The Jury

epilogue

Eight days later, a couple walking along a lonely stretch of beach nearly four miles north of Tash’s apartment stumbled on Frank’s remains, washed up, battered by the rocks, almost unrecognizable.

Harry and I knew there was no way Frank could have survived the plunge from the balcony. We talked for several minutes, considered the options and in the end I wiped the phone and a few other surfaces for fingerprints, and we left as quietly as we’d arrived. The only evidence that we had ever been there were the two dangling belts left on the balcony between the apartments. No doubt some tenant would find them and wonder where they came from. They would never know.

We looked for Frank’s floating body from the rocks below the complex for almost an hour and decided there was nothing we could do. It was fruitless to call the police. It would only open new wounds for Doris and the kids, and could accomplish nothing for either Epperson or Kalista Jordan.

Harry had been right; Tash and Crone were out celebrating. They never knew we were at the apartment that night. To this day, we have kept our silence.

Seven months have now passed, and after a coroner’s inquest, Frank’s death has been ruled an accident. Only the insurance company fought this finding. The million-dollar policy Frank purchased years before contained a double-indemnity clause paying two million dollars on accidental death. Even a suicide guaranteed the face amount of one million since Frank had held the policy long enough to establish that he hadn’t purchased it in contemplation of killing himself. For the carrier it was not a happy scenario, a desperate family in financial need pitted against a Goliath insurance company with its offices in some skyscraper in another city.

Doris wanted me to represent her at the inquest. I told her I could not, but I didn’t tell her why. My only advice was that she not volunteer information to anyone regarding my telephone call to her that night. It was better that way. She could testify truthfully about what she didn’t know. And no one ever asked. To this day, Doris doesn’t know why I called or how I got the telephone number to her mother’s house. When I went back to the phone that night, after Frank had disappeared over the balcony, I told Doris I was looking for him. It was the best I could do under the circumstances. She didn’t know where he was.

On the stand they asked her several pointed questions. Yes, her husband was despondent over the death of his daughter. No, he never threatened to take his own life. No, she never found or saw a suicide note. What they don’t know, and could never guess, is that the only suicide note Frank ever wrote was for someone else.

If the hearing officer at the inquest was in doubt, he came down on the side of the angels. After all, there was no solid evidence of suicide. Even I could not testify with certainty, should some psychic have called me to the stand, whether Frank jumped or fell that night, though the details of what I do know would have caused much pain. I have no difficulty sleeping with my secret, though the visage of Frank’s tortured soul visits me from time to time in my dreams.

When it was over, David Crone, then back at the center, tested the two surviving Boyd children, Jennifer and Donald, for Huntington’s chorea. They were both negative. Frank would be happy to know, and perhaps he does, that his family has finally found peace.