Grain of Truth Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Grain of Truth

  Innocence Unit, Book One

  by V. J. Chambers

  GRAIN OF TRUTH

  © copyright 2017 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Elke Lawrence was called in to the office of her boss, the district attorney of Gathopolis, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that it wasn’t good news.

  The way things had been going for Elke lately, she wasn’t sure if she was ever going to get good news again. She was the laughingstock of the entire community, and she didn’t know how she was going to overcome the stigma when she tried to convince jurors to convict in her next case. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  But she’d do it. She’d been a prosecuting attorney for her entire career, and she wasn’t going to stop now. She couldn’t stop now. She didn’t know anything else.

  Everything else in her life, everything that she’d held dear, was crumbling around her. Her career was the one thing that she had left. She needed it. So, she would make it work. But that didn’t mean when she got the summons to go see Bernadette, that she didn’t start to feel queasy.

  Bernadette Lane was the district attorney. She and Elke were friendly enough to call each other by their first names. They’d been working together for nearly a decade. But that didn’t mean that Elke would necessarily call Bernadette a friend. She didn’t socialize with her after hours. She wasn’t friends with her on social media.

  She didn’t call Bernadette after she found out the truth about Felix. No, that honor had been reserved for her longtime best friend from undergrad, Lily, who now lived on the other side of the country and had three kids. Despite the time difference and her obvious exhaustion, Lily had stayed on the phone with her for three hours, bless her. Elke had sobbed and raged and wondered how she would ever keep going.

  She hadn’t figured out how to move forward, but it was happening anyway. At least, the world was going ahead, like a gigantic push broom, and Elke was caught up in it with the rest of the dust and trash.

  Elke walked down the hallway towards Bernadette’s office, and she tried to calm herself down.

  Maybe it’s nothing, she said to herself. Maybe she’s just going to express sympathy.

  Maybe. Or maybe Bernadette was going to tell Elke to take some time off. Without pay. She’d say it in a sympathetic way, like she was just looking out for the other woman, but it would be devastating. Elke needed this job.

  She squared her shoulders. She wouldn’t let Bernadette take her job. She’d fight for it. She’d bargain. She’d beg. If it came to that, she would do whatever it took to keep it.

  And now she’d reached the end of the hallway. There was a large window in front of her. It looked out on James Street in town. Cars were driving by at the staid pace demanded by the speed limits downtown. Silver cars. Blue cars. Green cars.

  Elke looked out the window and chewed on her bottom lip.

  She had almost gotten a silver car. She liked the way they looked. Apparently, a lot of people did, because there were a lot of silver cars out there. She noticed that after she had almost purchased one. Well, the thing was, it hadn’t actually been her purchasing the car. Felix would have done it for her, because Felix always handled all the big purchases, and her salary was just there for extra niceties.

  But now…

  She let out a breath and it came out shaky.

  Oh, hell.

  She couldn’t be thinking about this right now. She was wanted in Bernadette’s office. The office was just there. To the right. All Elke needed to do was to turn and raise her hand and knock on the door.

  Stop looking out the window and thinking about Felix, she told herself. Stop it.

  Obediently, she turned away from the window and surveyed the door to Bernadette’s office. It was dark-stained wood with a brass nameplate on the door. The door knob was polished bronze.

  But thoughts of Felix didn’t quite leave her. They never did. All she seemed to be able to think about these days was Felix. How could she have been so wrong about him? How could she not have seen the truth? What was wrong with her?

  She swallowed, struggling to get herself under control. She was almost on the brink of tears, and she couldn’t go into Bernadette’s office crying. That was out of the question. No, if that was going to happen, better to run off and claim something else, even something embarrassing like the stomach flu.

  Of course, if she did run off, then this meeting would simply be hanging over her head. She’d never know what it was about or why she’d been called in. That would be torture. She couldn’t handle that.

  She sucked in a breath through her nose, somehow clearing her mind by sheer force of will. And she knocked on the door. Two quick raps that sounded almost casual.

&nb
sp; “Yes?” called Bernadette from within.

  “It’s Elke,” she said.

  “Oh, come in.”

  Elke pushed the door open.

