Chương 3
“What happens if she approves it?”
“You walk out.”
“Where?”
Nora blinked.
It was the first question for which she had not prepared an answer.
Finnley laughed once. The sound startled both of them.
“I’m serious,” he said.
“The innocence clinic arranged temporary housing.”
“A shelter?”
“A hotel.”
“Who pays?”
“The clinic.”
“For how long?”
“We’ll figure that out.”
He pulled the thread until it broke. “That’s what people say when they don’t know.”
“Yes,” Nora said. “It is.”
A correctional officer opened the door and told them the hearing would resume in ten minutes.
Nora stood. “There will be cameras outside.”
“No interviews.”
“Good.”
“I want to see Walter.”
“After the hearing.”
“Why did he wait three years?”
“We’ll ask him.”
“He could’ve stopped this.”
Nora’s expression changed. Not defensiveness. Weariness.
“He may have an answer you hate.”
Finnley lifted the portrait against his chest and followed the officer.
Judge Hart approved the motion at 1:17 that afternoon.
She spoke carefully, refusing the language of miracles or justice restored. The newly discovered evidence, she said, destroyed confidence in the original verdict. The prosecution had failed to disclose irregularities in its financial analysis, though the extent of that failure remained under investigation. Finnley’s conviction was vacated. The indictment was dismissed without prejudice at the state’s request, a phrase Nora later explained meant they retained the theoretical ability to charge him again if the evidence somehow changed.
Finnley listened without looking at the reporters.
When the judge ordered his immediate release, people on the benches applauded.
Judge Hart struck the gavel and told them to stop.
The applause continued for another second anyway.
A deputy escorted Finnley downstairs to remove the transport restraints. A corrections supervisor handed him a clear plastic bag containing the clothes he had worn during his transfer from North River: faded jeans, a gray T-shirt, worn sneakers, and a belt that no longer fit his waist.
The clothes smelled like a warehouse.
He changed in a restroom stall while a deputy waited outside. When he pulled on the jeans, he discovered a folded bus receipt in the pocket, dated three years earlier. He stared at it until the numbers blurred, then put it back.
No one had returned his wallet. His driver’s license had expired in prison. His phone was gone, either lost in county storage or never properly inventoried. The supervisor gave him a check for the remaining balance in his inmate account.
Thirty-eight dollars and twelve cents.
“Congratulations,” the man said.
Finnley could not tell whether he meant it.
Outside the secure area, Nora waited with Walter Ames and a woman from the innocence clinic named Beth Corbin. Beth had brought a navy windbreaker because someone had seen the afternoon weather forecast. Finnley took it though he was not cold.
Walter stood near the wall holding his cap in both hands.
Up close, he looked older than he had on the witness stand. Brown spots covered the backs of his hands. One thumbnail was split. His eyes stayed on Camden’s portrait.
“You kept it,” Walter said.
Finnley’s throat tightened. “You’ve seen this picture?”
“Your father carried a copy in his wallet. Same day, I think. He complained the photographer made his hair look blue.”
That sounded like Camden.
Finnley stepped closer. “Why did you wait?”
Nora moved as though to intervene, but Walter lifted one hand.
“Because I was scared,” he said.
The answer was so plain that Finnley almost missed it.
Walter looked toward the courthouse doors. “Your stepmother came to the cemetery the week after Camden vanished. She knew he’d spoken to me. Didn’t know what he’d said, but she knew. Asked whether he left anything. I lied.”
“You had the letter.”
“And the key. Recorder too.”
“For three years.”
“Yes.”
Finnley’s fingers tightened around the portrait. “I was in prison.”
“I know.”
“You watched them take me.”
“I watched the news.”
“That isn’t different.”
“No,” Walter said. “It isn’t.”
Beth glanced down the hall. A cluster of reporters had gathered beyond the glass doors. Their microphones and cameras looked like dark flowers pressed against the entrance.
Walter continued. “Camden told me to keep the envelope unless something happened to him. Then he said to give it to a lawyer he trusted. That lawyer died two months later. Heart attack. I took it to another one, but I lost my nerve before I got inside.”
Finnley turned away.
Walter’s voice followed him. “Reagan had a man come by my house. He didn’t threaten me straight out. Said accidents happened to old men who lived alone. Said cemetery equipment could be dangerous.”
“And you believed him.”
“I did.”
“My father believed you.”
Walter lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
Finnley wanted to strike him. The urge arrived cleanly, without drama. He pictured the old man falling against the courthouse wall, his cap dropping, everyone rushing toward the newly freed prisoner who had proven exactly what they once believed about him.
Finnley put the portrait into Nora’s hands.
Then he pressed both palms against the cool glass of the exit door until the anger passed through them.
Walter spoke behind him. “Two weeks ago, they announced the cemetery land was being sold. I had to clear my office. Found the envelope behind an old furnace panel where I’d hidden it. I sat there for most of the night. Then I called the number on one of those articles about your appeal.”
Nora had written that article with the innocence clinic.
Finnley turned around. “Why now?”
Walter swallowed. “Because I’m seventy-six, and being a coward had started taking more work than I had left.”
No one spoke for a moment.
A vending machine hummed near the elevators. Someone in another corridor laughed too loudly. Finnley noticed that Walter’s left shoelace was untied.
He took the portrait back from Nora.
“I don’t forgive you,” he said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“Good.”
May you like
Walter nodded.
Beth opened the side exit, and cold air rushed into the corridor. Reporters shouted Finnley’s name the moment they saw him.
