When Cicadas Cry, page 17
“At this point, it’s all helpful since I know so little. And the small-town factor still makes my head spin.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You’re defending Eli’s grandson on charges of murdering Buford Gadsden’s daughter, and I pick up a cold case involving a double homicide near a party on Gadsden family land that had a ripple effect of landing Buford Gadsden in jail for selling drugs—and one of his ‘customers’ was Eli. It’s like everyone here is connected, and chance meetings create secrets between the most unlikely people. Doesn’t the connection here seem strange to you?”
“It crossed my mind, but the more I think about it, it’s not that strange.”
“No? Then why did it jump out at both of us as?”
“I think it’s called selective distortion,” Zach said, “taking new information—like your new information that there was a double homicide on Edisto Beach—and trying to make it fit with information or a perception you already have. We’ve been hyper-focused on Sam’s case, and that necessarily includes Buford’s daughter and Eli’s grandson. When Eli reminded us that he and Buford both had some remote connection to that old case, we tried to make it fit somehow with the current case. But, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“The thing that puzzles me more is that someone as nosy as Colleton didn’t know more than he did.”
“We’re on the same page there. I’m betting Colleton knows more than he’s telling. The question is why.”
“Afraid I’m no help there—I’m as clueless as you are,” Zach said. “You planning on working late there?” He gestured to the file.
“I’m thinking I’ve probably had enough for one day,” she said. “Why? Something else you’d rather I do?”
“Turns out there is,” he said, reaching for the lamp.
She smiled into the darkness as she heard his towel hit the floor.
CHAPTER 22
FUCK, FUCK, FUUUCK! THERE MUST BE HUNDREDS OF COLD cases rotting away in moldy boxes in the bowels of the sheriff’s office. How in the hell did Addie Stone manage to land on that one? I don’t know how I managed to hold it together when I heard she was reopening the Edisto Beach thing. I remember thinking I sounded normal while we were talking, but I was trying so hard to choose my words carefully I can’t be sure.
When I left Jessie Gadsden on the floor with her miserable life oozing out of her, it never dawned on me that Samuel Jenkins—or anyone else—would find her so soon. Sam’s arrest does have advantages. He didn’t just call for help—he got down and wallowed around in the gore and trampled up the scene. Jesus, what was he thinking? No complaint from me, though—as long as the powers that be are convinced they have the killer behind bars, they won’t come looking for me. Hat’s off to the BLM protesters on that point—they are 100 percent right about Sam being railroaded. Neither the cops nor the solicitor are even thinking about any other suspect, much less looking for one.
On the other hand, Sam’s arrest means there will be a trial, and a trial means there will be two sets of lawyers rooting around in the evidence, taking a closer look. Not good.
I’ve known since Sam’s arrest that I would need to worm my way into some inside information on his case. Now, with the old case reopened, I’m going to need to keep an eye on that one too. At least Addie gives me an inside track on both cases. But if Addie connects enough dots to see the connection between that old Edisto case and the new one, that will not be good for me. It will be a hell of a lot worse for her.
Because I am NOT going to jail.
CHAPTER 23
EMMA HUDSON’S OFFICE WAS IN AN OLD GOVERNMENT BUILDING across from the courthouse that had been repurposed as shared office space for solo professionals and entrepreneurial start-ups. The perimeter of the building was lined with small offices with windows and the interior had common space conference rooms, breakrooms, etc. It was modest but respectable. A shared receptionist at the front desk gave Addie Emma’s suite number, and Addie walked down the hall to find the door slightly ajar and Emma typing furiously on a computer.
“I hope I’m not too early,” Addie said, knocking lightly on the door.
“Not at all, come in,” Emma said, looking up. She had let her graying hair go natural, and her face was deeply tanned and heavily lined as though she’d lived her life out in the sun. The combination of the white hair against the deep tan lent a startling intensity to her bright blue eyes. “Have a seat,” she said, extending an arm toward the chair on the other side of the desk. “I was about to step across the hall and grab myself a cup of coffee. Can I get you one too?”
“Thanks, that would be nice. Black.”
“Ah, common ground already. I’ll be right back.”
Addie took in the shelves of tennis trophies and photos of a young Emma with ponytailed chestnut hair holding up silver cups and engraved plaques. One of the photos had a familiar-looking face in the background. If that wasn’t Colleton Burns, he had a doppelgänger.
“Here you go,” Emma said, handing her a steaming cup and closing the door before sitting at her desk.
“Do you still play?” Addie asked, nodding toward the trophies.
“Not at the level I could when I was younger, but I still play. Believe it or not, there’s not a lot to do in Walterboro, and it keeps me active.”
“Is that Colleton Burns in the background there?” Addie asked.
“Of course it is.” Emma laughed. “If there was a team of young women in short tennis skirts, there was a good chance he was around somewhere. To be fair, though, it was also because his well-heeled mother sponsored a lot of our teams, and Colleton would show up to hand out the trophies. That was taken not long after I moved here—it was the last year I played competitively. After that, I helped coach the high school team for a while.”
