Presumption of Guilt

by Marti Green

  “Just be careful, Tommy. Tell everyone to be careful.”

  Always be careful. That had been drummed into the agents at the FBI, and it was no different at HIPP. Be careful. But how do you protect yourself from the unknown? Someone wanted Dani off this case and had sent a strong message; that much was clear. It was the “who” that had him stumped.

  Before Dani had gotten into her car to make the trip back to the city, she’d called him. “We’ve got to look harder at the jail,” she’d said. “See if you can find Joe Singer’s business partner.” There hadn’t been time for much discussion. She’d said she’d fill him in when she got to the office. But she never arrived. If Dani was true to form, she’d jotted down notes of her visit with Molly’s trial lawyer. She always liked to do it while it was still fresh in her mind. Those notes would be in her car, now in the police impound, evidence in a potential attempted murder. He’d have to wait until the car had been gone over completely before he could get Dani’s briefcase.

  Tommy wended his way through the hospital corridors and out to his car. It was already starting to get dark, a reminder that the shortened days were bringing them closer to winter. Some of his FBI buddies had retired to Florida, spending their time on the golf course instead of shoveling driveways while freezing their butts. Their biggest worry was getting to the restaurant in time for two-for-one drinks, not whether their friend would survive an attempted murder.

  He found his car in the parking lot and started his drive home, where his wife waited for him. If it were Patty lying motionless in a hospital bed, he’d be inconsolable. She’d been by his side for more than twenty years, and without her he’d be lost. It was hard enough dealing with Tommy Jr. off at college, the first of his five children to leave the nest. Time seemed to be flying by now, as if the passing of days sped up as he aged. Before long, all of the kids would be gone, his once noisy home silenced with their absence. How could parents bear that? He’d left the FBI to spend more time with his kids, and it was the best decision he’d ever made. Seemed unfair that they would turn around and leave him and Patty, going off to college or getting married. Married? It seemed surreal to Tommy. His dark hair was peppered with gray but he still felt like a kid himself. He prided himself on his fitness, often challenging his sons to basketball games and holding his own against them.

  He pulled into his driveway, and as he walked in the door, the smell of garlic wafted in from the kitchen. With the television blaring in the living room, Patty didn’t hear him as he snuck up behind her, placed his arms around her waist, and nuzzled her neck with a kiss.

  “Great, you’re home,” she said, leaning into him. “Dinner’s just about ready.” She turned around to look at her husband. Her voice grew quieter as she studied his face. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “She should be okay, I think. But the docs put her in a coma. You remember, like Cousin Eddie.” Tommy went to the refrigerator and pulled out a cold beer, then sank into his chair at the head of the kitchen table. He’d played the optimist with Doug and now continued it with Patty. But he knew Dani’s injuries were serious. Sometimes the unexpected happened. Doctors never gave guarantees. He’d always accepted the risks that came with his jobs, but lawyers weren’t supposed to be in jeopardy. If Dani’s car had missed the tree, it would have gone over an embankment. Instead of seeing her battered and ghostlike, but still alive, he’d have been at her funeral.

  Someone had wanted her dead. If she pulled through this, he would make damn sure that person didn’t get another chance.

  CHAPTER

  15

  A week after the crash, the police finally released Dani’s car, and Tommy had the contents of her briefcase spread out on his desk. He opened the folder she’d marked “trial attorney” and took out the legal pad sitting on top. There were only three words on the page: “Hire forensic accountant.” Those didn’t come cheap, and HIPP, as a nonprofit relying on donations and grants, operated on a shoestring. He’d have to get approval from Bruce. He strode over to his office, knocked on the open door, then stepped inside.

  “Dani wants us to hire a forensic accountant on the Singer case.”

  Bruce perked up. “She’s already out of the coma?”

  “No, that’s still later today. It’s in her notes. I got her briefcase back today.”

  Bruce picked up a pencil and twirled it in his fingers. “Is that about the jail finances?”

  “I assume so. She didn’t elaborate in her notes.”

  “I know those letters said the murders had to do with the jail, but the state looked into it. Isn’t it a dead end now?”

  “Maybe not,” came a voice from the doorway. Both men looked around and saw Melanie as she walked into the office. “I was going through Dani’s mail and found another letter, still unsigned, but more detailed this time.” She handed the letter to Bruce and he read it aloud.

  Dear Ms. Trumball: I know that you are now representing Molly Singer. I read about you in the newspaper, about your accident, and hope that you are better now. As I said in my earlier letters, the ones I sent to Donna Garmond, Molly is innocent. Her parents were murdered because of the jail. There are some powerful people in Hudson County who had too much to lose if the truth about the jail came out. I was hoping you’d figure it out on your own but maybe this can help. The cost overruns weren’t routine like the state said. It was because people involved were lining their pockets with a lot of money, including Molly’s father and his partner. But they weren’t the only ones. And the others needed to make sure Joe Singer didn’t talk. I hope I’ve given you enough because I can’t tell you any more. I shouldn’t even have told you this. But Molly Singer doesn’t deserve to be in jail.

