Last Light by C. J. Lyons

cops in the hospital when they came to arrest him. The other apparently walked in on the homeowner confronting his big brother with a gun—there was a struggle and the man ended up dead. Cops had the gun with the younger brother’s bloody fingerprints, eyewitness saw them driving away from the scene, and like I said, they both confessed.” She flicked her hand in the air as if whisking a fly. “End of story.”
    “Then why are we here? They must have some grounds for appeal, some reason they need us to re-investigate.”
    TK rolled her eyes. “The guy working with the Justice Project, that David Ruiz, he says the confessions were coerced. That the public defender took the plea without even checking the evidence. The older brother—the druggie, the one supposedly too high to know what he was doing as he stabbed a woman and her seven-month-old baby girl to death and tried his best to kill her son—he died in prison last year. So now the younger brother, Michael Manning, he’s recanting his confession, asked the Justice Project to help him with a habeas corpus appeal.”
    “Tough sell. Especially after this long.”
    “Exactly. The Justice Project is handling the inadequate defense counsel part of the appeal, but they want us to re-examine everything, try to build a case for this guy’s innocence.”
    “Which you don’t believe.” Hard to ignore the skepticism in her tone.
    “Look. I like working for Valencia and her group. Love it when I can solve a puzzle no one else can. I’m not sure why she’s wasting our time on this one. Seems to me it was an open-and-shut case twenty-nine years ago and it’s an open-and-shut case now. But I want to go full-time with the Beacon Group, and the only way to do that is to go where Valencia tells me. And,” she glanced at Lucy, “I guess, impress you. How am I doing so far?”
    “You’re honest, I’ll give you that.”
    “Unbiased, too. I’ll give this job everything I have. If that means proving myself wrong about Manning and his brother, that’s cool. My ego isn’t tied to anything except finding the truth and knowing that if I can’t find any evidence to prove Manning’s innocence, then it simply does not exist.”
    “Good to know,” Lucy said with a laugh. She had to admit TK was refreshing in her attitude—so different from the office politics that contaminated most cases over at the Bureau. “Did you work investigations while you with the Marines?”
    TK shook her head. “No. I was a straight-up MP—pretty much busting up parties and fights, guard duty, maintaining discipline. Then I did FET deployments, two to Iraq and four to Afghanistan, and after that they sent me to work with Cultural Affairs.”
    Lucy had no idea what FET or Cultural Affairs duties entailed—planning parties? No, TK had the body language and command presence of someone who’d seen real action. She’d have to ask Nick next time they talked; most of his patients were veterans. “Valencia said you were awarded a Bronze Star. What’s the story there?”
    To her surprise, the younger woman flushed and looked out the window, away from Lucy. “Not much to talk about. Operational security.”
    Military speak for “mind your own business.” As in classified information above Lucy’s clearance level. She changed the topic. “Where do you think we should start?”
    “Me? I’d start with the scene of the crime, work out from there. Reconstruct the crime, focus on any forensic evidence we could retest with modern techniques. In 1987, they wouldn’t have used DNA, so that’s an option.”
    “If any evidence still has viable DNA and wasn’t contaminated,” Lucy put in. “Think how many cops and crime scene guys—hell, evidence clerks and the DA’s people—would have handled any evidence, left their own DNA.”
    TK nodded, conceding the point. “There were no signs of any sexual assault according to the state pathologist, so you’re right. It might be a long