Death Row novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The Hearing
They sat me in a gray conference room in front of a screen on a cart, with an officer at my shoulder.
On the screen was a long wooden table in a state building, and seven members of the clemency board sat behind it in a row.
Evan stood at a podium on the left with his folder open.
Hauck sat beside him in a suit that was too tight across the back.
On the right side of the room, in the front row, sat Marlene and a man with a grey beard and wire glasses.
He had put on a dark tie.
He looked like a grieving brother.
"Counsel, you have twenty minutes," said the board chair.
Evan used all twenty.
I had never heard him speak when he was angry, and it turned out he was good at it.
He laid out the clean ring, the dentist's boating accident, the missing page from the care home's sign-in book.
He put two photographs on the document camera, side by side, and the seven faces on the board leaned toward them.
"These are a wedding photograph from a different county and a visitor's identification issued three weeks ago," he said. "I ask the board to look at the left eyebrow."
The chair did.
"Counsel, the beard and the glasses are different. The age is different. Anyone can be said to resemble anyone."
"Then ask Mr. Fell to stand and take off his glasses."
"Mr. Fell is a member of the victim's family. He's not on trial."
"No, he isn't," Evan said. "That's exactly the problem."
The chair said, "Detective Hauck."
Hauck stood.
He told them about the ring.
He told them in his flat courtroom voice, the same voice he had used against me, and for a second I heard it in my own chest and wanted to close my eyes.
"I am the arresting detective in this case," he said. "I am telling this board I have doubts."
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