The Stolen Hours

by Allen Eskens

He said more after that, stammering as he struggled to find ever-greater insults to hurl at her, but Lila had stopped listening, filling her head with numbers as she counted her steps back to her car. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three…

  Once inside, she started the engine and pulled out from the curb, nearly hitting a truck passing by. John and Sylvie stood in their yard, shoulder to shoulder, John’s face red as he continued his tirade, Sylvie simply glared at Lila, letting her husband speak for both of them.

  Lila could barely breathe as she fought to keep it together. She had failed in spectacular fashion, and it took all of her strength to keep her eyes from filling up with tears. Sylvie had pledged her loyalty to a man who might be Lila’s rapist. She was willing to lie for him. For better or worse, she had chosen his side—truth be damned—and now Lila understood that Sylvie, a woman who had once been like a sister to her, would defend John to the end.

  Chapter 36

  Leo Reecey tried to convince Gavin that they should waive his Rule Eight hearing, telling him that the proceeding was superfluous. Then the pompous ass felt the need to explain that superfluous meant “meaningless,” as if Gavin were just another cave-dweller in an orange jumpsuit.

  “The Constitution grants you the right to an attorney,” Reecey said. “The Rule Eight is there to make sure that step gets accomplished. You have an attorney, so going in for a Rule Eight is a waste of time.”

  But Gavin Spencer did not waive his hearing. He had prepared for this moment over the course of years, sitting alone in his big house, watching true crime reruns, his mind racing with half-formed ideas about how he’d do things better—perfecting his craft. How many nights had he awakened with plans and ideas wriggling like larvae inside his temples, twisting and grinding at his brain until he was forced out of bed to do more research—the only task that could calm the squirming.

  Like an obsessive in search of order, he’d scoured the internet for information. What charges could they bring? How did the jail system work? He studied the rules of evidence and criminal procedure with more vigor than some law students. Know your enemy became his mantra.

  What Gavin understood about the Rule Eight hearing was that he would be brought to court and given an opportunity to meet with his attorney away from the strict procedures of the jail. This was his chance to be in reach of a cell phone.

  At the courthouse, a guard walked Gavin and another inmate, Bart, to a cinder block holding cell where Gavin expected to find Leo Reecey waiting. The attorney wasn’t there. Bart gave a stab at conversation, but Gavin ignored him, focusing instead on the image of choking his lawyer until the man’s eyes filled with blood. Two hundred thousand dollars and the son of a bitch couldn’t bother to get to court on time. God damn that lazy bastard.

  Three minutes before the start of the hearing, the door clanked with the sound of a heavy metal key. “Spencer, you’re up.” The jailer walked Gavin through a side door and into the courtroom, where Leo Reecey sat at counsel table.

  “Where the hell you been?” Gavin hissed the words into Reecey’s ear as he took a seat.

  “Traffic,” Reecey answered.

  “Bullshit,” Gavin whispered. “Did you bring the phone?”

  Reecey put a finger to his lips as the bailiff announced Gavin’s case.

  “Did you bring it?” he asked again with more insistence.

  Reecey hesitated for a second and then gently tapped his breast pocket.

  Gavin relaxed, and let his gaze track across the floor to the prosecutor’s table, where Lila Nash sat askew in her chair, looking at him, her expression perplexed, as though she were trying to shove a square memory into a round hole. Gavin averted his gaze and leaned back in his seat.

  Judge Anderson asked Reecey if his client wanted the complaint read. Reecey declined.

  “Would you care to address the issue of bail?” the judge asked.

  Reecey looked at Gavin, who shook his head.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Are there any omnibus issues to be addressed?”

  Reecey stood. “I filed a motion requesting a contested hearing on the issues of probable cause and the admissibility of the lineup. We do not waive our right to have the matter heard in an expedited fashion, as my client is in custody.”

  “Would the State care to be heard?”

