Thinking this through, Jess realized something else that hit her solidly in the stomach, causing pain too sharp to ignore. She jumped up from the booth. “I'll be right back,” she said.
She hurried into the restroom, vomited bile into the toilet, then stood at the sink and splashed cold water on her face. Water dripped down her forearms as she pressed the lever on the paper towel dispenser and wiped the cool drops from her face and neck. She leaned against the wall to support herself, legs unsteady. How long had it been since she'd eaten? A long time, judging by what hadn't been in her stomach.
God, how could I have been so stupid?
The question was indulgent, and her reasons didn't matter now. She'd felt small, overwhelmed, a failure. Faced with her own impotence, she realized she needed help and she had no choice but to ask.
When she'd decided what to do, Jess returned to the booth. Manson and Mike were both subdued, each dwelling in his own thoughts. She gestured to the waitress and ordered a tall glass of water, a large soda, and toast. The guys ordered full meals. Jess hoped she'd be able to eat more, if she could keep anything down.
When the waitress had brought the water and soda and gone again, Jess said, “The good news is that Arnold didn't destroy the evidence.”
Mike's mouth literally hung open. Manson's countenance brightened.
“The bad news is that we'll never find it until after Taylor dies.”
“But why not?” said Mike. “What do you mean? Where is it?”
Manson's sharp, “Quiet,” served as a slap-down, stopping Mike cold.
“I agree with the first half and I don't care to argue the rest,” said Manson. “But do you really believe there's nothing we can do?”
“You should keep looking, David. Mike can help you. But you won't find Vivian. Not until after the execution.” She finished the soda and felt an immediate blood-sugar lift.
The waitress interrupted to bring the food. Jess took a bite of the toast, chewed, and swallowed. Another. It tasted like cardboard. But she'd never get through the day without fuel in her stomach. She took a deep swig of the water to wash it all down and waited to see if it would stay there before she added more to her gut. She anticipated failure, but she had to try.
“The only chance we have now is Helen Sullivan. If I can speak privately with her, I might be able to persuade her to stop this juggernaut temporarily, until we get everything sorted out.
If
I can reach her. I tried before and couldn't get through her protection.”
Manson must have reached the same conclusion on his own. He was a smart, if soulless man. He didn't argue. Instead, Jess could almost see him moving ahead mentally, formulating his strategy for using Taylor's death as an effective sword in his continuing battles.
Mike's attention span being what it was, he practically jumped with excitement. “Now you're talking! Reach Helen Sullivan . . . I can fix that. No problem.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and pressed a speed-dial button.
“Who are you calling?” asked Manson.
If lives were not at stake, Jess might have laughed at the grin Mike flashed Manson, a look that conveyed supreme confidence, the rough equivalent of sticking out his tongue. “Just my college roommate's dad. One Sheriff MacKenzie Green.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tampa, Florida
Friday 3:00 p.m.
WITH OLIVER IN SURGERY, Helen took the time to shower and change into the jeans, shirt and boots Frank Temple had brought from the ranch the night before. The process had made her feel almost human again, although nothing about the woman she saw in the mirror looked familiar.
Oliver's seizure remained unexplained. The doctors had discovered that his glucose IV was not dripping correctly, and their best guess was that the seizure was caused by too much insulin in his blood stream. The question they couldn't resolve was how such a large dose of insulin could have occurred. An adjacent room did house a diabetic patient, but if any nurse had made the mistake of injecting Oliver instead of the diabetic, no one was admitting it.
One thing was clear: Whether accidental or deliberate, the overdose and resulting seizure would have been fatal if Helen hadn't discovered it at the precise moment when she did. Seeing Oliver's prognosis worsen with the incident had stretched Helen's tension to the snapping point. Later today or tonight, once the doctors drained the hematoma and re-stabilized him, Helen planned to move Oliver back to the ranch, where she could control who got near him.
Meanwhile, she'd already spoken to the people investigating the arson and Todd Dale's death and expected an interim report later today, with a full report coming in the morning. That left nothing more to do, for Oliver or otherwise, except to stay strong and pray.
A rap came at the door. “Come in,” she said, expecting to receive the food Frank had ordered minutes ago. When the door opened, her eyes widened for an instant.
Jess Kimball entered with the tray. “Hi, Governor. I hope you don't mind. They said I could bring this in for you.” She placed the tray on the bed table and stood back, taking in Helen's battered face. “Don't worry,” she said with a grin. “No cameraman, I promise.”
Putting a smile in her voice, Helen said, “Mac said to expect you.” She gestured toward the one chair in the room, where Jess took a seat.
Helen perched on the side of the bed, unwrapped the food and began to eat. Once she started, she realized how hungry she was. In no time the sandwich, which tasted as good as a five-star restaurant meal, revived her sagging spirits along with her energy.
“You look like you've had a pretty rough night yourself,” Helen told Jess.
“I think we both have.”
“Well, we both know what I've been doing. What about you?”
“How's your husband?”
Instinctively, Helen embellished the truth. “The doctors say he'll be fine. But fill me in on your situation. Mac said it was urgent, and Oliver will be out of surgery soon. I don't have a lot of time. What is it I can do for you?”
“Not me, exactly,” Jess said. “It's Tommy Taylor. I'm not certain, but I think there's a good chance he didn't kill Mattie Crawford, and I'm almost sure that relevant new DNA evidence exists. If I'm correct, either Vivian Ward has possession of it, or knows where it is. That's why I'm here, to ask you to stay this execution for a few days while we track all this down and get it resolved, one way or the other.”
