Accused: A Rosato & Associates Novel Read online

  “Honey, we’re home.” Mary cut the ignition, and Judy regarded the prison in somber silence. It was a massive concrete structure, the oldest part of which dated from 1929, with brick additions built in the intervening years. Much of the prison remained hidden behind a grimy fifty-foot-high wall of stained concrete, topped by barbed concertina wire and old-school turrets with armed guards, like ominous black shadows behind windows of bulletproof glass.

  “Remind me never to do anything bad, ever.” Judy chuckled, nervously. “How do I look? Undesirable? Gender-free? No fun in general?”

  Mary glanced over, and Judy was dressed in their agreed-upon outfit of jeans, flats, and a white shirt with a dark blazer. “Are you trying to make me laugh, because it won’t work. Maximum security always puts me in a bad mood.”

  “Occupational hazard for a criminal lawyer.”

  “Let’s go.” Mary knew they wouldn’t be allowed to bring their phones or handbags, so she pocketed her keys, slid her ID from her wallet, grabbed a legal pad and pen, while Judy did the same, and they got out of the car, walking through the large parking lot to the entrance, which had a concrete overhang.

  “Hey, where’s your engagement ring?” Judy asked, as they passed a black van that read Coroner’s Office, Montgomery County. “Did you leave it home so the bad guys don’t steal it?”

  “No, it needs to be resized.”

  “Why?” Judy smiled slyly. “It fit you perfectly.”

  “It was big, and I didn’t want to lose it.”

  “God forbid.” Judy chuckled, and Mary tried not to notice the long Pennsylvania D.O.C. bus with grates over the smoked windows, idling noisily at the curb.

  “I don’t want to lose my ring.”

  “But if it fell down the drain, or disappeared down the sewer, or got flushed down the toilet, or spontaneously combusted, you might not mind.”

  “Stop.” Mary couldn’t smile because the prison was giving her the heebie-jeebies. She couldn’t imagine spending the next fifty years behind these thick concrete walls.

  “Anything could happen to it, accidentally on purpose. Unfortunately, it’s carbon, the most indestructible substance known to man, so unless you wander into an atomic blast, you have to deal with that ring, sooner or later.”

  “Enough. Get your head in the game.” Mary climbed the concrete steps to the entrance and walked through the smudged glass doors, with Judy falling into step behind her.

  They entered a waiting room that looked ancient enough to have been part of the original building. It was a long rectangle, only dimly lit by small windows at the end of the room and panels of fluorescent lighting, in the ceiling of peeling white paint. The floor was of a grimy tan linoleum, apparently inadvertently matching the tan, battered lockers that ringed the far side of the room, behind rows of old-fashioned wooden benches. Visitors filled the benches, under a sign that read NO SPANDEX, NO HOODIES. There was a large wooden reception desk across the room, staffed by a slim female corrections officer, wearing a black uniform with the yellow patch of the Department of Corrections.

  They made a beeline for the reception desk, and Mary took the lead, placing her driver’s license across the counter. “We’re here to see Lonnie Stall. We’re attorneys, and we called ahead to be put on his visitors’ list.”

  “That’s fine. Sign in, please.” The corrections officer slid an old-school sign-in log across the counter, and Mary signed them both in while Judy handed in her driver’s license, the corrections officer examined them, then handed them back. She gestured at the benches. “Take a seat, and we’ll call you in a minute. He’s been approved for legal mail.”

  Mary didn’t understand. “We don’t have any for him.”

  “No, he has some for you.”

  “Oh, okay.” Mary was nonplussed, but she didn’t want to let it show in front of the corrections officer, because she had implied on the phone call that she was Lonnie Stall’s lawyer, referred by one Allegra Gardner. It was the only way to get the visit on such short notice, since lawyers and clergymen generally had unlimited visits in state prisons.

