Chapter 6

It was almost eighteen months after the convictions of Lisa Evans and Blake Moore for the murder of Mark Evans. Enough time had passed that even Basil Smith rarely thought about the case that had troubled him for the first year after he had represented the defendants. He had checked the transcripts thoroughly several times on his own time, but could not find legal grounds for launching an appeal. There had been no failure in the law that he could exploit for the benefit of the two convicted murderers.

It was a relatively quiet Wednesday morning in the New York City offices of The Innocence Project. The receptionist had just returned from her morning coffee break and was taking a moment to check her appearance in a small mirror when the FedEx delivery man stepped up to her desk with a package. It was one of those large padded envelopes that are regularly used for interoffice delivery of the information and products that business and industry simply cannot do without ... and that have to be delivered yesterday.

The receptionist signed the electronic pad she was offered, and then watched as the very buff young man, clad in his summer uniform of shirt and shorts, left the office. The exact nature of her thoughts were for her alone to know, but the naughty smile on her face would have provided a clue to anyone there to witness the whole event. In this case the reception area was populated only by the attractive young black woman sitting at the receptionists' desk.

The package had been addressed simply to the office, so she opened it to determine what the disposition of its contents should be. Inside she found a DVD, a sealed black plastic bag with a biohazard symbol, and a multi-paged letter. Since there was nothing pressing for her to do at the moment, she began to read the letter.

It took her a few minutes to do that, and the range of emotions that crossed her face while she read the letter would have intrigued an observer of the scene. No one else had entered the office since the departure of the hard bodied FedEx man, so again her expressive reactions were unseen.

When she completed reading the letter, she sat in contemplation for a moment before picking up her phone and pressing one of the intercom buttons, waiting for a few seconds, and then saying, "Tony, could you come out here for a moment? We've just received a package that I think you're going to find of interest." She sat listening for almost fifteen seconds before she continued, "Yes, it does appear to be something that the team can work on. It concerns a couple of murder convictions that apparently should be reversed."

About a minute later a tall, red haired young man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans came out of one of the offices that opened into the reception area, thanked her while picking up the package, and then disappeared once more behind the door from which he had appeared.

The comfortably dressed young man was Tony Kelly, a recently graduated lawyer who felt that before he began chasing some high-paying Associates position in a Wall Street law firm, he should devote some time to the public good. He had worked at The Innocence Project for almost a year, doing mostly basic legal research for the more high-profile lawyers who had begun the office a number of years earlier.

While he knew that he wouldn't be staying there for the rest of his career, he enjoyed making a difference in the lives of some of those who had been unjustly convicted of serious crimes.

Once he had returned to the comfortable swivel chair that was behind a relatively cheap veneered desk, he placed the contents of the FedEx envelope on his blotter and picked up the letter, after taking a cursory glance at the DVD and sealed bag. He maneuvered his chair so that he could lean back and place his Nike clad feet on the corner of his desk while he read the letter. It had been clearly printed from a computer system in an easily read font, and he was quickly lost in its contents.

The Innocence Project,

New York City.

Re: the murder convictions of Lisa Evans and Blake Moore.

I hardly know where to start with this, so I'm going to just start at the beginning. This way I will be able to keep everything in sequence, and hopefully not forget anything important.

My name isn't of any consequence, but the information I have been asked to give you could make a real difference in the lives of not just the two convicted murderers named above, but in the future well-being and happiness of five other people, of which I am one.

The beginning that I am going to start with is the day almost fifteen months ago when a man walked in from the street in response to an ad that I had placed in our local paper. I was looking for someone who was computer literate to join me in my small computer services company. A short interview made it obvious that he knew at least as much as I did about computers and their use in business networks. I've since learned that he knows even more than me. In any event I hired him immediately.

This man, who I will refer to as Mark throughout this letter, was probably the quietest person I had met in quite some time. That didn't affect his ability to do his job, which he did very, very well. Within two months my business had grown by at least 50% due to his efforts, advice, and the long hours that he seemed to insist on working.

When he started working for me, he told me that he had just arrived in town, and hadn't yet rented a place to live. Since my business was still going through the pains of infancy, I had contemplated renting out a basement room in our home for extra income. I wanted to be able to plow the profits from my business back into it, making it grow so that it would eventually provide a living for my young son and I. I knew that I was taking a small chance when I rented this room to Mark, but there was something about him that convinced me that he wasn't any threat to us.

We began a routine that continues to this day, although it has changed in its dynamics. He spent the first three months in that basement bedroom, although he ate with us and the two of us would travel to and from work together every day. In the beginning he would always return to the office to work extra hours, time that he did not ask to be paid for. He would always tell me that he would rather spend the time productively, rather than in front of a television set or sleeping.

Over time, our relationship changed from one of boss and employee to one of friendship and eventually to what it has become now; a loving family relationship. My son calls him his Daddy, and that is what he is in every way.

From the very beginning I knew that something was weighing heavily on Mark's mind. Over time his extremely quiet nature, and his frequent habit of lapsing into deep thought about things that I knew nothing of, brought a confrontation of sorts between us. One afternoon when it was extremely quiet in the office, I locked the door and called him into my private office.

I was determined to find out what was bothering him so much, as I had begun to realize how my feelings for him had developed.

