[Jess Kimball 01.0 - 02.0] Fatal Starts

by Diane Capri

  Helen perched on the side of the bed, unwrapped the food and began to eat. Once she started, she realized how hungry she was. In no time the sandwich, which tasted as good as a five-star restaurant meal, revived her sagging spirits along with her energy.

  “You look like you’ve had a pretty rough night yourself,” Helen told Jess.

  “I think we both have.”

  “Well, we both know what I’ve been doing. What about you?”

  “How’s your husband?”

  Instinctively, Helen embellished the truth. “The doctors say he’ll be fine. But fill me in on your situation. Mac said it was urgent, and Oliver will be out of surgery soon. I don’t have a lot of time. What is it I can do for you?”

  “Not me, exactly,” Jess said. “It’s Tommy Taylor. I’m not certain, but I think there’s a good chance he didn’t kill Mattie Crawford, and I’m almost sure that relevant new DNA evidence exists. If I’m correct, either Vivian Ward has possession of it, or knows where it is. That’s why I’m here, to ask you to stay this execution for a few days while we track all this down and get it resolved, one way or the other.”

  “There’s a big difference between ‘almost sure’ and the existence of new evidence,” Helen said. “With the evidence in hand I might be able to stop the execution. Otherwise, there’s no chance. But you must know that.”

  When she saw Jess’s deflated expression, Helen realized her tone was too harsh. She held all the power here. Jess was a straightforward person who would not have come to her without good reason.

  “I’ve signed several death warrants during my tenure, Jess,” she said more softly. “Honestly, the Tommy Taylor warrant was one of the easier ones.”

  “I totally get that,” said Jess. “He’s a killer. But maybe not in the Crawford case.”

  With Jess’s gaze holding hers, Helen tried not to glance at the clock, her thoughts returning to Oliver.

  “So you’re not saying Taylor doesn’t deserve to die, but…what?”

  “That I’m scared,” Jess said. “If Tommy Taylor’s the wrong man, then someone else killed Mattie Crawford. I can’t ignore that, just walk away, and live with myself after. Could you?”

  The question was both naïve and profound. Entire treatises had been written on the subject for hundreds of years. Yet, Helen did need to be sure she was doing the right thing.

  “I met Tommy Taylor first when I was a young prosecutor. He’d already raped, tortured and killed at least four children, including Arnold and Vivian Ward’s two sons.” Unbidden, crime-scene photos flashed in Helen’s memory. After all the time that had passed, she could still recall them in far too vivid detail. “I stared into Taylor’s eyes back then, and you know what looked back at me? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Helen had finished the food and was feeling stronger. Her hands had stopped shaking. “Did you know that we offered him a plea deal in the Crawford case? Several times, actually. We offered to forego the death penalty if he would save the state the expense and uncertainty of trial. He chose to die.”

  “That supports my theory. Why would he give up a deal like that if he had really killed Mattie? His rejection only makes sense if he didn’t kill Mattie. Doesn’t it?”

  “Killers don’t think like normal people, Jess. Not killers like him.”

  “Still,” Jess said, “Did you believe him?”

  “No. I never believed him,” Helen said. “He denied killing the other boys too. Should we believe that?”

  Jess didn’t reply. Helen could see the ambivalence etched plainly on her freckled face.

  “You’ve read all the trial transcripts and interviewed the witnesses?”

  Jess nodded.

  “There wasn’t much to complicate things,” Helen said. “The jury convicted him in twenty minutes.”

  And what a relief it had been, especially after the failure of justice for the rape, torture, and murder of the Ward boys. Though there’d never been any question of Taylor’s guilt in that case, the local police had botched the handling of evidence to the point where the prosecutor couldn’t take the case to trial. They’d had to let Taylor go.

  Helen had been involved in making the decision to release Taylor. It hadn’t been her case, but she’d agreed with the decision at the time, even though she’d never felt any justice in releasing Taylor. The knowledge had always burdened her conscience, and it weighed more heavily once she learned she could have saved Mattie Crawford if they’d kept Taylor in jail.

