Read The Death Factory for Free Online Page A

looked like a troubled boy coming to an adult for help with some problem beyond his ability to handle.
    “Felix . . . what do you want me to do?”
    “All I know is that I can’t handle being the only one to know this stuff. I finally told my wife about it. At first she told me I had to go to the FBI or the state police. But then I made her see that I’d probably lose my job over that. Like a lot of the techs, my credentials aren’t exactly up to date in every area. When I brought up the idea of coming to you, she jumped on it. So . . . here I am. Do we let a guy we know raped and nearly killed an innocent girl walk because Daman Kirmani is arrogant, lazy, and stupid?”
    There it was, the choice I’d confronted so often in life: the path of least resistance, or the walk over hot coals. I thought about Sarah lying inside, floating on a carpet of Dilaudid, my mother tending her constantly. It was hard to summon the motivation to help someone else. Vargas was talking again, more about his wife and son and his miserable pay.
    “We’re straddling the poverty line, actually,” he said.
    “Whereas I—”
    “You were the boss’s mano derecha at that office, Mr. Cage. Two hundred attorneys up there, and everybody knows Cantor listened to you like nobody else. Wyatt Earp, right? Most of the cops say you could have run against Cantor and beaten him in the last election, or at least been his handpicked successor. And I know you never let that culero Gaines intimidate you.”
    “Felix . . . you said the plea deal’s been signed. The perp’s already gone before the judge.”
    “Yes, this morning.” He sucked on his cigarette. “But I heard sometimes they vacate those plea deals.”
    I shook my head firmly. “Only for material breach by the defendant, almost exclusively. That’s as rare as snow in Houston.”
    “But not impossible?”
    “The next thing to it. A plea bargain is like a contract between the state and the felon. You can’t simply break it.”
    Vargas looked desperate. “But we must do something, no? That bastard is guilty.”
    The more I thought about what Vargas had told me, the more hopeless I realized the case was. Joe Cantor wasn’t going to undercut one of his top prosecutors on a plea deal that had already been made. He wouldn’t want to create that kind of ill will in his office, and he damn sure wouldn’t want to bring down that kind of scrutiny on the crime lab. He would address the crime lab problems if I raised them—privately. But he wouldn’t want TV crews hounding him while he was doing it, or legions of convicts filing appeals.
    “I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” I told Vargas. “Unless maybe you could find that photo the rapist shot. I know it sucks, but sometimes cases slip through the cracks. I’ll push Cantor to check out the crime lab. But reversing a completed plea deal isn’t going to happen.”
    Vargas stared at me for several seconds, then turned as if to go. I wanted to say something more, but before I could, he looked back and said, “There’s one more thing, Mr. Cage.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You know this girl.”
    I couldn’t believe him at first. It didn’t seem possible. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
    “The victim. You know her. Maribel Avila.”
    The name took me a minute. Because the people he was referring to, I hadn’t seen since 1988. Then it was like a grenade went off in my brain. “You mean—”
    “Dominic Avila,” said the tech. “A brick mason. One of your first capital cases, I heard. An Anglo contractor killed him on a construction site. You sent the killer to death row.”
    In a flash, I saw three pretty little girls in a row sitting in the courtroom watching a murder trial. “And Maribel was . . .”
    “The youngest daughter,” said Vargas. “She was eleven years old at that time.”
    “That’s who got raped with a bottle?”
    Vargas gave me the slow nod. “She’s twenty-one now. She just