Now You See Her

Chapter 71

I DIDN’T KNOW what time it was when I woke with a start, spilling Justin Harris’s court transcripts.

The plane that I was now on was a tiny fifty-seater. I’d had an hour layover in Atlanta before getting on the disconcertingly small aircraft.

After I put Harris’s folder away, I looked out the tiny window, wondering how close we were. There was nothing but water underneath us now, as silver and bright as tinfoil under the harsh Southern sunlight.

As I was staring at the light, the butterflies in my stomach woke up and got right back to work.

It was Florida light. Key West light.

Was I safe now? Hadn’t I left Peter back in New York? I didn’t know.

I looked up as the cabin speaker tolled out a musical bong, and the stewardess announced that we were about fifteen minutes out. Across the aisle, a decent-looking, fair-skinned man of about fifty smiled at me. He wore Bermuda shorts and a gray NYU gym shirt and had wavy strawberry blond hair.

He was Australian and quite drunk. I knew these things because he’d tried to hit on me by the gate in Atlanta. Under other circumstances, I probably would have let him. I certainly could have used a drink.

“To paradise,” Crocodile Dundee said with a goofy theatrical flourish as he raised his plastic cup to me. I smiled politely before looking away.

More like Paradise Lost for me, I thought, staring back out the window. I made out the line of a large structure beneath us.

I closed my eyes, my stomach suddenly seizing up, my teeth and ears aching with tension. Clammy sweat stuck my shirt to my back as the coffin wall of the fifty-seater plane suddenly felt like it was bearing down on me, burying me alive.

The structure I’d spotted was the Overseas Highway. The same Overseas Highway where the Jump Killer had almost murdered me nearly two decades before. As if that weren’t heart attack–inducing enough, as the plane descended, the white hot Florida light began sparking off fishing boat after fishing boat, each one a carbon copy of the Stingray Peter sailed.

I shouldn’t have come here, I thought, instantly overcome with terror. This was stupid. I was stupid. I’d escaped from hell. Why was I going back?

“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey,” a Southern voice cooed in my ear. It was the stewardess, a short, sturdy blond woman in her early fifties. She held my hand. “I can see it in your face. Don’t worry. Everybody gets airsick sometimes. Even me. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Turn the plane around, I felt like telling her. But was that even safe? Did I have anywhere to hide now?

As she snapped open a vomit bag, I heard the landing gear hum down. I felt its jolt beneath my feet as it locked into place.

Then black stars lit across the inside of my closed eyelids as I threw up. With an embarrassingly loud and drawn-out retching sound, I returned the airline’s complimentary honey-roasted peanuts and Diet Coke. When I glanced across the aisle again, my Aussie buddy was intently studying his in-flight magazine.

Terrific, I thought, wiping my mouth with a napkin.

Way to hit the ground running.

Chapter 72

HAVING SPLASHED SOME WATER on my face, I felt slightly better as I came down the rolling stairs of the tiny jet onto the airport tarmac. The small Key West airport looked the same as it always had: namely, as laid-back and weathered as its baggage handlers. You could actually see the crystal blue water sparkling beyond the runway’s chain-link fence, lulling and beautiful and beckoning.

I tore my eyes off it as I followed the line of smiling, ready-to-party young businesspeople. This wasn’t a vacation for me. It was more like a suicide mission. Get in and get the heck out, I told myself.

“Miss?” said an NBA-sized black guy in aviator shades and a green tennis visor, tapping me on the elbow on the airport’s sidewalk.

Christ, did he recognize me? I thought. “What?” I snapped at him.

“Do you need a taxi to your hotel?” he said warily as he pointed at the car behind him.

We stopped at the Hyatt five minutes later. After I paid and tipped the driver, I hurried into the lobby as if the parking lot were a sniper zone.

The large black female concierge gave me an easy smile when I came in. “Nina Bloom?” she said when I showed her my credit card. “Oh, yes. I just got off the phone with someone about you.”

What?!

“Your firm just upgraded your room,” she said. “They must like you. You’ve been transferred to one of our penthouse suites.”

The first time I felt that I’d breathed all day was after I’d tipped the bellboy and had the door securely locked behind me. It really was a beautiful suite. South Beach chic. White leather furniture, black quartz countertops, neon bright modern art. Outside the sliding glass doors, a queen-sized white chaise with my name on it lay on a private, Mexican-tiled roof deck.

There was also a huge gift basket on the countertop. Tropical flowers, Godiva boxes. Even an orange and green magnum of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

“Thanks for doing the right thing, kid. Go get ’em!” my boss had written in the message.

Well, at least I was making someone happy.

I read in one of the hotel magazines about the upcoming Conch Republic (as Key West jokingly called itself) Independence Celebration. There was a bed race down Duval Street and, of course, lots of drinking. Maybe that was a good thing. Hopefully, the whole police department, including Peter, would be more than busy with the greater influx of tourists than normal.

I plopped down on a low, white leather couch and called Emma.

“I made it,” I said. “I’m so tired.”

“Sure you are, Mom,” Emma said. “I feel for you. Enjoy your business trip to Key West. Try not to throw your back out limbo-ing the night away.”

I shook my head. She didn’t understand. She had no idea how much I wanted out of this place, how much I wanted to go straight to the airport and head home.

“You better not do any partying with that Gabby, either, Miss Wiseacre. I love you, Wilson. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

After I hung up, I put in a call to Harris’s attorney, Charles Baylor, whose office I would be visiting tomorrow. No answer. What else was new? I was going to take a shower, but then I saw the sky. The sun was going down, and the sky was turning a ridiculously intense electric blue.

I shook my head again as I remembered partying in Mallory Square that last sunset on spring break. Dancing and singing to Bob Marley, I’d actually thought I could be happy and carefree forever.

I’d thought wrong.

Despite the memory, and my usual policy of not mixing business with pleasure, I decided to bring the bubbly bottle out onto the roof deck with a water glass. Because if anyone on earth needed a drink at that moment, it was me.

On second thought, I left the water glass inside and headed for the white chaise, the champagne bottle’s foil trailing behind me.

Chapter 73

CHARLES BAYLOR’S OFFICE was on Terry Lane, a block south of Hemingway’s house in Old Town. Nine a.m. sharp on Friday morning, holding a box of Dunkin’ Donuts in one hand and a box of coffee in the other, I rang his bell with my elbow.

As I waited, I heard a screaming saw at the rear of the house. On the porch, a rusty bicycle sat next to some beat-up diving tanks. What the hell kind of law office was this? When the saw stopped, I put down the coffee and whammed on the door with my fist.

A bleary-eyed, tan, shirtless guy wearing a green bandanna, goggles, and an air mask opened the door a minute later. He wiped his hands on his sole visible item of clothing, his cutoff jeans.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’m looking for Charles Baylor. The attorney?” I said.

“He’s not here at the moment,” the guy said, grinning like an idiot as he pulled down the mask. “I’m Charlie Baylor, the carpenter. Maybe I can help you out?”

I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. Nice to meet you, too, wiseass, I thought. “I’m Nina Bloom from Scott, Maxwell and Bond. They put me on to assist in the Justin Harris case. I left you about a dozen messages.”

“Well, bless my banjo,” Baylor said in an exaggerated hick accent. “You must be Miss New York City here to learn the hillbilly beach bum some lawrin’. I got every one of yours and the righteous Mission Exonerate’s calls, all right. You didn’t get my e-mail? ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ My client is in competent hands. You should check your BlackBerry. My message heading, I believe, was ‘Go Find a Tree to Hug.’ Guess you’ll have to drink all that coffee yourself. Shame. See you around.”

Could this guy be a bigger prick? I thought, as he started to close the door in my face. I drop-kicked the doughnut box into the gap to stop it.

I’d come down here for a lot of reasons. Messing around wasn’t one of them.

“ ‘Competent hands,’ huh?” I yelled as he looked down at the crushed doughnuts in pained shock. “What are you building back there, Mr. Baylor? Harris’s coffin?”

He pulled off his bandanna and ran a hand through his sandy hair. He looked to be in his early forties, but his lean, brown, weather-beaten face was still boyish somehow. He looked more like a landscaper than a lawyer. One with eyes the color of the sky I’d seen from my balcony last night, but that was beside the point.

“Harris’s coffin?” he said with a grin. “That’s cold, woman. Damned if I’m not starting to like you. Please call me Charlie. When are they changing your firm’s name to Scott, Maxwell and Soulless Bitch?”

I held eye contact with him, then smiled for the first time myself. “Invite me in, and we can go over it, Charlie.”

Chapter 74

HALF OF THE LAWYER’S HOUSE was beautiful: golden, varnished Dade pine floors; a completely refurbished curving banister and stairway; a white-on-white marble cook’s kitchen out of Architectural Digest. The other, gutted half, with its shattered plaster walls and garbage-brimming joint compound buckets, had a striking resemblance to a crack house.

Luckily, I was quickly escorted through the construction site into an artfully finished oak-paneled office behind the kitchen.

Charlie dropped the salvaged doughnut box onto his immaculate desk and took a Heineken keg can from a minifridge.

“Out of orange juice?” I said, making a show of checking my watch.

“In Key West, this is orange juice,” Charlie said, popping the beer can’s top and taking a slug.

I almost passed out when I noticed the framed Harvard Law diploma on the wall, a little magna cum laude banner bridged across its lower right-hand corner.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” he said, rocking back and forth in his chair. “I missed summa by like point-oh-six or some such. I really wanted to go to Yale, but their rugby team flat out blew that year.” He took a long sip, burped, and helped himself to a crushed Boston Kreme.

“What are you doing down here?” I said.

“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame,” he sang with his mouth full. “But I know—”

“Please shut up,” I said.

“Fine,” he said, chewing. “Like everybody else, I guess things went south until there was no more south left to go. This is actually my granddaddy’s place. He was a Texas oilman. He actually won it in a poker game at the age of seventy. Family legend has it he came down, took one look around, and telegraphed back, ‘If all works out, I’ll never be sober again.’ ”

“Touching story,” I said.

“Anyway,” Charlie said. “A few years ago, I inherited it and his dusty toolbox. After I bring this baby back to its former glory, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I got a friend who works for HGTV, said I’d be a shoo-in for one of those hunky carpenter dudes. How much money they make, you think?”

“You’re too old,” I said.

He finished his doughnut with another slug of beer and made a growling sound. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m also actually taking a stab at being the next John Grisham or Ernest Hemingway. You been to Papa’s house yet? Did you know some of the cats there have six toes?”

