Read Online Fox is Framed by Lachlan Smith - Free Book Online Page B

isn’t coming on my say-so.” Car handed me a file folder with the subpoena return inside it. What this meant was if the judge allowed it, we could have Bell arrested by a sheriff’s deputy and brought to court.
    â€œSo he’s the snitch?”
    â€œApparently. He didn’t deny it.”
    â€œWhat’ve they got hanging over him?”
    â€œNothing, far as I can tell. He’s been clean since the day he got out of prison. He’s right here in the city. At city hall, in fact. He works as a driver for Supervisor Eric Gainer.” Car delivered this astonishing news without blinking.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. Eric Gainer had been my high school classmate and the star of our state championship basketball team my junior year. Five years later, he’d also been an eyewitness to the abduction of Lucy Rivera. His role in the drama had involved a heroic attempt to save the girl. He’d managed to yank the driver’s door open as the kidnapper sped away. Eric would end up dragged along for half a block before he was shaken loose, yet he’d managed to get a look at the kidnapper’s face. Lucy was herself unable to identify her abductor, as she’d spent the long hours of her captivity blindfolded while being repeatedly raped.
    In many ways, Gainer’s heroism and his testimony identifying Russell Bell as the kidnapper had launched his political career. From the beginning, Gainer seemed marked for higher office: the governor’s mansion, perhaps. Now, in what appeared to be a stunning reversal, Bell worked for Gainer and had ratted out Lawrence, who’d helped free him.
    I wondered why on earth this hadn’t made the papers, why we’d heard nothing about it. Nothing Car had said so far contradicted my father’s story that Russell Bell had snitched on him before my father could do the same. Yet there had to be more.
    Car and I returned to the courtroom to hear Crowder ask, “Detective, how long have you been the lead investigator on this case?”
    â€œTwo weeks,” Shanahan said.
    Sitting at the defense table, Nina glanced back. I held up the folder containing the subpoena return, and she rose to take it. Returning to her chair, she opened it partway to glance at the contents, then gave a frown.
    Crowder went on with her examination. “In those two weeks, have you learned of any information that was not contained in the investigative file?”
    â€œI have. I interviewed a new witness earlier this week, who provided important information.”
    So here it was, exactly as Nina had predicted. The DA was going to solve the problem of relying on stale and tarnished evidence by building its case on words allegedly from Lawrence Maxwell’s own mouth.
    â€œDoes the name of this witness appear in the original investigative file?”
    â€œNo. The individual wasn’t a witness at the time of that investigation.”
    â€œExplain to me, if you can, how you came to interview this person.”
    â€œSure. Maxwell’d been in prison twenty-one years. It seemed logical to me that at some point he would have talked about why he was there. I obtained a list of individuals with whom he might have communicated, including prison staff and inmates. I contacted as many people as I could whose names appeared on that list, and interviewed them, either in person or over the telephone.”
    Nina was jotting notes, presumably a reminder to request a copy of the list from the DA.
    â€œAnd what information, if any, did you learn from these interviews that was relevant to your investigation?”
    â€œLast week I spoke to a former inmate who told me that Lawrence Maxwell had confessed to murdering his wife.”
    â€œDid you obtain a statement?”
    â€œSigned and sworn.”
    â€œWithout revealing any information that might identify that informant, please read his statement into the record.”
    Nina rose to