Chapter Seventeen
Tampa, Florida
Friday 3:00 a.m.
JESS PACED THE SMALL WAITING ROOM wondering if she'd ever get Helen alone, and worrying that any moment Frank Temple would walk in and have her escorted out the front door.
She had sent Mike off to find himself something to eat, intending to sneak into Helen's room to wait for her. Shortly after that, she spotted Helen leaving Oliver's room for her own, accompanied by Frank Temple and Ben Fleming. Jess had been shocked at how horrible Helen looked. Now she had to wonder whether the governor would even be up to sorting through the Taylor mess tonight, unwanted company or not.
The situation had become impossible, but Jess couldn't leave, couldn't give up. Not if there was a chance that Arnold Ward had for years hidden evidence that would exonerate Tommy Taylor of Matthew Crawford's murder. Not if Matthew Crawford's
real
killer might have been walking free all these years, living, and killing, as he wished. If such a man existed, then he had to be found and brought to justice. He
had
to.
What should she do?
So deep into her thoughts was she that she hadn't noticed the lanky figure leaning against the doorjamb.
“Before you wear a rut in the carpet, you wanna talk about it?”
Jess jerked at the voice she'd recognize under any circumstances, her skin crawling at the appearance of David Manson.
“What do you want?” she said with as much calm authority as she could muster. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks so he wouldn't see them shaking.
“No fair. That's what I was asking you.” His sardonic smile infuriated her, which was good, because it replaced her earlier indecision with an energizing anger.
“Do the governor's guards know you're here?”
Manson kept the smile on his face. “I'm here for the same reason you're here: Tommy Taylor. The thing is, I thought you'd already made up your mind about the case. You can't be having second thoughts, can you? Not the determined crusader for victim's justice herself? Surely.”
Manson's words made her stomach churn, partially because he'd hit so close to the truth.
“You know what, David? It makes me feel much better to know that you've never changed. Sometimes I think I should cut you some slack, but fortunately, every time you open your mouth I realize how foolish
that
would be.”
His face reddened and the smile faded. Bulls-eye.
But he recovered quickly. “So I'm right again. You are having second thoughts. Why? It's not like you to question yourself once you've made up your mind. You're one of the most stubborn people I've ever met. So what is it?”
Stubborn?
He thinks
I'm
stubborn
?
The absurdity of her childish knee-jerk response broke through her anger and she smiled. She was back in control of her emotions.
An idea hit her: Maybe David Manson was the answer to her quandary. She glanced up at the clock. Less than fifteen hours to stop this freight train. What other choice did she have?
She took a deep breath. “Tell you what. There is something bothering me. But we can't talk here. We need privacy. Where could we go?”
Manson shrugged, failing to cover his keen interest with a casual display. “I've got my RV outside, but getting from here to there without being noticed by the reporters in the lobby would be difficult. Are you up for that?”
Her career would be over forever if she allowed herself to be photographed anywhere near Manson on the eve of Taylor's execution. The credibility she'd worked so hard to earn would evaporate. She'd never get it back.
“Not on your life.” Instead, she gestured in the direction of the smoker's exit. “You come with me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tampa, Florida
Friday 3:45 a.m.
FIVE MILES DOWN THE EXPRESSWAY Jess found an open-all-night Waffle House, perfect for her purposes. She didn't want to be alone with David Manson, couldn't trust him to that extent. A public place worked fine, so long as they remained out of microphone and camera range from his groupies or anyone else who could exploit their meeting.
Seated with coffee and menus and the waitress safely out of earshot, Jess took a deep breath and asked the question she never thought she'd be posing to the one person she never would have believed she'd ask. “If we wanted to stop Taylor's execution now, what could we do?”
David Manson stopped pouring sugar into his chipped coffee cup and looked at her out of dark brown eyes ringed with long black lashes as if she'd just landed from Mars. “You're kidding, right?”
“No.”
She could almost see his synapses firing as he considered her query. He didn't trust her any more than she trusted him and that was fine with Jess. After several moments, when she didn't elaborate, he added more sugar to his coffee and moved the spoon around in contemplation.
Finally, he shrugged. “Okay. I'll bite. As you know, I've already taken every legal step available, including two emergency appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court asking that they stay the execution. They declined. I could keep hitting my head against the wall, but it's pointless. There's nothing left to do except try to persuade Helen Sullivan, fine humanitarian that she is, to stay the execution.” He sipped his coffee. “Good luck with that.”
“Then why were you at the hospital?”
“You're a journalist, Jess. You know as well as I do. If you can't beat them, document them.”
“So this isn't about saving Taylor anymore,” she said. “It's about smearing Sullivan?”
“Hey, short of divine intervention, it's lights out for Tommy Taylor in, oh,” he glanced up at the old-fashioned clock on the wall above the grill, “about fourteen hours.”
He picked up the sugar dispenser and poured another stream of the white stuff into his cup. Jess remembered him sucking down sugar from the days when she thought he was helping her find her son Peter. Simply watching him made her teeth hurt. If only it had instilled in him a sweeter disposition.
“That's some compassion you've got there,” she said.
He shrugged again. “Must be my mother's fault. Everything that happens is the mother's fault, isn't that what Freud said?”
