Page 32 of Never Flinch

And with that, Barbara bursts into tears.

2

The next morning, Izzy is sitting on a bench in the mellow morning sunshine not far from Courthouse Square. She’s drinking a latte from the Starbucks half a block down First Street. Beside her on the bench is another latte. The name on the cup is Roxann, which is short ane, but you can’t expect baristas to know every name, can you?

The sun on her face is wonderful. Izzy feels she could sit here sipping coffee all morning, but here comes her target, a well-padded woman in a gray pants suit. She approaches Izzy’s bench with her purse swingingfrom one shoulder and her eyes firmly fixed on the prize, which happens to be the Starbucks. Izzy has tracked Roxanne’s coffee-break routine on two mornings, but hasn’t approached. Today, with the lady’s bossman safely out of the way in Cincinnati, she pounces.

Well, maybe nothing so predatory. She just holds up the cup and says, “I believe this is yours, Roxanne.”

Roxanne Mason stops and looks warily at Izzy. Then at the cup. She says, “That’s not mine.”

“It is. I bought it for you. My name’s Isabelle Jaynes. I’m a detective with the BCPD. I’d like to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About certain beyond-smut magazines.Toddlers. Uncle Bill’s Pride and Joy. Bedtime Story. Mags like that.”

Roxanne’s face, cold to begin with, now freezes solid. “That’s court business.Oldbusiness. Drink that extra coffee yourself.” She takes a step toward Starbucks.

Izzy says, less pleasantly, “You can talk to me here in the nice sunshine, or in a hot interview room at the station, Ms. Mason. Your choice.”

In a way, she already knows what she needs to know; the way Roxanne Mason’s face froze up told her most of it.

Roxanne halts in mid-step, as if playing Statues, then slow-steps back to the bench and sits down. Izzy holds out the coffee. Roxanne waves it away as if it might be poisoned, so Izzy sets it down between them.

“How do I know you’re not a reporterpretendingto be a cop?”

Izzy takes her ID folder out of her back pocket and flops it. Roxanne looks at the photo, then looks away with a child’s pout on her round face:If I don’t see you, you’re not there.

“You work for Douglas Allen, correct?”

“I work forallthe ADAs,” Roxanne says. Then—still not looking at Izzy—she bursts out: “I don’t know why you people have to keep digging at the Duffrey thing. If that man was telling the truth, it was a tragic miscarriage of justice. They happen. It’s sad, but they do. If you want to blame somebody, blame the jury, or the judge whoinstructedthe jury.”

Roxanne—the assistant to the six Buckeye County Assistant DAs—doesn’t know that three people have been killed with the names of Duffrey jurors in their hands. To this point the police have been able to keep a lid on that. Sooner or later someone will blab, and when they do, the papers will be on it like white on rice. Or (Izzy’s thinking of Buckeye Brandon’s blog and pod), like flies on shit.

“Let’s just say that some questions have come up.”

“Ask Cary Tolliver, why don’t you? He’s the one who framed Duffrey, and did a good job of it, too.”

Or maybe he had a little help from an ambitious ADA, Izzy thinks.One who’d like to step up to the big chair currently occupied by Albert Tantleff. An ambitious ADA who had a headline-friendly case dumped in his lap and didn’t want to see it overturned.

“Cary Tolliver is in a coma as of this morning and won’t be answering any questions.” Which is a shame, because he could have told them what Izzy is currently fishing for, but—as Tom Atta pointed out—they didn’t know the right questions to ask, and Tolliver, half gorked out on morphine, hadn’t thought to tell them.Or he might have thought we already knew, Izzy thinks.

“Are you familiar with the name Claire Rademacher, Roxanne? She works at First Lake City Bank, where Alan Duffrey and Cary Tolliver also worked.”

Roxanne finally takes the cup of coffee. Removes the lid and sips. “I recall the name. I think she was interviewed. Everybody who worked with Duffrey at the bank was interviewed.”

“But she was never called to testify.”

“No, I’d remember that.”

“My partner and I talked to her. It was an interesting conversation. Did you know that Alan Duffrey collected vintage comic books?”

“Is this going somewhere?” From her face, Roxanne Mason knowsexactlywhere it’s going.

“Vintage comics come in special Mylar bags. Duffrey was particularly taken with a character named Plastic Man. Sixty-four issues were published between 1943 and 1956. I googled it. But then, about seven years ago, DC Comics did a six-issue run ofPlastic Mancomics—what they call a mini-series. And do you know what? Cary Tolliver gaveDuffrey those six issues as a goodwill gesture when Duffrey got the chief loan officer’s job. Now, don’t you think that’s strange? Considering that Tolliver was also in the running for the job, then went and framed Duffrey as a pedophile?”

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Roxanne said. “We know what Tolliver did, or at least what he says he did. He spilled his guts on that podcast!”

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