"Thanks, honey." Dan Healey smiled up at his wife as she put a large platter of freshly made sandwiches on the coffee table in the middle of the room.
"There's more in the fridge so if you want seconds, just ask." She bent over and kissed her husband, smiling at the others as she disappeared through the archway into the kitchen.
An appreciative chorus of "Thank you's" filled the air as the four men in the Healey living room surveyed the pile of ham-and-cheese and pastrami sandwiches.
"Thanks for the pastrami, Bonnie!" Haseejian yelled at her retreating form as he and Bill Tanner reached for plates from the small stack on the table then picked up one of the sandwiches. Chuckling, the Robbery sergeant looked at Steve and Tanner. "She knows it's my favorite so she always keeps some on hand."
"She spoils you," Healey agreed as he passed a small plate to Steve then took one for himself.
Tanner placed a ham-and-cheese sandwich on his plate then set it on the end table beside him, reaching for his briefcase and putting it on his lap. He had just arrived.
Steve, his attention divided between Tanner and the ham sandwich now on his own plate, took a sip of his beer and watched the black sergeant open the briefcase and remove a medium-sized file folder.
Tanner looked at the other three before he took a deep breath and cocked his head. "Okay, so you guys gotta realize I've been on this for less than twenty-four hours, right? And I don't have the answers to all those questions you asked me, Steve – at least not yet. But I have a pretty good idea why Cord was here and not in Quentin. It still has to be confirmed, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate." He stopped and looked at all three again. "And you're not going to like it… none of you."
# # # # #
"You know, I would never have expected Mike to ever have kale in the house…" Jeannie was looming at the open door of the refrigerator in the Stone kitchen, staring into the crisper. She glanced over her shoulder at Dan Robbins standing at the counter, chopping a large beefsteak tomato.
He chuckled. "He didn't start buying it until about six months ago. He used to tell me he wouldn't buy something he'd never heard of, but I finally convinced him to try it. He still doesn't like it very much but he gets it for me."
Jeannie smiled warmly, turning her attention back to the fridge and starting to remove several items. "You eat here a lot?"
"Oh, about once a week, I guess. Sometimes more when we're working on a really tough one, you know."
"That's good," she said softly, closing the door and crossing to the counter beside him. She was pleased that her father had found common ground with the young man who was so different from Steve; at the beginning of their partnership she had worried that the ice would never be broken.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as she washed the kale and radishes. "Thanks for this," she offered quietly.
Dan had driven her home from the Hall after the reunion with her father; she had been distraught and he was loathe to leave her alone. When he offered to stay and have dinner with her, she jumped at the chance.
He knew Steve and the others were huddled together somewhere trying to decide what to do and how to do it and he longed to be with them, but for the moment this was exactly where he was needed. He would catch up with the others later.
They were quiet for several long seconds as she set out another cutting board and knife. Finally, trying to sound casual, she asked quietly, "So, ah… do you think he did it?"
Dan stopped chopping the kale for a split second then continued. "To be honest, Jeannie, I haven't made my mind up either way. But I think I know your father well enough now that…well, let's just say I don't think he's the kind of man who could beat another man to death, no matter how angry he was."
She had stopped moving and was hanging on his every word. Dan was watching her peripherally; he remembered what Steve had told him about Mike's attack on Cord in the Homicide office years ago, and he also knew that Jeannie was well aware of her father's seething hatred of Cord.
She took a deep unsteady breath. "Then he was lying to me?" she asked hesitantly.
Dan cleared his throat. "Well, maybe it was not so much lying to you as protecting someone else…" he offered, trying to soften the blow.
She turned to him searchingly. "Do you think that's it? Do you think he's covering for someone?" There was a hopeful desperation in her voice that cut through him sharper than the knife in his hand.
He didn't want to destroy her newfound optimism unnecessarily. He took the bunch of radishes from her and set them on the cutting board. "Well, that's one theory, wouldn't you think? I mean, you know, I don't think any of us – you, me, Steve, the guys in the squad – none of us can really believe he did it, so somebody's going to be looking that direction, I would think."
"But he pled guilty… They're going to send him to prison… in the next couple of days, Dan. Can that be reversed? I mean, if someone comes up with something that points to someone else…" She sighed in frustration. "Oh god, you know what I mean…"
Dan stopped chopping again and turned to her, smiling slightly. "Yeah, I know what you mean. And yes, if he isn't really guilty, and he is covering for someone, and we can prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, he can be pardoned."
