to Spaulding.
* * * *
At home, Jake rummaged through his basement, searching for his father’s records. Why now? He couldn’t get the question out of his head. What did Spaulding and his lawyer hope to achieve with the new testing? Every couple of years he was subjected to this torment. And every couple of years he gathered his strength to face down the parole board with his gruesome evidence. The pictures of the crime scene, along with Eva’s bruised and bloody body, gave them many reasons to deny Spaulding’s request. His father had kept a copy of Eva’s case file at home since he wasn’t allowed to work it. The other detectives made sure he had every bit of evidence he needed. It was one of their own who’d been victimized. Nobody messed with a cop’s family and got away with it. Except maybe this time, he thought as he rubbed his throbbing head. Had George Spaulding found a way to cheat the system? It couldn’t be true after seventeen years that they had imprisoned the wrong man. If it was true, then who had killed his sister Eva? Jake couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
No, it was George.
The fifth box he opened was dedicated to her case. On top, his father had marked it one of five. After hunting down the other boxes, he brought them upstairs and placed them in his office. The first box he opened sent him right back to hell and his first visit to the morgue. It was the year he had lost his innocence.
A buzzing rang out in his ears from the fluorescent lights overhead. The starkness of the corridor as their footsteps echoed in the silence created the crescendo of a day gone horribly wrong. The buzzing grew louder as they approached the door. The medical examiner, Doctor Ed Jerome, put his hand up to stop them.
Taking a deep breath, Doc Jerome said, “James, you’ve done this a hundred times, but this is different. I can make the identification for you.”
“No, I need to do this, Ed,” Captain James Carrington said.
“Okay. Why doesn’t Jake wait out here?” Doctor Jerome offered, giving him an out.
He spoke up, his voice louder than intended. “I’m going in.” He said it with such force it brooked no argument.
Ed pushed open the door.
On the table lay a body covered with a white sheet. Ed’s assistants had set the victim up for viewing. There was no way to hide the odor of death, though they tried to camouflage it with disinfectant, air fresheners, and Clorox. “The house of death” is what the cops called it.
Jake inhaled as he looked to his father for support. His father, a tall man, who Jake favored in height only, squared his shoulders and nodded to the M.E.
“Show me,” James demanded.
Doc Jerome pulled back the sheet to reveal a girl in her mid-teens, black and blue from head to toe, the violent trauma of death etched in her horrified expression. Fright forever pasted on her face.
“Was she raped?” James asked, while tears escaped his eyes.
“Yes,” Doc Jerome said.
Neither man paid attention to Jake’s weeping at their side. He couldn’t stop as he viewed his younger sister. With a gentle caress, he touched her forehead, her cheek, then kissed her good-bye on the lips.
He turned away in grief, saw both his anger and his pain reflected in his father’s face. His father’s fists clenched, his shoulders racked with heavy sobs as he viewed the broken body of his daughter. Jake understood he looked with a father’s eye, not a cop’s.
“My baby,” James cried.
Jake listened every night at dinner when his father spoke of his cases. It was something distant, stories that didn’t touch his life. Until now.
The buzzing in his ears increased. Time and space slipped by, then someone held a glass of water to his lips. The stress of the situation had overtaken him—he’d collapsed on the floor.
“I’m sorry, Jake. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” James hugged him, crushing him to his chest.
“I’m fine, Dad. When you catch the bastard, I’m going to kill him for what he did to Eva. You need to know I’ll do it.”
It was the first time he’d ever cursed in front of his father.
It took every ounce of strength within him to pull himself out of the memory. A fist squeezed his heart. He couldn’t do this alone. God, he needed a drink. No, he needed Louie.
After a couple of hours, Jake decided to go back to work. Until a new trial came to fruition, he’d continue to line up the info on the case if and when they needed the ammunition to get a second conviction on Spaulding. He’d have it ready. Tonight, he would lay out a strategy and organize the files as he would for any other case he worked.
* * * *
News traveled fast in a cop shop. Among curious glances thrown his way, or comments of support from his detectives in the bullpen, Jake ignored them all. He took a seat at his desk across from Louie. His friend eyeballed him but didn’t comment, which Jake found out of character for him. The Wagner file he wanted to review wasn’t in his desk drawer.
“You got the Wagner file?”
“Yes.” Louie gathered the papers spread across his desk, placed them back in the file, closed it and handed the bulk of it to Jake.
As he took the file from Louie, Jake studied his partner and his messy desk. The finicky Louie didn’t match up with how he maintained his area. His suits pressed, his pants creased to razor sharpness, along with his precisely knotted tie and styled black hair, were at odds with the mess on his desk.
He wondered how Louie worked with all the clutter. Jake kept a phone and computer on his desk. All his files were in the desk drawer, alphabetized for easy access. Louie had all his files on top, an in-and-out box, an empty coffee cup and this morning’s wrapper from his breakfast sandwich. A cluttered desk would clog up my mind, Jake thought as he opened the file. Pushing Eva’s case to the back burner, he tried to concentrate on Shanna’s.
“Are you free tonight to throw a couple of things around?”
“Yep.”
“We’ll do it at my house after we get out of here. I’m going to suggest to McGuire that Burke and Kraus work Eva’s case if Spaulding gets a new trial,” Jake said.
“I agree.”
“I’ll need to tell him. And I don’t care what he said. I need to be in on the briefing. I’ll be right back.”
Jake got up and walked into McGuire’s office without knocking. “Shamus, give the case to Burke and Kraus. When the time comes, I’d like to be in on the initial meeting in case they have questions.”
“I’ll need them to come at it with fresh eyes, Jake, not with your preconceived notions.”
“I’m not going to offer personal opinions. The file will speak for itself. No one is more familiar with it than me.”
McGuire checked his calendar. “We might as well get ahead of this. Set it up in Conference Room One for three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon. I want to refamiliarize myself with the
