8.
The factory Mitchell had worked at in Oregon was near the shoe company headquarters, in a suburb at the edge of Portland.
Ruby found a gracious receptionist in the cool, scented lobby. Big corporations knew how to deal with members of a criminal
defense team: They followed the law meticulously, and in this case, Ruby knew that the law was on her side. While she was
in Georgia, she’d had Mitchell sign some releases, and those releases were like bars of gold for his case. They let her get
the information even the police could not.
In moments, she was holding Mitchell’s old employment file in her hands. She saw with excitement that it contained information
about his transfer to Georgia. Previous legal teams had not gotten this file. They probably thought it didn’t matter. But
to Ruby, all information was valuable. You never knew what would lead to the truth.
His social security number had been blacked out. She smiled ruefully at that. Where he was now, Mitchell Brown was not at
much risk for identity theft. There was an old employee ID picture of him, smiling shyly at the camera, his name badge on
his shirt. One page held his last review: Excellent team member; works well with others. Nothing bad to say. Always on time. Trusted employee.
Ruby looked at his medication list. One time, she had exonerated an innocent man on the basis of his medication list: He took
a sleep aid that would have knocked out a horse. The real killer, as it turned out, was a man who looked a bit like him.
But Mitchell Brown took nothing.
His initial job application was part of the file—they kept good records.
She saw his neat writing. His date of birth.
Address: post office, Chinook. Emergency contact: Solemn Brown.
There were no parents listed. For his references, he gave a teacher and, interestingly, the sheriff.
Mitchell Brown had been hired on standard probation and had flourished, driving to work in the rickety truck his grandfather had once driven.
Ruby read with a half smile the “About Me” section Mitchell had filled out, in his careful blue-ink prose. I grew up in Chinook. It’s a small town about an hour away, but I don’t mind driving. I live with my grandfather. For fun,
I like to fish. I don’t like hunting. In high school, we went to Ashland to see the Shakespeare Festival there. Someday I
would like to travel more.
After four years with the company, Mitchell had been offered the transfer to Georgia, leaving his grandfather in the hands
of some hired help from town. Ruby scanned those pages and saw nothing particularly interesting, besides the name of an old
supervisor in Union City she could look up.
She returned to the original application.
Describe a time you overcame a challenge, read one of the questions. She didn’t expect Mitchell to have written about losing his mother—she knew from experience that
by the time Mitchell was eighteen, he would have learned not to bring it up. It made things awkward and ended conversations.
No one wanted to hear about that level of pain.
So he wrote about something else. She could almost see him chewing on the end of the pen, filling out the application at the rural school the Chinook kids were bused to, sitting in the guidance counselor’s office, where a table held stacks of applications for local businesses like the sawmill, as well as applications for the military, which the counselors were not supposed to offer but often did.
Or maybe he had driven here for the application, and filled it out right here in this lobby, taking his time, thinking of what he could say that would seem normal, approachable.
Understandable. A challenge anyone might have that required overcoming.
My grandfather started going blind when I was about ten, he wrote, and Ruby saw his hesitation in the light ink. I ended up being responsible for more than some kids my age. There was a lot he couldn’t do, especially at first. Like go
shopping at the market. Or pick up his social security check. The lady at the bank (it’s really just a counter at the post
office) got to know me. Pretty much everyone in town did. Not that there are that many, ha. I found out that even people who are surly can be kind when they are asked to help. I got to meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise
met. That’s how I met that challenge.
“Helpful?” came a voice from behind her, and she turned to see a man with sharp cheekbones and beautiful hazel eyes. In his
finely cut suit, he could only be an executive, she thought. He was around her age, maybe a few years older. Mid-thirties,
she guessed.
He held out his hand. “I’m Ronald. The receptionist told me you were here.”
She put the paperwork in her bag, and shook his hand.
“Not every day we get a private investigator working on a death row case,” he said, and she saw that he was intrigued, and
maybe making sure the shoe company wouldn’t end up in the paper.
“Just a formality,” she said, as she did on every case. “My work is confidential and privileged. What I find, I turn over
to the attorney. But I don’t talk to the press. I don’t like the press.”
“Why not?”
