a violent man.
“To be fair,” Jerry said, a hint of hesitation returning to his voice, “it would be one thing if some other random person’s DNA was on the knife—maybe a retail clerk who handled the sale. But the DNA just happens to match someone who stabbed a person in a bar fight eight years after Lou Finney was killed? Plus, your father emailed me copies of everything he had on Rollins for me to print out. Rollins pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault when he was nineteen years old, two years before Lou Finney was killed. The charge was for throwing punches, but Rollins attacked the victim at a party when the victim told Rollins to knock off this little party trick that involved throwing his knife in the air and catching it. So that proves Mason Rollins was already in the habit of carrying knives.”
“I agree it’s intriguing,” Laurie said. “The problem for Gunther, of course, is that he actually confessed.”
“Which is why he’s claiming that Leo made it up,” Jerry said.
“That’s a ludicrous position,” Laurie said, “but I guess someone who doesn’t know my father personally might look at the DNA evidence and wonder. Besides, my understanding is that Gunther initially claimed that Lou Finney was the one who originally pulled the knife on him and Pratt, and that he was struggling to get control over it when Finney was pushed toward him. Only after my father went back to the station to question him again did he admit that he was in a blind rage because that woman in the bar rejected him.”
“Jane Holloway,” Jerry added. Laurie was always impressed by Jerry’s ability to quickly commit to memory the names of everyone involved in one of their cases.
“Yes. But here’s my point: if a detective were going to fabricate a confession, why would he make up two versions of the admission? My father could have simply said that Gunther fessed up during the initial interrogation. It makes no sense.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Jerry said. “Gunther concedes that he made the first statement—about Finney falling on his own knife. He claims he only said it because he was exhausted and half-drunk, and both of the interrogating investigators refused to believe that he was innocent. So he offered them a story that he thought might get them to back off.”
“Both?” Laurie asked. “I thought it was just Gunther and my father, alone in the room.”
“Not at that point. It was Leo and another detective named Mike Lipsky.”
Laurie remembered the man her father referred to as Hot Lips well. “My dad’s former partner. Salt of the earth. He passed away about six years ago.”
“Well, Gunther says they didn’t seem to buy his story about the stabbing being an accident, but eventually they left the interrogation room and had him booked for murder. Then your dad came back alone a couple hours later, badgering him to take more blame for the homicide. Gunther insists that he stuck to the same story, and then suddenly your father stood up and began claiming he’d confessed to intentional murder instead.”
Laurie realized that in her rush to move quickly in the hopes of finding Johnny, she had not been careful enough in gathering the specifics of the interrogation from her father. When she asked Leo why he was alone with Gunther during the confession, he explained that Lipsky had gone home by then. She now realized that both detectives had left after the initial round of questioning, and only Leo had returned to pursue the “spurned Casanova” angle. “My father warned me that Gunther is cunning. Pretty convenient that he only denies the part of the conversation when he and my father were alone in the room together. It’s easier to accuse one detective of perjury than two.”
Grace was nodding along. “He may not have known that one of the detectives had passed.”
“He probably also had no idea just how hard it would be to malign someone with Leo Farley’s reputation,” she said. “Dad thinks Gunther would have been released by now, except the DA’s Office knows it will have a major problem with the NYPD if they essentially concede that the former first deputy commissioner framed an innocent man.”
“Not to mention the defendants who would come out of the woodwork claiming they were set up, too,” Jerry added.
“But if my father were to admit it? Gunther would walk out of prison tonight, a free man.”
Jerry shook his head. “I’m starting to understand