Nine

“Listen, Roland, we have to talk.”

Regan sat across the table in the small luncheonette from Roland and Lester Ray on Friday afternoon. Mitch sat next to her, his arm around the back of the booth.

“Are you her boyfriend?” Lester Ray stared at Mitch.

“Yes.” Mitch stared back levelly. “Yes, I am.”

“Okay.” Lester Ray nodded. “That’s cool.”

“Lester Ray,” Regan said. “Listen to me very carefully. This involves you.”

“Okay.” He nodded again.

Roland rested his arms on the table, an apparent attempt to look nonchalant, but his eyes were darting around the room.

“I need to make this very clear to both of you,” she said. “I’ve only begun to look into this case. I have made no decisions regarding this book. I have very little information to go on right now, understand?”

“Yes,” Lester Ray said uncertainly, then, “No.”

“I need more information before I can decide if I want to work on this project. Specifically, Lester Ray, I want to know more about you. If I decide to go forward with this book, I’ll be working on it for months. I need to know that this case is something I’m going to want to spend a considerable amount of time on.”

“What other information do you need?” Roland looked wary.

“I need to know about Lester Ray’s background. His family, his upbringing, prior arrests.” She looked at Lester Ray. “You were arrested before, right?”

“Yes.” He nodded matter-of-factly, neither cocky nor ashamed.

“Several times.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with this?” He frowned.

“This book should be about justice for all. I was railroaded, almost executed, because someone lied in court. Because someone in a lab somewhere didn’t have enough people at work for a couple of weeks so he got backed up. What happened to me could happen to anyone, and that’s the story you have to write about.”

“Your life story is part of that, Lester Ray.” Regan chose to overlook his theatrics. “The book is going to tell the whole story, how you got from wherever it was you started, to being arrested for the murder of Carolyn Preston, to your conviction, to your incarceration. It’s more than just what happened to you over the past few weeks—it’s how you landed in prison and how you got out. It’s everything that led you to it, do you understand?”

She watched his face for a moment, waiting for some sign he was following her.

“Lester Ray. Remember what I told you. This is not just about you. It’s about Carolyn Preston and it’s about Eugene Potts, and what led them to where they ended up as well. It’s about decisions we make and it’s about finding the truth, and it’s about justice not just for you, but for Carolyn. It’s her story as much as it is yours.”

“Okay, we get it.” Roland waved her off. “When do you want to start?”

“We start now,” Lester Ray told them. “Or we don’t start at all.”

“Fine. Lester Ray, why don’t you tell me about yourself? Where were you born?” She took a small recorder out of her bag and set it on the table. “Where’d you grow up?”

“What’s that?” He looked at the recorder suspiciously.

“I need to record the conversation, so that I can focus on talking to you, rather than taking notes.” She smiled at him. “Do you mind if I record this? Is it all right with you?”

“Oh, ah, sure. Sure.”

“Lester Ray…” Roland eyed the recorder.

“It’s okay, Roland,” Lester Ray told him. “I don’t mind. Regan’s cool.”

Roland sighed and leaned back against the booth. “This is just for you, though, right? I mean, it doesn’t get sold or passed around or anything?”

“Of course not.” Regan smiled again, then turned to Mitch. “Would you mind getting me some ice cream from the counter?”

“Sure. Cone or a dish?”

“A dish. Strawberry.”

“I think I’ll get one, too.” Mitch stood. “Lester Ray?”

“Ahhh, sure. Thanks. Chocolate.”

“Roland, looks like you’re going to have to give me a hand here,” Mitch told him. “Three dishes, two hands.”

Roland followed Mitch to the counter with obvious reluctance.

“So, Lester Ray, you were going to tell me where you were born…” Regan reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.” He nodded with a slight jerk of his head. “I was born in Georgia. Calumet, just over the Florida line. Small town near the coast.”

“Tell me about your parents.”

“Don’t know nothing about my father.” He shrugged. “Don’t even know his name. Don’t remember my mother. She left me with her folks right after she had me. Don’t know where she went or what she did or where she is now.”

“So your grandparents raised you.” Regan fought a smile. Hadn’t he recently sworn on his mother’s grave?

“Till I was eight or nine. Then my grandfather died and my grandma went to live with her sister in Tallahassee. But her sister didn’t like kids, so they gave me to the state.”

“You were a foster child?”

“Yeah.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “What’s that word, foster, mean, anyway?”

“It means to bring up or to care for in place of the parents.”

“Don’t remember much of that,” he told her. “The caring for part. Don’t remember that anyone cared all that much about me.”

“How many foster homes were you in, Lester Ray?” Regan watched his face, watched his eyes, wondering if he was going to launch into more of his dramatics.

“I don’t honestly remember. There were so many…” He looked away, unrest settling around him.