“Did you know Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun?” I said quickly. “This is a lot of fun and everything, but we need to go over Harris’s case. I got the brief, but I’d like to hear in your own words, in a nutshell, where it went wrong.”

“In a nutshell,” Charlie said. “OK, let’s see. It all went wrong probably right around the time the cops said, ‘Hey, Harris, you have the right to an attorney,’ and Harris didn’t say, ‘Where’s the phone?’ ”

He leaned back in his swivel chair, balancing the can on his bare chest.

“Harris was his own worst nightmare. First he tells the cops he didn’t know Foster. Lie numero uno. Then, faced with the DNA results, he claims he remembers having consensual sex with her at the prison where he worked and she was a volunteer. He said the coed scholarship musician was ‘quite the little freak,’ quote unquote. That she liked to slap and scratch him and for him to cuff her up before they did it in the janitor’s closet.

“Which is exactly what he said happened when she came in to volunteer that morning before she went missing. He claimed after he went off shift that day, he was with another woman, his fiancée, the whole day at the Miami Seaquarium. But when police questioned his alibi, the fiancée completely denied it.”

“Crap,” I said.

“On a pointy stick,” he said. “That’s why my white-shoe firm handed the case to me when his first lawyer was disbarred for bilking his real estate clients. See, like you, I was once moronic enough to believe in Harris, too. Enough at least to take it to trial.”

“What happened in court?”

“It came down to the jury not buying that a poor black prison guard could possibly have consensual sex with an angelic white college student who volunteered there. Foster’s mother sat in the front row, and she cringed and cried whenever the notion of her daughter and Harris being together came up. The jury wasn’t too hot on the idea either. Slam dunk. Capital murder.”

Charlie yawned and licked some custard off his finger.

“I left my firm a year later. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, I guess. So there you have it. In a nutshell. Trying to dig Harris out of his hole cost me pretty much everything. How you figure you’re going to get it done in a week?”

“I don’t know,” I said standing, “but I’m going to do something that maybe you haven’t thought of this year.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Charlie said, sitting up.

“I’m going to fucking try,” I said.

Chapter 75

IT WAS FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON by the time my chartered plane brought me up to Raiford, where Harris was being held on death row.

Raiford, in North Florida near Jacksonville, was about as far from Key West as you can get without leaving the state. Charlie had suggested to Harris that a local attorney might be more practical, but Harris had refused to get someone else.

It was Charlie or no one, Harris had said. Which made me wonder about Harris’s judgment.

I passed a small group of young protesters sitting on cars parked in the brown grass across from the maximum security prison. A waiflike teen in a vintage flowered dress waved a sign at me that said, DOWN WITH THE DEATH PENALTY. FREE JUSTIN HARRIS!

“Doing my best,” I mumbled as I approached the razor-wire fence of the prison parking lot.

With its king palms, hedged grounds, and whitewashed mission architecture, the entrance of Raiford looked more like a nineteenth-century resort than a prison.

But I nearly forgot that impression forever the moment I stepped inside and took in the stark concrete-and-steel interior decoration. I was buzzed in and felt as much as heard the clack as a door bolt shot home behind my back. It was the first time I’d ever been inside a prison. Movies didn’t do justice to the demoralizing horror.

From somewhere and everywhere came indeterminate shouts, overly loud televisions, flushing toilets, steel on steel.

I thought about that night on the beach so long ago. About Ramón Peña. About the fate I’d dodged.

Or had I? I wondered. Every time I thought I’d gotten away from it, it seemed to pop up again, like a will-o’-the-wisp in reverse.

After being admitted and having my bag searched, I was escorted by a mute, broad-backed Hispanic guard down a bleak cement hallway. I had to wait twenty minutes before Justin Harris hobbled into the death row visitor area in wrist-to-leg shackles. The guard with him actually cuffed him, like a wild beast, to a raised iron ring in the floor beside the table.

And the guard didn’t go far. He stood watching us intently from the other side of a large wired-glass window.

I looked at Justin Harris for the first time. He was heavier than his Fox News picture. He was a big man, gone to fat, his massive shoulders and arms and chest crumpled toward the floor as if something at his center had caved in. He sat there breathing raspily as he stared at me blankly. I noticed a raised, bluish bump on his cropped head.

“Where’s Charlie?” he finally said. “I thought they said my lawyer was here.”

“I’m Nina Bloom. I work at a law firm in New York, and I was assigned to help out Charlie on your case. What happened to your head?”

“This?” he said, pointing at the bruise with a goofy grin. “I bumped it water-skiing.”

I let out a breath as I held eye contact with him. He had a week to live, and he was being a wiseass? Was Harris actually nuts? I wondered.

“I know you didn’t do this, Justin,” I said quietly. “I’m here to help.”

Anger flashed in Harris’s suddenly wide eyes. His chains jingled as he sat up. “Oh, really. How do you know I didn’t do it? Because I’m black, and you voted for Obama? Listen, I fought for this country with honor with the Army Rangers in the first Iraq War, and now they’re closing down Gitmo. Maybe you and your ACLU pals should skip me and try springing a terrorist.”

“I know you believe in this country, Justin,” I said even quieter now, as I took his medal out of my bag.

“Who gave you that?” he said, outraged.

“Your mother. I’m here for her as well as you.”

He stared at the medal. He took a breath, held it. He shook his head, quickly closing his eyelids before a tear could escape.

“They executed Ted Bundy here. Did you know that?” he said matter-of-factly. “The electric chair is down the hall. They said there’s a new portable one I could choose if I want. Or I can go the needle route. Problem is, they botched one a few years back when they missed the vein. Left foot-long chemical burns up both of the guy’s arms.”

“I’m going to get you out of here, Justin,” I said.

He huffed out a breath, then looked at me for a long beat. Finally, he smiled at me. A genuine smile for the first time. He had straight teeth, dimples. For a split second, I saw the resemblance to the young, grinning drum major on the Carnegie Hall stage.

“I’m sorry about the Obama crack. I didn’t mean it,” he said, squeezing his hands together as if in prayer. “I understand what you’re trying to do, Miss Bloom. I admire it. Trying to help out desperate people is a nice thing. You really seem like a nice person, and I thank you for believing in me. But the governor of Florida isn’t going to grant me a stay. I got myself into this mess, and I’m resigned to suffer the consequences. I lived my life. It didn’t turn out so hot. Now it’s going to end.”

“Look at me,” I said passionately. “I’m not talking about a stay. I’m going to get you out of here, Justin. I know your DNA was from consensual sex with Tara Foster and that your fiancée lied about you. I’m going to straighten the whole thing out. Can you remember anything at all that can prove your alibi?”

“It’s been really nice talking to you, Nina, but I need to get back to my reading now,” Justin said, knocking on the wired glass.

As the guard was taking him away, Justin turned back. “Wait, there actually is one thing,” he said.

“What? What is it?” I said, sitting up.

“If you hear from my mom, tell her I love her, and that I’m OK, and that I don’t want to see her at the execution, OK?”

I nodded and let out a breath as I watched Justin be led away.

Chapter 76

CHARLIE WAS ON THE FRONT PORCH of his Key West bungalow, playing an electric steel guitar, when I arrived at his house at around nine on Saturday morning. He actually had an amplifier and everything. His eyes were closed as he maneuvered the glass slide over the strings, really getting into the jangling blues tune he was playing.

He opened his bloodshot eyes immediately when I stormed up the stairs and yanked the amplifier’s plug.

“I see that writing isn’t the only occupation that you share with Papa Hemingway,” I said as I kicked the half-empty box of Heineken keg cans between his feet. Had he been drinking all night? Or just all morning?

“How’s Justin? Still as optimistic as ever?” Charlie said, finally looking up at me after a slow sip of breakfast beer. “Did you know the Today show called me to see if I wanted to go on and plead Justin’s case? I asked Justin, and he went crazy. He wouldn’t let me do it. He doesn’t want to be defended. He’s sick of living in prison, sick of living, period. How do I fight for the life of a man who so obviously wants to die?”

Charlie really was playing the blues, I realized. He looked depressed as well as drunk. It was obvious that Justin wasn’t the only one who was listening to the ticking of a dwindling clock. Charlie was blaming himself for Justin’s fate. He felt that he’d let the man down.

Worst of all, like Justin, he seemed to think the whole thing was over. I had to change that.

“Justin is hopeless, as hopeless as his lawyer,” I said, waving Harris’s thick case file along with the printer sheets from the research I’d done at my hotel the night before. “Which has to change right now. We need to turn this around, Charlie. We need to go over this case with a fine-tooth comb. What about justice?”

Charlie tipped up his can and dropped the empty on the porch floor.

“Ours is a world where justice is accidental and innocence no protection. Someone said that. Euripides? Smart fuck, whoever he was,” Charlie said as he cracked open another beer.

I went over and snatched it out of his hand and threw it off the porch before I sat down next to him.

“Did you know that at the time of Harris’s arrest,” I said, showing him my papers, “the local West Palm news showed his picture and broadcast his perp walk? Several local newspaper editorials called for swift justice before the trial even began. A motion to move the trial upstate to a neutral venue by his first lawyer was dismissed out of hand. You and I both know Harris was ramrodded.”

“I hit on those points at his direct appeal and at the writ of certiorari we sent to the state supreme court, but no sale,” Charlie said. “I was at that trial, sweet peach. I actually held the envelope that had Foster’s underwear and Harris’s DNA. I killed myself on that case. I did everything possible. I brought in the phone-book-sized record of all the men in South Florida who have been in Airborne units to show how circumstantial the state’s evidence was, but they didn’t want to hear it. Harris getting capital punishment is what got me to hang up my briefcase. I’m against the death penalty.”

“But he didn’t do this!” I yelled.

“But so what!” Charlie yelled back.

This was crazy. I’d come down here and risked everything to help out an innocent man, and I was getting resistance from both him and his lawyer.

I struggled to think up a way to inspire Charlie. I needed him on board. I couldn’t do this alone. At least not without revealing the dangerous lie that was my life.

“And maybe he did do it. How do you know? Were you there?” Charlie said.

“I just know,” I said.

“I get it,” the Southern beach bum lawyer said as he began tuning his steel guitar. “You’re a psychic bitchy New York lawyer.”

“Haven’t you ever believed in anything?” I said. “Believed in something not for any reason, but just because you believed in it with every square inch of your body? That’s how I feel about this case.”

