Fatal Distraction Read online

  The paramedic had retrieved the portable oxygen tank and was about to jump up into the ambulance to leave. Jess asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Lung cancer. Emphysema. Really bad.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  The woman looked Jess square in the eyes. “What do you think?” She hoisted herself into the back of the ambulance. A second paramedic closed the doors and ran around to the front seat, turning on the siren and the lights, and driving away out of the back of the prison yard, in the opposite direction from the crowd still chanting, “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess stood watching the ambulance depart for a few moments until it reached a back exit gate and passed into the darkness.

  Vivian and Arnold Ward got what they wanted. Tommy Taylor was dead. But at what cost?

  “Peace be with you, Vivian,” she muttered to herself, not knowing what else to say.

  She looked for Mike, feeling an urgency she knew was born of Manson’s absence. God forbid that he find the evidence before she did. Where was Mike? Most of the cars parked in the lot reserved for execution witnesses were leaving.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she said aloud, scanning the line of vehicles moving toward the exits.

  Dr. Fleming approached from her blind side. “Jessica Kimball, isn’t it?” he asked, startling her. She looked down to see his right hand extended.

  “Right.” She said offered her hand to shake. He clasped it firmly and covered it with his own. “Dr. Fleming, right?”

  “Ben. Please.” He held on to her hand with a firm, dry grasp until she began to feel uneasy. “I saw you crying inside. Are you all right?” She tried to pull her hand away. He refused to release it for a moment or two, and then he let go.

  “It’s been a busy week for me. I was more tired than I realized, I guess. Thanks for asking.”

  Where was Mike? He should have been here by now.

  “I saw you talking with Vivian Ward,” Dr. Fleming said.

  Jess’s pulse quickened. He’d been watching her? That knowledge crawled along her spine.

  “Doesn’t look like she’ll be with us much longer, does it? A blessing, really. She’s suffered so long. She struggled to survive until this night. Many times, we didn’t think she’d make it. With her husband gone, and Taylor dead, she doesn’t have anything else to live for.”

  The way he said these things reminded her of something, but what? “I didn’t realize you knew Vivian. Or Sarah Taylor,” she said, perhaps a bit more belligerently than intended. But the guy creeped her out.

  “I’ve been close to all of these good people,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of grief counseling work with victims of violent crime. I thought you knew.” The words were reassuring, but Jess didn’t feel reassured.

  “So you know the Crawfords, too, then?”

  “Since their son’s death. Their situation has been tough. Twin daughters, younger than Mattie. The girls were neglected, really, before Mattie died.” Sorrow fairly dripped from his mouth.

  “What do you mean? The Crawfords are wonderful parents.” Jess felt as if he were talking in a foreign language or something, telling twisted versions of what she knew. Nor did she have the time to stand here and discuss the nature of grieving parents with him.

  “Social services had been called several times. If Mattie hadn’t been murdered, something else would have happened eventually in that house.”

  She took a full step back. “Are you suggesting that the Crawfords were involved in Mattie’s death?”

  He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “They were too young, they had no support system. Matthew traveled for his job. And Marilyn simply couldn’t cope without help after the twins were born.” He stopped, took a big breath, let out a long sigh. “Afterward, they realized how much better their lives were. Mattie’s severe autism was so hard on all of them. It’s sad but true,” he said, “death can be a blessing.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Thornberry, Florida

  Saturday, 4:00 p.m.

  OLIVER HEARD THE VOICES pulling him up from deep slumber, but didn’t recognize them. Was he dreaming again?

  Two men. The conversation sounded clinical, so maybe doctors? Oliver struggled to hear, to pay attention. It was really dark in here, though. He couldn’t see anything. Why were there two men talking to each other in the dark? The situation made no sense.

  Are you awake? he wondered.

  He heard one of the men say, “Your shift ends at four. I’m not sure who will replace you. Want to go over everything again?”

