Chapter Forty-Five
Quinn arrives at Mr. Toad’s Pub carrying the flowers, worried that he still has some fake beard glue residue on his neck. The place has an Irish pub vibe, decorated with shelves of old books amid signs for Guinness.
He spots Holly on the outdoor courtyard at a table between two trees strung with white lights.
She’s with her classmates laughing about something.
Probably the law school inside jokes he doesn’t understand.
He went to a trivia night with Holly and her classmates one time and the teams all had silly names like “It’s Raining Mens Rea” and “Swinging Dictas” and “The Bad News Barristers.”
“Hey!” she calls out when she sees him. She comes over, takes the flowers. “Thank you, they’re beautiful.”
“Mr. Agbayani said carnations are for first anniversaries.”
She smiles and nods, knowing why he was visiting the store today.
Tom, who Quinn knows has eyes for Holly, comes over, shoves a glass of beer in his hand. “Happy birthday, man!”
Quinn takes a sip. Tries to muster some enthusiasm. “Thanks.” He always feels out of place around Holly’s classmates. They’re nice enough, but he feels patronized for some reason. It’s his own insecurity and he needs to get over himself.
“Twenty-one! Is that your first legal drink?” Tom asks, reminding everyone that he’s younger than the rest of them.
Quinn nods, doesn’t mention that his actual first legal drink was in Somalia, where soldiers could consume alcohol at eighteen while on post, never mind that alcohol was otherwise illegal in the rest of the country.
Prohibition resulted in most of the locals chewing khat, a narcotic stimulant.
Quinn had his first legal beer after a particularly grueling patrol.
“How’s studying going?” he asks the group, trying to scrub the thought of Somalia from his mind.
His question is met with groans. It was nice of them to come out during finals.
Holly looks pretty, even with the bags under her eyes and her frayed Creighton Law sweatshirt. She’s been studying around the clock for 1L exams, determined to be in the top of the class and make law review.
They drink a few pitchers and Quinn is starting to relax, though he keeps thinking about the woman he followed at the grocery today. If he refuses, I’m turning in the Polaroids I found of the teenage girls to the police.
“Everything okay?” Holly asks. She’s been asking him this a lot lately when she catches him lost in thought, spiraling about his mother’s case, her Red Flag file, and Kenny Pearl.
“Yeah, just a crazy day at work.”
“What happened?”
He tells her about the lady and her threat, doesn’t mention the guy faking the neck injury. He’s spared further discussion when one of the girls calls Holly over. Tom sidles up next to Quinn.
“Holly said you’re working on a case alleging Brady violations?
” In his short time hanging with 1Ls, he’s learned that the adage “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is true.
The Brady rule, as Quinn has learned helping the young lawyer defending his mother’s boyfriend, requires the government to turn over any exculpatory evidence—evidence that tends to suggest a defendant’s innocence—to the defense.
The failure to do so can require a new trial.
Quinn got Ms. Glomm to sign an affidavit saying that she’d told the police about his mother’s plan to report criminal activity to the company, a possible alternative motive for her murder, yet this information was never turned over to the defense.
He also got good ol’ Toby from Burger Hut to sign an affidavit that he saw Quinn’s mom talking to a man the morning she was killed, a man in a business suit who was tall and strapping and obviously not Randy Calhoon.
“Yeah, I’m helping to try to overturn the verdict of the man convicted of killing my mother,” Quinn says, mostly to watch Tom squirm, but he doesn’t.
“No shit!” Tom looks out at the group. “Holly, you didn’t tell me the whole story on that Brady case!”
Tom is fascinated and peppers Quinn with questions. Quinn’s mind flits to his trip to the prison to visit Randy after the conviction.
“I didn’t kill your mom.”
“Then who did?”
“If I knew that…”
Quinn had slid the papers across the table. Copies of the contents of his mom’s Red Flag file. “Does this mean anything to you?”
Randy examined the documents, which were a mishmash of his mother’s notes and work papers that made no sense to Quinn.
He showed Randy the paper with “Pearl” written on it; the one with “Megan” and “D-302.” They also reviewed what looked like the schedule for company deliveries and ordinary course company records.
“It says ‘Pearl,’” said Randy. “That’s gotta be Kenny Pearl, her supervisor. I told you, Nadine said she found something and was gonna report it. And everybody knew Kenny had a thing for your mom since high school.”
“What did she find?”
“She clammed up about it. At first I thought someone was stealing. But the night before, she told me she uncovered something big. That she needed to confront someone. That’s where I think she was going when she clocked out that morning.”
“To meet whoever she was gonna confront?”
“Yeah. If I knew more, I’d tell you.”
Quinn wondered: Could whomever she was meeting be the man in the suit Toby saw? Who was he? And what was she meeting him about? The same questions that had kept Quinn up at night for months.
