O'Donnell what I'd done, but I decided it was hunger brought on by
watching him eat his bagel. The moment passed when he started chewing
with his mouth open.
'So what happens next?' I asked. As far as I was concerned, what
happened next was a big fat indictment against Derrick Derringer, but I
kept that to myself.
'Duncan's on a call to the governor now,' O'Donnell said. 'The only
question is whether to get Landry and Taylor out through the courts or
have the governor pardon them. Looks like a pardon, though. The
courts will take too long, and there's no guarantee we could even get
them out that way without an error at trial.'
Believe it or not, what's known as a 'mere' showing of innocence is not
a legal basis for setting aside a lawfully obtained conviction.
Instead, the defendant has to point to an error during trial that
affected the result of the case. Illegally seized evidence introduced?
Public defender fell asleep? Then you might have a chance at reversal.
But if the procedures were lawful, it's pretty much impossible to set
aside a jury's guilty verdict, even if you subsequently demonstrate
your innocence. Respecting the finality of the guilty verdict is the
only way to keep the courts from being flooded by convicts' endless
claims of innocence. Without a procedural error, Taylor and Landry had
a better chance of release through the governor's intervention than in
a court of law.
'Is Jackson willing to issue the pardon?' I asked.
'Looks like it. We've talked about a stipulation of police misconduct
as the trial error, but Duncan and Jackson are worried about a beef
from the police union,' he said.
'Was Landry poly graphed about that? What did she say about Chuck?'
'Nada. The polygraph only covered the ultimate issue of factual
innocence. The examiner was worried about adding too many
questions.'
The greater the number of material questions you put in a poly, the
higher the risk of either false signs of deception or inconclusive
results. So much for using modern technology to find out if the man
I'd been sleeping with was lying his ass off.
'Oh, and the FBI finished its profile. Pretty much what we expected,'
he said.
'Any theory as to why the guy wrote the letters now, after all these
years?' I asked.
'Probably because of the media attention. He might not have come out
on the Taylor stories alone, or maybe he would've waited until after
the execution. But the theory is that the combo of the Taylor and
Derringer stories was too much for this guy to resist. The profiler
compared it to the Unabomber sending out his manifesto after Tim
McVeigh stole his thunder.'
'So how come we haven't heard anything from him since?' I asked.
'FBI says that's the kicker,' he said. 'Usually, a communication like
that is followed up with a body or at least more taunts. It's possible
there's another one out there, and he's waiting to see if we'll find it
on our own. Another possibility, of course, is that this guy's got his
own way of operating. Wait and see, I guess. Anything else on your
end?' he asked.
Oops. Now I was going to have to be a hypocrite on that whole lying
thing. 'Nope,' I said, mentally crossing my fingers. 'The victim
understands what's going on. The family won't be making any statements
to the media. They just want to be kept in the loop.' The truth was
that Kendra and her mom were so grateful for Kendra's continued
anonymity that they'd never contemplate making a statement to the
media.
But seeing as how I was already lying to Tim's face, there was no real
harm in letting him think the Martins might embarrass him publicly if
he dropped the ball.
I might not play well with others, but I was getting pretty good at
faking it.
My pager finally buzzed as I was taking a plea in Judge Weidemann's
courtroom.
'A problem, Ms. Kincaid?' Weidemann inquired, peering down over his
half-moon glasses. I was surprised that he was paying enough attention
to the proceedings to notice that I'd glimpsed down at the device
clipped to my waistband.
'No, sir,' I responded. 'Just waiting for a grand jury decision, your
honor.'
'Not too much suspense to be found there. Who's today's ham sandwich?'
he responded. The defendant and his attorney, Frankie LoTempio, got a
laugh out of that one. A running joke among criminal defense lawyers
is that grand jury proceedings are so one-sided that grand jurors would
indict a ham sandwich if asked to by the prosecutor. The way I saw it,
if prosecutors were doing their jobs and only asking for indictments
that were warranted, grand jurors should be indicting all the cases
