back, then.”
He was tall, well over six feet. She was five-nine, and she wore heels, so she didn’t often look up to people. She watched him walk up to the counter with an easy saunter and then tore her eyes away when she realized she’d focused too long on the way his backside filled out those faded jeans.
Maybe she should have ordered hot tea. It would give her something to do with her hands. But her choice of drink revealed something about her psyche, and she wanted to avoid that. This interview was about her work.
When Benedict returned to the table, he held two steaming cups.
“You must be very thirsty,” she said.
“The tea is for you. In case you change your mind.”
Raleigh’s whole body tingled. How had he known hot tea would be her beverage of choice? Lucky guess? She did not like his presumptive gesture, but she chose not to let him know of her irritation. He might be trying to get a rise out of her.
She firmly set the tea aside, though, perversely, it did tempt her. Darjeeling, her favorite. How could he know?
It would have been prudent for her to do a more thorough background check on Griffin Benedict. She felt distinctly uncomfortable, knowing he had done some digging around of his own. He apparently had learned more than her win/loss record in court.
“I know you’re busy.” He pulled a reporter’s notebook from his breast pocket. “So we’ll get right to work. You don’t mind this, do you?” He set a digital recorder in the center of the table.
“No, of course not.” She had no reason to fear the recorder. She wouldn’t make any verbal missteps, and the recording might protect her from being misquoted.
“First, congratulations on your victory in the Eldon Jasperson case.”
“Thank you, but the victory belongs to everyone at Project Justice. It was a group effort. All I did was file papers.”
“Modest. I like that.” He smiled, revealing his blindingly white teeth, and she noticed his eyes for the first time. They were a deep, sincere brown. He had probably disarmed any number of female interviewees with that smile and those eyes.
She couldn’t deny a certain awareness of him as a man, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t show it. She met his gaze squarely and gave him a reserved smile, waiting for him to continue.
“Yes, well, let’s move on to the Anthony Simonetti case. Another death row inmate. In fact, most of your cases are for prisoners on death row, correct?”
“Project Justice is normally the defense of last resort. We deal with the most serious, the most urgent cases, many of which are capital crime convictions.” Raleigh relaxed slightly. Now they were in comfortable territory for her.
“So you believe Anthony Simonetti is innocent?” he asked with an obvious note of cynicism.
“An important piece of evidence has surfaced, which might exonerate Anthony,” she said, using her client’s first name in the hopes of distancing him from his infamous mobster father. Leo Simonetti was rumored to have beheaded one of his enemies with a machete.
“But do you believe the man is innocent? I mean, come on. He was picked up two blocks from the crime scene, covered with his dead girlfriend’s blood. He claims he happened upon Michelle Brewster moments after her murder, and that was how he got her blood on him. But wouldn’t an innocent man have then summoned the authorities? Instead of fleeing?”
Benedict had keyed in on the most damning evidence against Anthony. “He was overcome with shock and grief. He fled from the horror of what he had just discovered. No, he did not behave logically. Many people, in a crisis, do not behave logically.”
She knew this for a fact. She had walked away from the car accident that had killed her husband. Uninjured, but covered with his blood, she had fled the car and wandered along the icy road in her inadequate coat and shoes until the police had spotted her and picked her up. She’d been dazed, incoherent. To this day, she had no memory of the accident, or the few minutes before and after.
“So you do believe he’s innocent.”
She suppressed all thoughts of Jason, which could swamp her in grief at a moment’s notice. Sudden tears were not something she relished explaining to a reporter.
“I believe only in what the evidence tells me. Additional evidence has been found, and it has something to say.”
“The district attorney has said he will not reopen the case, that the right man is behind bars.”
“District attorneys seldom admit to mistakes—especially around election time.”
“So you think Simonetti didn’t get a fair trial?”
“That’s not the issue. I believe the D.A. did the proper thing at the time, given the evidence presented.”
“And what about now?”
“I don’t agree with the police department’s decision to ignore the gun that was recently found in the water heater next door to the crime scene—especially since finding the murder weapon is the one thing that could prove someone else was involved in the crime.”
“I understand that the gun is corroded. It can’t even be test fired, and the serial number is unreadable.”
How did he know that? Since the gun’s discovery had already appeared on the news, Project Justice had sent out a carefully worded press release regarding the foundation’s plans to find out if the gun was significant to Michelle Brewster’s murder. The release hadn’t mentioned anything about severe corrosion.
She smiled, saying nothing.
“And even if testing were possible,” Benedict continued, “aren’t you afraid it would put the last nail in Anthony’s coffin? That could prove embarrassing for Project Justice.”
The reporter had quickly homed in on the weakest point of her case. As he fled the scene, Anthony himself could have hidden the gun inside the neighbor’s water heater, which was easily accessible.
“I can’t comment as to the specifics of the case,” Raleigh said, stepping back onto her comfortable platform. She preferred that her arguments be presented first to a judge—not debated in the media.
“You always say that when you don’t like the direction an interview is taking.” Benedict leaned forward, too close for comfort. “I’ve read every news story in which you were quoted, watched every bit of available video in which you were interviewed. When a hard question is asked, you suddenly can’t comment.”
She tried not to show how much his intensity rattled her. Tough reporters had gone after her before. She was used to it. This was nothing compared to what she’d faced when filing motions on behalf of Eldon Jasperson, a convicted child murderer.
So why did it bother her so much? Why did this reporter bother her so much?
“Difficult questions usually involve the specifics of an ongoing case, which I cannot discuss. No mystery about that.”
“I would argue that the Simonetti case is different. It seems…out of character for you. You normally don’t take on cases without more compelling evidence.”
“Each case presented to Project Justice is evaluated based on a unique set of circumstances. We felt this case had merit.” Granted, it had been a hard sell to Daniel Logan, Project Justice’s founder and the ultimate decision maker. If the gun could be traced back to Anthony or anyone in his extensive criminal family, the foundation would be inundated with negative publicity, which tended to cause donations and sponsors to dry up.
But Raleigh believed in Anthony’s truthfulness when he told her he did not own—had never owned—a gun. She had even taken the extra precaution of recording her interview with Anthony on video, then having Claudia Ellison, the foundation’s on-call psychologist, evaluate Anthony’s demeanor.