Helen ran around to the other side of the bed and climbed up onto the mattress. Oliver's eyes were open and she thought he was watching her. “Hang on!” she yelled over the noise. She hoped he could hear her, but she had no time to waste confirming.
She wedged her body under the plastic bed sheet and cotton bottom sheet under Oliver's body and pushed with all of her strength. She felt his dead weight begin to move, but she made little headway. She kept trying. She couldn't see anything at all. After several attempts, miraculously, Oliver's body began to slide. Jess had begun to pull.
All at once, Oliver and the sheet he lay on slid off the mattress. Before he thumped to the landscaping, Helen grabbed the sheet. Jess managed to pull the sheet down to the ground and Helen slipped off on top of him.
The three of them lay tumbled together on the shrubbery, battered and bruised, but were alive.
Helen and Jess scrambled to grab the sheet and pull it along the back yard, bouncing Oliver over stones and debris until they reached the clearing where Jake's barn once stood.
From the ashes of Jake's barn, the three of them watched as the ranch house burned.
A few moments later, the remainder of the only home Oliver had ever loved exploded into the night sky sending fire and sparks so high into the air they illuminated the clouds.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Thornberry, Florida
Tuesday Noon
NEW YEAR'S DAY, HELEN RESTED her boots on the railing of the porch that surrounded what had been the ranch manager's house and pushed the big cane-bottomed rocker back and forth. She wore comfortable jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a lightweight denim jacket, clothes she'd owned for so many years they felt like second skin. The day was cool but sunny and dry, the kind of weather Floridians loved but seldom experienced.
Her emotions had returned, ebbing and flowing unpredictably, but she no longer allowed herself to become distanced from her feelings.
A week ago she'd saved Oliver and Jess while losing Frank and members of his team. Her home and everything in it had been destroyed.
And she'd killed a man. He was a man who deserved to die. He would have killed her if she hadn't killed him first. He would have killed Oliver and Jess, too.
Her feelings were ambivalent and came in waves. Sometimes she thought she was rationalizing her horror away. Other times she thought she'd experienced some sort of post-traumatic growth. Regardless she couldn't change anything that had happened. She wondered how long it would take her to make peace with that reality. She was willing to ride it out this time. No more burying herself in distractions.
Right at the moment, she felt free and unencumbered. The sensation was settling as comfortably on her shoulders as the jacket. Today was the first day she'd been free of the burden of government in too many years. Whether she thrived and flourished or withered and disappeared remained an open question. Answers would come soon enough.
She held a warm mug of black coffee between her hands and stared out toward the big live-oak tree that had so enthralled her son as a child. She imagined she saw the ten-year-old Eric sitting there, laughing. She could think about him sometimes with only a searing stab of sorrow instead of unrelenting anguish. She supposed that was a type of progress.
Curiously, she didn't regret shooting Ben Fleming at all. She felt neither satisfaction nor remorse. DNA results confirmed absolutely that Ben Fleming had killed Mattie Crawford, Todd Dale, and nearly destroyed Oliver. She had little doubt that Ben Fleming had cleverly, quietly pushed poor Milton Jones to his mad, drunken act of desperate violence. And although she would never have definitive proof that Ben had killed her son and Vivian Wade, she would believe it until the day she stopped breathing. Yes, if anyone ever deserved to die, it was Ben Fleming. Sometimes, a small nudge of satisfaction surfaced that she'd been the one to do it.
Helen heard a car pull up in the driveway. Jess Kimball walked around the side of the house, up onto the porch, and settled on the edge of another rocker's seat.
“About ready to head out?” Helen asked her.
“My flight leaves in three hours, but I've got to return the rental, too,” Jess said, subdued, but a bit rushed, too. A long-sleeved shirt covered the bandage on her arm, but she'd only been able to partially conceal the crease along the side of her head with her curly hair. “I finished the article last night and sent it off to my editor. I'll send you the magazine when it appears, if you want.”
Helen smiled, wagged her head back and forth. “I'm sure you did a fine job on it.”
She would never read Jess's article. They both knew as much.
They sat for a moment, rocking together, bound together by experiences etched in granite memory. Helen felt Jess's anticipation across the short divide.
“Where are you going?”
Jess stood and jiggled her keys. “Colorado. A guy there is helping me with Peter. He's got some new leads.”
“How long are you going to keep looking?” Helen's tone was gentle. “Peter's been gone for more than ten years. Even if you find him now, he won't be your baby anymore.”
“I know. But I can't give up. I'll keep looking until I find him.” She hesitated again, still reluctant to say the words that Helen had lived with every day since Eric died. “One way or the other.”
Helen let it go. If Jess was able to avoid the words, maybe she'd be able to avoid the nightmares, too. “It's not so bad, after a while. You never forget, but you keep going. Bad memories hurt less. You remember more good times.”
