The Stolen Hours

by Allen Eskens

  The jailer paused outside of the courtroom and asked Gavin to hand over his folder. Pulling the papers out, the jailer shook them as though expecting something nefarious to fall out. Then he checked inside the pockets, a quick glance into each, before returning the papers and the folder to Gavin.

  Could they have been any more predictable?

  The guard walked him into the courtroom and to the table where Leo Reecey sat waiting.

  “Any surprises coming?” he asked Reecey.

  “Nothing I know of.”

  The door at the rear of the courtroom opened and a somber Andrea Fitch strolled up to her table, looking at neither Reecey nor Gavin. Gavin took that as a good sign. Then Lila came in, but she did not go to counsel table; instead, she took a seat in the back. Gavin contemplated the significance of this subtle change in protocol but decided that it meant nothing.

  The hearing began, and the discussion unfolded just as Leo Reecey had thought it would—one after another the State’s arguments fell to the floor. When Andi had exhausted all of her options, the judge called the attorneys back to her chambers. Reecey had predicted this move, telling Gavin that judges often explained a decision in chambers—especially one that might be hard for one of the parties to accept—before stating her ruling from the bench. Reecey also said that Fitch would dismiss the case rather than wait for an adverse ruling. The hearing was playing out exactly as Reecey had said it would, which raised Gavin’s opinion of his lawyer—if only slightly.

  Andi and Leo stood and followed the judge through a door behind her bench, leaving the jailer, the bailiff, Gavin, and Lila alone in the courtroom. Gavin wanted to say something pithy, gloat over his victory, but he held it in. He wasn’t going to be that last soldier.

  Then from the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Lila had risen to her feet and was walking his way. Gavin kept his eyes forward. The swinging gate that divided the well of the courtroom from the gallery squeaked as she walked through. She stopped in front of him, facing him, barely an arm’s length away.

  “It took me a while,” she said, “but I remember you.”

  “I don’t think you should be talking to me,” Gavin said, his lisp slipping out.

  “I knew your voice but I didn’t understand why. Now I do.”

  “You need to leave.” Gavin looked in the direction of the bailiff, who watched Lila with curious fascination.

  Lila reached into her jacket pocket, and for a split second Gavin expected her to pull out a gun. But it wasn’t a gun; it was a picture. She slapped it to the table in front of him. Gavin glanced at the picture and recognized himself, sitting on a chair at a party, his eyes fixed on Lila. Gavin’s blood went cold and thin in his veins.

  “You think you’ve won,” Lila whispered, her eyes pinned on his. “But I won’t let that happen.”

  Then she turned and walked out of the courtroom.

  Chapter 57

  It took nearly an hour for the jailers to book Gavin out, an excruciating march of time that caused Gavin’s heart to pound. He was close—so damned close.

  As he waited, he relived Lila’s actions. There was no way that her memory had miraculously returned after eight years of amnesia. It didn’t work that way. If she accused him, it would be a lie. But did that matter? Even if she concocted an absolute fairy tale out of bits and pieces, she had a photo to back it up. Where the hell did she get a photo?

  But they were still processing him out, which meant they didn’t have a prosecutable case yet. They would need to re-interview witnesses from the party, focus their attention on Gavin’s movements that night. They would dig through the evidence bags in search of anything that might put Gavin in the backseat of that car. He had been careful, even if Jack had not. He knew they would find no DNA or trace evidence—but they might find Jack.

  With Vauk dead, they would be frantic in their efforts to get him back behind bars. His window of opportunity would be small, a matter of days or maybe even hours.

  And still the clock on the wall refused to tick.

  If the State’s best evidence rested on the word of a single woman, he merely had to silence that woman—Sadie Vauk had proven that. With Lila gone, the photo would become meaningless. And with Jack gone, the last remaining witness would be eliminated.

  At 4:27 p.m., Gavin Spencer became a free man, stepping out of the jail into a heavy downpour of rain, his green folder held over his head as an umbrella. He needed to move quickly to put his plan into motion. Step one—find out where Lila lived. With any luck, he might catch her leaving work.

