The Price of Justice

by Marti Green

  “So, what now?”

  Tommy glanced over at the beach. “I’m staying down here a few more days. Think I’ll nose around a bit.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to get back. I’ll let Bruce know where you are. And if I can do something, just holler.”

  Tommy dropped Dani off at the airport. As she waited for her flight, Dani thought about what lay ahead. It wouldn’t be easy—trying to find a murderer seven years after the crime. They couldn’t even go to the police who’d investigated. As far as everyone was concerned, Earl Sanders murdered Carly Sobol. Asking to review files or talk to the investigating detectives would raise too many eyebrows, possibly leading to the discovery of Amelia Melton’s “donation” to Letitia Sanders. She drummed her fingers on her chair as she tried to come up with a solution. And then it hit her. She pulled out her netbook, and after fifteen minutes of research on Lexis, she thought it would work. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Jack Donahue.

  “I need a favor,” Dani said to him after they’d exchanged greetings. “I want you to file a complaint on behalf of Winston for a pure bill of discovery.”

  “A what?”

  Dani laughed. Most lawyers hadn’t heard of this arcane rule in Florida law that dated back to the eighteen hundreds. She’d only vaguely remembered it from a convoluted question on her bar exam. “It basically allows for pre-litigation discovery so that a prospective plaintiff can assess whether he has a case.”

  “What case does Winston have?”

  “I’m thinking violation of his civil rights, malicious prosecution, wrongful incarceration. If I tried, I’m sure I could come up with others.”

  “And Winston wants this?”

  “He doesn’t even know about it yet.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  If they were to have any chance of finding the real killer of Carly Sobol, Tommy needed access to all of the original investigation notes, not just the official police reports. Fat chance the Palm Beach Police Department would turn that over to him unless they were compelled. So, Dani figured, find a way to force them.

  “We believe Winston didn’t kill Carly. But neither did Sanders. We want to find out who did.”

  “Is that what Mrs. Melton wants?”

  “I doubt it. I suspect she wants the whole sordid mess to go away.”

  “You need a plaintiff.”

  “I think we can convince Win to do it.”

  “No one in that family does anything without Mrs. Melton’s approval. And I can’t imagine she’d want the papers to run with a story that the family is seeking monetary damages from the police.”

  “I suspect after seven years on death row, Win probably feels he’s earned the right to make his own decisions.”

  “There’s Frank Lesco. He knows the case. Why don’t you use him?”

  “Because the fewer people who know the truth about Sanders’s confession, the better. Look, Mrs. Melton tricked me into taking this case, and you went along with it, so I figure you owe me one.”

  Dani heard a deep sigh on the other end, then a cough. “If Winston goes along with it, I’ll file the papers.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” she said, then hung up with a big smile on her face.

  CHAPTER

  32

  Win’s hands shook as he held the letter, reading it once again. It felt like he was reading the words of a ghost, a dim apparition from his past.

  Dear Win,

  I was overjoyed when I read the news of your acquittal. I’d always known you were innocent but feared that it wouldn’t matter, that you’d be put to death anyway. Thank heavens that awful man finally told the truth. I don’t know how you feel about hearing from me again. I know you’d told me to stop writing, but I always felt I should have pushed harder, that when I stopped, I’d abandoned you.

  I finished medical school at NYU last summer, and I’m now doing my internship there. I feel like I’ve had my head in books the past eight years. I know you wanted me to move on with my life, but my life has been studying, first to make sure I’d get into med school and then to do well once there. So, I’ve had no boyfriends since you. No serious ones, at least.

  I don’t know if you ever think about me. I’ve thought about you often. I know we’d only been together a few months, but when I was with you, it felt like you understood me more than anyone else I’d ever known. I miss that. I miss your smile. I miss your hand holding mine. I miss you.

  Will you be coming back to New York? If you do, I’d really like to see you again. I know I’m being forward, but you always liked that in me. I hope you still do.

  Yours, Sienna

  Sienna wanted to see him again! Each time he read her letter, his heart beat a little faster. He’d thought about her many times over the years, even when he’d tried to forget her. It didn’t surprise him that she’d gone on to medical school. That had always been her goal. He was different now, though. He felt like the old Win had shattered.

  His time in the county jail, waiting for his trial, hadn’t prepared him for prison, much less for death row. “The evidence is flimsy,” his lawyer had assured him. Because it was a death-penalty case, bail wasn’t available. Still, he’d made it through the indignity of strip searches, communal showers, and life in a small cell. And then the verdict came. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that he’d be found guilty. Juries didn’t convict innocent men. So, he was still in a state of shock when he’d been transported to the state prison in Raiford, marched past the rows of cells with ordinary prisoners, through the door that led to death row.

  He hadn’t been prepared to be awakened each morning at five a.m., first from the sound of the locked doors to death row opening, then as the clang of the metal doors closing reverberated down the corridor, followed by the stomp of a guard’s boots as he wheeled the breakfast cart, stacked with trays of food. He hadn’t been prepared to have each meal thrust through a small slot in the bars. He hadn’t been prepared for the roaches that came out with each tray of barely edible food, responding to the warm odors. He hadn’t been prepared to eat his meals sitting on his thin, thirty-inch mattress, with the tray balanced on his knees.

