Presumption of Guilt (5 page)

A wave of anger washed over Reynolds. With his voice barely controlled, he said, “What the hell does that mean? Did you blab to someone?”

“Calm down. It’s nothing like that. The guards down in Bedford keep me apprised on all the inmates we send there.”

Reynolds felt his chest unclench. “Okay. That’s good. Anyway, it needn’t mean anything, her seeing a new lawyer. Don’t most prisoners keep trying to overturn their convictions?”

“Sure. But it’s Molly.”

“So? She’s had other attorneys.”

“Not in years. I thought it was over.”

Despite his reassurances to the sheriff, Reynolds felt an acidic burning in his gut. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Tums, popped the lid, and shook two pills into his hand. He listened as Engles jabbered on a bit longer, then cut him off when he couldn’t take any more. “Look, just monitor the visits, okay? Let’s not get all worked up when it could be nothing.”

“Don’t you think Alan should know?”

“Not yet.” Reynolds needed to think this through before they involved Alan. He had been crystal clear about that—keep him at arm’s length unless there was no choice. “Look, I’m up to my ears here. Let me know if you hear anything else, but for now, let’s just let it simmer.”

After hanging up, Reynolds stared at the budget on his desk. He’d been working overtime getting it ready for the legislature, looking for places to cut. When the county changed to a county executive form of government, the Democrats took the first spot. Everyone knew it was because of that damn jail. But he’d won four years later and had held on every election since, mostly because of his promise to keep taxes down. With real property values in the toilet, property-tax revenue went down the drain with it. Now balancing the budget was like walking a tightrope with no net. The locals demanded services—they just didn’t want to pay for them.

He pushed the papers to the side of his desk and opened its bottom drawer. He rarely drank anymore, especially at the office. But he kept a bottle of eighteen-year-old single-malt scotch tucked away for important visitors—those deep-pocketed constituents whose favor he needed to curry year round, election year or not. After buzzing Jeannette and reminding her not to interrupt him again, he pulled out the bottle, slid his chair to the credenza behind his desk, and retrieved a crystal highball glass, then poured himself two fingers’ worth. The rich, peaty scotch went down like liquid heat, and he leaned back in his chair as he savored it.

It wasn’t like he’d never thought about Molly Singer over the years. It would have been impossible not to. Still, he’d pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, only brought them forward occasionally, less and less often as the years went by. He’d known she was trouble the first time Finn brought her home. Too smart for her own good, too willful for her parents to control. And too pretty to ignore.

That was the question now: should he ignore this new development? Chalk it up to just another grab by a prisoner for freedom? Or did it mean trouble for him? Trouble for all of them. Reynolds took one more sip of the scotch, then picked up his phone and dialed Alan.

C
HAPTER

8

T
he sound of the door slamming shut reverberated throughout the house. At least it was quiet now, Finn thought, the screaming of the last twenty minutes replaced by silence. He knew it wouldn’t last. Any moment now Kim would storm into his study, her mouth twisted into the scowl she wore whenever she’d had a run-in with Sophie. It wouldn’t matter that he’d told her he shouldn’t be disturbed. Kim paid him no more mind than Sophie did. He braced for the inevitable tirade. It wasn’t long in coming.

“I can’t take her anymore,” Kim spat as she burst into the room. “She has no respect for me. None whatsoever.”

Finn swung his chair around and looked up at his wife, firmly planted in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. She hadn’t changed from her yoga class at the gym, and the black spandex shorts hugged her body.
She’s so beautiful, even when she’s angry.
How did she manage it? Even after a baby she’d stayed slim, her skin still smooth and youthful. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked more like a college coed than a mother of two. He felt like an old man who’d robbed the cradle, but she was only two years younger than he
.
Finn looked down at his expanding belly. The buttons of his tucked-in shirt looked ready to pop.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What can I say? It’s Sophie.”

“What does that mean?” The coldness of her tone sliced through the air.

