weaknesses in his arguments. If my case isn’t good enough to raise doubts about my guilt, whose is?
It was a made-for-the-camera moment, striking just the right tone for the end of the interview. Ryan hadn’t managed to shake Gunther away from any part of his side of the story. If anything, Gunther had strengthened his case, maximizing his use of the DNA evidence while calling into question Leo’s credibility.
Ryan looked to Laurie. She understood it was a sign that he was coming to a close. She nodded.
“Just a few more questions before we wrap up, Mr. Gunther. I’m going to read you a list of names of people who were at Finn’s Bar the night of the murder and ask whether you had any contact with them either before that night, or since.”
“Very well, but I don’t see the point of it.”
“According to your version of the story, you were at the bar alone and didn’t know anyone there, so we’d like to confirm that. And then we’d like to make sure you didn’t make any attempt after the fact to contact potential witnesses against you, either at your original trial or in your wrongful conviction case.”
For the first time since the cameras started filming, Tracy Mahoney spoke up. “Don’t answer that, Darren. It’s too vague.”
He used his free hand to wave off her concerns. “Please, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Let’s hear it.”
One by one, Ryan read from the list that Laurie had created: Lou Finney, of course; Jane Holloway, the woman Gunther had been hitting on that night; Jay Pratt, the man Gunther had fought with in the bar; Clarissa DeSanto, the waitress who’d surprised Leo by not testifying at Gunther’s trial; and, finally, Mason Rollins. According to Gunther, he had no preexisting connection to any of them, and no contact with them since.
“What about the friend you were celebrating with earlier that night, before the confrontation with Mr. Pratt? Perhaps he could shed some light about your demeanor that evening.”
Gunther squinted, as if confused by the question. “I was at the bar alone. I had been planning to meet some other Vassar students who were in the city for break, but never linked up with them. I headed down to the Village to find some fun on my own. Little did I know that the decision would ruin my life.”
According to Samantha Finney, Clarissa the waitress had said Gunther arrived with another man, but there was no way to know the truth at this point. This checklist of names was actually only a lead-in to the next question—the one that mattered the most.
“And finally,” Ryan asked, “we’d like to know who might serve as character references on your behalf.”
“Meaning what?”
“People who could say what type of person you were eighteen years ago, but also anyone close to you now. You say you’ve been a model prisoner. We think our viewers would like to hear from the people who know you best, to get a better sense of who you are as a person.”
If Gunther was involved in kidnapping Johnny, this was his opportunity to put them in touch with a third party who might continue a potential trade for his freedom, outside the confines of the prison.
“My mother went into a nursing home four years ago with dementia,” he said, shoulders slumping. “They wouldn’t even let me out to say good-bye to her while she still recognized her son. I’d probably say my lawyer is the person who knows me best at this point.” He nodded in Tracy’s direction. Laurie knew that a lawyer could not serve as a formal witness on behalf of her own client.
“No one else?” Ryan asked. “Maybe an old friend from the neighborhood, or even a former prisoner you’ve stayed in touch with whom we could interview?”
Come on, Laurie thought, take the bait Point us in the right direction.
“Sorry,” Gunther said with a shrug, “it’s not exactly easy to keep or make friends from behind bars.”
Ryan’s face fell as he looked to Laurie to make the call. He knew it, too. They hadn’t gotten what they needed.
“I think that’s all we have for today,” she said.
“You sure?” he asked. “Not like I’ve got big plans for the rest of my day.” Those twinkling eyes and dry smile again. She could see why so many media types had fallen for him.
“All good.” She felt a chill as she walked behind his chair to rap her knuckles on the door, indicating to the guard that they were finished.
As she heard a key enter the lock, Gunther spoke again. “By the way, Ms. Moran, my thoughts and prayers are with your fiancé’s nephew and your entire family.”
She nearly jumped at the direct mention of Johnny’s disappearance. “What did you say?”
“I’m a bit of a news junkie. Five different newspapers, a mix of local and national, every single day. The Post and the Daily News have certainly done a good job getting his picture out everywhere. He looks like a sweet boy. I hope he’s found safely, and soon.”
Laurie’s mind raced, silently shuffling through the press coverage she had been monitoring. Several of the stories noted that Johnny had been in the Hamptons for the birthday party of his uncle, newly confirmed federal judge Alex Buckley, but so far they had mentioned neither Laurie nor her father. At the very least, Gunther’s comment revealed that he had made the connection. But was this his way of letting her know he could lead them to Johnny?
