Page 38 of Never Flinch

Izzy gets up, stretches, and plants her fisted hands in the small of her back. “I’m too old for this shit. Come with me, Holly.”

Izzy leads her into the women’s locker room. Izzy spins the combo on one of the lockers. Her street clothes are hanging inside, along with her Glock. Her purse is on the shelf. She rummages and brings out afolded sheet of paper. “Here. If you get caught with this, you didn’t get it from me.”

“Of course not.”

Izzy sighs. “Of course, who elsewouldyou have gotten it from? Lew knows we’re friends.” She brightens. “On the other hand, he can’t fire me, at least not until after the Guns and Hoses game.”

Holly unfolds the paper and scans it.

Andrew Groves (1), Philip Jacoby (2), Jabari Wentworth (3), Amy Gottschalk (4), Ellis Finkel (5), Turner Kelly (6), Corinna Ashford (7), Letitia Overton (8), Donald Gibson (9), Belinda “Bunny” Jones (10), Steven Furst (11), Brad Lowry (12).

Judge: Irving Witterson

Prosecuting Attorney: Douglas Allen

“For whatever it’s worth,” Izzy says.

“You didn’t add Duffrey’s lawyer. I guess I could look it up—”

“No need. His name’s Russell Grinsted, and I doubt if he’s the guilty one Bill Wilson wrote about. So far as I can tell, Grinsted did everything he could to get Duffrey off, once his client made it clear he wanted to take it to trial.”

“Could he have made a deal?”

“According to Grinsted, yes. Evidence was thin, the argument that the shit was planted was fairly strong, if not powerful. He says Al Tantleff, the big boss, would have allowed Duffrey to plead down to one count. Might have gotten a year in prison, might even have gotten supervised release along with community service. But Duffrey claimed he was totally innocent… framed… set up. He especially didn’t want to go on the Registry, which a guilty plea would have entailed. Tantleff handed the case off to Doug Allen, and Allen took it from there. Tom and I need to talk to Grinsted again, just to fill him in, and wereallyneed to talk to Allen.”

“About?”

“About what I found out from Claire Rademacher. She’s—”

“The chief cashier at the bank where Duffrey and Tolliver worked.”

“You’ve been digging, Gibney.”

Holly gives an uncomfortable smile. “Not enough to do.”

“The DA’s office found out something from Rademacher.” Izzy explains about the Mylar comic book bags, which Cary Tolliver took back after Alan Duffrey handled them.

“Allen kept the Rademacher woman off his witness list. Why wouldn’t he? She couldn’t help his case, only hurt it. Which left it up to Grinsted to find out what she knew, and he never did.”

“No investigator this Grinsted could call?” Holly herself has only worked for criminal lawyers on a couple of occasions, but she’s pretty sureshewould have located Claire Rademacher and heard her story.

“Nope, Russell Grinsted’s a one-man band. He talked to all the witnesses on Allen’s list and depo’d some of them—including Tolliver, who wasn’t sick yet and hadn’t had his come-to-Jesus moment—but he didn’t get to Rademacher. Probably didn’t see any need to. When he finds out what Allen was hiding from him, he’s going to be furious.”

“Poopy behavior.”

“Poopy but not out of bounds. A prosecutor trashing a confession letter would have been—if Allen actually did it—but playing three-card monte with witnesses is classic prosecution strategy. Defense lawyers do it, too. Whatisout of bounds are the photographs Allen submitted at trial. They purported to be of Duffrey’s fingerprints on the kiddie porn magazines. They were actually photos of Duffrey’s fingerprints on thebags, carefully lit so you can’t see the bags themselves.”

“He falsified the evidence!” Holly exclaims. This kind of trickery always makes her furious. It’s not so different from how some of the insurance companies with whom she does business operate… including the one with the talking donkey.

“He’ll smile and say he did no such thing when I confront him. He’ll say there’s a difference betweenclaimingsomething and letting people—in this case the jury—draw their own conclusions. He’ll say that all he did was point out the fingerprints were Duffrey’s. He never specifically said they were on the porno mags themselves.”

Holly is flabbergasted. “Can he do that?”

Izzy gives a sharklike smile. “No. It’s an ethical violation. The state Supreme Court won’t disbar him, but I think he’ll be subject to disciplinary revocation, which istantamountto disbarment. Because, see, Alan Duffrey can’t ask for another trial, can he?”

“No.”

“Confession letter or no confession letter, Douglas Allen is never going to sit in the County Attorney’s chair. But right now that’s not the important thing.”

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