Burrel looked over Hannah’s head to Robert Parekh. Hannah resisted the temptation to turn to him too and kept her eyes on the judge. After a moment, Burrel said—“A little leeway, Ms. Rokeby, but let’s not get carried away. And I hope you’re going to back those very strong words up with very strong evidence. We don’t malign the character of long-serving police officers in the courtroom without good reason.”
Hannah inclined her head and turned back to Pierce. “Sheriff Pierce, do you recognize that evidence bag?”
He cleared his throat. “I do not.”
“Okay, let’s go back a bit. Do you recal a breakin and attempted rape of a woman named Lana Cantrel in Victory Hil in 2009?”
Hannah raised her voice again for the benefit of the gal ery. “Lana was at home alone with her baby late at night. A man broke into her home and attacked her. Luckily, Lana’s husband came home unexpectedly from a business trip and interrupted the attack.
According to the police report the attacker escaped and left no DNA evidence behind. Do you recal that case?”
“I do,” Pierce said gravely. “Not al of the detail. It was a long time ago, but I recal the case.” God he was good. He came across like an upstanding guy. The kind of serious, measured, feeling person you’d want to have running your town’s law enforcement. Hannah thought about that moment in the bar after Sean had been beaten to a pulp. Now, Pierce. Now you get what’s due.
“Do you recal then that your crime scene officers did in fact recover hair evidence from the Lana Cantrel case?”
“No, I don’t. As you said, there was no DNA evidence in that case.”
“You don’t recal that hair evidence was recovered from the scene in the ordinary way and logged into evidence by an officer named Nicola Pandy?”
“I . . . no. I don’t recal .” For the first time, Pierce looked uncertain.
“You don’t recal going to Officer Pandy and threatening her?
Officer Pandy’s grandson had a record for pot possession. You don’t recal going to her, taking that evidence bag from her, that bag which contains the hair evidence recovered from the Cantrel scene, and then threatening Officer Pandy? Warning her if she told anyone about what you had done, that next time you arrested her grandson, it would be for intention to supply and it would be heroin?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So if I were to cal Officer Pandy to the stand and she were to testify to that effect, she would be lying?” Hannah waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the courtroom, as if she had Nicola Pandy right there, ready to go. In fact Pandy was retired and living in Florida. Hannah had spoken to her on the phone. Pandy had no family in Virginia these days. She would be wil ing to testify, she said, but travel wasn’t easy for her with her various health problems, and she certainly couldn’t have gotten to Yorktown with an hour’s notice.
Pierce didn’t know any of that though. His eyes swept the courtroom, looking for a woman he hadn’t seen in person for over seven years.
And the judge saw him do it, even as he denied everything.
“She would be lying, yes,” Pierce said firmly.
Hannah picked up the bag and carried it to the evidence clerk.
“Judge, we’d like to admit this into evidence please. It is hair evidence taken from the Lana Cantrel case. The chain of evidence is written on the bag. It tel s you who col ected the evidence and the person to whom they passed it. The name of the crime scene officer who col ected the evidence is written on the bag. Nicola Pandy.
Officer Pandy doesn’t work for the state of Virginia anymore. She is wil ing to testify because her grandson and al of her family have left Virginia and are therefore no longer in danger from Sheriff Pierce.”
Jackson Engle stood. “Objection, Judge. We have no information as to where this evidence came from. Anyone can throw some hair in a baggy and write a name on the front. This is hardly credible. And Ms. Rokeby seems to have forgotten that she is here to question the witness, not to testify herself. And even if Ms. Rokeby was a witness, which she is not, she has no direct knowledge of any of this. This is al hearsay.”
“Actual y,” Hannah said. “I recovered this evidence myself just over an hour ago when I broke into Sheriff Pierce’s private office in his home here in Yorktown. Sheriff Pierce maintains a col ection of duplicate police files and what appears to be voluminous blackmail material in that office, including a duplicate of the Sarah Fitzhugh file.
That’s where I found this evidence.”