  Bernadette’s office was not large, although it was larger than Elke’s. It was probably the largest office on the floor, a long and narrow room with one window. They were housed in a building put up in the 1700s, and all the rooms were small. The ceilings were low. The halls were narrow. Elke liked working there, because it felt like she was in touch with the history of her town. She liked to imagine people going up and down the hallways in powdered wigs, liked to think of the drama of the American Revolution and the Civil War raging outside while this building stood tall. It had been a symbol of justice for hundreds of years.

  Bernadette sat in a desk that nearly spanned the width of the room. She looked up at Elke and motioned for her to sit down in front of her.

  Elke did. She tried a smile and then wondered if she oughtn’t have smiled. Maybe this was a serious meeting.

  “How are you?” said Bernadette.

  “Good,” said Elke.

  “I mean, under the circumstances…”

  Elke flinched.

  “Sorry,” said Bernadette.

  “No, don’t be,” said Elke.

  It was quiet.

  Bernadette leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. “I’m just going to come right out with it, I think. No reason to keep you in suspense. You’re being transferred.”

  “Transferred?” said Elke.

  “Just let me finish,” said Bernadette. “It’s a bit of a promotion, actually. You’ll be heading up the Conviction Review Unit in Haven Hills.”

  “Haven Hills? But I work for you. I work here.”

  “Well, you couldn’t very well head up a CRU here. You’d be reviewing your own convictions,” said Bernadette. “That would be impossible for you. You couldn’t be objective.”

  Elke was confused. She’d heard of Conviction Review Units, or Conviction Integrity Units, as they were sometimes called. They were units made up of lawyers and police officers who examined cases for the possibility of mistakes. They set people free who’d been wrongly convicted of crimes. “I didn’t think Haven Hills had one of those units.”

  “It’s new,” said Bernadette. “In the wake of that television documentary all about the case there, they feel the need to do some damage control. They think a CRU is the kind of thing that will help rehabilitate their image, rebuild trust with the people of the community.”

  Elke had seen the documentary too. It was about a man who’d been in prison for nearly twenty years. He had supposedly raped a woman, but DNA evidence was found that exonerated him, and so he’d been freed. The documentary had painted the entire justice department at Haven Hills as bumbling and inefficient. She licked her lips. “So, it’s a publicity stunt, then? I’m supposed to head up a publicity stunt?”

  “It’s not that way at all,” said Bernadette. “Listen, obviously, no one who works at the DA’s office in Haven Hills can be a part of the unit, considering the inability to be objective and all of that. So Arthur called me and asked if any of my employees might be a good fit. And I thought of you immediately.”

  Elke’s lips parted. “You did?”

  “Yes,” said Bernadette.

  Elke felt the word burst out of her. “Why?”

  Bernadette sat back in her chair. “Well, I thought it would be obvious after what happened with Felix.”

  Elke’s face twisted. She wouldn’t dare say that. That was cruel, a sick irony. Maybe she’d fought to clear Felix’s name, but it wasn’t the same. Not at all.

  Bernadette cleared her throat. “I’m sorry if I upset you. I know that your efforts were… misguided, but your technique was quite inspired, and perhaps you’d like to try your hand at using it for someone who deserves it.” The minute the last words were out of her mouth, she cringed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m very sorry.”

  Elke decided to ignore all of that. She couldn’t even begin to respond. Instead, she said, quietly, “You want to get rid of me.”

  “No, of course not. This is a good opportunity for you.”

  “I’m an embarrassment to you. To the entire department.”

  “That is not it at all.” A pause. Bernadette sighed. “All right, well, you must have considered that this wouldn’t go over well in the courtroom. You ask a jury to believe you that the accused is guilty, but you no longer seem as if you’re the best judge of character.”

  Elke’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry.” Another pause. Bernadette’s voice softened. “I can’t seem to stop sticking my foot in my mouth. I truly don’t think you are a bad judge of character, Elke. You did what anyone would in your position. I understand why you fought for him.”

  Elke was dangerously close to tears again. She concentrated on her breathing.

  It was quiet.

  Bernadette sighed again. “Listen, if you won’t take the job, I suppose I can find someone else to recommend to Arthur. I just thought this would be a good move for you. It will be easier than trying to work here after everything. It will be a fresh start. And there will be a pay raise.”