“Are there any in particular that stand out in your memory?”

“Oh, sure. Not many of them so good. But I did have one foster mom who was real nice.” He smiled weakly, the memory of something good coming to life in his eyes.

There, Regan thought. Just that little bit, a tiny flash of something genuine, something human.

“Tell me something about her. Why does she stand out in your memory?” Regan asked.

“She had three or four of us she took in, she didn’t have kids of her own. We all got along real good, that was important to her, that we be like a real family, like real brothers and sisters. She made us lunches to take to school every day. And she used to make us cookies on Sunday. We all had to go to church with her in the morning, then in the afternoon, she’d bake cookies. Oatmeal, with raisins. They’re still my favorites.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“Almost a year.” His eyes grew sad, and the light began to fade. “She got sick. The state came and took us all away. I never saw any of those kids again.”

“After that home, where did you go?”

“Someplace not as nice. Someplace not nice at all.”

He shifted uneasily in his seat, his eyes taking on a haunted look, the little spark gone completely.

“I don’t like to think about being in that place, with those people. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Maybe when you get to know me better, you will,” she said gently.

He shook his head. “Some things you’re better off forgetting about. That’s what the reverend who came to the prison said. Some things you should just leave in the past. I’m all right with that.”

“Was that the worst of the foster homes?”

“The worst?” He seemed to give the question great thought. “What makes one bad place worse than another?” Finally, he shrugged. “Let’s just say I don’t have very many good memories of being a kid, and we’ll leave it at that.”

Regan made a mental note to see if she could track down someone who worked with Lester Ray in the foster care system, maybe some of his foster parents. She was almost afraid of what she’d find. Acknowledging that she might eventually discover that Lester Ray was in fact a murderer, she could not help but ache for the sad child he must have been—a child whose memory of the foster mother who sent him to school with lunch and baked his favorite cookies had been the only good thing he’d brought with him from his childhood. How different might his life have been, Regan wondered, had that time with that good and caring woman lasted for longer than one brief year?

This, she knew, was the beginning of the story. Cold-blooded killer or merely a sad man whose life had taken an unjust and frightening turn: everything that Lester Ray was, or could have been, began right there.

She was glad to see Mitch and Roland return to the table. Her heart was starting to hurt.

“You might want to watch what you say, Lester Ray.” Roland motioned for him to slide over. “At least, until she decides whether or not she’s going to write this book.”

“I’ve already decided,” she told him as she licked ice cream from her spoon. “I spoke with my editor before coming here; she assured me my publisher is interested in moving ahead with this if I decide to go forward. I want to do the book. I’ll have to speak with my agent, Roland. She’ll call you, and between the two of you and my publisher, I’m sure something can be worked out that will be to everyone’s satisfaction. I’d like to work on this project with you, Lester Ray.”

“Hey, that’s terrific.” Roland beamed. “What do you say to that, Lester Ray?”

Lester Ray put down his spoon, thought about it for a moment, looked up at Regan and asked, “Do you think in the book, you could call me Darren?”

 

Lester Ray and Roland left the luncheonette while Regan and Mitch were still finishing their ice cream. They were eager to get on with their day, Roland to get Lester Ray a cell phone into which he’d program his and Regan’s numbers so they could all stay in touch over the next week. The lawyer couldn’t wait to discuss business terms with Regan’s agent.

Lester Ray couldn’t wait to head for the beach and the first vacation he’d had in many, many years.

“I’m going to the Outer Banks,” he’d told Regan. “That’s up in North Carolina. I heard someone say they had real nice beaches on this real thin little strip of land. They said it wasn’t near as hot as it is down here, but you can sit on the sand and watch the dolphins. That’s what I’m gonna do. Roland here is going to lend me some money, ’cause when my lawsuits get filed, I’m gonna be rich.”

“Good luck working with Lester Ray,” Mitch said after the two had left. “He has the attention span of a gnat.”

“True. I’ll earn every penny of my advance on this one. Haven’t decided yet how much is an act, and how much is the real Lester Ray. You buying that ‘aw shucks’ thing he’s selling?”

“Not even if he’s giving it away.”

“That’s what I thought. He’s creepy in a quiet sort of way. One minute he seems very calculating, very melodramatic, turns on the tears and the hang-dog expressions like a pro. The next, he’s like some poor lost soul who doesn’t know which end is up. I’m not sure which is the real Lester Ray.” She wiped the last trace of ice cream from her fingers. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.” He stood and waited for her, then together they stepped from the cool restaurant into the heat of a bright June afternoon.

“And what’s with the name change?” Mitch asked as they walked to his car.

“Lester Ray thinks his name makes him sound like a redneck,” Regan explained to Mitch. “He thinks Darren sounds smoother.”

