Page 108 of The Right to Remain

“Are we done here?” asked Serena’s lawyer.

“Yes,” said Jack, and the prosecutor agreed.

They called for the guards, the door opened, and Serena left with her attorney. The prosecutor walked with Jack down the hallway to the visitor’s reception area.

“We have preliminary results in the fingerprint analysis,” said the prosecutor, walking. “Helena’s prints are on the gun that was dug up in her yard. Which is no surprise. It’s her gun.”

“Which she may have used to shoot her husband before burying it in the yard. Sounds to me like I have reasonable doubt, and you have yourself another suspect.”

“She’s not a suspect. She passed a polygraph.”

“A polygraph is not admissible evidence,” said Jack. “And I don’t believe in them anyway, unless it’s my client who passes.”

“Just hold your horses before you start pointing the finger at Helena. There’s a reason the analysis is ‘preliminary.’ There may be a print on the gun that doesn’t belong to Helena.”

“What do you meanmaybe another print?”

“It’s low quality. Our analysts are working to enhance the image before making a conclusive determination. If it belongs to your client, I’m open to considering a plea.”

“If it doesn’t belong to Elliott, I’m open to a dismissal of the indictment,” said Jack.

They stopped at the reception desk, where the guard had their cell phones waiting for them.

“I guess we’ll see,” said the prosecutor. She took her device and headed for the exit.

Jack powered on his phone, stepped to a far corner of the lobby, and dialed his assistant. Bonnie “the Roadrunner” was as fast on the phone as she was on her feet. She answered on the first ring.

“Bonnie, I need you to call your nephew, the tech wizard from MIT.”

“What about?”

Jack had more than a hunch about “what kind of friend” CJ was to Serena. “Tell him to go back six years on the internet. I want every photo posted on social media by Elliott’s mother, Serena Carpenter, before Austen Pollard was born.”

“That should be no problem. Pity the fools who think anything in cyberspace ever really disappears. What are you looking for?”

“Pay dirt,” said Jack, and the call ended.

Jack returned to the guard at the reception desk. The relationship between CJ and Serena was just one point of follow-up from the deposition, and Bonnie’s nephew was the right geek for the job. But Jack had other questions that only one person could answer.

“I’d like to meet with my client, Elliott Stafford,” Jack told the guard.

“Do you have a meeting room reserved?”

“No, but I just came from one.”

“That one’s booked the rest of the morning. So are the others. This could take a while.”

“I can wait as long as it takes. And while I’m waiting, please deliver Elliott this message: His attorney is not leaving this building until he comes down here and we talk, man to man.”

Jack stepped away from the desk and took a seat in the lobby.

Chapter 39

Jack’s wait lasted into the evening. Around eight o’clock, a corrections officer found him in the visitors’ lobby and delivered the news.

“Your client refuses to come down and speak with you,” he said. “But he asked me to give you this.”

Jack took the envelope, waited for the guard to step away, and then opened it. Inside was a single page from the real-time transcript of Serena Carpenter’s deposition. Five hours into his wait, Jack had emailed a pdf to the reception desk and asked the guard to print and hand-deliver a hard copy to Elliott. That one page contained the most disturbing testimony of all from Serena’s deposition:I told Elle if she went through with the adoption, I would pay for all the treatments she wanted.