I drove to the Sheriff’s Office, parked my car at a meter, and stuffed the pistol under the front seat. Last time, when I told the information desk attendant that I needed to talk to Deborah Holt, he told me to wait outside the security checkpoint. This time, he made a call and then handed me a pass with directions to the Homicide Room.
Eight years ago, after spending thirty-six hours in that room, I left in handcuffs – the first step on my path to death row. Now I felt a tremor in my belly as I pushed through the door.
Holt leaned against a reception desk, waiting for me.
She looked me over. ‘I thought they had you in the hospital.’
‘They kicked me out.’
‘When they took you in, they said maybe this time you’d gone down for good.’
‘Apparently not even close.’
‘You look OK now,’ she said. ‘Tired.’
‘A long night,’ I said.
‘Come on, then.’ She led me back through the room to a double cubicle she shared with Bill Higby. She sat at one of the desks and gestured at the other. ‘Have a seat.’ I took Higby’s chair. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.
I said, ‘A man is scheduled to die at Raiford in three days. Thomas LaFlora.’
‘Right,’ she said, as if she knew.
‘You’ve got to help me stop it. I’m pretty sure someone else did the killings.’
The glimmer of a sad smile showed on her lips. ‘You’re pretty sure, huh?’
‘Another guy who was dealing cocaine back then. His name’s Randall Haussen. Kim Jenkins’s husband.’
‘Kim Jenkins, the suicide?’
‘I think he killed her too,’ I said.
Again, the sad smile. ‘What makes you think so?’
I couldn’t tell her about pulling Haussen out of his sister’s house. ‘I talked to him. He’s hiding it, but he teases with what he knows.’
‘Did he tell you he’s responsible for any of the deaths?’
‘Basically.’
‘Explicitly?’
‘He didn’t need to.’
‘Do you have proof?’ When I said nothing, she said, ‘I know you’ve had bad breaks, Franky. But LaFlora will die because he killed two people. Witnesses saw him kill them. You can’t undo that.’
‘Haussen went to jail for shooting another dealer,’ I said. ‘Thomas LaFlora had a drug record but that’s all. Nothing violent until this.’
She shook her head.
‘Kim Jenkins OD’ed a couple of times on over-the-counter drugs,’ I said. ‘She never used a gun.’
‘I wish I could help you,’ Holt said. ‘What do your friends at the JNI say? They’re the ones who know how to do this.’
I stood up. ‘The JNI can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. You at least could pull in Haussen and talk to him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But once we break the rules, bad things happen. Detective Higby broke the rules with you. You know how that turned out.’
‘Bad things happen with the rules or without them,’ I said, and I started to leave. But first, I said, ‘Why was Higby at Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit’s apartment?’
She looked at me as if I was missing the obvious. ‘He’s a homicide investigator—’
‘On leave.’
‘The higher-ups called him back for this one.’
‘Because the killings look like the ones he railroaded me on?’
‘Among other reasons.’
‘And also like the killings of the boys up the St Johns River?’
‘In some respects.’
‘What respects?’
She pointed at Higby’s chair again, and I sat. She spoke quietly. ‘There was no sexual assault this time.’
‘Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit weren’t as pretty as the boys.’
‘And the wounds on the upper torso are new,’ she said.
‘The ripped-up chests.’
‘Yes. We might have a different killer. Or the same killer might have changed his behavior. Either way, we’ve learned things we didn’t learn from the earlier killings.’
‘Like what?’
She frowned. ‘I’m telling you this for only two reasons. First, as I said at your motel, you deserve to know. You’re a victim too. Second, you’ve worked on this harder than anyone else, and while we all still thought you killed the Bronson boys, you were out ahead of us. I want to hear your thinking.’
‘So what have you learned?’
She sighed. ‘Telling you any of this could get me fired.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Except for the man who supposedly threatened the Bronson boys and Lynn Melsyn – a man Detective Higby thought and still thinks was a fiction – the earlier killings, including the Bronsons, seemed to be crimes of opportunity – kids who crossed random paths with a predator. But the deaths of Melsyn and Nesbit, which link directly to the deaths of the Bronson brothers, turn the murders into motivated crimes. The killer is a sexual deviant, but he also had another reason to kill Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit. Maybe they knew something about him. Maybe they angered him. Whatever the reason, the killer chose to kill these particular men. So maybe he also targeted the Bronson brothers and the other boys. Maybe they also knew something about him or angered him.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘You’d already figured that out?’ she said. ‘What else do you know?’
I thought about the file she brought me at the Cardinal Motel. The runaway Jeremy Ballat and the Mexican kid Luis Gonzalez were last seen alive on the same stretch of the St Johns River but had little in common otherwise, and less in common with Steven and Duane Bronson.
‘Almost nothing,’ I said.
‘Tell me.’
I said, ‘The Bronson brothers and one of the other kids – the runaway – were thieves. They had juvenile records for breaking into neighbors’ houses. Small-scale stuff, though Felicia Bronson thinks the man who was threatening her sons was one of the robbery victims.’
