Piece of My Heart (Under Suspicion #7) - Mary Higgins Clark Page 0,36
minutes after her own arrival, Marcy spotted Detective Langland through the front window at Babette’s and rose to greet her at the corner table she had requested for their visit.
“I took the liberty of ordering you a coffee,” Marcy said.
“Bless you. How are you holding up?”
“I’m not. I feel… numb. Like I’m forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, even though I don’t know what direction I’m supposed to be moving.”
“I’m so sorry we haven’t found your son yet. The good news is we finally got permission for the Amber Alert to go out. It should blast all over phones and highway alert signs any second now. And we’ve got hundreds of volunteers forming search parties, and officers volunteering to knock on doors, house to house, working off-duty.”
Marcy mustered a smile. “We’re very appreciative.”
“So I looked into the Darren Gunther matter, as you requested,” Langland said. The detective had called Marcy at precisely six this morning, probably when she woke up to her alarm and saw the text message Marcy had sent the previous night. Marcy told her about Leo Farley’s theory that a convicted murderer named Darren Gunther may have kidnapped Johnny under the mistaken belief that he was Leo’s grandson, Timmy. He and Laurie wanted to use Laurie’s television show as a way to approach Gunther outside the formal legal process. “With all due respect to the esteemed former deputy commissioner, I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than Leo and his daughter may have described it.”
This was precisely why Marcy had wanted to speak to the detective privately. Leo and Laurie were Alex’s family now, and by extension, they were Andrew’s and therefore hers. But how well did she really know them? Johnny, on the other hand, was a part of her. He was her heart. Laurie had already gotten Marcy all worked up about the possibility of Johnny’s birth mother going after him. Now she was convinced some person Marcy had never heard of had somehow managed to mastermind the abduction of her son from a prison cell. Laurie was a brilliant woman, but part of her talent in her job was having a colorful imagination for alternative story possibilities. On the other hand, Laurie had good reason to believe her father.
“My brother-in-law, a very experienced defense lawyer and now a federal judge, says he’s never seen a law enforcement officer with the natural instincts of Leo Farley,” Marcy said. “He seems to think that if Leo believes Gunther is planning some way to cheat the system in this wrongful conviction claim he made, then he must be right.”
“Have you ever heard of tunnel vision?” Langland asked.
“Sure, like when you can only focus on one thing. Like right now, all I can think about is my son.”
“Yes, it’s that, but it means something else when we talk about police having tunnel vision in an investigation. If a detective is convinced a suspect is guilty, they focus only on that suspect to the exclusion of other possibilities. It’s not that they intentionally try to frame anyone, but they see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear. They stop being objective, and view all of the evidence through the lens of the theory they already believe.”
“And you’re saying Leo Farley’s not objective when it comes to Darren Gunther?” Marcy asked.
Langland shrugged and took another sip of her coffee. “I’m saying it’s possible. It takes more than a book of essays written in a jail cell to gin up the kind of support Gunther has for his release.” She reset her coffee cup in its saucer and leaned forward across the table, preparing to explain. “During his trial, Gunther claimed that a third person became involved in the fight between him and another bar patron after they spilled out onto the sidewalk, and that this stranger was the one to pull out a knife and stab the bar owner. Obviously, the jury didn’t believe him, but Gunther has stuck to that same story all these years in prison.”
“Don’t all convicts say they’re innocent?”
“A lot of them. But not many of them have DNA evidence on their side. Any chance you know what touch DNA is?” Langland asked.
Marcy shook her head.
“It’s the ability to get DNA evidence off of skin cells left behind on an item. That kind of technology didn’t exist eighteen years ago, but we do it all the time now. It’s not quite like CSI where the bad guy