  He didn’t go directly to the Government Center, though, just in case anyone was watching him. Instead, he slipped into a parking ramp, which he knew connected to the Government Center via the skyway. He crossed the skyway, dropped his folder with the hidden SIM card into a trash receptacle, and grabbed a newspaper to hide behind.

  The atrium of the Government Center buzzed with people heading home for the day. Gavin found a bench facing a calm reflecting pool, beyond which lay the bank of elevators. He opened his newspaper to a random page and began watching—and thinking.

  How could he follow her if she had driven to work? Getting a cab would be impossible in the rain; besides, a cab would keep a record of the route. He seemed to recall seeing one of those bike sharing racks out in the courtyard. He had a credit card in his wallet. It would record his rental, there at the Government Center, but he’d just gotten out of jail, so that could be easily explained. With the rain and the congestion of rush-hour traffic, he might be able to keep up with her. If all else failed, he would buy a new laptop—a throwaway—and hunt her down that way, but he would have to move quickly.

  Gavin breathed in the sweet air of freedom, reveling at how it carried no hint of desperation, or fear, or sweaty men who wanted to beat him to death. Gavin was a free man, and he would stay that way. There was nothing he wouldn’t do—no labor too difficult, no risk too great, no price too high—to stay out of prison now. Lila would die. They would suspect him, of course, but if he left no evidence, he would face no greater jeopardy than what he had with Sadie or the others. Do it soon. Do it cleanly. But do it, and put the nightmare to rest.

  Gavin manned his post, his eyes lifted above the top edge of the paper, his thoughts pumping faster than the beat of his heart, contingencies gushing like blood from a ruptured artery.

  Then he saw her step off the elevator. She wore a red raincoat and carried one of those classic umbrellas, long and thin with a silver point on the top. She didn’t look around the atrium for Gavin, which told him all he needed to know about her naïveté. She headed for the north exit and not the parking ramp, which lifted Gavin’s spirits. She walked to work? Gavin waited until she had left the building, her blue umbrella opened against the rain, before he stood to follow.

  Chapter 58

  Lila walked through the north exit of the Government Center, popping open her new umbrella as she stepped into the rain, the handle sturdy and thick in her hand. The heavy droplets fell hard and loud against the nylon, the cacophony making it difficult to hear anything beyond the edge of the umbrella—traffic, voices, footsteps. Above the skyline to the west, the clouds appeared to be thinning.

  She crossed the courtyard, walking north toward the Stone Arch Bridge, the sidewalks mostly empty in the rain. A couple of men ran by, racing against the downpour. One came up behind her so quickly that it startled her, his large shoes splashing water onto her pant legs as he rushed by.

  As she walked seven blocks to the bridge, the rain, carried easterly by the wind, grew lighter, but it had emptied the bridge of pedestrians. She followed the curve of the bridge as it ran past the ruins of an old mill, and slowed her pace as she reached the middle of the river.

  Had she planned for every contingency? She thought so, but she knew the price of even one small mistake. What she was doing—this gambit—she owed to Sadie and the others. No one could walk this path except her.

  She arrived at the center of th
e bridge and turned to look downstream, thinking about Joe for just a moment. There was so much she hadn’t told him, and if he knew why she was standing on that bridge, he would have lost his mind. She hadn’t called him, but it would have been nice to hear his voice—tell him that she loved him—just in case.

  He’s coming.

  From the corner of her eye, Lila saw the dark figure getting closer. He was about a hundred feet behind her and moving slowly. The rain had lightened enough that she could hear the water rushing over the falls. Soon she would be able to hear his footsteps. She went through her final preparations—a few more seconds and she would be ready.

  Forty feet away.

  Lila closed her umbrella, strapping the canopy to the handle, turning it into a weapon.

  Thirty feet.

  She reached into the pocket of her raincoat and armed the canister of pepper spray.

  Twenty feet.

  Lila pulled the pepper spray from her pocket and turned.

