Red Mist (14 page)

Then I read a call sheet that includes handwritten notes he made at eight-oh-seven p.m.
The suggestion that choking was the
cause of death was made by Tara Grimm.
“Barrie Lou seemed to be having a hard time breathing,” the warden apparently said
to Colin over the phone while the body was in transit, en route to the morgue.
She didn’t witness this herself, she said,
but it was reported to her that Barrie Lou “was struggling for breath and seemed distressed.”
The guards thought it was anxiety,
Tara Grimm told Colin.
“It wasn’t too long before she was to be taken into the death chamber and prepped, and Barrie Lou was
prone to emotional fits and anxiety.
Now I’m wondering if she might have choked on her last meal.”

Colin wrote these remarks on the call sheet, and he dutifully checked for food aspiration when he made his first incision
on Barrie Lou Rivers’s body less than an hour after he was on the phone
with the warden, who did not attend the autopsy.
Official witnesses listed on the protocol as having been present include
a morgue assistant, a death investigator, and a representative from the GPFW, Officer M.
P.
Macon.
The same prison guard who
was my escort earlier today.

T
he cause of death listed on the preliminary autopsy report is undetermined and the manner is the same.
Undetermined
and
Undetermined.
In forensic pathology this is a no-hitter, a game tied at zero inning after inning and finally called because of rain or
dark or who knows what, but in the end it doesn’t count.

Every death should count, and I am not a good sport when I can’t find an answer.
I know there always is one.
But now and then
forensic pathologists like Colin Dengate and me are forced to accept we’ve failed.
The dead won’t tell us what we need to
know, and we have no choice but to come up with what is most plausible medically even if we don’t quite believe it.
We release
the body and personal effects so those left behind can tidy up legal affairs, collect insurance, arrange funerals, and go
on living.
Or in the case of Barrie Lou Rivers,
she was signed out and buried in a potter’s field because nobody claimed her or gave a damn.

Eventually Colin amended the autopsy report to a sudden cardiac death due to myocardial infarction with a manner of natural,
and this is what is on her death certificate as well.
It was a default diagnosis based on an equivocal amount of coronary
artery disease.
Sixty percent of the left anterior descending artery.
Twenty percent of the right at one centimeter from the
ostium.
The circumflex coronary artery was clear.
She was awaiting her execution, and at some point after a last meal of a
tuna-fish sandwich on rye, potato chips, and Pepsi cola, witnesses claimed she suffered shortness of breath, sweating, weakness,
extreme fatigue—symptoms that were interpreted as a panic attack precipitated by her impending execution.
A panic attack is
consistent with the undigested food Colin found when he opened the stomach during the autopsy.
Extreme stress or fear, and
the digestion completely quits.

By all accounts, it appears she was dead from a massive heart attack at seven-fifteen p.m., or not quite two hours before
she was scheduled to die by lethal injection.
As I continue to review her case, Jaime talks from the kitchen while she arranges
each of our meals on her rental unit’s white plates.
She’s talking about the Jordan family.
She wants their injuries and any
other artifacts and crime scene information interpreted as precisely and as irrefutably as possible.
She needs my help.

“Colin should be able to tell you about their injuries and everything else,” I remind her.
“He went to the crime scene and
did the autopsies.
He’s a very competent forensic pathologist.
Have you tried to discuss the cases with him?”

“One perpetrator.
Lola Daggette.
Case closed,” Marino replies.
“That’s what everybody around here’s got to say about it.”

As Jaime gets out wineglasses I recall Colin’s demeanor during the case presentation he gave at the NAME meeting in Los Angeles
years ago.
He was personally outraged by the savage deaths of Dr.
Clarence Jordan and his wife, Gloria, and visibly upset
over their two little children, Brenda and Josh.
Colin’s opinion then was that only one person had committed those crimes—the
teenage girl who was washing the victims’ blood out of her clothing in a halfway-house bathroom within hours of the homicides.
Any subsequent stories and rumors about Lola Daggette’s mysterious accomplice were a defense attorney’s fiction, I remember
him saying.

