All Day and a Night (8 page)

Please. I have had this letter all these days with no idea what to do until I saw you on TV and
talked
conversed with Jerrod Carter about Buck Majors, who lied about Carter’s confession—and
mine
.
And on top of that, I was nailed for killing six people (TO BE CLEAR: I KILLED NO
ONE!!!
) based only on my one so-called confession from this “detective
.”

The confession was BOGUS from the start. Take a look. You will see. Look at the words Buck Majors used when he was supposed to be quoting my so-called confession, and then compare those words to the so-called confession he got from Jerrod. You mean him and I—two guys that never met each other until we were in the joint, who got arrested three whole years apart—we just happened to use the SAME EXACT WORDS???
No way!

Please help me. A real killer is out there, and it’s not me. And while he’s been out there all these years, I have been in here, and I missed

- Seeing my mother when she was dying and asking for me

- Her funeral

- My sister getting married

- My neice and nephew (twins) being born, learning to talk, starting school. They do not even know they have an uncle because they would not understand

-Everything else I might of done as a young man to make myself better and stay out of jail and be a regular person

I know I made mistakes. I was no angel, and I admit (and told Buck Majors) I hired prostitutes sometimes. But I did not kill anybody. Please believe me. Look at the words of the confessions. There is no way. My original attorney, Mr. McConnell, was a good man, but he was more worried about saving me from the needle than proving my innocence. I didn’t know then that I’d be better off dead than pullng LWOP for crimes I did not do. There’s a reason they call it “all day and a night
.”

I look forward to your response
.

Sincerely
,

Anthony Amaro

Amaro had included a hodgepodge of attachments with his letter, random pages of miscellaneous documents he had collected over the years. Carrie’s first task this morning had been to file a motion to vacate Amaro’s conviction. They knew they didn’t have sufficient evidence yet to exonerate Amaro, but accompanying the motion was a request for a
subpoena duces tecum
to the Utica and New York City police departments for all documents associated with Anthony Amaro’s case.

She had also reached out to Harry McConnell, Amaro’s original defense attorney on the Deborah Garner case, and learned that he was retired from practice. She left a message for the daughter who now ran the office, hoping she might be able to fill in some of the blanks. Now Carrie was creating a more specific list of requests to file with the police. While Linda’s many years as a courtroom defense lawyer made her great in front of a jury, big-firm practice had made Carrie very, very good at looking at pieces of paper and figuring out which other pieces of paper were likely missing.

She was pulled into the present by three quick raps at the door, followed by the appearance of Thomas’s cheerful face. “You sure you have everything you need in here?”

In here
was a squat better suited as a janitorial closet than a lawyer’s office. Thomas’s eyes darted around Carrie’s makeshift workspace in curiosity.

Yesterday, she had thought of Thomas as simply the receptionist, but now Carrie realized that, until today, he had been the only full-time worker at the Law Offices of Linda Moreland, LLC, other than Linda herself. From what Carrie could tell, Thomas was Linda’s secretary, scheduler, and personal barista. When Linda had introduced them yesterday, Thomas beamed as Linda recounted a story of him producing a backup tube of her go-to shade of lipstick when she couldn’t locate hers before a recent CNN interview.

Linda Moreland had been a true one-lawyer shop, but now she had so much work she needed a second lawyer—enter Carrie. When she offered Carrie the position yesterday, she had also offered to let her delay the start-time until she secured “proper working space.” Carrie had been the one to decide she wanted to start right away, and now Thomas had added
Take care of Carrie as she worked out of a storage closet
to his list of responsibilities.

“Thank you so much, Thomas. Really, I’m fine.”

“She’s got me calling the building manager to nudge him about the space down the hall she’s expanding into. Obviously it’s more urgent now that you’re here.”

At Russ Waterston, lawyers billed their time in six-minute increments, so there wasn’t a lot of in-office small talk. “Well, thanks for doing that. But I don’t mind this.”