“Looks like you were successful at that too,” Addie said, noticing a later photo with Emma surrounded by a circle of younger girls. One—a perky blond with a pretty smile—was holding up a plaque.
“I did okay.” Emma’s blue gaze stared intently over the rim of her cup as she raised it. “But you aren’t here to ask about my long-gone glory days.”
“No, I’m not. Like I said on the phone yesterday, I’m working with the sheriff’s office on a cold case—a double homicide on Edisto Beach.”
“I heard you were Zach Stander’s investigator. Is the Jenkins case not keeping you busy enough?”
“Legal cases don’t work the same way in real life that they seem to in the movies—the work comes in fits and starts, and it’s not all over in a few days,” she answered, diplomatically avoiding the subject of Colleton’s coup.
“You’re not telling me anything new there,” Emma said. “I spent almost thirty years with the public defender’s office before retiring and starting this sleepy little private practice.”
“Actually, it’s your time with the PD I want to ask about—I understand you represented Logan Bennett when he was charged in the Edisto murders.”
“That’s right. A lot of what I know would be privileged, but I’m happy to share what I’m allowed to. I can’t imagine how any of it would help, but, as I admitted when you called, I have ulterior motives for wanting to meet you,” she said with a wide grin.
“Fair enough.”
“So, fire away, Addie Stone. What is it you want to know?”
“Let’s start with this: the night of the murders, Logan left the party for an hour or two at about the time the girls did. There were at least thirty witnesses who gave statements, and almost every one of them mentioned that. It’s been a while since I was a teenager, but, if memory of similar parties serves me, there would have been a lot of kids coming and going—probably in couples. It seems odd that so many people would even notice, much less think it was unusual that one guy left for a while. What am I missing?”
“Logan was handsome and a bit of a daredevil. He was popular with the other kids, and you know how teenagers are. They all want to be popular, so they idolize the ones who are and emulate everything they do. Cindy didn’t have that same level of popularity, but she had a reputation for being a drama queen, and she supposedly made a big public scene when their little fling ended badly. When an ‘it’ kid like Logan leaves a party, it gets noticed. Then all the others look around to see who else is missing that might be with him. That led to noticing Cindy was gone, which led to Tara since they were best friends.
“Then there was the timing thing since Logan was unaccounted for during the window they estimated for time of death. To add fuel to the fire, when the investigators asked him where he’d been, he flat out refused to answer. Throw in the fact that public pressure was hot, and the cops didn’t have so much as a scrap of another lead, and Lee Bowen and his team were all over Logan.”
“Sounds like you don’t think that was justified. Is there some bad blood between you and Bowen?”
“No,” Emma said after an awkward pause, “nothing personal. Lee and I started our careers at about the same time, and he seems like a decent guy. It would have been reckless not to seriously consider Logan under those circumstances. But I knew they weren’t putting much effort in searching after they arrested Logan. That changed after he was released, of course, but they wasted valuable time they could never get back. If they’d stayed hard on the trail while it was still hot, we might have answers today instead of another cold case. But they didn’t. They were convinced it was Logan, and I ended up defending him.”
“Any chance you took statements from any witnesses that you can share?” Addie asked.
“I thought you might ask. After our call I looked through my file and found a summary I put together of the most salient facts from the more detailed statements. Technically, it would be attorney work product, but the information isn’t privileged, so I can give it to you.” As she talked, she reached for her mouse and printed a document that she handed across the desk.
“Impressive,” Addie said. “I was guessing we’d have to go through an old box full of mildew and silverfish.”
“In this shoebox of an office? There’s not much space for storage. It eventually forced me to go paperless. I admit, though, I put it off for a long time, especially scanning this old stuff. Old dogs, new tricks, and all that.”
“Thanks for this,” Addie said, putting the papers in her backpack. “There’s something else I wanted to ask about. Please don’t take this wrong, but thirty-four years ago, you couldn’t have been more than a few years out of law school. I’m sure you were—are—a good lawyer, but how does a baby lawyer get assigned to a double homicide?”
“And a girl lawyer at that, right?”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know, but trust me, it was a significant factor three decades ago in this little town,” she said with an air of resignation. “Besides, they didn’t assign it to me initially. Instead, they quite sensibly gave it to a lawyer who was far more senior and had some murder cases under his belt. Crazy thing was that Logan wouldn’t have it. He insisted they reassign it to me. As you might imagine, the guys at the top explained to him that he didn’t get to pick because they knew who was best for what case and he would have to accept the counsel they assigned if he wanted to be assigned a defense attorney.” She paused and smiled as if picturing the skirmish.
“Next thing we knew, Logan—in typical Logan fashion—told them all to go fuck themselves. Said it was his ass on the line and he’d have me or no one. They called his bluff and said it was his right to refuse counsel, figuring he’d relent in a day or so. When he didn’t, I finally went to my boss and begged him to assign me with the condition that I would report to the more senior lawyer and get his help at every stage, and we’d try the case together if it came to that.”
“And they agreed to that?”
“Hell no—they were no more inclined to let a baby lawyer tell them what to do than to let Logan, but the families and the public were screaming for action. The judge was passing that heat along to the PD because circuit court judges are elected by the legislature for terms, and the last thing the judge wanted was to have his name on a conviction and sentencing that was kicked back on appeal on a high-profile case. My bosses finally caved and put me on it.”