  “Here we go.” Judy led them over to the first long bench, which reminded Mary of a pew and turned out to be just as comfortable, when Mary sat down and looked around. There were roughly ten benches full of all kinds of people, all ages and ethnicities; an older African-American man reading a discarded newspaper, a heavyset white woman who was pregnant, a pretty young Asian woman applying lip gloss, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman with a toddler on her lap.

  Mary’s heart went out to each of them, and what struck her mostly was the very mundaneness of their manner, even the way they talked among themselves or to each other. None of these visitors felt nervous or edgy, but they were here to visit someone they loved and had been visiting undoubtedly for years, since all of the inmates at Graterford had been sentenced for major crimes. For their families, the horror of the setting had become routine, and Mary wondered if the fact of the crimes themselves had become routine, as well. She prayed not.

  “Lonnie Stall!” a corrections officer called out, motioning them forward, and Mary and Judy rose together and walked toward a grimy metal door, which the corrections officer opened with a loud metallic ca-chunk. “Take off your belts, shoes, and jewelry, and put them in the bins, ladies.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said, as they passed through the door together and entered a narrow room that held an old wooden table with wooden bins, in front of a metal detector. The air felt warmer and closer, but that could’ve been her imagination. She couldn’t deny that it felt strange to be admitted to the secured part of a maximum-security prison, full of murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders, with the proverbial door clanging closed behind them. She had read on the website that Graterford housed a significant proportion of inmates serving life without parole and it had one of the two Death Rows in Pennsylvania.

  Mary and Judy went through the metal detector, collected their belongings, had the back of their right hands stamped and read by an ultraviolet light, and were led through one locked door, then the next, being watched by prison guards behind a smoked glass panel. They were admitted into an old narrow staircase with painted cinderblock on either side and traveled down the nonskid steps, where the air grew hot enough to make it difficult to breathe.

  The stairwell bottomed in a large visiting room the shape of an L, with vending machines on the right and rows of faded red, blue, and tan chairs, filled with people visiting inmates in brown jumpsuits, without handcuffs. The sound of conversation, laughter, and tears filled the room, and the air conditioners were no match for the collective body heat, strong perfumes, and stale cigarette smoke that clung to many of the visitors. A large sign read, Inmates and Visitors May Embrace When Meeting And Departing Only. An elevated wooden chair against the wall held a brawny young lieutenant, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and black pants with a gray line down the side. His eyes scanned the room under the black bill of his white cap, a walkie-talkie crackling in its belt holster.

  “Ladies, this way to the attorney booths,” the female corrections officer said over her shoulder, leading Mary and Judy through the rows of visitors and inmates, with no more concern then someone going down the aisle in a movie theater. “You’ve never been here before, have you?”

  “No,” Mary answered for the both of them. She gestured at an area beyond the chairs to the right, enclosed by thick, scratched glass. “What’s that?”

  “That’s for inmates who can only have no-contact visits.”

  “Who would that be? Inmates from Death Row?”

  “No, capital-case inmates have a visiting room upstairs, all to themselves. What you’re looking at is the visiting area for J-block and L-block, which are our restricted units, for inmates who got written up for misconduct. Things like that.”

  Judy looked at a line of paintings that covered the cinderblock wall, as if she were at a nightmare art show. “Is that inmate art?”

  “Yes it is,
” answered the corrections officer, and they passed scenes of moonlit oceans, a pastoral landscape, a portrait of Elvis, an Eagles logo, and a still life of red wine with several hunks of cheese, which would’ve been at home in a fine Italian restaurant. The correctional officer pointed to the left. “Outside is a pretty mural the Mural Arts Program did for us.”

  Mary looked to her left, where there was a long line of tall windows that overlooked a grassy outdoor area with picnic tables and blue-and-white umbrellas. On one end was a cheery children’s playground with a bright yellow slide and blue monkey bars, and beyond that a colorful mural depicting children at play, which read CHERISH THIS CHILD. But even the mural couldn’t dispel the grimness of the gray concrete wall that bordered the yard, topped with spiky concertina wire. Mary realized it was the inside of the wall they had seen from outside the prison.

