Second Chance

Chapter 94

AS SOON AS SHE GOT TO WORK the next morning, Jill opened the case file and waded in. She told her secretary to hold all calls and canceled what only yesterday had seemed an urgent meeting on another murder case she'd been working on.

With a mug of coffee on her desk and her DKNY suit jacket slung over her chair, Jill lifted out the first heavy folder. The massive trial record - pages and pages of testimony, motions, and judicial rulings. In the end, it would be better that she didn't find anything. That Marty Boxer ended up being a father who had come back to protect his kid. But the prosecutor in her wasn't convinced.

She groaned and started reading the file.

The trial had taken nine days. It took the rest of the morning for her to go through it. She sifted through the pretrial hearings, jury selection, the opening statements. Coombs's precious record was brought out. Numerous citations for mishandling situations on the street where blacks were involved. Coombs was known for off-color jokes and pejorative remarks. Then came a painstaking re-creation of the night in question. Coombs and his partner, Stan Dragula, on patrol in Bay View. They encounter a schoolyard basketball game. Coombs spots Gerald Sikes. Sikes is basically a good kid, the prosecution conveys. Stays in school, is in the band; one blemish when he had been rounded up two months before in a sweep of the projects looking for pushers.

Jill read on.

As Coombs busts up the game, he starts taunting Sikes. The scene gets ugly Two more patrol cars arrive. Sikes shouts something at Coombs, then he takes off. Coombs follows. Jill studied several hand-drawn diagrams illustrating the scene.

After the crowd is subdued, two other cops give chase. Patrol Officer Tom Fallone is the first to arrive. Gerald Sikes is already dead.

The trial and notes ran over three hundred pages - thirty-seven witnesses. A real mess. It made Jill wish she'd been the prosecuting attorney. But nowhere was there anything implicating Marty Boxer.

If he was there that night, he was never called.

By noon, Jill had made her way through the depositions of witnesses. The murder of Sikes had taken place in a service alley between Buildings A and B in the projects. Residents claimed to have heard the scuffle and the boy's cries for help. Just reading the depositions turned Jill's stomach.

Coombs was Chimera; he had to be.

She was tired and discouraged. She'd spent half a day plowing through the file. She had almost gotten to the end when she found something odd.

A man who claimed he'd witnessed the murder from a fourth-story window. Kenneth Charles.

Charles was a teenager himself. He had a juvie record. Reckless mischief, possession. He had every reason, the police said, to create trouble.

And no one else backed up what Charles said he saw.

As she read through the deposition, a throbbing built in Jill's head. Finally, it was sharp, stabbing. She buzzed her secretary. “April, I need you to get me a police personnel file. An old one. From twenty years ago.”

“Give me the name. I'm on it.”

“Marty Boxer,” Jill replied.