Charlie lifted a new can to his lips. He let out a breath before he lowered it. “And if you only believe, then fairies will sparkle magic dust on Justin’s jail cell door and make it disappear,” he said, angrily putting down the guitar. “Fine. You win. I guess you should go in and put on some coffee while I take a look at the old file yet again. Gee, this is going to be fun, dredging up my life’s worst failure for the thousandth time.”

I smiled as I walked past him toward his front door.

“New York City pain in my ass,” he mumbled as he opened the folder I’d brought. “Milk with two sugars, you hear me? And one of those doughnuts and… and I hate you, Nina, whatever the hell your name is.”

“I love you, too, Charlie,” I whispered to myself as I found the kitchen.

Chapter 77

CHARLIE AND I spent the rest of that Saturday working our asses off. On a beat-up leather couch in Charlie’s office, we went over Harris’s trial transcript line by line. Later Charlie, humming, sitting behind his desk, spun a rugby ball as he drank coffee, nodding as he read to himself.

Charlie really had done one hell of a job, I soon realized, as I turned the trial transcript and appeal pages. Pointed out inconsistencies. Objected to every cheap emotional trick the DA tried to pull. But the cards were stacked against Harris. The judge, more than the DA, seemed to want to convict Harris.

The worst of it was the excessive victim-impact testimony the judge had allowed during the sentencing portion of Harris’s trial. A total of sixteen family members, friends, and classmates gave over three hours’ worth of sobbing, heart-wrenching, emotional testimony as to the damage done by the loss of Foster. No wonder the jury had voted unanimously for the death penalty.

By the afternoon, we’d both pretty much gone over everything. We even got down on the Oriental carpet and arranged Foster’s original 1994 homicide case file, compiled when her body was originally found, beside the 2001 file, begun when the case was reopened.

I stood there, rubbing my eyes. All the photos, evidence lists, time lines, alibis, and lab reports seemed like one giant postmodern art installation. One that was making my brain ache as I tried to make heads or tails of it.

I knew I needed to try everything to come up with a way to clear Harris, but after a while, even I was starting to lose hope. I yawned, fighting exhaustion. We needed something. Anything.

“Look at this girl, would you?” Charlie said, sadly shaking his head as he waved his hand over the list of Jump Killer victims. It felt like I’d just had a shot of espresso when I realized he was pointing at my picture.

“What a beautiful young woman,” he said, suddenly looking at me. “She remind you of anyone?”

I stared back at him, wide-eyed.

He snapped his fingers. “Renée Zellweger,” he said. “A young Renée Zellweger.”

Renée Zellweger? I thought, relieved but suddenly frowning. Renée was OK, but how about a young Gisele Bündchen?

I jumped back as Charlie suddenly threw the rugby ball against the wall, almost knocking down his Harvard diploma.

“I got it!” he said, pacing back and forth. “I could slap myself. How could I be so stupid? Why the hell didn’t I see this before?”

“What? What?” I said, standing.

“The hairs. Where the hell are the hairs?”

“What are you talking about, Charlie?”

Charlie knelt down and pointed to the evidence list from the 1994 file.

“Right here. Look. There were three hairs found on Foster’s body underneath the paracord ligature she was bound with,” he said, pointing at the original file.

“But here,” he said, indicating the 2001 lab report, “there’s no mention of them. They test the semen found on the girl’s panties, but not the hairs. Why not?”

“They forgot?” I offered.

“Maybe,” Charlie said as he lifted his phone. “Or maybe they tested them and then deep-sixed the results when they came up inconclusive. Maybe the cops and DA conveniently left out the lab report when it didn’t match.”

“Who are you calling?” I said.

“The airport,” Charlie said. “We need to be on the first flight up to Boca tomorrow morning to get our hands on those hair samples in the old case file. We need to have them tested. Maybe you should head back to your hotel and get some rest. I know I need some. The cops up in Boca are a real pain in the butt. We’re going to need to kick ass. Speaking of ass-kicking, I want to thank you for kicking mine.”

“Anytime,” I said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Chapter 78

I HARDLY RECOGNIZED CHARLIE when he picked me up in an airport taxi wearing a crisp blue serge suit.

“You own shoes? Wingtips? I’m in shock,” I said.

“I shaved and even took a shower,” he said as he lifted his bulging briefcase. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll categorically deny it.”

Our plane was on time, and so were we when we arrived at ten sharp at the Boca Raton PD station, about 150 miles to the north. We had an appointment to meet with the detectives who originally arrested Justin Harris, but we had to sit in the department’s lobby for the better part of an hour before Person Crimes Unit Detectives Roberta Cantele and Brian Cogle buzzed us in.

Instead of going back to their office area, we were seated in an interview room by the front door, as if we were suspects.

“What’s this about?” Cogle, a tall detective with a white goatee and a huge gut under his Cuban shirt, wanted to know.

“Didn’t the DA tell you?” Charlie said. “We need to take a look at Tara Foster’s original case file. The evidence envelopes, the whole nine.”

“Why?” Cantele said.

“Because Justin Harris is about to be executed in five days, and we want to make sure it isn’t a mistake,” Charlie said.

“You goddamn defense liars, uh, I mean lawyers, never quit, do you?” Cogle said. “Are you aware that one of Harris’s victims was the wife of Peter Fournier, Key West’s chief of police? She was, like, twenty years old. That doesn’t chill you?”

Peter was the police chief now? I tried not to pass out. That was unbelievable. Not to mention terrifying. As if I didn’t feel paranoid enough coming down here.

“I know Fournier,” Charlie said. “My taxes pay his salary, unfortunately. I saw his dumb ass on the Today show on Thursday spouting all his victims’ rights, fry Justin, Jump Killer crap to Al Roker. I have no doubt his wife was killed by the Jump Killer. The problem is, and I know it’s a hard one for you guys to follow, Justin Harris isn’t the Jump Killer.”

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

Peter had been on the Today show? On Thursday?

I really had seen him in Grand Central Terminal!

Chapter 79

“HARRIS IS THE MISTAKE,” Cogle shot back. “And his murderous ass is going to get corrected come Friday. This is bullshit. You already had all the appeals you’re going to get. Everything is in order.”

“You wouldn’t just be saying that because it’ll be your job if we find something, would you?” Charlie said, taking out his cell. “You’re not actually going to make me call the DA again, are you?”

“Fine,” Cogle said, leaving.

“This is a wild goose chase, isn’t it?” Detective Cantele said, drumming her fingers against the cheap office table as we sat there, waiting. “It’s gotta suck knowing your boy is going down, and you couldn’t stop it, huh, Baylor?”

Why don’t you shut up, bitch, I wanted to say to the cop as Cogle came in with a bulky white evidence box.

Charlie threw open the lid and quickly flipped through the file folders. He lifted out a bag with a faded pair of panties in them and shoved them back into the box.

“Where are the hair samples?” he yelled at Cogle.

“Hair samples?” Cogle said, scratching his tilted head. “What do you mean?”

Charlie pointed at the evidence manifest.

“Right here. Evidence Sample D2. Hair sample found beneath the ligature.”

Cogle hummed as he slowly flipped through the file folders. Finally he stopped and shrugged elaborately.

“What do you know? Must have gotten lost,” he finally said. “Maybe a rat ate them or they evaporated. We are talking seventeen years, right? Was that all, or do you two need to use the restroom before you leave?”

Back out in the baking parking lot, Charlie seemed to have trouble opening our rental car. He suddenly threw the keys as hard as he could across the lot, then sat down on the concrete car stop beside it.

I sat down next to him, stewing in my own depressing thoughts.

Peter knew I was alive.

That was bad. About the worst thing possible. Was he still in New York? I thought about calling Emma and telling her to get out of the apartment, but then I remembered she was at her friend’s in Brooklyn.

I wondered if I should go straight home and grab my daughter. I’d run once before. I could do it again. Throw a dart at a map and just go. Even if Peter was onto me, at least he didn’t know about Emma.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Peter was chief of police now. He’d always been ambitious. But representing the Jump Killer victims’ advocate group? What a goddamn bullshit artist. He must have been thrilled all those years, thinking I was dead without having to kill me himself.

“The police destroyed that evidence, Nina,” Charlie finally said. “They’re laughing at us. They don’t care that an innocent man is about to die. No one does. That’s it, Nina. That’s all she wrote. We’re done. Justin’s done. It’s over. We have to accept the inevitable.”

I sat there thinking about that. Maybe Charlie was right. Maybe I should just let Charlie and Justin figure it out. Every man, woman, and child for themselves.

But right there, among the cop cars, with tar sticking to my four-inch heels, my anger tipped the scales against my fear. I was tired of running. Tired of Peter. Tired of what I had become.

I wasn’t going to run. I wasn’t going to hide. I was going to do the right thing.

“Nothing’s inevitable,” I said as I finally stood. I held out my hand and helped Charlie back to his feet as well. “They won this battle. Now let’s go and win the war.”

Chapter 80

AFTER WE FOUND the rental’s keys (Charlie had flung them under one of the Boca PD cruisers), we drove to the parking lot of a nearby Burger King, where I proceeded to go through Charlie’s messy files like I was possessed.

Alone and penniless, I had managed to raise a daughter in New York City with nothing but sheer will. I was pissed off now. I was going to straighten out Justin’s case if it killed me.

“What are you looking for now?” Charlie cried.

I pulled out a sheet of copy paper on which Charlie had typed, “HARRIS’S ALIBI INFO!” in big, bold letters across the top.

“This,” I said.

I read that Harris’s ex-fiancée’s name was Fabiana Desmarais. She was a Haitian immigrant who lived in Princeton, Florida, a few miles north of the Homestead Correctional Institution.

“How far away is Princeton from here?” I said. “We need to speak to Fabiana.”

“Wait one second,” Charlie said. “I tried that before the first habeas corpus appeal three years ago. Not only wouldn’t Fabiana’s mother let me speak to her, but she actually sicced her dog on me, a half-starved boxer with a bad attitude.”

“Hey, maybe you rub dogs the same way you rub people, Charlie,” I said. “I’d like a shot at her.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “We’ll use your secret weapon: charm. I forgot about the universal love all people have for pushy New York broads.”

We took the Florida Turnpike and about an hour and a half later, we zigzagged through some side streets until we pulled up in front of a sign that said HOMESTEAD MOBILE HOMES.

