Taken to the Edge

by Kara Lennox

  But she couldn’t deny she’d wanted more from the man she desperately wanted to love. Maybe Ford didn’t believe she was guilty, but he hadn’t jumped immediately to her unconditional defense, and that was what hurt.Robyn took the cab all the way home, to Green Prairie. The fare was exorbitant, but she paid it with a credit card. Running up her credit was the least of her worries. She was more concerned about mundane things; what would happen to her art class? Would they give her a few days to wrap up her affairs, put her things in storage? Or would the apartment manager end up throwing her belongings into the street?

  Inside her apartment, she wandered around like a ghost, touching her furniture, her dishes, even her soap.

  She didn’t kid herself—they were going to arrest her. She had no credible defense against Roy’s lies, at least not at the moment, and she would probably spend at least tonight in jail.

  There, they wouldn’t have fancy soap that smelled of grapefruit.

  The memory of Eldon on death row made her shudder. Even if she fought this murder charge with every fiber of her being—which she intended to do—she could still end up locked away forever, or executed.

  The two parched plants on her balcony needed water again, so she gave them a drink. It was a meaningless gesture, really—they were already dead from the heat and neglect.

  Finally, she drove herself to police headquarters. It was a place she knew well. She parked in the lot, took one last breath of fresh air and headed into the featureless cinder block building.

  The desk sergeant looked at her in surprise, and she realized that she knew him. Eight years ago, he’d been at the same job. He was a bit grayer now, a bit stockier, but still recognizable.

  “Ms. Jasperson?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I was told to come here by Sergeant Glasgow.”

  The sergeant appeared just then, smirking ever so slightly. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” he said, almost pleasantly.

  “I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”

  The sergeant said something under his breath. It sounded like, Don’t get your hopes up, but she couldn’t be sure.

  He led her down a long hallway and through a set of locked doors into the bull pen, where the detectives worked. It was a small police force, so major crimes, burglary, fraud and missing persons all worked together.

  Every one of the cops looked up when she entered. Robin met their gazes squarely, and one by one they looked away.

  Sergeant Glasgow opened the door of an interview room and gestured for her to enter. He followed, soon joined by two other male detectives. Neither was familiar.

  “Before we start,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down before they could choose one for her, “am I under arrest?”

  “No, ma’am,” the sergeant said. “We’re just going to have a friendly chat.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Cut the crap. I’ve sat through one of your ‘friendly chats’ before.” It had lasted six hours without a bathroom break. She didn’t imagine much had changed since then—except they weren’t on a fishing expedition this time. A witness had placed her at the scene of the crime.

  They started out friendly enough, going through the usual legal warnings. She agreed to talk without a lawyer present. She knew she could stop the questioning at any time and ask for one; eight years ago, she hadn’t known that. The knowledge gave her some small comfort.

  They started with the preliminaries—her age, her relationship to Eldon and Justin, where she’d lived at the time of her son’s disappearance—all the same questions she’d answered a million times, and would probably answer another million.

  Sergeant Glasgow had just started to get to the meat of the interview—what she remembered about the night of Justin’s kidnapping—when someone knocked on the door.

  The interruption was not appreciated, judging from the looks of consternation on all three of the male officers’ faces.

  A woman poked her head inside the door. “Ms. Jasperson’s attorney is here.”

  The three detectives looked at her. She shrugged. “I guess Ford Hyatt called someone—he said he was going to.”

  Everyone went silent as the door opened wider. Robyn hoped to see Raleigh Shinn enter the room. Raleigh, at least, was up to speed on the case, and Robyn respected her thoroughness and intelligence. But the dapper, bald-headed and bespectacled attorney who entered was definitely male.

  With a start, Robyn realized she recognized him. He was one of Eldon’s appeal attorneys, William Purdy. He hadn’t gained Eldon’s freedom, but Robyn had liked him anyway. He was smart and knew the law, at least. Ford had chosen well.

  But did she want him to make that choice for her? If she accepted Purdy as her lawyer, he wouldn’t let her continue with the interview and she wanted to get it over with. But maybe Ford was right; innocent people needed lawyers, even if “lawyering up” antagonized the detectives.

  She opened her mouth to agree to the attorney when another person entered the room in a flurry of excitement and perfume.

  Trina?

  Robyn was happy to see a friendly face, and a little bit relieved that she didn’t have to face Ford just yet.

  “Robyn, don’t you worry about a thing,” Trina announced. “Ford hired the best criminal defense lawyer in the county. Please, if you don’t mind?” She glared at the detectives.

  In turn, the detectives all looked at Robyn. The decision was hers, whether to accept legal help or decline. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

  “I’ll accept Mr. Purdy as my lawyer for now.”

  Purdy smiled. “Very well. Then my client does not wish to answer any more questions at this time.”

  “But I want to get this—”

  Trina quelled Robyn with a warning look, and Robyn stopped. “All right. But I’d like to make it clear that I don’t have anything to hide. As soon as I discuss my innocence with my lawyer, you can get on with your questions.”

  The detectives didn’t look happy. But at least they hadn’t arrested her. She was free to go…for now.

