The Wrong Man

30

Tori stopped by the law office around eight-thirty with some work product for me. I’d deputized her, put her to work on summarizing some of the background evidence into abstracts that I could quickly reference if necessary. She’d wanted to help, and I’d warned her that it was grunt work, the lowest of the low-background summaries of Tom Stoller and the others with whom he’d served in Iraq. I’d probably never use them, but I’d rather have the information and not need it than need it and not have it.

Shauna had taken some work home with her, which was too bad, because I wanted her to meet Tori.

Tori looked glum. Not an uncommon reaction of a woman in my presence, and Tori wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine on a good day.

“This is really sad,” she said. “He had schizophrenia hidden inside him and the post-traumatic stress unleashed it?”

“Yeah, it’s a bitch of a thing, no question.”

“But you’re not going to say that at his trial? That he had a flashback or whatever?”

I shook my head. “I think I have a stronger case on reasonable doubt.”

“That’s too bad,” she said.

I didn’t follow.

“I mean, it’s a compelling story,” she said. “If I were on the jury and heard about war and that tragic thing that happened in Iraq with that little girl, and now he has post-traumatic stress, and on top of that, a mental illness, I’d feel sorry for him. I wouldn’t want to convict him.”

That was a savvy observation, I thought, for a math major. She was right on the money.

“I’m going to try to get that information in front of the jury, anyway,” I said.

“Oh, good. You really should.” Tori strolled the conference room, looking at the exhibits. She stopped on the blow-ups of the crime scene, the dead stare of the victim, the pool of blood, but then quickly turned away.

“You get used to that,” I said.

She looked at me. “To what?”

“The violence. The blood and gore. You have a problem with that, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your reaction, the other day. When I told you I was defending someone accused of killing a woman in Franzen Park. You looked like you were about to vomit.”

She stared at me. I had a hunch that she didn’t like being analyzed. I didn’t, either. I was beginning to think we were made for each other.

“Well, I don’t like violence against innocent people,” she said. “I don’t like it when people are minding their own business, trying to make a living and support their family and all the right things, and then someone comes along and senselessly kills them. That turns my stomach, yes. And I wouldn’t want to get used to it.”

Fair enough. A good reason to stick to mathematics. Plus, she would make a room full of male high school algebra students very, very happy. She removed her long white coat to reveal a black turtleneck and jeans. She looked better every time I saw her.

“But if you’re a criminal or something,” she continued. “If you’re doing something bad. If you’re a drug dealer or whatever and someone kills you-honestly, I don’t have much sympathy for that. If you’re in that game, you live with the risks.”

“You play in mud, you get muddy,” I said.

“Exactly.” Tentatively, she looked back at the crime scene blow-ups. “So which one was she?”

“She-you mean the victim? Kathy Rubinkowski?”

“Yes. Which one was she? Was she an innocent victim? Or was she muddy?”

Interesting. Very interesting. It was really helpful to inject some fresh blood into this process, a layperson unschooled in the law but with brains and common sense, plus a nice ass.

It hadn’t occurred to me to think of Kathy Rubinkowski as anything but a victim. If Tom shot her as part of a PTSD episode, the answer was easy, she was a random, innocent victim. But even if it were a Mob hit, I’d been working on the assumption that she had stumbled on something at work, that kind of thing, and she was murdered before she could expose it.

But Tori, unpolluted and viewing this from a fresh perspective, had made a good point. Why was Kathy necessarily an innocent player? She could have been involved in something shady herself. I made a note to mention something to Joel Lightner. He was probably pursuing that angle, anyway, but it never hurt to make the comment.

“Maybe while you’re majoring in math, you could minor in pre-law,” I said.

“Not for me.” She walked across the room to where I was sitting. My heart did a two-step. The faint scent of flowers followed with her. I knew-meaning my brain fully comprehended-that nothing was about to happen. She wasn’t going to sit on my lap or disrobe or any of the images that swam through my head. But I found her approach provocative no less.

It was a humbling feeling. I still didn’t really know how to do this. Even before I met my wife, I was never good at the initiation stage of a relationship. Since her death, I’ve never felt like I had my legs under me when it came to navigating this kind of thing.

“But I do want to help,” she said. “I don’t have any legal training, but I can do summaries or abstracts or whatever. I’d really like to help this poor guy.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure this isn’t your detached way of trying to spend more time with me?”

She watched me for a moment, then allowed for a small smile. “Always that cocky exterior,” she said, shaking her head.

Yeah, okay, but I was breaking through with her, even just a little.

“You can help,” I said. “Let’s start by figuring out if Kathy Rubinkowski was clean or muddy.”