  Helen had left the prosecutor’s office soon after. She simply couldn’t handle the work anymore. The pain of the victims’ families was heartbreaking. Even the criminals she tried and convicted rotated through the system and came back around over and over again. She felt like a hamster in a wheel. In the end, she couldn’t give the job her best work any longer. She’d had to quit.

  She had come full circle. Only this time she’d been able to do for the Wards as Governor what she couldn’t do as a junior prosecutor: execute Tommy Taylor. Except now, she didn’t want to be the one to do it, taking even a life as despicable as Tommy Taylor’s while his mother remained among the living. Helen understood, in a visceral way she hadn’t felt before Eric was killed, that death of a child was something no parent should have to endure.

  “Okay,” Helen said at last. “Tell me exactly what you have to support your concerns.”

  Jess laid it all out, one piece at a time: everything she’d learned from Vivian Ward and David Manson; what she knew, what she surmised and what nagged at her instincts. When she finished, Helen felt shaken but tried not to show it. Instead, she stood, walked unsteadily to the door and called Frank Temple into the room. “Can you find out whether Vivian Ward has been picked up by any of the law enforcement agencies since her husband died?”

  “I’ll check. It might take a few minutes,” Frank said, then left the room.

  Helen turned back to Jess. “I want to be sure I understand you, so bear with me a moment while I review your story. Okay?”

  Jess nodded.

  Helen applied her legal skills and her own experience to the mixed bag of information and explained each piece to be sure they were both in agreement. When she’d covered everything, she took a deep breath and asked, “You know what chain of custody is, right?”

  Jess nodded. “It means that to be admissible into evidence at trial, the state has to prove where each piece of evidence comes from and everything that happens to it up until the minute it’s used at the trial. To prevent tampering with the evidence. So we can be sure the evidence is what the State says it is.”

  “Right,” said Helen. “So even if you find this trace evidence, the one person who might testify about the chain of custody is Arnold Ward, and he’s dead.”

  “Well, yes, but I’m guessing Taylor would not object to the chain of custody,” Jess said a little hopefully. “I mean, he’d want the evidence admitted, so he wouldn’t care where it had been or who might have touched it.”

  “The prosecutors would. Believe me. They’ve done nothing wrong here, and they’re not going to take your word for it that Taylor or Manson or someone else didn’t substitute hair strands for the ones that were originally collected at the crime scene.” Jess said nothing, so Helen kept going. “The one person who might be able to help is Vivian Ward.”

  Here Helen paused so that Jess could acknowledge the central fact: that neither she nor Manson had been able to find the alleged evidence. Jess nodded.

  “But instead of waiting to talk with you, telling you what she knows, handing over whatever she might have, Vivian’s gone missing.”

  “Unless she’s been arrested,” Jess reminded her. “But remember: For me, this isn’t as much about saving Taylor as it is about knowing who killed Mattie Crawford. If this evidence exists, if Taylor didn’t kill Mattie, then Mattie’s real killer is still out there. It’s been fifteen years. Who knows how many children he’s killed already? He could have taken Peter. He could have killed Eric. Every
moment that passes is a moment when another child could die.”

  Before Helen could respond, the door to her hospital room opened. Swathed in surgical garb, Lydia, the pretty nurse who had not left Oliver’s side since his unexplained seizure at six o’clock this morning, stuck her head inside. “Mrs. Sullivan? Your husband is out of surgery. You can see him now. Follow me.”

  26

  Raiford, Florida

  Friday 7:00 p.m.

  Jess leaned on the passenger side of the SUV in the Florida State Prison visitor’s parking lot in Raiford, eleven miles west of Starke and a bit further north of Gainesville.

  Starke, Jess had decided as Mike drove through the town half an hour ago, was aptly named. A dry, harsh landscape dominated by the prison where hardened adult male inmates were caged at a daily cost less than a night’s stay in a cheap hotel. Death row prisoners were executed here by lethal injection or electric chair, their executioners anonymous private citizens paid less than $200 per inmate.