  Bruce looked up from the letter. “Well, this certainly backs up Dani’s call for a forensic accountant. If the state couldn’t find wrongdoing, the payoffs must have been buried pretty deeply.”

  “I know a good one from my days with the FBI,” Tommy said. “He’s semiretired now. Maybe I can sweet-talk him into giving us a break on his fee.”

  Bruce placed the letter on his desk. “We’re not spending much money on travel to other states with this case, so there’s room in the budget. Go ahead. Give your friend a call.”

  Tommy thanked Bruce, then headed back to his own office. The letter writer talked about powerful people in Hudson County benefitting financially from the jail. But who? Even if he hadn’t seemed squirrelly when Tommy had met with him, Reynolds the county executive would have been a strong candidate. As head of the legislative committee overseeing the building of the jail, he’d have been in a position to cover up a lot of questionable expenditures. Tommy would check into Reynolds further. It had been a hell of a lot easier when he worked for the government. Then, he could get a court order giving him access to bank records without the target even knowing about it. It was trickier to get that information now, but he’d figure out a way.

  Who else, though? Every county in every state had people who ran things, usually behind the scene. If he wanted the scoop on who carried the weight in Hudson County, the person most likely in the know would be the head of the party out of power. He turned to his computer and after a quick Google search came up with a name. Paul Scoby headed the Democratic Party in Hudson County. He reached for the phone and dialed his number.

  Black enshrouded her, and wrapped around the darkness was confusion. Dani didn’t know where she was, why the slightest move sent waves of pain throughout her body. Then she was aware of the murmur of whispered voices and realized her eyes were closed. Why couldn’t she open them? It felt as though weights pressed down on her lids. She pushed, gently at first, then harder, and slowly the light emerged. She was in a bed, in a room painted white, aluminum blinds on the windows. Doug sat in a chair next to the bed, his face turned up to a man dressed in a neatly pressed suit, a folder in his hands. She tried to speak but couldn’t form the words. Her hands felt heavy
but she managed to lift up her thumb and hold it erect. Suddenly, the man in the suit nudged Doug and said, “Look.”

  Doug grabbed Dani’s hand. “Sweetheart, you’re awake.” He opened his mouth to say more but stopped as tears rolled down his cheek.

  Dani tried to speak again, and this time forced her words out in a croak. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “You were in an accident. Your car went into a tree,” Doug said. “Do you remember anything?”

  Slowly, it came back to her—the black SUV that loomed suddenly in her rearview mirror, the jolt that sent her off the road and into the tree. “It wasn’t an accident,” she said.

  Doug squeezed her hand. “I know. There were witnesses.”

  “What happened to me?”

  Doug looked up at the doctor standing at the bedside. “Dr. Reuben, do you want to explain?”

  The man in the suit tucked the folder under his arm and stepped closer to Dani. “Mrs. Trumball, you were very fortunate. Your airbag inflated and saved you from more serious injuries. Several ribs are broken and you sustained some trauma to the head from the impact, which caused swelling in your brain. You were put in a coma to allow the swelling to subside. This morning, I stopped the medication which kept you in a coma. I don’t believe there will be any permanent injuries, but I’d like to examine you now if you’re up to it.”

  “How long?”

  The doctor looked puzzled.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Seven days.”

  Dani turned to Doug. “I have to get back to work. Without me, Bruce will probably drop Molly’s case. I need to be there.” She attempted to sit up, groaned from the pain, then carefully lay back down.

  Doug laughed. “I don’t think you need to examine her, Dr. Reuben. She’s back to her old self.”

  “Well, let’s just make sure,” the doctor said with a smile. He began by asking Dani simple questions—her name, address and phone number, her date of birth, the name of the current president, the sum of five plus seven. She rolled off the answers easily. He moved then to a physical examination and when he finished, said, “I don’t find any neurological deficits, Mrs. Trumball. When your bones and bruises heal, you’ll be good as new. But work is out of the question for a bit. You still need complete rest.”

  “I’ll make sure she gets it,” Doug said. “Even if I have to strap her down.”

  Dani turned to Doug. “Have you heard from Bruce? Is he dropping her case?”

  He pointed to a vase of flowers on the windowsill. “Those are from Bruce. He was here. So were Melanie and Tommy. Tommy I had to practically throw out, he came so often. I told him you’d rather he were working on Molly’s case.”

  “And Bruce didn’t stop him?”

  “Nope. He said go ahead.”

  Dani breathed a sigh of relief. She knew the doctor was right—just sitting upright pained her. She needed to talk to Tommy, though, fill him in on her conversation with Molly’s trial lawyer. Before, there hadn’t been pressure to move quickly. No clock was ticking toward a date with an executioner, as was so often the case with Dani’s death row clients. But the SUV that pushed her off the road changed things. Someone was watching her and didn’t like what he saw. She and her team needed to find out who, quickly, before he acted again.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Paul Scoby’s office was a tiny room at the back of his hardware store, the one desk taking up most of the floor space. It was difficult to believe that the slightly built man, measuring no more than five feet seven on a good day, with a mop of brown hair falling over his eyebrows, was the leader of the Democratic Party in Hudson County.

  “Thanks for meeting with me,” Tommy said.