She said nothing, but she was thinking about terms like inner city and at risk that the media used to describe and stigmatize Black people, or how reporters shrugged off police misconduct but depicted defense lawyers as slimeballs out to free every convicted killer.
Every word, every sleight of hand, was weighted against men like Mitchell.
“I just don’t,” she said, and seeing the confusion in his eyes, she felt herself retreat inside. This man found her attractive:
He wanted to know more about her. But there was a canyon of experience between them, and Ruby knew better than to even try
to cross it. She had gotten tired of trying to explain the system to others. It never worked.
She turned to leave, and he watched her go.
She stopped for coffee, and sat on a bench beside a pond, eating a bagel and tossing the crumbs to the ducks. It was nice
to be outside. She pulled a ream of papers—the evidence listings—out of her bag and read the typed-out lists in the mild Oregon
sun.
Pants.
Socks.
A wallet, splashed with blood.
The clothing had been part of exhibit A during the trial, placed in a cardboard box that had later disappeared. She was very
interested in that fact.
Fingerprint cards.
Lab results from the Pickleweed police.
The photo of the bloody handprint on the car door.
All of it gone, as lost to the world as Mitchell’s mother, and all the other women on Ruby’s map.
A fat mallard waddled up to her, pecking hopefully at her feet.
“Sorry, Charlie,” she said. “I’m all out.”
Exhibit B was a set of car keys. These had been identified as belonging to Mitchell Brown.
They had been found on the gas station counter, sprayed with blood.
There was blood all over the gas station, even splashed across the foggy-cold windows of the beer cooler.
Ruby had no trouble believing that the blood was a match for Betty Dubois, even if those tests, along with the keys and the rest of exhibit B, had also disappeared.
After ten years, she didn’t doubt that the woman was dead.
She thought of those trial exhibit boxes. White cardboard, with lids. They would have been carried from the Pickleweed courtroom
into a locking room in the district attorney’s offices. After the conviction, they should have been transported to police
archives. In the case of murder—especially a death penalty conviction—the state was required to keep the evidence until the
death of the convicted person.
But losing it? There was no penalty for that.
The duck at her feet kept pecking.
The district attorney had said it was a mystery, what happened to those boxes. In a way, it didn’t matter. There was no way
to retest the evidence now. There was no way to see if someone had been lying.
The last page of the list was, as usual, all the evidence that had been ruled out as important. There had been a driver’s
manual in Mitchell’s glove box, in a truck that was later turned into a cube, and a map, which might have saved his life that
night if he had been sober enough to check it. Dirty socks on the truck floor. A car wrench from the toolbox, ruled out as
a murder weapon.
A VHS tape.
That caught her attention. She turned the page. There was nothing more.
She called Terrence Fulks as she left the park, the ducks swarming the bench behind her. He picked up immediately.
“I got that report,” he said. “Poor guy. I didn’t know that his mom went missing.”
“Me either,” she said. “Probably doesn’t mean anything to the case. But I was reading the evidence listings, and toward the end there’s one that says ‘VHS tape.’ Do you know what that is?”
“I do. I asked the district attorney about it. It was video from the bar that night. They didn’t use it during the trial because
it was established that Mitchell was there. The defense had no argument with that fact. It’s what happened later that we dispute.”
“If the tape wasn’t taken into trial, do you know where it might be?”
He paused. She could feel him thinking—she was down to twelve days already and focusing on material that was probably irrelevant.
The bar was over an hour away from the crime scene, and the witnesses there had been thoroughly interviewed. None of it had
anything to do with Betty Dubois.
“No,” he said.
By the time Ruby got back to the airport, she had learned that the Pickleweed police kept their archives in old limestone
vaults outside of town.
Ruby kept everything she needed for quick trips in her bag. There was her laptop, a digital camera, a change of clothes, and
her toiletries. The bag was made of old leather, thick and creased. Emptied of belongings, it made a nice pillow, and even
now, when she smelled it, she thought of memories both peaceful and sharp.
“Can I help you?” the man at the ticket counter asked.
“Atlanta, your soonest flight,” she said.
“I’ve seen you before,” the man said, smiling. He had on a pale pink shirt and looked like a happy man.
“I’m sure you have,” she said.