“What about the rest of the papers? The name Megan. The delivery schedule? D-302?”
Randy studied them, raised a defeated glance. “Scheduling deliveries was just part of your mom’s usual paperwork; she did all the scheduling. And I don’t know no Megan. And that number means nothing to me.”
Tom’s voice tears him from the memory. “So, what happens if an appellate court agrees there’s a Brady violation? Does the appeals court just reverse the conviction or how’s that work?”
“Two weeks ago, the appeals court remanded the case back to the trial court to consider the evidence.” Quinn doesn’t say that this will likely be a lost cause, given the hanging judge.
Quinn excuses himself to the bathroom even though he doesn’t need to go.
Like the courtyard, inside the bar is crowded.
Mostly people in their twenties and thirties, downing pitchers, lining up shots, laughing.
Why can’t he be so carefree? Lighten up for a change?
Why did he feel the need to escape Holly’s friends, who’ve been nothing but nice to him?
It’s then he sees a familiar face. He almost rubs his eyes like he might be seeing things. But it’s her, he’s sure of it. She’s taller than most of the patrons, and she’s also hard to miss.
Quinn edges through the bodies to get closer. A guy holding a beer is standing too close to her, talking at her intensely, and she looks bored. Quinn can’t help but stare. She still looks the same but perhaps more sophisticated. It’s then she catches him watching.
Her face shows a moment of recognition, then lights up. She waves him over, and the guy with the beer glowers when he sees Quinn coming their way.
“Jules Delaney,” Quinn says.
“Quinn Riley.”
They’re both silent for a beat, studying the other with the faintest of smiles on their faces.
Jules then pushes past the guy who was trying to chat her up. Turns to him and says, “It was great running into you, Todd. Tell your sister I said hi.” She latches her arm around Quinn’s and leads him away.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” she says, as they walk to a small opening in the crowd, and she stands, facing him. “You remember Miranda from high school?” Jules continues. “That’s her big brother. He’s a cop, the kind who took the job because they get to carry a gun.” She rolls her eyes.
Quinn says nothing.
“Cat still has your tongue, I see,” she continues, playfully. “How are you?” She examines him, doesn’t pause even a beat at his scar. She hasn’t seen him since it happened.
“I’m good. And you seem to be doing well, ‘Stadium Girl.’” He smiles.
“I was hoping you didn’t see that. I actually imagined your face when I first saw the video.
It was so embarrassing.” She tells him about her job, about traveling the world, about living in New York.
She’s friendly, seems genuinely happy to see him.
But she also seems to be putting on an act.
But she also seems to be putting on an act, her enthusiasm forced.
Or perhaps this is her fashion-model persona.
Or maybe a defense mechanism to get through the day.
He’s heard about her sister’s disappearance.
The news loves a May Day Killer story. He decides not to bring it up.
“So, what are you up to?” she asks, sipping through a straw from what looks like a vodka tonic.
Before he answers, Jules’s gaze snags on something near the door to the bar. Quinn sees a handsome guy in a suit looking over at them. He nudges his head at Jules, like saying it’s time to go.
“Crap, I need to get going. But we need to catch up, Quinn.” She digs through her handbag, pulls out something, hands him a business card. “Maybe we can get coffee or something while I’m in town.”
Before Quinn replies, Jules does something unexpected. She runs her hand along his face, tracing his scar. “I want to hear everything about what’s happened, Quinn.”
As she glides through the crowd Quinn feels something he thinks his mom might call a live wire.
Later, in the dark of his apartment’s bedroom, lying in bed next to him, Holly turns to Quinn. “Is something wrong?” she asks.
“Why do you keep asking me that?”
“You’ve been, I don’t know, more distracted, lately.”
She doesn’t say obsessed, at least. Obsessed with finding the truth about his mother’s murder.
She knows he is … obsessed, that is. He nearly lost his job over it when Kenny Pearl threatened to file harassment charges against Quinn and his employer after Quinn’s repeated efforts to question the man.
“Who was that girl at the bar?”
“What girl?”
“Quinn, I saw you.”
“Just a friend.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Holly isn’t the jealous type, so he’s surprised by the reaction.
But he’s never told her about Jules Delaney.
He considers reassuring her. But he says nothing.
He’s not sure why. Maybe because it’s better that she thinks he’s distracted by another woman than by his obsession with Kenny Pearl.
Pearl knows something. He has to. Why else would his mother have written his name in the Red Flag file?
After Holly falls asleep, Quinn carefully slides out of bed, scoops up his tiny mountain of clothes, and heads to the living room of the apartment, gently shutting the bedroom door behind him.
He puts on his jeans, pulls his shirt over his head, laces his sneakers.
Then he grabs the car keys and slips out of the apartment, knowing he may later regret it.