Camaro that had looked orange in the moonlight. Also, he’d had a better look at the man on the deck than he’d shared, a good enough look to tell him that the man was about six feet tall, with bristle-short hair and a tattoo of some sort along his left forearm.
Doran insisted he had an alibi: He’d spent the night with a man named Donny Ward, drinking whiskey and target shooting with a .22. When the police went to interview Ward, though, he claimed to have no idea what Doran was talking about. Said he hadn’t seen Doran since an encounter at a bar a few nights earlier.
Within days of Heath’s murder, Doran found himself facing an eyewitness account, hard evidence found at his home, and a useless alibi. He was broke, of course, and couldn’t afford a private attorney. His public defender, a man who had worked on exactly zero murder cases, managed to get a plea offer that reduced the charge to manslaughter, occurring during autoerotic activity,
Five years passed, and Doran stayed in prison. He behaved well in custody, gave the jailers no trouble, kept his mouth shut. Behaved well enough, in fact, that he was trusted with some sweet prison jobs, simple, yawn- while-you-work tasks like cleaning up after meals, mopping the floors, and taking out trash.
It was a tough fiscal year, state and federal budget crunches being felt in almost every agency, including the correctional facilities. Jobs were lost, and employees who left of their own volition were not quickly replaced. Reduced manpower was a challenge in every jail, and with that challenge Doran and the rest of his cleanup crew were given a new responsibility: running the trash compacter, a task previously supervised by a corrections officer. All trash leaving the jail was compacted both for efficiency and to ensure that any inmate hoping to escape in a garbage bag would be properly flattened before finding his way to the truck.
One day in late September, not all of the trash was compacted. Andy Doran and two others hid in a heap of refuse, were loaded into the back of a garbage truck, and were driven out of the gates and back into freedom. Within forty-eight hours, the other two were arrested at a truck stop on I-70, where they were attempting to purchase hot dogs and Red Bull energy drinks even while their pictures were being displayed on the television set just over their heads. Andy Doran wasn’t with them when the cops came, though, and, according to his fellow escapees, the last time anyone saw him he was walking through a muddy wheat field, heading north.
All of this, Joe and I learned through several hours spent in the Ashtabula County Courthouse reading hundreds of pages of depositions and transcripts in Doran’s case. While I went through the case file, Joe made a trip to the library and came back with a dozen more articles relating to Doran’s escape from prison and the subsequent—and unsuccessful—manhunt.
“Can we really believe,” Joe said, “that when this guy broke out of jail the first thing on his mind was settling a score?”
“Why not? If he’d done five years for a crime he didn’t commit—”
“He might have murdered that girl. Can’t be sure he didn’t, not yet, at least.”
“Right. But playing out the thread here, we’ll say that he didn’t, and that for some reason unknown to us he held Jefferson responsible. Five years is a long time to spend in prison for something you didn’t do. A long time to build a grudge. Ever read
Joe wore a deep frown as he continued flipping through documents, but he was also nodding. “Jefferson never went to the cops. He tried to hire Thor to kill whoever was threatening him. Doesn’t exactly smack of legitimacy, you know? So maybe we’re right. Maybe the reason he had to try to handle it with someone like Thor was because he knew Doran had him—and his son—by the balls.”
“His son’s testimony was absurd. Showing up with his father to change stories a day after he found the body?”
“It is weak, which is why it wouldn’t have convicted Doran. The girl’s underwear—”
“Which could have been planted easily enough.”
“Yes, but it was still more convincing evidence than anything Jefferson’s son said. Although he did point them in Doran’s direction, I suppose. He got it all moving.”
“That time reference . . . it’s too clear. Paying the price for five years, he said—and then he comes after Jefferson and the son as soon as he gets out of prison. It’s also the exact same time Jefferson and the son developed their rift. I bet Jefferson pulled the son out of the fire and then cut him off. He wouldn’t want his image tarnished by a son who was a murderer, but he also wouldn’t want the kid around. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Maybe you’re right when you say it’s too clear, LP.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would Doran make that reference to you? Seems like he establishes his identity a little too easily with that. Anybody who knew what happened with Matt Jefferson in that situation, or even looked into it on the surface like we have, would roll to the same conclusion.”
“What does Doran care? It’s not like he has anything to lose—the day he runs into a cop, he goes right back to prison. He couldn’t give a shit if I turn more police attention onto him. He’s already a fugitive.”
Joe thought about that and nodded.
“If this guy
“I think I’m with you. Right now we’re guessing, though. No real reason to suspect he came after Jefferson other than that remark about the five years.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, interrupting us. I slipped the phone out, checked the display, and saw my gym’s number looking back at me. Odd, considering the gym was closed. I answered and got Grace.
“Lincoln, I think you’d better get down here. There are some, um, people here to see you.”
“I’m in the middle of something important,” I said, thinking that she was with the insurance company, an ordeal I didn’t want to tackle right now. “Why don’t you have them call me to set up a meeting instead of just showing up like that?”
“It’s the police.” She had dropped her voice.
“What?”
“They’re at your apartment, and it looks like they’ve got a warrant.”
22
It took us an hour of fast driving to make it back, but they were still there when Joe pulled into my parking lot. I saw Targent’s Crown Vic and two squad cars. The door to the stairs was open, and Targent came through it as I got out of the car, rage boiling through my veins. There was a warrant in his hand.
“This is bullshit,” I said when he gave it to me.
“Judge didn’t seem to think so.”
“Judge is going to be regretting that when I get an attorney to go after you guys for an unfounded warrant. You’ve got absolutely no evidence to suggest I’ve done anything, Targent. And the saddest thing is that the more you dick around with me, the less you’re accomplishing on this case.”
“You go ahead and get your lawyer,” he said, moving for the door. “And we’ll be discussing that supposed lack of evidence in just a minute, Perry. Now stay out of our way until this is done.”
He turned and walked back up the steps. Grace was standing inside the gym office with the door open, watching with concern.
“I came down to help clean up,” she said. “They told me I could either unlock the door or they’d break it. I didn’t want them to break—”
“It’s okay, Grace. This is no big deal. You did the right thing.”
My words were calm, but they couldn’t hide the anger. Joe stopped to talk to Grace as I walked up the steps and into my apartment. Targent was speaking in a low voice to his team, offering instructions, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. There’s a sense of total invasion and violation that comes with being served a search warrant, being required to open your door for a group of cops whose mission is to find something in your home that indicates your guilt in a crime. I’d exercised search warrants constantly when I’d been a cop and never really
