Emilia told him not to worry. She was seeing Heather the following day and would find out exactly what was going on.
“I got this,” Emilia said. “You leave it to me from here on out, do you hear me?” Emilia sounded pissed. She had taken control and wanted Josh to trust that she could handle Heather. And she also wanted Josh to keep his damn nose out of it. The more he meddled and tried to control Heather, the more he mucked things up and made Heather suspicious that something else was happening.
“All right,” Josh said.
“I’m serious!” Emilia yelled.
“Okay. Don’t get all [crazy].”
“I’m not. I am just tired of you telling me how this is gonna happen. I’ll play along like I’ve been playing along. . . . I’m gonna have to, because you seem like too much of a pussy to do shit.”
Their time was up. The call was over.
CHAPTER 45
THE NEXT MORNING, Josh called his mother, Judy Chandler.
“Momma?”
“Yeah, baby ... it’s me.”
Something was up. Josh was crying. He didn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?” Judy pressed.
Josh still wouldn’t speak.
“You okay, baby? What’s wrong?” Judy could hear her son whimpering. “You there?”
“Yup, Momma, I’m here.” Josh sounded like a little boy, as if Judy had scolded him and he was coming back to apologize.
“Oh, God, you got some bad news, don’t you?” Judy asked.
“Yeah . . . ,” Josh said through tears.
“Oh, God . . . here’s Lily.” Judy handed the phone to Emilia, whom she called by her nickname.
“What’s wrong?” Emilia asked.
Josh was breathing heavily, crying and sniffling. He could barely speak. In a whisper, he said, “I gotta stay here. . . .”
“What? No bond?”
“No.”
Josh had gone to court and faced the judge, who indicated Josh wouldn’t be getting out that day or the next, or even the following week. He was going to be spending forty-five days in the can and might end up with even more time. Walking into court, Josh assumed he was going home that morning. The news was devastating.
“They said I’ll go back to court February ninth.” That was one month and a day away. He had no idea what would happen on that date, but he would face the judge again. For all Josh knew, he explained to Emilia, he could get some serious time in the state pen.
“Are you serious?” Emilia asked. She sounded both livid and confused.
“Yup,” Josh answered, crying even harder.
The line went quiet for a time. Then Josh said, “Oh, my God, I should have killed that bitch.”
CHAPTER 46
A FEW DAYS later, after some time reflecting on things, Josh was back to his normal self, the blow of being locked up for a month (at the least) finally not throbbing any longer. He had accepted his sentence. He had that warrior tone to his voice again. Revenge was on Josh’s mind now. He had been betrayed. He was ready and willing to accept punishment, but there would be a price.
He encouraged Emilia to stay close to Heather.
“I got this,” she said. “You don’t worry.”
“I’m gonna leave it in your hands.”
Heather and Emilia were communicating just about every day by now. Emilia was helping with the kids and playing it cool with Heather, being her friend.
Josh told Emilia how he was “fixing” to “do ten years” for the gun charge—years stripped from his life that he, of course, blamed Heather for. He had just spoken to Heather himself, Josh said, and she now promised him that she was definitely going to drop the charges, but she had done nothing to support that claim just yet.
“No, you’re not,” Emilia said about the ten years. She sounded certain.
Their time was up. Josh said he’d call again soon.
CHAPTER 47
EMILIA AND HEATHER were driving back from Ocala. Emilia had taken Heather food shopping and was planning on watching Heather’s kids that night when Heather went off to work. Heather drove. When they got to Emilia’s house, Heather started crying.
Emilia asked what was wrong.
It was Ben McCollum, Heather explained. She was sad that it hadn’t worked out. Heather liked Ben a lot and realized that she loved him and it was real. She knew he was good for her. But she’d gone and screwed it all up, and now Ben wanted nothing to do with her, even with Josh out of the picture.
Emilia asked why they broke up. For Emilia’s benefit, Heather and Ben together would be the ideal scenario; it would take Heather out of the picture—sort of—and allow Emilia to have Josh to herself without having to worry about Josh and Heather getting back together.
“’Cause he said if I dropped those charges against Josh, he didn’t want to have nothing to do with me. He didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder no more and it wasn’t fair to him.”
Heather explained that although they had broken up back in December before she and Josh married, there was still a chance for Ben and her to be together. She was planning on pleading with Ben to reconcile.
They sat in the driveway. Emilia didn’t know what to say. She needed Heather to drop the charges, but she also wanted Heather and Ben together. Emilia had gotten hold of a police report from the incident. She knew by reading the report that the prosecutor had no case without Heather—despite what she had been telling Josh. Ben had said in the report he wasn’t sure if Josh had a gun, so the case relied solely on Heather’s testimony. Without her, the prosecutor would have to drop the charges and release Josh.
“He’s done so much to me over eleven years,” Heather told Emilia. She was still crying. “He shouldn’t be pissed off if he sits in there a little while, because I deserve to have a life, too.”
Not taking sides, Emilia consoled Heather, telling her it was all going to work out. Not to worry. They’d think of something.
Together.