Though it sounded like an attempt at humor, Jess knew that for Manson it was no joke. Her first inkling had been when Manson turned on her, blaming her for Peter's disappearance.
“Mothers have one job, and one job only,” was one of Manson's favorite sayings. “They must, absolutely must, protect their children every minute of every day. No exceptions for any reason. If they can't do that, they have no business having a child in their care. Ever. Any woman who allows her child to be harmed should be sterilized. I'd say shot, but I don't believe in killing.”
Looking at him, she wondered, could she really bring herself to help him achieve his goal of saving Tommy Taylor? Manson sought only self-aggrandizement, without concern for anyone or anything. Everything he did was for effect. He had no conscience. Could she ignore his motives, work with the man, and let the ends justify the means?
Again, she asked herself, did she have
any
other choice?
“What kind of divine intervention would it take?”
He considered her as if examining a laboratory specimen, turning his head this way and that, probably trying to figure her angle.
“Actually,” he said at last, “at this stage Taylor's beyond even that. It's almost five o'clock in the morning on the last working day before Christmas. Taylor's already been run up and down the system so many times, a reprieve is beyond unlikely. The only thing Taylor's case is good for now is to make a point after he's dead.”
He picked up the menu and said, “I'm thinking about a waffle. Interested?”
Biting her tongue, Jess picked up her menu, too, and went through the ritual of ordering, and Manson went back through the sugar and coffee routine again. Jess searched her mind for any way to salvage something from this most distasteful of meetings.
“I know you didn't bring me here to eat waffles, Jessie. What do
you
think might make a difference to Helen Sullivan or some unlucky judge at this hour? It wouldn't have anything to do with that nutty redneck Arnold Ward trying to kill me, would it?”
She hated it when anyone called her Jessie, particularly in a tone that suggested she was nothing but a child, and a foolish one. But it was Manson's remark about Arnold Ward that nearly moved her to violence.
“That man,” she said through clenched teeth, “was the farthest thing from nutty or redneck that I've ever known.”
“Actually,” said Manson, ignoring her tone, “I've always thought he was the one who really murdered Mattie Crawford. Is that what we're talking about? Can you prove it? I could get a judge to do the right thing with that.”
Jess could only stare into Manson's suddenly animated face and take a slow ten count before she trusted herself to respond.
Cold-hearted bastard.
Why had she thought she could do this?
“You know, David, I'd forgotten how truly despicable you really are. This was a bad idea. Forget it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. She scooted out of the booth, threw the twenty on the table and walked out.
She was backing out of the parking space when she glanced up and saw David Manson moving toward the car. She waited until he reached the locked passenger door and pulled fruitlessly on the handle before she lowered the window two inches. “What do you want?”
“Hey.” He gripped the top of the window as if to hold the SUV in place. “I need a ride back to the hospital.”
“Call a cab. And move out of the way. I'd rather not run you over, even if they'd give me a medal for doing it.”
Finally her words sparked the animalistic anger that always hovered beneath Manson's onion-skin veneer of civility.
“Open this door!” he yelled as he pounded on the window with his right elbow, attempting to break it while he continued to hold on with his left hand. The force of his elbow blows barely wiggled the glass, but she didn't wait around for him to find something more effective.
She lifted the pressure of her foot off the brake and the SUV moved backward. Manson hopped along with the window for a few steps, screaming obscenities, until the vehicle's speed forced him to let go. He pulled off his shoe and threw it at the SUV's front headlamp, shattering the glass.
Jess pressed the accelerator and backed all the way out onto the highway, then shifted into drive and sped off. Far behind, David Manson stood screaming in the parking lot.
“Good bye, David,” she said.
She knew he wouldn't give up. He had an entire stable of groupies who would have him back to the hospital within minutes. Leaving him there was childish, but it felt good. She only fretted that she'd galvanized an unstable man who was already out to bury her
.
Exhaustion crowded her. She closed her eyes briefly, feeling her lids scratch against her corneas. How long had it been since she'd really slept? Years. She was so tired.
But everything depended on her, and one thing had become clear: Short of finding the Wards' evidence, she would never know the truth. She had to do the job, do it now, and do it right. She squared her shoulders, sat up straight, and took a deep breath.
And as she did so, she imagined Mattie Crawford's real killer walking along a sidewalk, paying for his breakfast at the Waffle House, driving down the highway. Finding him, stopping him, depended on her.
But what if she failed?
Chapter Nineteen
Tampa, Florida
Friday 5:00 a.m.
HE'D TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS in the ICU waiting room because he could think better in the dark. Even hospitals were quiet in the wee hours.
But the silent darkness invited covert plans. He felt cornered, vulnerable, and he saw only one solution. As soon as he explained what he wanted to do, the questions began.
Why do you need to kill him? He's still unconscious?
He thought he'd already explained his reasoning, but perhaps he hadn't. He said it again with patience, in slightly different words, seeking to evoke comprehension.
Because he saw me at the barn. When he wakes up, he'll tell Helen that I started the fire
.
Then they'll know you killed Todd Dale too, I suppose
.
His anger flared.
Todd killed himself
.
So you said. But you don't mean that literally, do you?
He glanced up at the clock, felt the tension of time's short fuse. Arnold Ward had underestimated how much time he had to jump from his truck before the explosion yesterday. Fleming didn't want to make the same mistake.