Fatal Distraction Read online

  Oliver fell upon Milton and knocked him to the floor.

  But Milton was desperate too, and more determined. He pushed Oliver hard enough to free his arm. Two FDLE agents and one Valencia County deputy now stood on empty pews, weapons drawn and trained on Milton from shooters’ stances.

  Helen sensed more than saw Frank Temple reach her side to shield her. She struggled to breathe, the suffocating precursor to an asthma attack constricting her throat.

  Milton whipped the gun toward his own head as if to shoot himself.

  “Drop the gun!” two deputies shouted at once.

  “Don’t!” Oliver shouted over the noise of the panicked crowd. “Think about Ruby. She wouldn’t want you to do this. You know she wouldn’t.”

  Oliver’s rushed words seemed to register with Milton, for even from behind Frank Temple’s bulk Helen saw Milton hesitate, maybe a bit unsure. Looking straight into Oliver’s eyes, Milton lowered the gun a few centimeters. A moment’s hesitation. It was going to be all right.

  Swiftly he pointed the gun at Oliver’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  At the same moment, gunshots rang out from three directions over the heads of the cowering spectators.

  When the shooting stopped, despite the searing pain in her shoulder and the lack of oxygen to her lungs, Helen managed to rise to her knees and crawl into the aisle.

  Milton Jones, becalmed by death on the carpeted sanctuary, lay next to Oliver’s bleeding body.

  Without conscious volition, Helen screamed.

  Chapter One

  Three Years Later

  Tallahassee, Florida

  Thursday 3:00 p.m.

  JESSICA KIMBALL FOUGHT THE weight of time. Left unoccupied, her mind would dwell on Peter. Only purposeful activity distracted her. She reviewed her notes once more before her interview with Governor Helen Sullivan commenced.

  “Come on. Let’s do this already,” she whispered. Her right leg seemed to bounce of its own volition, the only outward indication of her impatience.

  The fine December day had inspired someone to leave the windows open in the Governor’s mansion. A cool draft prevented the crackling fire in the fireplace from heating the room and carried the cacophony of angry protestors inside. Jess pulled her lightweight grey sweater off her shoulders and slipped her arms into the sleeves.

  She’d entered the mansion through the front door, with her photographer Mike Caldwell filming the mob’s shouts and threats and objects flung while she strode past. Something had connected with her left thigh, but she’d deflected the pain as she would ignore the bruise. Both were irrelevant.

  Safely inside, Jess curbed the adrenaline and settled deeper into the soft red leather upholstery, couched in Governor Sullivan’s inner sanctum while David Manson’s Abolition Project crazies remained most definitely on the outside.

  Manson had followed her to Florida seeking increased attention for his anti-death-penalty efforts by coasting along Jess’s unbroken victims’-rights winning streak. He’d never bested her, although he rebounded after every defeat with renewed vigor.

  Jess believed her success came because she worked hard to stay on the side of the angels. Never had she undertaken an equivocal case, nor would she. Too many crime victims needed her support to waste her efforts on the undeserving. Above all, everything she did was for Peter.

  Now Jess’s investigative spotlight shone on tomorrow’s execution of Tommy Taylor, dubbed the Central Florida Child Killer. Years ago, Taylor had unspeakably tortured four of his five murder victims before authorities apprehended him. Revulsion flooded her body. Child killers were the most despicable criminals Jess could imagine.

  “Where are you, Helen?” She said. Her question did not manifest the governor. The continuing delay heightened her tension and caused her to reexamine her work.

  As always, Jess arrived at her opinions and chose this case only after months spent completing the thorough due diligence her conscience and readers demanded. She trusted her process because it had never failed her. Mentally, she ticked off the steps, making check marks on her note pad.

  She’d reviewed thousands of pages of text from case files and appeal records, and then discussed the evidence in depth with every investigator and attorney who had handled the case.

  She’d learned everything possible about each victim and had spoken several times to every surviving member of the victims’ families.

