“Mr. Jones, this is Maxine Revere. I’m a friend of Kevin O’Neal, who you represented thirteen years ago in a capital case.”
Pause. “I know who you are, Maxine. I can’t talk about Kevin with you. I don’t even represent him anymore, I moved to Los Angeles eight years ago.”
“Kevin is dead,” Max said. “I was at his funeral today.”
“I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.”
“I have some questions about his case.”
“Are you asking as a reporter or as a friend?”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t know,” he responded truthfully.
“A little of both.” Max paused, then added, “Did you know that Kevin lied about his alibi?”
“No, I didn’t. Do the police have new evidence?”
“Kevin told me after the trial that he was with a girl. Olivia Langstrom.”
“The name sounds familiar, but I don’t remember why.”
“I talked to her today, and she admitted it, but didn’t tell me why she never came forward.”
“Maybe she was lying.”
“Why would Kevin tell me twelve years ago, after the trial was over, that he was with her if he wasn’t? I believed him when he said he was home alone.”
Jones didn’t say anything.
“You didn’t,” Max said.
“I had doubts.”
“You thought he might be guilty?”
“I thought there was more than enough reasonable doubt,” Jones said. “I became a criminal defense lawyer because sometimes, the system is fucked. I don’t care if my client is innocent or guilty, but I don’t want to know. I want the cops to do their job right and I want the trial to be fair. Too often, they cut corners to get a conviction. Everyone is guilty, from the cops to the lawyers to the media. There was no hard evidence against Kevin. Only circumstantial evidence. If Lindy Ames wasn’t the daughter of Gerald Ames who had the clout to move the DA into an indictment, the case would never have gone to trial.”
“What did you think of the investigation into Lindy’s death?”
“It was bungled from the beginning. Little of this made it into the trial, but the Atherton Police Department didn’t call the MPPD for nearly twelve hours after the body had been found. The crime scene was completely contaminated. By the time MPPD got there, they could only work with what was left, and most I got tossed.”
“Anything that pointed to Kevin?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did any of the evidence you had tossed point to Kevin’s guilt?”
“No—but it didn’t exonerate him, either. It was neither—simply that all the evidence collected by Atherton PD was tainted because it was stored improperly and without a clear chain of custody. The judge agreed with me. The DA never fought it, and I believe it’s because the evidence wouldn’t have helped their case.”
“Detective Beck showed up at Kevin’s funeral. I had words with him. I was under the impression Kevin was the only suspect they pursued.”
“I think they had another suspect but dismissed it when Kevin was handed to them on a silver platter.”
Max’s heart skipped a beat. “Who?”
“I have no idea. It was never turned over to me as part of discovery, and my investigator never found anything to support another killer—nor did he find evidence to support Kevin being guilty. It was clear that an anonymous tip to the police hotline told them that Kevin had been spotted in the high school parking lot the night Lindy was killed. Then the police learned about her fight with Kevin the night before, their previous relationship, that he was jealous because she was seeing someone else—”
“Someone the police never named.”
“True.”
“And you don’t know who?”
“I do not. Kevin didn’t know who it was, but said that’s what they’d been fighting about.”
“Mr. Jones, do you have your files on the case?”
“No.”
Max’s heart sank. She realized she’d just driven past her hotel. She made an illegal U-turn and headed back.
“I’d really like the transcripts.”
“You do know that Kevin was obsessed with Lindy’s murder.”
“I didn’t, not until his sister told me after he killed himself.”
That information obviously surprised Jones. “He committed suicide?”
“Do you find that odd?”
“I feel bad because I was avoiding his calls for the last couple of months. He’d become so obsessed with the case I couldn’t keep talking to him, it was taking too much of my time. Maxine, I gave Kevin my personal files.”
“All of them?”
“Last summer. After so many years, I didn’t see the harm—I never thought the police were going to uncover new evidence, or the DA was going to retry the case. I thought maybe reading my notes and the information would help him find closure.”
“Do you have copies?”
“No. My old law office has the official files, including the transcripts, but my personal notes all went to Kevin. I’ll call on Monday if you’d still like a copy of what they have.”
“Yes, I would, thank you. And thank you for your time.”
She sat in the parking lot of her hotel and stared out the window without seeing anything.
If Kevin had his attorney’s files, where were they now? Max had been through his entire apartment. They weren’t there.
And if that revelation wasn’t surprising enough, Max had one more surprise: not two minutes after she hung up with Jones, she got a call from Detective Santini, the cop in charge of the Jason Hoffman murder.
“Detective, thank you for returning my call.”
“It’s not every day I get a message from a national news reporter.”
She couldn’t read his voice, whether he had an opinion about her or not. “I’d like to talk to you about the Jason Hoffman homicide from last November. Do you have time?”
“Not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “I just put the case in the inactive file this week, so you can maybe understand why I’m curious about your interest.”
“If you meet with me, you’ll find out.”