“No!” I said as we pulled up at Fabiana’s address. Beyond a rusty mailbox was an obviously deserted double-wide trailer with broken windows.

“I’m the manager. Can I help you?” called a very dark black man beneath the retractable awning of another trailer across the street.

As we stepped up, I saw that he was sitting on a faded wooden grapefruit crate and that he was working a paper or something in his dark, nimble fingers.

“We’re looking for Fabiana Desmarais,” I said.

“You cops?” the man said without looking up.

“No, we’re lawyers,” I said.

“I’d tell you even if you were cops,” the old man said with a yellow grin. “Fabiana and her snooty mother took off in the middle of the night about two years ago. No forwarding address.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have her social security number on file?” Charlie said, glancing at the rusted trailer.

“Since she owed me six months’ rent, I actually tried all that skip trace stuff. Number they both gave me was fake. Maybe they went back to Haiti like the old battle-ax of a mother kept threatening. Said America was an uncultured cesspool. America! I used to say to her, ‘How many illegal American immigrants they got paddling shark-infested waters into Haiti on tire rafts last time you checked?’ ”

“Oh, well. Thanks for your time,” Charlie said.

“You know what Fabiana’s mother reminds me of? This,” the old man said, holding up the piece of paper he’d been working. It was an origami cobra. He made a hissing sound as he twirled its tail between his fingers.

“Nice,” Charlie said. “Thanks again.”

“Well, at least we didn’t get bit,” Charlie said as we got back into the hot car. “Are you finished now, or do you need some more face time with the origami man?”

I scrubbed at my forehead with my fingers. “We need to speak to Justin again.”

“Up in Raiford?” Charlie said. “You were just up there.”

“If he doesn’t give us anything, then it’ll be on him,” I said.

Chapter 81

IT WAS COMING ON THREE by the time our chartered Cessna twin-prop arrived in Raiford on Tuesday. All this flying was costing a fortune, but an innocent man’s life was at stake—and I was billing everything to my Global 100 firm. Charlie called and made arrangements with the warden as we were driving past the growing crowd of protesters outside the prison grounds.

Harris looked stunned as Charlie and I met him in the lawyer visiting room.

“Back again so soon?” he said to me.

“Hate to interrupt your reading,” I said, tossing him a bag of mini pretzels.

“Hey, thanks. They’re my favorite,” he said, actually sounding pleased. He ripped open the bag with his shackled hands, dumped the pretzels onto the interview table, and ate one.

“OK,” I said. “I got you something, Justin. Now you have to give us something. We need to speak to Fabiana, but she’s no longer living in Princeton. She left and didn’t leave any forwarding info. Do you have any clue where she might have gone?”

“You kidding me?” he said with his mouth full. “I haven’t spoken to Fabiana since she threw the engagement ring I bought her in my face a decade and a half ago. That bitch wants me dead, and she’s going to get her way. You’re digging a dry hole.”

“You know what I’m sick of, Justin?” I said, suddenly smashing one of the pretzels on the table with my fist. “You and your attitude. You don’t want me to try to save your life? That’s not macho, that’s just stupid. Or just come out and say it. Have the guts to say, ‘I did it! I killed Tara Foster!’ ”

He gaped at me with his open mouth for a moment before he closed it. “But I didn’t,” he said, spitting crumbs.

I held my hand to my ear. “Holy moly! Did I just hear someone actually defend himself?”

“Who’s running the show here, Charlie?” Harris said.

“Isn’t that obvious?” Charlie said, eyeballing me.

“Fine. Try her cousin Maddie,” Harris said. “She was the one who actually introduced us.”

“Maddie what,” I said, thumbing my iPhone.

“Maddie Pelletier,” Harris said. “She’s a teacher at the high school in Key West now. She was always pretty cool to me. She even writes sometimes.”

I thumbed the phone book app. “I got a Madeline Pelletier on Fogarty Avenue.”

“That’s her,” Justin said.

I stood. “We have to go, Justin,” I said. “But we’ll be back.”

“Yeah, for the execution,” Harris mumbled.

“No, dumbass,” I said, pointing at the barred gate. “To open that door and let your mother hug you again.”

Chapter 82

“HEY, WHO WANTS A BEER BRAT?” Peter yelled, smiling, as he snapped barbecue tongs in front of his smoking grill.

With the festive smell of charring jerk chicken and chorizo sausage, the cries of running children and Neil Diamond playing softly from his backyard speakers, the barbecue seemed more like a birthday party or a christening than an event for the surviving family of serial killer victims.

It was an eclectic group: black, white, brown, rich, poor, even a gay Protestant minister. Death didn’t discriminate. Peter knew that firsthand.

The barbecue was actually one of several events planned for the group this week. Tomorrow, a chartered bus and plane from Miami would take all of them to the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee for a sit-down and some more press coverage, Peter hoped. Then it was over to Raiford on Friday for an all-day camp-out vigil before Harris’s midnight execution. An exhausting schedule for these poor folks but one that he hoped would provide some closure.

Knowing that Jeanine was actually still alive disqualified Peter’s membership in the group, but, hey, who was he to burst everyone’s bubble with a technicality?

Besides, she’d be deader than grunge music once he went back up to New York and hunted her down after the execution.

He was flipping some peppers and onions when the minister formed a prayer circle around the pool.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Peter said along with everyone as he took his place between his beaming wife, Vicki, and the minister.

Across from them, his new best friend, Arty Tivolli, the multimillionaire, smiled approvingly.

The closing on the golf course was scheduled for a week after the execution. Peter would be splitting the six percent commission with the broker. In two weeks’ time, if all went well, he’d be handed a check for three and a half million dollars.

And it all would go well. He of all people would see to that.

An hour later as everyone was lining up along the seawall in lawn chairs to watch the sun set, Peter’s cell rang.

“Hey, Peter. How’s it going? It’s Brian Cogle from the Boca PD.”

“Of course, Bri. What’s up?” Peter said to the crusty old cop. He knew everybody who was anybody in South Florida law enforcement. It was all about the networking.

“Just wanted to let you know that we got a visit from Harris’s mouthpiece, that son of a bitch Charlie Baylor. He was asking about the hairs.”

“Those, huh?” Peter said, frowning. Baylor was such an asshole.

“There was a woman with him, too. A lawyer. He got some help.”

Shit, Peter thought. That was all he needed to upset the apple cart. Some eleventh-hour crusade. If Justin Harris was given a stay, who knew how pissy Tivolli would get. Now was not the time for the unexpected. Harris needed to be in a pine box by next week.

“Any chance your boy at the lab who squelched the hairs will squeal?” Peter said. “If there’s any friction, I’d be willing to make it worth his while.”

“Pete, c’mon. Don’t insult me,” Cogle said. “I got it under control. The lab rat is my geeky little brother-in-law. I’m his son’s godfather. Besides, he’d get canned. Not a chance.”

“Good,” Peter said. “Like I told you before, Brian, getting rid of them was the right thing. Showing that there was a second person at the crime scene would have complicated the whole case and gotten that son of a bitch off. You did the right thing, brother. I’ll never forget it.”

“Don’t even mention it. Had it been my wife, I know you’d do the same for me,” Cogle said. “You going up to demonstrate at the execution?”

Behind Peter, the gathered crowd began to ooh and aah as the sun began to descend over the gulf. Peter squinted out at the water as the sky turned the color of a new penny.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Brian,” Peter said.

Chapter 83

WE HAD TO DRIVE UP to Jacksonville to get a direct flight back to Key West, so it was almost nine p.m. by the time we spilled out of a puddle jumper back at the Key West airport.

We had our cabdriver take us directly to Madeline Pelletier’s house on Fogarty Avenue, not far from Key West High School. The front yard of the small stucco house she lived in was strewn with toys.

“Yes?” said the pretty, petite teenaged black girl who answered the door.

“Can we speak to Maddie Pelletier?” Charlie said.

“Mom,” the girl called back into the house. “It’s white people.”

“Hello,” said a not much older version of the girl who’d answered the door a minute later. “I’m Maddie. Can I help you?”

“Hi, Maddie. Sorry to bother you so late. We’re lawyers representing Justin Harris. Could we speak to you?”

“Oh, wow. Poor Justin,” she said, shaking her head. “I pray for him. What can I do for you?”

“Well, we actually need to speak to your cousin Fabiana,” I said. “But we can’t seem to find her.”

“Do you think Fabiana can help Justin?”

“Justin claims that he and Fabiana were on an all-day date at the Miami Seaquarium the day he was accused of killing that girl,” Charlie said.

“But Fabiana said it was a lie,” Maddie said.

“We know,” I said. “But we have some new information and just need to ask her some questions. We really need to speak to her.”

“That’s what helped the jury to convict Justin?” Maddie said with a stunned look on her face. “I had no idea. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say her mother is behind this somehow.” Maddie shook her head. “I’m not sure what to do. My aunt Isabelle, Fabiana’s mother, is a very old-school Haitian, very suspicious of everything. She stopped speaking to me for years after she found out that I introduced Fabiana to Justin at a bar. She’ll go crazy if she finds out I sent you.”

“She won’t find out from us,” Charlie said.

“Aunt Isabelle runs a pretty successful Haitian restaurant near South Beach in Miami. It’s called the Rooster’s Perch. She and Fabiana live in Little Haiti. Hold the door. I’ll get the address for you.”

Charlie and I stared at each other as we waited.

“Is this what I think it is?” Charlie said. “Are we actually making some progress?”

“Shhh,” I said. “Hold your breath. We don’t have the address yet.”

Chapter 84

AFTER AGREEING that neither one of us could physically set foot on another airplane until morning, Charlie and I decided on dinner instead.

“I’ll behave, too. I’ll drink only light rum,” Charlie said as our taxi let us out on crowded Duval Street.

We sat in a booth at Jack Flats. The place had an awesome, long, beat-up wooden bar and old black-and-white photographs of cigar factory workers who had populated the island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Outside the open stall-like doors, Duval was the same as ever. Think a drunken Greenwich Village block party in New York, with flip-flops. Only it was even crazier now that the Independence Celebration was in full swing.

I stared, amazed, at the Yanks-Rays game playing above the crowded bar beside a neon Dolphins helmet. I’d been so busy in the last few crazy days, I’d almost forgotten that there was a sport called baseball. I needed to call Emma as well. I decided I’d text her once I got back to my hotel.

“Don’t tell me. You’re a Yankees fan, too,” Charlie said as I clapped at a Posada double. “Could you try just a tiny bit more not to make me hate you even more?”