“I’ve been to his lab only once, several weeks ago,” Jaime says.
“He didn’t come out of his office to meet me, and when I
went in to speak to him, he didn’t get up from his desk.”

“You can’t force him to be friendly, but I can’t imagine him deliberately impairing an attorney’s ability to get needed information,”
I reply, and what I really want to say is that Jaime is Jaime, and what’s worse, she’s a New Yorker, one of those northern
aggressors who comes to a small southern city and assumes everyone is backward, bigoted, dishonest, and somewhat stupid.

I suspect her attitude is obvious when she deals with Colin, who grew up in these parts and is steeped in local tradition,
whether it is participating in Civil War reenactments or Irish parades on Saint Patrick’s Day.

“He’s bound by statute to give you anything that could be exculpatory,” I add.

“He didn’t volunteer anything.”

“He doesn’t have to volunteer anything.”

“He thinks I’m just looking for someone to support an alternate theory.”

“He very well might think that, because that’s exactly what you’re doing,” I reply.
“You’re doing the same thing any good
defense attorney does.
What I haven’t been told is how or why it is you’re involved.
You left the DA’s office and suddenly
you’re in the opposite camp, representing Lola Daggette.
And what is your interest in Barrie Lou Rivers?”

“Cruel and unusual punishment.”
Jaime pours wine.
“Barrie Lou was so terrified as she awaited her execution in a holding cell,
she died of a heart attack.
Whose idea was it to serve her a last meal that was identical to what she poisoned her victims
with?
Was it hers?
If so, why?
To show remorse, or a contemptuous lack of it?”

“There’s no forensic analysis that will answer that,” I reply.

“I seriously doubt she picked the menu,” Jaime makes her point.
“I suspect the objective was to taunt her with what awaited
her when she was strapped on that gurney, to terrorize her about what the death squad had in store for her and how much they
were looking forward to her getting what she deserved.
Barrie Lou had a panic attack, all right.
She was literally scared
to death.”

“I don’t know if it’s true she was tormented, and I don’t think you can know it, either, unless someone who was involved admits
to such a thing.
And I’m curious about why you’re suddenly so interested,” I tell her frankly.
“I’m puzzled by why you’re
suddenly up to your elbows in defending the very sort of people you used to lock up and throw away the key.”

“Not suddenly.
I’ve been having discussions for a while.
My
troubles with Farbman and just my having my fill … well, it goes back longer than you might think.
I alerted Joe at the end
of last year that I was looking into other prospects, that I was interested in wrongful convictions.”

“Good ole Joe
Nail ’em
Nale,” Marino quips, as he flips a page of another report.
“I wish I was a fly on the wall when you told him that,” he says
to Jaime.

Joseph Nale is the district attorney of Manhattan, Jaime’s former boss, and not the sort to be favorably inclined toward any
individual or organization dedicated to exonerating people wrongfully convicted of crimes.
Most prosecutors, if they’re honest
about it, aren’t fond of lawyers who make it their mission to fight the injustices caused by other lawyers and those they
recruited as experts.

“I informed him I’d also been talking with some attorneys I know who work with the Innocence Project,” Jaime continues to
explain.

“The one here in Georgia?”
I ask.

“The national organization in New York.
But I’m acquainted with Curtis Roberts, and I did ask him to do a favor.”

“So Leonard Brazzo wouldn’t know you were behind the invitation for me to meet with Kathleen Lawler.
So I wouldn’t know,”
I presume.

“I’m having dialogues with firms and in the process of narrowing it down,” Jaime says, as if she didn’t hear me.
“Much of
it depends on where I want to live.”

“I’m sure what happens in the Lola Daggette case will have some bearing on which law firm you pick,” I say, not so subtly.