  Southern accent, for sure. Local? Oliver couldn’t tell.

  The second man said, “I got it.” And then it sounded like he was reading from something. Maybe a medical chart? But how could he be reading in the dark?

  “Unconscious for thirty-six hours. Unexplained seizure less than twelve hours ago. Hematoma drained. Feeding tube in place. Breathing unassisted. IVs in place.” The second fellow clearly not Southern, but Oliver couldn’t place the flat, even inflections. Sounded like a newscaster, maybe.

  Southern man again. “Don’t leave him alone for any reason. Watch and wait. Report if anything changes. That’s pretty much it. Hope you brought a good book.” He kind of chuckled.

  I’ll just ask them what’s going on. Oliver tried to speak but couldn’t say a thing. He tried again. Nothing. He couldn’t move his lips.

  Am I awake? he asked aloud, but he heard no sound emerge from his mouth. Was it really dark in here? Were his eyes open?

  He decided he was not dreaming.

  Don’t panic, he told himself. He’d awakened without total control over his motor functions for several years. Since the stroke. The sensation wasn’t so bad if you recognized it. Kind of like an old friend. Comfortable when you know the paralysis is only temporary. After rehabilitation, he’d regained use of most of his body last time. There was no reason to assume he couldn’t do so again.

  Have you had another stroke, Old Man? All right. Start at the start. What can you do?

  He heard various beeping and whirrs in the room. Medical equipment. He was familiar with medical machines. He’d spent enough time in the hospital after his heart attack and his stroke to recall their rhythmic sounds. Hearing seemed to be okay. Or at least as good as it was before.

  Before what? He thought about that question a minute. When no answers surfaced, he continued his review of systems.

  Left arm? Nope. And he hadn’t been able to move the left hand for three years anyway.

  Right arm? Couldn’t move that either. Left leg? Right leg? Neither seemed to respond. Or if they were, he couldn’t feel the movement. He continued trying until he felt too tired to try any more.

  Oliver’s low-level panic began to increase. He felt the pounding of his heart and the quickening of his pulse, and he knew they were both signs of increasing anxiety. The knowledge and the recognition offered a level of comfort. At least I’m not an imbecile, he thought. Mental faculties good. I can figure this out.

  He recognized how exhausted he was all of a sudden. Maybe he could sleep. Perhaps things would have improved by the time he woke up again. Maybe Helen would be here, wherever he was, and he could ask her.

  He began the meditation Ben Fleming had taught him to calm his night-time anxieties. He slowed his breathing, relaxed and silently repeated the word sleep until he was almost out.

  Ben’s voice came into his consciousness. “I’m Dr. Fleming,” he said.

  Newscaster-voice responded. “Mrs. Sullivan told us you’d be stopping in. I’m Daniel, the resident on this shift.”

  “How’s my patient feeling today?”

  “All systems seem normal, but he isn’t responding to us yet.”

  “You’re thinking he will?” Ben asked.

  Oliver thought the question fairly callous, considering that Oliver was right there in the room where he could hear every word they exchanged.

  “His symptoms mimic locked-in syndrome, and h
e’s certainly suffered several of the known causes. Brain trauma, stroke, and a brain hemorrhage,” Dan said. “But we haven’t found any brain stem lesion to support the diagnosis.”

  “That’s not too surprising, I guess. More likely he’s in a persistent vegetative state, don’t you think, since you’ve not seen any evidence that he’s alert or aware?”

  Did Oliver detect pleasure in the tone of Ben’s diagnosis? That couldn’t be true. But his heart rate began to increase, just the same.

  Dan seemed to agree. “Well, we don’t want to say that to Mrs. Sullivan, but that’s a more likely answer, given everything he’s been through.”

  “Yes, I thought so,” Ben said.

  This time, Oliver was positive he sounded satisfied, and not only with his diagnostic skills. But why would Ben want Oliver to be a vegetable for the rest of his life. That would be crazy.

