The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham (15 page)

“Maybe. How well did you know Diana Russo?”

He rolls his eyes as if she is the last subject he wants to discuss. “Not well at all. I kept my distance from the beginning. She wanted a job but back then we didn’t hire girls. She took it as an insult and never liked me. She soured Keith on me and we never got along. I was relieved when he left, though I wasn’t finished with him. He became a real pain in the ass.”

“In what way?”

He gazes at the ceiling as if debating whether or not to tell me a story. Being an old lawyer, he can’t help himself. “Well, this is what happened,” he begins as he shifts weight and settles in for the narrative. “Back in the day, I had all the tort business sewed up in Ruiz County. All the good car wrecks, bad products, med-mal, bad faith, everything. If a person got injured, they showed up here, or sometimes I went to see them in the hospital. Keith wanted some of the action because it’s no secret that injuries are the only way to make money out there on the streets. Big-firm guys in Tampa do okay, but nothing like big tort lawyers. When Keith left my office he stole a case, took it with him, and we had one helluva fight. He was broke and needed the cash but the case belonged to my firm. I threatened to sue him and we fought for two years. He eventually agreed to give me half the fee, but there was bad blood. Diana was in the middle of it too.”

Law firms blow up every week and it’s always over money.

“Did you and Keith ever reconcile?”

“Sort of, I guess, but it took years. It’s a small town and the lawyers generally get along. We had lunch the week before he was murdered and had a laugh or two. Keith was a good boy who worked hard. Maybe a bit too ambitious. I never warmed up to her, though. But you had to feel sorry for her. Poor girl found her husband with his face blown off. Handsome guy too. She took it hard, never recovered, sold the building and eventually left town.”

“No contact since then?”

“None whatsoever.” He glances at his watch as if he’s facing another hectic day and the hint is clear. We wind down the conversation, and after thirty minutes I thank him and leave.

Chapter 18

Bradley Pfitzner ruled the county for thirty-two years before retiring. During his career he avoided scandal and ran a tight operation. Every four years he was either unopposed or faced light opposition. He was succeeded by a deputy who served seven years before bad health forced him out.

The current sheriff is Wink Castle, and his office is in a modern metal building that houses all local law enforcement—sheriff, city police, and jail. A dozen brightly painted patrol cars are parked in front of the building at the edge of town. The lobby is busy with cops and clerks and sad relatives checking on inmates.

I’m led to Castle’s office and he greets me with a smile and firm handshake. He’s about forty and has the easy manner of a rural politician. He did not live in the county at the time of the Russo murder, so hopefully he carries no baggage from those days.

After a few minutes of weather talk, he says, “Quincy Miller, huh? I looked through the file last night to get up to speed. Are you a priest or something?”

“A lawyer and a minister,” I say, and spend a moment talking about Guardian. “I take old cases that involve the innocent.”

“Good luck with this one.”

I smile and say, “They’re all difficult, Sheriff.”

“Got it. So how do you plan to prove that your client did not kill Keith Russo?”

“Well, as always, I go back to the scene and start digging. I know that most of the State’s witnesses lied at trial. The evidence is shaky at best.”

“Zeke Huffey?”

“Typical jailhouse snitch. I found him in prison in Arkansas and I expect him to recant. He’s made a career out of lying and recanting, not unusual for those guys. Carrie Holland has already told me the truth—she lied under pressure from Pfitzner and Burkhead, the prosecutor. They gave her a good deal on a pending drug charge. After the trial, Pfitzner gave her a thousand bucks and ran her out of town. She hasn’t been back. June Walker, Quincy’s ex-wife, lives in Tallahassee but so far has refused to cooperate. She testified against Quincy and lied because she was angry over their divorce. Lots of lies, Sheriff.”

This is all new to him and he absorbs it with interest. Then he shakes his head and says, “Still a long way to go. There’s no murder weapon.”

“Right. Quincy never owned a shotgun. The key, obviously, is the blood-spattered flashlight that mysteriously disappeared not long after the murder.”

“What happened to it?” he asks. He’s the sheriff. I should be asking him.

