Keller pulled her rental car into the strip mall in North Omaha. It had a payday loan company, a Dollar Store, and a nail salon. She scanned the address on her phone to make sure it was the right place. This was it, all right. Then she saw it, at the far end, a plain storefront with a small sign that read THE INSTITUTE FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS.
Keller found Louise Lester at a cluttered desk hemmed in by piles of paperwork. The place had no walls, no separate offices or even cubicles. Just a large room with about ten workstations, the hum of chatter and clicking keyboards filling the air. It reminded Keller of an old-time pressroom.
These weren’t reporters, though. The Institute for Wrongful Convictions was staffed by volunteers—law students, retirees, social justice warriors—which was why Keller had assumed it was open on a Saturday. She felt an electricity in the room.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Keller said. She’d been saying that a lot lately.
Lester gave her a fleeting smile. She wore no makeup, and wore a threadbare suit that was too large for her frame. Keller suspected there was an attractive woman hiding in the boxy attire. Her look screamed, There are more important things than looking pretty.
“Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for the Pines,” Lester said, her tone melancholy. Like the loss wasn’t just professional.
“Did you know them well?”
“Mostly Evan. He was a real advocate for us. A wonderful man.”
“I saw him in the documentary. He was really passionate.”
Lester nodded. “Those fucking filmmakers made him seem unbalanced. I would’ve never participated if I’d known what they’d do to him. They had the nerve to ask me to help with the sequel, and I told them where they could stick their movie.” Lester took a cleansing breath, as if she were stopping herself from getting worked up. As if it were something she’d learned to do as a child to temper the fire naturally blazing through her veins. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The Adlers just aren’t my favorite people. Evan was one of the finest humans you’d ever hope to meet. He didn’t deserve what they did to him. And Judy and Ira, they used him in the worst kind of way. They couldn’t care less about him or Danny or the thousands of other wrongfully convicted.” She waved her arm around the room. “They just wanted the ratings. To hell with the truth. They just wanted to tell a good story.”
“You think the documentary was just a story?”
“Absolutely.”
“But you represented Danny Pine.”
“Of course. But not because of the half-assed theories in the documentary. Because his confession was laughably unreliable. I’ve got two dozen other cases that are even worse. But those kids weren’t white hometown football stars, the victims not pretty white girls.…”
Lester’s eyes flared. They had a vibrant intensity. Keller usually didn’t care for true believers. She thought they often suffered from tunnel vision, saw conspiracies that didn’t exist. Exhibit A was the Adlers back at the farmhouse. But as she eyed the woman across from her, Keller could only hope her twins would live life with such zeal.
Lester continued, “So do I think the Unknown Partygoer or Bobby Ray Hayes or the boogeyman killed Charlotte? No.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The Unknown Partygoer is based on the hazy recollection of one kid at the party. He’d been drinking, and he’s since had a car accident that left him with a brain injury, so there’s no way to test his recollection. Also, someone else would’ve noticed if some guy in his late twenties was at a high school house party. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. You’re in the FBI, you know.”
“I know a lot of DNA exonerations involved mistaken eyewitness testimony,” Keller said, trying to find common ground.
“Try seventy percent. Seven in ten of people freed by DNA had been convicted based on bad eyewitnesses. Most of the rest, were…”
“False confessions,” Keller said, finishing Lester’s sentence and trying to regain control of the conversation. Keller’s eyes couldn’t help but lock onto the poster behind Lester’s desk. It was a disturbing black-and-white photograph of an African American boy strapped into the electric chair, his round cheeks streaked with tears as someone tightened the chin strap of the metal helmet that was too large for his head. Under the photo it read:
GEORGE STINNEY JR.
EXECUTED IN 1944 AT THE AGE 14 FOR KILLING TWO WHITE GIRLS