The Wrong Man by David Ellis

managed.
    “How ya—how’s—I mean…” Hilton didn’t know how to start. There was no obvious introductory small talk when your pal is in lockup for murder.
    “Hey,” Tom said again. “Hey… Bob.”
    “You doing okay in here, Lew? I mean, best as possible?”
    “It’s—hot. It’s hot.” Tom stared into his lap.
    “You look like you need to get some food in here,” Hilton said. “Gotta be better than the MREs, right?” He chuckled, but it fell flat. Tom was unresponsive.
    “The vegetables taste like dirt,” Tom said. I thought all vegetables tasted like dirt.
    “Hey, Clap and Rush said hey. I told them I was seeing you.”
    “Okay.” Tom’s eyes moved everywhere except to his visitor.
    Hilton was unsure of himself. Tom wasn’t exactly a sterling conversationalist these days. And more to the point, he was an entirely different person than the one Hilton had come to know in Iraq.
    “Lew,” he said, “I told your lawyer about the tunnel. I told him about it. I told him that if it was me, I’d have done the same thing. That you tried to warn her and you couldn’t have known.…”
    Tom turned his head, like he was responding to a sound to his left. He held it there, his gaze steadied on the wall.
    “Lew, you got a good lawyer here, don’t you think? He wants to help you. You gotta let him. Can you talk to him about what happened the night that woman was shot?”
    It was like Tom’s mental computer had frozen up. He didn’t move an inch. Save for the rise and fall of his chest, it was hard to tell if he was dead or alive.
    Hilton dropped his head. He was talking to a man who had once been his superior officer, who had commanded his respect and admiration, to hear him tell it. How devastating it must have been to see Tom so utterly broken now. And that was to say nothing of whatever internal demons Hilton carried himself. Nobody would walk away from a war experience without scarring.
    “I don’t remember,” said Tom, words as lucidly delivered as any I’d heard from him.
    Hilton straightened. So did I, slouching in the corner. Dr. Baraniq had warned me that it was not uncommon for someone experiencing PTSD to have amnesia over the episode. But I’d been counting on Tom being able to recount at least some detail of the night Kathy Rubinkowski was shot—for Dr. Baraniq and for the jury.
    I had no occurrence witnesses whatsoever. Tom couldn’t speak to what happened. There was nobody that heard Tom yelling to Kathy Rubinkowski to
drop the weapon, drop the weapon,
or anything to that effect. Nobody to testify that the victim posed any perceived threat to Tom whatsoever. No triggering event to which I could point that would explain why, at that moment, Tom Stoller suddenly fell into the grip of a PTSD episode.
    I had nothing. Nothing but a hypothesis from a doctor.
    Getting nowhere with Tom, Bobby Hilton returned to lower-key material. He told Tom how he was going to work in his father’s pizzeria in Racine with an eye toward taking over the place. He talked about how he was engaged now. He repeatedly asked Tom if he needed anything, but got nothing but one-word responses. Tom kept his head turned to the left, looking off in the distance, for the remainder of the conversation. It was painful to watch.
    “Take care, Lew,” said Hilton. He placed his hand on the thick glass again before he walked past me and out the door.
    I approached the glass. “Tom, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
    My client didn’t answer. He was gone for the moment. No sign of recognition or emotion, save for a tear that formed and ran down his cheek.
    When I walked back out in the hallway, Sergeant Bobby Hilton was on the floor, head in his hands, sobbing like a child.
    He looked up at me with a tear-streaked face. “Tell me… what you need me to do,” he said to me, struggling. “I’ll do anything.”

20.
    Detective Gary Boxer led me into an interview room. He had a file folder in his hand and a small