by Marti Green
“Can you give me his name?”
“Sure. It’s Coach Webber. Fitz Webber.”
“Thanks. I appreciate your help.”
Tommy did a quick search and came up with a phone number for Fitzroy Webber in Saint Petersburg. He gave it a try but got voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message. Instead, he figured he’d try again later—only to forget, as he got bogged down in other matters.
Back in the office, Dani was still seething. It infuriated her that Jack Osgood remained behind bars because of discredited science. Nearly half of the DNA exonerations had been in cases where faulty forensics led to the wrongful conviction. She shuddered to think of the men and women still in prison, perhaps facing death like Jack Osgood, because some dentist or doctor or scientist or technician testified with certainty that their science assigned guilt to the defendant.
It would take years, maybe decades, for the courts in all the states to rectify the past mistakes and put a halt to the continuation of those errors. For Osgood, Dani would have to continue the fight against admitting bite-mark analysis—up to Georgia’s Supreme Court, if necessary. Only, for Osgood’s sake, she hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
She left work at 4:00 p.m. The light was already fading, and the darkness that would soon engulf the city matched her mood. By the time she walked in the front door, even Ruth’s gleeful shouts of “Mama” did little to lift the heaviness she felt. She went through the motions of preparing dinner, and managed to keep a smile on her face for Jonah and Ruth, but once the children were asleep and she settled onto the couch for “honeymoon hour,” Doug’s first words were, “What’s wrong?”
“You can tell?”
“Of course I can. We’ve been married almost twenty years.”
Dani bowed her head. “Sometimes I think it’s too much. That I should walk away from what I’m doing.”
“Something happen today?”
“Nothing new. I’m just tired of fighting ignorance. Willful ignorance. Or maybe it’s heartlessness.”
“From prosecutors?”
“Oh, they’re bad enough. I’m talking about judges.”
Doug wrapped his arms around Dani and pulled her into his body. “Surely, not all judges.”
“Of course not. It’s just so damn frustrating that testimony based on junk science is still allowed.” She straightened up and turned to look at Doug, her features set in a glower. “Out in California, a man was convicted of murdering his wife based on bite-mark evidence. Eleven years later, the same dentist admitted that there was no science to conclude that the defendant’s teeth matched the bite mark. The judge ruled that as a result, the prosecution had no case and the remaining record showed he was innocent.”
“That’s good.”
“Not so fast. On appeal, the California Supreme Court ruled that an expert could never be wrong or legally false because his testimony was merely opinion. That’s insane. Jurors are so used to watching shows like CSI that they believe an expert’s testimony is infallible. Especially when they say things like ‘It’s a match’ or ‘There’s no chance of error’ or even ‘to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.’ To a juror hearing those words, it spells ‘guilty.’”
“Our justice system isn’t perfect. You know that. That’s why you work for an innocence project.”
“Only . . . it’s wearing me down. I come home and see Ruth for such a short time before she goes to sleep. I miss spending time with her. And Jonah is growing up so fast. Before we know it, he’ll be leaving us.”
Doug began to rub Dani’s shoulders. “You know, you don’t have to work. Come to California with me. Take time off. A year, maybe more. Figure out what you want. It doesn’t even have to be law.”
Dani’s eyes began to tear up as she once again leaned back into Doug. “I can’t. It keeps me awake some nights, thinking about innocent people in prison. I have to keep doing this.” She managed a wan smile. “I just needed to vent tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be ready to fight again.”
CHAPTER
39
His chest tightened, and his stomach did somersaults as he read the newspaper article. He’d been traveling the day before and so missed reading it yesterday, but now he sat in his office, catching up. Two detectives, two different towns, two different states. It was so long ago. How could they have pieced it together? A drop of sweat from his brow dripped into his eye, and he took out a tissue to wipe it dry. He never should have given in to the urge. If it hadn’t been for the latest one, that investigator wouldn’t have gone looking. At the time, he’d gloated over Osgood taking the fall for him once again. It proved he was safe, impervious to arrest. But now—now they’d discovered the link. How long would it take them to realize it was him? Soon? Maybe never?
He thought about running away, but where? He had a family. They wouldn’t follow him without questions, and he couldn’t give them answers. Could he leave them behind? If he went to prison, he’d have no choice. He’d heard about people taking on a new identity, buying false documents, starting over. He wouldn’t know where to begin to make that happen.
“Dinner’s ready,” his wife called.
He put down the newspaper and slowly lifted himself from the chair. He was still a big man, but some of the muscle had softened, and his bones creaked as he moved. Some would consider him middle-aged, but he still thought of himself as young. Only now, carrying the weight of his misdeeds, he felt old.
He walked into the dining room and gave his wife a peck on her cheek. His children were already seated, bickering among themselves. How could he survive never seeing them again?
As he watched them fight, he thought of his sister. They used to argue all the time, but they were devoted to each other. Maybe she would know someone. Someone to give him a new name, a new life. She had to come across plenty of criminals in her job at the courthouse. And she already knew about him, even though he’d denied it to her.