‘What else?’
I said, ‘Mercury.’
‘Huh?’
‘The blood expert said the Bronson brothers had elevated levels of mercury. The report on Jeremy Ballat, the runaway, said he did too.’
‘Weird,’ she said. ‘What do you think it means?’
‘Probably nothing. All kinds of things can cause it. I haven’t checked the Mexican boy.’
‘I’ll look into it,’ she said. ‘What else?’
I’d seen nothing that directly connected the four boys. But I thought again of the upriver town of Bostwick that Jeremy Ballat seemed to have passed on his way to being dumped in Etoniah Creek State Forest and near where Higby retrieved Josh Skooner when Josh ran away from home. Since Higby charged me with killing Steven and Duane Bronson, Bostwick also made him a kind of connection. I said, ‘You say Higby’s a good investigator.’
‘One of the best.’
‘Well, you figured out the connection between the Bronson brothers, the runaway, and the Mexican kid. And I figured it out. Why didn’t he?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m wondering is all,’ I said. ‘Does he still think I killed the Bronsons?’
‘He has a hard time admitting he’s wrong.’
‘Seems like a pretty bad investigator to me, then.’
‘He’s complicated,’ she said.
I got up to leave again. ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘The lobby camera at the Sun Reach Apartments caught me coming and going. Who else did it catch?’
‘That’s the thing. No one of interest. There’s a service entrance and an elevator at the back of the building. We think the killer must have gone up that way.’
‘Which means he knew about the lobby camera.’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘And that would mean he’d gone to Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit’s apartment before.’
‘Maybe. Only maybe.’
‘So the killer knew them.’
‘Maybe.’
In the afternoon, I went to Dr Patel’s office. When the receptionist sent me in, Dr Patel was sitting behind his desk, paging through a book.
I sat on his couch, and after a minute he put the book down, came over, and sat in a chair facing me. ‘I’ve been reading,’ he said.
‘I see that.’
‘About the bewilderment of the self,’ he said. ‘And the making and remaking of traumatized minds. Sometimes, it seems, even with radical therapies—’ He stopped himself and focused on me. ‘Are you all right? You look exhausted.’
‘A long night.’
He suppressed a smile. ‘With Cynthia?’
‘I wish,’ I said.
‘Trouble sleeping? I can prescribe—’
‘I kidnapped a man I thought was responsible for a murder. A few murders, really.’
His smile fell.
‘I picked him up in Atlanta and took him back to Jane and Hank at the JNI. They made me let him go.’
He paled.
‘I tell you this for a couple of reasons,’ I said. ‘One, he might call the cops on me. He’s guilty and scared, so I don’t think he’ll call them, but if he does, I’ll miss tomorrow’s appointment. And two, he threatened to kill me.’
‘Oh, Franky,’ he said, ‘you crashed two weeks ago – you came within an inch of killing yourself – and the moment you get out of the hospital you shove the gas to the floor. I can’t help you if you’re unwilling to help yourself.’
So, following doctor’s orders, I took the evening off. I left the pistol deep under the front seat of my car where I could get to it if I needed it, but it would stay out of reach – mine or anyone else’s – if I didn’t. Then, at seven thirty, I picked up Cynthia at the Cineplex, and we went out for pizza. Afterward, we drove to the beach and sat on the sand and talked as waves ripped and rushed and then pulled back with a hushing. The sun set, and the moon – huge and yellow – rose over the ocean. Cynthia and I sat and watched, touching hands because we needed nothing more from each other when a moon that huge and yellow was rising.
The next morning, after sleeping on the carpet, I woke early. I turned on the TV as I did my pushups. The news led with a story about an overnight fire that burned most of a condominium complex on the Westside, and followed with a feel-good story about how kids were spending the last month of their summer vacation. During the commercial, I flipped on to my back and started my sit-ups.
When the news came back on, a serious-faced Asian reporter stood in front of the county courthouse and said a controversy was brewing over the execution of a local man convicted of double homicide twenty-five years ago. I stopped exercising and watched. With forty-eight hours remaining before the scheduled execution, the man’s lawyer was calling for a delay after discovering new evidence. The camera cut to an interview the reporter had taped with Jane yesterday afternoon. Jane said that a man had emerged who had knowledge of the events of twenty-five years ago and possibly an active role in them. This man’s knowledge might exonerate Thomas LaFlora. The reporter asked why Jane was introducing this man only now. The urgency of the moment had made wheels turn that were stuck for more than two decades, Jane said. Then she named Randall Haussen.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Good for you.’
When I called the JNI office at nine, though, Thelma said Jane wouldn’t talk to me.
‘How about Hank?’ I said.
‘Uh-uh,’ she said.
‘Tell them Haussen will run now that they’ve named him. He did it before and no one even suspected him.’
‘They know that,’ she said.
‘Then why did Jane go public with his name?’
‘LaFlora has two days. Unless something happens now, nothing happens.’