  Chapter 59

  He had planned to keep his distance as he followed her home, but when she neared the middle of the bridge, she stopped. The rain had settled enough that he dropped the newspaper he’d been holding up to keep the rain at bay. He slowed his pace as he closed the gap between them.

  She stopped at the rail and looked out over the river, her body at an angle that kept her back to him. She was all but begging to be thrown off that bridge. He had big plans for Lila, true, but he also had a gift for improvising. There were no cameras on the bridge. No people. The view from shore would be frustrated by the misty rain. He could steal her umbrella to cover his face as he escaped. One simple shove and his troubles would be over.

  Be smart. Be bold. Strike when they expect you to retreat.

  He slowed down even more, to let the plan gel. It would work.

  She closed her umbrella.

  He was almost there.

  She reached into her pocket, and before he could charge, she spun around to him.

  Gavin saw a flash of black in her right hand, and the way she thrust it out made him think it was a gun. He stopped in his tracks, even stumbled back a step before he realized that it was only pepper spray.

  “Get back!” she yelled.

  She held the umbrella in her left hand the way a child might hold a toy sword. The absurdity of it nearly made Gavin laugh. He took a step closer.

  “I said get back!”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Gavin glanced from side to side to make sure they were alone. He thought about charging her and being done with it, but his curiosity got the better of him. How much did she remember? Did she know about Jack? What had she told the cops? Find that out before you kill her.

  He said, “What was that about—up there in court?”

  “You raped me.”

  “I what?”

  “I remember everything.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “I know the truth.”

  Gavin looked hard at Lila, unable to mask his contempt. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and spat in your face.”

  “You and your buddy.”

  “What buddy?”

  “Silas Jackson. He was with you.”

  “Silas—?” Gavin could no longer suppress his laughter.

  “He confessed.”

  “Who the hell is Silas Jackson?”

  “He was with you that night. I remember.”

  Gavin subtly checked both ends of the bridge again—still no travelers. He took a small step forward and dropped his voice to a deeper register, drawing his words up from a cold, dark place. “You can’t bluff after you’ve shown me your cards, Lila.” She stood with her back to the rail. Foolish. No escape. “Silas Jackson? You overplayed your hand. We both know you’re lying.”

  Lila’s eyes narrowed on him. “But you wouldn’t know that unless you were there, would you?”

  A spike of heat ran up Gavin’s neck and into his cheeks. The last soldier to die, Gavin thought to himself. He had let down his guard and said too much—only Lila’s rapist would know that Silas Jackson hadn’t been there—but it didn’t matter now. Lila Nash wasn’t leaving that bridge.

  Chapter 60

  Lila had her confession—at least it sounded like a confession to her ears. And it didn’t escape her notice that Gavin had been carefully stepping closer to her with each word—preparing for his attack. The time had come to end it.

  “You’re a rat,” Lila hollered. The odd choice of words seemed to confuse Gavin, who paused in his tracks. And then, like an explosion, both ends of the bridge lit up with strobing lights. They had heard her signal; the squad cars were on their way.

  Gavin looked north and south, and smiled—not the reaction Lila had expected. He tipped his head back to look at the sky, the rain soaking his face. He opened his mouth to catch some of the droplets on his tongue. When he returned his gaze to Lila he said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “When did you ever do a good deed?”

  “I let you live, didn’t I?”

  The lightness drained from his eyes, and he lunged at her. She hit the trigger on the pepper spray, catching him in the eyes but not slowing his attack. She jammed the umbrella tip into his chest with all the force she could muster. He shrieked in pain. Then she aimed the pepper spray onto his opened mouth. But none of it stopped him.

  He crashed into her, slamming her against the rail, the steel hitting her back and nearly knocking the wind out of her. His arms shot around her chest, gripping her in a bear hug, and his momentum pulled her off her feet and over the rail. There was nothing she could do.

  They toppled over and fell—six feet.

  The climbing rope snapped tight, and the full-body harness clamped hard around Lila’s thighs, jerking her back. She smacked against the stone of the bridge, her head cracking so hard that it jarred her teeth. And somehow, Gavin held on, his arms locked so tightly around her waist that she couldn’t breathe.