She felt no closer to the truth.
“Let’s just say that the entire family is eager to get him home—no matter what.”
She searched Gunther’s face for some glimmer of a reaction as the prison guard re-shackled him. He did not turn to look at her again as he was escorted from the room.
* * *
Nick led the way toward the prison exit, l
ugging his field camera in a cross-slung leather bag.
Laurie found herself moving slowly, not wanting to climb into the studio van without a better lead.
She stopped walking as they approached the check-in window and turned toward Ryan at her side. “Is it just me, or did that not go well?”
“Not just you,” Ryan said. “It’s everything we already knew, but in his own words, which, frankly, sounded pretty good. And you know I like your father, but Gunther put some points on the board. We’re going to need to look at the timing between Gunther’s case and your dad’s promotion to the Public Information Office.”
Laurie pressed her hand to her forehead. There had to be something else they could do before leaving. She suddenly looked up. “The common folk digs,” she said.
Ryan’s expression was confused.
“Gunther remarked that he was on a sojourn to the luxury legal team suites, nicer than the meeting areas for the riffraff.”
It only took Ryan a beat to catch up to her train of thought. “Meaning, he has other visitors.”
Ten minutes later, they had a name: Summer Carver. She first showed up in the guest log about a year earlier, but over the last six months, she had only rarely missed the twice-a-week visitation hours that Gunther was allowed.
“So much for not having any friends except his lawyer,” Ryan said dryly.
As they waited for a corrections official to print out a computer scan of the woman’s New York driver’s license, they saw Tracy Mahoney standing in the alcove just inside the prison entrance. She turned away and held up her phone as if making a call, but Laurie was certain the lawyer had been watching them.
Tuesday, July 21
Day Seven
Chapter 37
The next morning, Laurie stood in her office, before three whiteboards containing everything they knew so far about Johnny’s disappearance, Darren Gunther and the murder of Lou Finney, and the possible connections between the two. Jerry, Grace, and Ryan sat at the white oval conference table, taking notes as she summarized key points.
She drew a circle in red ink around Summer Carver’s name. “If Gunther has someone acting as his eyes, ears, and legs on the ground while he’s in prison, we think Summer Carver is the most likely candidate. She is his only visitor at the prison other than his lawyer and, on occasion, his editor.”
She drew a second, smaller circle around Tracy Mahoney’s name. “There’s some possibility that his defense lawyer plays a complicit role in facilitating communications, but we think it’s unlikely she does any dirty work herself.” Tracy had seen them speaking to the prison guard at the check-in counter. It was certainly possible that the lawyer would have notified Summer by now that their production team was aware of her contacts with Gunther. The purpose of this meeting was to prepare before making any attempt to contact Summer directly.
“Jerry and I got an early start this morning looking into Summer’s social media, and hit pay dirt. Jerry, I’m going to let you spell out what we found.”
With only the four of them, Laurie would have simply had them huddle around her computer. Jerry, however, had been eager to connect his laptop to a projector so he could present what they had found on a larger screen.
As Laurie took a seat, a Facebook profile for Summer Carver appeared on a pull-down screen at the head of the conference table. In the profile image, a lanky young woman with long black wavy hair and pale skin held a fluffy white kitten up to her strawberry-freckled nose. “So Summer’s only social media presence is on Facebook. The first thing we noticed is that her only public posts—meaning we can see them even though we aren’t her online ‘friends’—are shared posts from the Darren Gunther Is Innocent page. We also know that she is active on Darren Gunther’s advocacy page, which isn’t surprising given that she visits him in prison.”
Jerry moved the cursor to the place on Summer’s profile where you could link to the profiles of any family members. Two family members were listed: her mother, Julie Carver, and a brother, Toby Carver. Jerry moved the cursor to Toby’s name and clicked.
“Her brother hasn’t posted anything for four years, so… dead end.” The profile picture wasn’t even of a person. It was a scenic shot of some woods near a creek. Jerry then pulled up the profile of Summer’s mother. “Mama Julie, however, is quite the active Facebook user.”
Julie’s profile photo depicted two women, smiling in close-up. One was Summer Carver, and the other wore a blue T-shirt that said 60 Is the New 40 in bold white letters. Julie was shorter and heavier than her daughter, with shorter, lighter hair, but they shared the strawberry freckles. Jerry double-clicked on the profile photo to reveal the date and caption. “This is from about three years ago. As you can see from the caption, they were celebrating Julie’s sixtieth birthday.” The caption read, “Best birthday gift possible. My beautiful daughter is back with me. So happy to have her home again!”