  An odd job to take on, Jess thought, although she understood killing. After Peter was abducted she had learned to kill and how to avoid being killed. She owned more than one gun, possessed a concealed weapons permit, and felt no compunction about protecting herself and others. None at all.

  It wasn’t the killing that puzzled her. No. It was injecting a man with chemicals to kill him while he was strapped to a gurney and in front of witnesses. If anything, the process seemed too clinical, considering the crimes committed by the condemned. Too humane.

  She’d observed beloved pets softly euthanized. She’d seen video of Dr. Kevorkian’s rigged system for patients’ self-administered suicide by lethal injection. And she’d witnessed several prison executions.

  Based on those experiences, Jess would never have agreed to kill a murderer by injection. Not for $200, or for a thousand times more.

  Because when they died that way, they didn’t suffer at all, nothing like the cruel and unusual punishment they’d inflicted on their victims. They should pay with physical pain and psychological pain, too. But if and only if they were guilty.

  And that was most certainly the question tonight, for Tommy Taylor, who’d died strapped to the table almost an hour ago.

  “Earth to Jess,” Mike said, as he slammed the back hatch and hoisted his camera onto his shoulder. “If we’re going to get anything on tape, we need to get moving. People will be coming out soon.”

  He tromped past her, and she followed, weaving between the vehicles parked on the sidewalks and in the aisles, moving toward the crowd in front of the building where David Manson was talking to the assembled crowd. People stood out front with signs, candles, and flashlights. Several news stations were already filming. The execution itself would have been filmed, too. Jess could watch it later, if she had the stomach for it.

  When they reached the edge of the crowd, Jess hung back to watch Manson. “Film him, Mike.”

  “You got it.” He shot Manson for a while, then panned the crowd.

  They heard only snippets of Manson’s shouted speech, most of which was either untrue or distorted.

  “Tommy Taylor said he was innocent of this crime while he was lying on the gurney tonight. Since nineteen seventy-seven, one-hundred-twenty-three people on death row in this country have been proved innocent. This state, Florida, leads the way in mistakes. Twenty-two prisoners sentenced to death have already been exonerated!”

  Between each of his shouted sentences, the crowd’s angry chanting could be heard, much as it had outside the Governor’s mansion on Friday. “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess had heard enough for tonight. It had been a long, long time since Jess had felt the crushing weight of failure on her shoulders. Few death row inmates were truly innocent, she knew. Yet the innocence myth prevailed because it was nourished and enhanced by Manson and others. Jess had been one of the most vocal opponents of the myth for years.

  Tonight, standing here, she realized why the myth would never die. Tommy Taylor was certainly not innocent. Not by a long stretch. He was a vicious child killer. No question. He had killed and escaped justice at least four times. He should have been executed for those crimes.

  But she knew deep inside that he had not killed Mattie Crawford, and executing him for Mattie’s death was wrong. While Tommy Taylor paid the ultimate price, the real killer had gone free. Jess could not live with that and Helen Sullivan wouldn’t be able to, either.

  “Okay, Mike. Let’s go.”

  Jess flashed her press pass at the guard and he waved her inside. She’d visited the execution chamber before and knew where it was, but it was faster to wait while Mike listened to the guard’s directions. Jess followed him down the hall.

  At the entrance to the witness room, Jess placed a restraining hand on Mike’s arm. “Stand over here, out of the way. Film whatever you think you should without being offensive. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t tell anyone who you are or why you’re here. Don’t even say you’re with me. Take this microphone. I won’t need it.” Without waiting for his agreement, she opened the door and went inside.

  After a few seconds, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Her gaze scanned the room filled mostly with reporters, law enforcement personnel, and a few civilian witnesses. She saw the families seated at the front. Jess recognized Tommy’s mother Sarah Taylor, Matthew and Marilyn Crawford.

