Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Carmichael & Associates
Seattle, Washington
The building was old brick, eight stories of it wedged between newer glass towers in Seattle's downtown legal district.
Allie and Jason took the elevator to the top floor, where the doors opened onto a luxurious reception area.
An older woman behind a mahogany desk looked up from her reading glasses, offered a practiced smile, and asked if they had an appointment with Mr. Carmichael.
Allie showed her credentials. “Special Agents Bishop and King, FBI.”
As soon as Allie made the introductions, the expression of formal curiosity quickly tucked away behind a professional composure.
She rose from her chair and led them down a carpeted hallway lined with framed photographs of Seattle's skyline from different decades.
They passed a pair of paralegals hunched over laptops and were escorted into a corner office that commanded immediate attention.
Wood paneling covered the walls from floor to ceiling.
Bookshelves lined two sides of the room, heavy with law volumes and brass-framed case plaques.
The other two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Elliott Bay, where a container ship was making its slow passage beneath a sky the color of old pewter.
Leonard Carmichael stood from behind a wide desk and crossed the room to greet them.
He was tall and lean, with silver hair swept back from a high forehead and frameless glasses.
He gestured toward two leather chairs facing his desk, then turned to the reception area.
“Margaret, would you bring us some coffee?”
She nodded and quickly disappeared. Carmichael settled into his chair and studied them with a quiet patience that Allie recognized from her experience sitting across from attorneys. The good ones, like good agents, never rushed.
“I appreciate you making time for us,” Allie said.
“I had a feeling this visit was coming.” Carmichael lightly drummed his fingers on his desk.
“I've been following the news about Sterling and Judge Vance. When someone starts killing prosecutors and judges, you look at the cases that left the most wreckage.” He paused and shook his head.
“The Torrino RICO case was the biggest case I ever worked. That organization destroyed a lot of people.”
Margaret returned with a tray of coffee in ceramic mugs with a mini-carafe of cream and a bowl of assorted sweeteners.
Allie accepted hers with a nod of thanks and took a sip.
It was better than anything she'd had outside of Grams's kitchen.
She made a mental note to ask Margaret what brand it was, then reminded herself that it wouldn't be appropriate.
“You represented Sal Torrino during the trial,” Jason said as more confirmation than a question.
“I did. Lead defense counsel.” Carmichael cradled his own mug between both hands. “It consumed my life for what felt like years.”
Allie set her mug down on the edge of his desk. “What were your thoughts about the trial? Looking back on it now?”
Carmichael took his time answering, his gaze drifting briefly toward the windows and the gray water beyond.
“The evidence was overwhelming. The prosecution built a fortress around their case, and frankly, there was very little room for the defense to maneuver. My team questioned some of the evidence during trial, and we filed motions challenging the admissibility of certain key pieces, but Judge Vance denied every one of them.” He turned back to face her.
“They built a rock-solid case against Sal Torrino. I'll give them that.”
“But?” Allie prompted.
Carmichael's mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. “But certain things troubled me. Certain key pieces of evidence appeared very late in discovery. That alone isn't unusual in a complex federal case, but the timing and the nature of those pieces raised questions my team never fully resolved.”
“What specific evidence troubled you?” Jason asked him.
“Financial records, primarily. Bank statements and ledgers that supposedly proved money laundering through several of Torrino's legitimate businesses.” Carmichael opened his hands, palms up, as though laying out invisible documents.
“These records appeared in discovery very late in the process.
My team argued the documents had been altered, that timestamps on the bank statements didn't match the transaction dates they were supposed to corroborate. The prosecution countered that the records came from a cooperating witness who had been afraid to come forward earlier. Judge Vance allowed them.”
“Any issues with witness testimonies?” Allie asked, watching Carmichael's face for what he wasn't saying as much as what he was.
“That was the other concern. Several key witnesses changed their stories between depositions and trial.
Substantially, in some cases. Their testimony at trial was more detailed, more damning, and more neatly aligned with the prosecution's narrative than anything they'd said previously. One witness in particular was in the U.S. Marshals Service’s witness protection program, and we couldn't access him independently to verify his account. We filed a motion for access, but that was denied as well.”
“You think someone got to the witnesses, maybe convinced them to change their stories?” Jason asked.
Carmichael raised a hand. “I'm not going to sit here and accuse anyone of specific misconduct. What I will say is that federal prosecutors are good at their jobs. They build solid cases. But parts of this one felt…constructed.” He let the word hang for a moment.
