Free (2012) Cross-Border Murder by David Waters

the game. The Expos had yet to get someone past first base.
    “But,” Ryan said, “the charge would probably have been downgraded, if and when he decided to explain how and why it had happened.”
    “But he was innocent.”
    It was Ryan’s turn to study her face. “Tom has told me of your certainty about his innocence. Why are you so sure? The fact that the case was dropped only acknowledges his legal innocence.”
    “The legal question doesn’t interest me. The law,” Gina scoffed, “is an ass. Everyone knows that. It’s making amends for what happened to him after he was released that I care about. I care about that because of how he will be remembered, because of what it might mean to my mother, and because of what it might mean to me.”
    Her emotional concerns had not side-tracked him. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
    I would have been happier if he had shown some sympathy. I put it down to his years of being a hard-nosed detective. But Gina did not seem to care. It was almost as if she wanted him to be tough and unemotional.
    “He wrote me a long letter a month before he died.” This was news to me. Ryan and I both waited. “I think he knew he was dying. He wanted to be sure I knew everything that he knew about what had happened. He wanted to be sure, also, that I would continue to believe in his innocence after he was dead. He emphasized that a number of times and with a reason.”
    “What reason?” I asked.
    “Because he believed the real murderer, to protect himself, would subtly let the word out, once my father was dead, that my father had indeed been guilty.”
    “Did he suspect anyone in particular?” I asked. I was annoyed that she had kept this pertinent bit of information from me.
    “No.”
    I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. Surely he must have advanced some thoughts about the possible motives of others who had been part of that inner circle. But maybe not. I had little experience about letters from dying men. The Expos began a rally and our attention was forced back to the game by the screams of the die-hard fans who were still in the park.
    I was surprised to find myself watching with lukewarm enthusiasm. Last year’s strike still bothered me. So too did the loss of key players to teams with big money south of the border. I used to listen to every game, sometimes late into the night when the Expos were playing on the West Coast. Beside me Phil Ryan was shouting encouragement. I looked at the field of players and their hunger for the big bucks. I could no longer cheer for them now, anymore than I could cheer for Ted Turner or members of the Saudi royal family. The rally petered out. A glum silence descended on the stadium. Gina resumed where she had left off.
    “You see, he really did not know whom to suspect because he had lost his grip. That’s also why he could no longer teach or function as an historian. To teach history you have to believe in your capacity to understand at least something about what has happened in the past. He had believed in his friends at the university. People he thought he understood, people he believed understood him. With his arrest all of that got turned upside down. Events had traumatized him. He could make no sense of what had happened. As he put it in the letter, his world had turned into a purgatory of smoke and mirrors. When he opened a book or tried to teach, words seem to float about and change meaning on him in mid-sentence.”
    “He could have got counseling.” As soon as I spoke, I wanted to take back the words. What do I know about such things?
    “He tried that. But it didn’t work. He wrote that he became a frightened man. Never knowing when a few days of normalcy would be replaced by weeks of horror and despondency. It was his fears, the humiliation, and the shame he felt at his inability to control those fears that finally drove him away from us. My mother was aware of what he was going through. I wasn’t. I only saw