  Vivian Ward sat alone, exactly as Jess had expected when she learned Vivian had not been arrested. Beside her stood an empty chair where Arnold would have been seated. The parents of two other children tortured and killed by Tommy Taylor were also present. Jess hadn’t met them, but she’d seen their pictures in the files she’d reviewed and knew who they were. The collective agony Tommy Taylor had caused these fine people was an oppressive presence in the room.

  The execution chamber itself could be seen through a glass wall. It remained filled with the members of the team who had carried out the death sentence. She forced herself to look at Tommy Taylor lying on the gurney, eyes closed, dead.

  Jess didn’t realize she was crying until a prison guard handed her a box of tissues. She used them to wipe her eyes and softly blow her nose. Fatigue, she rationalized, was as much the cause of her tears as failure. She could feel no sympathy for the dead man, but his victims commanded her heart.

  After a short while, the drapes were closed between the two chambers and the lights came up. People stood and began to gather their personal belongings in silence. The guard standing next to her in front of the door said, “Please wait until the row of witnesses in front of you has departed and file out orderly behind them.”

  Everyone had turned toward the guard’s voice when he began to speak. Jess noticed that others had been crying, too. Some of the family members were no doubt relieved to have finality, certainty, although some were more justified in those feelings than others, whether they knew it or not. Like so many experiences, no one knew how they would react to an execution until they actually observed one.

  Jess straightened up, waiting for Vivian Ward. The two sets of parents Jess had never met left first, followed by Sarah Taylor, who leaned heavily on the arm of a man Jess hadn’t expected to see: Dr. Benjamin Fleming. Why was he here with her? Jess couldn’t read Sarah Taylor’s expression at all. Dr. Fleming seemed mildly curious about Jess’s presence too. Neither of them said anything to the other as he passed through the exit.

  Matthew and Marilyn Crawford followed next. Their red-rimmed eyes met Jess’s and they nodded to acknowledge they’d seen her. The relief on their tear-washed faces was palpable. They’d told her they expected to receive the gift of closure tonight, their long ordeal ending with Taylor’s death. They planned to return to their other children, and to their lives, believing they had received justice for their son. They’d expected to feel cleansed.

  But that’s not how they looked now. And Jess regretted that her efforts in the hours and days to come would undo any closure they’d achieved. Unless the real killer was caught.


  While she waited for Vivian, Jess saw Manson enter through an emergency exit door on the opposite side of the room. Their eyes met for an instant. He appeared enraged, but was it merely a part of his act? Jess didn’t believe anything Manson represented without verifying it first.

  She felt a hard claw seize her arm and looked down into Vivian Ward’s wizened face, split by the two-pronged oxygen tube entering her nostrils. Vivian leaned heavily on a cane while a paramedic walked closely behind her, pushing the portable oxygen tank.

  “Walk with me, dear,” Vivian said, her voice a hoarse whisper. Her breath smelled like the bottom of a dirty ashtray and reminded Jess of the toxic atmosphere inside her house.

  Jess let Vivian hold her arm and accompanied her out.

  “I have something for you, Jess,” Vivian said. “Out in the car. Something you’ve been looking for, sugar.”

  “You don’t expect me to be grateful after all you’ve put me through, do you?”

  Vivian leaned into the support of Jess’s arm and moved slowly forward, seemingly unable to reply.

  In the corridor Mike was filming the witnesses leaving the chamber. He joined Jess on the way out and followed Vivian and her to Vivian’s transportation, which turned out to be an ambulance parked in the first handicapped spot outside the entry door.

  “Come along, Miz Ward,” the paramedic said, after she’d opened the back door and moved the gurney down to the pavement. Vivian sat on the gurney, breathing hard in little gasps. She began to cough repeatedly, but the ragged edges of each cough were small gurgles. Her hacking went on for a long time and brought up a ball of dark yellow sputum that she spat out. Finished, she fell exhausted back onto the bed.

  Jess turned to Mike. “Go on to the car and get everything stowed. If you finish before I get there, come back and pick me up.”

  When she turned back around, Manson had moved in behind her and knelt next to Vivian, where they spoke quietly but with great intensity.