"I got a drug dealer who killed his family!" Jane Joyce cried out. "In Texas!"
"You think yours sucks?" Mary Ann said, gaping at her case. "I got a loser they caught on a cold homicide case in South Florida!"
As always, my stomach tightened at the mention of Florida.
"A fricking serial killer, no less," Mary Ann said. "Check this out."
I almost bit through my latte cup. A burning line of coffee sprayed from my nose onto my chin.
In Mary Ann"s hand was a photocopied Miami Herald article. She gave it to me.
It had a three-word headline: "Jump Killer Caught?"
Chapter 57.
May 17, 2001 JUMP KILLER CAUGHT?.
Palm Beach County cold-case detectives placed a state corrections officer into custody for the 1993 murder of a Boca Raton woman Monday night. Police sources confirm that a DNA match led to the arrest of Florida City resident Justin Harris.
Murder victim Tara Foster was still in college in June of 1993 when she was reported missing after volunteering as an office worker at the Homestead Correctional Inst.i.tution in Florida City. Her remains were found wrapped in plastic in Everglades National Park a year later.
With DNA evidence originally retrieved from Foster"s body, cold-case detectives restarted the investigation this month with an effort to obtain DNA from likely suspects. Because she"d been tied with paracord, the same ligature linked to the infamous Jump Killer disappearances in the early 1990s, cold-case officers cross-referenced original witnesses in the Foster case with former paratroopers.
Justin Harris, a veteran of the 101st Airborne and a guard at the Homestead prison, provided DNA that matched samples found on Foster"s clothing.
He is currently being held without bail.
My pulse hammered in my throat, against my temples. The photocopied article in my lap wavered in my vision like something seen through old gla.s.s.
As I sat there with Mary Ann and Jane, the traffic beeping outside on Third, the shouted coffee orders, the jet engine whoosh of the milk frother, all began to fade. In their place came a rush of images and sensations I"d thought I"d successfully blocked from my memory.
The Jump Killer"s strange dark eyes, the pungent smell of cologne in his car, the ache in my arms as I hung on for dear life as he crashed through the surf behind me.
"Hey, Nina," Mary Ann said, looking at me with worry. "You OK? You look almost as pale as me."
"Fine," I heard myself saying. I braced myself and thumbed to the next page. I found another newspaper article that listed all the women whose deaths the Jump Killer was believed to be responsible for. I scanned the faces until I got to the second one from the bottom.
Above the caption "Victim 20" was a vaguely familiar face. I guess it should have been, since it was my high school yearbook picture.
Sitting there, I felt like you do in that dream where you"re back at school, and you have to take that one last test you never studied for. That sour, pit-of-your-stomach, panic-attack realization that the jig is up. The worst thing of all has happened. You"ve been found out.
"Earth to Nina," Mary Ann said. "Hey, if you"re so interested, why don"t we switch? Connecticut"s what? Two hours away at the most. How am I going to arrange everything with my kids if I have to go to Florida? Besides, I"ve got red hair. Fluorescent bulbs give me blisters. Do ol" Mary Ann a favor. This is a media case as well. Think of the publicity for your firm. You"ll make partner."
A media case? It was worse than I thought. Why the h.e.l.l hadn"t I heard about it?
"A media case? Really?" I said.
"Justin Harris? That"s right. I heard about it on Channel Four," Jane said. "Get out of here. You got the Jump Killer case?"
"Yes," Mary Ann said, annoyed. "Do you want to switch?"
"Spend some personal time with a s.e.xually s.a.d.i.s.tic serial killer? Gee, let me think about that. Uh, no," the tall brunette said.
Mary Ann turned back to me. "Please? For old times" sake?"
That"s when I noticed on the cover contact sheet that Harris"s lawyer lived in Key West. Fear of Mary Ann recognizing my photograph was replaced instantaneously with fear of death. My mind flashed on a memory. Elena"s bullet-riddled, b.l.o.o.d.y body splayed out on the gas station floor.
Go back to Key West? I thought, failing to banish the image with a sip of latte.
Not after seventeen years. Not after seventy.
If I b.u.mped into Peter, I"d be the one receiving the death penalty.
I handed the case file back to her as if it burned my fingers.
"I can"t," I said emphatically. "Sorry. Emma"s got the SAT coming up."
The lies came as easily as always. I guess I should have felt guilty. I didn"t.
"Fine," Mary Ann said. "Fine. Of course, I"d get the short straw. I always get the short straw."
No, I felt like saying to her. I"d just missed it for once.
Chapter 58.
I DECIDED TO WALK back to work. It was one of those bright, iconic New York spring days that make you forget about things like triple-digit parking tickets and transit strikes and construction crane accidents.
But for some strange reason, I wasn"t in the mood for thinking about April showers or stopping to smell the Park Avenue tulips.
Back inside my small office on the forty-fourth floor of my Lexington Avenue office building, I closed the door and just stood at the window, staring down at the people scurrying in and out of Grand Central Station. Beyond the Empire State Building to the south, downtown Manhattan sprawled and glinted under the midday sun, intricate and magical, like Monopoly pieces placed on a giant Oriental carpet.
Gazing on it, I thought about the Eighth Avenue pimps and potholes that formed my first vista on my first night in New York and how much I"d accomplished since then.
I continued to stand at the window, hugging myself. At first, I felt sad, then suddenly furious. For all this to get dredged up now, so close to home, just when my life was starting to take off, felt beyond coincidence. It felt intentional.
A media case? I thought. Hadn"t I suffered enough? I thought about the life I"d struggled to put together. All the comments and lewd offers I"d received from a.s.shole restaurant managers and customers. The eyebrow raises I"d had to endure from my co-op board for the crime of being a young single mom. All the packed buses and subway cars and work, housework and homework, that never seemed to give me a moment"s peace.
Most of all, I thought about all the abject terror that I"d gone through in the middle of the night with Emma those first few months when she was colicky. Night after night, I would rock my swaddled baby, weeping along with her, convinced that I was a day away from failing, losing Emma, being fired, being found out.
That wasn"t enough, huh? I thought, staring up at the blue sky. Sacrificing for my daughter, constantly having to look over my shoulder as I worked my fingers to the bone? I haven"t paid enough?
Besides, it wasn"t like I"d done nothing to try to set things straight. After about a year, when I"d scored a decent studio rental and a solidly paying waitressing job at a SoHo supper club, I saw an article in the Post about the Jump Killer. As guilt started to eat away at me one night after I picked up Emma from day care, I took the PATH train out to Hoboken. From an I-95 highway pay phone, I called the New York office of the FBI and gave an answering machine a description of the Jump Killer and his dog and his car.
Over the years, from time to time, I"d think about doing the same thing about Peter, but in the end, I feared that he-with all his law enforcement contacts-might somehow find out. The call would be traced. Peter would know that I wasn"t dead and come looking for me and Emma.
I let out a breath as I finally sat at my desk. My brow beaded up with cold sweat as I remembered the Jump Killer"s face. The office seemed to fade, and there I was again, homeless and pregnant, running for my life in a pair of secondhand Doc Martens.
After a while, I tried to console myself. Things could be worse. At least I hadn"t actually been a.s.signed the Jump Killer case. I"d definitely dodged a bullet there.
What was I getting so upset over? I"d just have to concentrate on my own case, I decided. Keep my head down and my fingers crossed that Mary Ann wouldn"t recognize me. This whole thing would blow over like a freak storm.
I lifted Randall King"s heavy case file and dropped it on my desk.
I even opened it.
Then I stopped kidding myself.
I shoved the file aside and turned on my computer. I clicked open Internet Explorer and typed "Justin Harris" into the Google search box.
A fraction of a second later, I pushed the hair out of my shocked eyes.