“The pieces fit too perfectly. There were no loose ends, no ambiguity, no contradictions.
In my experience, Agent King, real evidence is messy.
Witnesses forget details, and their testimonies are never exactly the same.
Documents have gaps, and timelines don't always line up cleanly.
That's how the real world works.” He shook his head slowly. “This wasn't messy. Not even a little.”
Allie turned that over in her mind. She'd worked enough cases to know Carmichael was right about one thing: real evidence was never clean. Human beings were unreliable narrators by nature, and the physical world didn't organize itself into neat packages for the convenience of prosecutors.
“If the evidence concerned you, why didn't the defense push harder?” she asked.
The lawyer’s expression carried something close to regret.
“We challenged what we could. But chain of custody in federal cases is usually airtight.
The prosecution's documentation was meticulous, and every motion we filed was met with volumes of procedural compliance records.
You can only challenge evidence so far before the jury starts wondering why you're making so much noise about technicalities instead of addressing the substance.” He removed his glasses and held them loosely in one hand.
“And the substance was damning. Sal had real enemies, real competitors, and real victims. The prosecution didn't need to fabricate a motive. They just needed the jury to believe the evidence trail.”
“Mr. Torrino maintained his innocence?” Jason asked.
“Every day of the trial and every day since.” Carmichael replaced his glasses. “He always said he was being framed. Of course, that's what they all say.”
There was something in Carmichael's tone that Allie caught, a note of unresolved doubt that decades of practicing law hadn't quite smoothed over. She filed it away.
“You mentioned you'd be willing to provide copies of your appellate briefs and case files,” Allie said. “We'd like to take you up on that.”
“Of course. I'll have Margaret compile everything and send it to your office. The appellate briefs in particular lay out every evidentiary challenge we raised. Whether or not anyone listens to them now is another matter.”
Allie shifted in her chair, moving to the question that mattered most. “Mr. Carmichael, who do you think might come back for murder five years later?”
Carmichael laced his fingers together on the desk and considered the question.
“I wouldn't begin to know. Sal's oldest son was killed before the trial, and the other is in prison. He was preparing for them to eventually take over, and they were deeply involved in the organization. The family’s network was vast. It reached across the Pacific Northwest and beyond, but I wouldn't begin to know who might be coming around after all this time.” He studied Allie's face.
“Do you have anything that makes you think you're looking in the right direction with the Torrino case?”
Allie met his gaze evenly. “We're looking under every rock we can find.”
Carmichael gave a slight nod, as if that was the answer he expected. “Then I hope what you find underneath this one gives you something useful.” He stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “If there's anything else I can do, don't hesitate to call.”
Jason merged onto I-5 southbound, the Charger settling into the flow of midday traffic as they headed back toward Tacoma.
Rain had started to fall in a thin mist that coated the windshield and blurred the taillights ahead of them.
Allie watched it gather and streak, her thoughts still in Carmichael's office.
“Every case has its weaknesses,” Jason said after a few miles of quiet. “Carmichael was Torrino's defense attorney. He's naturally going to see the places where things could have swung better in his favor.”
“I know.” Allie adjusted the heat vent. The dampness had crept into the car and settled against her skin.
“But he's been doing this for decades, Jason.
He's not some ambulance chaser grasping at straws.
He said some of the evidence felt constructed, and that's not a word an attorney at his level uses casually.”
“Okay, but feeling something’s wrong and proving it are two very different things. The Torrino case was huge. A win would have probably been the biggest of Carmichael’s career. I can’t see him backing down from evidence he actually believed was manipulated.”
Allie felt the familiar creep of frustration gather in her chest again. “All we’re doing is spinning our wheels.”
The frustration had been building for days, accumulating in small increments with every dead-end interview and every case file that led nowhere.
She could feel it in Jason too, in the way his grip on the steering wheel had grown tighter over the past week and in the clipped rhythm of his questions during interviews.
Neither of them had said it out loud yet, but they both knew the killer wasn't waiting for them to catch up.
They were both running on discipline and caffeine, pushing through the tedium because that was what the job demanded, but the lack of answers was wearing on them.
She was ready for some momentum to start building, for even the smallest crack to appear in whatever wall they kept hitting. So far, though, they couldn't even get the transmission out of park.