“Don’t you apologize.”
Keller drained the rest of her glass.
“Do you think there’s a connection with the father’s accounting firm?” Bob asked as he poured her a refill.
Keller’s money-laundering investigation into Marconi LLP was the only reason she’d been dragged into this mess with the Pines.
“I doubt it. Evan Pine wasn’t a big player at the firm. He was only on my interview list because he’d been fired,” Keller said. Fired employees were always the most willing to dish dirt.
“It’s a big coincidence, though,” Bob said. “The firm is in bed with the cartel, and the family dies in Mexico.”
“That’s what Fisher said, but it’s a stretch. He’s just using the connection to get us involved with a high-profile case, curry favor with State and headquarters.”
“So you think it was just an accident?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Excerpt From
A Violent Nature
Season 1/Episode 3
“You Fucking Idiots”
BLACK SCREEN
The sound of a murmuring crowd is broken by THE JUDGE’S voice announcing the jury has reached a verdict. FADE IN ON:
INT. COURTROOM VIDEO FOOTAGE
The judge reads the verdict, and the spectator section is a mix of cheers and sobbing. The judge calls for order, when a man rises. He’s pointing angrily at the judge, then the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, his finger landing on the jury box.
EVAN PINE
You fucking idiots! Shame on you, shame on all of you.
JUDGE
Order! I will not have outbursts in this courtroom.
EVAN
He’s innocent. You fools. You fucking idiots!
TWO SECURITY OFFICERS confront Evan Pine, a struggle ensues, and he’s dragged from the courtroom.
EVAN
He’s innocent. My son is innocent!
CHAPTER 8
EVAN PINE
BEFORE
Evan examined the wild-eyed man with curiosity. With the wrinkled shirt and unruly hair, the man looked like one of those homeless street preachers who hold Mass outside the subway. Or an angry cable news pundit on a bender.
“With the advent of DNA,” the man ranted, “we learned something that people still just don’t seem to get: we lock up a shocking number of innocents. And you know what? About a quarter of them confessed. So when people say innocent people don’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit, well, it’s horseshit. And teenagers falsely confess at rates much higher than adults. They just tell the police what they want to hear. One study of people exonerated through DNA found that forty percent were kids who falsely confessed.…”
Evan clicked the mouse on his laptop and paused Netflix. Horseshit. It wasn’t a word he’d normally use. But there Evan was, for twenty million viewers to see. He’d once made the mistake of reading the comments section on one of the forums for the documentary.
The father has lost his shit.
He’s so devastated, he can’t see straight.
Free Danny Pine!
Boo fucking hoo, I hope his son rots for what he did to that poor girl.
Off-camera, the documentary filmmakers, Judy and Ira Adler, were quietly stoking Evan’s flame. They meant well, the Adlers. They believed Danny was innocent. But in the aftermath, Evan couldn’t help being angry with them. For exploiting their private lives for public entertainment. For getting his hopes up. He clicked the mouse, and his face was animated again.
A voice spoke from off-screen—Judy’s. “But if Danny wasn’t involved, how did he know that Charlotte’s head had been crushed with a rock?”
“He didn’t know anything,” Evan replied, angry at the question. “Those two cops, they fed him all the details. Watch the tape, for Christ’s sake.”
The screen jumped to the now infamous interrogation video. It showed Danny with his head down on the table in the windowless interview room. The cops had picked him up at the house early that morning. Evan had been out of town for work. Liv had been running errands, and had missed the calls from Maggie.
The burly cop, Detective Ron Sampson, slammed his open hand on the table, making a loud smack. Danny jolted up, his face puffy and tear-soaked.
The other cop, Wendy White, with her frizzy hair and circa-1985 bangs, said, “Just tell us what you did, and we’ll work this out. You can go home.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Stop lying!” Sampson said, his voice showing the frustration of several hours of interrogation. Evan felt a sting of guilt that no one—not Evan, not Liv, not a lawyer—had been there to help his son. Danny had turned eighteen just two weeks before. Technically an adult, so the cops didn’t need to notify his parents. Still, if Evan had caught a different flight and not been in the air, or if Liv had just been home and … Evan stopped himself, deciding not to go down that road again.