It's generally accepted wisdom among those who toil for justice, who give up nights and weekends

and children's birthday parties in service of the dead, that sometimes what a stall case

needs most is a set of fresh eyes, eyes that may see what others missed.

A service, the Erlick's father and son, felt morally compelled to provide.

As Clint put it, it was painful to see a man whom I knew was innocent, whom I knew had served our country,

locked in a cage like an animal.

But it is equally true that people don't generally like to be told when they're wrong.

So when a tough case is finally all done and dusted and the guilty party has been tried and

convicted and sent away, fresh eyes are not always so welcome,

no matter how bright or perceptive, especially to those like the O'Keeffe's, for whom that long-sought

conviction was as important as breathing, given the horrors that had descended upon them,

beginning with that awful moment in Michelle's Blue Mustang all those years ago.

But the desert winds blue as ever, year after year, and the seasons came and went, and new families grew up around them,

and Mike and Pat O'Keefe did what they had to do to put some kind of

life back together. Not easy, as Pat told me, not easy at all. But you make accommodations to this,

this sort of continuing pain that you feel, huh? That you just have to find a place for it and live with

it? I think you kind of work through it.

You don't really close the book, like people say,

oh, oh, you'd be so happy when everything's all done.

Michelle will still be gone.

Yeah.

We'll still miss her, but we learn to get through each day.

...