“Not a chance,” I said before finishing my beer and standing. “Watch my seat, and I counted my wings, by the way, Harvard boy.”

The first thing I noticed as I headed back to our table a few minutes later was that there was a police car at the curb in front of the open doors. The second was that there was somebody in my seat.

When I realized who that somebody was, I stopped in midstride in the middle of the bar as if I’d hit an invisible wall.

Chapter 85

I STOOD THERE. The people at the bar and the multiple ball games on the TVs above them suddenly seemed out of rhythm, somehow both too slow and too fast. The sound from the bar’s speakers, which had been playing the classic rock song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” alternately blasted and dipped, as if a child were playing with the volume knob. The cigar factory workers now sent me malignant stares from the vintage photographs. So did a stocky waitress, jostling past me, as I stood in the middle of the crowded room, my lungs and heart seizing.

Peter sat in the booth with Charlie less than ten feet away on my right. He was wearing his dark blue police uniform, his thick, chiseled arms as deeply tanned as I remembered them. It was as if he hadn’t aged at all.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the butt of his gun on his Sam Browne belt. In a moment, he would turn and see me, I thought. In a moment, he would stand and draw and fire his gun into my face. People or no people, the fact that almost two decades had passed meant nothing. Killing was what Peter did.

I was suddenly extremely aware of my heartbeat. I could feel the systole and diastole of my heart clenching and releasing as I waited for Peter to catch me out of the corner of his eye.

But after one second and then two, miraculously he didn’t turn. After a third moment, my paralysis lessened, and I was suddenly able to move. I mustered up the last iota of my will to live. I backpedaled, turned, and squeezed into a place along the crowded bar.

“So you’re still trying to pull some tricks up in Boca,” Peter said to Charlie at my back, as I eavesdropped. “I mean, you seem like a decent lush, Baylor. Why represent a piece of garbage like Harris? Controversial client like that is bound to stir up people’s emotions. I’d hate to see you become a victim of a violent crime.”

“Is that a threat?” Charlie said.

“Just some friendly advice,” Peter said. “Your own personal public service announcement from Key West’s chief of police.”

“Don’t you have any drunks to beat up?” Charlie said.

“Fresh out,” Peter said. “But if you’re free, we could head outside.”

“Be happy to,” Charlie said. “You keep the badge, I get the gun.”

“You’re real funny, Counselor, but what’s not funny is that you’re trying to protect the man who killed my wife from his just reward.”

I swallowed. Peter was referring to me, I realized.

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “No matter what you do, Friday night, your precious client is walking into that chamber, and they’re going to carry him out in a bag.”

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” Charlie said calmly.

“Yes, we certainly will,” Peter said.

I heard Peter stand. Would he come to the bar and order a drink? Was he behind me? Before I could muster up the courage to turn around, I felt a hand at my back.

“There you are,” Charlie said.

I couldn’t have been more relieved.

“Who was that cop?” I managed to spit out.

“Chief of Police Peter Fournier. Must have heard it through the grapevine that we were looking at Tara Foster’s file.”

I blinked down at the floor, trying to absorb that.

“Some people say he’s dirty, but whenever any complaints arise, he always ends up smelling like a rose. You have to see him, with his perfect Barbie doll wife and two perfect little Stepford kids, like he’s Mr. All-American Dad. Then he comes in here just now with that high-wattage Tom Cruise smile of his and threatens me. Sick puppy.”

Peter had a wife and kids now?! I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I’d be sure to go over it when my heart started beating again.

“You want another beer?” Charlie said.

“Yes,” I said. “And a shot of whiskey.”

“There you go, Nina. Get into that Key West vibe. I didn’t know you had it in you,” Charlie said with a wink. “But then I call us a taxi. We need to rest up for tomorrow. We have only another three days. I have a feeling this one is going to be a race to the finish line, don’t you?”

Chapter 86

I IMMEDIATELY HIT THE SHOWER when I got back to my hotel room. With my hands flat against the glass tile wall, I stood directly under the spray in the suite’s spa-like bathroom for almost an hour, my eyes closed as the hot needles pinged off my face and skin.

I was hoping the heat and the rush of the water might clear my mind, deliver some much-needed calm, but as the minutes passed, I knew it was fruitless.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how dangerously close I’d come to Peter, but after a while, I realized there actually were some positives. One, Peter was back in Key West, away from Emma. Two, if Peter didn’t ask Charlie about me that meant Peter didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t in New York. And three, he didn’t know that I was helping Charlie.

But I had to keep things that way. Going out for dinner and drinks on Duval Street was about as reckless a move as I could have made. All Peter had to do was turn, give the slightest of glances over his shoulder, and he would have seen me again.

Freeing Justin was my priority, but I had to be smarter. I also needed to wrap this up as soon as possible. Every moment I stayed down here, I was playing with my life.

Finally, reluctantly, I squeaked off the faucet and squeezed out my hair. After I dried and wrapped myself in a couple of fresh towels, I pulled on the fluffy bathrobe that was hanging on the inside of the bathroom door. I went into the bedroom and set the alarm clock for five so I could get up early to do my hair.

I was going to call Emma back in New York, but then I realized how late it was and decided to just text my daughter good-night instead. Too exhausted to get into my pj’s, I sat for a moment on the side of the bed.

Beyond the open doorway of the bedroom, the living room curtains were wafting gently in the breeze from the rooftop patio slider. Between them a slight sliver of the moon glowed over the still silver plain of the water.

Could Charlie see it, too? I wondered. I couldn’t deny how I was starting to feel about him. He was funny, intelligent, not hard to look at, though the breakfast beers would have to go.

I turned off the light and lay back on the pillows, already half asleep, when I had a much less romantic thought. Without turning, I glanced over at the billowing living room curtains, furling now in the dark like a full sail.

But how could the curtains be blowing in the breeze? I thought.

When I’d locked my balcony door before my shower?

Chapter 87

FOR THE NEXT two solid minutes, I lay there in the dark, my heart rapping like a set of brass knuckles at the inside of my chest, silence sizzling in my ears.

But there has to be a good reason was the thought that scrolled through my unraveling mind like a continuous news crawl.

Then my molars clicked together involuntarily as a faint scraping sound came from just beyond the open bedroom door.

Something in my chest started to flutter when I heard it again. It came from the left, as if someone standing in the suite’s kitchen had shifted his weight.

Not just any someone either, I suddenly thought.

I guess Peter hadn’t missed seeing me at the bar after all.

I knew I couldn’t just stay there, that I needed to get up, hide, run, do something. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Animal fear pressed down on my chest like a lead blanket, making me weak, pinning me to the bed.

After a long, careful, silent breath, I lifted my hand as if to prove to myself that I could, in fact, move.

Good, I thought stupidly.

Now I needed to do the same thing with my feet.

I reached out as I slowly sat up, my right hand brushing along the top of the bedside radio alarm clock. I was standing, my eyes glued to the dark doorway, when I had an idea. I bent down slowly, unplugged the heavy clock, and brought it with me to the side of the open bedroom door.

As I arrived, a dark figure moved smoothly and silently through the bedroom doorway.

At first, I didn’t believe it.

This isn’t happening, I thought, suddenly frozen and senseless again. How could this be happening? I’m dreaming this.

Then a switch tripped somewhere in the primordial part of my brain, and I snapped out of my daze and swung the clunky alarm clock by its cord two-handed as hard as I could.

There was an unexpectedly loud shattering sound followed by a heavy thump as the figure immediately went down. I’d swung high and assumed I’d hit Peter in the head, but I didn’t stick around to find out. I dropped what was left of the clock and ran in a blind panic out of the bedroom.

In two strides, I was through the suite’s living room, my hand wrapped around the front doorknob, turning and pulling in one motion.

Then my arm almost came out of its socket as the door jerked to a stop only a quarter of the way open.

Hysterical, I tried the door two more times before I realized the slide lock was still engaged. Moaning and literally shaking with terror, I forced myself to methodically close the door, flip the lock free, and then try the knob again.

That did it. I ran out into the blindingly bright hallway and burst through the closest stairwell door to my left. My bare feet slapped painfully off the concrete as I half ran, half fell down the stairs.

As I made the next lower landing, I paused. Huffing and puffing, I tried to quell my rioting mind and figure out what to do next. Should I go into the hallway and knock on some doors? Go down to the lobby? That’s when the stairwell door above me blew open like it had been torn off its hinges.

Heavy footsteps began to hammer down the stairs as I turned and ripped open the lower floor’s door. Shedding towels, with my robe flying wide, I ran half-naked now down the new hallway. Every molecule of my being was focused on one thing: pumping my legs up and down as fast as they would go, moving away from the sound behind me.

As I turned the next corner, I spotted a red metal box on the wall. A loud clanging started immediately as I yanked the fire alarm on the run. Doors opened up and down the hallway. A groggy teenager’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he saw me streak past him at about thirty miles an hour.

I hit the next stairwell door and took this newest set of stairs two by two all the way to the ground floor. I crossed the empty lobby in nothing flat and headed for the hotel driveway. Standing in the drive’s turnaround, the night manager was on his cell phone and looking up at the building.

I thought about stopping and asking for his help, but even he would be no protection from Peter, I realized. I spotted a taxi stopped at the light on the corner and bolted for it.

The traffic light turned from red to green when I was still about twenty feet away.

I wasn’t going to make it, I thought as I ran barefoot, wheezing and covered in sweat, into the street. I winced, waiting for the feel of a bullet in my back, to fall sprawling on the asphalt. In my hysterical mind, it was already over. I could actually see Peter coming over and smiling his easy smile as he placed a gun to my forehead.

But instead, the cab suddenly stopped short and I jumped in. I broke a nail ripping open the handle of its rear door.

“In a rush, are we?” the young Asian wiseass of a driver said as I collapsed across the rear seat.

“Drive,” I gasped. “Drive, drive. Please just drive.”

Chapter 88

I MADE THE TAXI DRIVER PROMISE to wait for me as I pounded on Charlie’s front door.

He finally opened it, wearing a pair of Texas A&M boxer shorts.

“What the hell?” Charlie said. “Nina?”

I smoothed my still wet hair as I stood in my bathrobe, staring at him. I hadn’t thought this far in advance. What could I say? How could I explain what had just happened?

He reached out and grabbed my elbow, sudden concern in his eyes.

“Nina, are you OK? Are you hurt?”