  “And there is another mural the program made for us.” The corrections officer gestured, and Mary looked over. Hanging on a wooden rack was a mural depicting a stone archway with a cobalt blue river winding into the distance. She knew that prisons often provided idyllic backdrops for inmates to use in photographs, on days when family picture-taking was authorized.

  “Here’s where you get off.” The corrections officer stopped outside three battered doors at the end of the room, painted a bizarre turquoise color, and unlocked the door. “Wait here and he’ll be brought down.”

  Mary and Judy thanked her, and they squeezed into the attorney booth, which described exactly its size. It held only three old wooden chairs, and a small Formica shelf mounted in the corner. The air smelled close and dirty, like a hot box.

  “Yikes,” Judy said, which just about summed it up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lonnie Stall was of average height, about five-ten with almond-shaped eyes, of a soft brown color. He wore his hair natural, shaved close to his head, and a brown jumpsuit, with dull yellow trim around its short sleeves. His arms were muscular, and his right biceps had a script tattoo that Mary couldn’t read, though she was sitting right across from him.

  “My name is Mary DiNunzio, and this is my colleague Judy Carrier. We both work at Rosato & Associates, a law firm in town, and we were hired to look into this case by Allegra Gardner, the younger sister of Fiona.”

  Lonnie nodded slowly. His brown eyes remained steady and his manner subdued. “Okay.”

  “Allegra believes that you’re innocent of killing Fiona and we’ve been hired to investigate the crime.”

  “I know that,” Lonnie said calmly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll show you.” Lonnie set a manila envelope on the counter and pulled out a piece of folded white paper. “That’s from Allegra Gardner.”

  Mary opened the paper, and Judy leaned over to see a letter written in small, cramped handwriting, dated three years ago.

  DEAR LONNIE, DON’T WORRY. I KNOW YOU ARE INNOCENT AND SOMEDAY I WILL GET YOU OUT OF JAIL. YOUR FRIEND, ALLEGRA GARDNER.

  “That’s just one of the letters.”

  Mary looked up, surprised. “There are more?”

  “Yes. Plenty.”

  “How many?”

  “I’ll show you the first batch.” Lonnie pulled a thick packet of letters from the envelope, wrapped in a rubber band. “You can have them. I don’t want them. I stopped opening them after the first few years.”

  “Years?” Mary asked, aghast.

  “I probably have one hundred letters from that little girl.”

  “What do they say?”

  “The same thing, over and over again.” Lonnie shrugged. “She knows I’m innocent and when she gets some money, she’s going to get me out. She must’ve gotten her money, and here you are.”

  Mary set the letters aside, trying to get back on track. “Do you have the other letters?”

  “Sure, I saved some.” Lonnie glanced at the door, which was closed. “The guys in my block think they’re from a girlfriend, which isn’t the worst thing for my reputation.”

  “May I have the other letters? I’ll send you a stamped envelope for them.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Mary caught Judy’s questioning eye and moved on. “To get to the point, you’re telling us you’re innocent of Fiona Gardner’s murder.”

  “I am,” Lonnie answered, his tone genuine. “I didn’t kill Fiona. I’m completely innocent.”

  “So why did you plead guilty?”

  “Because I was going to get convicted and my lawyer told me it was a good deal and I should take it.”

  “Did you know Fiona?”

  “Not that well. Just to be polite, nod to her at the parties, s’up, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t know her better than that?”

  “No.” Lonnie shrugged again. “I worked for Cricket Catering, and they did the parties for the Gardner family. I worked for them nights and weekends while I was in high school and kept it up when I went to college. I was a freshman at Temple, working for my degree in business.”

  “It’s our understanding that you had a romantic relationship with Fiona. Is that right?”

  Lonnie frowned. “No. Not at all.”

