Chương 3
“That model is common.”
“He smoked clove cigarettes. Ruth smelled them near her porch after he left.”
“You did not report this?”
“To whom? The department that gave him an award for convicting me?”
Mitchell glanced toward the clock at the end of the corridor. “Anything else you decided not to report?”
Gavin laughed once, without humor. “You want the complete inventory of things nobody believed?”
“I want anything that keeps my officers from walking into an ambush.”
The word officers pulled Gavin out of himself.
He sat down.
“Hale carried a backup pistol on his left ankle,” he said. “At least he did five years ago. He hated elevators. He used the stairs even when his knee bothered him. He chewed cinnamon gum when he was trying not to smoke. If Ruth’s back gate is open, don’t use it. The latch sticks. It makes a loud snap.”
Mitchell studied him for a moment.
“Why do you remember all that?”
“Because he sat across from me for fourteen hours and asked how I killed my wife.”
Brennan returned from the desk. “East River is down to one lane.”
“Tell the agents to use the mill road,” Mitchell said. “And warn them about the gate.”
Brennan relayed the message.
Mitchell remained at the bars.
“Cole, when this began, did you know the phone existed?”
“No.”
“Did your wife ever use an old phone as a camera?”
“Yes. After somebody came into the house while we were away.”
“Was anything taken?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know someone entered?”
“Elise noticed a kitchen chair had been moved. I told her Chloe probably did it. Chloe was three and couldn’t drag that chair without taking out a wall.”
“You dismissed it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was tired. Because I’d worked eleven hours. Because Elise had started checking locks twice and asking if cars were following her. Because I thought fear was something you could starve by refusing to feed it.”
“What was she afraid of?”
Gavin stared at the stained floor between his shoes.
“She worked in emergency communications. County 911. She found changes in response records. Calls rerouted, times altered, units marked unavailable when they weren’t. She thought Hale was protecting somebody.”
“Who?”
“She never told me. We were fighting. I accused her of bringing work home. She accused me of drinking again.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
Mitchell’s expression did not change.
“I had stopped for fourteen months,” Gavin said. “Then I started hiding bourbon in the garage. Not every day. Enough days.”
“Was that presented at trial?”
“Parts of it. The parts that made me look violent.”
“Were you violent?”
“I punched a cabinet door once. I scared her. I never hit Elise.”
“That was not my question.”
Gavin’s mouth tightened.
“No. I wasn’t violent with her. I was loud. I was dishonest. I made her live around my moods. That’s not the same as murder, but it wasn’t nothing.”
Mitchell nodded once, as if placing the answer into a file.
“Why would she hide a recording phone under a floorboard?”
“I don’t know that she did. Chloe said Ruth hid it there today.”
“Where was it found?”
“You’d have to ask Ruth.”
“I intend to.”
Mitchell turned to leave.
“Warden.”
He stopped.
“If the court doesn’t act before six?”
Mitchell looked toward the corridor that led to the execution chamber.
“I paused the internal procedure. I cannot suspend the sentence.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” Mitchell said. “It isn’t.”
He walked away.
At 5:14, Leah Price arrived at the prison with her blouse untucked on one side and dried coffee on the passenger seat of her car. She had been Gavin’s attorney for three years, though most of their work together had involved explaining why one court after another would not revisit questions already decided.
Leah was forty-six, narrow-faced, chronically sleep-deprived, and incapable of entering a room without rearranging the papers in her hands. She reached the holding cell carrying a legal pad, two phones, a laptop bag, and the expression of someone who had spent the last hour arguing with people who controlled life and death from offices with expensive carpet.
“Tell me exactly what Chloe said,” she demanded.
Gavin repeated it.
“Exact words.”
He repeated them again.
“Did she say the recording shows Hale entering the house, hiding the knife, touching the knife, carrying the knife?”
“She said hiding it.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she say his face was visible?”
“No.”
“Did she identify him herself or repeat what Ruth said?”
“I don’t know.”
Leah swore under her breath and began writing.
“Why are you doing that?” Gavin asked.
“Because the attorney general’s office is already calling this the unverified statement of a frightened child.”
“She saw it.”
“They will say she saw a man Grandma told her was Hale.”
“She knows his face.”
“She was three when he investigated the murder.”
“He’s been on television every anniversary.”
Leah looked up. “That is not helpful.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say only what you know. Right now, precision is more useful than outrage.”
“Precision got me five years of losing.”
“Imprecision helped put you here.”
The sentence struck cleanly.
Leah closed her eyes. “That came out wrong.”
“No. It came out the way you meant it.”
“At trial, you lied about where you went after leaving the house.”
“I was ashamed.”
“You said you drove around. You went to a bar.”
“I know where I went.”
“You denied drinking until the bartender testified. Then the jury heard every other answer through that lie.”
“I know.”
“You also told police Elise was paranoid about work.”
“I know.”
“You told them the old phone was broken.”
“It was broken. The screen barely worked.”
“Could it record?”
“Apparently.”
May you like
Leah set her papers on the shelf outside the bars. “Gavin, I am not attacking you. I am trying to find every weakness before the state does.”
“The state already found every weakness. They built a house out of them.”
