by Kara Lennox
They were shown to a room with a large table and four chairs bolted to the floor.
“Jasperson will be brought in shortly,” one of the guards said.
When they were alone again, Robyn jumped out of her chair and paced. “I thought we would visit him through one of those windows with telephones—you know, kind of like in the movies.”
“Are you nervous about seeing him face-to-face?”
She flashed a guilty, nervous smile. “Terrified. I haven’t seen him in years. Trina says he isn’t holding up well.”
“Sit down,” Ford said. “You heard the rules. We have to stay in our chairs.”
“Sorry.” She slid back into her seat, then clenched her hands in front of her on the scarred metal table.
A few moments later, a guard escorted Eldon Jasperson into the room wearing shackles on both hands and feet, and Ford got his first good look at the man since the trial, when he was more familiar to Houstonians than the hottest Hollywood celebrity. Though Ford knew prison was hard on the inmates, he wasn’t prepared to see a gaunt man with thinning gray hair and sallow skin. In the eight years of incarceration, he’d aged twenty.
The guard seated his prisoner in a chair across the table from them and chained him to it. Jasperson’s gaze was on Robyn—and it was hungry. A surge of protectiveness welled up in Ford, so strong it stole the air out of his lungs.
“Robyn.” Jasperson’s voice was low, cultured. “This is a surprise.”
“Hi, Eldon.” She sounded soft, comforting, full of emotion. “I’ve brought someone to see you—someone who might be able to help.”
Eldon spared a quick, dismissive glance for Ford. “Another lawyer?”
“I’m an investigator with Project Justice. Ford Hyatt.” Ford nodded, since they weren’t allowed to shake hands. “Are you familiar with Project Justice?”
Eldon’s interest ratcheted up a notch. “You’re the folks who get innocent people out of jail.”
“Sometimes.” Ford spent a couple of minutes telling him the basics of how the foundation worked and his role there. “Robyn brought your case to my attention. I’d heard of it, of course. But I hadn’t realized how many unanswered questions remained. The information she provided was compelling enough for me to want to look into it.”
“A little late, isn’t it?”
“We’re often the avenue of last resort. Mr. Jasperson, I’ll get right to the point. I’ve read the police report, and I have strong reason to believe you were not alone the night Justin disappeared.”
Fear and surprise flashed briefly in Eldon’s sullen gray eyes, but he quickly hid his reaction. Not quickly enough, however. Ford knew he was on to something.
“Why would you think something like that? If anyone could back up my story, don’t you think I’d have said something?”
“Why did you order a large, half-and-half pizza?” Ford asked.
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Because I was hungry? Who the hell told you what kind of pizza I ordered? Why would anyone care about such a stupid detail?”
“It was in the police report,” Ford replied. “Police often ask for small details when they’re questioning victims or witnesses—or potential suspects. The details will trip people up.”
“Or help them out,” Robyn said. “Eldon, you ordered a large pizza, half black olives. You hate black olives.”
“That’s just not true.” But he swallowed several times. The questions were making him nervous.
Ford continued to push. “Mr. Jasperson, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t tell us who you were with. Whatever your reasons for keeping that secret—surely they don’t matter anymore. You have nothing to lose.”
“I’d like to help, believe me,” Jasperson said politely. “But I was alone.”
Robyn banged one fist on the metal table. “You were cheating on Trina while she was away at a conference,” she said, suddenly harsh. “Why can’t you admit that?”
“Where would you get such a foolish idea?” Jasperson sounded less polite now.
“Because you cheated on me. And I know what it looks like. I watched the video of your interrogation, and I know the look that was on your face. I’ve seen it before—when you’d been with Trina and you were trying to hide it from me.”
He sat up straighter, defiant. “Maybe I looked guilty on that video because I killed our son.”
Ford expected Robyn to flinch at the words, but she came right back at him. “I know damn well you would never have hurt Justin. Tell me who she is.”
Robyn and her ex-husband stared at each other, challenging, until Ford was sure blue sparks would fly between them. But finally Eldon looked away, defeated. “I can’t find her,” he said softly. “I saw no reason to involve her at the beginning. I had no clue things would turn out as they did, not an inkling that I’d be arrested for Justin’s murder. So I said I was alone. Later, when I knew I was in trouble, I couldn’t find her. She’d left town. So I said nothing. Changing my story—with no one to corroborate it—would only make me look like a liar. And a cheating husband on top of that.”
Ford resisted the urge to grin. He really hadn’t been sure Robyn’s hunch would pan out.
“So what’s her name?” Ford asked, pad and pencil ready.
Eldon shook his head. “You won’t find her. She hid her tracks well. Anyway, she wasn’t there when Justin was taken. She was back at my house.”
“But she can verify that Justin was alive at the time you left to get pizza.” Ford was amazed that Jasperson didn’t grasp this. “The prosecution has always maintained the pizza run was a cover story used to stage a phony kidnapping, and that you’d probably killed Justin hours earlier and spent a good amount of time disposing of the body.”
Now both Robyn and Eldon did flinch.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no time to worry about delicate sensibilities. Eldon, this woman could clear you.”