  Perhaps most heartbreaking was Taylor’s own mother, destroyed by the knowledge that her son was guilty of slaughtering children, even she agreed that he should pay for his crimes.

  Finally Jess had interviewed Tommy Taylor himself, and now she had no doubts about his guilt. None whatsoever. No normal person does what Taylor did to those kids; or deserved to live afterward.

  She glanced at her watch. Yes, the governor was about ten minutes late. Nervous perspiration chilled her. She laid her forearms across her chest and rubbed her arms a moment, then doodled a few quick strokes on her pad until the continuing noise jerked her attention back to Manson’s followers.

  Jess tried to afford them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they didn’t know that Manson exploited abolition of the death penalty only as a convenient philosophy his audience idealized.

  Like Manson, though, these protesters defended death-row inmates based on the media value of their stories, rather than by the merits of their cases. To Jess this amounted to excusing depraved indifference to innocent human lives for the sake of publicity. Manson didn’t care about justice any more than he cared whether death row inmates were innocent, guilty or from Mars.

  Thoughts of David Manson brought to mind her missing son again. Manson’s phony idealism had almost drawn Jess in once. Through hard experience, she’d learned how he worked.

  Manson had used her search for Peter to further his own agenda, which Jess would never forgive nor forget.

  To this day, David Manson hung around her like an albatross, but she recognized him for the vulture he was, feeding on the world’s evil and manipulating young idealists to grab attention, or even incite violence, when it served his purposes.

  An inner door opened and Helen Sullivan walked toward Jess, hand extended, apologies offered and accepted. Jess noted Helen Sullivan’s girl-next-door freckles made her appear remarkably young for her age.

  Three years after her son’s murder, Sullivan might have looked worn out, but instead she projected vigor, competence and strength. She was dressed in a somber blue suit and plain pumps; a somewhat old-fashioned double strand of pearls rested at her taught neck. Facelift? Jess wrote on her pad. Politics was a glamour business these days, too.

  The two women settled down to business. Jess placed her digital recorder next to the Governor’s cell phone on the low coffee table between them. Jess held a stenographer’s pad on her lap, ready to jot her impressions with a blue felt-tip in the left column as they talked. She reserved the right column for quotable phrases she might grab while completing the final paragraphs of the magazine article she’d been writing for months.

  The only thing missing from the room was Mike, his video camera rolling. After a few posed pictures of the governor at her desk, Mike had been asked to leave by Governor Sullivan’s chief of staff.

  On a different day, Jess might have argued. She’d come to depend on video, which often helped her nail her final drafts with accurate details she might have missed. But the interview was too important to her story and this was her last chance to complete it before Taylor’s execution. Jess was packed for Colorado to follow a lead on Peter, her own missing son, immediately after Taylor was pronounced dead. She had no time to waste. Her notes and the voice recorder would have to suffice.

  Jess admitted, too, that she admired Helen Sullivan and didn’t want to alienate the governor, whose coping skills fascinated Jess.

  She could relate all too well to Helen’s lost child—Peter had been kidnapped ten years ago and never found, although finding him remained Jess’s personal
obsession to this day.

  For now, seeking justice for victims like herself and Helen Sullivan in a society more focused on protecting the killers kept her soul alive while she searched for Peter. Barely.

  But what, Jess had long wondered, enabled Helen Sullivan to succeed—to excel and not merely cope—on a daily basis when parents of murdered children so often lost their faith in everything, including life itself?

  Helen’s poise rivaled Queen Elizabeth, some said, speculating that Sullivan was cold and unfeeling, but Jess rejected that explanation; Helen Sullivan was more complicated than that.

  Jess began the interview as pleasantly and lightly as possible. The governor’s answers were candid, almost charming. After the first few softball questions, though, Jess couldn’t help asking about the no-camera rule: “Why won’t you allow me to videotape this interview?”

  If Jess had hoped to catch Sullivan off guard, she failed. The governor answered Jess’s question without blinking an eye, but her diction changed. She became precise, controlled, rehearsed.

