Innocence On Trial

by Rick Bowers

  What now?

  She knew the answer to her own question—and how to jack up a car, remove a damaged tire, and mount the spare. The year before, one of her rear tires had picked up a nail on the way home from the beach. She’d begun to panic, when a Good Samaritan came to her rescue and showed her, step-by-step, how to change it out. Laura vowed to never be caught short like that again and followed up with a visit to the auto-parts store. Casting cost concerns to the wind, she’d spent $179 on a supercharged Emergency Roadside Survival Kit, a package approved by the New York State Police, complete with fluorescent orange vest, reflective triangles, and six powerful roadside flares.

  Laura leaned out of the driver’s-side window and looked up and down the long, straight ribbon of road. Seeing no one, she turned off the ignition, unfastened her seatbelt, and climbed out onto the gravel. She took long, purposeful strides to the back of the car, popped the trunk, pulled out the jack, grabbed the tire iron, and removed a couple of safety flares from the kit. With an eight-inch flare in each hand, Laura marched off ten paces from her rear bumper and knelt on the hard, roadside surface. She was positioning the first flare when she heard the whine of an engine behind her.

  Looking back, she saw headlights. White eyes in the blackness. Coming on fast. The twin beams grew brighter as the car got closer. It passed, and Laura watched the Chevy Impala crawl to a stop on the shoulder, about fifty yards in front of her disabled Mustang. Her eyes narrowed. Her body tensed. Her heart raced. Her breaths came faster. She did not light the first flare.

  The Impala idled for a long moment, engine purring like a beast resting in the bush. Its headlights remained on, illuminating the gravel roadside and the black woods. A darkened figure emerged from the driver’s-side door, visible in the mix of headlights and moonlight. The man was clad in a black windbreaker, black pants, and black shoes. He stepped in front of the car, menacing in his own headlights.

  Was this the man who’d been wearing the blue blazer?

  Had he cut her tire to form a slow air leak back in the cemetery parking lot?

  Had he followed her to this isolated spot, knowing her tire would go flat?

  For what purpose?

  Maybe this was just her overactive imagination, conjuring up a doomsday scenario. Maybe he was just another Good Samaritan out to do a good deed for a stranded motorist.

  “Do you need help, Miss? Let me lend you a hand.”

  15

  “No, thank you,” Laura called to the man in black, still walking toward her on the dark country road. “Just a flat. I’ll have it fixed in no time.”

  She rose from her kneeling position and stood erect, holding her head high, focusing her eyes forward.

  He kept coming. “No, no, no. Let me help you.”

  The man took five or six strides forward, cutting the distance between them to within thirty yards. Then, he came even closer.

  At twenty yards out, Laura could see his eyes, two gleaming orbs reflecting the mix of moonlight, starlight, headlights and taillights. A cocktail of fear and anger ran through her. Her father’s words raced through her head: “If your guy is innocent, the real killer is still out there.”

  At fifteen yards out, there was just enough light to make out his appearance. His short-cropped blond hair moved in the wind. His intense blue eyes cut the night. His square shoulders hunched like a wolf on the hunt. This had to be him. The man who’d been shadowing her—in a black outfit this time, instead of a blue blazer. Then, she saw it. In his left hand, the guy twirled a tire iron.

  As the guy got closer, twigs snapped under his black shoes. She studied his smile. There was no doubt. It was the same man from the gas station, the restaurant, the cemetery, and who-knew-where-else?

  “Stop right there! I called the police!” Laura shouted the lie at full volume. “They’re on their way! A state trooper will be here any minute! Take off before the cops get here! Before you regret this!”

  “You called the police?” The interloper dropped his voice an octave, halting his forward progress to consider her words. He spread his arms into a wingspan, palms up, tire iron dangling from his left hand. “Now, that is strange. You see, there’s no cell coverage out here in God’s country. There’s no way to dial 911. You called no one. No one’s coming to your rescue. No one but me.”