Jess nodded. “I've been told that before. I'm glad it's true for you.”
“It will be true for you, too,” Helen said.
Jess nodded again, glanced away, and then looked back with her mouth turned up in a weak smile. “Talked to Mike. He said he was bummed that he wasn't here during . . . the fire.”
Helen laughed. “I'll bet he was.”
Neither of them mentioned that if he'd been in his bed on the ranch, Mike would have died on Christmas Eve along with Prescott and Berger.
And Frank. Helen had asked him to serve in a job that had gotten him killed when he could have rotated off her detail, knowing he wouldn't refuse her request. One more thing she had to live with that was far from easy.
“What about Manson? Have you heard from him?” Helen didn't expect Manson would allow Taylor's wrongful execution to fade into obscurity when it was a clear victory for his cause, as well as an unmatchable opportunity for personal publicity. Indeed, as far as Helen could see, Manson was the only one who came out on the positive side of the entire disaster.
“To tell you the truth,” Jess said, her chin jutting forward. “I hate that he was right. He'll never let me forget it, either. He acts so damn sincere, but he's a dishonest fraud. I put that in my article, too. I haven't figured out what else I'm going to do about him, but I won't let his actions go. Not by a long shot.”
Helen liked the spark of indignation she recognized from the first time she'd met Jess. The younger woman was resilient, too, even if she didn't realize just how much yet.
“I'm not okay with everything,” Jess admitted, subdued. “I said that, too. In the article. Just so you know.”
“I was sure you would,” Helen replied.
“After Peter was taken, I've tried to help other parents like me get justice. The system favors the criminals over the victims most of the time, or so it seems to me. I guess in the end the Wards did get some justice, and maybe the Crawfords, too.”
“You can't blame or applaud the legal system for any of that.”
Jess was always prepared to argue. “But Tommy Taylor shouldn't have been executed when he was. He didn't kill Mattie Crawford. That's the real bottom line.”
“True.”
“I helped to make that happen,” Jess said. She looked at the ground, “And I'm having trouble dealing with it.”
Helen sighed. “Remember what I told you about the American creed. We can't focus on everything that's wrong with the world that we can't fix, everything we failed to do right. You'd be paralyzed with indecision and do nothing worthwhile with your life. That would be a shame, Jess. A waste. The good will outweigh the bad. You have so much yet to accomplish.”
Jess jerked her head up, eyes blazing. “That's a nice philosophy, Helen, but we killed an innocent man.”
Helen sighed again. Jess seemed world-weary and wise in most respects, but she still had much to learn. Helen put an edge into her voice, too. “Tommy Taylor wasn't innocent. You said that yourself. The system didn't fail him, people failed the system. People who didn't give us a chance, who didn't trust us to do our jobs. Ben Fleming and Arnold Ward built Tommy's conviction into an air-tight legal box. You and I didn't do that. And Tommy's dead. We can't bring him back.”
She thought about something Mac Green had said to her, too. “If you could bring Tommy Taylor back to life now, would you want to let him loose on the community again?”
Jess considered Helen's words, perhaps unwilling to concede, but she let the point go. “So what do we do now?”
“We ask God and Tommy's mother to forgive us. We go on. We learn from our mistakes. We do better next time.” More than words she'd been raised by, these were the words Helen lived by, the only reality she knew or wanted to know.
Silence reigned for a bit before Jess's impatience took hold again. “What are you going to do?”
“Take care of Oliver. He's beginning to communicate with me. The doctors say he'll improve. So I'll just wait to see what happens.”
Jess said, “Good. I'm glad.”
Helen nodded. “I'll probably go back to practicing law. I miss the work, fighting the good fight every day, you know? The only way to make the system work is to have dedicated people working within the rules. I can do at least that much.”
Jess nodded this time. “No more politics? Even without the party's endorsement, I think you'd be elected, hands down. And no one would serve Florida better in the Senate than you.”
“Maybe. I just don't have the heart for it right now.” She noticed that Jess was about to argue with her, so she said, “I may change my mind one day.”
Jess bent to give Helen a strong hug. “Take care of yourself.”
“You, too,” Helen said, squeezing her back. “Keep in touch. Come back as soon as you can.”
“I'll call,” Jess promised, as she disappeared around the corner of the house on her way back to the car.
Helen wondered if she'd ever hear from Jess again, but when she could see Jess inside the car in the driveway, she shouted, “Happy New Year!”
Jess waved from the car.
Helen waved back.
Then Jess rolled down the window and shouted, “I'll bring Peter next time I come. He'll love it here.”
THE END
AUTHOR'S NOTE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Capri
is a lawyer and multi-published author.
She's a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author's Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.
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