Chapter 5 — Derek Chu

Derek Chu was not difficult to find. He had left the parking garage job after the trial — he'd mentioned in his testimony that the publicity made him uncomfortable — and was now working at a dry-cleaning shop on Merchant Street, three miles from the courthouse where Gerald Morrow had been convicted.He recognized Nora immediately when she walked in. The recognition was not the neutral recognition of a witness seeing a face from the news. It was the specific recognition of someone who has been carrying a thing and has been waiting, with guilty relief, for someone to come and take it."Detective Voss," he said."I'm not here officially," she said. "I want to talk to you about the Briar case."He looked at the other employee — a teenager doing alterations in the back — and said something in Cantonese that the teenager responded to by disappearing through a rear door. Then Derek Chu turned the sign on the front door to Closed.They sat in the back, on plastic chairs, among hanging clothes in plastic sheaths."I've been waiting for someone to come," he said. He said it with the exhaustion of a person who has been holding their breath for over a year. "After the verdict I told myself it was done, it was over, I said what I saw. But I didn't sleep right. Not since the verdict.""Tell me about the first array," Nora said.He looked at his hands. "About two days before you showed me photos — before you, Detective Voss — another man came to see me. He didn't come to the garage. He called me and said he was from the police and he needed to verify some things. We met at a diner.""What did he look like?""Fifties. Heavy. Grey hair. He wore a suit, not a uniform. He had a badge but I didn't look at the number — I was nervous, I just looked at the badge."Whitmore: fifty-eight, heavyset, grey hair.She kept her face neutral. "What happened at the meeting?""He showed me photographs. Nine of them, I think. He asked me to look at them and tell him if I recognized anyone from the garage that night. I looked. I told him I saw a man near the car, dark jacket, medium height, heavyset — I said that in my statement too. I looked at all nine photos and I said I wasn't sure. None of them was a clear match.""Morrow wasn't in those nine photos.""I don't know. Maybe he was and I just wasn't sure. But when I said I wasn't sure, the man — he didn't push it. He said that was fine, that my description was very helpful, that they might come back to me. He left." Derek paused. "Two days later you came. And you had photos — six photos, not nine. And I looked at them and there was one man who matched what I remembered saying. Dark jacket, heavy, medium height. I said it was him.""You said it was him," Nora said carefully."But I was saying what fit the description I'd already given. Not — I didn't see him in the garage and think 'yes, that's the man.' I looked at who matched what I'd already said." He was very still. "After the trial I thought about it more. I started thinking: what if the reason I wasn't sure in the first photos was because the person I actually saw wasn't in those photos at all? What if the description I gave was accurate but the man you showed me was just the person who best fit it in a small lineup?""Why didn't you come forward?""Because a man was already convicted. Because I wasn't sure. Because—" He stopped. "Because the second detective came back to see me after the trial. The first one. The heavy grey-haired one."Nora went still."He congratulated me on being a good witness. He said the department appreciated my cooperation. He said that witnesses who performed well were remembered." A pause. "And then he said something I didn't understand until later. He said: 'People who reopen closed cases usually regret it.' And then he left."The room was very quiet."He threatened you," Nora said."He said it like it could have been friendly advice." Derek Chu looked at her. "But it wasn't."She looked at him for a moment. A man who had been sitting on this for fourteen months. "I need you to be willing to make a statement. A formal one. This time to the right people."He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Who are the right people, if the man who threatened me is at the police department?"It was a good question. She didn't yet have the full answer."I'm working on that," she said.