Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
FBI Field Office
Tacoma, Washington
“Delivery for Agent Bishop.”
Hannah appeared in the doorway holding two cups of coffee. Her brunette pixie cut framed her face. She handed one of the cups to Allie and dropped into the empty chair beside the desk, tucking one leg underneath her as if she planned to stay awhile.
“You are a lifesaver,” Allie said, and eagerly wrapped both hands around the warm cup.
“I know.” Hannah took a sip from her own. “So I hear things have taken quite the turn around here?”
Allie stabbed a pencil through her bun and leaned back. “It’s complicated. But we’re making progress, which is more than I could say a week ago.”
“That’s something, at least.” Hannah’s expression brightened. “Speaking of progress, guess who made the school basketball team?”
“Zach?”
“Who else? He came home with the news on Tuesday and hasn’t stopped talking about it since.
I’ve already heard fourteen different arguments for why he needs new shoes.
Apparently, the ones he has are, and I quote, ‘not real basketball shoes.’” Hannah rolled her eyes, but the pride in her voice was unmistakable. “He’s eight. He doesn’t need Jordans.”
Allie smiled. “Give it a year. He’ll tell you he needs a different pair for home and away games.”
“Ugh, don’t even joke about that.” Hannah studied her for a moment. “How about you? How are you holding up?”
Allie turned the cup slowly in her hands. “I’m really missing Grams. The house is too quiet without her. I come home and there’s just nothing. No humming from the kitchen, no click of her crochet needles from the living room. It’s weird how much one tiny person can fill a house.”
Hannah reached over and squeezed her arm. “She’ll be home soon. Just hang in there. And you know you can always come over for dinner. Zach would love the audience for his basketball stories.”
“I might take you up on that.”
After she was gone, Allie glanced at the transcripts still spread across her desk.
She gathered them into a neat stack and headed for the conference room.
Marze was sitting at the head of the long table, his tie loosened and the lines around his eyes deeper than usual.
Jason occupied his regular spot and restlessly tapped a pen on his legal pad, while Brandy and Mia sat side by side near the middle with their laptops open.
Marze didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“Elias Thorne has been breathing down my neck all morning. He wants answers, and the DOJ is applying pressure from above. The U.S. Attorney wants to know when we’re going to catch this killer, and every day that passes without an arrest makes all of us look like we’re standing still.
” He rubbed his mustache. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but the timeline just got shorter.
I need some solid leads, and I need them now. ”
Allie had worked under pressure plenty of times before, and she knew her team had too, but this case, involving murdered federal officials, had its own particular gravity.
She raised her hand off the table. “I have something, and I wanted to wait until we were all together to bring it up. I interviewed Maria Delgado yesterday, one of the prosecution’s witnesses in the Torrino trial.
She testified about the financial operations of Torrino’s organization.
” Allie paused, knowing that what she was about to say was going to tip the entire investigation in a new direction.
“She admitted that Sarah Park directly influenced her testimony. Park told her what to say on the stand, including things Delgado wasn’t certain about.
Specifically, Delgado was instructed to testify that she personally witnessed Sal Torrino giving direct orders related to the financial operations.
But she never did witness those things. Park also gave her specific dollar amounts to memorize and present as though she had firsthand knowledge of them. ”
Nobody spoke. Mia muttered something under her breath. They all understood the significance of what they were hearing.
“Her false testimony became the foundation for the financial ledgers that Bob Halloway later presented to the jury,” Allie continued to explain.
“The prosecution built one layer of fabrication on top of another. Delgado’s statements gave the ledgers credibility, while the ledgers gave the financial case its teeth. ”
Jason nodded along. “It’s the same situation for me,” he interjected.
“I interviewed Tommy Nguyen. He testified at the trial about physical evidence connected to the financial side of the prosecution. Nguyen told me that Park showed him documents before his testimony and instructed him on exactly what to say about them. He admitted he didn’t actually see what he claimed to have witnessed on the stand.
” Jason set his pen down and looked around at his coworkers.