I was about to tell him that there was a fire at the hotel. Why not? What was another lie on top of nearly two decades’ worth?

I was more surprised than anyone about what happened next. Maybe it was the fact that I’d come unglued with shock and wasn’t thinking straight. Or that I’d been working so hard over the last week under such enormous stress.

I stepped over the threshold and crashed into Charlie like he was a tackling sled. I wrapped my arms around him like he was my last hope. Probably because he was.

He seemed baffled, to put it mildly. But that shocker wasn’t anything compared to what came out of my mouth a second later.

“My name isn’t Nina,” I said in his ear. “Oh, Charlie. You have to help me. Please.”

Chapter 89

CHARLIE STARED AT ME, blown away, for a few moments before he brought me back into his office and sat me down. After he paid for the taxi, he put a half-full water glass of Johnnie Walker in my hand and one in his own, sat slowly himself, and let out a breath. After several more beats, he yelled, “What?!”

I stared at him for a few seconds, biting my lip. How could I do this? I thought. How could I open up after so many years, so many lies? I’d been keeping my secrets for too long. How could I reveal them now?

At first, I scrambled to think of a way to minimize the utter outrageousness of my insane life story. But after a minute, I realized how impossible that was.

Harris’s case file was sprawled out on Charlie’s desk. I stood and retrieved the sheet with the photographs of the suspected Jump Killer victims.

“Look, Charlie,” I said, tapping my high school yearbook picture twice. “This isn’t a young Renée Zellweger. It’s me. My name is Jeanine. Jeanine Fournier. I used to be married to Peter Fournier, the Key West chief of police.”

Then for the next half hour, as Charlie sat there blinking, I explained myself. Or at least tried to. When I got to the part about my faked abduction, he held up his hand.

“So you’re telling me that Fournier, the chief of police, is not only a bad cop, but, in fact, a psychopath?” Charlie said.

I nodded vigorously. “That’s why I faked my death. Peter’s first wife tried to leave him through regular channels. I didn’t feel like being stalked and gunned down.”

Then I told him the part about the Jump Killer and my new life and identity up in New York with Emma.

“When my firm volunteered me for the pro bono initiative, and I found out about Justin,” I explained, “I knew I had to come back down here to help. I knew Justin was innocent because the psycho who picked me up hitchhiking and tried to kill me the night I left was white.”

Charlie closed his eyes and began to rub them. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“Are you really a lawyer at least?” he finally spat out.

“I went to Fordham Law at night. I even passed the bar. My plan here was to get Justin off, but keep my life secret and safe and intact. But that’s out the window now. Peter was in my room tonight. He must have seen me at the bar when he was talking to you. I’d call the cops, but Peter is the cops. What am I going to do?”

Charlie lifted his drink and stared at it, thinking. Then he finally finished it.

“Well, from one lawyer to another, here’s my best advice, off the top of my head,” he said. “You need to get on a plane and get as far away from Fournier as possible until we can figure out a way to deal with him. You need to go back to New York.”

Chapter 90

“GO BACK to New York?” I said. “What about Justin? I had contact with the real Jump Killer! That’s pertinent to Justin’s case, isn’t it? I’m probably the only person who’s ever seen the Jump Killer and lived. Don’t I need to testify?”

“It’s not that simple,” Charlie said. “In order to get a stay of execution with this little time left, you have to go through the Florida Office of Executive Clemency. We’re going to get only one shot at convincing the board to look at any new evidence. As it stands now, Justin’s fiancée recanting her damaging testimony is still the best possible scenario. She’s the only one who has vital exculpatory evidence that speaks directly to the case. The members on the board would be forced to consider it.”

“But—” I started.

Charlie silenced me with a palm. “Your, uh, new revelations, on the other hand, are essentially this: you came into contact with a white man who seemed to be the Jump Killer. It’s certainly thought-provoking, but there’s not enough legal red meat there. In fact, it might be seen as so fantastical that I wouldn’t be surprised if the governor dismissed it as a desperate stunt. Fabiana’s testimony is it, our only shot.”

“But we haven’t even found her yet,” I pointed out. “Let alone convinced her to tell the truth. And what if we don’t? Then what do we have? Nothing. Fantastical as it is, my testimony is at least something.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said. “But it’ll be really hard for you to testify if you’re dead. You’re not thinking straight. Didn’t you just say that Fournier was in your room? You getting out of Key West isn’t a choice.”

I sat there staring at him. He had a point. I definitely was in danger. Now more than ever. But after meeting Justin, I knew I couldn’t run again.

“I need to see this through,” I finally said. “Whatever happens, I’m not leaving until I’ve done everything I can do for Justin. I’m staying.”

Charlie stared at me, exasperated. He drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Mission Exonerate? Mission Impossible is more like it,” he said. “Fine. I’m not going to deny that I do need your help. For Justin’s sake, I guess we don’t have a choice. But until this is over, we stick together. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said, letting out a breath.

I couldn’t believe it. I was still here. I had actually told someone my secrets, and I hadn’t burst into flames.

Not all of my secrets, I reminded myself. I had yet to mention Ramón Peña, but I guess it was a start.

“I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Charlie,” I said. “For me, for my daughter. I’ve been holding this inside for so long. I’ve never told anyone. I’m so sorry I lied to you.”

Charlie lifted the phone. “I should have known you were trouble the second you crushed your doughnuts in my door, Nina. Or do I have to call you Jeanine now? Never mind. What’s the number for your hotel? That bathrobe is probably too casual even by Miami standards. If we’re still going to go up there to find Justin’s ex-fiancée, I have a funny feeling you’re going to need your bags.”

Chapter 91

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Charlie and I were in Miami. It was around nine when we rolled up in front of the address Fabiana’s cousin gave us, a tiny stucco house in the northeast Miami neighborhood known as Little Haiti.

I looked anxiously down the block at the bars on all the neighboring windows, the chain-linked front yards cluttered with garbage and barking dogs. Loud Caribbean hip-hop blasted as a bunch of muscular kids in gangbanger do-rags sat on a battered gray leather sectional on the corner, giving new meaning to the word loitering.

“Wait in the car,” Charlie said, opening his door. “With the doors locked.”

“No way,” I said, following him out. “You’re not leaving me out here.”

We hurried up the cracked concrete path to Fabiana’s tiny house and rang her doorbell.

“Fabiana!” Charlie called, giving the door a couple of quick pounds for good measure.

A minute later, one of the larger corner “kids” rolled past on a BMX trick bike, alternately sizing us up and glancing at our rental.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone home,” I said quickly as the kid rolled back toward his posse. “Why don’t we check for Fabiana at her mom’s restaurant?”

“That’s funny. I was just thinking the same thing,” Charlie said as we raced each other back to the car.

After Little Haiti, Fabiana’s mother’s restaurant, the Rooster’s Perch, was a happy surprise. It was half an hour away in South Beach, a block west of the trendy art deco hotels of Ocean Drive and the beach. Behind the eatery’s battered wooden sidewalk tables, a wall mural depicted cattle and chickens under palm trees, smiling black kids in plaid school uniforms, dark women in colorful dresses carrying wash.

“We do not open until lunch,” said a very dark old woman who was cutting open a bundle of tablecloths at the bar just inside the door when we walked in. She wore an expensive cream-colored dress, pearls, and a suspicious, sullen expression.

“Let me guess. You’re Isabelle,” Charlie said.

“Who are you? How do you know my name? What do you want here?” the woman said, her eyes gleaming as she came immediately around the bar.

Now I understood what the trailer park manager meant when he compared her to his paper cobra.

“We’re here to speak with Fabiana,” Charlie said.

“There is no one here by that name,” the old woman said, pointing at the door with her knife. “Leave, I tell you. Now.”

“It’s OK, Mama,” said a younger black woman in an apron who suddenly appeared in the swinging kitchen doorway.

Charlie and I looked at each other in happy surprise.

“It is not OK!” Isabelle insisted as she turned.

The younger woman barked something in French. The old woman’s eyes went wide before she reluctantly stepped out of our way.

“I am Fabiana Desmarais,” the young woman finally said as she waved us into the kitchen. “How can I help you?”

Chapter 92

FABIANA WAS PETITE with very light blue eyes and cinnamon-colored skin. Though she was almost in her fifties, she looked maybe half that. She wore a simple, wide-necked peasant blouse with a fuchsia cotton skirt that seemed much cheaper than her mother’s.

Behind her, several quartered chickens sat on a cutting board beside a pile of Scotch bonnet peppers. From an industrial-sized bubbling pot on the stove came the strong but comforting smell of chicken broth. Immediately hungry, I had to resist the urge to ask for a bowl.

“Hi, Fabiana. I’m Nina, and this is Charlie,” I said, taking the lead. “We’re really sorry to bother you, but we’re here about Justin Harris.”

A look of fear wafted through Fabiana’s blue eyes. Her mouth opened in a tiny O. “What about him?” she said, collecting herself after a moment.

“You mean you don’t know?” I said.

She shook her head. “Know what?” she said.

“Justin Harris is going to be executed, Fabiana,” Charlie said. “In two days, he’s going to receive the death penalty for killing that girl, Tara Foster.”

Fabiana pinched her chin as she stared wide-eyed at the tiled floor. “Are you from the police?” she said.

“No, we’re here to help Justin,” I said. “We’re his lawyers. We want to save him. But we need everyone to tell the truth once and for all so that he will not have to pay for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Fabiana walked over to a stainless-steel counter where a large mortar and pestle sat. “I loved Justin,” she said as she began violently grinding a pile of spices. “He was a good man, always a gentleman. He had a car. He would take me everywhere. I never knew that the world could be so wonderful. He said he was going to marry me. He said he was going to take me away from Mama.

“Then the police said that he had done a bad thing with that white woman. That he had done nasty things to her at his job. He lied. He was no gentleman. Mama was right. I could never love such a man.”

“But he was with you on the day the girl was abducted, Fabiana. We know that he was. You went to the Miami Seaquarium together.”

“That never happened,” she said as she dropped the pestle. “On that day, I was with my church group. Mama will tell you. Justin was mistaken. I must get back to work.”

“Wait,” I said, grabbing her wrist. “What Justin did with Tara Foster was wrong. To treat you in such a manner was unconscionable. But he shouldn’t have to die for it. If he was with you on that day, then everyone needs to know. Or you’ll be the one who is responsible for his death.”

Fabiana shook her head. “I have nothing more to say. You must leave now. I must get back to work.”