“I doubt she’ll talk, even if you do find her.”
“Let me worry about that. What’s her name?”
“You can’t do this!” Eldon roared. “Trina…Trina has been so loyal through all this. I can’t face death knowing I’ve turned her against me.”
“Eldon,” Robyn said. “It’s too late for that. She already knows.”
“She’s okay with it,” Ford added, lying through his teeth. “She understands. She won’t hold it against you, not at this late date. It was a long time ago.”
Eldon shook his head stubbornly.
“You’d rather die than take this chance?” Ford asked.
He didn’t respond.
“We’ll find her without your cooperation,” Ford said with steely determination. “And when we do, I won’t be gentle with her. I’ll feed her name to every sleazy reporter in the country. Her life will be a living hell.”
ROBYN WANTED TO OBJECT to Ford’s harsh threat. Hadn’t Eldon been savaged enough? But what did Ford care? He didn’t know Eldon, had never seen him playing horsey with Justin or entertaining the baby with faces while changing his diaper. Ford’s job wasn’t to make friends. He was pursuing this case the way he did everything—moving resolutely forward, eye on the goal, never wavering.
It was the reason she’d agreed with Trina that he was the right man for the case.When Ford had shielded her from the media vultures, she had thought she’d seen a speck of caring there. But she must have been mistaken. The man was a machine.
“Eldon,” Robyn said gently, grasping his attention. “No matter what happens, you won’t die alone. I will be here for you. I still care for you.”
“How could you?” he asked. “After what you’ve been through…”
“You lost a son, too. Maybe you aren’t the most faithful of husbands, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t love your son—or that you should die for someone else’s crime. For the love we had for Justin—for the love we once shared. Help us help you.” A single tear escaped, and she dashed it away. “Tell us the woman’s name. We’ll handle it sensit
ively.”
Eldon closed his eyes, battling some internal demon. Finally he looked at Robyn, shutting out Ford. “Heather.” He barely whispered the word. “It was Heather.”
“Heather Boone?” Robyn asked, her voice coming out a hoarse accusation. Oh, God. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to say anything.
“Do you understand now?”
Robyn was afraid she did. “How old was she at the time?” She chanced a look at Ford, gauging his reaction. He leaned back in his chair, his face a granite wall. But she noted a faint flicker of displeasure in his eyes. He wasn’t happy with the conversation’s direction.
“She was above the age of consent,” Eldon said.
Ford suddenly sat forward. “Look, would somebody mind telling me who Heather Boone is?”
“She was one of my art students. Someone I took a special interest in. Apparently Eldon did, too,” she added bitterly. “Damn it, Eldon, she was a troubled child. How could you take advantage—”
“I was helping her.”
“By sleeping with her?”
“Time-out!” Ford silenced them with his outburst. Robyn looked at him, startled at his show of temper. But there was a time to be sensitive, and a time to play hardball. Ford instinctively knew which strategy to use. “If you want me to move forward with this case, y’all are both gonna have to shut up and listen to me. Eldon, you’re dealing with me now, not your ex-wife. Tell me from start to finish what happened that night. And if I sense any bullshit, I’m walking out of here and never coming back.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ROBYN SHRANK BACK IN THE face of Ford’s anger. She wasn’t used to people speaking to her that way. Most people, family included, handled her with kid gloves. They tolerated any sort of emotional outburst or bad behavior because she had lost her child to tragedy.
She stared at Ford and he at her, bracing for more harsh words. But they didn’t come. After a few charged moments he sat back in his chair and straightened some papers on the table in front of him.Robyn switched her attention to Eldon, positive he would be the next to explode. Her ex had never tolerated anyone speaking to him in such a manner—which hadn’t boded well for him during police interrogations. But to her surprise, he didn’t strike back. He folded his arms and looked down in a classic posture of submission.
He hardly looked like the man she knew. Or thought she knew. God, he’d had an affair with a teenager. A girl still in high school. Barely legal. Of course, Robyn had been the same age when Eldon had first become interested in her; Trina had barely been out of her teens at the time Robyn discovered that affair.
“I’ll go over the story again,” Eldon said calmly, as if the outburst hadn’t happened. “If you think it will help.”
He started at the beginning, when he had picked up Justin from Robyn’s house and they’d argued about his mother’s interference. His story lined up with her own—possibly because they had both told it so many times that their memories had become identical.
When he got to the part about Heather, he spoke barely above a whisper, so that Ford had to ask him to speak up so the digital recorder could pick up his voice.
They had spent the evening as people having illicit affairs generally did. Then Heather, with a case of the postcoital munchies, had begged Eldon to order pizza. He’d gone to pick it up, he said, because the restaurant didn’t deliver past midnight.
“Why did you take Justin with you?” Ford asked. “Why didn’t you leave him at the house if Heather was there?”
“He woke up just as I was about to leave, crying and cranky. Heather didn’t know anything about taking care of children, and she wasn’t comfortable alone with him. I scooped him up and brought him along because he liked to ride in the car. It usually put him right to sleep, which I thought would be a good thing.”