“I think it’s going to take more than a name change to put some polish on him, but maybe that’s just me.”

Mitch stopped in midstride and snapped his fingers. “Forgot something. Be right back.”

Regan window-shopped at the little gift shop next door while Mitch dashed back into the luncheonette.

He returned in a minute, a napkin in his hand. “That was close. They were just cleaning the table.”

“What’s that?” She pointed to the napkin.

He unwrapped it to show her.

“A plastic spoon?”

“Lester Ray’s plastic spoon.” He nodded and rewrapped it. “Far as I know, no one else has a good sample of Lester Ray’s DNA. You never know when something might turn up that you might want to compare.”

“You’re looking in Potts’s lab for things that might have been mislabeled, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Sure.”

“What would you do if you found something?”

“We’d send it to the FBI lab to retest.” He unlocked the car door for her. “But beyond that, some of the cases Potts worked on had connections to cases the local office worked on. We just need to make sure the results were right the first time.”

“You’re going to have the saliva from that spoon tested at the FBI lab?”

“Yes,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door and got into the car.

“Why?”

“Just a feeling I have.” He smiled and started the car. “Call me a cynic, but I just have the feeling we’re going to be hearing from Lester Ray again. I just want to be ready for him.”

“Would that be admissible?”

“Probably not, but it would give us a baseline.”

“Just in case something shows up at Potts’s lab.”

“Right.” He brought the car to a stop at the light.

“Did something show up?”

“Not yet. But you never know.” The light turned green and he was smiling as he drove on. “What time is your flight?”

“Six. And don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject. I just wanted to know how much time we had, and now I know. Not much. We’ll have just enough time to pick up your things from the hotel and get you to the airport.”

“You swear you’re not holding back anything?”

“I swear. There’s nothing else to tell. Nothing has turned up at the lab that I’m not telling you about. I just like to have a little insurance, just in case something does.”

“Something like what?” she persisted. “What could turn up that you could positively attribute to him?”

“Clothes matching the description of the victims.” He glanced over to find her staring at him. “And no, I swear, nothing has been found.”

“You’d tell me, though, right, if you did? I mean, if I’m going to be writing a book about how this guy was railroaded through the justice system and came within weeks of being executed, I’d sure as hell hate to have him turn up guilty later.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “My publicist has already been contacted by several talk shows wanting me to come on and talk about Lester Ray and my feelings on the case and that sort of thing. I’d hate to go on national TV and talk about how this guy was screwed over by the courts, only to find he was guilty all along.”

“There’s always that possibility,” he reminded her.

“So, in other words, watch what I say.”

“That’s always good advice, don’t you think? Besides, you don’t want to give away too much, right? You want to walk that line right down the middle. Maybe, between now and the time you finish your research, the truth will come out, once and for all.”

He pulled into the hotel parking lot and waited for the valet. He handed over the keys, saying, “Don’t bury it. We’ll be back out in thirty minutes.”

Mitch and Regan got out of the car. He took her arm as the double doors opened and they walked into the cool of the lobby.

“Maybe,” Mitch said, “by the time the book is finished, you’ll know for certain if Lester Ray was shafted, or if he is, as Lederer still believes, a vicious murderer.”

He stopped suddenly and looked at his watch.

“Regan, it’s Friday.” He frowned. “Why are you leaving when we could be spending an entire weekend together here?”

“I booked the flight before I knew you were going to be here this week.” She grinned and added, “But now that you mention it, I could go for some fun in the sun. Last weekend we worked the whole time. Now, throw in a run on the beach at dusk, and I could be talked into changing my flight.”

“Definitely a run on the beach. I was going to suggest that myself. After which we could come back here for a nice dinner…then, who knows?”

“Let’s go up to the room, and I’ll call the airline and switch my flight to Monday morning.”

“We can head out early in the morning, hit the beach…” he was saying as they walked hand in hand to the elevator. “Lie on the sand, listen to the waves pounding the shore…”

“I didn’t bring a suit.”

“The hotel has a shop right near the restaurant,” he reminded her.

“Oh, right.” She brightened. “And yesterday they had the cutest little pink and green bikini in the window. I think I’ll stop in right now while they’re still open and see if they have it in my size.”

“While you’re doing that, I’ll stop at the front desk and see if the package is here yet.”

“What package?”

“The package containing a copy of the police file on the Barnes case.”

“The DA did say he’d send me one. I thought he’d forgotten.”

“Yeah, well, he needed a little reminder. I had Dorsey pick it up and drop it off for you.”

“How can I ever thank you?”

“We’ll think of something before the weekend’s over, I imagine.”

“Oh, I imagine we will.”

He laughed and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “And if you’re a really good girl, there just might be a copy of the trial notes in it for you, too…”

“Agent Peyton, you sure do know how to turn a girl’s head…”