  Purdy and Trina escorted her out of the interrogation room. They made arrangements for Robyn to have a formal sit-down with the lawyer early the next morning, after which they would return to the police station to resume her interview.

  Another few hours of freedom. All the tension drained out of Robyn, and her knees wobbled.

  “You poor thing,” Trina said. “I just could not believe it when I heard what had happened.”

  “Ford called you?” Lately, keeping Trina in the loop hadn’t been a top priority for Ford.

  “Um…no, honey, it was in the news report on the radio. In fact, the news vans are outside now.”

  Robyn briefly considered hiding in the ladies’ room and never coming out. Facing the press had been difficult with Ford at her side to protect her. Who would protect her now? Trina?

  “Trina, you don’t believe I’m guilty, do you?” She needed for someone to have faith in her.

  “Oh, honey, of course not. I mean, you and I had our differences, but you loved your little boy. Anyone could see that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You look exhausted. My car is parked in back. We can sneak out the back door. I’ll take you home and feed you a nice meal. Ford said I shouldn’t let you go home alone, that it’s not safe.”

  “So you did talk to Ford?”

  “I called him when I heard. I wanted to do something. He’d already taken care of the lawyer, but he said I should come here and make sure you let Purdy do his job. And he said I shouldn’t leave you alone.”

  Given the way she’d fallen apart earlier today, she didn’t blame him.

  In truth, Robyn didn’t want to spend what might be her last night of freedom by herself. Granted, Trina wouldn’t be her first choice of companion. But Trina was who she got, and the woman was going out of her way to be kind.

  “All right,” Robyn finally agreed.

  One of the cops showed
them out the back door. Moments later, Robyn settled into the passenger seat of Trina’s Escalade, reveling in the energetic air-conditioning and letting her mind go blank.

  It wasn’t until Trina turned her car onto Sycamore Lane that Robyn realized “home” meant the Jasperson mansion—the same house Robyn had shared with Eldon when they’d been married. She hadn’t been back here since Justin disappeared.

  The house looked the same, a colonial red brick with massive white columns and a circular driveway with a fountain in the middle. Robyn remembered how impressed she’d been with this house the first time she’d seen it, so different from the tiny mobile home where she’d grown up.

  Now it struck her as being a bit much.

  The trees had grown. A lump formed in Robyn’s throat when she spied the dogwood tree she and Eldon had planted when Justin was born. It had been just a tiny stick of a thing. Now it was a mature tree, growing near the corner of the front porch.

  On closer inspection, the house seemed a bit bedraggled. The trim needed painting, the lawn had bare patches and the flower gardens were filled with weeds. Maintenance on this property was hugely expensive; maybe Trina didn’t have the funds to keep it up.

  Trina pulled into the three-car garage and cut the engine. The other two bays were filled with old furniture. Robyn recognized a couple of pieces that she and Eldon had picked out for the living room, and the headboard to their bed.

  Well, it was only natural for the new wife to put her stamp on the decorating.

  Then she spied Justin’s crib, and she almost lost it.

  She had to remind herself that, on the advice of friends, relatives and her therapist, Robyn herself had dismantled the room she kept for Justin in her apartment. Life went on.

  She followed Trina into the house.

  “I bet you haven’t had lunch,” Trina said. “And here it is almost dinnertime. I’ve got some cold cuts and French bread and maybe some soup from the deli. Would that be okay?”

  “Trina, that would be spectacular. I really appreciate it.” On impulse, she opened her arms and hugged Trina. Right now, she needed to connect with someone. Badly.

  Trina seemed surprised, but after a moment she softened and returned the hug, patting Robyn on the back. “Oh, honey, you would do the same for me if I was in trouble.”

  Trina’s lush black hair tickled Robyn’s nose, and she got a strong whiff of shampoo.

  Coconut.

  The smell was familiar, and Robyn’s body reacted to it by producing a rush of adrenaline that made her want to push Trina away and run. The reaction confused her for a moment, until she realized from where she knew the scent.

  The person who’d broken into her apartment and assaulted her had used the same shampoo.

  Robyn had told Ford her attacker was too small to be a grown man, and was probably a kid. But now she realized it also could have been a small woman.

  “Robyn, is something wrong?”

  Robyn had pulled back and, still grasping Trina by the shoulders, was staring at the other woman’s face, probably with a look of horror.

  “You broke into my apartment,” Robyn said before she could consider the wisdom of confronting someone who had assaulted her, and possibly had done much worse.

  “Excuse me?”

  The pieces fell into place. “It’s been you all along. You resented Justin. You were jealous of me, and the hold you thought I had on Eldon because he was the father of my child. So you did something about it.”

  “Have you completely lost your mind? I would never hurt a child. I was cleared as a suspect. Roy saw a woman with long blond hair in that parking lot, and last time I checked, that didn’t fit me.”

  Robyn felt dizzy with the realization. Trina had just cemented her fate. “Roy never said anything about a woman with long blond hair. But he was supposed to, wasn’t he? That’s what you coached him to say, when you paid him to make up a story.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never met this Roy person.”

