The Spellmans Strike Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

OBSESSION
    Twenty minutes later I was at Maggie’s modest office near the Bryant Street courthouse, observing a standoff.
    “I would like to go home for the day,” Maggie said. “Rae would not. And apparently she is accustomed to winning these kinds of simple debates.”
    Maggie and I stood in the doorway of the file room. Rae had made a desk of the floor and encircled herself with a mass of thick, yellow files. Her attention was so wrapped up in the cases she was studying that my shouting her name elicited only a “Shhhh.”
    I flicked off the light switch.
    “Hey!”
    Rae got to her feet and flicked it back on. I flicked it off. She flicked it on again.
    Back and forth until Rae said, “What are you doing here?”
    “I was called for an extraction,” I said.
    “I have work to do,” Rae replied. “Real work. Serious work. People’s lives are at stake here.”
    “You also have home work and Maggie would like to leave for the day.”
    “All things insignificant compared to this,” Rae said, sweeping her hand across the assemblage on the floor.
    Maggie tried to reason with her. “Rae, you’ll come back on Wednesday and pick up where you left off.”
    Rae simply ignored her “employer” and returned her attention to one of the files.
    “Where’s the circuit breaker?” I asked.
    Maggie led me into the break room and I flicked off the file room lights. When we returned to the file room Rae had found a flashlight and was continuing her work under its glow.
    Maggie is about five foot seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds. I’m five-eight and more than that. 1 Rae is approximately five foot two and around ninety-five pounds. Suffice it to say, Maggie and I had enough manpower, so to speak, to physically remove her.
    After a very brief consultation, we decided that it was the only way.
    “I’ll take her head. You take her feet. Watch out,” I said. “She’s a kicker.”
    Fifteen minutes later, in the car on the way back to the Spellman house, Rae was deep into her tirade about the abuses in the criminal justice system.
    “False confessions are way, way more common than you think. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t confess to a crime I didn’t commit, but you never know. Like, if somebody didn’t let me pee for hours and hours, I think at some point I’d crack,” she said.
    “I’d like to see an appeal on a conviction based on no bathroom breaks,” I said.
    “It’s not just that,” Rae replied. “There are so many ways a person can be wrongfully incarcerated: biased police lineups, coerced confessions, bad forensics, misuse of informants—the list goes on, and I’m not even thinking about police corruption, like planting evidence and stuff. Which I won’t mention in front of Dad because he’ll get all mad, but it happens.
    “So, anyway, Maggie shows me the files she has. These are all guys in prison who say they are innocent. She can only work on one pro bono case at a time and she told me to review the files and pick the three most likely candidates. How am I supposed to decide something that important? How? Do you realize that I am holding a man’s fate in my hands?”
    “Rae, do me a favor: Try not to let your ‘volunteer’ 2 work turn you into a narcissist.”
    I pulled up in front of the Spellman house.
    “Why are we here?” Rae asked.
    “Because this is your home and it’s where you eat most of your meals and where you tend to sleep.”
    “No!” Rae said, shaking her head, annoyed. “I was supposed to go to Henry’s house after Maggie’s.”
    “Why?”
    “The SATs are in two weeks and he’s helping me study.”
    “Have Mom or Dad drive you,” I said, unlocking the door.
    “Do you see either of their cars in the driveway?” Rae asked.
    She was right. Mom and Dad were out doing . . . I really don’t know what they do when I’m not around.
    “Where are they?”
    “They have a yoga class on Monday evening. Then they go to a vegetarian restaurant