  “You’re wrong! I have a police radio!” Laura yelled that lie even louder. “They’re on their way! When they get here, you’re fucked!”

  “Liar.” The man spat the word and took a step forward. “What’re you afraid of? I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help. I just want to mount that spare for you. Maybe talk a little. Get to know you.”

  “No! Get away from me!”

  “Too late for that.”

  She realized there was no more need to shout. The man had stopped just ten or so yards away. This was no Good Samaritan. This was a Bad Samaritan.

  The man glared. “I know who you are. You’re a lawyer. You represent a murderer. He killed little Erin Lambert. He nee—”

  “Yeah.” She took a step back. “I’m impressed. You did your homework.”

  “I’m going to ask you in a nice way,” the man said. “Please, drop the case.”

  Laura shook her head. “No. Forget it.”

  “Drop it. I can make you. One way or another.”

  “Not happening. Who the hell are you?”

  The stranger released a long, slow, guttural laugh, a contorted smile crossing his twisted face. He passed the tire iron to his right hand and raised it high. “I guess you’ll have to learn the hard way.”

  Laura straightened her back and narrowed her eyes. She curled her upper lip and snarled like a dog. Her mind raced. Should she make a run for the woods? No. She couldn’t show fear or panic. Plus, he’d hunt her down, anyway. The guy looked fit, strong, serious, and determined.

  Laura dug the soles of her flats into the loose gravel, bracing her legs for possible impact. She kept her hands behind her back, not allowing the would-be attacker to see the safety flare in her right palm. With her left hand, she squeezed the ignition cord that would ignite its strontium nitrate core. She had to force the confrontation. She had to provoke him.

  “Fuck you, asshole. Go to hell.”

  In the moonlight, Laura watched the man’s face turn red as blood flooded his brain. He lifted the tire iron even higher, the cold, steel shaft reflecting the stars. Its reflection gave her a focal point as she calculated probabilities and plotted her next moves.

  A tire iron. Not a gun. He wasn’t carrying. Must be back in his car. “Eddie Nash is innocent. I won’t drop his case, not until the day he walks out of that prison a free man. Not until the day you move into his cell.”

  The stranger narrowed his eyes, curled his upper lip, and lowered his head. She pictured him as a raging bull, snorting fire, feet pawing the ground, preparing to charge the matador As the man rushed forward, Laura felt like an unprotected quarterback being blitzed by an undefended lineman. She let the charging man get close before stepping to one side, then she squeezed the flare behind her back and yanked the ignition cord. She thrust her hand forward as a burst of sizzling, multi-colored light lit up the night. The dazzling fireball—a circle of red, orange, yellow, and blue—sent toxic smoke swirling in the crisp air. It looked like a blast from a military-grade phosphorus grenade, or the final fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Laura cracked open her eyes and stared through the circle of flames. Seeing the sizzling core of light starting to wane, she whipped the second flare from her back pocket and pulled the cord, creating another blinding flash, and thrust it into her attacker’s face.

  The man held an arm over his eyes, drawing back from the sizzling flames and backpedaling like a sand crab headed back to sea. His body tipped and tilted with each frantic, backward stride. Stumbling and gagging on the toxic, blue smoke, the intruder
dropped the tire iron, rubbed his eyes, and blinked into the blinding, phosphorescent haze. The light in his panicked eyes was almost as intense as the streamers encircling him.

  Sensing an advantage, Laura took another step toward the retreating thug, slashing both flares back and forth, whipping embers from side to side, ignoring the molten residue dripping onto her hands, spitting out smoke from her inflamed lungs.

  Moving into a full retreat, the attacker held his hands out in a defensive position, before turning and running back to his Impala.

  The car was still idling on the shoulder. The headlights were still on, and the driver’s-side door was ajar.

  “Hey!” Laura screamed like a mad woman, rushing after him. “Where you going, asshole?!” She lifted one of the flares over her shoulder as the man reached his car and crawled onto the front seat. “You know what one of these will do to your fuel tank?! Wait for the BOOM!”