  “No problem. But I don’t know how I can help you. I didn’t know Joe Singer and wasn’t involved with the building of the jail.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m hoping you can shed some light. I have reason to believe that the people who were involved somehow benefitted financially, in ways they shouldn’t have.”

  “Skimming?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If that were true, why do you think I’d know anything about it?”

  “Because I think the people doing it were the higher-ups in the Republican Party. And I think as head of the Democratic Party you would keep tabs on them.”

  Scoby smiled. “Don’t you think if I had something on them, I would have used it during election campaigns? I’d love to have that kind of dirt. The state looked into the cost overruns with the jail, though, and they came up empty. So, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time with me.”

  Tommy wasn’t ready to give up. Sometimes people didn’t realize what they knew. “How well do you know the county executive?”

  “Frank? Very well. We went to Hudson High School together back in the day.”

  Tommy made a note on his pad. “He was head of the appropriations committee when the jail was being built. Any overage approvals had to go through him, didn’t they?”

  “Sure. But there were Democrats on the committee as well. Frank didn’t have the authority to approve bills on his own. The ranking Democrat on the committee had to okay them as well.”

  “And who was that?”

  “Back then? Let me think.” Scoby was quiet for a moment, then opened his drawer and took out a book, thumbed through it, then said, “That would be Mary Jane Olivetti. Came into politics after she stepped down from being a nun. You couldn’t find anyone more honest than Mary Jane.”

  “Do you have a phone number for her?” Tommy held his pen in his hand, ready to write.

  Scoby’s voice softened. “I’m afraid not. She died a while back, a car accident. A terrible loss for us. She would have gone far in politics.”

  Tommy didn’t know where else to go with his questioning. The one person who might have information about wrongdoing was dead. He stood up to leave, then sat back down. “Just one more question. Do you remember how long ago she died?”

  “I think it was about ten years ago, give or take.”

  “That’s okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll look it up. I’m sure the local newspaper had a story about a legislator dying.”

  “Wait a minute. Now that I think about it, maybe it was twelve years ago. I remember now. Molly Singer was on trial when it happened.”

  “Mommy, you look damaged,” Jonah said when Molly walked into the house leaning on Doug’s arm for support. “And your face has purple eruptions. Did you have an accident?”

  Dani wanted desperately to hug him, but she knew her knitting ribs couldn’t withstand the squeezing he’d give her. Instead, she made do with leaning over and kissing the top of his head, then ruffling his hair with her hands. Had he grown again? At thirteen, he was almost as tall as she. “Yes, Jonah, I was in an accident, but I’m okay. Only I need to rest a few days at home before I’m all better.”

  Jonah’s face lit up at the prospect of having his mother at home, and once again Dani felt that twinge of guilt that she wasn’t home for him every day. Whoever said women could have it all couldn’t have been a working mother. Sure, the once-closed doors to previously male-dominated careers were now opened. But once inside the door, women still had to work twice as hard to make it to the top echelons. And that took away from time spent with her children at home. No one talked about the emotional loss in not watching your child’s first steps, or hearing her first words, or being there to soothe him when he scraped a knee. Dani knew her decision to return to work required her to engage in a balancing act, and she wasn’t always certain the scales tipped in the right direction.

  “I’m going to lie down for a bit,” Dani said, after catching up with Jonah on what he’d been doing while she was gone.

  “Do you need my help getting upstairs?” Doug held out his arm for her.

  Dani shook her head, then w
alked up the stairs to her bedroom. As she passed the large mirror hanging over her dresser, she glanced at her image and frowned. Splotches of purple bruises dotted her forehead. Her normally olive skin was washed out, drained of all color. Her dark curls hung limply down to her shoulders. She looked all of her forty-three years and then some. What a sight I am, she thought as she made her way over to her bed. Well, at least there was one bright spot. The five pounds she’d been trying to lose for more than a year were gone. But the lying-in-bed-in-a-coma diet wasn’t one she’d recommend.

  After she got settled, several pillows propped up behind her back, she reached for Molly Singer’s file, then called Tommy. She’d had several conversations with him since she’d been awakened from the coma.

  “So, how does it feel to be back home?” Tommy asked.

  “You can’t imagine. Just the few days in the hospital after they woke me up were agony. And not seeing Jonah was the worst. Doug thought it’d be better to wait until I was home.”

  “How long before you’re able to come into the office?”

  “I’ll see how it goes over the weekend, but I should be ready by Monday.”

  “Good. And how early can you travel?”

  “Why? What have you found?

  “Joe Singer’s partner. He’s living in Miami Beach. I’m gonna fly down to speak to him, and I didn’t know if you wanted to come as well.”

  Dani thought about it. If there had been skimming of the jail funds, the anonymous letter writer said Quince Michaels was involved. She’d love to watch as Tommy questioned him; so much could be learned from Michaels’s body language. Still, having an attorney in the room could be intimidating. Tommy might be more effective at getting Michaels to let down his guard if he questioned him alone. “No, you go without me or Melanie. And this way you don’t have to wait until I’m cleared to travel.”

  “Okay, then if he’s available, I’ll leave tomorrow.”