  She had planned for Gavin’s attack. It had been the final contingency, the break-the-glass emergency. The harness had a dorsal ring in the back between her shoulder blades, making it easy to feed the rope up through her raincoat. She had clipped the rope to the bridge with a brand-new carabiner in those seconds as she’d waited for Gavin to catch up.

  Niki Vang hadn’t agreed to the plan at first, but Lila explained about the harness, and that, with Gavin just getting out of jail, he wouldn’t have a weapon. “Put an unmarked car on both ends of the bridge, and wire me so we can hear each other. I’ll come across as weak, vulnerable—even stupid. It’ll feed his ego, make him cocky. He’ll see me as a loose end, not bait.”

  Niki still didn’t agree, so Lila put it as bluntly as she could. “If we don’t do this, he’ll walk, and then he’ll kill me, and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop him.”

  It never occurred to Lila that Gavin might hang on. His eyes remained pinched closed, blinded by the pepper spray, but it was the shot he took to the mouth that was putting the hurt to him. He gaped, trying to pull in a breath.

  “Who was with you?” Lila yelled.

  “Fuck you.” His throat had closed up so that she could barely make out the words. He wrapped his legs around hers, let go of her waist with one of his hands, and grabbed her lapel. He was heavy, and his weight caused the leg straps of the harness to dig into her thighs.

  He let go with his other hand and grabbed the collar of her coat. He could barely breathe, yet he was climbing up her body. She kicked and flailed, boxing the sides of his head with her palms, and still the snake continued to climb. She grabbed his ear and twisted it. She stabbed at his eyes with her thumb. It’s him or me.

  He thrust a hand up to her throat, digging his fingers into the sides of her neck, cutting off her air.

  Above her Niki yelled something, but the words got lost as pain clotted Lila’s ears. Gavin kept squeezing, his face red and wet with spit, his tears streaking down his cheeks.

  L
ila punched him in the face as hard as she could, the crack of her knuckles against his nose sending a jolt up her arm. He reacted by jerking his head back, exposing his throat. She punched a second time, landing her fist on his Adam’s apple. She heard a crunch.

  Gavin let go of Lila’s throat and grabbed her coat again, his reddened eyes searching Lila’s face for something. His mouth opened and closed, but his lungs didn’t fill. His eyes grew large, and she heard a gurgle as his body began to jerk.

  He announced no surrender as he let go of Lila and fell into the dark, cold embrace of the Mississippi River.

  Chapter 61

  Matty Lopez and a uniformed officer hoisted Lila onto the bridge, her eyes still fixed on the body of Gavin Spencer bobbing and twisting in the frothy river below, facedown—dead.

  On the bridge, Niki helped Lila out of her harness, and another officer brought a blanket from her squad car to wrap around Lila’s shoulders. They were treating her like a victim, like someone they had pulled out of a burning house, but she didn’t feel like a victim. She could still see his face as he fought to breathe. The elation of watching him fall to the river still pulsed in her veins. She felt nothing like a victim.

  A third detective joined them on the bridge, a man named Voss whom Lila had met when they were working out the details of the plan. He handed a green folder to Niki.

  “He dumped this in a trash can on the skyway,” Voss said.

  Lila didn’t get to watch them fish Gavin’s body from the river. Instead, they took her to the Homicide office in City Hall, where she listened to the recording of her confrontation, filling in those words that had been lost behind the rustle of her clothing. As she worked with Niki on the transcript, Matty dug through the green folder, inspecting the pages one at a time. As Lila was finishing her account, Matty lifted the hidden SIM card into the air.

  In the moment of silence that followed, Matty and Niki must have formed the same thought, because they both reached for their phones and opened their SIM card trays to try and slide it in. It didn’t fit. Lila laid her phone on the table and Niki popped it open, fitting the card into place. A few taps on the screen and she said, “Two text messages sent to a single number. Nothing else.”