A Very Simple Crime (8 page)

As a deputy prosecutor Leo had been assigned to the team handling the Guaraldi case, although, at that time, no one had yet heard the name Frank Guaraldi. The case was simply known as the torso murders. It was already one of the longest and costliest unsolved cases in the county’s history. Certainly it was the highest-profile case any of them had ever been involved with, and a legitimate suspect had not even been named yet. Leo’s work on the case eventually earned him the position of prosecutor, then lead prosecutor, and, once Guaraldi had been fingered as the most likely suspect, Bob Fox had appointed Leo to the post of assistant district attorney. It was rumored that if he could bring the Guaraldi matter to a successful conclusion, he was an odds-on favorite to go on to become the youngest district attorney to ever hold the seat.

The whole thing started with an arm. A severed arm found in a drainage ditch on a rural road outside Atlanta. The arm had been eaten at by animals and was badly decayed but obviously that of a child. Decomposition had robbed the forensics team of any hope of a print ID. Only one clue offered any chance for identification. A toy ring had been found on the middle finger of the severed arm. It was a cheap plastic thing that only a child would wear. The type of toy that could only be bought out of a bubble gum machine, with cheap gold lamination that was chipping away from the pale plastic base. Investigators tracked down the Chinese manufacturer of the ring, and then the importer, and from there the distributor. The distributor’s records listed several vendors in the Atlanta area. The ring went in a seventy-five-cent machine of which there was one vendor who maintained only one such machine. That machine was located in an arcade in the Little Five Points area of downtown Atlanta. This was a definite starting point, the first real lead they had had to follow up on. All missing-persons reports from the city police department were culled for the previous two years, and from those reports investigators pulled the names of children between ages four and twelve, and from this list was pulled only those missing children who had lived within a twenty-mile radius of the Little Five Points neighborhood. A group of officers was dispatched to interview family members of the missing children.

The temperature had peaked at a record-breaking one hundred one degrees that July day, and Officer Lyle Davis was thinking only of a cold beer when he knocked on the door of the last address on his list. Donny Easton, missing for three months. He showed the photo of the plastic gold ring to Mrs. Easton, a huge and solidly built woman. Her eyes widened and hope bloomed on her face. Donny had worn one just like it. Never took it off. Officer Davis explained the circumstances of the ring’s discovery and watched Mrs. Easton crumple to the floor. He’d forgotten all about the dreamed upon beer. More body parts were found. Arms, legs, sometimes just a finger, twice an ear, and one time a severed head. Always children. Never an entire body. Some of the body parts led to identification, but many did not. Each time a piece was found, the national media descended on the city like vultures following the scent of carrion. The police department, and in particular the mayor, were singled out for criticism for allowing the slaughter of children to continue. Gestures such as a hotline number for tips and a dusk-till-dawn curfew were made to appease the frightened population, but no real progress was made.

The death count stood at nine. Possibly nine, because not a single complete body had thus far been recovered. The city lived in fear; parents existed in a constant state of maniacal paranoia. Neighbors reported neighbors for eccentric behavior. An anonymous caller to the tip line gave the name of a man, James Nice, a bachelor with no children, who was seen purchasing dolls and hacksaw blades in a local K-Mart. Nice was investigated and found to be blameless (the blades were to cut a section of burst water pipe in his garage, the dolls for his niece’s birthday), but his name was leaked to the media. They called him a person of interest. News crews set up mobile studios outside his house. His face was seen on television and in newspaper photos with captions that capitalized on his ironic name. Within a week of the tip line call, the chief of police declared him no longer a suspect, and the media pulled away. By then, Nice, a recovering alcoholic, had turned to bouts of heavy drinking and antisocial behavior. He yelled at strangers in the street and took to shoplifting. He lost his job. Lost his house. Three months after being cleared as a suspect, he was found dead in a homeless shelter lying facedown in a pool of his own vomit. Nice’s family sued the city and were eventually awarded four point seven million dollars.

Frank Guaraldi. He and his wife, Janice, ran the Little Wonders day care and after-school center in College Park. When the ninth victim of the Torso Killer was identified as Gwendolyn Peters, Leo Hewitt, as the district attorney’s liaison to the police department, was the one who made the connection. Donny Easton, the first identified victim, and Gwendolyn Peters, the last, had both attended the same day care. Little Wonders.