“I mean she’s always overly dramatic. You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

Kim stormed across the room and thrust her index finger at him. “Heaven forbid you should ever take my side. She’s a drama queen because you’ve allowed it. You never see Graham behave that way.” Finished with her scolding, she once again wrapped her arms around her chest.

It always led to that. Their son, as rambunctious as most six-year-old boys, had no flaws according to Kim. The perfect, loving child, well-behaved and attentive. Too attentive, Finn sometimes thought. Too attached to his mother. And Sophie? It seemed Kim only saw her flaws, never the terrific things about her.

Graham was a carbon copy of his father, with sandy-brown hair that curled when it got too long, deep-brown eyes with lashes women envied, and a nose that some already described as patrician. When strangers saw the family together, though, it was the resemblance between Sophie and Kim that drew their remarks. When the two females in his life weren’t engaged in warfare, Finn appreciated the irony. Sophie shared Kim’s silky blonde hair that almost touched her shoulders, her large eyes, and full lips. “How much your daughter looks like you,” they’d often comment, and Kim would always reply, “Oh, she’s my stepdaughter. Looks like her real mother.”

Her real mother.
The phrase cut through Finn like a surgeon’s scalpel. He’d married Kim when Sophie was only four years old. Before then, Sophie had no mother. He couldn’t understand why Kim pushed her away, even before Graham was born. Deny it as she might, Kim was Sophie’s real mother—she had no other.

“Look, I’ve got to catch up on this paperwork. Let’s talk about it later.”

Kim’s mouth clenched tighter. She unfolded her arms and placed her hands on her waist and stamped her foot twice. “No! Not later, now. I’m sick of you coddling her. She wouldn’t be this way if you ever disciplined her.”

Finn held back a chuckle. Almost thirty, and sometimes Kim behaved like a child having her own temper tantrum. With a sigh, he said, “I’ll talk to her. I promise. But I really have to do this work now.”

“Just do it. Today,” Kim said, then turned and stormed out of the room.

Finn turned back to his desk, papers spread across the top, and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. Life hadn’t turned out as he’d expected. Throughout high school, he’d planned on becoming an architect. Then, everything changed with the killing of Molly’s parents and her unthinkable arrest and conviction for the crimes. And with Sophie.

His parents thought he was crazy to fight for custody. “You’re only nineteen, your whole life is ahead of you,” they’d said. “Donna wants the baby; she’s finished with school. Besides, she’s a woman. She can handle it better.” It didn’t matter what they said. Sophie belonged with him. Instead of college, he did what he’d done every summer since he’d started high school—worked on a landscaping crew. He enrolled in botany classes at the local community college and by the time Sophie was three, he’d started his own landscaping company. Now he owned the most sought-after landscape design company in Hudson County.

Finn glanced out the window at his expansive lawn. He was a fortunate man, with a family he loved. If only Kim and Sophie could get along, he would be truly happy.

Kim was right, though. He didn’t discipline Sophie. He couldn’t. When she looked at him with her tear-streaked face, he only saw Molly. And a rush of guilt would flow through him, because he knew it had been his testimony that sent Sophie’s mother to prison.

C
HAPTER

9

O
nce again, Dani sat opposite Molly Singer in the austere interview room, with a table and their chairs the only furniture. Again, a guard dressed in a starched gray uniform stood outside, able to view the occupants through the square window at the top of the door but unable to hear the soft voices of the two women talking. Dani heard the usual distant sounds, all blended together inside the room. She had learned to push those sounds away, to turn them into background noise, like waves crashing over rocks.

Molly’s prison garb was orange, a starkly bright color that made most faces disappear. Not Molly’s. Even without any makeup, her freshly scrubbed cheeks glowed. An attorney retention letter had already been signed and put away in Dani’s briefcase. Dani chatted with Molly at first to put her at ease. Now it was time to get down to business.

“Tell me everything you remember about that night.”

Molly sat erect in her seat, her hands folded in front of her. She spoke softly. “That’s just it; there’s so much I don’t remember.”

“Start earlier, when you were out with Finn.”