Yes, she would help him. As he sat down to eat, he resolved to call her tomorrow.
CHAPTER
40
Three weeks passed before Dani got a response to her discovery request from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office. She groaned when she saw a report from Michael Forbes. He was old school—in the camp of odontologists who were convinced, without any scientific evidence, that they could distinguish a human bite from an animal one, and definitively determine who made the bite mark. She glanced through the report, which had compared the mark on Alison Grant’s arm to Osgood’s teeth and found it a match. She leaned back in her chair and read it again, this time more slowly. Halfway through, she stopped, incredulous. Forbes had used the same imprint of Osgood’s teeth taken twenty-two years ago. She didn’t need training as a dentist to know that his bite would have changed over the years, especially over such a long period. Any dental work done, like caps or bridges, would surely result in a different bite mark. She jotted a note to herself to check with the prison dentist to see what work had been done on Osgood’s teeth during the past two decades.
As she’d suspected, there was little else tying Osgood to the crime. A neighbor said she’d seen him walking on the block a few days before the murder. There was no hair or fingerprints left at the scene. A few footprints were found on the lawn under Grant’s window, and the shoe size matched Osgood’s. More junk science, she thought. All it should do is prove that a person wearing footwear of a certain size and make was present. But so-called experts would get on the stand and state with certainty that a shoe worn by the defendant made the print at the scene of a crime. Sometimes, when a shoe had been worn down in a unique way, it could provide markings that were useful in an identification. But Dani had taken Osgood shopping on his first day freed from prison and been with him when he’d purchased a new pair of Nike sneakers. There had to be thousands of men in the area with the same brand. So, good luck getting that into evidence.
Dani pivoted to the two other cases she had taken on—it would be at least six mo
nths for Osgood’s case to get to trial. Both of the new cases had DNA available. Both, she expected, would be resolved quickly. Without DNA evidence, these men would continue to languish in prison. One had been behind bars for eighteen years, the other for sixteen. How did the system get so broken? Or, was it ever fixed? It seemed so simple on Perry Mason, where eyewitnesses were never wrong and the bad guy always confessed. Now, she knew that eyewitness testimony was the least reliable, and sometimes innocent people confessed.
But the system was broken beyond that. Technical testimony, for such a long time considered the gold standard in trials, was now being questioned. After decades of forensic examiners testifying in court that ballistic markings or fingerprints or shoeprints or tire tracks or bite marks could identify a perpetrator, The National Academy of Sciences had said, “Not so.” At least, not with a high degree of certainty. Just recently, the FBI had conducted a postconviction review of its own hair-sample lab. In 268 cases in which the lab reported a match, the technician was wrong 96 percent of the time. Fourteen of those defendants convicted, in large part, because of that testimony had since been executed. Yet, Dani knew, courts continued to admit testimony from so-called technical experts. She was determined not to let that happen to Osgood.
She finished the motions she was working on, then went back to the discovery she’d gotten from Franklin and thumbed through it again. Up until Grant, each of the girls abducted from her bedroom and then murdered had been bitten on the upper arm. In each case, the arm had been submerged in water for a long period before the body was found, and the DNA had been washed away. There was nothing in the files she’d received about saliva in the bite mark, so she expected the same would be true with Alison Grant. Still, she had to check. She picked up the phone and called Franklin.
“So, I guess there was no DNA recovered,” she said when he got on the phone.
“There was no rape.”
“I mean from the bite mark.”
She was met with silence on the other end.
“You still there?”
“They might have recovered a small amount. I’m not sure it will be enough.”
Now it was Dani’s turn for silence. Most prosecutors cared about justice. If they didn’t believe the evidence supported a charge, they didn’t bring one. Some counties had even instituted conviction-integrity units—prosecutors charged with going over certain past convictions to make sure the evidence wasn’t flawed. Once in a while, though, she came across a prosecutor whose uppermost concern was winning. Franklin now struck her as that kind. “Has it been sent out for testing?”
“Not yet. We’ve been busy with other matters.”
Dani exploded. “If that sample isn’t sent to a lab today I’m going straight to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and accusing you of purposeful obfuscating. And my second stop is to your district attorney.”
“Don’t get your britches all tied in a knot. We just do things in the South a little slower than you northerners.”
“Today!”
“It’s been getting readied to send out. I suspect it’s on tomorrow’s schedule.”
“Today!”
Dani heard a deep sigh on the other end. “I’ll do you a favor and see if I can fast-track it for you.”
“So, it’ll go out today?”
“Yes. But you know these labs are slow. Probably won’t get the results back for a couple of months.”
“Four weeks. Tell your lab if they don’t have the results in that time, I’m going to the newspapers.”
He chuckled. “I can see you’re going to be a tiger in court. I look forward to going up against you.”
“This isn’t a contest, Mr. Franklin. A man’s life is at stake.”
“A man who took the life of a young girl.”
“No. A man who’s suspected of taking her life. And when those results come back, you’ll see it’s an innocent man whose life you’ve been playing with.”
CHAPTER
41
I need your help,” he said to his sister when she answered his phone call.
“What?”
