Chapter 4
Tori glanced toward Amy and touched her watch.
Her producer held up both hands. Ten seconds.
Tori turned back to the mic. “I hope to have Mr. Prescott as a guest on Dark Deeds Unraveled in the near future. Right now, he’s adjusting to being a free man.
But you can check out my TV interview with him.
The link is in the comments. When we return from a short break, I’ll take questions and comments—whatever you want to say as long as it’s clean. ”
Once her mic was silent, Tori blew out a breath and turned toward Amy. “How do you think it’s going?”
“Great. Your first caller is Jackson, and there are now ten waiting behind him. I’ll cut it off at those ten, and you can wrap up the session.” Amy grinned. “Save something for the next podcast . . . oh, and be sure to mention next week’s segment on domestic violence.”
Tori nodded. She was looking forward to starting the series on women in abusive situations. Her first guest was someone who’d gathered her courage and left the abusive relationship and who wanted to encourage others to do the same.
Just before the ad finished, Amy’s voice reminded her of the caller’s name and where he was from before starting the countdown in her earpiece.
When she hit one, Tori’s mic went hot. “Welcome back to this segment of the podcast where I’ll take calls.
First up is Jackson from Ohio. Welcome to Dark Deeds Unraveled. ”
“Thank you for taking my call, Victoria.” The caller’s smooth baritone carried well over the air. “I’ve only listened to the last few episodes. What got you involved in this case?”
She smiled, even though no one other than her producer could see it.
“Two things, Jackson. Almost two years ago, Mr. Prescott’s sister, who lived here in Knoxville at the time, called the TV station where I worked as an investigative reporter, claiming her brother had been railroaded.
The station gave me the assignment, and it intrigued me.
She’d hired a private investigator, who dug into the trial transcripts.
He was the one who discovered the pawn ticket that had been entered into evidence along with other miscellaneous objects in Mr. Prescott’s possession at the time of arrest. The ticket had been ‘lost in the shuffle’ so to speak.
“The more I dug into the case, the more convinced I became that Huey Prescott was innocent. And if he was innocent, that meant whoever killed Mr. Livingston had gotten away with murder.”
“So, why do you think the police missed the pawn ticket?”
“That’s a good question, and an even better one is why didn’t the lawyers involved find it?” Both questions she had to be careful answering, because while she thought all the parties involved had been lazy, she didn’t want to make enemies in Memphis.
“It’s my understanding that the year Mr. Livingston was killed, there was a shortage of police officers in Memphis, while at the same time the city experienced over a 10 percent increase in homicides.
I personally believe the detectives had tunnel vision and confirmation bias.
They were slammed, and the four jailhouse informants—plus the fact Prescott couldn’t account for his time the night of the murder—made for a closed case.
They could move on to the next homicide.
Same thing for the DA and public defender. ”
“Do you think the detectives did a sloppy job?”
Tori paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. “First of all, Mr. Prescott didn’t remember the ticket, and while I didn’t walk in those officers’ shoes, or the DA’s and public defender’s, I can imagine how overwhelmed they were by the explosion in the murder rate.”
And that was twenty years ago. Her research showed it was even worse now. And not just in Memphis. From what she’d seen in her job with the TV station, Knoxville wasn’t much better.
“Yeah, I see your point. One more question—what’s Huey Prescott’s next step?”
“To get back to a normal life,” Tori said.
“And to find his daughter. The first time he was arrested for drug possession, the girl’s mother moved away from Memphis, taking their unborn daughter with her.
He never knew he had a daughter until the detective tracked down the town the mother moved to and neighbors confirmed she had a daughter who was conceived during the time she was with Prescott.
But it’ll take a DNA test to prove paternity. ”
“I hope he finds her,” Jackson said. “Be sure to post when Mr. Prescott will be on your podcast. Thanks for taking my call.”
Amy spoke into the earpiece. “Line two is Paul from Mississippi.”
Tori punched the second line. “Thanks for calling, Paul. What’s your question?”
“I’ve enjoyed following this case,” he said, his Southern accent thick. “What made you think Huey Prescott didn’t confess to the four inmates?”
“Another good question,” Tori said. “I had several reasons, the main one being how identical their stories were. I can’t see four different men reciting the same details unless they got together first and rehearsed what they were going to say.
And then the vendetta they described Prescott had against Mr. Livingston’s neighbor because the neighbor failed to pay the defendant a drug debt.
The neighbor in question vehemently denied he owed anyone a debt, much less one for drugs, but he was never called to testify. ”
“You’re kidding,” the caller said.
“Afraid not.” She held that prosecutor in disdain, and if he were still alive, she’d go after him, but he’d died years ago.
“Yeah . . . I get you. I read a copy of the trial transcript online and told my wife I didn’t believe the jailhouse snitches. Like you, I thought their testimony sounded rehearsed. Why didn’t his public defender contest their statements?”
“I’m afraid we’ll never know the answer to that question since he died not long after the trial in a tragic hit-and-run, a case the police never solved, by the way.”
They chatted a few seconds more, and he signed off.
This wasn’t going half bad. Maybe Amy was right.
In fact, this was kind of fun. It might even be a good idea to go live again and take calls more often.
Her friend’s voice sounded in her ear. “There’s a caller on line two. John Smith from Kalamazoo.”
“Welcome to Dark Deeds Unraveled. Do you have a comment or question on the Prescott case?”
“Yeah.”
The person sounded like they had a bad cold. “Go ahead.”
“What if getting Prescott off puts you in the killer’s crosshairs? You or someone you love could pay for your meddling in the case.”
Meddling? “Excuse me? Is that a threat?”
“Of course not. Just an observation on my part—people have been known to get killed for less.”
She did not like the caller’s tone. “I suppose my investigation could be called meddling, but I hardly think Huey Prescott would look at it that way.”
“If I were you, I’d watch your back.”
“Thank you for your call.”
Tori looked over at Amy, whose eyebrows were raised in alarm. The words hadn’t necessarily been a threat. It was the way the caller had said them that sent a shiver running down her spine.