I sucked in my breath. I’d been sure without the picture, but it was still hard to have it confirmed. Those holes that I thought my father and my uncle Bernie might have punched so they could hang up the ball and use it for batting practice, those came from nails. Someone had pounded nails into a baseball. Somehow had thrown it at the marchers and gotten Harmony Newsome in the temple. And then someone had retrieved the ball and removed the nails.

I felt a sick apprehension as Theo focused on the four-digit badge number of the cop in riot gear. When we finally could read it, I let out a little sigh. I didn’t know whose it was, but I still could reel off my father’s by heart. At least it hadn’t been him pocketing a murder weapon at a crime scene.

46 - DISCOVERY

46

DISCOVERY

I MADE UP A STORYBOARD OUT OF A SELECTION OF PICTURES: Sister Frankie with Harmony Newsome, Harmony with her hand over the ball after it struck her in the temple, Peter with the man who might have been Harvey Krumas, the close-up of the ball, the cop pocketing the ball, the close-up of his badge. Theo let me use a computer to type captions for the pictures and a letter to Bobby Mallory. I addressed him formally by his title, not just because he’d pissed me off believing Hazel Alito’s wild accusation against me but because I didn’t know what he’d been doing in Marquette Park all those years ago. He’d been a nineteen-year-old rookie getting baptized by fire under the protective arm of veteran officer Tony Warshawski.

What had any of them done in the park that day?

Dear Captain Mallory:

These pictures were taken by Lamont Gadsden in Marquette Park on August 6, 1966. I found the negatives this morning, and they are now in a secure location. I believe the people who broke into my home and office this past week were looking for these negatives.

As you perhaps recall, in January 1967 Steve Sawyer was arrested and convicted for the 1966 murder of Harmony Newsome (photograph 4). No murder weapon was ever produced. Sawyer’s conviction was based solely on an uncorroborated confession that was extorted under torture by George Dornick and Larry Alito.

At his trial, Mr. Sawyer tried to insist that Lamont Gadsden had pictures which proved his innocence. The photographs attached to this letter raise serious questions, at minimum, about the chain of custody of evidence at his trial.

Before you ask the State’s Attorney’s Office to file charges against me in Larry Alito’s death, I suggest you revisit this 1966 murder, the 1967 trial of Steve Sawyer, and, in particular, that you discover the identity of the officer wearing badge number 8396.