“Obviously a large one that also has offices in the South and Southwest,” she replies, as she hands me a glass of wine and
gives
Marino a Diet Coke.
“Red states are fond of executing people, although I don’t intend to have my home base in Alabama or Texas.
But to answer your question about how I came to be involved in Lola Daggette’s wrongful conviction, she wrote a number of
letters to the Innocence Project and a number of groups and lawyers who take on cases like hers pro bono.
The letters were
badly written, let me add, and were shelved until this past November, when an emergency stay of execution was denied by the
Georgia Supreme Court, inspiring a legal review by various public policy organizations.
Then earlier this year there was a
botched execution here in Georgia that has caused a lot of concern about whether it was deliberately cruel.

“I was asked if I were interested in Lola Daggette’s case, as there seemed to be some utility in having a woman involved,
I was told,” Jaime continues.
“Lola’s not known to cooperate with men, and in fact is incapable of trusting a man because
of the extreme abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather.
I said I would take a look.
At the time, there
was no reason to think there might be any link to you.
I started reviewing Lola’s case before Dawn Kincaid attacked you.”

“I’m not seeing a link to Lola Daggette beyond her being in the same prison as Dawn Kincaid’s biological mother,” I reply.
“Although if Dawn’s mother, Kathleen Lawler, is to be believed, Lola seems to have some sort of connection to Kathleen.
An
adversarial one.”

“Most of these cases reviewed by national litigation and public policy organizations involve people incarcerated in Georgia,
Virginia, Florida, the red states.”
Jaime ignores what I just said.
“Many of these people are given life sentences or sentenced
to death because of flawed forensics, misidentification, coerced confessions.
And there
aren’t many women on death row.
Currently, Lola is the only woman on death row in Georgia, only one of fifty-six nationwide.
And there aren’t many women attorneys with my degree of experience and track record taking on these cases.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”
I won’t let her get away with her self-serving rhetoric.
“What it does further explain
is your interest in having a presence in certain locales and why it might be wise to take a job with a big firm that has offices
everywhere.”

“I have no dining-room table, I’m sure you’ve noticed, so we’ll make ourselves comfortable in the living room.
Stay where
you are, and I’ll serve.”
Jaime carries in our food, and her deep blue eyes meet mine.
“I’m glad you got here safely, Kay.
I regret any inconvenience or confusion.”

What she means is she regrets any lies.
She regrets finding it necessary to manipulate me into showing up to help her with
a case that will make a name for her in criminal defense law if she succeeds in freeing Georgia’s most notorious killer, who
happens to be the only woman in the state on death row.
I don’t want to think there is no altruism involved, but I’m certain
I smell ambition and other motivating factors.
This isn’t completely about Jaime’s wanting to right a wrong, maybe not even
mostly about it.
She wants power.
She wants to rise from the ashes after being forced out of office in New York City, and
she wants sufficient influence to crush enemies such as Farbman and probably a long list of others.

“I shouldn’t drink Diet Coke,” Marino says, as he begins to eat.
“Believe it or not, artificial sweeteners can make you fat.”

“I was determined to convey two things to you,” Jaime says to me, as she sits down on the couch with her plate of sushi.
“You’d
better watch yourself, because you and I both know it’s all about the case.
It’s never purely about justice when cops, the
FBI, sink their teeth into something.
It’s the case.
First, last, and always.
Quotas, headlines, and promotions.”
She reaches
for her glass of wine.

“I appreciate the forewarning,” I reply.
“But I don’t need your help.”

“Well, you do.
And I need yours.”

“White sugar and fake sugar.”
Marino glances up at me as he eats, the spoon loudly clacking against the side of the mug.
“I
stay away.”

“I have a feeling you’ve alienated Colin.”
I state the obvious to Jaime.
“He can be stubborn but is very good at what he does.
He’s well respected by his peers, by law enforcement.
He’s also a southern gentleman, and an Irish one at that, through and
through.
You have to know how to work with people like him.”