  “Because despite what Mr. Manson seems to think, Tommy Taylor’s execution is not a side show. Video images of the countdown to a man’s final breaths are inhumane. They imprint indelibly on a mother’s mind.”

  Jess immediately understood Helen’s position—she, too, had seen the horrible video of Eric Sullivan’s last moments on earth and recalled every frame. But as a mother, Jess disagreed: For her, not seeing the images of Peter’s kidnapping was infinitely worse. Her imagination produced powerful, terrifying images whenever she closed her eyes. She’d have preferred knowing exactly what had happened to Peter instead of being tormented by questions that could never be answered.

  Jess didn’t push but instead tested Sullivan’s poise with a more provocative question. “The execution of Tommy Taylor is set for Friday at six p.m., twenty-seven hours from now. Yet, you’re attending a ball this evening to celebrate the end of your final term as Governor. Doesn’t that seem in poor taste to you?”

  Sullivan remained still, hands clasped in front of her, holding a linen handkerchief embroidered with her husband’s initials. She didn’t look away or avoid the question. Nor was she provoked to rash comments.

  “Executions are difficult for all of us. It wasn’t right to avoid the problem by leaving for my successor, and the date and time couldn’t be set until after the appeal process was exhausted. There was simply no alternative.”

  Too controlled, Jess wrote on her pad. She gave the effort one last shot, not really knowing what she was trying to accomplish but operating purely on instinct. Something told her there was an issue to uncover here, and Jess needed to know she’d looked under every rock before she allowed a man’s life to be extinguished. Even if doing so got Jess thrown out into the cold with Manson.

  “Some people say you’re too close to this case, Governor. You were on the team that prosecuted Taylor for the fifth murder, the one for which he will be executed.”

  Sullivan waited for Jess to finish the question. Much too cool, Jess thought, watching closely as she tried again to get a rise out of the self-possessed woman.

  “They say that you believe Taylor had your son killed as an act of vengeance,” Jess said, “payback for his death sentence.”

  Was there a slight tension in the clasp of Helen’s hands that hadn’t been there before?

  “Is that true?” Pen poised, recorder running, Jess waited. Eventually, Sullivan would talk, and what she didn’t say might be as powerful as the carefully crafted answer she might eventually offer.

  The murder of Eric Sullivan and Ryan Jones remained an open case. Law enforcement agencies might well know more than they could prove about the unsolved crime, which meant that Helen could be motivated by knowledge about Eric’s killer that had never been made public.

  After several empty seconds, Jess cleared her throat. Governor Sullivan blinked, seeming to realize where she was once again after being captured by her own thoughts. When she did respond, her stilted statement suggested another rehearsed answer.

  “I was a junior member of the prosecutor’s team when Mr. Taylor was tried for the murder of Mattie Crawford. The question of my disqualification to act on his case as governor was fully explored during his appeal process and decided by the courts. The suggestion that I might be disqualified is incorrect on both the facts and the law.”

  Another question transparently dodged with a prepared response.

  By reputation, Jess was a bulldog interviewer who never, never gave up on a sensitive question in pursuit of truth. She opened her mouth to rephrase, but something about the set of Governor Sullivan’s face stopped her words before she voiced them. Instead, Jess asked a question she’d designed to support the final paragraphs of her article and wrap everything up.

  “Why do you think justice is best served by Tommy Taylor’s execution, Governor? Why not issue a pardon?”

  Before Sullivan could answer, the cell phone on the table rang. She glanced down at her watch, apparently surprised to notice it was already past four o’clock.

  She said, “Excuse me, please,” picked up the phone, stood and walked into the adjoining private chambers. Jess reached over and pressed the off button on the recorder and settled in to wait by reviewing her notes.

  During the research phase of the case, Jess had learned that the cell phone was never far from Governor Sullivan’s right hand. Its omnipresence was, by tacit agreement, ignored by the press because it seemed cruel to comment. But everyone knew that the phone connected Helen Sullivan directly to her husband who’d kept an identical one with him at all times since being released from the hospital three years ago.