He didn’t close the door, though. “I never thought she’d hire a full-time lawyer. She has a bunch of investigators she likes to work with. And she’s used contract attorneys when she’s busy; and she likes to employ interns. I think it reminds her of teaching. But I guess something happened with the Jerrod Carter case that led to all this new work?”

“Something like that.”

“Because I know she thinks that case is a big one, with a big payout. Like, that’s why we—well,
she
was going to be able to take more square footage in the building. I mean, he’s been in prison for fifteen years, and now there’s new DNA pointing to someone else. The problem is, Carter confessed. Or at least, he supposedly did. So Linda’s been digging into the detective’s history. Turns out he was extremely successful getting murder suspects to confess. He was considered one of the very best by the NYPD. Linda thought maybe he was a little
too
good. Buck Majors. That’s his name. Except the cops all called him Dime. Know why?”

Carrie did know, because Linda had explained the connection between Jerrod Carter and Anthony Amaro to her before Carrie had even agreed to yesterday’s job interview. But she could see that Thomas was eager to tell her. She raised her eyebrows.

“They joked that he should be named Dime instead of Buck—like you couldn’t be questioned by him without doing a ‘dime’ in prison. That means ten years. So Linda had already been digging around about the detective, wondering if he’d earned his big reputation by lying or beating it out of them or something.”

So far, everything Thomas had said could be gleaned from information Linda had discussed during talking-head gigs about the Jerrod Carter case. She noticed Thomas’s eyes darting not so subtly around her table full of documents.

“Anyway, that’s all I know. But, I’m not a lawyer or anything, so—I’ll leave you to be.”

Carrie had seen how Linda treated Thomas the day before. She was friendly and full of praise, but when it came time to talk about the job and Carrie’s responsibilities, she had closed her office door, even though Thomas was the only other person around. She was so focused on her own priorities that she had never noticed the obvious: Thomas wanted to feel like a real member of the team.

Thomas beamed when Carrie spoke up before he closed the door. “The reason she needed another lawyer is because there’s a pattern. It turns out that, in case after case, Majors claimed that the defendants confessed with phrases like ‘You got it right’ or ‘That’s how it happened’ or ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ Linda’s still trying to find more police reports and trial transcripts, but she says that at least one of those phrases appears in about two-thirds of the detective’s confessions. And it was actually Jerrod Carter and another inmate who initially spotted the similarities between their two confessions to Major. Or, rather, their
supposed
confessions. So now she’s also representing the other inmate. His name is Anthony Amaro.”

She showed him the letter Amaro sent to Linda, seeking her help.

“All day and a night,” he said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I do.” She hadn’t until she’d looked it up online. A life sentence was “all day.” “All day and a night” meant a life sentence without parole. “I’m focusing specifically on the Amaro case, while Linda continues to track down other questionable confessions obtained by Majors. She’s finding more potential clients every day who are going to challenge their convictions.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. Because Linda has built this huge platform, and is, basically, famous. But, you know”—he looked down the hallway, just to make sure no one was around—“we’re small,” he whispered. “And, like, I was wondering how she was going to pay for that space. And, well, for you.” He laughed nervously.

Ah, and for him. He’d been wondering whether Carrie was here not as an addition but as a replacement, as the only other body Linda Moreland could afford.

“Not to worry,” Carrie said. “From what I’ve been reading, Buck’s new nickname should be ‘Multimillion Bucks,’ as in, the millions of dollars he’s going to cost the government for trusting him.”

They heard the front office door open, and, just like that, Thomas was back at his post.

A
few minutes later, there was another tap on the door. Linda pulled a step stool from against the wall and used it as a chair. “Sorry about the ghetto digs. More importantly, sorry to make you get started on your own. That stuff at Cardozo took longer than I expected.”

She had already explained that she was giving a lunchtime lecture at Cardozo Law School, followed by a meeting with the director of their wrongful-conviction clinic. She had been hoping to peel off some of their students to work for her in exchange for school credit.

“Any luck?”