  Rushing within feet of his front bumper, she slid a sizzling flare under the chassis. She stepped back and yelled, “Hold on! Hold on! Here it comes!”

  Laura looked through his windshield and into the stranger’s wide, terrified eyes as he slammed the gearshift into drive. She had no idea whether a flare would ignite his fuel tank, but then again, neither did he. She raced down the embankment and dove behind a thick tree stump as his car lurched forward, the tires creating a shower of gravel. There was no BOOM.

  Laura dropped the dying flare and watched as his taillights vanished into the darkness.

  She managed to mount the spare and drive six miles to Hamilton Memorial Hospital. She told the emergency room doctor about the flat, improvising that a malfunctioning road flare had exploded in her hand. The physician washed out her eyes, applied ointment to the burns, and checked her lungs.

  “Your lungs are good,” he assured her. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t play with road flares for a while.”

  Later, a young nurse stood at her bedside with a pair of scissors, clipping away hanks of singed hair.

  Finally alone in the recovery room, Laura relived the encounter. The man in the blue coat at the restaurant and cemetery. The flat tire on the isolated country road. The tire-iron-wielding intruder dressed in black. Was the real killer out to stop her from reopening the investigation and clearing Nash’s name? Were the police out to stop her from exposing their frame-up and who-knew-what-else?

  Reluctantly, Laura took out her phone, called her father, and told him what happened. “Yes,” she agreed; he could come to the hospital to take her home.

  “No.” She would not drop the case.

  16

  Glass office towers glistened in the morning sun.

  Wide sidewalks bustled with pedestrians, newsstands, food carts, bus stops, and taxi stands.

  Laura strolled down the broad sidewalk on the east side of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. She was relieved that the epicenter of the case was moving from the remote enclaves of western New York State to the metropolis of New York City. The next acts would unfold at the Council Against Wrongful Convictions offices in Brooklyn, and the United States courthouse just over the bridge in Lower Manhattan.

  Laura kept scanning her surroundings for any sign of her attacker. She figured her roadside pyrotechnics had not scared him off for good. He would be back—whoever he was—to finish what he’d started. Was he the real Hangman?

  The stranger was nowhere in sight, and that was good news for the time being. Laura swung the chestnut-colored leather briefcase her father had given her as a college graduation gift in her left hand and clutched a bagel with lox and cream cheese wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper in her right. Walking at a good clip, she lifted the briefcase to check her watch—9:37 AM. She took a bite of the bagel and picked up the pace, in a hurry to get to the office and update her colleagues on the case. She needed their backing to secure the resources that would supercharge her appeal.

  She also had to begin preparing for oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which would be held at the Thurgood Marshall Justice Center in Manhattan. This would determine whether a new trial would be granted.

  Moving in the stream of pedestrians, Laura passed a classic New York City newsstand, where the balding proprietor made change for hurried customers. Garish headlines screamed from the tabloid racks. Political scandals. Subway shootings. Financial rip-offs. The sensational banners made her think of the media frenzy that loomed in her future. Challenging the conviction of a man the press had dubbed “The Hangman of Eden” in the first trial was certain to reignite the imagination of the headline crafters. Those creative news poets who worked in high-rise offices and sixty-four-point type had been in rare form in the aftermath of the murder ten years ago. Stripper Swings from Hangman’s Noose. Eden Woman Hung Out to Die. What would they come up with this time?

  Laura took long, hurried strides down the sidewalk, outpacing the parade of pedestrians. She was running late for a meeting, so she hustled into a modified trot. Feeling her phone vibrate in the back pocket of her black, cotton slacks, she stopped short, downed the last of the bagel, retrieved the device, and checked the data screen: Delilah Cole, the young paralegal assisting her with the Nash case.

  “Delilah.” Laura summoned a chipper voice to sync up with her perky assistant. “What’s up?”

