SEVENTEEN

With Randy at the ready, Punt did a slow-motion performance of rising from his captain’s chair and placing his copy of the trial transcript in his briefcase before he turned and locked his file cabinet. I sensed from his deliberate movements that he wanted to make sure Randy knew who headed this investigation—Punt, not Randy.

“Yes, Randy.” Punt spoke calmly, and Randy backed off a few steps. “Now would be an excellent time for us to call on Nicole Pierce. I telephoned a friend at the marina and learned that her husband’s on a salvage job near Marathon. Some guy’s sailboat sank in high winds and Slone’s trying to winch it up. Even if all goes well with the job, Slone won’t be in until late tonight.”

“Let’s go.” Randy headed for the door.

“Maxine,” Punt said. “Is it okay if we all go in your car? One car arriving at the Pierce home will be less conspicuous than two.”

“Especially if the one is gray—not yellow,” Randy said.

“Don’t know why a rich guy like you drives that old clunker.”

“Inverse snobbery,” Punt said, grinning.

“We’ll take our car.” Maxine led the way outside and we all piled into the Ford for the short ride to the Pierce home. Flagler carries a plethora of traffic, but this end of the avenue offers few tourist attractions to catch a visitor’s eye. We had no trouble finding curbside parking directly in front of a row of one-story stucco homes. I remembered the neighborhood well. I tried to forget the frosty reception and the curt invitation to leave that Punt and I had received when we visited here a year or so ago, seeking information from Slone Pierce.

Punt led the way through the gate in the coral rock privacy fence, stepped onto a pine-planked porch littered with old air tanks and damaged face masks, and rapped on the door. At first I thought nobody would answer, then a curtain parted at a front window, dropped back into place. Punt knocked again, and in a moment the door opened a crack and the pungent scent of nail polish remover mingled with cigarette smoke reached us.

Nicole Pierce brushed a strand of bottle-blonde hair behind her left ear while she sized us up—and gave us ample time to size her up. Short. Middle-aged. Heavy-set. Her double chin formed a collar of flabby flesh that supported her coarse features. Her bloodshot eyes and no-smile lips gave her the dragged-out look of a barmaid who’d worked an eight-hour shift and needed a hot shower and a long rest. Clutching the thin panels of a thigh-length swimsuit cover-up together at the waist, she greeted us.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Pierce, I’m Punt Ashford. My dad and Slone used to dive for Mel Fisher.”

“Yes?”

“These people with me are my friends, Keely Moreno, Maxine and Randy Jackson. We’d like to come in and talk to you for a few minutes.”

Nicole backed up a step and turned her head as a racking cough shook her body. Behind her on an entryway table, a cigarette smoldered in an ashtray. I thought she might close the door in our faces. But no.

“What’s your business with me? What have you come here to talk about? I just got off work and I’m really not in a talking mood.” Her voice carried the deep huskiness common to pack-a-day smokers and heavy drinkers.

Punt flashed his identification and although she peered at it, I doubted she could read it from behind the mesh of the screen door. So far she hadn’t let on that she recognized Randy’s face or his name, but I knew she had because when she spoke next, she directed her words at Randy instead of at Punt.

“Please state your business. I’m not sure…”

“May we come inside?” Punt asked again.

To my surprise, she opened the door and stood back so we could enter. She scooped the top of a wetsuit off a chintz-covered couch and brushed two broken snorkels from a chair in front of a console TV.

“Please have a seat.”

Punt chose a chair beside a window and Maxine, Randy, and I sat in a row on the couch like cormorants on a phone wire. I could identify with Nicole’s lack of interest in housekeeping. The room looked clean enough, just “lived-in” messy.

Once we were seated, Punt drove to the point. “We want to talk to you about the Randy Jackson trial in the early eighties—about your testimony at that trial.”

Nicole Pierce stood up immediately. “I have nothing more to say about that trial. I don’t care to discuss it with you now or ever. Nor do I want to discuss it with anyone else. I want you to leave…now.”

Punt didn’t budge from his chair. “We’ll only take a few minutes of your time, Mrs. Pierce.” Punt kept his voice warm and friendly and he turned on a heartbreaker smile that I knew well. “Your testimony at Randy’s trial carried a great deal of weight with the judge and jury. Are you aware that Mr. Jackson spent twenty years in prison?”

“I’m aware.”

“Randy feels that you misrepresented him. He feels that you…”

“You lied.” Randy’s scar began to flame as he interrupted Punt and scowled.

“Easy, Randy.” Punt stood to pat Randy’s shoulder.

“Easy, hell!” Randy rose and turned his wrath on Nicole. “You bitch! How can you sit there and face me calm as low tide after the rotten thing you did to me?”

Nicole jumped up. “Get out of here, you murderer! All of you get out of my house before I call the police.” She reached for the telephone sitting on an end table near the couch and jammed the receiver against her ear, listening for a dial tone. I could hear it from where I sat, but I didn’t know how to stop her.

“Calling the police is your privilege, Mrs. Pierce,” Punt assured her, keeping his voice low and smooth and his smile in place. “But we hope you won’t do that. We haven’t come here to make trouble for you concerning a trial that ended two decades ago. We had hoped you’d help us.”

“Help you in what way?” She paused with her finger still poised over the telephone number pad.

“The authorities have exonerated Randy in the Dyanne Darby case. Surely you’ve read about that.”

“Yes. I read all about that. I still think he’s guilty as sin no matter what the court says or does. I didn’t recognize him when you first arrived here or I’d never have let him inside. Again, I’m ordering all of you to leave.”