  What was it Ben had said the last time? Good bye and have a good journey, or something like that? Maybe he was still traveling. Maybe when he woke up, he’d be there. Wherever there might be.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thornberry, Florida

  Saturday 7:00 p.m.

  RATIONAL OR NOT, HELEN was glad to be home. She was too keyed up to sleep. Yesterday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year though it had felt like the longest. Once she was settled in at the ranch, the activities of the past few days seemed surreal. It was only seven o’clock, but it was as dark outside as midnight.

  Frank Temple and Mac Green, working together, had sealed the ranch tighter than a Swiss bank vault. Against medical advice, Helen had moved Oliver here from the hospital. He was ensconced in the guest bedroom down the hall here in the ranch house with around the clock nursing care as well as double security protection. If nothing else, she knew her husband would not be dosed with another patient’s insulin in their home. That certainty relieved a small measure of anxiety.

  Oliver hadn’t awakened from his coma. Though Helen remained hopeful, the surgeons were less optimistic as the hours passed without significant improvement. Nor could they say whether he would be in full control of his mental and physical faculties when and if he awakened. The precise mechanism of the seizure he’d suffered before his surgery remained unexplained. No additional seizures had occurred, but she’d been warned to expect more. Seizures, they said, once begun, were rarely solitary.

  A couple of the younger doctors had suggested that she not allow insertion of Oliver’s feeding tube yesterday after the surgery. Let nature take its course. She knew what they meant: let him die. As long as Oliver still possessed a spark of life, though, she relied on that spark to wake him up and return him to her, whole in body, mind and spirit.

  Helen passed the hours handling the few last-minute responsibilities as governor. The holiday season at the end of her tenure provided a level of calm in government that she appreciated this year more than ever before.

  Tommy Taylor’s execution had been completed last night without further incident. After so many years, it was somewhat surprising that the case was finally over. As hard as the case had been, she was glad she’d taken care of it instead of passing the problem on to her successor.

  She’d spoken with Ralph Hayes several times, reassuring him that she was running for the senate, she and Oliver would be actively campaigning on January second, as they’d planned. Her reassurance wasn’t a lie, exactly. More like a statement of optimism in the season of hope.

  Everything she’d needed to finish was done for the night.

  She had her laptop open to the initial arson and homicide reports as she sat in her favorite brown leather recliner. A fire burned in the fireplace, pulling the chill from the damp night air. She’d poured a glass of red wine, a 2002 Napa cabernet, and planned to review the crime files again to absorb as much as she could. Tomorrow, she’d be ready to walk the scenes for herself, to confirm and supplement what the investigators had collected. But she couldn’t concentrate. She’d read the same paragraph in the arson report three times and recalled none of it.

  She stopped fighting the urge. She let her head drop back on the chair, closed her eyes and conducted a mental review. She’d stayed away from the two crime scenes on the ranch to allow the law enforcement teams to do their jobs without interference. They’d finished their work today. No official conclusions would be reached until the voluminous data was analyzed. Frank told her the most promising evidence found was a black ski mask under the trees not far from the spot where Oliver lay on the night of the fire. No one knew yet whether the ski mask contained usable evidence, but its proximity to Oliver seemed a promising lead, and batteries of tests were already in the works.

  Tomorrow she planned to examine the sites herself, there being no substitute for a first-hand look while the scene remained relatively fresh.

  From long experience, she knew that she would see things differently from the other investigators. In this situation, they were scientists who sought objective proof admissible in court; Helen sought confirmation or denial of the truth her instincts had already disclosed.

  “Interested in some company?” Frank asked from the doorway leading to the back of the house.

  “More than interested,” she said, offering him the other chair facing the fire. She closed the lid on her laptop and moved it to her side table. “Want a drink?”

  “I’ve given up alcohol until we figure things out.” He was dressed the way she was in jeans, boots, a sweater. “Mac went home about an hour ago.”