  “Just checking on you. Where are you? What’s your ETA?”

  “Three blocks out. Be there in ten.”

  “Good.”

  “How’s the prep work going?”

  “Going great. I’ve got all the content ready to go for the three o’clock meeting. I’ve drafted the cover memo, compiled the agenda, and copied the trial transcripts, appellate drafts, discovery responses, and media clips. I’ve laid out the facts of the case in PowerPoint and placed hard copies in all the folders. Eight sets of papers in eight individual folders, one for each of the attendees.”

  “Ahead of the game, as usual,” Laura replied. “You are the Get-it-Done Girl. I am glad you’re on my side.”

  Delilah Cole was a stand-out paralegal. Mid-twenties, whip-smart, and task-oriented. Her goth attire, diamond nose stud, and arm tattoos also separated her from her colleagues.

  “How’s our client?” Delilah asked. “What’s his mood? Is he hanging with us? Oh. Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

  “Nash is good. He’s behind our strategy one-hundred-percent. The federal appeals court is reviewing our petition. The law journal coverage is favorable. The prosecutors are starting to sweat. We’ve got this. The three o’clock meeting should be a rubber stamp.”

  Delilah’s deep inhale and slow exhale were audible over the phone. “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m reading an email.”

  “What?”

  “The three o’clock meeting is blowing up. Find me as soon as you get here. I want to go over everything with you.”

  “‘Blowing up?’ What does that mean?”

  “It’s not a meeting. It’s an ambush.”

  Arriving at the Council Against Wrongful Convictions offices—based in an eight-story building that had once been a furniture warehouse—Laura stepped through the revolving glass door, plowed through the lobby, and hustled into a waiting elevator. She hit the button for the fifth-floor offices of the state’s premier legal nonprofit, dedicated to exonerating the imprisoned innocent.

  Time to go to war with her own colleagues.

  17

  Eddie Nash pushed out of his bunk and took three steps to the desk on the far side of his cell. He sat in the plastic chair, opened the drawer, and took out a notebook and pen. He held the prison-issue pen up in the dim light and laughed out loud. Prison. How fucking stupid. The pen was made of flexible rubber, so it couldn’t be weaponized.

  Eddie opened the notebook and stared at the blank page. He wanted to unload his thoughts onto those pages—to express h
is excitement at the prospect of being cleared, to put the notion of being free into his own words.

  But, words wouldn’t come. Instead, he just had questions. What was happening with his case? When was his cute lawyer coming back to fill him in? What did those federal judges think of the appeal? Eddie looked to the ceiling, invoked the spirit of his literary hero, Etheridge Knight, and asked himself, What would Etheridge write?

  Not that he knew much about books, authors, or literature. He didn’t. How would a rebellious black kid from a shit-kicking upstate town know anything about literature? How would a kid who’d slept through high school know about prose and poetry? But, unschooled as he was, he understood the power of words, and he liked Etheridge Knight, a black man who’d begun writing poetry as an inmate at Indiana State Prison back in the ‘60s, and one of whose books had even been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

  Eddie liked to lose himself in the cold, hard words and cutting references in Knight’s poems and stories. The writer’s comparison of modern prisons to slave plantations made him think. Eddie had read Knight’s meandering tale, A Fable, over and over, contemplating its meaning through his own plight:

  Eddie puzzled for hours over the fictional conversation of seven wrongfully convicted black inmates.

  Prisoner # 1 insists that the only viable route to freedom is through education. Learning to emulate the non-colored people, he tells the others, will persuade their jailers to set them free.

  Prisoner # 2 responds to that idea with a definite, “Hell no.” He claims that only God can grant them freedom. If all seven adopt and adhere to Christianity, he proclaims, the Lord will lead them to the promised land.

  Prisoner # 3 replies to the God-will-set-us-free argument with one word: “Bullshit.” Prisoner # 3 has been digging an escape tunnel. He urges the others to pick up shovels and join in the task. By working together, he asserts, they can all escape.