“Mrs. Pierce, DNA evidence proved without a doubt that someone else murdered Dyanne Darby. You, like many others, may still have totally unfounded doubts about Randy’s innocence.”

“You bet I do!”

“We now feel there’s only one way to totally clear Randy’s name and help him ease into today’s society. That way’s to find Dyanne Darby’s true killer and to get that person behind bars. That’s what we hoped you’d be able and willing to help us do.”

“How can I possibly do that? In what way do you think I can help you?” She set the phone back onto the end table, but she still remained standing, kept her gaze on it as if she might pick it up again at any instant.

“Please sit down and hear us out,” Punt said. “You could help us by admitting you lied under oath. That’s what we’ll tell the police right now—if you force us to by calling them. We’ll tell them we can prove that you lied. Perjury’s a serious crime.”

Nicole remained standing, folding her arms at her waist until she realized that position allowed her cover-up to gap. She clutched the cover-up to her body again, this time managing to tie strings at the neckline and the waist.

“You’re thinking that if you tell the police I lied, and if they can prove I lied, then I’d be in big trouble?”

“That might be true,” Punt said. “Or maybe not. It’s hard to guess what lawyers, judges, juries, and the police might do. But it’s something for you to consider.”

Nicole sat again and jutted her ample chin toward the ceiling. “You’re suggesting I could be brought to court on a perjury charge?”

“I’m saying that’s a possibility,” Punt said.

“Well, I say no way. I didn’t lie. I told the court exactly what I saw happen. I didn’t back down on my story then, and I won’t back down on it now. Never. On the afternoon Dyanne died, I saw Randy Jackson enter Dyanne’s apartment then return to the hallway with her blood all over himself and his clothes. That’s what I saw. I lived right down that hall from Dyanne and that’s exactly what I saw.”

“Maybe you made a mistake,” Punt said. “That’s possible, you know. Eyes can play tricks. You described the killer as a tall man with a Z-shaped scar on his left cheek.”

“Right. That’s what I saw.”

“Randy’s a tall man, that’s for sure, but if you’ll notice, Randy’s scar is on his right cheek, not his left cheek.”

Nicole studied Randy as if she’d never seen him before.

Punt continued. “I’m suggesting that you saw that facial scar so often in the courtroom and maybe during the times you double-dated with Dyanne and Randy that its image became embedded in your thinking. I’m also suggesting that because of its familiarity you imagined remembering the scar on the man you saw leaving Dyanne Darby’s apartment, the man you believed in your mind to be Randy Jackson.”

When Nicole looked at Randy again, her eyes widened as if she were seeing him for the first time.

Punt continued. “Nicole, Randy did not enter Dyanne’s apartment that afternoon. He didn’t call on her until early evening. They had a dinner date. If you saw someone leave her apartment in the afternoon with blood on his clothes, you probably did see the killer. But it wasn’t Randy Jackson.”

“Then who was it?”

“If anyone had known that for sure, Randy wouldn’t have spent twenty years in prison. Do you have any idea who the killer might have been?”

“No. None. If it wasn’t Randy, then why did the jury believe it was Randy?” Nicole asked.

“Nobody knows exactly why any jury reaches the decision it reaches. That holds true of the jury at Randy’s trial. Many things play a part in a jury’s decision. Randy had no alibi for the time of Dyanne’s death. He said he was at home alone. Nobody could prove that he was home alone, and…”

“And nobody believed him?” Nicole asked.

“He had no corroborating witness to the fact that he was alone. His alibi amounted to no alibi at all under those circumstances. Your testimony that you saw him leaving Dyanne’s apartment in the afternoon went a long way toward convicting him. He had her blood on him, that’s true. He explained he had touched her body, tried to see if he could help her before he realized she was dead and called the police.”

“And the jury didn’t believe that.”

“Right. They didn’t. And in addition to that, Randy’s court-appointed lawyer did little or nothing to help him win his freedom. At the time of Randy’s trial DNA evidence was inadmissible in the courtroom. But things have changed. DNA evidence is permitted and that’s what won Randy’s exoneration—twenty years too late.”

Nicole looked at Randy, then she looked back at Punt, glaring at him for a few moments before she burst into tears, lowered her head to her knees and sobbed. We all squirmed in discomfort at her outburst.

At last she raised her head, still gulping for air, fighting for composure. “What have I done?” she muttered. “What have I done?”

“Perhaps the only thing you’ve done is make a mistake,” Punt said. “Anyone can make a mistake. And what’s past is past. We haven’t come here to fault you for your mistake. But we have come to ask you to help us find Dyanne’s killer. We’ve no interest in seeing you brought up on a perjury charge for a lie that you could easily admit was an error, a case of mistaken identity. But I’m thinking that if you made one mistake, maybe you made others. Maybe if you think carefully you can recall facts about the killer that might help us identify him today. Are you sure the man you saw leaving Dyanne’s apartment was a tall man?”

“Yes. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“What did you compare him to in order to estimate his height?” Nicole hesitated a long time before she answered. “To myself, I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Punt looked Nicole up and down as if measuring her height. “You’re about five feet four inches? Is that a close estimate?”

She nodded.

“So if the man you saw was taller than you, that makes him a very tall man?”

Nicole looked as if she might sob again and Punt spoke quickly.

“Nicole, why don’t you tell us again what happened the night Dyanne died? Maybe you’ll remember some detail that could help us find the real killer. Memories fade with time. We all know that, but we also know that certain special incidents remain lodged in our minds, popping up like lighthouse beacons on a dark shore.”

For a long time, Nicole hesitated and I thought she might refuse to say any more to us at all, but after taking a few deep breaths, her story began to pour forth like gall from a ruptured liver.