  “Good. He’s got a family, too. There’s nothing he can do here in the dark, anyway,” she said. To distract them both from the crimes against her and Oliver that were upper-most on their minds, she asked, “Anything else on the Taylor execution?”

  Helen hadn’t turned on the television and she didn’t intend to. If there was anything she needed to know, someone would tell her. She was still Governor until midnight on December 31, but government offices were closed until Thursday for the Christmas holidays and would be closed most of next week as well.

  Unless an emergency came up, she expected to be unoccupied for most of the last two weeks of her term. Until three days ago, she’d intended to spend the time with Oliver planning her senate campaign and making the transition to private citizen.

  “Sometimes I think you’ve got ESP,” Frank said, chuckling a bit. “I’ll miss that when the new gov takes over.”

  She sipped her wine, nodding. “Telepathy would be useful. But for now the best I can do is guess. Let’s see . . . Mac called. He wants a favor. Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I really have to use my telepathy?”

  Frank laughed out loud this time. “You’re good. Keep guessing.”

  Helen pretended to think a minute. She’d been expecting the call. She’d told Jess Kimball that she refused to halt the Taylor execution because there were no legal grounds to support a stay. Helen’s reasoning had been flawless, but only an excuse. She didn’t grant Jess’s request mostly because the fallout would have buried them both alive. At some point, Helen intended to explain her decision to Jess. She hadn’t expected that time to arrive so quickly.

  “Jess Kimball desperately needs to talk to me. She’s found the missing evidence.” Somehow, every time she thought she was finished with Tommy Taylor, he came back to bite her like a rabid cat with nine lives. He was doing it again, even after death.

  “Almost right,” Frank said.

  Helen took another sip of the wine. “What did I miss?”

  “Jess didn’t call. She’s here. Want me to send her away until next year when she’ll be someone else’s problem?”

  Helen set her wine glass down on the side table with regret. She’d need a clear head to handle whatever Jess had come to drop in her lap. “It’s not going to get any easier, unfortunately.”

  “No.” Frank stood, reached into his pocket, pulled out his two-way and instructed a member of his team to escort Jess into the room. “I’ll be close by if you need anything.
”

  Frank left for the kitchen, where his team had set up temporarily. Given the security issues, only law enforcement and medical personnel were on site. In the next few days, Helen would need to work out different arrangements. For now, Frank and Mac doubled as Helen’s assistants too, when necessary.

  In came Jess without speaking and put what looked like a white banker’s box down on the coffee table in front of Helen and sat in the oversized chair Frank had vacated. The brown leather and heavy wood frame all but swallowed her whole. She was a petite woman, with a mop of curly blonde hair dressed tonight in black jeans and a blindingly bright orange and red shirt made of a shiny fabric. She radiated energy, which made Helen feel all the more tired. Something had stoked Jess up since last they’d talked, and Helen was too weary to joust with her. She reminded Helen of a fireball or maybe a firefly, something small but ferocious that burned too hot to last forever.

  “What’s in the box, Jess?”

  “Before we get to that, can I ask you something?” Without waiting for Helen’s consent, she plowed ahead. “Who is Ben Fleming, anyway?”

  The question came out of nowhere. Helen wasn’t prepared for it. She did what she’d been trained to do when a journalist blindsided her. Stall. She responded with a question of her own. “Why do you ask?”

  Jess jumped up and began to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace. The fire’s glow surrounded her, completing Helen’s mental picture of the smaller woman as some elemental creature made of fire, set to explode.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Jess said. “Everywhere I go on this Tommy Taylor thing, Ben Fleming is there. He was at the hospital when I came to see you. He was at the execution. He knows everybody and says he knows stuff he shouldn’t know, like a hacker or a stalker. The guy is creepy.”

  Was she hyped up on drugs or something? Helen glanced toward the small radio on the table next to her wine. She could reach it easily if she needed to call Frank. “Ben? Creepy?”