“Nah. They want a level of supervision we can’t provide. I need working bodies, ready to go.”

“Well, I’ve been chipping away.” She told her about the
subpoena duces tecum
she had filed.

“Sounds like good work. But I’ll warn you, this isn’t like the civil cases you’re used to. You can’t just ask and expect to receive. They’ll claim confidentiality of police personnel records, protection of witness and informant identities, ongoing investigations, every piece of bullshit. Sometimes you’ve got to find another way. I’ve got a contact in the crime lab. He tells me the police got a letter similar to the one Amaro received at the prison, but have they said one word? Of course not.”

“They’re just ignoring it?”

“Not entirely. They’re having the labs take another look for DNA evidence. They’re probably hoping to find fresh evidence against Amaro so they can bury the letter without anyone being the wiser, but my contact will tell me one way or the other.”

“How do you have a source there?” Carrie realized how naïve she must sound to someone with Linda’s experience.

“Because I show him more respect than the prosecutors do. The ADAs treat the science types like puppets, expecting them to regurgitate whatever rehearsed testimony might impress a jury. But I’ve learned that if you treat them like professionals, they’ll be fair on cross-examination. They’ll acknowledge the limits of their evidence. I’ve spent years cultivating relationships. The last thing these people want is to contribute to a wrongful conviction. They won’t tell me everything, but they’ll tell me when something doesn’t smell right.”

Carrie noticed that Linda’s voice was calmer—less shrill—than during her television appearances. “Has anyone ever told you that you seem so different in person?”

Linda’s laugh was deep and warm. “Oh, all the time. And thank God for that. ‘Linda’ on TV is a persona. In this job, you’ve got to be a fighter. Cops and DAs have the built-in superhero thing. There are eight different flavors of
Law and Order
on constant cable replay, depicting them as the good guys. I do what I need to do to help our clients. I try to channel every person’s inner rebel, that small part of us willing to recognize the terrifying truth that sometimes cops and DAs get it wrong—and, even worse, sometimes they really don’t give a damn.”

Y
ou ready to talk?” Ellie asked. According to her watch, they’d been in the car for five minutes. They had already hit the Manhattan Bridge, and her partner’s only words had been “Not yet,” muttered when she started venting about Linda Moreland. Since then, he’d been surfing the radio. He’d been briefly satisfied by the tail end of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” but once the song ended, he’d gone back to channel flipping.

“Stupid department-issue p.o.s. Impala. Should’ve taken my ride. Terrestrial radio is tired.”

At least he was using his words now. Ellie was ready to press him for answers. “So, I assume the paucity of decent music on FM isn’t what’s actually eating at you. Is this about Santos? I thought he handled the case reassignment pretty well under the circumstances.”

Rogan didn’t respond.

“Or the stuff he said about Buck Majors?” she asked. “We knew we’d have to double-check the Amaro investigation. If anything, the fact that Majors had a solid reputation makes it more likely Amaro’s guilty, which seems like good news to me.”

Still nothing.

“Look, I talked to Max about this whole ‘fresh look’ thing. He wants to believe he picked us because we’d do the best job, but I don’t blame you for feeling like it’s my fault.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. Though, don’t get me wrong, there is a
that
. But
this
is about Linda Moreland.”

“Oh, she’s the worst. I see her enormous head on TV and I want to throw it out the window. The television. Her head, too, if that were possible.”

He turned off the radio but didn’t say anything.

“And that
voice
,” Ellie added. “It’s like getting stabbed in the ear with a metal skewer. I don’t understand why cable channels give her a platform. How is she possibly—”

Rogan cut her off. “They give her a platform because she feeds a certain part of the population their red meat. It’s no different from what politicians on both sides do. Hell, Nancy Grace and Jeanine Pirro have gotten rich and famous railing against criminals. Linda Moreland has simply turned the tables and is railing against us.”

“Yeah, but we’re the good guys.” She blinked her eyes and flashed a smile, but Rogan wasn’t in a joking mood.