Her eyes widened expectantly and a small smile began to curl her lips. For the first time in the past fifteen horrific and life-changing hours there was finally a small light at the end of the very long, dark tunnel.
# # # # #
"Okay, so," Tanner began after he swallowed his first bite of ham-and-cheese, "do you guys remember Oliver Johnson?"
Steve inclined his head, Healey frowned and Haseejian leaned forward, making a face. "That name sounds familiar…" he growled under his breath.
"It should. He was Cord's court-appointed lawyer."
"Right!" Steve hissed, shaking his head as the others nodded in confirmation. "He was an asshole, if I remember correctly."
Tanner chuckled. "You do. Well, turns out he was an even bigger asshole that we thought." He took a couple of sheets of paper out of the briefcase and held them up. "Okay so, before I go any further, none of what I'm about to tell you leaves this room."
He looked at each of them individually and after a couple of silent seconds, one by one they all nodded, frowning in consternation and confusion.
"Okay thanks," Tanner nodded, obviously relieved. "So, well, I'm still trying to get this straight in my own mind so… bear with me here. From what I've been able to piece together… and it's by no means a complete picture as yet… it seems that Johnson turned out not to be a real lawyer."
There was a beat or two of dead air then Healey said quietly, "What?"
"Johnson never passed the bar – in California or anywhere else for that matter. He was a fraud."
"A fraud…" Haseejian repeated mechanically.
"His law degree was bogus, and someone in the California Department of Justice seems to have uncovered that little fact about a year ago."
"A year ago? So why hasn't anyone heard about it before now?" Healey barked and Tanner shot him a scowl.
"I'm getting to that, Dan." Healey snorted an apology and the Homicide sergeant swallowed a smile. "From what I've been able to uncover – and I'm sure it's not the entire story but it's on the right track – for some reason someone at the CDOJ started to look into Johnson's credentials and this is when the fraud was exposed. Needless to say, there were a lot of red faces, to say the least, in the Attorney General's office.
"But then somebody realized that not only was the fraud going to shine the wrong kind of light on the CDOJ and its hiring practices, but that any case that Johnson handled during his time as a public defender was subject to review, and his clients could, and probably would, be granted new trials."
"Son of a bitch," Haseejian muttered under his breath as all the frowns deepened.
Tanner nodded in commiseration. "Anyway, from what I can gather, the powers that be wanted to keep everything 'in camera'. There was a tremendous concern that if knowledge of this got out, all hell would break loose, and they were probably right. But things got a little complicated and some of Johnson's clients, the ones who had been incarcerated on lesser charges – robbery, assault, extortion, that kind of thing – were released pending review of their cases."
"Okay, I can understand that," Steve said finally, not taking his eyes from Tanner's face, knowing there was more to come. "But Cord was in for murder. Surely they didn't let him out?"
Tanner shook his head. "As far as I can tell, anyone incarcerated for manslaughter or murder was going to remain in custody pending the investigation into Johnson's fraud case, but they were still probably going to be eligible for a retrial."
"So how…?" Healey prompted anxiously.
Tanner took a deep breath. "Well, from what I've been able to uncover so far, Cord was released by mistake."
"By mistake?" Steve repeated derisively, looking both stunned and angry.
With a sympathetic shake of his head, the Homicide sergeant continued. "Now I don't have names but it seems that whoever was in charge of going through the list of Johnson's clients accidentally – or so we hope - superimposed the records of several of the convicted felons Johnson represented. There is a possibility that the only thing that showed up on Cord's record was the charge of aggravated assault – not murder and not even attempted murder. And so he was released two days ago."
"Oh my god," Healey whispered, almost too dazed to get any breath behind his voice.
Tanner nodded, eyebrows elevated. Steve raised his hands to his face, covering his eyes then slid them down till his palms were together in front of his mouth. A tense silence filled the room as they contemplated what they had just been told. Eventually Steve lowered his hands. "So how did Mike know about all this?"
The black sergeant shook his head. "I haven't figured that out yet. All I do know is that Cord was dropped off here in The City by the prison bus that regularly transports paroled and released prisoners out of Quentin, along with eight other guys."
"He was just released?" Steve asked, his thoughts reeling and his emotions roiling. "No follow-up, no legal tether?"
Tanner shook his head again. "Nope, not a thing. He was dressed in civvies and he had twenty-five bucks in his pocket. He was, for all intents and purposes, a free man."