She wanted to vomit. She wanted to lash out. For the first time in her life she found herself wishing for a weapon. A gun. A knife. She could use it too. She would be capable of it. Here was pure destruction. A psychopath who had kil ed her father, destroyed her mother, and even now was attaching himself like a leech to good people.
“Hel o,” he said. He had blue eyes, dark lashes, and an almost feminine mouth. She couldn’t stop cataloguing his features, as if she could find the answers to al of her questions in his face. How was it possible that he should look so normal?
“I’m Sean.” Sean paused and waited for Hannah to introduce herself. When she didn’t, he continued. “This is Hannah. We’ve both been assigned to work on your case.”
“It’s good to meet you both,” Dandridge said. “Thank you for your work.” He took a seat on one side of the table and they sat opposite him. He rested both arms on the table and leaned forward. “Where’s Rob? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s tied up,” Sean said. “With the hearing next week, he’s been working on motions and preparing arguments. He wants to be here, but he also wants to do his best work for you.”
“I get that,” Dandridge said. “But I need to prepare too. I’m going to be in court next week, with Pierce and Engle and al of the rest of them out to get me. To get that needle in my arm.” He tapped at his inner right elbow with two fingers of his left hand. The movement was sudden and unexpected and despite herself, Hannah flinched.
Dandridge’s eyes went to her briefly before returning to Sean. “I need to talk to Rob. Get my head straight before it al kicks off.”
“I know,” Sean said. “Rob knows that too. He’s going to try to get down tomorrow, but worst case he’s booked a video meeting. And you know we’l have at least an hour with you in Yorktown, pretrial.”
Dandridge grumbled. “That video conferencing tech is a heap of shit. It works maybe a third of the time, if you’re lucky. The rest of the time you get hooked up to the wrong meeting, or the audio goes out.
And I don’t trust the prison not to listen in, do you?”
Sean grimaced. “Maybe not.”
“And fucking Yorktown. The last time I was there they broke my ribs. They gave me internal bleeding. I was lucky not to lose my goddamn liver. Going back there is going to make my PTSD worse, you know that? I don’t know why Rob didn’t get a change of venue. I mean, given everything . . . You know, even the feds saw that I was set up. How does it make sense to send me back to the same prosecutor and the same court system that sent me down in the first place? You tel me that.”
There was no way to answer that question.
“We found Neil Prosper,” Hannah said. She wanted to hurt him, even if it was only in some smal way.
“Wel , goddamn. You found Neil?”
“He changed his name and moved to North Carolina two days after you were arrested,” Hannah said. “He hasn’t been wil ing to talk to us. He won’t answer our questions. He hasn’t backed up your alibi.”
Dandridge’s expression darkened and he shook his head.
“Goddamnit. Goddamn. Pierce got to him. You can take that to the bank.”
“Rob is thinking about subpoenaing him,” Sean said.
Dandridge shook his head. “There’s no point. Neil’s not going to go up against Pierce for me. We never had that kind of friendship, not even back in the day. And now? After eleven years? I don’t think so.”
“We should at least try . . .” But Dandridge just kept shaking his head darkly and Sean let his voice trail off. There was silence for an uncomfortable moment.
“Wel ,” Dandridge said in the end. “What else have you got for me?”
Sean shifted in his seat again. “Most of the arguments in court wil be about pul ing apart the old evidence that they used to convict you. It’s real y about pointing out to the court—to a new judge who wil be very aware of the media glare—just how weak and unreliable that evidence is. And we’l be putting you on the stand to talk about the beating Pierce gave you, that wil be new.”
“What he did was beat me to a pulp. I was pissing blood for a month afterward. And I went cold turkey in their jail. No support. It’s a goddamn miracle I didn’t die.” His expression darkened. “Maybe that’s what they wanted. Wouldn’t that have wrapped things up nice and neat? Junkie rapist dies in prison. So sad.”