  But I don’t want a fresh start, thought Elke. I want one thing to be the same in my life. One tiny thing. I want a foundation, a bedrock. I need it. But that wasn’t going to happen, she realized. There would be no foundation, no comfort, no familiarity. The storm that was Felix’s sins would rip everything away from her. She would be bereft.

  “Elke?”

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “You always have a choice.”

  Elke raised her face to look at Bernadette. “I suppose so. In a way.”

  “So, what’s your answer? Will you take the job?”

  Elke let out a little helpless laugh. “Sure.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Being head of a unit generally meant one got to staff it, at least that was what Elke had always thought. But at the Haven Hills CRU, that didn’t seem to be true at all. When she met with Arthur Andrews, the DA and her new boss, he informed her that her staff was already selected and that they’d all be there when she started on Monday morning.

  Haven Hills was a thirty-minute drive from her home. It wasn’t a long commute, but she’d been practically able to walk to work before, not that she ever had, because it wasn’t practical to walk in high heels.

  Elke had asked for a key to her office early, but they didn’t have keys ready. They told her that she’d have her key first thing Monday. Which meant she and her staff would all be coming in blind. She didn’t like that. But DA Andrews said that there was no reason to rush into anything. “Take your time, settle in,” he said. And then he went on and on about finding the right case to start everything off.

  She had been right before. It was a publicity stunt.

  Andrews was mostly concerned with the image of the DA’s office, and because of that, he said that they wanted to make sure the first case was the kind of case that would send the right message. Andrews wanted the person they exonerated to be the right kind of poster child for the papers. Someone who the average person could identify with. Not a drunk or a deadbeat or a wife beater. A woman would be great, he said.

  Of course, it was up to Elke to pick the case.

  But it wasn’t really. This was going to be her first test. If she didn’t pick the proper case, then her time here was going to be pretty miserable.

  However, the more Elke thought about it, the more she agreed with her new boss that it was a good idea to pick the right case. Because she could use some image rehab herself, and she didn’t want to be associated with a deadbeat or a wife beater either. And the more high profile this case, the more that people would talk about it. And the more that they talked about it, the more that they would forget about Felix and forget about her role in all of that. And the sooner everyone forgot about Felix, the sooner she could go back to being a prosecuting attorney instead of running a ci
rcus freak show.

  So, that Monday, she arrived early, ready to tackle the cases and find herself someone innocent.

  Assuming there were any innocent people locked up in Haven Hills. It was possible that the business with the man on the documentary had been a fluke. She couldn’t believe that there were many innocent people in jail, after all. At least, she was reasonably certain that all the cases she had prosecuted in her career had seen justice served.

  If she had thought otherwise, she couldn’t have prosecuted a case in good conscience.

  As she collected the key to her new office, she decided that some people weren’t good at their jobs. Some people didn’t have the moral integrity that she did. She would be going over their cases, and she would be finding their mistakes. This new job had nothing to do with her past performance.

  Unlike the offices in Gathopolis, her new office was the fourth floor in a newer building, probably built sometime in the 1970s. It had an open floor plan with abundant windows that let in the cold winter sun. There was a conference room in the center, complete with a long table and various props like white boards, a projector, and a screen. All the other offices surrounded it. But the walls were all constructed of glass. The top half of the glass was clear, but the bottom was marbled and distorted to give the semblance of privacy.

  The whole place was bright and airy and unfettered.

  Elke missed the claustrophobia of her previous office.

  She expected to be the first person to arrive, since she was there quite early. She’d seen the sun come up as she was driving. But instead, as she walked down the glass-lined corridor between the conference room and the offices on the west side of the floor, she came face-to-face with Frankie Hart.

  “Oh,” said Frankie. “Hi.” She was clutching an armful of file folders, and her hair was falling out of the bun on the top of her head. Her skirt suit seemed somehow askew. But Elke wasn’t surprised by the woman’s appearance. Frankie always looked like that.

  Elke and Frankie had gone up against each other on a case about three years ago. Typically, there was a friendly camaraderie amongst lawyers, even if they worked on opposite sides of the fence. After all, most cases came down to defense lawyers and prosecutors sitting down together and haggling out deals. You couldn’t very well do that kind of thing if you weren’t at least a bit friendly with each other.