  Oliver Sullivan’s gunshot wound had healed without serious complications, but he’d suffered a severe stroke following the surgery to remove the bullet. Through months of physical therapy, Governor Sullivan had remained by his side as much as possible.

  Now Oliver spent most of his time at their cattle ranch, some forty miles from Tampa in Thornberry, where he’d grown up next door to his high school sweetheart Helen Carter. The ranch was and always had been their only private residence.

  Almost fifteen minutes later, Sullivan returned to her seat across from Jess.

  “I’m sorry for the interruption,” the governor said, then frowned over the noise from Manson’s protestors that had increased in volume, suggesting more people had joined the group outside.

  Regular chanting, difficult to discern at first, became clear with repetition: “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Manson must have arrived, Jess thought, kicking the protest up a few notches by his very presence. The five o’clock news would be starting soon and Manson would find some way of ensuring the journalists deemed his spectacle worthy of air time tonight. He’d started a countdown to Taylor’s execution and would stop at nothing to provoke constant attention until Taylor died.

  Jess watched as Sullivan glanced over at Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Frank Temple and inclined her head. Temple, who typically kept within ten feet of the governor, opened the room’s door and invited Jess’s photographer Mike join them.

  Now what’s that about? Jess wondered as she turned the recorder back on.

  Mike quickly set up his camera and began shooting as the chanting from outside grew louder, angrier.

  “Do you hear that, Governor?” Jess asked, knowing the video would pick up the chants as clearly as she could hear them. “The Manson Abolition Project is saying that Taylor didn’t kill Mattie Crawford. They say you should stay his execution pending new DNA evidence. Why have you chosen not to do that?”

  Jess knew the facts surrounding Manson’s DNA argument, but Sullivan’s detailed knowledge of the case would impress the magazine’s reading audience with the level of care the Governor exercised when dealing with a stay of execution request.

  Sullivan leaned forward in the chair, raising her voice a bit to be clearly heard. “Because there is no new evidence to test. They claim that ne
wer DNA techniques used on the old evidence might reveal Mr. Taylor’s innocence, but they’re wrong. Everything was tested before the trial and twice more during his appeals.”

  “Could newer techniques reveal a different result?”

  “They might,” Sullivan acknowledged. “But only if there were any new evidence. I’ve granted a stay of execution twice before to allow the defense to find such evidence. They haven’t found it. Mattie Crawford’s family deserves our consideration too. They deserve closure for the long, painful process of moving on with their lives.”

  Sullivan stopped a few moments, cleared her throat, and raised her voice to be heard over the chanting. “We can’t wait any longer for evidence that may never be found and, if it were found, would no doubt confirm what the prior tests already revealed and two juries already concluded: Mr. Taylor was Mattie Crawford’s killer.”

  To be fair and objective, Jess raised the obvious counter-argument. “But many ask what the rush is. If Tommy Taylor is guilty, he can be executed later. You’re not concerned that the next governor will pardon him, are you?”

  Sullivan looked at Jess for a long moment before settling back into her chair and refolding her hands on her lap. If her composure had slipped a bit earlier, she had herself well under control now. She glanced briefly toward Frank Temple, for what? Assent?

  Jess leaned in closer to hear every word.

  “You and I have worked together before, Jess. We don’t agree on these death penalty cases, do we?”

  Jess held her stare. “No, Governor, we don’t.” And most of the country sides with me, she thought but did not voice.

  Helen nodded. “Right now, you’d think I’m committing political suicide by admitting that I don’t support the death penalty, especially when I’ve managed to avoid that answer in the past. Wouldn’t you?”

  The chanting outside grew louder and seemed to be moving in a sound wave closer to the room where they sat. “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess noticed Frank Temple reach into his pocket and pull out a cell phone. He pushed a button and held the phone to his ear. She read the slight furrow in his brow as concern, but not alarm. He pushed a button, and dropped the phone back into his pocket, then moved closer to Sullivan, but remained out of the camera’s view.