The Wrong Man

89

I worked on two things for the remainder of the night and well into the morning: my argument on why Judge Nash should let us reopen this entire case and investigate my new evidence, and, in the event he shut us down, my closing argument to the jury on why the prosecution hadn’t proven its case against First Lieutenant Thomas Stoller.

I finally cried uncle at three in the morning. Tori, who had stayed with me at the firm and even listened to my summation a couple of times, accompanied me to my hotel room.

My hotel room was a piece of shit, but I could see part of the city’s north and east side where most of the young people lived, where most of the socializing took place.

Even now, at half past three in the morning. Some of these places had four A. M. liquor licenses. I remember that time, before I was married, when you didn’t get started before midnight, when four A. M. meant you were done drinking and it was time to find an all-night diner or some burrito joint.

“You’ve done your part and then some,” Tori said to me, sitting on the bed. She was wearing a gray T-shirt and nothing else. Under any other circumstances, I would be powerless to resist. I’d be jumping on the bed.

“Maybe, maybe not. If I hadn’t been so consumed with Gin Rummy, I would have had Lightner investigating Randall Manning earlier on. All this stuff that happened with him and his family-and Stanley Keane’s and Bruce McCabe’s families? The Brotherhood of Jihad shit? If I’d known that weeks ago, we could’ve made more of it.”

“You were playing catch-up all along,” she said. “You thought this was a simple insanity case. You said so yourself. When it was handed to you, you were told it was a simple case. I mean, Jason, the guys who had this case before you-they didn’t come up with any of this, did they? You should be proud of what you’ve uncovered in such a short amount of time.”

Down on the street, a couple blocks away, a man wearing several layers of clothing was staggering across an intersection. He looked drunk. He looked homeless.

This all started with Tom, and my promise to Deidre Maley that I would do everything I could for her nephew.

Tori climbed off the bed and came to me. She put her arms around me and wrapped her warm body against mine. We stood like that forever. I rested my head on hers and looked out over this city where I grew up, where I lived, and where I would die.

“What if we just left?” she whispered to me. “When this is over, I mean. We could leave. I have money saved up from an inheritance. We could do it, Jason. We could leave this all behind.”

I turned and faced her. I touched her cheek and looked into her eyes, desperately searching mine. “You’d do that? With me?”

She looked into my eyes and nodded.

“Where would we go?” I asked.

“Anywhere.”

Anywhere with me? I had misread her. I knew things were moving forward, but I didn’t think she’d traveled this far. Had I?

“Let’s get through this first,” I said.

“No, you’re right.” There was an imperceptible nod of her head. It made sense. We both knew that. I had no idea how this would end. And I had no idea what would remain of me when it did.