MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

She knew in her heart that she was going to spend the rest of her life with this wonderful man.

So she lied. “We were so young. We just grew apart, is all.”

She immediately felt guilty about the fib, but she assured herself it was harmless. She never wanted Andrew to look at her and wonder if he had been her rebound guy, or a second choice that she had settled for. The truth was, Marcy had always thought the idea of a “soul mate” was preposterous, until she met Andrew.

But then, this morning, for the first time since that fifth date, she found herself lying when Andrew asked where she was going as she reached for the car keys on her hotel nightstand. “To get more of the flyers copied.”

Technically, that was true, but the copy shop would be Marcy’s second stop in town. Her first was to see Detective Langland on her own.

Three minutes after her own arrival, Marcy spotted Detective Langland through the front window at Babette’s and rose to greet her at the corner table she had requested for their visit.

“I took the liberty of ordering you a coffee,” Marcy said.

“Bless you. How are you holding up?”

“I’m not. I feel… numb. Like I’m forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, even though I don’t know what direction I’m supposed to be moving.”

“I’m so sorry we haven’t found your son yet. The good news is we finally got permission for the Amber Alert to go out. It should blast all over phones and highway alert signs any second now. And we’ve got hundreds of volunteers forming search parties, and officers volunteering to knock on doors, house to house, working off-duty.”

Marcy mustered a smile. “We’re very appreciative.”

“So I looked into the Darren Gunther matter, as you requested,” Langland said. The detective had called Marcy at precisely six this morning, probably when she woke up to her alarm and saw the text message Marcy had sent the previous night. Marcy told her about Leo Farley’s theory that a convicted murderer named Darren Gunther may have kidnapped Johnny under the mistaken belief that he was Leo’s grandson, Timmy. He and Laurie wanted to use Laurie’s television show as a way to approach Gunther outside the formal legal process. “With all due respect to the esteemed former deputy commissioner, I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than Leo and his daughter may have described it.”

This was precisely why Marcy had wanted to speak to the detective privately. Leo and Laurie were Alex’s family now, and by extension, they were Andrew’s and therefore hers. But how well did she really know them? Johnny, on the other hand, was a part of her. He was her heart. Laurie had already gotten Marcy all worked up about the possibility of Johnny’s birth mother going after him. Now she was convinced some person Marcy had never heard of had somehow managed to mastermind the abduction of her son from a prison cell. Laurie was a brilliant woman, but part of her talent in her job was having a colorful imagination for alternative story possibilities. On the other hand, Laurie had good reason to believe her father.

“My brother-in-law, a very experienced defense lawyer and now a federal judge, says he’s never seen a law enforcement officer with the natural instincts of Leo Farley,” Marcy said. “He seems to think that if Leo believes Gunther is planning some way to cheat the system in this wrongful conviction claim he made, then he must be right.”

“Have you ever heard of tunnel vision?” Langland asked.

“Sure, like when you can only focus on one thing. Like right now, all I can think about is my son.”

“Yes, it’s that, but it means something else when we talk about police having tunnel vision in an investigation. If a detective is convinced a suspect is guilty, they focus only on that suspect to the exclusion of other possibilities. It’s not that they intentionally try to frame anyone, but they see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear. They stop being objective, and view all of the evidence through the lens of the theory they already believe.”

“And you’re saying Leo Farley’s not objective when it comes to Darren Gunther?” Marcy asked.

Langland shrugged and took another sip of her coffee. “I’m saying it’s possible. It takes more than a book of essays written in a jail cell to gin up the kind of support Gunther has for his release.” She reset her coffee cup in its saucer and leaned forward across the table, preparing to explain. “During his trial, Gunther claimed that a third person became involved in the fight between him and another bar patron after they spilled out onto the sidewalk, and that this stranger was the one to pull out a knife and stab the bar owner. Obviously, the jury didn’t believe him, but Gunther has stuck to that same story all these years in prison.”

“Don’t all convicts say they’re innocent?”

“A lot of them. But not many of them have DNA evidence on their side. Any chance you know what touch DNA is?” Langland asked.

Marcy shook her head.

“It’s the ability to get DNA evidence off of skin cells left behind on an item. That kind of technology didn’t exist eighteen years ago, but we do it all the time now. It’s not quite like CSI where the bad guy walks into a room and leaves his DNA on every single surface, but it’s much more sensitive testing than was available even ten years ago. Well, last year, Gunther asked a court to order the state to test the knife that was used to stab Lou Finney. He got lucky, and the court actually agreed. Sure enough, the lab was able to get a testable sample from a spot on the very end of the knife’s handle, near the blade, and it didn’t match either Gunther or the other man in the original bar fight. At that point, the case was assigned to the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.”

“And what is that?” Marcy asked. She suddenly imagined Johnny sitting in the empty seat next to her, crying. He was everywhere and nowhere.

“Basically, what it sounds like. They reinvestigate closed cases where there’s a reasonable claim of innocence. New York maintains a DNA database that contains samples from certain categories of convicted felons. Through the DNA database, the DA’s Office matched the skin cells on the knife to a man named Mason Rollins.

“At the time, Rollins was just a twenty-year-old with a misdemeanor assault arrest and one conviction for a low-level drug offense. But now he’s got a rap sheet taller than I am, including four years upstate. Guess what for?”

“No idea.”

“Stabbing someone in a bar fight ten years ago.”

“Leo didn’t explain all of this,” Marcy said.

“That’s what I meant about tunnel vision. He probably has some theory as to why Rollins and the DNA don’t matter, because he’s convinced his guy’s guilty.”

“Leo said Gunther confessed.”

“And Gunther says he didn’t. No one else witnessed the confession, and this was before they started routinely videotaping interrogations.”

Marcy didn’t know Leo Farley well, but she knew him to be a good and honest man. She couldn’t imagine him fabricating a statement that hadn’t been made. She told Langland as much now.

“I’m not saying he made it up. He questioned Gunther multiple times over the course of several hours, alone and without a lawyer. Some cops don’t want to believe it, but it’s a proven fact that innocent people can be made to give false confessions under the right circumstances—or the wrong ones, as the case may be.”

“With all due respect, Detective, you don’t sound like a typical police officer. In fact, you sound more like my brother-in-law, Alex, and he was a defense attorney.”

Langland held up her palms. “I’m not saying that’s what happened. But I made a call to someone I know in the DA’s Office in the city, and she said Farley’s got his heels dug in on this case. He sees it as a personal attack on his integrity. She told me that if it were any ordinary detective who had handled the case, Gunther would probably have been released by now.”