“Yes,” Queen Isabelle said, coming through the swinging door. “Leave now.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, putting his hand into his jacket pocket. “You know the South Beach Marriott?”

“The hotel around the corner?” Fabiana said, puzzled. “Yes. What about it?”

Charlie handed her his card with a room number scrawled on the back. “Well, we’re going to be there for the next two days. If you want to come by, you can watch the coverage of your ex-boyfriend’s execution with us.”

“But you said you were his lawyers. Won’t you be there to help him?” Fabiana said, confused.

“It’s out of our hands, Fabiana. You’re the only one who can help Justin now,” Charlie said as we left.

Chapter 93

“ROOM SERVICE?” Charlie said into our phone at the Marriott ten minutes later. “Please send up two turkey clubs and a pitcher of—”

I kicked Charlie in the back of the knee with my pump.

“Um, lemonade,” he finished, hanging up.

I dropped my laptop and briefcase in a heap by the couch. I walked across the suite and drew the drapes. Reeling with disappointment and exhaustion, I shook my head at the too bright Florida sky, the too bright glittering ocean.

My return to Florida wasn’t going as I had hoped. I’d wanted to avoid Peter, but I failed. I was continuing to lie to someone I was starting to have feelings for. And now, after we’d finally found Fabiana, she was refusing to help Justin. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. What the hell were we going to do now?

Behind me, Charlie kicked off his shoes and lay down on the couch.

“Do you think Fabiana will take the bait?” I said.

“Do I know?” Charlie said, closing his eyes. “Depends on how much she hates Justin, I guess. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right? It’s looking like Justin must have scorned the living crap out of Miss Desmarais. Is it actually possible for a woman to hate a man to death?”

“You’d be surprised,” I said grimly. “How long do we wait?”

Charlie let out a tired breath. “Two, three hours at the most,” he said. “If she doesn’t show, then we won’t have any other choice. We’ll have to go with Plan B.”

“Which is?” I said.

“We still go up to meet with the clemency board in Tallahassee, but instead of Fabiana recanting her testimony, you’re going to have to tell the board your bizarre life story instead. It’s gonna suck, and it probably won’t even work, but it’s like you said. Other than that, we don’t have a damn thing.”

I pieced through that excruciating scenario. I’d had trouble enough telling my secrets to Charlie. How exactly was I going to give them up to the governor of Florida?

A long hour later, after my third game of solitaire, I was heading out onto the balcony to give Emma a call when there was a soft knock on the door.

“Lunch. Finally,” Charlie mumbled from where he lay dozing on the couch.

“No, please don’t get up. I got it, really,” I snapped as I crossed to the door.

My mood definitely lifted when I opened it.

It wasn’t room service.

I stepped back and let Fabiana in.

Chapter 94

“THANK YOU SO MUCH for coming, Fabiana,” I said. “I promise that when you testify that—”

“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not testifying. I came to give you this,” she said, taking a sheet of newspaper out of her pocket.

I unfolded it. It was a yellowed page of classified ads from the Miami Herald. I held my breath after I spotted the date in the corner. It was from June 19, 1993. From reading and rereading the case and trial transcripts, I knew that was the day after Tara Foster had been abducted.

“What is this, Fabiana?” I said, quickly scanning the classifieds.

Fabiana took it out of my hand and turned it over. My eyes fell immediately to the photograph at the bottom. A group of people were sitting in some stands by a pool with a woman in a wet suit and some dolphins.

“Floridians beat yesterday’s heat at the Miami Seaquarium,” said the caption.

“Justin and I are in the picture,” Fabiana said. “Right there in the front row. You were right. I lied.”

I peered at the photograph more closely. It was true. You could just make out Justin and Fabiana sitting in the front row.

“Charlie!” I yelled, handing him the page. “You’re not going to believe this. Look!”

He took the newspaper page out of my hands, looked at the picture, looked at the date.

“Yes!” he said with a triumphant grin. “Finally, a break!”

“All you need to do is show this to the authorities, and my lie will be exposed,” Fabiana said. “Then they can set Justin free, yes?”

“Actually, well, no, Fabiana,” Charlie said. “It’s not that simple. This is extremely helpful, but you need to come to Tallahassee with us and bring this forward yourself. You’ll have to give your testimony as well.”

“I’m absolutely not willing to do that,” Fabiana said coldly.

“Why not?” Charlie said.

“Nina?” Fabiana said, looking at me. “Can I speak to you alone?”

I eyeballed Charlie to get going.

“Fine. I’ll be out in the hall, I guess.”

“Don’t judge me,” Fabiana said after Charlie left.

I shook my head. “Of course not, Fabiana.”

“Seventeen years ago, Justin made me pregnant. He told me that he couldn’t afford a baby and a wife, but that if I… got rid of the baby, he would eventually marry me. He even bought me a ring. So I agreed. I didn’t want to kill my baby, but in the end I decided I didn’t want to lose Justin more. It was three months later that I found out through a friend that he was cheating on me. Not with just one woman, but with several.”

Ouch, I thought. Justin really had scorned the living crap out of her.

“When the detective told me years later that Justin had admitted to having sex with Tara Foster in the prison, it brought back all that horror and hatred and pain. So I lied. I wanted to hurt Justin as much as he had hurt me. The last thing I want to do now, after all these years, is tell my dirty little story to the whole wide world. You can understand that, can’t you? I’ll probably be in some trouble myself for lying.”

“That’s true, Fabiana. But there’s no other way. You don’t have to get into specifics about why you lied. All you need to do is explain that you did lie and that Justin was with you the whole day.”

“Can’t you do it for me?” Fabiana said, closing her eyes.

“It doesn’t work that way, Fabiana. I know it’ll be painful to testify, but how do you think you’ll feel if you don’t come forward and Justin is executed? Seventeen years is a long time to hold on to your pain. It’s time to let yours go.”

Fabiana let out a breath. “You’ll be there?”

“Of course,” I said.

“OK,” she said. “I guess I don’t have a choice. I’ll do it.”

Chapter 95

JUST BEFORE DINNER, on the second-to-last day of his life, Justin Harris lay on his cot with a book open in his large hands. It was a cheesy old paperback about a brilliant and bulky detective named Nero Wolfe.

“News flash, fatso,” Justin mumbled as he tossed the book under his bunk. “In the real world, the killer gets away with it.”

He sat up immediately as boots squeaked and metal clicked out in front of his death-watch cell adjacent to the execution chamber.

“Harris, visitor,” the day captain, Johannson, said, opening the gate.

Visitor? he thought as Johannson cuffed him. Must be that irritating new lady lawyer, he guessed, smoothing his orange jumpsuit.

The white execution chamber Johannson brought him past could have been a large doctor’s examination room, except for the singular black velvet curtain covering one wall and the leather restraints on the gurney.

“Oh, yeah, by the way, Harris, since you were a guard, all of us got together and chipped in on a little gift,” Johannson said, showing him a box. “We thought maybe if you got bored, you’d like to see a movie tonight.”

Harris glanced down at the box. Dead Man Walking. “Nice of you guys,” he said, cheerily refusing to let these bastards or anyone else get to him. “Some of Sean Penn’s best work right there. Too bad I don’t have a DVD player, though.”

“You won’t need one where you’re going, lowlife,” the guard cooed in his ear.

“Yeah, you deserve it, you sick freak,” called out Jimmy Litz, one of his neighbors down the row. Litz had dropped a cinderblock off an overpass and then, pretending to help the victim, a twenty-three-year-old Jacksonville housewife, raped and killed her instead.

“Well, I guess we all can’t live up to your moral standards,” Harris said with a smile.

Yup, it was the lady lawyer, he told himself as he turned the corner and saw her and Charlie in the visitor room. Then he saw the second woman in the room, and the stone-hard set of his face buckled.

It was Fabiana. No. Not her, he thought. He could face anything. Tomorrow, even. But not her.

He turned to Johannson, fighting back his emotions. “Take me back to my cell.”

He had turned around in the corridor when there was a loud bang behind him.

It was Fabiana. She was at the wired glass. She bashed it again with her fist. “It’s OK, Justin,” she yelled, with tears in her eyes. “I forgive you. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Please talk to me.”

Justin turned again and stood there in the corridor, biting his lip as he stared at her. This woman he had hurt beyond reckoning was saying she was sorry to him?

Charlie and Nina were grinning from ear to ear.

“We got news. Good news. You’re going to like this, Justin. I promise,” Charlie called.

“What’s it going to be, Harris?” Johannson said, annoyed.

“I guess I got some visiting to do,” Harris finally said.

Chapter 96

AT NINE THIRTY the next morning, Charlie, Fabiana, and I arrived, crisp and scrubbed and combed, at the state capitol in Tallahassee.

The last thing to do was the most important. We needed to deliver Fabiana to our ten o’clock meeting with the executive clemency board.

All in all, Fabiana seemed nervous but ready. The emotional meeting between her and Justin at the prison the night before had made them both feel better, I thought.

Maybe confession really was good for the soul. Who knew? Maybe I’d look into it myself at some point.

We were crossing the street toward the capitol’s plaza when we noticed the commotion. People holding signs were filing off a tour bus. About two dozen people were walking across the manicured capitol grounds or had already taken up position in front of the modern capitol building’s main entrance.

“What’s this? A tea party?” I said.

Then I saw the signs.

MEET YOUR MAKER, JUSTIN HARRIS! one said.

An attractive brunette in jeans and an American flag T-shirt waved a banner that said, NA, NA, NA, NA. HEY, HEY, GOOD-BYE, JUSTIN!

“You gotta be kidding me,” Charlie said as a news van pulled in behind the bus. A reporter got out with a beefy guy in a Braves cap and a shoulder cam.

“Pro– death penalty people are here!?” Fabiana said.

“Damn it,” I said to Charlie. “That’s all we need. The circus is starting, and it looks like we’re in the center ring.”

“And that’s not the worst of it, not by a long shot,” Charlie said, pointing toward the bus.

I stopped in midstride as I saw where he was pointing.

I felt numb.

Peter was standing by the bus door, all smiles as he helped people off.

Chapter 97

I SWALLOWED, suddenly feeling weak, as the blood drained from my face.

I felt like running back to the car, or at least diving behind a parked one. All Peter would have to do was turn up the block and see me.

The only positive my seizing mind could latch on to was the fact that he wasn’t in uniform, wearing his gun. Then that slight hope was torn away as I remembered he most definitely could be strapping an off-duty concealed weapon.

