Bowers - Innocence On Trial

Published and distributed by Book Baby
In association with Script Star Media
Print ISBN: 978-1-54395-867-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-54395-868-3

2019 Rick Bowers
www.rickbowerslive.com
All rights reserved.

To Wynn, Neva, Helen, and Luke, with Joy.

In the time it took to write this novel, 409 men and woman
were exonerated of serious crimes in the U.S.

Innocence on Trial is dedicated to them, and all of
the imprisoned innocent.

Eden, New York
July 2, 2008
3:17 AM

Erin Lambert placed two hands on the precast concrete barrier of the pedestrian bridge that arched over the Genesee River.

Erin had no doubt that the forty-foot drop would end her pain. The violent crush of flesh and bone on rock and water would break the grip of the street-grade OxyContin, acid-laced weed, cheap vodka, and uncaring men who had ruined it all. The plunge would also erase the shame of dancing nude for leeches and losers. Erin wondered whether her sister strippers at the Bottoms Up Gentlemans Club would hold a wake for her using her stage name, Breeze.

My life is fucked, she thought, watching the water swirled below. Totally fucked.

At that moment, Erin heard the unwelcome sound of salvation coming in the form of tires on gravel. The engine stopped, the door opened, and footsteps snapped dried twigs and leaves. Tree frogs and cicadas screeched an alarm.

Go away. Erin didnt bother to look back to see whod crashed her pity party. Just leave me alone. Get it? Go.

No response.

For Christs sake. She raised her voice even louder, her cry riding the jagged rocks that studded the shallows upriver. What part of get lost dont you understand?

Still no response.

Erin turned to confront the intruder. She saw the dark outline of a man moving toward her. His shadowy presence stepped onto the footbridge, taking long strides. In his black sweatshirt, slacks, gloves, and boots, the figure blended into the night like the reflection of the black oaks on the dark water. His eyes, however, cut through the darkness, glowing in the moonlight like those of a predator closing in on his prey.

As the man approached, Erin opened her eyes so wide, her lids ached, straining to see if she could identify him. In the hazy moonlight, she could make out his face. The guys rigid bone structure and cold, deep-set eyes sent panic racing up and down her spine. In the dim light of the starry sky, she moved her gaze to his hands. The man twirled a steel pipe in his right hand and swung a coil of rope in his left. Her heart pounded, and her brain raced; fear paralyzed her arms and legs.

No! she screamed. Why?

He kept coming, picking up his pace.

Im sorry, she gasped. I am. Im so sorry.

Her hunter laughed. His cold, deep voice said, Too late now.

Her blood froze over.

Although shed contemplated death just moments before, Erin Lambert now wanted to go on living. Dont hurt me, she gasped, registering the noose hanging at the end of the rope.

She felt like one of those chiseled ice sculptures at a winter festival. Closing her eyes, she embraced the darkness, blacking out what she hoped was just a bad dream. When her eyes opened, however, there was no doubt that this was real. The intruder raised his right arm above his head and brought the tire iron down hard. The dull clunk echoed off the granite rock face.

White-hot pain cascaded over the right side of Erins face, circled her skull, and spread through her head, neck, and shoulders. Her knees buckled. Her eyes rolled. She dropped the vodka jug shed been slurping from and heard it shatter at her feet. She crumpled into a heap on the shards before curling herself into a ball at the base of the barrier. She felt another surge of pain as the black tire iron cracked against the other side of her skull. Now, she lay still, feigning death.

Wait. Her mind raced. Whats this? Hope flickered. Erin spotted the vodka jugs handle, still intact, and grabbed it, thrusting the jagged edge into the leg of her assailant. She heard a scream, followed by silence.

Now go.

No chance. The mans muscular arms lifted her up and propped her against the barrier. His skilled and practiced hands dropped the noose over her head and snapped the slipknot tight. He pulled hard, squeezing the rope into her neck, cutting off her air supply.

The man in black stepped back and wrapped the other end of the rope around a steel bar protruding from the concrete. Then, he lifted her limp body onto the top of the wall.

No! Erin sucked in a lungful of air, summoning the strength to scream. Please, no!

She saw him smile and heard him snicker.

She felt his hands rest on her upper body.

She watched him step back and set his feet.

She felt him push.

Erin experienced an instant of weightlessness as she plunged into the abyss.

The rope unfurled and snapped tight.

The cicadas and tree frogs went silent.

2019

The crumbling ramparts. The spiral guard towers. The thirty-foot concrete wall.

Squinting into the sun on a cloudless summer morning, Laura Tobias scanned the century-old, two-thousand-man, maximum security prison. The Attica Correctional Facility in remote western New York looked like a medieval fortress rising from a barren moonscape.

Attica, a rogues gallery of serial killers, gang leaders, pedophiles, and madmen.

Attica, a state-run torture chamber for the depraved, deranged, detested, and diabolical.

Attica, a monument to misery, misnamed a correctional facility.

Attica, the scene of the infamous 1971 prison riot and takeover, and the merciless police siege that left thirty-nine inmates and hostages dead. Adding to the death toll were three inmates and one guard killed earlier in the revolt.

Laura imagined what the scene must have been like on that fall morning, close to a half-century ago. The morning that six-hundred armed state troopers reclaimed the D-Block exercise yard the cons called Central Park. She could almost see the armored choppers raining tear gas on prisoners as they retreated under a hail of gunfire, and the police sharpshooters picking off the inmate ringleaders. She could almost hear the automatic weapons fire and the booming shotgun blasts tearing up convicts and hostages as the amplified command, Surrender and you will not be harmed! rolled over the living and the dead. She imagined state troopers firing at the cons, who wore football helmets and fought back with shivs, crude Molotov cocktails, and homemade spears.

Laura crossed the asphalt parking lot and approached the prison entrance, which was flanked by the flags of the United States and the State of New York. She passed a granite marker bearing the names of the eleven guards killed in the 71 siege. Laura pictured the dead prisoners and hostages lined up on the pavement, as they had been after the 71 assault. The hardtop under her black ankle boots had once glittered with a thin sheet of crimson, and the humid air had once been beaded with red droplets.

Fuck Attica.

Laura Tobias was a woman of high ideals and personal secrets.

The young lawyer looked up at the words, Attica Correctional Facility, etched in concrete above the arched entrance. Cracks in the grim faade cascaded in all directions like random slash wounds. Her gaze rose to the imposing turret and towering spire that made the place look like a castle. Disneyland for the doomed.

Laura hated Attica. Dungeons like this, and the hopeless souls locked inside them, were among the reasons shed become an exoneration lawyer in the first place. Torture chambers like Attica, and the miserable men locked inside them, were among the reasons shed never stop fighting for the wronged innocents.