“Can you come and babysit tonight?” Heather asked Emilia.
“Of course ... I miss those babies.”
“Yeah, I need some time to talk to Ben.” Heather was hoping to convince Ben that the relationship was worth reinvesting in, that Ben shouldn’t be frightened away by Josh.
“I am so glad I got you, Lily,” Heather said.
Before taking off, Heather mentioned that perhaps Josh should stop calling her, because there was a restraining order in place.
CHAPTER 48
THEY WERE ON the way to the store: Emilia, James Acome and his buddy. Josh had no idea Emilia was hanging out with these guys, but Emilia had a plan. As they drove, she started blathering on and on about Heather and Josh and how much of a nuisance Heather had become for the two of them. Emilia was reeling.
“I’m getting some money back for taxes,” Emilia said. She was speaking to both men, but addressing James’s friend, a guy who knew Heather and James well, and also hung out with them at times and partied. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars. You get Heather drunk, lure her to [a place where I am] so I can snap her neck.”2
James’s friend felt that Emilia “was serious,” he later said.
While Josh was in jail, James Acome had moved in with Heather and the kids. Heather had realized Ben was totally not into her anymore. She needed to be with someone. But whether it was Ben or James, this pissed Josh off royally. James wasn’t only sleeping with Heather, he was now living with her, spending copious amounts of time around the kids, which infuriated Josh even more.
But after James heard Emilia’s offer, he hightailed it over to the house and, according to his friend, moved out of the house and told Heather he wanted nothing to do with either Emilia or Heather. The idea that Emilia wanted them—whether she was joking didn’t matter—to get involved in a conspiracy to hurt Heather was something James and his friend wanted nothing to do with.
Emilia started to call everyone that she, Josh and Heather knew. One friend took a call from Emilia
soon after she had approached James and his friend. Emilia didn’t hold much back.
“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars to kill Heather,” Emilia said, according to several sources, including law enforcement. “I would do it myself, you know, but I cannot move the body.”
She had that baby bump, after all. She didn’t want to strain herself and hurt the child.
The friend laughed it off and thought Emilia was kidding.
CHAPTER 49
MUCH OF THE focus surrounding the conversations Emilia and Josh had from January 10 through January 28 centered on Heather continuing to press charges, despite her telling Josh otherwise. If she dropped the case, Josh kept repeating, the state could not hold him longer than ninety days. If that scenario played out, he’d be out in March, just in time for the arrival of his baby.
But Emilia kept telling Josh she was certain that the same woman who had let Josh down, time and time again, was going to push forward with the case. Heather was lying, Emilia explained. She had no intention of ever dropping those charges.
“Yeah . . . she’s going to,” Josh said.
Emilia became angry.
The next idea Josh had was for Emilia to call the Department of Child Services to report abuse going on inside the house so Heather would have to face a bit of trouble herself. It would all help Josh’s cause. If James was still living there (even though they had heard he moved out), then he and Heather would be caught up in a state child abuse investigation.
Emilia went quiet. She was beginning to feel used. She was a bit uneasy about doing everything in her power to get Josh out because she feared Josh would, as he had so many times before, run right back to Heather and the kids. She didn’t say it to Josh, but Emilia wondered if she was just the “other woman” for the time being once again, like all those other times Josh needed a woman in his life.
“Listen, Emilia . . . you never have to ever worry about me and Heather again . . . ,” Josh said, picking up on Emilia’s trepidation. He sounded sincere, selling this very well.
With an obvious unease in her voice, in a nearly inaudible whisper, Emilia said, “I know.... I’m not worried about that.”
They got into a discussion about James Acome’s friend and “that thing,” as Emilia put it, she had asked him to do. Emilia told Josh she needed to spend more time with James’s friend so she could try and convince him, obviously. But she didn’t want to go into too much detail about it over the jail phones.
“Why do you got to spend time with [him]?” Josh wanted to know. He genuinely seemed to be in the dark here about what Emilia was referring to when she said “that thing.” Josh even had a dash of jealousy in his tone.
All she could answer, “I hope you know what I mean when I say ‘spend time.’”
“No, I don’t,” Josh responded. He sounded confused.
“It’s not in a sexual way. I hope you don’t think that. Please don’t ever think that,” Emilia said with a nervous laugh.
“I don’t know. What’s going on?”
“Baby, I cannot talk to you over these phones. You know that.”
Josh got loud: “You need to send me some ... damn kind of indication.”
“Well, it’s not nothing dirty. Geez.”
“Okay,” he said, calming down.
“What you and me had talked about,” Emilia said, pressing on. The sense was that they had broached this topic in the past and Emilia was simply revisiting a prior plan.
“What you and me had talked about . . .”
“Okay, okay, okay . . . ,” Josh said, as though he had an epiphany—Oh yeah, that thing—and it had hit him and he suddenly understood what she had been referring to all along.
“What you and me had talked about . . .”
