Proof Positive (2006) (34 page)

I visited it with your folks. It's a very good hospital. The grounds are beautiful, and your room will be very nice. It will be much better than sleeping in that lot. You'll be safe.

Jacob didn't respond.

Jacob's parole officer gave his okay. He'll be released in an hour or so and you can drive him over, she told Solomon. Then she addressed her client.

Is that okay, Jacob? Can your mother and father drive you? They really want to.

Jacob looked up from the floor. Okay, he answered softly.

Valerie reached out slowly and tentatively until her hand rested on Jacob's forearm. He didn't flinch or resist.

We love you, Jacob. We never thought that you did what they said. We want to help you any way we can. That's what parents are for to love you and help you, especially when times are hard.

Jacob nodded.

I' ve got to take Mr. Cohen upstairs, the guard said.

Okay, Amanda said. Your folks will be waiting for you.

Jacob started to walk away. Then he stopped and turned toward Amanda.

Thank you, he said.

Amanda smiled. It's been my pleasure.

As soon as Jacob was out of the courtroom, Rabbi Cohen released the breath he'd been holding in.

He seems better, Valerie said.

He does, Solomon agreed, but Amanda could hear the reservation in his voice. They all knew that Jacob would never be completely cured. Their hope was that he would get well enough to lead the most normal existence he was capable of.

I hope that the hospital works out, Amanda said.

We all do.

The Cohens walked away and Amanda felt her chest swell with pride. She felt very good about saving Jacob and about continuing to fight for him even when it seemed certain that he had killed Mary Clark. There were a lot of bad days when you were defending bad people you knew were guilty, but a case like Jacob's made it all worthwhile.

EPILOGUE:

BERNIE HELD OUT TO THE BITTER END, BUT HE FINALLY TOOK the deal. They insisted that he had framed innocent men, and they wanted to know why. He was willing to have Alec DeHaan give Carlos Guzman a list of cases in which he had given false testimony or rigged the evidence, but he refused to explain why he'd chosen the men he'd sent to prison. Cashman knew that they were monsters, and he felt no duty to explain. In his eyes, he was a martyr who was sacrificing his life and career to a worthy cause that the morons and mediocrities who now controlled his life would never understand.

It didn't take more than a few days in jail for Bernie to regret his decision, but it was too late to take back what he'd done. What wore on him was the boredom; the absolute certainty that tomorrow would be exactly like yesterday, and the day after tomorrow would be more of the same. And the food was atrocious and inedible. How was he going to put up with the food?

On the third day after his plea and sentencing, he was still in the Justice Center jail, awaiting transport to the penitentiary, when a guard came to escort him to a noncontact room for a visit. Alec DeHaan made a practice of meeting with him in a contact room. He could not imagine who else would visit him certainly not those ungrateful cretins from the crime lab. They had deserted him. To think that he had believed they were his friends.

Knock when your visit is up, the guard told Cashman as he opened the door to the narrow room. When Cashman stepped inside, his mouth opened and he stared at his visitor.

Martin Breach smiled at Cashman and gestured toward the telephone receiver that hung from the wall. If Cashman had not been bored out of his skull, he would have screamed for the guard, but he knew that Breach could not get to him through the bulletproof glass, and he was curious why the man who wanted to kill him was paying him a visit. When he picked up the receiver, he was holding on to the possibility that Breach was here to tell him that he was going to forgive and forget.

How did you get in here? Cashman asked.

I could tell you, Breach answered with a chilling smile, but I'd have to kill you.

Cashman lost his color, and Breach chuckled.

Just kidding, he said. Actually, killing you is the farthest thought from my mind, Bernie. I was rooting for you to get life. See and I hope you don't mind me waxing philosophical I don't believe that religious mumbo jumbo about an afterlife. I think this is all you get and when you die it's like sleep, only there's no dreams and you don't wake up.

If I'm right, death ain't so bad, no worse than a dreamless sleep. So you could say that dying puts an end to suffering, which is why I never wanted you to die. If you was executed you would have gotten away with trying to frame Artie and I want you to pay for what you done.