“I need to disappear.”
Her voice, when she responded, was strained. “It was you. Oh, God. All of them?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You work at the courthouse. I thought, maybe, you might know someone who knows how to make up false identities.”
She thought for a moment. “There is someone.”‘
“I need it soon.”
“It’ll be expensive, I suspect.”
“That doesn’t matter. I have money.”
“Get me some passport-size photos.”
“Okay. I’ll overnight them.”
“I’ll let you know when they’re ready.”
“Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”
He could hear her sniffles. “I love you, you know,” she said. “But promise me you’ll stop. That this will be the end.”
He wanted it to end. He was losing everything of importance to him—his wife, his children, a satisfying job. He wanted to be normal. He hoped he could be. “Yes,” he said to his sister. “It won’t happen again.”
CHAPTER
42
Three weeks later, Dani was still waiting for the DNA results on the saliva found in the bite mark in Alison Grant’s arm. Just before leaving the office to return home, she placed a phone call to Osgood. It was easier to reach him at a county jail than the state prison, so she only had to wait five minutes before he got on the line.
“How are you holding up?” Dani asked him.
“It’s different here. I’m not locked up by myself all day. I’m with everyone else.”
“Are they bothering you?”
“No. I’m big. I guess they think I’m strong, too. Some of them call me names.”
“What names?”
“Retard.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m used to that. They called me the same when I was in school.”
Dani wondered if verbal bullying would ever stop. It had gone on when she was in school, and probably had when her parents and grandparents were young as well. But longevity didn’t make it right. She’d heard some educators excuse it as a rite of passage, something that kids had always done. She’d also heard some schools had adopted a zero-tolerance policy, but often that backfired, bringing more abuse on the bullied kid when the aggressor faced consequences. She didn’t know the answer. She was just glad Jonah went to a school where everyone was different, and everyone accepted those differences.
“Doris came to visit me. Two times,” Osgood said.
“That’s nice. I’m sure it was good to have a visitor.”
“I like her. I think she likes me.”
Dani hoped that was true. This man had spent half his life in prison unfairly, and now that freedom was in sight, he was once again the target of a careless police investigation that was choosing expediency over thoroughness. He should be living in that home, solidifying a relationship with Doris. He should have his father in his life, helping soften the loss of his mother. There were so many shoulds. Dani hoped the most important one would come back soon—the DNA testing that should show someone else had murdered Alison Grant.
Dani felt bone-weary by the time she arrived home—late as usual. She always tired more easily in the winter months, when the days were short and darkness came too quickly. She wondered if it would be different on the West Coast, where the milder weather might compensate for the reduced sunlight.
Katie had left the family a lasagna in the oven, and as soon as Dani opened her front door, the delicious smell of garlic greeted her. Thank goodness Doug liked garlic as much as Dani did. Her best friend was married to a man who couldn’t tolerate the odor and had banished it from their kitchen. Dani couldn’t imagine going through life without it.
Ruth rushed up to greet her, holding her arms up in the air to be picked up. Dani was happy to oblige and
planted kisses all over her daughter, causing Ruth to erupt in giggles. Doug was already home, and after they exchanged their news of the day, they called Jonah down for dinner.
They’d finished the meal, and Dani was serving dessert, when Jonah said, “I think we should all move to California. It would be an exploit.”
Dani had to stop and think what he meant. Usually, she had no problem understanding his word substitution, but now she was stumped. “What do you mean, Jonah?”
Doug jumped in. “Are you saying it would be an adventure?”
“Yes. Completely.”
Dani glanced over at Doug. They purposefully hadn’t discussed his job offer with Jonah, figuring they’d wait until it was closer to the time for him to leave. Doug shrugged his shoulders.
“Who talked to you about California?”
“Nobody. I attended to you talking to each other. I think we should all stay together. That would be exceptional.”
“Wouldn’t you miss your friends? And Katie?” Dani asked.
“Yes. But I would miss Daddy more.”
Dani sat back in her seat, numb. She felt the forces closing in on her, pushing her to leave New York, to move to California. Pushing her to leave HIPP.
Something kept niggling at the back of Tommy’s brain, but he couldn’t lock down what it was. Something he’d said he’d do later, only now he couldn’t remember what. It frightened him, these lapses in his memory. He’d always prided himself on having a mind like a steel trap—once it was part of his consciousness, it stayed there. He’d never had to write it down. Lately, though, he’d sometimes forget the simplest thing—where he’d placed his keys, the name of the person who’d asked him to leave a message for Patty, even the name of someone he’d known from his kids’ soccer games. He’d told Patty that it worried him, but she just laughed. “You’re not far off from sixty. It’s common to forget things. It happens to me all the time.” But it didn’t happen to Tommy. And he didn’t like it one bit.
He’d kept in touch with Hammond and Wilson, but they hadn’t gotten very far. They were checking down leads of anyone who knew the murdered girls and who might also have been where the other girls were murdered. It was a slow process, especially since, as cold cases, they didn’t warrant a lot of manpower. Still, they’d promised Tommy they wouldn’t give up.