LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER TWO

      BREE COULDN’T SEEM to do anything but stare at Eric Riggs’s bare chest. The first coherent thought that came into her mind was, Damn, this guy has one hot bod, quickly followed by the realization that her observation was inappropriate.

      Then she saw the scar. “You’re saying Kelly Ralston—my Kelly Ralston—did that to you?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Someone chose that moment to walk into the small lounge, a woman about Bree’s age dressed in an off-the-shoulder sweater, hot-pink jeans and platform shoes. Her blond hair was in one of those chic bobs that moved with her, then fell right back into place.

      The woman skidded to a stop, took in Eric’s state of undress and backed out of the room with her eyes closed. “Don’t mind me. I was never here.”

      “Great,” Eric muttered as he quickly pulled his undershirt back on and shoved his arms into the sleeves of his shirt. “Wonder how long it’ll take Jillian to spread this all over the office grapevine.”

      “Well, don’t blame me,” Bree groused. “You’re the one who chose to perform a striptease.”

      “Only because you refused to believe me without proof.”

      “Who says I believe you? You could have gotten that scar some other way.”

      “Why would I make up something like this?”

      “I don’t know.” That was the problem. She didn’t know. If Project Justice didn’t want to take on Kelly’s case, they could have just rejected her application. They could pick and choose which cases they wanted to devote their energies to. Sadly, there was no shortage of innocent people behind bars.

      Eric finished dressing, knotting his shimmery blue tie just so. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

      “Okay, fine. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Kelly really did attack you in prison, unprovoked. That doesn’t mean he committed the crime he was convicted for.”

      “He did, though.” Eric took a deep breath, almost as if trying to draw strength. “He confessed to his crime, to anyone who would listen, in excruciating detail. And he bragged of the murders he’d committed for which he was never arrested. Multiple women. Brutal attacks.”

      That stopped Bree. She couldn’t immediately come up with a handy reason why Kelly would do such a thing. He had always adamantly professed his innocence. “You’re lying.”

      Eric shrugged. “Believe what you will.”

      Bree quickly returned to safer territory—the argument she had rehearsed. “If you would just review the facts—if you would just talk to Philomene—you would have no choice but to believe Kelly is innocent.”

      “Lay it out for me,” he said with obvious reluctance.

      “They picked up Kelly because he was walking in Philomene’s neighborhood with no obvious destination in mind right after she called 911. He never admitted guilt—”

      “Not to you.”

      “He never admitted to knowing Philomene. They put him in a lineup, and Philomene identified him. There was no physical evidence linking Kelly to the case. And, in fact, his DNA does not match the sample collected from one of the other murders thought to be part of the serial killer’s pattern. But when that result came in, the police decided to separate that one case out from the others and claimed it must be unrelated, even though the M.O. was exactly the same.

      “They took Kelly to court, and Philomene again identified him as her attacker and even added a couple of details she claimed to have remembered, like his tattoo. It was an easy victory for the prosecution.”

      “Sounds like it. A credible witness is very hard to overlook. She had no motive for lying about it, especially since she didn’t even know him.”

      “So flash forward to a couple of months ago,” Bree continued. “I’m working in the emergency room at the county hospital when Philomene comes in—”

      “Working at the E.R. in what capacity?”

      “Physician.”

      “Oh. I didn’t realize...”

      “Yes, you’ve already demonstrated that you’re remarkably badly briefed on this case. Anyway, this woman comes in having an acute asthma attack. I treated her, and then I recognized her, though it was several years since I’d seen her. She remembered me, too. I was a character witness for Kelly during his sentencing. I couldn’t resist bringing it up, even though I know it’s cruel to remind a woman of the most traumatic time in her life. But she seemed to want to talk about it. She jumped at the chance. She said she needed to get something off her chest. And that was when she told me that she didn’t really recognize Kelly in the lineup. The prosecutor was with her in the room, she was nervous, he was putting all kinds of pressure on her to identify her attacker.

      “She said they gave her hints about which man she was supposed to pick out, and she did it. And the more times she said it, the more sure she became in her head that he was the one. But later, after all the pressure was off, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake, that she’d sent an innocent man to prison. But she was afraid to change her statement. She was afraid she’d get into trouble—her record isn’t exactly sterling and she has reason to be afraid of the police.”

      “What makes you think she’s telling the truth now?”

      “She wasn’t lying. She had no reason

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