JO03 - Detour to Murder Read Online Free PDF

before he received the gash on his head. I looked up, stared at the wall, thinking.
    Quickly, I turned back to the interrogation report. There was no mention of a heart attack in his plea negotiations with Roberts.
    The District Attorney had lied. He lied to the courts, lied to Roberts, and with this document, the deceit was still very much alive. To put it pure and simple, it was all bullshit. With his lies and threats, Frank Byron had bluffed Roberts into confessing to a murder.
    I knew now that the authorities in Yuma County, Arizona could not have issued a murder warrant charging Roberts. The only thing they could’ve charged him with back in 1945 would’ve been grand theft auto, hardly a capital crime, which by now would’ve been dismissed. The statute of limitations wouldn’t apply, he left the jurisdiction, but who in their right mind would try a class D felony, thirty years old?
    I stared at Byron’s signature, a hasty scrawl. Why would he, the head honcho, put his name on a report that on its surface was a lie? Could it have been a cover-up? If so, what was he concealing? Maybe he didn’t want his office to take the case to trial for some reason. And by coercing Roberts to confess to Vera’s murder, there would be no trial, no witnesses, no evidence, and nothing in the public record. The documents and other ugly details—such as the autopsy report—would be buried away in the tombs of the City Hall basement, where they wouldn’t see the light of day for almost thirty years—until now.
    But then why would Byron want to sweep Vera’s death under the rug? Big shots like Byron wouldn’t have messed with a small-time murder rap. And Vera was definitely small-time, just a wayward girl, like a million others who flocked to the City of Fallen Angels. Unlike a movie studio mogul, politician, or a powerful mob boss, Vera’s death would’ve been an inconspicuous pinpoint on anyone’s radar.
    Byron left the DA’s office in 1946, less than a year after Roberts’s conviction and, after an unsuccessful run for governor, went into private practice somewhere in California, but that’s all I knew. I didn’t even know if he was still alive, but I knew if he were, I’d want to have a little chat with him.
    I set the file down and propped my feet on the desk. What kind of shyster handled Roberts’s case back in 1945? He could not have studied the reports, or he would have seen the same things I did. The guy wasn’t much of a lawyer. He sounded more like a movie agent, selling the rights to his story, and vanishing with the cash. It would’ve been obvious to a decent attorney, or for that matter, anyone who looked, or cared: If Roberts hadn’t killed Haskell, then he had no motive to murder the girl. Reasonable doubt; if the case had gone to trial back then, a first-year law student could have handled it. Might have even gotten Al Roberts acquitted.

C H A P T E R  4
    The next morning, I skipped breakfast and headed out, driving directly to the prison.
    “You’re late,” the guard, Marsh, said. “The prisoner is already in the hearing room.”
    “Yeah, the traffic, bumper to bumper.”
    “Forget it. I get enough jive from the inmates. C’mon, follow me, O’Brien.”
    I followed Marsh into the parole hearing room connected to the main dormitory. He moved to the back of the windowless room, where he stood again with his feet spread and his hands clasped behind his back. A rectangular conference table sat at the front of the room. Three unoccupied high-back leather chairs rested behind the table. Rows of hard steel folding chairs faced the table, filling the remainder of the room.
    Roberts sat slumped in the front row. I deposited myself next to him and set my briefcase on the floor.
    “We haven’t much time,” I said, “so I’ll be brief, Al.”
    He didn’t acknowledge me, just kept staring at the floor.
    “Listen up. I’ve found out something. May help.”
    “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill