"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 Tallaha.s.see, 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 d.a.m.n 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 cla.s.sified 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 cla.s.sifieds.
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 Tallaha.s.see 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 c.r.a.p out of her.
"When the detective told me years later that Justin had admitted to having s.e.x 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 overpa.s.s 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 gla.s.s. 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 Tallaha.s.see.
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.
"d.a.m.n 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 b.i.t.c.h," 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 b.a.l.l.s 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?"