Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

“I opened your father’s case, his murder book.”

“ What? Why?”

“Like I said, I wanted to get you some closure. I thought if you knew what happened, you could-”

“You opened my father’s case?” I didn’t know what to say; I was still processing it, what she’d done, everything I knew about the case.

“When you told me about your father I could see how it was eating you up inside, the guilt and all, so I thought…I just wanted to help, but it backfired. It made the cops and feds more suspicious of you, but it’s okay now. I mean, now that you’re in the clear.”

“Made them more suspicious of me- how ?”

“Well, they’re not. Not anymore.”

“Terri.” I locked eyes with her. “Just tell me what’s been going on.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Nate. I didn’t mean to cause you any shit. It was the furthest thing from-”

“Jesus, Terri, if you don’t tell me what this is all about-”

“Okay,” she said. “I called you because I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else, that the case had been reopened-by me-and what’s been discovered.” She put her hand up before I could ask another question. “What they found were three distinct samples of DNA taken from the murder weapon, the gun that killed your father.”

“Three?” I was trying to make sense of it, but the pictures I had always imagined about that night were flashing in my brain.

“It means there were two other people on the scene other than your father, two other people who deposited their DNA on the gun. One left saliva, the other a tissue sample, flesh caught in the firing pin. It must have pinched his hand when he pulled the trigger. They couldn’t test DNA back then, but the DOJ kept the samples on ice. Cold Case just had them tested, sent the results out to data banks, and scored a hit. Actually, two hits.”

When I didn’t say anything, she slid a report over to me. “Does the name Willie Pedriera mean anything to you?”

There was something familiar about the name, but I couldn’t place it.

“His DNA is one of the samples, the tissue sample. He’s serving life up in Green Haven for homicide. Don’t know how long that will be. According to Cold Case, he’s sick.”

“What about the other one?”

“It was a juvey case, sealed. That is, until Cold Case got the DOJ to open it about five minutes ago. Now they’ll arrest him.” She turned a paper around and I read the name.

It took me a minute to process the information and recover from the shock. When I did, I begged her to get Cold Case and anyone else to hold off.

Terri sucked on her bottom lip, thinking about it.

“Trust me one more time. Can you do that?”

She nodded.

“Thanks,” I said. “I need to be the one to do this.”

Ten minutes later I was in a cab heading down Broadway, a twenty-year-old memory coming back to me in a rush: My father finding the drugs and heading off in search of the dealer; and me, a scared kid who wasn’t thinking straight, calling Julio, telling him to warn the dealer, then to meet me uptown. For twenty years that was how I’d imagined it: The drug dealer had killed my father because I’d sent a warning. But now I was seeing it differently.

He’s with a client.”

I walked past Julio’s secretary, into his office. He looked up, then at his client, a man in a chalk-striped suit.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Not now.” Julio smiled at his client and frowned at me.

“Now,” I said. “It’s important.”

The suit left and I handed Julio the results of the DNA test.

“Hey, that was an important client. This is my job, Nate. Are you out of your mind?”

“Read it.” I tapped the report. “It’s a DNA test. Twenty years old. Your DNA, Julio. On the gun that killed my father.”

Iwas back in El Barrio twenty years ago, remembering how Julio had been stoned by the time I’d met up with him, edgy, and hardly talking. After I’d left, he’d taken the ill-fated joy ride that had landed him in Spofford, wrapped a stolen car around a lamppost, high as a kite, weed in his pocket. He’d called me from the station, used up his one call. He had something to tell me, he said, but I wouldn’t let him. My father had just died, and I’d killed him; it was all I could think about. Julio was sent to Spofford, and I wished it were me, a way to pay for what I’d done. I couldn’t face my mother, or my life. For a year I lost myself in drugs: stoned on grass, high on meth; anything to mask the pain and guilt. I was trying to kill myself and might have succeeded had it not been for Julio, who came out of Spofford a new person and helped me get clean. He stayed by my side when I was jumping out of my skin, and held my head when I was sick. We never spoke again about the night my father died. I knew what I’d done and I thought Julio was sharing my secret. I didn’t know he had one too.

Istared at Julio, waiting. He didn’t say anything, but his face did, surprise mixing with sadness and pain. “You have to believe me, pana, I was trying to stop it.” He sighed and sagged into a chair.

Then he told me how he’d been with the dealer, Willie Pedriera, when my father showed up; how my father had threatened Pedreira, who produced a gun; how he and Pedriera had struggled and fought; and then how he’d watched, helpless, as Pedriera shot my father. Pedreira threatened to kill him, and me, if he ever told anyone what had gone down.

“Pedreira’s cousin was with me in Spofford,” he said. “He told me Willie was watching, that he would always be watching, and that he would kill me.”

“And you believed him?”

“Nato, I saw him shoot your father. I knew what he was capable of.” Julio pinched the bridge of his nose. “He would call me every few months and remind me. “And then…” He took a deep breath. “…time passed. And I just, I just couldn’t tell you. It had been too long.”

“Pedriera’s in prison,” I said. “And they’re going to arrest you because your DNA was on the gun.”

“We fought, like I said. My hand was on the gun, my sweat; it’s possible.”

“More than possible, Julio.”

He nodded. “I wondered if this would ever happen. I used to have nightmares about it, but now…You believe me, don’t you?”

My friend looked up at me, his features clear, no ambiguity in the muscles of his face. I could see he was telling the truth.

“Yes, I believe you. But they know I’m here, Julio, the cops. And I have to call them. I have to bring you in.”

He nodded, resigned. “I’ll go to them.”

I called Terri, told her Julio would turn himself in, and asked if she would personally meet him. Then I asked him if I could borrow his car again.

“Hey, pana… ” Julio managed a smile. “You might end up keeping it.”

“No,” I said. “ Confia en mil. Trust me.”

Icalled in every favor I had, even got Perez to do one for me, then got directions, borrowed an NYPD magnetic beacon, planted it on the hood of Julio’s Mercedes, and raced up the Taconic State Parkway.

The Green Haven Correctional Facility was in upstate New York’s Dutchess County, in a town called Stormville, eighty miles from the city. I made it there in just over an hour.

I parked the car in the lot and stared up at the thirty-foot-high wall and guard towers. It was like something out of Birdman of Alcatraz or The Shawshank Redemption.

Green Haven was a maximum-security prison, most of the inmates serving long stretches, all of them for violent crimes.