Chapter Thirty-Four
At the end of dinner with Holly, under the soft lights of Maxine’s restaurant, the waiter brings over a cupcake with a candle in it. Holly gives Quinn the sweetest smile.
“I didn’t know it was your birthday until you testified,” she says.
Quinn doesn’t tell her that he hates his birthday.
“The servers were going to sing while you blew out the candle, but I thought better of it.”
“Thank you.”
She reaches for his hand, squeezes it. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Quinn replies.
“Why do you wear a broken watch?” Her eyes go to the Timex on his wrist with its shattered face. “I noticed on one of your visits to George and always wondered.”
Quinn beats back the memory fragments: him in a chopper coming in and out of consciousness, his arms covered in blood—some of it his, some of it Giuseppe’s, some of it from the men they had to kill—the sun reflecting off the shattered glass of the Timex.
“It’s a long story.” He worries she’ll say she has time, but she doesn’t. “Now can I ask you something?” he says. “About the law?”
“The law?”
“Yeah.”
“You can ask, but I’ve just had undergrad courses, I’m no lawyer.”
Quinn produces the papers Randy’s defense lawyer gave him and tells her about their encounter in the courthouse bathroom.
Holly reads them quickly. “This is a motion in limine. The prosecution asked the judge to stop the defense from arguing to the jury that there was an alternative killer or that someone else had a motive for your mom’s murder.
The judge granted the motion. It’s a handwritten order on the front of the papers. ”
Quinn reads the messy handwriting: Granted. Defendant’s alternative suspect theory too speculative and unreliable without corroboration.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that the judge wouldn’t allow the defense to argue that someone else had a motive to kill your mom because there was no corroboration that she ever reported anything to the company that would’ve given someone a motive to kill her.
The only evidence of that was the defendant’s say-so.
The judge wouldn’t allow the argument based solely on Randy’s word without someone backing it up.
The motion says the company said it received no report from your mom. ”
Quinn recalls Ms. Glomm saying she’d reported the theory to the police. And that the lazy cop never followed up.
“But my mom’s coworker knew. She told me that she thought my mom’s murder was connected to a report my mom made to the company. She said she told the police about it.”
Holly thinks on this. “If the police had exculpatory evidence, they were required to turn it over to the defense, I know that much,” she says. “Your mom’s coworker would’ve been the corroboration needed.”
Quinn realizes that the deck was stacked against Randy even more than he’d thought.
“Her coworker said my mom had this file. She called it her Red Flag file.” He tells her about the mysterious file.
“Did you ever find it?”
“No. The bank either auctioned off or dumped all our stuff in the house. And there was no green file in my mom’s things from the office.”
“I thought you said it was red?”
“Yeah, that’s just what she called it. My mom’s friend said that’s why she remembered it so well: a Red Flag file that was green.”
Holly’s eyes light up. “George! I’ve seen a green folder in your brother’s things.”