“No offense, but why would Logan want a less experienced lawyer?”
Emma sighed. “Logan and I had a bit of a history.”
“A history?” Addie’s jaw dropped.
“No, not a personal history, a legal history.” Emma seemed amused by Addie’s reaction. “Like I said, Logan was a daredevil and didn’t exactly think the rules applied to him. This led to a few brushes with the local authorities—the kind of lesser offenses that are assigned to a young, less experienced lawyer. I can’t tell you details since most were removed from his record because he was a minor. I can tell you they were typical teenager stuff.”
“Like underage drinking?”
“Along those lines,” Emma said with a noncommittal shrug and an impenetrable poker face. “If you looked up his criminal record, you’d find at least one of the arrests because he was already eighteen. It was for trespassing. One of our more prominent local citizens had a swanky backyard setup with a swimming pool, colored lights, and a refrigerator full of beer—and a lousy hiding place for the key to the padlock. He woke up one night to noises coming from the backyard. When he went to investigate, he found Logan skinny-dipping in his pool and drinking his beer.”
Addie couldn’t help but laugh. “I get why the guy was pissed off, but that sounds more like something most people would have dealt with Logan’s parents about rather than press charges, especially back then.”
“Sorry—did I forget to mention Logan was skinny-dipping with the guy’s beautiful teenaged daughter?”
Now they were both laughing.
“What happened?”
“By the time the police arrived and fished a drunken Logan out of the pool sans pants, it had occurred to the citizen that if he pursued it to trial, his daughter would be the subject of gossip for years. After I was appointed to represent Logan, I met with him, and we worked out an informal deal. The citizen agreed not to pursue prosecution—which the authorities were only too happy to agree to with so many bigger fish to fry. In return, Logan agreed to stay at least five hundred feet from the daughter and their residence, reimburse him for the beer, and check in with me once a month for six months to confirm he was staying out of trouble. It wasn’t a formal pretrial intervention, so the arrest is still on his record, but it only shows as an arrest for trespassing that was dismissed.
“God,” Emma said, “I haven’t thought about that fiasco in years. How did we get off on this tangent?”
“You were telling me about Logan insisting his case go to you.”
“Ah, yes. At first, Logan wouldn’t tell me where he’d been either. Finally, after my incessant begging and cajoling, he admitted that he had left the party for a while to buy some drugs. I tried to explain that any sentence for drug charges would pale in comparison to what was going to happen if he were convicted of murder. His take on it was that he hadn’t murdered those girls so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to prove he did.”
“If only that were true,” Addie said, thinking about Zach and Sam.
“If only is right. Logan finally agreed that I could tell the solicitor what he’d been doing, but he still refused to say who the dealer was. I talked myself blue in the face trying to convince him that wouldn’t get us anywhere, but he never gave in. I’ve always wondered if he was more afraid of the dealer than he was of jail, but who knows. I did go to the solicitor with what Logan would let me say and tried to bluff my way into making him believe we’d give up the name at trial, but he wasn’t buying it.”
“Then how did you get Logan out?”
“That’s just it. I didn’t. After weeks of beating my head against a wall, I still had nothing. Zilch. In the end it was pure luck. The sheriff’s office received an anonymous hotline tip that Buford Gadsden had been selling dope from a shrimp boat docked at Edisto Island. Even gave a date he’d been selling.”
There was Buford Gadsden’s name again.
“I think the cops thought the tip was sketchy, but they checked it out anyway. The K9s alerted on the pot, but it had been weeks since the date identified in the hotline tip. What was left wasn’t enough to warrant a trafficking charge, and nobody really cared. But Logan’s big break came when they turned over a cooler lid and out dropped a leather wristband.”
“A what?”
“A leather wristband. They used to sell them at cheesy kiosks at Myrtle Beach and places like that. They had names tooled into the leather. They were all the rage with some of the kids for a while—especially in the seventies. They had gone out of style by the eighties, but a few still hung around. Anyway, this one fell out of a seat on Buford’s boat—and guess what the name was.”
“No way,” Addie said.
“Way. And guess what date the caller gave.”
“The date of the Edisto murders.”
“You got it. Suddenly Logan Bennett had an alibi.”
“Now that’s a story.”
“Yeah—my first big win was one I can’t take any credit for,” Emma joked. “I don’t suppose you could tell me a bit about your case now?” she added.
“You know better.”
“I know the solicitor hasn’t announced whether he’ll be asking for the death penalty. Has he given Zach any feel for how he’s leaning?”
“Not yet,” Addie said.
“Want my take on that?” Emma asked.
“Couldn’t hurt—you’ve known him a long time.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time across the courtroom from Jake Barton, and there are a lot of unflattering things I might call him,” Emma said, “but stupid isn’t one of them—he is as smart as they come. He knows this is going to be one of the highlights of his career, and he will not risk losing even on one point. The death penalty is not as unpopular in this part of the country as it is in others, but there are still plenty of people who balk at making that call.”