  He hadn’t been prepared for the concrete walls that made up his home for twenty-four hours each day. There was no common room, or communal dining room, or library, or television room. There was only his six-by-nine-foot cell, looking out into a corridor, one of fourteen along the same wall. A cot, a toilet without a seat, a small locker for his personal items. That was his world.

  He hadn’t been prepared for the putrid odors from hot, humid air, mixed with the smell of stale cigarettes and sweating bodies. Even in the winter, when it was always cold in the cells because there was no heat, the foul air attacked his senses. Still, winter was better than summer, when the temperatures outside rose into the high nineties, making the heat inside the non-air-conditioned cells unbearable.

  He hadn’t been prepared for the noise. Confined to their cells most of the day and night, the men on death row chattered constantly to inmates they couldn’t see, only hear. Some, mentally unbalanced, screamed for much of the day. Others shouted loudly enough to be heard down the whole row of cells about any subject they could think of—politics, sports, religion, law, sex. It was never quiet.

  Most of all, he hadn’t been prepared for the isolation, the soul-crushing sense of being alone in the world, cut off from normal human interaction, hopelessness displacing all other feelings. It hadn’t taken long for him to learn that hope was destructive. It ate away at him inside until nothing was left.

  His only salvation had been books and visits. Once a week, he was allowed visitors, so each week, his mother flew on the company jet to be with him. She was allowed to hug him when she arrived, and again when she left. All other physical contact was denied. Once a month, his grandmother joined her, and twice a year, his father visited. At eac
h visit, his mother brought books, and when she left, he’d lose himself in the words.

  Although death-row inmates were allowed a radio and a thirteen-inch TV in their cells—no cable, of course—and some kept those going all day for a tie to the outside world, for Win, books provided the needed distraction from what awaited him.

  Each inmate was allowed to spend up to ninety-nine dollars a week in the canteen, once again on a cart brought to them since they couldn’t leave their cells. They could purchase cigarettes, sandwiches, juice, pastries, potato chips, even soap. Win quickly learned that most of his fellow inmates on his corridor came from poor families. He arranged for his mother to deposit ninety-nine dollars not only in his account each week, but in the accounts of the other death-row inmates. That insured his safety for the two hours allowed in the yard.

  During his seven years, three men had committed suicide. They were men who’d been on death row more than ten years and welcomed death to escape the agony of their isolation, preferring an immediate end rather than the minute-by-minute death of their lives.

  Two men had been exonerated and left death row to return to their families. One had been on death row for nineteen years, the other for twenty-three. The exonerations had given him hope. Hope that he would get a chance to prove his innocence. He’d learned from his readings that since the death penalty had been reinstated, one out of every four men on death row in Florida had been exonerated. Now that Florida was determined to kill its inmates more quickly, he’d wondered every day whether his chance would come before it was too late.

  Win had told Dani he’d changed, and that was true. But he hadn’t let on to anyone the depth of the change. He was damaged goods now, unable to sleep through the night, awakened by nightmares of pacing around his cell over and over and over again.

  He looked at the letter from Sienna once more, then shook his head sadly. He wanted desperately to write back, tell her he still loved her, but he knew that he wouldn’t. She deserved someone whole. Instead, he was Humpty Dumpty, who’d fallen from his great heights, and who couldn’t be put back together again.

  CHAPTER

  33

  Getting access to the police notes would help, but Tommy knew it would take time. Before he returned to New York, he headed to Palm Beach High School to take a look at the yearbook for the 2007–2008 school year. Once there, he made his way to the principal’s office.

  “Why on earth would you need it?” Mrs. Baker, the principal, asked after Tommy explained who he was. “The man who really murdered her finally confessed.”

  “Yes, but there’s still a cloud over Winston, left over from the trial. The only one who saw Sanders at the high school was Winston’s best friend. I’m trying to track down other students at the dance who might have seen him.” Tommy had rehearsed this lie before he’d arrived at the school. No one could know that he was trying to track down the real killer.

  “Well, I suppose it’s okay, then.” She walked over to a bookcase in her office. One shelf contained a whole row of yearbooks. She scanned through them until she came to the one she wanted, then pulled it out. “Feel free to use my outer office, then drop it off with my assistant.”

  Tommy nodded, then moved to the outer office, where Baker’s assistant sat, along with a row of chairs for students who’d been sent to the principal’s office. He pulled out a legal pad from his briefcase, along with a pen, and settled in one of the chairs. First, he flipped through the book to see if there were any pictures of the dance. He found two. He’d hoped the names of the students in the pictures would be printed below the photos, but no such luck. He ambled over to the assistant, the one person in the school who usually knew even more about the students than the principal.

  “Excuse me, Miss—”

  She looked up from her typewriter. “Miss Wender.”

  She looked to be in her fifties, with hair already gray, and carrying an extra twenty pounds.