  Lila Nash rose to her feet, swallowed as if nervous, then said, “Defendant’s motion is boilerplate, Your Honor.” Her words came across weak—a scared mouse. “We understand that the only issues going forward are those set forth on the record today. We further assume that all other issues will be waived. If counsel for the defense has any additional issues, we ask that he serve us with specific notice in a timely fashion.”

  The judge looked at Reecey, who had retaken his seat. “We’re litigating just those two issues, correct, Mr. Reecey?”

  “Correct.”

  “If you decide to raise any additional issues, you’ll need to give proper notice to the State.”

  Reecey partially stood to give his answer. “Absolutely, Your Honor.”

  When the hearing adjourned, Gavin glanced sideways to watch Lila Nash as she put her papers into a briefcase. When she left counsel table, she passed within a few feet of Gavin and their eyes met, the contact lasting less than a second. It was enough for Gavin to see the flicker of turmoil. She was struggling.

  Would she piece it together? Even if she did, they would still need to reopen the case, find the string that connected Gavin to Lila. He had taken great care to create an alibi, bribing his roommate to take pictures at graduation, pictures that would mark Gavin present at the ceremony. The move seemed over the top, but even back then he was a craftsman. They had nothing that could put him anywhere near Lila Nash that night. Plus, they would need to find Jack—Jack, who was on the outside, free to carry out what needed to be done to keep them both out of prison.

  Reecey stood, as if to leave the courtroom, but Gavin grabbed him by the sleeve. “We need to talk.”

  Leo’s nod seemed reluctant, but he said to the guard, “I need a minute with my client.”

  The jailer walked them through the side door to the holding cell, where Bart awaited his turn in court. The jailer swapped Gavin for Bart, telling Reecey, “When we’re done with his hearing, I’m taking ’em back. You got till then.”

  In the room, Gavin took a seat at the lone table, his back to the door, and beckoned the phone from Reecey with a flick of his fingers. Leo hesitated but handed it over.

  “I’ll need a paper clip,” Gavin said.

  “What? No.”

  Gavin opened a texting app on the phone.

  “Give me a goddamned paper clip. I’ll give it back.”

  As Reecey dug through his briefcase, Gavin typed in a phone number from his memory, and then—typing in proper sentences, as he despised the crude language of textspeak—he wrote:

  Hi, Jack. It’s Gavin. Surprise! By now you’ve read about me in the papers. I’m famous. You will be too unless you do as I say. You will receive two letters signed G—one long, one short. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you do exactly what I tell you to do. Write down the first letter of each sentence. The short one will give you your instruction. You will want to refuse, but that would be a grave mistake. The long letter will lead you to a private URL. There you will find a file. Open it. Do what I say or I promise I will send you to prison. I am not fucking around!

  Send.

  The jailer rapped at the door, causing Reecey to jump. He gave a thumbs-up to the jailer at the window and held his other hand out to Gavin, wanting the phone back.

  “Paper clip,” Gavin whispered as he deleted the text from the phone.

  Reecey slid the paper clip to Gavin. “You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

  Gavin ignored him, punching the tip of the paper clip into the side of the phone, popping open the SIM card tray. He tapped the memory chip out of the tray and closed it again.

  The door clanked as the jailer
pushed the key in.

  “Give me the goddamned phone,” Reecey said.

  Gavin slid the phone and paper clip to Reecey and slipped the SIM card under his tongue.

  The door opened. “Let’s go, Spencer.”

  Reecey—with tiny droplets of sweat clinging to his temples—stood with Gavin and walked out of the cell. Before they parted company, Gavin leaned in to Reecey and whispered, “Next time, don’t be late.”

  There was a lightness to Gavin’s step as he walked back to his cell. Eight years ago, he’d been the sidekick, following Jack’s instructions, but he had learned a lot. He’d learned that leaving a witness alive leads to regret and sleepless nights. He’d learned that he had a darker appetite than even Jack could have suspected. But the true lesson that Gavin carried out of that bean field was that he could do it better if he did it on his own.

  Now the tables had turned. Jack would be the one taking orders. Gavin pictured Jack sitting down to decipher the secret messages, a child’s code, really, the letters and symbols in the longer correspondence taking Jack to a file stored on the server hidden in his mother’s garage attic.