“And did he fall asleep?” Ford asked, scribbling notes.
“The restaurant was less than ten minutes away. By the time I got there, Justin was out like a light. That was why I left him in the car. I didn’t want to wake him up. I know it was wrong—crazy wrong—but the pizza place was in a nice neighborhood. The parking lot was well lit. I was going to run in, grab the pizza and run back. I was gone less than two minutes.”
“And when you came back?”
He shook his head. “I almost didn’t notice he was gone, at first. The car was dark, and I was anxious to get back home. I turned around to back out and…that’s when I noticed.”
“What did you do?”
“For a minute, I just stared in shock. Your mind goes through all the usual stuff—maybe I was seeing things. Maybe he got out of the seat and moved to a different part of the car. Maybe he wandered off. He’d just recently learned to get himself out of that car seat.
“Or maybe I hadn’t brought him with me—maybe he was at home. I considered everything, including that I might be going crazy. Then I started searching. And calling. I had every employee from the restaurant searching inside and out. And when he didn’t turn up after a few minutes, I called the police.”
Despite everything, Robyn’s heart went out to him. She could see the torture on his face. His lawyer had elected not to put him on the stand during his trial, claiming that it was always a risky move. The D.A. could trip up even the most innocent defendant.
Now she believed it had been a mistake not to let the jury see Eldon’s raw pain. He hadn’t shown this side of himself to the media, but if they saw him now, they would never refer to him as cold again.
She couldn’t even imagine the guilt he must feel. If she’d been in his shoes…well, she never would have left Justin in a car unattended, under any circumstances. But children were snatched from even the most attentive parents.
Robyn thought the interview was over. Eldon had finished his story. But Ford had more questions.
“What happened to Heather?” he asked. “When you didn’t come home with the pizza—did she call you? Did she come looking for you?”
“No. I was so focused on finding Justin, I completely forgot about her. And when I came home—hours later—she was gone. She’d left an angry note, which I destroyed.”
“Did it surprise you that she didn’t call?”
Eldon hesitated. “She was…melodramatic. She probably assumed I was with another woman. Such a reaction is not completely normal, I know, but it’s what she likely would have done.”
Ford looked to Robyn for confirmation. She nodded. The Heather she had known was borderline paranoid. Everything was about her. In her mind, people and events all conspired against her.
“Did you continue your affair with her?”
“God, no. I was living in a fishbowl after Justin disappeared. By the time I realized I was a suspect, Heather had left town. I didn’t see the point in dragging her into it—tearing up my marriage and my character in the process—if she couldn’t be found to back me up.”
Robyn watched Ford. His face gave away little, but she sensed a prickle of excitement coming to life inside him. They’d barely started, and already they had a new lead.
Still, the questions continued. They talked almost three hours, until a warden told them they had over-stayed their welcome.
As they took their leave, Robyn searched for something to say to Eldon. Something to ease his pain, to reassure him, to give him a thin shred of hope to cling to.
But she could see nothing they’d done here today gave him hope. He was a defeated, broken man.
“Eldon,” she said. It was the first she’d spoken since her outburst. “You’re not alone. I won’t abandon you, and neither will Trina. She loves you.”
Eldon shook his head. “You both loved a man who didn’t really exist.” On that note, a guard escorted him away.
Robyn didn’t take a good, deep breath until they were outside. She had never appreciated hot, muggy, fresh air so much in her life.
“It must be awful for him,” she said as they walked across the steaming parking lot toward the car. “Eight years behind bars
, most of them in that place.”
“It’s bad,” Ford agreed. “Guilty or innocent, it changes a person forever.” He opened the passenger door of the Crown Vic. “Robyn, what do you think he meant when he said you loved someone who didn’t exist?”
She leaned her back against the car. “I guess because we both thought he was a devoted husband. When in reality he was jumping everything in his path with an X chromosome.”
“There were others?”
Robyn slid into the passenger seat and waited until Ford was behind the wheel. “Trina was the third one I knew about. When I caught him with the first one, he swore it had been a onetime deal, a momentary lapse, and that it would never happen again. I was pregnant with Justin at the time, and I didn’t want to make waves, so I chose to believe him.
“After the second one, I threatened to leave, but he said he would get counseling, and he did. The salon where Trina worked as a shampoo girl was next door to the counselor’s office.”
“What a bastard,” Ford muttered.
“I know you must think I’m an idiot.”
“Not at all. Eldon’s a good liar, very convincing. He turns those emotions on and off like a faucet.”
Robyn sat up straighter. “You think he was lying?” she asked, alarmed. If Ford believed Eldon was guilty, he would drop this case so fast her head would spin.
“No. The story he told today sounded legit. I tried every which way to trip him up and I couldn’t. But he was faking some of that angst. Milking his anguish and regret for all it was worth. For your benefit.”
“Mine?”
“You’re his last ally. He might lose Trina and he knows it. He’s going to manipulate your emotions every which way to make sure you give this your all. He’s a master manipulator, Robyn. I’ve been dealing with his type my whole life.”
Robyn squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re going to drop the case.”