“You tell me. The official version, according to Pfitzner, is that it was destroyed in a fire where they kept evidence.”

“You doubt that?”

“I doubt everything, Sheriff. The expert for the State, a Mr. Norwood, never saw the flashlight. His testimony was pretty outrageous.” I reach into my briefcase, pull out some papers, and place them on his desk. “This is our summary of the evidence. In there you’ll see a report from a Dr. Kyle Benderschmidt, a renowned criminologist, that raises serious doubts about Norwood’s testimony. Have you looked at the photographs of the flashlight?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Benderschmidt believes that the specks, or flecks, on the lens are probably not even human blood. And the flashlight was not found at the scene. We’re not sure where it came from and Quincy swears he had never seen it.”

He takes the report and takes his time flipping through it. When he gets bored he tosses it onto his desk and says, “I’ll spend some time with it tonight. What, exactly, do you want me to do here?”

“Help me. I’ll file a petition for post-conviction relief based on new evidence. It will have reports from our experts and statements from the witnesses who lied. I need for you to reopen the investigation into the murder. It will be a tremendous help if the court knows that the locals believe the wrong man was convicted.”

“Come on, Mr. Post. This case was closed over twenty years ago, long before I came to town.”

“They’re all old cases, Sheriff, old and cold. That’s the nature of our work. Most of the actors are gone—Pfitzner, Burkhead, even the judge is dead. You can look at the case with a fresh perspective and help get an innocent man out of prison.”

He’s shaking his head. “I don’t think so. I can’t see getting involved in this. Hell, I never thought about the case until you called yesterday.”

“All the more reason to get involved. You can’t be blamed for anything that went wrong twenty years ago. You’ll be seen as the good guy trying to do the right thing.”

“Do you have to find the real killer to get Miller out?”

“No. I have to prove him innocent, that’s all. In about half of our cases we manage to nail the real criminal, but not always.”

He keeps shaking his head. The smiles are gone. “I can’t see it, Mr. Post. I mean, you expect me to pull one of my overworked detectives off his active cases and start digging through a twenty-year-old murder that folks around here have forgotten about. Come on, man.”

“I’ll do the heavy lifting, Sheriff. That’s my job.”

“So what’s my job?”

“Cooperate. Don’t get in the way.”

He leans back in his chair and locks his hands behind his head. He stares at the ceiling as minutes pass. Finally, he asks, “In your cases, what do the locals normally do?”

“Cover up. Stonewall. Hide evidence. Fight me like hell. Contest everything I file in court. You see, Sheriff, in these cases the stakes are too high and the mistakes are too egregious for anyone to admit they were wrong. Innocent men and women serve decades while the real killers roam free, and often kill again. These are enormous injustices, and I’ve yet to find a cop or a prosecutor with the spine to admit they blew it. This case is a bit different because those responsible for Quincy’s wrongful conviction are gone. You can be the hero.”

“I’m not interested in being a hero. I just cannot justify spending the time. Believe me, I’ve got enough to worry about.”

“Sure you do, but you can cooperate and make my job easier. I’m just searching for the truth here, Sheriff.”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

“That’s all I ask, for now anyway.”

He takes a deep breath, still unconvinced and definitely uncommitted to the cause. “Anything else?”

“Well there is one other matter, another possible piece of the puzzle. Are you familiar with the death of Kenny Taft? Happened about two years after the murder?”

“Sure. He was the last officer killed on duty. His photo is hanging on the wall out there.”

“I’d like to see the case file without having to go through the Freedom of Information Act and all that crap.”

“And you think it was somehow related to Quincy Miller?”

“I doubt it, but I’m just digging, Sheriff. That’s what I do, and there are always surprises along the way.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Thanks.”

The fire chief is a potbellied, grizzled old veteran who goes by Lieutenant Jordan and is not nearly as friendly as the sheriff. Things are slow around the firehouse two blocks off Main Street. Two of his men polish a shiny pumper in the driveway, and inside an ancient secretary fiddles with paperwork on her desk. Jordan eventually appears, and after a brief round of forced pleasantries leads me to a cramped room with banks of 1940s-style file cabinets. For a moment he searches through history and finds the drawer for 1988. He opens it, flips through a row of dingy files, finds what I’m after and pulls it out.