  It disappointed Gavin that he wouldn’t be there to watch Jack open that file. Gavin had been the photographer who took that picture of Lila, the one that made its rounds among her classmates, but there were other pictures from that night, pictures that Gavin had sworn he had destroyed. One of those captured Jack’s smiling face. That little taste of blackmail should leave no doubt as to just how serious Gavin was. Jack would obey, or the picture would be turned over to the police.

  Jack would then decipher the shorter of the two correspondences—thirteen letters that, when laid in order, read KILL SADIE VAUK.

  Chapter 37

  Lila had prepared for Gavin Spencer’s Rule Eight hearing by staring at his mugshot. She propped it over a framed photo of Joe on her desk, and looked at it to try to dull the flutter in her chest. Something about him had seeped through the cracks of some very thick walls, finding a place where lost memories clung to life, and the more she stared at the picture, the more convinced she became that it was the man, not his lisp, that shook her.

  But at the same time, she knew the research on false memories and eyewitness fallibility. The Innocence Project had secured the release of over three hundred inmates, some on death row, who were put there by eyewitness testimony. Those victims probably felt certain as they accused their attackers, yet DNA would later prove those men to be innocent. She’d studied the infamous preschool abuse cases where subtle cues from an investigator steered children to describe things that never happened. How could Lila not have glimpses of Gavin in her memory? She’d been obsessed with him ever since that first day in court.

  She put the mugshot back in the file, closed it, and set off for the courtroom.

  On the way, she recited legal responses she could make to Gavin’s attorney, simple, throwaway phrases she’d memorized in case the panic returned. Andi had, no doubt, assigned the hearing to Lila to scrutinize her performance. Dovey would probably be there too, waiting for Lila to stumble. But the person Lila didn’t expect to see that morning was Sadie Vauk.

  She sat on a bench in the corridor, her fingers twisted together on her lap. Lila recognized her from the pictures in the file and took a seat beside her.

  “Sadie?”

  Sadie looked at Lila with guarded eyes, and didn’t answer.

  “My name is Lila Nash. I’m one of the prosecutors working on your case. I’m handling the hearing this morning.”

  “Oh, hi.” Sadie tried to smile, but it looked forced. “I thought you might be one of his lawyers.”

  “You don’t have to be here, you know.”

  “I know. That lady from your office, the…um…”

  “Witness coordinator?”

  “Yeah. She said I didn’t have to come—that nothing much was going to happen, but…” She shrugged instead of finishing her thought.

  Lila saw a slight tremor in Sadie’s hands, and she wanted desperately to hold those hands until the tremor passed. But despite seeing Sadie as a kindred soul, she and Sadie were strangers.

  “You want to see him in handcuffs,” Lila said. “You want to know that he’s not out there anymore—that he can’t get to you.”

  Sadie cocked her head, her eyes widening slightly as though Lila had just read her thoughts. Then she looked away and lightly nodded. “I see him in my dreams, his hands…” Sadie shuddered. “And when I wake up, I…I can’t seem to convince myself that I’m safe—that he’s not coming to kill me. So I thought…if I could see him, just for a second or two…if I could be sure.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid, Sadie.” The words felt like something she needed to say, even as they tasted like a lie on her lips.

  “But now I don’t think I can go in there. I’m terrified.”

  Lila thought for a moment and an idea came to her. “Follow me.”

  She led Sadie to the bailiff’s station, the office that organized security for the whole building. A bank of monitors lined the wall, one for each courtroom. And each monitor could switch views between cameras. Lila explained the situation to the chief bailiff, and he agreed to let Sadie watch the hearing on the monitor.

  “You can go to the hearing if you want to,” Lila said. “But if you would be more comfortable, you can watch it from here. There’s no sound, but you’ll see Gavin in his jail scrubs and handcuffs. It’s up to you.”

  “I’d rather watch from here,” Sadie said, and in her words, Lila thought she could hear a small measure of calm. “I’m just not ready to see him face-to-face. Not yet.”