“At this point, I think it’s pretty clear what happened.
The prosecution didn’t have a solid case, so they manufactured one. ”
Marze absorbed this with his jaw set, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the conference room.
“This is damning. But we need to be careful. Accusing federal prosecutors of conspiracy isn’t something we do without bulletproof evidence.
I want forensic analysis of the actual trial exhibits.
Get the originals if they’re still in evidence storage, and have our people examine them.
” He turned to Mia. “Pull the original defense motions from the trial. I want to see every concern the defense raised, every challenge they filed, and how the prosecution responded.”
“On it, boss.”
“Either way,” Jason nearly growled, “both Halloway and Park lied to us. We sat across from them, asked them direct questions, and they looked us in the eye and gave us nothing. They knew what they did during that trial, and they chose to keep it buried.” He shook his head in disdain.
“These are people in the AG’s office. They’re supposed to be on our side. ”
Allie understood his anger because she shared it. The unspoken contract between law enforcement and prosecution was built on the assumption that everyone was working toward the same goal with the same integrity. When that contract was violated, it corroded everything it touched.
Marze held up a hand. “I hear you. But I want to be strategic about this. We don’t press Park again.
Not yet. Let her sit with whatever she thinks we know, and we’ll come back to her when we’ve got more leverage.
” He made a note on the pad in front of him.
“I’m going to contact Reeves and caution him to stay sharp on Park’s protective detail.
If she’s part of this conspiracy, and she realizes we’re getting close, she could become unpredictable.
And with her involvement, she’s probably a target herself.
Either way, Reeves needs to know what we’re dealing with. ”
“What about tracking down more of the trial witnesses?” Allie asked. “If Park coached Delgado and Nguyen, she probably did the same with others. We need to know if the pattern of coercion was widespread or limited to a few key testimonies.”
Marze looked toward the analysts. “Brandy, Mia, start pulling the witness list from the trial and locating as many of them as you can. Cross-reference current addresses and contact information.”
Brandy nodded in reply. “We’ll get on it immediately.”
Mia was already scrolling through something on her screen. “I can pull the witness roster from the archived files. Some of them are going to be hard to find after this long, but we’ll track down who we can.”
“I think there’s someone else we should talk to.” Allie glanced at her notes, then looked up. “Donatella Torrino is Sal’s daughter and the only family member who isn’t dead or in prison. If anyone has a perspective on what happened to that family and why, she does.”
Mia tilted her head. “From what I’ve pulled together on the Torrino family, Donatella broke away from them years ago, well before the trial.
She moved to New York City to work in fashion and seemed to want nothing to do with the family business.
” Her fingers flew over her keyboard, and she leaned closer to her screen.
“But here’s something interesting. She moved back to Tacoma right before the trial started. And she never went back to New York.”
“She’s still in the area?” Jason asked.
Mia nodded. “Olympia. She owns a small fashion boutique there. Looks like she’s been running it for a few years.”
“Then we should pay her a visit,” Allie said. “If the prosecution fabricated evidence to convict her father, Donatella may know more than anyone about the impact that had on the family.”
Marze surveyed the room. “All right. Brandy and Mia, you’ve got the defense appeals and the witnesses. Allie and Jason, set up a meeting with Donatella Torrino.” He stood. “We need to move fast.”
The meeting broke apart as everyone pushed back from the table and dispersed.
Allie stayed behind for a moment, standing alone in the conference room with the whiteboard timeline on one wall and case files stacked along the other.
She never would have imagined at the beginning of all this where the facts would lead her.
The evidence was accumulating in two distinct directions now.
One trail led toward a killer who branded federal officials with exhibit numbers from a trial that had defined their careers.
The other trail led toward the trial itself, toward the possibility that the prosecution team had built their landmark case on a foundation of lies and coerced testimony.
Was it really true that people with combined decades of honestly fighting for justice had been willing to sacrifice it all to secure a conviction for one of the most wanted men in this part of the country?
She hoped the answer was a resounding no, but from where she was standing right now she wasn’t willing to bet on it.