His stance, his tone, his mere being suffused her with a kind of energy born of the outrage he inspired. David Manson was the one who should be locked up. That he walked free while she sat in jail infuriated her nearly beyond reason.
She forced herself to stay seated, leaned her head back against the block wall, and appeared unconcerned, even bored. “I'm flattered that you'd come so far to rescue me, David, but I already have a lawyer on the way.”
He snorted. “Nice try. Even if you did have a lawyer on the way, he couldn't help you until Monday after you're arraigned and your bail's set.”
“That might be true if I'd been formally arrested and booked, but I wasn't.”
“Hang out here and wait, then. I, on the other hand, have a lawyer here that can get you released now. If you want.”
“In exchange for what?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
The pieces of the puzzle shuffled and the real picture fell into place as last. Not only was it ugly, it smelled rotten as hell. Now she understood why she'd been detained without actually being arrested, and why it had taken Manson so long to get here.
Manson had followed her, then called the cops, arranged it all to keep her out of the way while he searched Vivian's house. If he'd found what he was looking for, they'd have charged her and she'd have spent the weekend in jail, out of Manson's way. Since he hadn't found what he wanted, he needed her help. Hard to believe he'd have any influence with the local cop shop, but he obviously knew someone who did.
Someday, she'd make him pay.
Jess stood, stretched like a cat. She walked over to Mike and nudged him awake. “Get up, Mike. Time to go.” He opened his eyes and, to his credit, followed her lead.
Then she turned to Manson. “Open the door, David. If you didn't need me, you wouldn't be here.”
He hesitated a few moments, then called to the deputy to release them. Once her keys and personal possessions had been returned and the three of them rejoined outside in the fresh air and sunshine, Jess told Manson, “You must have stepped in the cat litter in Vivian Ward's kitchen, David. You smell like crap.”
He scowled, but refused to rise to the bait. “Where's the evidence that old bat told you about?”
Mike got behind the wheel of the SUV. Jess stood with the passenger door open, tempted to hop in and leave Manson standing alone in another parking lot. “Not only do you smell bad, you've got no heart at all. I gather you didn't find Vivian, then, either?”
Mason grabbed her arm, but softened his approach attempting to persuade her. “Do you think something has happened to her? Her car's missing. I figured she was hiding out until after the execution. She's taunting me.” He took a deep breath, then applied his reserve of fake charm. “Should we be worried about her? An innocent man is about to be executed, but I swear, I haven't done anything to Vivian Ward. I need to find her as much as you do. Maybe more.”
Jess believed him. He wouldn't be standing here if he'd discovered other options. He was a dangerous enemy. He would do anything to serve his own ends, including harm to Vivian, and Jess, too, for that matter. She almost hoped Vivian had been arrested; at least she'd be safe.
But Manson was right; they both needed to find Vivian. “David, I don't even know what the evidence is. Or what it's supposed to prove. Do you?”
“Why would I know?”
“You were the one Arnold Ward meant to kill yesterday. You tell me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ocala, Florida
Friday 1:30 p.m.
JESS, MIKE AND DAVID MANSON huddled together in an Ocala bar. Necessity joined them for the moment, a fact that Jess and Manson seemed equally displeased about.
Mike, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. “This is so amazing,” he said, as if he'd qualified for the Olympics. “I can't believe we're trying to stop an execution.”
Jess stuffed her irritation. She wouldn't give Manson anything more to crow about, even Mike's innocent exuberance. “We're not trying to stop the execution, Mikeâ”
“Speak for yourself,” Manson cut in.
“âwe're investigating a rumor,” she said with a scowl. “Don't get carried away.”
Mike was fairly bouncing in his seat. “But we think there's some truth to this rumor, don't we? We think there is some evidence that might stop the execution at least temporarily, right? I mean, otherwise what's the point?”
Manson's patience, never long, snapped. “What did that scrawny old woman tell you, Jess? I have a judge standing by, but I've got to give him some details and it'll take me a while to get the papers together and get them over there. It's now or never.”
Jess's lips pressed into a hard line. “David, I wish to God I could do this without you. You are one heartless bastard. You know that, right?”
“Whatever. Spill it.”
She sighed. Jess had avoided this moment as long as she could. “Vivian suggested that Arnold had some physical evidence from the Crawford crime scene with the real killer's DNA on it.”
Manson's face flushed with color. He started to rise from the booth. ”That crazy old bastard. I knew he was a liar. He didn't really see Tommy that night, either, did he? I should have hauled his ass before the judge when I had the chance.”
Jess motioned for him to sit down, which he did. “Vivian said you'd tracked it down and approached Arnold about it. She said that's why Arnold wanted to kill you. Because he thought you'd figure out a way to use what you knew to get Taylor off again, and that meant Taylor would never pay for killing her boys.”
Manson stared at her for a long moment without speaking.
“You know what it is, don't you?” Mike asked him, fairly leaping across the table toward Manson in excitement. “The evidence Ward had. So what are we gonna do about it?”
Jess placed a restraining hand on Mike's arm, but her eyes never left Manson's face. “Whatever it is, David, you'll never get it from Vivian without me. She hates you almost as much as she hates Tommy Taylor. Arnold died to protect that evidence and she's not going to let her husband's sacrifice go to waste. Vivian won't see you, she won't talk to you, and she most certainly won't help you.”
She let the truth of her logic sink into Manson's thinking and waited for him to decide to meet her half-way. Moments passed like decades.