“There's a big difference between âalmost sure' and the existence of new evidence,” Helen said. “With the evidence in hand I might be able to stop the execution. Otherwise, there's no chance. But you must know that.”
When she saw Jess's deflated expression, Helen realized her tone was too harsh. She held all the power here. Jess was a straight-forward person who would not have come to her without good reason.
“I've signed several death warrants during my tenure, Jess,” she said more softly. “Honestly, the Tommy Taylor warrant was one of the easier ones.”
“I totally get that,” said Jess. “He's a killer. But maybe not in the Crawford case.”
With Jess's gaze holding hers, Helen tried not to glance at the clock, her thoughts returning to Oliver.
“So you're not saying Taylor doesn't deserve to die, but . . . what?”
“That I'm scared,” Jess said. “If Tommy Taylor's the wrong man, then someone else killed Mattie Crawford. I can't ignore that, just walk away, and live with myself after. Could you?”
The question was both naïve and profound. Entire treatises had been written on the subject for hundreds of years. Yet, Helen did need to be sure she was doing the right thing.
“I met Tommy Taylor first when I was a young prosecutor. He'd already raped, tortured and killed at least four children, including Arnold and Vivian Ward's two sons.” Unbidden, crime-scene photos flashed in Helen's memory. After all the time that had passed, she could still recall them in far too vivid detail. “I stared into Taylor's eyes back then, and you know what looked back at me? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Helen had finished the food and was feeling stronger. Her hands had stopped shaking. “Did you know that we offered him a plea deal in the Crawford case? Several times, actually. We offered to forego the death penalty if he would save the state the expense and uncertainty of trial. He chose to die.”
“That supports my theory. Why would he give up a deal like that if he had really killed Mattie? His rejection only makes sense if he
didn't
kill Mattie. Doesn't it?”
“Killers don't think like normal people, Jess. Not killers like him.”
“Still,” Jess said, “Did you believe him?”
“No. I never believed him,” Helen said. “He denied killing the other boys too. Should we believe
that
?”
Jess didn't reply. Helen could see the ambivalence etched plainly on her freckled face.
“You've read all the trial transcripts and interviewed the witnesses?”
Jess nodded.
“There wasn't much to complicate things,” Helen said. “The jury convicted him in twenty minutes.”
And what a relief it had been, especially after the failure of justice for the rape, torture, and murder of the Ward boys. Though there'd never been any question of Taylor's guilt in that case, the local police had botched the handling of evidence to the point where the prosecutor couldn't take the case to trial. They'd had to let Taylor go.
Helen had been involved in making the decision to release Taylor. It hadn't been her case, but she'd agreed with the decision at the time, even though she'd never felt any justice in releasing Taylor. The knowledge had always burdened her conscience, and it weighed more heavily once she learned she could have saved Mattie Crawford if they'd kept Taylor in jail.
Helen had left the prosecutor's office soon after. She simply couldn't handle the work anymore. The pain of the victims' families was heartbreaking. Even the criminals she tried and convicted rotated through the system and came back around over and over again. She felt like a hamster in a wheel. In the end, she couldn't give the job her best work any longer. She'd had to quit.
She had come full circle. Only this time she'd been able to do for the Wards as Governor what she couldn't do as a junior prosecutor: execute Tommy Taylor. Except now, she didn't want to be the one to do it, taking even a life as despicable as Tommy Taylor's while his mother remained among the living. Helen understood, in a visceral way she hadn't felt before Eric was killed, that death of a child was something no parent should endure.
“Okay,” Helen said at last. “Tell me exactly what you have to support your concerns.”
Jess laid it all out, one piece at a time: everything she'd learned from Vivian Ward and David Manson; what she knew, what she surmised and what nagged at her instincts. When she finished, Helen felt shaken but tried not to show it. Instead, she stood, walked unsteadily to the door and called Frank Temple into the room. “Can you find out whether Vivian Ward has been picked up by any of the law enforcement agencies since her husband died?”
“I'll check. It might take a few minutes,” Frank said, then left the room.
Helen turned back to Jess. “I want to be sure I understand you, so bear with me a moment while I review your story. Okay?”
Jess nodded.
Helen applied her legal skills and her own experience to the mixed bag of information and explained each piece to be sure they were both in agreement. When she'd covered everything, she took a deep breath and asked, “You know what chain of custody is, right?”
Jess nodded. “It means that to be admissible into evidence at trial, the state has to prove where each piece of evidence comes from and everything that happens to it up until the minute it's used at the trial. To prevent tampering with the evidence. So we can be sure the evidence is what the State says it is.”
“Right,” said Helen. “So even if you find this trace evidence, the one person who might testify about the chain of custody is Arnold Ward, and he's dead.”
“Well, yes, but I'm guessing Taylor would not object to the chain of custody,” Jess said a little hopefully. “I mean, he'd want the evidence admitted, so he wouldn't care where it had been or who might have touched it.”
“The prosecutors would. Believe me. They've done nothing wrong here, and they're not going to take your word for it that Taylor or Manson or someone else didn't substitute hair strands for the ones that were originally collected at the crime scene.” Jess said nothing, so Helen kept going. “The one person who might be able to help is Vivian Ward.”
Here Helen paused so that Jess could acknowledge the central fact: that neither she nor Manson had been able to find the alleged evidence. Jess nodded.
“But instead of waiting to talk with you, telling you what she knows, handing over whatever she might have, Vivian's gone missing.”