Trace of Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

Quinn.”
    Ordinarily, it really pisses me off when someone tells me what to do. However, a gun changes things in direct proportion to how likely it is I think the person might use it.
    I turned around very slowly, my arms in the air. Whoever it was knew my name, so it wasn’t a random mugging. When I finished turning around, I recognized the twin brother of Cammie Whitaker. I couldn’t remember his first name. He had sat front and center at the trial and was in photo after photo. And he was the last person I wanted to see with a gun.
    I nodded. “Hello,” I said softly, cautiously.
    His eyes were bloodshot, and I thought I smelled scotch. “You’re a whore. You know that? You’re a fucking whore.”
    I inhaled and tried to exude calm. “I’m sorry…” I struggled to recall his name. Harry. That was it. “I’m sorry, Harry.”
    “You’re not.” He started to cry, and the gun shook in his hand. “You’re not sorry. You’re working to free that freak from prison.”
    “How would you know that?”
    “Those Justice Foundation people have been snooping around. I followed them. And now they’ve got you and that LeBarge guy on the case. Well, I’m telling you to drop it.”
    “Look, Harry… I can understand your pain—”
    “You can’t understand anything about that!” he snarled at me. He was a good-looking guy, but I could see the toll grief had taken on him. Whereas Cammie was forever twenty-three in death, Harry had grown older, and living without his murdered sister, coupled with, I guessed, alcohol, left wrinkles crisscrossing his face. His cheeks were mottled. His eyes empty.
    “I can. My mother was murdered. And putting the wrong guy away for it isn’t the way to peace, Harry.”
    “He’s the right guy. The jury found him guilty in under three hours.”
    In my mind, I thought that was more a testament to his incompetent counsel than guilt or innocence, but I didn’t say that to Harry.
    “He may very well be the right guy—and science doesn’t lie, Harry. People do. So if he’s the right guy, the tests I run will tell us that.”
    Part of me understood Harry’s reaction. Cammie’s family, poor Harry here, had to live with the fact that if the cops had caught and maybe sent away the wrong man, then the real guy was out there—somewhere. If that proved true, who did they have to hate, to be angrywith? If Falco was innocent, then they needed someone new to despise. That left the Justice Foundation. And now, thanks to Lewis’s ego and his fascination with C.C., that left me.
    “Harry…I don’t know who did it. I just know that I want the truth.”
    “You see him?” His eyes were deranged. “You see him on TV? He never said anything. So quiet. Maybe a friend of his did it, and he stood around and watched. I get the feeling he’d like that.”
    Harry, his hair prematurely gray from the stress of his loss, his eyes sunken, started sobbing. I moved a step closer to him, and he cocked the gun and steadied it at me.
    “No…no, you’re a bitch. You don’t care that my sister was murdered. That someone raped her. You don’t give a shit about anything but proving your case. Being famous. You and those Justice Foundation friends of yours. You’re all going to rot in hell.”
    “Look, Harry…put the gun down. You want to murder me? Will that bring back Cammie? Will imprisoning the wrong guy bring her back? Leaving him there won’t bring you peace, Harry. It won’t take away that gnawing panic inside.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It’s not bullshit, Harry. I know better than anyone that peace is elusive. And revenge isn’t as sweet as people say it is.”
    Harry, his face ruddy from crying, rubbed at his nose. “Just leave the case alone.”
    Harry shook his head and then took his free hand—the one not holding the gun—and covered his eyes. And that’s when I knew I had to move. I just didn’t like the idea of my life being held in the balance by a man who was probably three sheets