Grace raised her hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “Would it be a spoiler to ask where Summer was before that?”
“If we knew, I would tell you. So, that’s mystery number one. Onward.” Jerry speed-scrolled through hundreds of typical social media posts: pausing to point out Julie’s regular mentions of her daughter, including a few pictures of the two of them together at the meal-delivery nonprofit called God’s Love We Deliver.
“I brought an extra sous-chef with me for my regular Tuesday shift in the kitchen,” Julie had captioned one of the photos. “Click here to donate to an important cause!”
Jerry continued scrolling before stopping suddenly on a post from four months earlier. “Now this is where things get interesting.”
Instead of a personal photograph, the post was of white cursive text against a dark blue background. Mothers Don’t Sleep, it read. They Just Worry with Their Eyes Closed. It was posted with the caption, “SO TRUE!”
Laurie noticed Ryan drop his pen to the table, taking a break from the notes he was scribbling intensely, as if he had been assuming that nothing promising could come from a so-called mommy-meme. He was wrong. The key was to read the replies from Julie’s friends.
Katie Lundt: Julie, I want to think you’re kidding, but this doesn’t sound good?
Beth Trainor: LOL, honey, but I agree with Katie. You’re worrying us. Is Summer okay?
Julie then replied: She has made some choices that are… well, I don’t understand them.
Katie Lundt: But is everything OK?!
Julie: I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer, so now she left the house to stay with Toby (half brother). Long story, but, honestly, I’m concerned. Pray for me and my daughter, please. I can guide her but I can no longer control her. Why do they have to grow up so fast?
Laurie would never understand people who engaged in intimate conversations on the internet. If she had to guess, Julie Carver never imagined that a total stranger would end up scouring her social media for a glimpse into the most private details of her family.
Ryan’s pen was back in hand, furiously at work on his legal pad. “It sounds like there was a falling-out,” he said. “And the timing is right. Starting around six months ago, Summer ramped up her prison visits to Gunther to twice a week. Her mother may not have been happy about her daughter’s newest friend.”
“That’s exactly what we think,” Jerry said. “Since this post four months ago, there’s no indication that Julie has seen her daughter even once. In fact, there’s no direct mention of Summer at all. On Mother’s Day, a few people posted notes to Julie that they were thinking of her and wishing her better days with her children, so it would appear that they’re still on the outs. And Summer’s profile says she has a brother named Toby. It seems he’s a half brother, and not Julie’s son.”
Ryan squeezed the bridge of his nose. “It’s still really thin. All we really know is that Summer supports Gunther and has had some falling-out with her mom. A big leap from that to kidnapping. Do we have any reason to believe Summer’s capable of that?”
&n
bsp; Jerry clicked off the overhead projection as Laurie explained that she had called Jennifer Langland, the Long Island detective in charge of Johnny’s case, the previous night.
Grace shook her head, not trying to veil her displeasure. Her long red fingernails gleamed as she raised an adamant hand. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve never met the woman, but from everything I’ve heard, she is convinced we’re on a wild-goose chase with Gunther. Just have your father do his thing. The NYPD can run Summer through every database known to man. Done!”
Grace wasn’t wrong. Langland was clearly skeptical of Gunther’s involvement in Johnny’s abduction, but she was also the investigator in charge. She was Laurie’s first stop unless it became clear they needed a Plan B.
“I think I caught Langland at a good time,” Laurie said. “Apparently they spent nearly two days trailing a guy who had been seen watching children on the beach the day Johnny was abducted. They finally pulled him over for failing to signal. They thought they might actually have him when they found a receipt in the car from that day, from one of the food trucks that works the beaches. But then they tracked down the food truck and learned it was in Southhampton when Johnny disappeared. Anyway, whether she thinks we’re on the right track, or was just embarrassed about hitting a dead end, she promised me she’d run Summer and get back to me.”
“Her brother, too?” Grace asked.
“All known associates.”
“It’s a start,” Grace said begrudgingly, “but I have a feeling that Mama Carver could tell us a whole lot about what Summer’s been up to. It’s just a few Facebook posts, but I know the sound of a mother who thinks her kid is up to no good. I mean, not that I was ever that kid,” she added.
“Of course not,” Laurie said. “Funny you should say that, Grace, because if I wanted to find Mrs. Carver today for a preliminary background interview, where would we look?”
Piece of My Heart Page 15