Harris"s ten-year-old arrest really was a big media case. There were dozens of newspaper articles. There was even an ongoing segment on the Today show about Harris"s impending execution.
I didn"t really watch the news, but the Today show! How the h.e.l.l had I missed it?
I didn"t want to know, was how, I realized. I hadn"t checked up on the Jump Killer in seventeen years. I never even once tried to find out what happened to Peter. I knew it was a childish notion, but I thought that if I stopped thinking about all of it, there would be some sort of karmic reciprocity, and everyone I had known would, in turn, stop thinking about me. Subconsciously, I"d made the decision that if I didn"t dwell on it, it would be like it never happened.
But it had happened, I thought as I stared sourly at the computer screen. And wouldn"t ever stop.
I opened a taped 2006 Fox News story about Harris on YouTube. I was hovering my finger over the mouse"s left-click b.u.t.ton to play it when my secretary, Gloria "Go-To" Walsh, came in. I immediately minimized the article with a guilty click.
"I thought you had that ProGen prospectus meeting," she said.
"Tom put me on a pro bono case," I told her. "No more ProGen for me."
"Yes!" Gloria said. "Maybe I"ll get home before seven this week. Anything interesting?"
No, more like life-threatening, I thought.
"Sort of, Gloria. I"m kind of in the middle of something. I"ll let you know, OK?"
I turned up the volume on my computer as she closed the door behind her. Shepard Smith was finishing up an intro about the Jump Killer murders. I took a breath, steeling myself to come face-to-face again with the man who tried to kill me that night.
When a picture of Justin Harris filled the screen, I hit the Pause b.u.t.ton, puzzled.
Because the man on the screen wasn"t the Jump Killer who"d given me a ride all those years ago on the Overseas Highway.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit above the "Justin Harris" caption was a very sad-looking, very African American man.
Chapter 59.
I SAT THERE very confused. Breathing slowly, trying to calm myself, I looked everywhere on my desk except the screen. I perused the snazzy gold embossing on a leather-bound copy of McKinney"s New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, smiled at the framed picture of Emma and me on our Vermont ski trip last January. For a little while, I even watched the minute hand of my gag lawyer"s desk clock that broke every hour down into ten six-minute increments, the same way we fun-loving corporate party animals billed our clients.
Then I looked back at the computer screen and winced.
Justin Harris was still there. Nothing had changed in the slightest. He was still black.
Which didn"t compute. Harris was definitely not the man who"d tried to kill me the night I hightailed it out of Key West. The terrifying, muscled wacko who"d put a gun up my nose was definitely Caucasian, or a mixture of Asian American and white.
Staring at the goateed black man, I came up with the most probable scenario. The one that the Mission Exonerate people kept on harping about: The Florida authorities had convicted and were about to execute an innocent man.
With a queasy feeling in my stomach, I clicked on the link for the most recent Miami Herald article. After I read its first paragraph, I kicked back my rolling office chair and clicked my forehead onto the varnished edge of my desk.
The execution was going to take place on April 29? Which was next Friday! Justin Harris was going to die in nine days.
Unless I did something about it.
I spent some time staring down at the industrial Berber carpet between my pumps as I took it in. Then I began to moan.
I was the only person who could.
I would have to come forward. It wasn"t fair. I"d spent so many hard years keeping the lid shut on the can of worms I called my life. Coming forward would mean exposing every one of my dirty little secrets once and for all, up to and including my part in Ramon Pena"s death.
I"d lose my job, everything I"d struggled and sc.r.a.ped for.
And what about Emma? Her life would be flattened. Good-bye, dream MOMA internship. Good-bye, Brown. Not to mention: Good-bye, her trust in me. How was that going to work?
That"s when I made the mistake of peeking back up at the screen. Justin Harris"s sad, deer-in-the-headlights gaze seemed to look directly into my soul.
It wasn"t a choice. A man"s life was at stake. I would have to come clean.
Chapter 60.
THEY SAY that a lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client.