Suddenly, the case now had something it had never had before, a legitimate suspect—Frank Guaraldi. And, at the exact same time that Leo was making the connection with the preschool, almost as if by divine intervention, Carolyn Conners, a housewife from College Park, called the tip line and reported a smell like rotting meat coming from the Guaraldis’ house. Two detectives interviewed the Conners woman, and she stated to them that she had observed Frank Guaraldi unloading bags of quicklime from the trunk of his car at three o’clock in the morning. She also claimed to have seen Guaraldi remove from his trunk an object wrapped in a plastic tarp. Yes, she had said, although she could not say so definitively, the object wrapped in the tarp could very well have been the body of a child. A search warrant was issued, and Guaraldi and his wife were brought in for questioning. The search of Guaraldi’s home yielded a cache of pornographic photographs hidden in a trunk in the attic. The photos depicted, among other things, women in bondage costumes being urinated on by men. Guaraldi’s vehicle was impounded. Every print, fiber, and microscopic speck was analyzed in record time. A strand of hair was recovered that matched the DNA of Gwendolyn Peters. Mitigating this was the concurrent discovery of DNA evidence that matched up with nine other (unharmed) attendees of Little Wonders. The Guaraldis denied any knowledge of the missing children. Janice Guaraldi was released from custody and asked to remain available for future questioning. Frank Guaraldi remained behind bars and was held pending formal charges.

In the heat of the media maelstrom that enveloped the city, attorney Monty Lee visited Guaraldi in his cell and offered to take his case pro bono. Guaraldi accepted gratefully and Monty Lee stepped into the limelight for the first time. He called the allegations against his client preposterous and nothing more than just that, allegations. He told the press that his client would sue the county for being held without just cause and being denied due process. The media ignited, and Montgomery Lee became a star.

Letters were drafted by the DA’s office and sent out to the parents of children who attended the Little Wonders preschool. The letters asked about any unusual occurrences, inappropriate touching, evidence of violence, and unusual bruising. The children said nothing happened.

At the bail hearing, Leo sat at the prosecution table with Paula, who had been handpicked by the district attorney, Bob Fox, to co-chair the case with Leo. Fox was carefully orchestrating every nuance of the trial. He and everyone else in the city government knew exactly how much was riding on the outcome of this case, and he was leaving nothing to chance. It was fuck or walk, Fox was fond of saying. Fox had told Leo that the positioning of Paula as second chair was a political as well as a practical move. It never hurt to have a pretty woman in court. He firmly believed that having a man and woman sitting at the prosecution table was the only way to go. You had to cover all the bases, after all. And that was certainly true, but it was also true that there was just something about Paula Manning that he simply liked. There was just something about her, something hard underneath.

Fox had entrusted the actual prosecution to Leo because Leo was, after all, the assistant DA and had shepherded all of the evidence thus far to reach this critical point. He believed in Leo. He believed Leo could win the case. He had, after all, given Leo the assistant DA position, hadn’t he? Of course he trusted him. Of course he believed in him. Then why did he still have a nagging doubt somewhere in the back of his mind? Leo was one of the best trial lawyers Fox had ever seen, and he was damn glad to have him as his assistant DA, but Leo had yet to show clearly and demonstratively where his loyalties lay. He had not sacrificed. Fox knew that it sometimes took a baptism of fire before some men would totally and completely pledge their loyalties to another man. This would be that time. If the case was won, Fox was sure to go on to become the state attorney general, and the DA’s chair would be a fait accompli for Leo.

If the case was lost, all would be lost.

At the bail hearing, Leo addressed the judge in his best tone of placid reason. “Your Honor, in light of the cruel and sadistic nature of the crimes of which Mr. Guaraldi is accused, the People move to deny bail for the defendant,” Leo said, and sat back down. Paula, who was sitting to his left, betrayed no emotion.

Guaraldi sat to Monty’s left at the defense table. Behind them, Janice Guaraldi waited expectantly. She held a ragged ball of Kleenex in her clenched fist. Behind her, the courtroom was packed with press and the merely curious who wished to know firsthand what sort of bail would be set for the country’s most notorious and diabolical child murderer. Monty stood up and nodded imperceptibly to Leo. This was the first time these two men had ever met in or out of court. To Leo, Monty Lee was the high-priced defense attorney who had tried to get Samuel Abdul off the hook. He held Monty Lee in the same contempt as the shiftless lawyer who would have set free the man who had swindled his mother out of her dead husband’s inheritance.