I let out a breath and a tiny thankful moan as Peter turned his back to us. A minute later, he took up position directly in front of the capitol’s lobby doors with the group of protesters.

“That son of a bitch,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. We have to deliver Fabiana to the clemency board, Peter or no Peter. We’ll split up. You guys hang back by these trees until I distract him, then you go straight into the lobby.

“If anyone tries to stop you, kick them in the balls and keep going. Our contact from the clemency board, Mr. Sim, said he’d be waiting in the lobby to take us up. I’ll make it if I can, but if I don’t, you’re going to have to start without me.”

“Distract him?” I said. “How? What are you going to do?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something. Be ready now,” Charlie said as he began to jog down the block toward the crowded plaza.

“Hey, Fournier! What the hell is this?” Charlie screamed immediately as he entered the plaza.

I put my head down as Fabiana and I moved along the stand of trees that lined the plaza’s sidewalk.

“What does it look like I’m doing, Baylor?” Peter called back.

“Making a jackass out of yourself, as usual,” Charlie said, taking a sign from a protester’s hand and tossing it onto a grassy knoll beside the capitol’s steps.

“Go home, all of you!” Charlie yelled at them with his hands over his head, his face clenched with theatrical rage. “My client is innocent, but if it were up to you, you’d kill him yourselves. What is this, some kind of lynch mob? This is disgusting. You make me sick!”

The gathered crowd looked at Charlie in complete astonishment. Except for the news crew. They looked like kids on Christmas morning. The beefy guy immediately took his camera off a tripod, put it up onto his shoulder, and turned it on.

“You’ve finally gone crazy, haven’t you, Baylor?” Peter said, stepping toward Charlie. The crowd slowly followed him, unblocking the front doors.

Charlie’s plan was working. At least so far. I still had about forty yards of open plaza to cross.

“Finally lost it, huh, Counselor?” Peter continued to yell in the dead silence. “This is unstable even for you. Let me guess. You’re drunk.”

“I’ll show you unstable,” Charlie yelled back, throwing his briefcase at Peter and raising his fists as he ran toward him. He really did seem like a complete lunatic. When Charlie said he was going to create a diversion, he wasn’t kidding.

Fabiana and I walked hurriedly across the plaza as Charlie and Peter rushed at each other and pandemonium broke out. No one even came close to noticing us as Peter swung at Charlie. The crowd made an ooh sound as Charlie ducked at the last second. But then a big, burly guy holding a JUSTIN HARRIS MUST DIE sign punched Charlie in the side of the head, sending him spinning.

“What? You can’t fight one-on-one, Fournier?” Charlie said as he sent the burly guy tumbling back with a shove.

“Miss Desmarais?” said a soft-looking Asian man in a tan suit as we finally made it into the end zone of the capitol’s cavernous lobby. “I’m Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture Dennis Sim. Where is Mr. Baylor, and what the heck is going on out there?”

“He’s, uh, been delayed,” I said. “I’m Mr. Baylor’s assistant, Nina Bloom. If you’ll take us up, we’re ready to meet with the board.”

Chapter 98

TWO HOURS LATER, I sat in the capitol’s wood-paneled second-floor corridor, checking the time on my iPhone every minute or so. It was either that or pull my hair out.

Because this was it.

Do or die.

Literally.

For the last excruciating hour, Charlie and I had been sitting on a long bench outside of the board’s meeting room, like bad children in front of the principal’s office. Inside, Fabiana was delivering her testimony to the executive clemency board. We’d already turned over the newspaper article to the parole investigator. The only question now was as simple as it was significant.

Had it been enough?

“She’ll do fine,” Charlie said with an aggravating calm as I spun my phone on the bench. He had a small cut under his left eye and a smushed right ear from the scuffle with Peter and the crowd. He’d probably gotten on YouTube by now as well for his taped “don’t Tase me, bro” moment in front of the capitol plaza crowd.

“I should tell them,” I said. “I should march right in there and tell them about Peter. About everything. What if this doesn’t work?”

“But it will,” Charlie said as the door opened.

Assistant Commissioner Sim appeared with Fabiana.

I took a deep breath.

“What’s the verdict?” Charlie said.

“The board will weigh the evidence now,” Sim said.

“What? More waiting?” I said.

“It’s not like we have a lot of time here, Mr. Sim,” Charlie said.

“That’s all I can say for now. Thank you for coming,” Mr. Sim said as he closed the door.

“What does that mean?” Fabiana said. “We have to keep waiting?”

“I need to tell them,” I said, stepping past Charlie toward the door.

Charlie got in front of me.

“No,” he whispered fiercely in my ear. “You don’t. You’re a victim here, too. Did you ask that son of a bitch Fournier to be a monster to you? You came down and actually risked your life to help Justin, and that’s exactly what you’ve done. But you can’t do everything. None of us can. We’ve done everything possible. We’ve petitioned the courts and petitioned the governor. It’s out of our hands now and in theirs.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I just went toe-to-toe with your ex-hubby. Do you really want to mess with me? Let’s head over to the jail.”

Chapter 99

THE WITNESS ROOM for the execution chamber looked like a community theater that Friday night. There were two rows of cheap red chairs, black walls, a black curtain. But beyond the curtain, instead of a lit stage, was the brightly lit window of the death chamber.

Placed directly in the center of it, like some kind of malevolent modern art piece, was an empty gurney. It was fitted with thick leather ankle and wrist straps, a cross awaiting the crucifixion. The digital clock on the wall behind it showed 10:27 p.m.

At around nine, the warden, Tom Mitchner, had come in and given a short explanation about what would happen. At five to midnight, Justin would be brought in and strapped to the gurney. A witnessing doctor would oversee the proceeding as two intravenous tubes were extended and placed into Justin’s left and right arms. At the stroke of midnight three drugs would enter Justin’s bloodstream in succession: sodium thiopental to render him unconscious; pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant to stop his breathing; and potassium chloride to stop his heart.

A reporter from the Miami Herald and one from the Associated Press spoke softly at the back of the room. Tara Foster’s mother, as well as the rest of her extended family, had declined to come. Fabiana sat in the front row, talking and holding hands with Justin’s mother.

My hand was cinched onto Charlie’s.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said to him, my eyes on the gurney. “It’s too much. Way too much. Why haven’t they stopped this? What are they waiting for? These bastards are still going to go through with it, Charlie. How is that possible? How can they?”

“Have faith,” was all Charlie would say, seemingly more to himself than to me.

Eleven came. Then eleven thirty.

“What’s up, Charlie?” I said.

“Have—”

“Faith?” I said. “I don’t know if I can.”

It was eleven fifty when the door opened, and a pale, heavy man in a gray suit appeared. It was Warden Mitchner.

I stared at him breathlessly, waiting to hear that it was over.

“It’s time now,” the tired-looking official said somberly. “They’re bringing in Mr. Harris.”

I had trouble focusing as they did just that. Justin stood ramrod straight, shoulders back, eyes steady and forward like the dress parade soldier that he once had been. He was flanked by two guards, as well as a white-jacketed orderly and a gaunt middle-aged woman in a navy pantsuit who I assumed was the doctor. Justin didn’t even flinch as his mother stood and put her hand on the glass. He just walked obediently over to the gurney and sat, spreading out his arms as he stared up intently, like a magician about to perform a particularly difficult trick.

In the silence, the orderly’s footfalls sounded, like the slow raps of a snare drum, as he stepped across the death chamber. When he stepped back a minute later, the IVs were in Justin’s arms.

The clock on the wall kept right on going. When it clicked forward to eleven fifty-nine, one of the reporters cupped a hand over his mouth like he was about to throw up. Tilted back in the gurney, Justin kept his eyes pinned to a point directly above the glass viewing window.

The room was still. Then the clock flashed.

It was twelve.

The injections started. A yellowish liquid suddenly appeared in the IV tubing and started to flow toward Justin’s forearms. All I could do was follow its path.

There was a collective intake of breath as the liquid entered Justin’s bloodstream and he closed his eyes.

“No,” I whispered.

Then my vision swam, and I doubled over.

Chapter 100

I WAS STILL DOUBLED OVER, in the midst of nearly passing out, when a deafeningly loud buzzer sounded in the execution chamber.

The orderly inside ran behind the partition as the witnessing doctor raced toward Justin. A thin stream of yellow liquid and blood splattered onto the floor as the doctor tore the IVs free. The orderly returned and motioned to the guards. After a moment, Justin was quickly rolled out of the room on the gurney with the guards and the doctor in tow.

“What the hell?!” Charlie said, running up and hammering on the glass.

The door to the viewing room flew open thirty seconds later.

It was Warden Mitchner.

“It’s OK,” he said, wheezing. The tall, flabby man was sweating, red-faced. “The first drug was just the painkiller. They didn’t drop the second plunger. Justin received only the painkiller. He’s going to be OK.”

Both reporters jumped up and began yelling at the same time.

“This isn’t happening,” Charlie said beside me. “This state runs executions about as well as its elections.”

“Please. We’ll have order here now. I just received this from Governor Scott Stroud,” the warden said, lifting a sheet of paper.

“ ‘Today I have decided to stay the execution of Justin Harris, an inmate on Florida’s death row for six months,’ ” Mitchner read. “ ‘I have done this to allow the district attorney and investigators involved in this case to gather and properly analyze any and all new information that has come to the attention of the clemency board. After a careful and close review, and conferring with the state attorney general and the parole board, I am not satisfied that it is proper that the execution should proceed until such new information is disseminated and reviewed.’ ”

The warden let out a breath. “That’s it,” he said.

Charlie sat heavily in one of the folding chairs. His head dropped down between his knees.

“Just tell me how Justin’s OK again,” he said, looking up at the warden.

“The doctor on call says his pulse is fine. He just needs to sleep it off. They’re bringing him to the infirmary.”

Charlie let out a breath, then sat up, wiping at the tears in his eyes. I came over and hugged him.

“Then we did it?” he whispered as if he could hardly believe it. “We actually did it?”

After a minute, we joined Fabiana and Justin’s mother in a standing embrace as the reporters spoke excitedly into their cell phones.

“See, I knew you would help Justin, Miss Bloom,” Mrs. Harris said to me as she kissed my hand, then my cheek. “I never doubted it for a second.”

“Me, too, Miss Bloom,” Charlie said winking from over her shoulder. “I knew you could pull it off.”