  Tommy placed the yearbook in front of her. “I wonder if you recognize any of the students in this picture?”

  She peeked at the photos. “I do, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to give you their names. Privacy, you know.”

  Tommy flashed her his biggest smile. “Oh, it’s okay. Mrs. Baker said you could help me.”

  “Really? Well, if she approved it.” She looked once again at the photos. “I don’t know everyone, of course.” She pointed to each student she recognized and gave their names. Tommy jotted notes as she spoke, and when finished, thanked her. He handed her back the yearbook and quickly left. He didn’t want to be caught in his lie if the principal exited her office.

  Once back in his car, he took out his iPad and looked up addresses for the names he’d been given. Of course, it was harder for the females. Many of them no doubt had married since then and taken their husbands’ names. He only needed a few, though. Each person he spoke to could lead him to others at the dance. The more people he reached, the greater likelihood that someone might have seen another person leave the gym after Carly Sobol went off with Win.

  He wrote down notes, then headed back to his motel. No use trying to reach people now. They’d probably be at work. When evening came around, he’d begin making phone calls. In the meantime, the beach beckoned.

  Tommy had already spoken to six people, and other than getting more names of kids at the dance, he’d made no headway. He dialed the number for the seventh person on the list—Neil Orloff. After he introduced himself, he said, “I’m trying to find someone at the dance the night Carly Sobol was killed who might have seen anyone else leave the gym before the dance was over.”

  “Why?” Orloff asked, echoing the same confusion expressed by each person to whom he’d spoken. He gave Orloff the same answer he’d given the principal.

  When Tommy finished, Orloff said, “I had a thing for Carly back then. Greg had grabbed her up before I’d had a chance to make my move, but I was still into her and kind of kept my eyes on her. When Greg left her to get some drinks, I thought I could move in for the next dance, but before I had a chance, I saw her leave with Win Melton.”

  “You knew who he was?”

  “No. But I read the newspapers and recognized him from the picture.”

  “Did you see anyone else leave?”

  “A few minutes later, Max Dolan walked out.”

  “How’d you know it was him?”

  “He was friendly with one of my friends. Sometimes he hung out with us.”

  Tommy already knew that Dolan had left the gym to look for Win.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Yeah. After Greg came back with drinks, he looked around for Carly. When he couldn’t find her, he left the gym, also.”

  This was news. Greg had told Tommy that he’d stayed in the gym. Now Tommy had a witness who said he’d lied about it. “Did you see either Max or Greg return?”

  “I wasn’t keeping an eye out for Max. But I didn’t see Greg or Carly after that. I figured he’d found her, and they’d left. Boy, was I wrong.”

  Tommy knew where he’d be tomorrow morning. Knocking on Greg’s door at eight a.m. Kincaid had a lot of explaining to do.

  Once again, Kincaid’s mother answered the door, and once again, she glared at Tommy when he asked for Greg. “When are you going to leave my son alone? You got what you wanted. That rich kid is off the hook.”

  “Just a few more questions for him,” Tommy said as he walked past Mrs. Kincaid into the foyer.

  “Hey. I didn’t say you could come in.”

  Tommy stood his ground and called Greg’s name. A moment later, he heard a door open, and then Greg’s voice. “Coming.”

  Tommy noticed a slight twitch in Kincaid’s eye when he entered the foyer and saw him. “Mind if we sit down and chat just a bit?”

  “Yeah, I do mind. I’m getting ready for work. I’d like you to leave.”

  Tommy
didn’t move. “I’m just wondering why you lied to me? About leaving the gym?”

  There was that twitch again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I spoke to a friend of yours, Neil Orloff. He saw you go after Carly.”

  Kincaid’s face turned red. “Look, I don’t know what your game is. The trial is over. Win walked away.”

  Tommy leaned close to Kincaid and whispered in his ear. “Did you kill her? Is that why you lied? Couldn’t stand to see her back with Win?”

  Kincaid pushed him away and shouted, “Get out! Get out of my house!”

  “Better do as he says, mister.”

  Tommy turned and saw Mrs. Kincaid standing three feet away with a gun pointed right at his chest. His leg muscles tightened, and his pulse quickened.

  “We got the ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law here. It means I can shoot you and say you forced your way in here, had to defend myself. I guarantee you, I won’t see the inside of a jail cell.”

  Tommy registered the daggers in her eyes and knew she wasn’t bluffing. “I’m leaving now.” Before he turned to the door, he whispered softly so only Kincaid could hear, “If you killed her, I’m going to find out. Count on that.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  Much as Dani wanted to find the person who really killed Carly Sobol, there was little she could do. The burden was on Tommy to try to uncover new leads. And so, she turned to the requests for help from prisoners that were piling up on her desk. She needed to choose her next client, the man or woman she was convinced was wrongly convicted. She decided to pick someone whom DNA could exonerate, assuming the police had held on to the files with the original samples.

  As she was looking through the list of inmates that HIPP had already agreed to help, Tommy, now back in New York, stopped by her office.

  “Anything yet on the lawsuit Donahue filed?” he asked.