"Mariah Stewart - Final Truth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mariah)

я╗┐ MARIAH STEWART
FINAL TRUTH
Prologue
Lester Ray Barnes was a man of many addictions.
Nicotine, alcohol. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Underage girls. Gambling. There were others, acquired over the years, but right now, it was the last that was sending that old familiar hum of excitement buzzing through his brain to remind him just how good he'd once been at playing the odds.
It had started when he'd overheard Dan, the night shift guard, chatting up Armas, the guy in the cell next to his.
"So, Armas," Lester Ray had heard Dan say, "guess you're gonna be looking to have your DNA retested, huh?"
"Whachu talking about?" Armas had mumbled in his lazy, offhand way.
"Heard CappyтАФthe lifer down on D?тАФhad his done over, month or so ago. Tests came back different this time."
Lester Ray could picture the smirk on Dan's face.
"What different?" Armas's voice moved closer to Lester Ray's cell now as he got off his cot to approach the guard. "Whachu mean different? What Cappy done?"
"What Cappy done is find himself a get-out-of-jail-free card." Dan pausedтАФfor effect, Lester Ray figuredтАФthen dropped the bomb. "This new test said it couldn't tell for sure if he did rape that woman."
"How come it couldn't tell?" Armas asked.
4 PROLOGUE
"They're saying the guy who owned the lab, he was messing up the samples. Like, maybe he tested the wrong stuff or something, and didn't testify right, I didn't get the whole story. All I know is, he wasn't doing it right and now they're saying there's no way of knowing for sure if it been Cappy or not."
There was silence on the cell block as the news was absorbed and processed.
"How can that happen?" Lester Ray heard himself ask as he, too, gravitated to the end of his cell.
"Beats me. That's just what I heard." Dan stood in the center of the hallway as if at center stage. "And I must have heard right, since Cappy's lawyer filed some kind of appeal with the court and it was heard this morning. Cappy's going home."
"Just like that?" Lester Ray's brows knit together as he tried to comprehend it. "Just like that, they're letting him go?"
"Judge said they couldn't hold him any longer. Gotta let him go since there was no way a' knowing if the test had been right. So, he'll be out of here as soon as he finishes signing them papers upstairs." Dan shuffled on down the hall, eager, no doubt, to spread the word beyond death row. "Don't that just beat all?"
"How'd he get them to do another DNA test?" Lester Ray called after him. "How'd they know to ask?"
"Somebody that worked at the lab ratted him out. And then somebody told a lawyer, Cappy's lawyer, and he went to the judge. Everyone downstairs is talking about it." Dan laughed dryly. "Me, I think Cappy's lawyer just played the odds. I'm thinking he figured, hey, some of the DNA got fucked up, maybe Cappy's was, too."
The guard paused, then half turned in the direction of Lester Ray's cell.
"Hey, you're the gambler, right? The hustler? You feeling lucky, Lester Ray?" Dan laughed again and continued on down the hall, talking all the way to the door. "Maybe talk 'em into giving you another test, maybe beat that date you got with the needle, Lester Ray. Warden's got your name on the calendar with a big red circle around it. Middle of June sometime, right? Be here before you know it."
PROLOGUE 5
Ignoring the taunt, Lester Ray called louder. "What lab was this, where this happened? You hear which one?"
"Fremont, I think it was," Dan said as he passed through the doorway. "Pretty sure it was the lab up in Fremont."
Lester Ray sat down on his worn, thin mattress, his forearms resting on his knees, and replayed the entire conversation with Armas and the guard over and over in his head.
Fremont.
Hadn't his own DNA been tested in the Fremont lab?
"Lester Ray?" Armas whispered. "How you figure this? You think this could be true?"
"Dan said it was."
"But Cappy say he done that woman. He tole us he done her, remember? Said he messed her up real bad."
"I remember."
"How could a test say he didn't, if he say he did?"
"I don't know." Lester Ray lay back on his mattress, his brows knitting together as he pondered that very thing.
First thing tomorrow, he was going to check into this. Call that lawyer the court appointed to represent him for his appeals. Find out what this lab thing was all about. If it was the same lab .. . if there was a chance, any chance at all.. .
Shit, he thought as he closed his eyes, maybe there was a way to beat his sentence, after all. He contemplated the odds.
The way things stood right now, his odds were a billion to one, definitely not in his favor. But if he could get them to retest him, too, the odds rose to fifty-fifty. Dead even. Didn't take a genius to decide whether or not to toss those dice.
Lester Ray mentally ticked off the number of times he'd bet the houseтАФand wonтАФon worse odds than these. Well, it was time to roll 'em one more time. God knew the stakes had never been higher.
Once a gambler, always a gambler. Lester Ray smiled to himself in the dim cell.
He lay awake long into the night thinking about how he'd spend his time, once he was out.
6 PROLOGUE
On Thursday afternoon, three days after hearing about the DNA debacle at the Fremont lab, Lester Ray sat across from Roland Booth, the attorney who'd been appointed by the Florida court system to walk him through his death row appeals.
"So what do you know about this DNA stuff?" Lester Ray folded his arms on the narrow table that stood between him and Booth, and turned his intense stare on the lawyer. "What are you hearing?"
Booth looked at him blankly, his expression a definite huh?
"Guy in here got out this week because of something being wrong with his tests." Lester Ray's calm whisper belied the urge to wrap the lawyer's tie around his neck and pull it as tight as he could. What the hell kind of a lawyer hadn't heard about the major fuck-up in the Fremont lab? Every inmate on every block in here knew about it. What kind of clown was Booth that he didn't know?
"The lab in Fremont." Lester Ray was practically growling, wondering, not for the first time, what the state of Florida had been thinking when they gave Booth a license to practice law. "They're saying the guy in the lab got the results all screwed up, then lied on the stand to cover it up, and some guys are getting out because of it. Don't you know what's going on around here?"
"Of course, I'm on top of it."
Lester Ray didn't bother to try to hide the smirk.