Cashman wanted to say something, but he was paralyzed with fear. Breach could see that, and he smiled.

I'm guessing you' re scared because of my reputation. Well, you should be. You can see how easy it was for me to arrange for this visit. I also arranged to have any trace of it disappear. You can scream your head off about me being here, but you'll never be able to prove it.

So why am I here? I'm here to tell you that no matter where you go I'll find out. My contacts are that good. And as soon as I find out where you are I'll arrange to have you punished. The people will be different, their methods will be diverse, but you will suffer big-time for the rest of your life for what you did to my best friend.

Breach got up and put his hand on the knob that opened the door to freedom, but he paused before he left.

People will be waiting for you, Bernie, and they have instructions to make sure that you survive every beating so that you can move on to your next encounter with pain. I wish you a long life.

The door closed behind Martin Breach. Cashman stared through the glass for a moment. Then he began to sob.

I GOT THE IDEA FOR PROOF POSITIVE SEVERAL YEARS AGO, WHEN I started seeing news articles about criminalists in state and federal crime labs around the country who were intentionally falsifying evidence or giving false testimony in court to get convictions. As someone who practiced criminal law for twenty-five years and who questioned the conclusions but never the honesty of the forensic scientists who testified against my clients, I found these articles disturbing. Fortunately, the vast majority of the men and women who work in the nation's crime labs are honest and hardworking. It is a shame that their reputation has been tarnished by a few very bad apples.

Three upstanding and dedicated forensic experts helped make this book realistic. On occasion, I have taken literary license with crime-scene procedure. Please don't blame these men for this. They told me the way it's supposed to work. I just didn't always follow their advice. I am very grateful to Brian Ostrom for teaching me about crime-scene procedure and for spending countless hours reviewing my manuscript for errors. I am indebted to Brent Turvey for reviewing my manuscript, for teaching me very clever ways to falsify evidence, and for writing Forensic Fraud: A Study of 42 Cases, Journal of Behavioral Profiling, April 2003, vol. 4, no. 1. Finally, I want to thank Jim Pex for reviewing the manuscript and pointing out my errors.

For the prologue, I leaned heavily on Dave Groom's chilling account of the execution of Jerry Moore, which he recounted in The Executioner's Face Is Always Hidden, in the June 1997 issue of The Oregon Defense Attorney, a publication of the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers' Association. Much of the best prose in my prologue was taken from Dave's account, because I could not improve on it.

I also want to thank Scott Miles for the information provided in A Gideon Moment, The Champion, the magazine of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

Others who assisted with the research for this book are Bridget Steyskal, Pat Callahan, Nancy Laundry, and Emily Lindsey.

I want to thank Jean Naggar, my agent, and everyone at the agency for their continued support, but I want to especially thank Jennifer Weltz for her brilliant idea.

Kudos to Jill Schwartzman, my intrepid editor thanks for all your hard work. Thanks to Christine Boyd for coming up with the title for this book, and thanks to the marketing and publicity departments for all the work they put into all of my books. Actually, I am indebted to everyone at HarperCollins for the way they have championed my writing.

As always, I want to thank the home team: my son, Daniel, and his delightful wife, Chris; my daughter, Ami, and her husband-to-be, Andy Rome; and my muse, my fabulous wife, Doreen. You are the best.

About the Author

PHILIP MARGOLIN has written eleven New York Times bestsellers including Gone, but Not Forgotten and Wild Justice each displaying a compelling insider's view of criminal behavior that comes from his unique background as a longtime criminal defense attorney who has handled more than thirty murder cases. He lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon.

www.phillipmargolin.com

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Copyright

PROOF POSITIVE. Copyright ! 2006 by Phillip Margolin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Microsoft Reader June 2006 ISBN 0-06-119523-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Margolin, Phillip.

Proof positive / Phillip Margolin.

p. cm.

1. Crime scene searches Fiction. 2. Murder Investigation Fiction. 3. Lawyers Fiction. 4. Oregon Fiction. I. Title.

PS3563.A649P76 2006

813'.54 dc22