She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until her chest began to hurt. With a deep breath, she sat back in the seat and played her final card. “Mike. Come on. We've got work to do before we witness the execution at six o'clock.”
She moved to rise from the booth, which seemed to stir Manson to full awareness.
“Sit down,” he said, motioning with his head.
Graceful in victory, she sat without comment, ignoring the increase in her heartbeat.
“It's the trace,” Manson said.
“Trace what?” Mike asked.
“The cigarette butt and the two hairs they found in Taylor's trunk with Crawford's body.”
Jess had suspected as much. Nothing else would have galvanized Manson to action as quickly or made him handle her as he'd done this morning with the local cops. “Go on.”
“You already know that the trace evidence wasn't sufficient to test for DNA back then, using the old techniques?”
“Right. The hairs and butt were never admitted into evidence at any of the trials because of that.”
Manson raked a hand through his spiky short hair. “When newer DNA techniques were developed that could examine smaller samples of saliva and hairs without roots, my team tried to locate the trace evidence. That's when we discovered the trace was lost.”
“That's fairly common,” Jess said.
Manson nodded. “Unfortunately true. We're busy with cases all over the country, so we moved on and gave up looking for the missing evidence in Taylor's case for a while.”
“And because you weren't sure whether the evidence would help or hurt, right?” Mike piped in. “I mean, the trace could just have easily hammered another couple of nails in Taylor's coffin. That's why his lawyers objected to that evidence in the first trial, to keep it out, because they thought it would bury him. Right?” he said, looking back and forth between them.
Manson shook his head and grinned. “Kid, if you're gonna get anywhere in this business, you've got to learn to chill. Hold your water. Okay?”
Mike's face fell and he lowered his head. Manson must have considered Mike suitably chastised, for he continued. “When Sullivan signed Taylor's death warrant, the case came across my desk again. I always get involved when the inmates are moved from death row to death watch.”
He made it sound noble, but Jess knew Manson became involved late in the cases because the earlier stages of the work were simple drudgery. The American legal system, honed over hundreds of years, served by countless devotees, worked well in the vast majority of cases. Proving mistakes were made was a long, tedious, and mostly fruitless process. Usually, there was no rush, meaning no news cameras, until the execution is scheduled and all legal avenues had been exhausted. The time from sentence to execution could take more than twenty years, and only a small percentage of death
row
inmates were ever executed.
Death
watch
inmates, on the other hand, presented high-profile opportunities for Manson. That's when he would step into the limelight and steal the glory. It was all a high-stakes game to him, less about saving inmates from execution when it mattered, and more about making a good show of it when it was already too late.
“I suppose you could call exculpatory DNA evidence my holy grail.” Like a practiced salesman, Manson presented himself effectively, the noble crusader seeking to prevent horrible miscarriages of justice.
“So when I saw that there'd been trace evidence at one time, I got excited. I chased it down. I found the court clerk, retired now, who told me she'd returned all of the collected but unused evidence to the Crawford and Taylor families, respectively. Clothes to the boys' parents, the hairs and cigarette butt to Taylor's mother.”
“Why?” Mike asked.
“The stuff belongs to them. Usually it's taken from them in the first place; when the courts don't need it, they give it back. Anyway, Mrs. Taylor, Tommy's mother, never opened the box, she said.”
“You must have been pretty excited, right?” Mike asked.
Manson gave him an indulgent smile. “Yeah. I was. But when I unsealed the box, the trace wasn't in there. Meaning it had never been returned to Mrs. Taylor at all.”
Mike listened as if this was the most exciting story he'd ever heard. And maybe it was. Jess could remember feeling that level of excitement during one of the many twists or turns that cases like this took.
“Anyway, I went to the Crawfords, who weren't all that happy to help me.”
“I'll bet,” Jess said.
Manson's irritation resurfaced. “But they did. Eventually. They let me look at their box, which was also still sealed, and also didn't contain the trace when I looked. Meaning, again, the evidence had never been placed in their box either.”
Jess's pulse quickened and she felt too warm. Nausea sent bile into her mouth. Her stomach churned.
Manson sensed her understanding and nodded.
“What?” Mike asked.
“I went back to the clerk. Pressed her pretty hard. She finally admitted that she'd given the trace to Arnold Ward directly. Why? Because he asked for it. She knew him, felt sorry for him. She said she didn't think there was any harm in giving him what he wanted. When I asked Ward himself about it, he denied that she'd ever given it to him.” Manson's tone remained subdued, but his stare had hardened.
From there, for Jess, it was a simple step to the truth: Arnold Ward requested the trace evidence because he believed it would prove who really killed Mattie Crawford. Which meant he at least suspected that Tommy Taylor wasn't Mattie's killer. Quite possibly, he
knew
.
Mike's mouth hung open. Jess put her head in her hands and massaged her temples, grappling with what this meant. Arnold and Vivian Ward were good people. They'd been victims of imperfect procedures when Taylor killed their two children. Having been victimized once, they feared the system would never punish Tommy Taylor for what he'd done to their boys.
Jess could see how the Wards might think putting Taylor to death was more essential than executing him for the right crime. But that was not the only thing they wanted. Nor would they have allowed Matthew Crawford's real killer to go freeâunless they were forced to do so.
Jess was as certain of these matters as she had ever been of anything. She understood Arnold and Vivian's motives and their pain, felt it whenever she was in their presence, as well as when she wasn't. They would not want to let a child-killer remain unknown or go unpunished indefinitely. In that respect, Jess knew, Arnold and Vivian Ward were much like her.