‘Ask if I can help,’ I said.
‘You already know their answer,’ she said. ‘Straighten your own mess. Until you get yourself together, they can’t depend on you.’
‘What if I never get myself together?’ I said.
‘Then it’s been good knowing you.’
Last time I’d tried to get myself together – to resolve the circumstances that had torn me apart – I’d gone to the Sun Reach Apartments and found Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit dead. And then I’d slashed myself with a box cutter.
But the dead men must have known more about the circumstances that led to the Bronson brothers’ deaths than they told me – maybe even more than they realized they knew. Why else would the killer visit them in their apartment, exposing himself to attention that had mostly disappeared with my arrest eight years ago? Maybe I’d gone to bed with the box cutter just when I was finding my way back to myself, or at least to what happened to me and the Bronson brothers.
Who else would know the same things Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit knew? Rick’s sister Lynn. But she was still hiding. Darrell Nesbit’s two friends who kicked down my motel room door with him might also know. So might the Bronson boys’ mother.
I decided to try the mother again. I would ask if her boys ever went to Bostwick. I would ask about the man who threatened them. I would ask for Lynn Melsyn’s address.
But as I left my room, Deborah Holt’s black Grand Marquis pulled on to the parking lot and stopped behind my car. The detective got out, holding a black vinyl portfolio. She said, ‘Good news. Or interesting, at least.’
We went back into my room. ‘I drove down to Putnam County yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘They still have records for the Mexican boy.’ She unclipped the portfolio and pulled out a file. ‘He also had high mercury. Way high. Like if he was a thermometer he would have geysered.’
‘Huh.’
‘My reaction exactly. But get this.’ She leafed through the pages. ‘The kid had a seven-year-old sister, right? After he died, the sister told their mom and dad about the man who came to their campsite. The lead investigator sat the girl down with a sketch artist.’ Holt handed me a photocopy. ‘This is what they came up with.’
The sketch showed a square-faced white man. Handsome and serious. Familiar too. If you averaged the features of Judge Skooner and his son Andrew, the face would look a little like the one in the sketch. ‘That’s screwed-up,’ I said. ‘Who do you think?’
She shook her head. ‘You say it.’
‘Eric Skooner sixteen years ago?’ I said.
‘Looks like him. But I expect it looks like hundreds of other men around here. Maybe thousands.’
The resemblance was strong, and the judge and his family were always brushing against trouble even as he collected awards for his toughness as a prosecutor and rigor on the bench, but the idea that he could have anything to do with the death of even one child, much less four boys – and with the killings of Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit too – was outrageous. But I said, ‘His family owns property across the river from where the Mexican kid’s family was camping.’
She nodded. ‘Tomhanson Mill.’
‘That’s where the runaway kid – Jeremy Ballat – swam to shore from the barge.’
She held the sketch so it caught light from the window and adjusted its angle as if that would change the picture. ‘I’m sure plenty of men in the area look like this,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Did you check to see if Tomhanson Mill uses mercury?’
She nodded grimly. ‘Fourteen years ago and then again three years ago, the Department of Environmental Protection fined them for dumping waste into a creek that empties into the river. In the settlement, Tomhanson admitted to regularly piping out what the DEP called “effluent with chronic toxicity.” The suit never mentioned mercury, but I made some calls. The mill uses it in its machine parts – the gauges and switches. It’s also in the chemical compounds. And it’s in the incinerator ash. So, yeah, there’d be a lot of mercury.’
‘Enough to show up in the boys’ blood after they died?’
‘Maybe – if the kids had close contact with the waste,’ she said. ‘The lawyers for Tomhanson Mill argued against the DEP, saying that once the waste spread into the river water it would become harmless, but the DEP showed that this kind of waste concentrates in pools.’
I thought about all she’d told me. ‘One problem,’ I said. ‘Steven and Duane Bronson also had high mercury. Were they ever near the mill? If they weren’t, then the Tomhanson mercury might have nothing to do with any of the deaths. And if that’s true, maybe the sketch isn’t Eric Skooner.’
‘Could be,’ she said. But she stared some more at the picture. ‘You know what happens if this is him? Everything collapses. Hundreds of verdicts. All the work that people like me have done to send him the cases. All the trust that people have—’
‘Then it can’t be him?’
‘If it’s him, if he’s involved in even the slightest way, it all falls down.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘His accusations against Bill Higby would collapse with everything else.’
I thought about that. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Higby has also spent time at Tomhanson Mill.’
Now I’d surprised her.
So I told her about Higby’s commendation for bringing Josh Skooner back to his family when, as an eleven-year-old, he ran away to the mill. ‘He went from rescuing Josh Skooner to shooting him. In between, he arrested me for killing two boys who might have died because of some connection to Eric Skooner. Higby rammed me on to death row even though he had evidence of earlier killings that I couldn’t have committed – killings that happened around mill land owned by the Skooners. His next-door neighbors.’
‘Oh,’ she said.