It took a while, but I convinced him to share what it was that was bothering him. Eventually he told me that he was running from a disastrous marriage, one that had shaken him to the core of his being. He told me his wife had betrayed him with a good friend, and that he had almost committed murder and suicide over it. We continued talking for the rest of the afternoon, sharing our feelings about adulterous spouses.

My husband had left me for another woman, and Mark had left his wife because of her relationship with another man. We had that common ground, and our talk seemed to somehow help him over one of the last hurdles he faced on the road to getting over his past life.

That talk also seemed to be the catalyst that brought the two of us together. We began dating on weekends, maintaining two separate relationships; employer and employee during the week, and man and woman on Saturday nights. After a month of that, things had progressed to the point where it made no sense for him to maintain his bedroom in the basement, and he moved into my bedroom with me.

Since that time we have been a family, although there were still times that I felt he was keeping things from me.

We continued in our relationship, growing as a couple. I know I love him, and I'm sure that he loves me and my son. I really should say our son; because that is the way he treats him. The boy will soon be four, and he needed a loving relationship with a father, something that his biological father completely failed to provide. He hasn't seen his biological father since he was an infant too young to even remember him.

This is where we found ourselves four days ago when Mark collapsed at work. It took three days in the intensive care unit before they decided that his problem was related to his heart, and that he was going to need open heart surgery to correct a condition that has apparently been there since his birth.

Once his condition was stabilized, he was moved to a private room. He was awake now, and we could finally talk to each other. When I first walked into his room, I could tell something was wrong, and that it was seriously bothering him. That was when he told me this story; the one that he was afraid would die with him if he didn't make it through his heart surgery. It's very important to him to finally close the door on this episode of his life.

He told me this story over the course of this afternoon, and once I agreed to type it up for him, and make sure that it got into your hands, it seemed as though the weight of the world had been taken from his shoulders. He is asleep now while I am typing this on my laptop, and my, I mean our, son is on the bed beside him, also asleep.

I think I will have most of the night to get this letter done. I'll still have to go home and create the DVD I'll explain later, and I also have to pick up a few other items before I can send this information to you. I really want to have it ready to be sent by noon tomorrow. The problem of getting it sent from some location that will not let you track it back to us also has to be solved.

The story my husband, and that is what he is to me, told me started almost two years ago. He was happily married to Lisa, and their marriage had almost reached its sixth year. One night, after they had enjoyed making love together, Lisa fell asleep, naked on the bed beside him. He doesn't understand why it caught his eye, but he noticed that there was a small, oval bruise on the side of her right breast.

At first he thought it was just from a bump, something that occurred when she walked into the corner of a piece of furniture at home or at the office where she worked part-time as a secretary. He said that it began to bother him as he lay there, as it looked more like a love bite than a bruise, and he knew he hadn't caused it. Thinking about it kept him awake for most of the night, as his mind imagined more and more erotic scenarios of how that bruise had been created. It was still on his mind the next day, when he went to work.

By the time he got to his office he had decided he was being foolish. After all, he had absolutely no proof of anything untoward happening. He had decided that this whole thing was just a circumstantial case.

Just before lunchtime the manager of the parts delivery division stopped by his office. The man had ordered a tracking device, for trial use, as a means of better coordinating their delivery fleet. He wanted Mark to evaluate it, and give his recommendations. Mark was left with the device, the software and all of the instructions for its use. It didn't take him long to decide on how he would test it.

Three days after he installed it in his wife's car, he was sitting at his desk and decided to check the monitor program to see if it was still tracking his wife's car. She had told him that she was going to do some shopping that afternoon, but the tracking device showed him that she had left home and gone directly to the home of Blake Moore, his best friend.

He checked back an hour later, and her car was still there. He didn't really believe that there was anything going on, so he called her on her cell phone. When she told him that she was out shopping, he knew immediately that something was drastically wrong.

That night he casually asked her about her day, and had to listen to her explanation about the shopping she had done. He told me that he was almost physically sick, but decided that he shouldn't just jump to conclusions. He decided to monitor her for another week, while he was out of town on business.

He was able to follow her car from across three states as she spent from eight o'clock in the evening until two o'clock in the morning at Blake's home. When he spoke to her the next day, she told him that she had been home all of the previous night. The shock of confirming her infidelity was apparently almost too much for him to handle.

When he got back from his trip, he was contemplating murder. He knew his friend Blake was a real ladies man, but never considered that he would go after Lisa. Likewise, his wife's betrayal almost tore the heart right out of him.

That first night that he was home he visited the elderly widow next door, ostensibly to borrow a wrench from her late husband's toolbox. Mark knew that her late husband had long ago hidden a pistol in the bottom of his large toolbox, apparently because his wife had forbidden him to keep guns around their home. He had shown it to Mark one day while the two of them enjoyed a beer together.

Instead of borrowing a pipe wrench, Mark had located and taken the revolver from the toolbox. As he explained it to me, his intention was to use it to kill Mark and Lisa, and then to kill himself. He decided that he would wait until the next time the two of them got together while he was in town. It wouldn't be a problem for him to leave his job and go to Blake's to catch the two of them together, and then deliver his ultimate revenge.

Since he was going to have to track his wife's car for several weeks, he had ordered one of the tracking devices for himself so that he could return the one that he had been given to evaluate. It was fortunate that Lisa and Blake didn't arrange a tryst for almost another week, because if they had, my son and I would never have had the great pleasure of meeting Mark.