“Your Honor, this is outrageous,” Monty said with the utmost calm. “My client has committed no crime. He is merely a suspect. And not a very good one at that. We all know that the people of this city live in fear. They demand that the child killer be caught, and rightfully so. The police department, in its clamor to find the killer, to meet the people’s demand, has accused the wrong man. In short, the prosecution has yet to offer up one piece of hard evidence. To deny my client bail would be, as I have said, outrageous.”

Judge Elizabeth Duran lifted a thick folder and waved it at Monty. Decades of smoking and marinating her vocal cords in single malt scotch had left her voice as deep as a man’s. “Mr. Lee, did you read the same police report I did? Two of the missing children were enrolled in his preschool. Did you read the affidavit of the eyewitness who saw your client removing a tarp wrapped in the shape of a body from the trunk of his car? Did you see the same pornographic photographs depicting women being tortured and degraded?”

“Women, Your Honor, not children. A taste for a little S&M isn’t a crime.”

“No, it’s not. However, there’s also the matter of the DNA evidence.”

“Found along with DNA from nine other children who attend the day care. The Guaraldis often transport the children in that vehicle.”

Duran cleared phlegm from her throat and shuffled through the papers one final time.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lee, but I’m inclined to agree with the prosecution on this one. I feel that Mr. Guaraldi is a serious threat to the safety of this community, and I would be derelict in my duty to protect this community if I allowed bail.”

“But, Your Honor, Mr. Guaraldi has lived in this community for over thirty years, he has no police record, he’s never even—”

“I’ve made my ruling.”

“Are you sure Your Honor isn’t giving in to the power of the press?”

“That will cost you five hundred dollars. Hope it was worth it. Good day.”

A forensics team was brought in to excavate around Guaraldi’s house. They dug extensive burrows and tunnels in and around the house. Nothing was found. A backhoe was brought in to excavate the entire property. The same process was carried out at the day care center. Nothing was ever found. Bob Fox was outraged. He set an inhuman pace for his prosecutors. He stormed through offices, demanding results. And Leo didn’t blame Fox for demanding results; he knew it was due in large part to the almost daily attacks made on him by the media. In fact, the media were starting to focus some of their attention on Leo, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. Two days after the excavation at Guaraldi’s home was abandoned, one of Leo’s clerks had buzzed his office and told him he had a call on line two.

“Who is it?” he asked the clerk.

“Anne Hunter.”

“Christ. Tell her I’m out of town.”

“She says to tell you that she knows you’re here and this is going to be your only opportunity to confirm or deny.”

“Confirm or deny what?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

“Christ,” he grumbled and punched line two. He had met Anne Hunter shortly after he became a prosecutor. He’d been working on a case involving a minor figure of the community who was suspected in a nonfatal hit-and-run. After court one day, Anne had approached him for comments on the case. He had known that sooner or later he would work on a case that generated some public interest, but he wasn’t prepared for the rush he got the first time a reporter actually asked him questions. He felt like a celebrity after the fact. It was ludicrous to feel that way, he knew, but, nonetheless, he got off on it in a big way. It fed his ego. And Anne Hunter had clued in to that right away. She called on him almost daily to get his comments on current cases, cases that he knew were not particularly newsworthy. But it was no big leap for him to talk himself into believing that they were important cases. After all, why would a real reporter want his views on them if they weren’t important? But Anne knew what she was doing. They had ultimately ended up seeing each other socially, but once the initial excitement of seeing his name in the paper had worn off, Leo began to dislike her. It had been a bit like going out with a psychiatrist. The conversation always seemed to have a subtext. There was always the feeling that every offhand remark was being neatly filed away and marked for later use. That she was grooming him for her future benefit. And that instinct had been right. Even after the relationship cooled (it had consisted of four sexual encounters and little else), he always called Anne first when he had a story he wanted leaked to the press. And now that he was the ADA on a murder case that had captured the nation’s attention, Anne Hunter had the ultimate in. She was reaping the benefits of all the hard work she had put into stroking his ego. Only lately, Anne didn’t seem too terribly interested in keeping Leo’s ego stroked. Her articles were becoming more and more critical of his performance on the case. Whereas she had once singled out Bob Fox as her whipping boy, she was now targeting Leo. Singling out mistakes he had made. Her last article had used the motif that time was getting short for the children of the city and what were our city’s leaders doing about it? The piece had ended with the ominous rejoinder that unless they did something soon, for Bob Fox and Leo Hewitt, as for the children, time was getting short.