The ambiguous nature of this conversation went back and forth for a few days as they hashed out plans for something Josh claimed not to be entirely clear on. Emilia kept saying she had his back, and she would take care of everything. All Josh needed to do was the time he had in front of him. Josh indicated on several occasions that he was upset for being kept out of things on the outside, but Emilia stressed the importance of being quiet about her plan because their conversations “could be”—and actually were—“recorded.”
CHAPTER 50
BY JANUARY 15, 2009, Josh and Emilia were at odds. Josh had said some things to Emilia a few days before and she was still upset with him. He had called her, but she didn’t want to talk. He kept telling her how sorry he was and how much stress he had been under in jail. He kept up the “baby this” and “baby that” pillow talk to try and win her back.
But Emilia was clearly feeling like the other woman. It seemed all they ever talked about was Heather. It was never about Emilia or their future together. How was Emilia feeling? What was their plan to be together when Josh got out? Hell, in all of the recorded phone calls, Josh never once asked Emilia how her health was or how the pregnancy was going.
“What’s wrong, baby, why aren’t you talking?” Josh said at one point.
“Been doing a lot of thinking,” Emilia stoically whispered. “I really get pissed off when you start telling me [what I got to do]. I’m gonna tell you now, Josh.... For some fucking reason, me and you cannot just see each other and be okay.... It’s either you are there or you are not.” Emilia used the child she was expecting in order to explain that Josh needed to step up, be a man, and either choose her and the child, or just go away forever. She promised she would never keep the child away from him if he chose to leave her, but “I don’t know if I can handle it if you were just coming around to see the baby.” Emilia either loved this guy sincerely, or had become obsessed with him. It was never clearer than during this one conversation that Emilia needed to have all of Josh or none of Josh. There was no way she could share him again. It was no longer an option for her.
“Could you?” she asked Josh, wondering if he would be able to come around on the weekends and spend time with their baby and not be in a relationship with her.
“I could,” Josh said without hesitation.
“Huh?” Emilia responded. She was both shocked and hurt by the answer.
He said it again.
The line went totally silent. Emilia did not respond.
Josh finally broke the silence. “It’s not what I want to do, but I could. I would not want to leave her without no daddy. You know I’d support her and take care of her. . . .” Then he went on to bad-mouth the two fathers of Emilia’s other children. He called these men lazy, deadbeat “m-f’ers,” who had left her high and dry, with kids to fend for by herself.
There was a weird cadence and tone to Emilia’s voice during this part of the call. She sounded very different. Quite subdued. Even a little bit crazy. She spoke softly and methodically—though not much. She had become someone else.
“With me and you, it’s just ... well, hanging out in limbo, just ain’t fun,” Emilia concluded. The impression she left with Josh was that she was finished. It was over. Don’t call again.
But Josh called back later that day. Emilia was in a better mood. Josh had something on his mind, though. He’d heard a rumor in the jail. He wanted to know if it was true and if Emilia was serious about it.
“How you gonna help me out of jail by giving James and [his friend] money?”
There was “that thing” again.
“What are you talking about?” Emilia asked.
“Are you gonna help me out or not? Straight out, baby.”
“Yes,” Emilia said, unable to respond fast enough. “Yes . . . ,” she said again.
“Don’t do it like that. I’m not doubting you, and I’m not, not believing you. But, baby, I’m . . . I’m scared right now. I really am. I am fucking scared. Just to be stuck here.”
“Look, I gave James ten bucks just to run me to the store, just so I could buy diapers.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. All I been told is that James done and gone taken money from [you]. . . .”
&n
bsp; Josh then talked about how, if only Emilia could get him out of jail, they would get “it” right, meaning the relationship. There was no doubt in Josh’s mind, he claimed. All of that history with Heather, it was enough to send him packing. He was done with her for good. The time in jail had made Josh realize that Heather was poison.
“Baby, I know everything’s gonna work out—I don’t worry about that,” Emilia said.
Josh put on a domineering tone and said sternly, “You don’t do nothing as far as that goes. You just get me out of here.... That’s your main focus right now. And that’s kissing ass right there. We got this. We gonna be the motherfucking team we supposed to be. You got that?”
“I know.”
CHAPTER 51
ON JANUARY 20, Josh called Emilia with something very specific on his mind. He wanted to know how close the next-door neighbor to her mother’s house was and if the wooded area between the two houses was thickly settled. He came across like a man on a mission, trying to figure out part of a plan.
“Is there people living in the house back there?” Josh asked. He had obviously been thinking about something in particular.
“Uh-huh,” Emilia said, agreeing. “Why? What ... next door?” Emilia was genuinely confused as to why Josh would care about this.
“But listen, it’s pretty woody in between by where your momma’s is and they’s house and where that old trailer is?”
“Yeah . . .”
“. . . And they can’t see out through there?”
He meant the neighbors: Could they look from their house windows—any of them—and see through the woods to that trailer?
“No,” Emilia said.
“Okay, okay . . . ,” Josh answered. He had been full of adrenaline, but now realizing no one could see out into the backyard of Emilia’s mother’s and that trailer, he was suddenly calmer. It was as if the plan he had mapped out in his head had come to fruition right then and there.
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