Free A Very Simple Crime by Grant Jerkins

studios outside his house. His face was seen on television and in newspaper photos with captions that capitalized on his ironic name. Within a week of the tip line call, the chief of police declared him no longer a suspect, and the media pulled away. By then, Nice, a recovering alcoholic, had turned to bouts of heavy drinking and antisocial behavior. He yelled at strangers in the street and took to shoplifting. He lost his job. Lost his house. Three months after being cleared as a suspect, he was found dead in a homeless shelter lying facedown in a pool of his own vomit. Nice’s family sued the city and were eventually awarded four point seven million dollars.
    Frank Guaraldi. He and his wife, Janice, ran the Little Wonders day care and after-school center in College Park. When the ninth victim of the Torso Killer was identified as Gwendolyn Peters, Leo Hewitt, as the district attorney’s liaison to the police department, was the one who made the connection. Donny Easton, the first identified victim, and Gwendolyn Peters, the last, had both attended the same day care. Little Wonders.
    Suddenly, the case now had something it had never had before, a legitimate suspect—Frank Guaraldi. And, at the exact same time that Leo was making the connection with the preschool, almost as if by divine intervention, Carolyn Conners, a housewife from College Park, called the tip line and reported a smell like rotting meat coming from the Guaraldis’ house. Two detectives interviewed the Conners woman, and she stated to them that she had observed Frank Guaraldi unloading bags of quicklime from the trunk of his car at three o’clock in the morning. She also claimed to have seen Guaraldi remove from his trunk an object wrapped in a plastic tarp. Yes, she had said, although she could not say so definitively, the object wrapped in the tarp could very well have been the body of a child. A search warrant was issued, and Guaraldi and his wife were brought in for questioning. The search of Guaraldi’s home yielded a cache of pornographic photographs hidden in a trunk in the attic. The photos depicted, among other things, women in bondage costumes being urinated on by men. Guaraldi’s vehicle was impounded. Every print, fiber, and microscopic speck was analyzed in record time. A strand of hair was recovered that matched the DNA of Gwendolyn Peters. Mitigating this was the concurrent discovery of DNA evidence that matched up with nine other (unharmed) attendees of Little Wonders. The Guaraldis denied any knowledge of the missing children. Janice Guaraldi was released from custody and asked to remain available for future questioning. Frank Guaraldi remained behind bars and was held pending formal charges.
    In the heat of the media maelstrom that enveloped the city, attorney Monty Lee visited Guaraldi in his cell and offered to take his case pro bono. Guaraldi accepted gratefully and Monty Lee stepped into the limelight for the first time. He called the allegations against his client preposterous and nothing more than just that, allegations. He told the press that his client would sue the county for being held without just cause and being denied due process. The media ignited, and Montgomery Lee became a star.
    Letters were drafted by the DA’s office and sent out to the parents of children who attended the Little Wonders preschool. The letters asked about any unusual occurrences, inappropriate touching, evidence of violence, and unusual bruising. The children said nothing happened.
    At the bail hearing, Leo sat at the prosecution table with Paula, who had been handpicked by the district attorney, Bob Fox, to co-chair the case with Leo. Fox was carefully orchestrating every nuance of the trial. He and everyone else in the city government knew exactly how much was riding on the outcome of this case, and he was leaving nothing to chance. It was fuck or walk, Fox was fond of saying. Fox had told Leo that the positioning of Paula as second chair was a