  Lila reached out, wrapped her fingers around Sadie’s hand, and gave a light squeeze, holding the connection long enough to let Sadie know that she meant it when she replied, “I understand.”

  Lila left Sadie in the bailiff station and walked to court, where Dovey once again sat in the back pew. She counted her steps to counsel table, the silent tick of numbers easing the anxious swell that bloomed in her chest. This case had her walking on the edge of a blade.

  Lila didn’t look at Spencer when they brought him in, but after he was seated next to his attorney, she couldn’t stop her head from turning. The man was wholly unremarkable, a guy who could blend into any backdrop, disappear in a crowd with the ease of a copperhead in a bed of dead leaves. He was the kind of guy that Lila would never have noticed or remembered. But isn’t it the copperhead you don’t see that bites you?

  Then Spencer glanced at her, and Lila could remember his voice, how his name fell heavy and wet from his lips. A chill touched her lungs and began to spread through her chest like frost. The panic had returned.

  Judge Anderson opened the hearing by addressing Spencer’s attorney, which gave Lila a moment to thaw. She ran through her script in her head, paying enough attention to what Mr. Reecey was saying to know which of her practiced responses would fit. When the time came, she stood, humming softly to herself to prime her vocal cords. She swallowed, and then spoke in a voice much softer than she had intended. “Defendant’s motion is boilerplate, Your Honor.”

  She cleared her throat and continued, yet the tremble behind her words made her sound like a child caught misbehaving. She was glad that Sadie couldn’t hear the shake in her voice. Had Dovey noticed? Had Andi? If she had, she didn’t show it. Lila finished her points and returned to her seat, relieved to have kept the panic at bay behind its paper-thin veil.

  At the end of the hearing, when she vacated the table to make room for the next prosecutor, she knew she would pass within a few feet of Gavin Spencer. He turned his face up to watch her leave, and she willed herself to look at him, hold the focus of his stare. She studied him with the eye of a poker player. He turned her stomach, but she wanted to take in all that she could in that brief moment. She wanted to shake something loose, some new crumb. What was it about this man that turned the air around her so thin?

  Next, Lila passed Dovey, who looked at her with an
expression of mock indifference, but Lila could see calculations moving behind his eyes. He had come there to confirm that she was weak, and she may have given him what he wanted.

  As she rode the elevator back up to her office, she continued to think about Gavin, and an idea occurred to her. If his lisp could trigger a bad memory, whisking her back to those stolen hours, might not a different trigger unlock a more helpful memory?

  Sean Daniels had been at the party in Uptown, but Lila hadn’t remembered that until she went to the Fifth Precinct with Niki. After hearing his name she could now see him sitting on the back porch, alone, arms folded as he watched her. The image was fleeting, but it was real, and it had been resurrected from dust. Could there be a way to let more of that light in?

  Lila had yet to face so much about that terrible year. Like a woman standing blindfolded on a cliff, she once believed that if she never took a step, there could be no fall. Others had looked for her attackers and failed, so Lila told herself that there was nothing more to be done.

  But that wasn’t true, and now she knew it. The scars those men inflicted reached deep into her soul, and if an answer were to be found, it would have to come from her. She would have no peace as long as those men walked free. She needed to shake loose some new memories, helpful memories, and the place to start would be the home she lived in on the night she tried to kill herself.

  * * *

  Charlotte Nash lived a mere twenty minutes away from Lila, but Lila hadn’t been to see her mother since Christmas. She would phone on her birthday and Mother’s Day, but those conversations held no more depth than a shadow, both mother and daughter making a point not to veer off happy topics.

  Charlotte Nash had been tireless in her fortifications against the winds of change. She lived in the same house where Lila grew up, went to the same church she had when Lila was a child, and played canasta on Saturday evenings with the same group of friends. The house had the feel of a time capsule, with Lila’s high school speech medals still hanging next to a family picture taken just before her father left for the Philippines—where he took up with a woman whose name remains unspoken in Charlotte’s house.