“We were supposed to meet up with friends and go to a movie. But when Finn picked me up, he said his parents decided at the last minute to go away for the weekend. He wanted us to go back to his house instead.”

“So that’s what you did?”

She nodded. “We’d begun having sex a few months before. Whenever one of us had an empty house, we took advantage of it.”

“What time did you get home?”

“It was past my curfew. I half expected my mother to be waiting by the steps, ready to lay it on for being late, but they were both asleep.”

“And what time was that?”

“Almost one. I mean, I was supposed to be home by midnight, and it was well past that.”

Dani took notes as Molly spoke, only looking up occasionally. “How did you know your parents were asleep? Did you see them in their bedroom?”

Molly paused before speaking again. “No. I mean, I didn’t see them. I just assumed they were asleep because their room was dark and the door was ajar, just like they always left it when I was out and they’d gone to bed.”

Dani stopped writing. “So they could have already been murdered by then.”

Molly flinched at the word “murdered,” then looked confused. “I thought they said at trial that the time of death was between two and four a.m.?”

“Medical examiners can be wrong. The science isn’t always so exact. If they were off by two hours, even an hour, it’s possible your parents were killed before you returned home.”

“No, that doesn’t make sense. Their door was ajar when I got home and closed when I woke up the next morning.”

Dani struck a line through her last note. She’d hoped attacking the time of death might be an avenue for appeal. “Okay, so you got home, your parents seemed to be asleep. Then what?”

“I was really hopped-up from being with Finn, you know, that way, so I decided to take Ambien to fall asleep. I had some in my medicine cabinet and took two of them, then got into bed.”

“How strong were they?”

“I thought they were five milligrams. That’s what my mother always used to take, and I’d gotten a few from her stash. After, when my lawyer looked into it, it turned out that she’d switched to ten-milligram pills. I guess I hadn’t paid attention to the difference in the way they looked.”

Occasionally, Dani had to rely on Ambien herself. She’d always been a solid sleeper, until Jonah was born. Then, after months of making sure she awoke at his first cry, the slightest noise disturbed her sleep. When that happened, after Jonah was regularly sleeping through the night, it sometimes took a pill to return her to sleep. She’d only needed the five-milligram pill, though.

“What do you remember next?”

“I—”

A tapping on the door caused both women to look up. The guard stationed outside the interview room was pressing her face up to the window and held up five fingers. Dani nodded. Molly would be returned to her cell in five minutes.

“Let’s change gears, Molly. We’ll get back to that night and the next day on my next visit. I want to find out more about your father’s business, especially the job building the new jail.”

Molly looked confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Your sister received two anonymous letters. They’re the reason I’m here, looking into your case. They suggest that your parents’ murder had something to do with the Hudson County jail. I know your father’s company built the jail, and I wonder if you can think of any reason why the two could be connected.”

Before Molly could answer, the door opened and the guard stepped inside. “It’s time,” she said.

“But it’s not five minutes yet,” Dani said, pointing to the clock on the wall.

“Yeah, well, I still have to get her back.”

Dani took a breath. This kind of arbitrary treatment was hardly unusual in prison—if anything, it was pretty much the norm—and it wouldn’t pay to antagonize the guards. She turned to Molly. “Just think about what I asked you, okay? We’ll talk about it when I return.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Soon.”

It was almost noon by the time Dani arrived at HIPP. As she made her way to her office, she popped into Melanie’s and Tommy’s cubicles and asked them to join her in fifteen minutes. She stopped to pour herself a cup of coffee, then finally sat down at her desk. A handful of messages sat on top of her chair, and she used the time before her colleagues arrived to return calls. As she spoke on the phone, she glanced around her office, so different than the spartan interview room she’d just returned from. Like the prison room, her space was small and without a window offering a glimpse of the outside world. Yet it breathed life. A large potted plant stood in the corner. Her law school diplomas graced one wall and on another were framed images of landscapes taken during her flirtation with photography. Pictures of Doug and Jonah adorned her desk.