The Sleeping Beauty Killer

53

She may have told Ryan and Jerry to call it a night, but Laurie couldn’t bring herself to leave. An hour later, she was reviewing every document in the boxes she had picked up from Casey’s defense lawyer, Janice Marwood. At this point, she was reading the pages just to stay busy. She knew that once she was home, alone in her room, the full impact of the conversation with Alex would hit her.

All these months, she’d been trying to make room in her heart for him, hoping he’d still be there for her when she was ready. But now he might really be gone from her life. She might have blown any chance they had at a future together, all because of this case.

It can’t be for nothing, she told herself, flipping more quickly through the defense lawyer’s files. There has to be something here that will lead me to the truth.

As Laurie pulled more and more documents from the boxes, she realized that Janice Marwood’s files contained far more than the records Casey had given her.

Casey hadn’t been certain whether Marwood had looked into the negative comments posted online, but Marwood’s files indicated she had. In fact, one file folder was clearly labeled “RIP_Hunter.” Laurie flipped it open and found printouts of many of the comments she’d been able to locate in her own search. There were also copies of letters Marwood had sent to various websites, unsuccessfully seeking information about the identity of the author of the posts.

Another notebook was labeled “Pre-trial Motions.” It was clear from the contents that Marwood had challenged much of the evidence that the prosecution wanted to present against Casey, and sometimes succeeded. In addition to getting Jason Gardner’s “character testimony” about Casey suppressed, Marwood had also kept a supposed friend of Casey from college from testifying that Casey once said the simplest way for a woman to have power was to marry well. She also barred the testimony of a co-worker at Sotheby’s, who claimed that Casey had set her sights on Hunter the moment he walked into the art auction.

This wasn’t the work of an attorney who threw the trial. More disturbingly, Laurie had to wonder why Casey hadn’t given her more complete information about her own defense.

Laurie needed a second opinion. To her surprise, her first instinct was to pick up the phone and call Ryan. She was even more surprised when he answered.

“You’re still here,” she said.

“Where I come from, you never leave before the boss.”

Laurie was impressed at the speed with which Ryan was digesting the trial transcripts. It was like watching the law version of a master chef in his kitchen.

He paused to look up after reviewing the notebook of pre-trial motions. “This does not look like the work of a lawyer trying to take a dive at trial,” he said.

“I was told she did a C-minus job,” Laurie said.

“I would have said the same thing three weeks ago. She didn’t put Casey on the stand, even though she had no prior record and could have presented herself well to the jury. Then she shifted gears at closing-suddenly moving from ‘she didn’t do it’ to a manslaughter theory. But now that I see all the work she did behind the scenes, I’d give her a B-plus, maybe even an A-minus.”

“Then why didn’t she move for a mistrial when one of the jurors reported that he’d seen RIP_Hunter’s comments about Casey online? Is it possible she was trying to help Casey initially, but then somehow General Raleigh got to her?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said, picking up another stack of documents from the files. “General Raleigh pulling strings to get Casey’s ex-boyfriend a book deal is one thing. But bribing a defense lawyer? And it’s hard to imagine any decent lawyer willing to risk her career. I suppose it’s possible, but-”

He stopped mid-sentence and flipped back to the page he had just finished reading. “Hold on a second, I think we have a problem. One of the motions to suppress has an attachment. Take a look at this.”

The page he handed her was from the police department’s inventory of evidence logged after the search of Hunter’s country home. It only took Laurie a quick skim to realize the significance of what she was looking at.

“This inventory log wasn’t in any of the documents Casey gave me,” she said. “Let me make two phone calls to confirm our suspicions.”

Fifteen minutes later, they had a new understanding of why Janice Marwood had refused to speak to Laurie. Just like Alex, she had a duty of loyalty to her client, fifteen years after Casey was convicted. She didn’t want to answer questions about Casey, because she knew her client was guilty.

“That’s why she didn’t ask for the mistrial,” Laurie said. “She realized Casey did it. If the state retried her with a new jury, there was a chance they’d find even more evidence against her in the interim. She got so much of the character evidence suppressed that she figured it was better to go to verdict and argue manslaughter.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Ryan looked excited about the case. “The good news is we now have a plan. I’ll make a copy of this for tomorrow. Casey won’t know what hit her.”