  “Then you must have talked to him on the phone. You sent him money.” Robyn knew she’d said too much. She had to get out of there, away from Trina before the woman did something terrible out of desperation. Some thing else terrible.

  Or before Robyn herself did something she would regret. She had never felt the urge to kill anyone—except the person who had taken her son away from her.

  She turned away and reached into her purse, intending to call someone—the police? No, it would take too long to explain.

  Ford. He would believe her. He had to believe her.

  She’d scarcely gotten the phone clear of her purse when Trina knocked it out of her hand, and it went skittering across the quarry-tiled kitchen floor.

  “Don’t you dare!” Trina’s eyes narrowed, and her artfully painted mouth twisted into a grimace. “Your precious Ford isn’t going to run to your rescue this time. This is between you and me.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HER HEART POUNDING, ROBYN judged her chances of lunging toward her phone and getting away with it.

  Not good. If Trina were capable of killing a child, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone. She was small, but strong from regular workouts.Robyn held up her hands. “Okay, whoa, whoa, time-out. I got a little carried away and I jumped to conclusions. Let’s not make this any worse than it already—”

  Trina cut her off with a well-placed elbow to the gut, knocking the breath out of her. “Just shut up, okay? I gotta figure out what to do. Your timing is lousy. Another couple of days and I’d have gotten the hell out of this town. I’m not an idiot, you know. I had a contingency plan. I’ve been socking money away in the Cayman Islands for years, just in case.”

  Robyn managed to pull some air into her lungs. “In case someone figured out you’d killed Justin.”

  “I didn’t kill him, you moron.”

  “What?” Robyn found strength she didn’t know she had. In one quick movement, she straightened, grasped Trina by the shoulders and shoved her into the refrigerator. “Then who killed him? You know who did it, and you better tell me right now or so help me I’ll—”

  “Let go of me!” Trina struggled, but Robyn’s fury fueled her muscles. “If you don’t get your hands off me this instant, you will never know what happened to your son.”

  Robyn instantly let go and backed up. “Oh, God, Trina, if you have an ounce of humanity in you, tell me what happened to Justin.” She sank to her knees, the fight gone out of her. She hadn’t let herself think about it in a long time, but now she did; she pictured her baby in an unmarked grave, somewhere in the woods or the desert where no one would ever find him.

  “Stop sniveling,” Trina said. “Get up.”

  “I won’t call anyone. I’ll give you plenty of time to get away. Just tell me where I can find—”

  “He’s not dead, okay? I may not be a saint, but I wouldn’t kill a little kid.”

  FORD’S GUT CHURNED FROM too much coffee and not enough food. He’d violated his own rule about keeping his tank filled; he’d skipped lunch and was on his way to missing dinner.

  But the urgency to do something about Robyn’s situation wouldn’t let him think about something as trivial as his personal comfort.On Raleigh’s recommendation, he’d hired William Purdy for Robyn, whether she wanted legal counsel or not. Ford hoped a lawyer would get through to Robyn where Ford had failed. Civilians simply didn’t understand how common it was for innocent people to confess when they were under tremendous stress.

  Ford had wanted to do more. He’d wanted to drive to Green Prairie, to be with Robyn, to personally micro manage the fallout from Roy’s explosive lie. But he doubted his presence would be welcome.

  So he focused on what he could do to help her, from a distance—namely, tearing apart Roy White’s statement and his credibility.

  Mitch Delacroix, the tech expert at Project Justice, had been put to work hacking Roy’s home and cell phone records. It wasn’t legal, but if they could find o
ut who he’d been in touch with, they would know who had bribed him.

  Ford had briefly considered Roy as a suspect—maybe he’d made up the story about Robyn to cover his own tracks, and he hadn’t been bribed at all. But without an accomplice, he would have had no way to make Justin disappear, because he was back at work a mere five minutes after the child went missing.

  Either way, he was working with someone.

  Ford was doing what he did best—working potential witnesses. Roy had family, friends and associates, and these were easy for him to find. Whenever he got someone on the phone who knew Roy, he asked if Roy had mentioned coming into some money, or if he’d announced plans to make a large purchase like a new car or a TV.

  He quickly found out that Roy was not generally liked or respected, even by his own family, and most of the people Ford talked to were eager to dish.

  Roy had told many of them about his trip to Houston, and the fact that his witness statement was going to save a man from execution and maybe catch a murderer. But none could remember anything about money—until Ford located one particular coworker.

  “Oh, yeah,” the man said. “He’s been wanting to buy a Harley for, like, five years, and just yesterday he was on the phone talking to a dealer about it. He sounded pretty serious about buying it.”

  Ford was encouraged. At a motorcycle dealership, there might be a paper trail to follow—or at least some notes made regarding the phone call. He was about to ask the coworker for more details when something caught his eye. He looked up to see Celeste standing in the doorway with a young woman in tow. He stopped talking midsentence when he recognized the woman.

  “I’ll have to call you back,” he told his contact on the phone. Then he hung up and stood. “Heather.”

  “She insisted on seeing you right away,” Celeste said. “When she mentioned that it was about the Jasperson case I knew you would want to see her.”