  Mary scanned his face, trying to see if he was telling the truth, but she couldn’t tell. “Did you meet Fiona when she was babysitting Allegra?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hug and kiss Fiona?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t have a relationship at all?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the main reason Allegra thinks you didn’t kill her sister. What do you have to say to that?”

  “I never was alone with Fiona when she was babysitting, or any other time.”

  Mary couldn’t figure out how to reconcile the conflicting information from Allegra and her father. “You really never did that?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “You weren’t in love with Fiona?”

  “No.”

  Mary avoided Judy’s eye. She didn’t want to conclude that Allegra was delusional. “I read your testimony at trial, but could you just tell me what happened the night Fiona was murdered?”

  “What’s the difference?” Lonnie’s tone was flat, without affect. “It’s not going to get me free. Nothing’s going to get me free.”

  “Just tell me what happened that night.”

  “It’s like I said at trial. I was working the party, serving. I was walking past the back stair when I heard a shout, faint, so I ran upstairs.”

  “Let me stop you there. What did the noise sound like?”

  “Like a woman’s shout. Not a scream, but a shout.”

  “Why didn’t you ignore it?”

  “I just reacted. I thought I could help.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “I was right there, walking past the stairwell, so I just reacted. I figured somebody maybe got lost and fell, so I handled it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I went down the hall and the door was open. I saw Fiona lying on her back, on the floor, next to the table. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was blood in the center of her shirt, she had on a white shirt, and I didn’t understand.”

  “What didn’t you understand?”

  “It was like there was a wound, but I couldn’t see what made the wound, and I went over to her and put my hand in the shirt with the blood. I guess I was just feeling for what caused it, like what was it?”

  Mary could visualize it. She would have done the same thing.

  “I got blood on me, that came out later at the trial, but I didn’t notice. I wasn’t worried about it, I was thinking about her.” Lonnie’s cadence quickened, though he told the story without the drama it deserved. “I put my head to her mouth, like my ear, to see if she was breathing. I couldn’t hear anything, so I pressed on her chest and tried to give her mouth-to-mouth, but it didn’t work. Then I started to think, I
got to get out of here. This doesn’t look good, not for me. So I ran out.”

  “Why didn’t you yell or call for help?”

  “I don’t know. I was just dealing with it.”

  “You didn’t make any noise when you saw her? Like a scream?”

  “I’m a man.” Lonnie smiled slightly.

  Mary didn’t understand something. “What was Fiona doing up there anyway?”

  “I know the family was up and down during the night, and they took some VIPs up there, to show off the offices.”

  “Then, when you saw you couldn’t deal with it, why didn’t you run and tell your boss, or any of the guests or even security?”

  “I don’t know. I should have, but I panicked. I felt like I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like I should’nt’ve gone into the small conference room, I didn’t belong up there.” Lonnie’s gaze shifted somewhere on the scuffed and dingy wall. “I used to think about it over and over, when I first got here. Why didn’t I just keep walking down the hall? I should’ve just kept going.”

  “Tell me about the cut on your hand.”

  “I cut it when chef asked me to cut a lime, because we ran out. Anyway, somehow the blood from my cut got on her. I didn’t cut it stabbing her, like they said. I didn’t stab her.”

  “They never found the murder weapon but they think it was a common knife. At trial they think you got it from the kitchen.”

  “I didn’t take any knife from the kitchen. Chef testified that none of his knives were missing, but he didn’t know what knives were in the kitchen when we got there. Chef keeps an eye on his own knives, because they’re expensive.”

  Mary made a note. “Let me ask you this. What do you think happened that night?”

  “I think somebody stabbed Fiona and got out through the other stairway, door, just before I came in and found her.”

  Mary brightened, glancing at Judy. “So there’s another stairway to the floor?”

  “Yes, there’s two. One was in the reception area and they had a velvet rope on that. But the one I used was near the cafeteria. No guests went back there but us.”