Page 11 of Ride the Lightning

“I just do.”

“Stop focusing on the negative things that could happen and trust your friend to have your best interests at heart. It’s how I ended up with you as my intern. Maybe you’ll have a great time.”

Avery smiled. “An excellent point.” He tipped his head to the side and scrutinized Jonah. “You seem extra broody. Is something wrong?”

The door swung open, and two agents entered the restroom, saving Jonah from having to answer. He wasn’t ready to talk about Marla to anyone yet. He’d half-convinced himself he’d dreamed the entire conversation until Jonah saw her leaving in a cab at eight in the morning. Marla didn’t like to be awake before noon or show her face to the world before two. Jonah regretted he hadn’t insisted on driving her to her appointment with the oncologist.

“There will be times when I might need to take you up on your kindness, baby, but tomorrow isn’t one of them,” she’d said on his porch the previous night.

The two agents, Paxton and Meyers, looked between Jonah and Avery as if they’d interrupted something. Paxton wore a bemused expression while Meyers maintained his typical stony façade. The partners were as different as day and night—in looks as much as their temperaments. Paxton was tall and whipcord-lean while Meyers was short and built like a block of ice.

“Avery, Mary is looking for you,” Paxton said after a few awkward seconds. “She said you have a visitor in reception.”

Avery gasped. “He’s here? I thought we were meeting at the restaurant.”

“Hot date?” Meyers asked.

“Blind date,” Avery said. He moved past the two agents to wash and dry his hands.

“During your lunch hour?” Paxton asked.

“You explain it to them,” Avery said over his shoulder on his way to the door.

The two agents looked at Jonah expectantly, so he repeated what Avery had said.

“That’s damn smart,” Meyers said. Paxton nodded.

Standing around the men’s room and chatting with these guys wasn’t on his list of things he wanted to do. Jonah tossed his wet paper towel in the wastebasket and headed toward the door. “See you around.”

“Hey, St. John,” Paxton called out.

Jonah sent a silent plea for mercy as he slowly turned to face the men. “Yeah?”

“For what it’s worth, I think you got a raw deal yesterday with Trexler,” Paxton said.

Meyers nodded.

“The man has it out for you,” Paxton said.

“Real bad,” Meyers added.

“Thanks for the heads-up, guys,” Jonah said, although they weren’t telling him anything new. “See you later.”

He retreated to his office and decided to work through his lunch hour since it might be the only free time he had to look into Earl Ison’s murder.

Before Jonah had joined the Savannah branch of the GBI, the process would’ve required an agent to dig through moldy, dusty case files at a storage facility. Jonah had overseen digitalizing thousands of case files and uploading them into the system so Stella could access prior case history when looking for patterns in crimes. It was one of the things Butch Trexler bitched the most about because it had cost the agency a substantial chunk of money and time to make it all happen. It didn’t matter what Trexler said, because Jonah and Stella had solved three cold cases and discovered patterns among unsolved investigations when no one else had. In each instance, it was the tiniest piece of evidence tying the crimes together. Jonah had also worked with Savannah PD on challenging cases to develop criminal profiles based on evidence they’d gathered. Trexler could bitch all he wanted about technology being unreliable, but Jonah’s track record said otherwise.

Once back in his office, Jonah bypassed the GBI-issued computer on his desk and went straight to Stella, who occupied her own corner in his office. He typed Earl’s name into the database, and within minutes, he had access to the entire case file, which was pitifully thin for a homicide investigation. There weren’t pages upon pages of interview notes like he expected to find. The handwriting was barely legible on what was there, but Jonah managed to make out most of what the investigators wrote.

On June 12, 1982, a construction crew had found Earl Ison’s body on a jobsite when they arrived for work. He’d been severely beaten, strangled with one of his stockings, and someone had shoved a pair of silk underwear in Earl’s mouth. They were presumed to be his since his skirt was hiked up to his waist, exposing his bare genitals for everyone to see. The crime scene photos didn’t show the staging, however, because the investigator documented that one of the workers on the crew lowered the skirt before the cops arrived. Jonah briefly wondered what pronouns he should use but decided to stick with Earl, he, and him because it was how Marla had referred to her friend, and she knew Earl best. Both of Earl’s stilettos had come off during the struggle, and one heel had snapped off completely from the sole.

After studying the disturbing crime scene photos, Jonah continued looking through the rest of the file, noting a few meager interview notes with the construction workers but nothing else until October 1995 when Morrisey and Milton headed to Georgia State Prison in Reidsville to interview Bo Cahill after he confessed to killing Earl. The detectives hadn’t documented any of the conversations they’d had with Earl’s friends, family, or coworkers, and that was just sloppy policework. Marla claimed to have made a considerable nuisance of herself but none of that was noted in the file either. Cops often documented when someone was highly invested in a case because sometimes that person was the perpetrator making sure the police weren’t getting too close to them.

According to the Cahill interview, Bo was in Savannah visiting friends when he met Lola at a bar. Bo didn’t realize Lola was a man dressed in drag until they left together. He claimed to have gone into a rage when he found out. Cahill had punched Earl hard enough to knock him out with one blow, then drove him someplace isolated, which happened to be a new neighborhood under construction. Bo stated he dragged an unconscious Earl out of the car and into an empty house, then strangled the prone man to death with one of the stockings. Afterward, Cahill reportedly masturbated with the silk panties and shoved them in Earl’s mouth. He deliberately left the skirt up to shame him. Bo stated Earl had never regained consciousness and hadn’t put up a struggle.

Morrissey or Milton had noted in the file that the underwear stuffed in Earl’s mouth were not public knowledge, and the coroner had found trace evidence of semen on the purple fabric. Jonah rolled around what he knew about DNA testing. At the time of Earl’s death, they weren’t using the kind of sophisticated analysis they were today. Techniques would have been available when Bo confessed thirteen years later though. There was no record they tested the semen to tie it to Cahill. The confession matched what the physical evidence told them, and he stated details only the killer knew. Cahill was heading to the electric chair the following week, so why waste taxpayer money for tests that wouldn’t be used to convict him? Was that the logic they used to justify policework that was negligent at best and criminal at worst?

There’s no way in hell Jonah would’ve accepted that as the only bit of proof. They’d made no attempt to corroborate Cahill was even in the area when Earl died. Bo Cahill said, “I did it,” and Morrisey and Milton said, “Okay.” It was probably followed with, “Thank God. Now we can get that Marla bitch off our asses.”