“Not much of a fire, as I recall,” he says as he places it on the table. “Help yourself.” He leaves the room.

Back then, the sheriff’s office was several blocks away in an old building that has since been razed. In Ruiz County, as in hundreds of other places, it was not at all unusual to store crime scene evidence anywhere there happened to be an empty space or closet. I’ve crawled through courthouse attics and suffocating basements in search of old records.

To alleviate the shortage of storage space, Pfitzner used a portable shed behind his office. In the file there is a black-and-white photo of it before the fire, and a heavy padlock on the only door is visible. There were no windows. I estimate it was thirty feet long, twelve feet wide, eight feet in height. A photo taken after the fire shows nothing but charred rubble.

The first alarm came at 3:10 a.m. and the firemen found the shed fully engulfed. The fire was extinguished in a matter of minutes with nothing salvageable. Its cause is listed as “Unknown.”

As Jordan said, it wasn’t much of a fire. The flashlight found in Quincy’s trunk was apparently destroyed. No trace was found. Conveniently, the autopsy reports, witness statements, diagrams, and photos were safely locked away inside Pfitzner’s desk. He had what he needed to convict Quincy Miller.

For the moment, the fire is a dead end.

Chapter 19

I call Carrie and Buck once a week to check on them. They realize I’m not going away and are slowly coming around. I repeatedly assure her that she runs no risks by cooperating with me, and we establish a level of trust.

We meet in a coffee shop near Kingsport and eat omelets. She reads the affidavit Mazy has prepared, then Buck goes through it slowly. I answer the same questions about what happens next and so on, and after an hour of gentle cajoling she signs it.

In the parking lot, I give her a hug and Buck wants one too. We’re trusted pals now and I thank them for having the courage to help Quincy. Through tears, she asks me to ask him to forgive her. It’s already done, I reply.

My mother inherited the family farm near Dyersburg, Tennessee, my hometown. Mom is seventy-three and has lived by herself since Dad died two years ago. I worry about her because of her age, though she is healthier than me and not at all lonely. She worries about me because of my nomadic lifestyle and absence of a serious romantic relationship. She has grudgingly accepted the reality that starting a family is not one of my priorities and I am not likely to produce more grandchildren. My sister has given her three but they live far away.

She doesn’t eat animals and is sustained by the land. Her garden is legendary and could feed hundreds, and in fact does. She hauls baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables to the local food bank. We dine on tomatoes stuffed with rice and mushrooms, thick butterbeans, and a squash casserole. In spite of the abundance, she eats like a bird and drinks nothing but tea and water. She is fit and spry and refuses to take pills, and as she pushes her vegetables around her plate she encourages me to eat more. She is concerned about my lack of weight, but I wave her off. I hear this from others.

Afterwards, we sit on the front porch and drink mint tea. Little has changed on the porch since my convalescence many years ago, and we talk about those dark days. We also talk about Brooke, my ex. They were fond of each other and kept in touch for years. Mom was angry with her at first for leaving me during my breakdown, but I finally convinced her that our split had been inevitable on our wedding day. Brooke married an entrepreneur who has done well. They have four children, beautiful teenagers, and Mom gets a bit wistful when she thinks about what might have been. As soon as I get an opening, I move the conversation in another direction.

In spite of my unconventional lifestyle, Mom is proud of what I do, though she understands little about the criminal justice system. She finds it depressing that there is so much crime, so many people imprisoned, so many broken families. It has taken me years to convince her that there are thousands of innocent people locked away. This is our first chance to talk about Quincy Miller and she loves getting the details. A murdered lawyer, a crooked sheriff, a drug cartel, an innocent man perfectly framed. She can’t believe it at first and relishes the story. I don’t worry about telling her too much. We are, after all, sitting on a dark porch in rural Tennessee, far away from Florida, and who would she tell anyway? I can trust my mom to keep secrets.