After the Execution

by James Raven

  As he warmed to the idea he reached again for the whisky bottle, but this time he fumbled with it and it fell off the table. He tried to catch it, but in doing so he lost his balance and his chair toppled over, throwing him onto the patio. The bottle exploded next to him, the glass shattering into dozens of pieces, some of which rolled into the pool.

  ‘Shit,’ he yelled.

  He tried to pull himself up, but he felt dizzy and disoriented. So he just lay there for about half a minute.

  Then he struggled to a sitting position, closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.

  When he opened his eyes again he discovered he was no longer alone.

  A figure loomed over him. A familiar figure.

  It sent a chill through every fibre of his being. He was so stricken with terror that he couldn’t even scream.

  All he could do was stare.

  At the ghost of Lee Jordan.

  49

  THE MAN WHO wanted to be the next US President looked absolutely terrified.

  His eyes bulged out of their sockets as he stared up at me from where he sat on the glass-strewn patio. I pointed the gun at his chest but I don’t think he even saw it. His gaze was locked on my face and it was clear that he thought I was an apparition.

  His fear and confusion filled me with a heady sense of satisfaction. What he’d done had festered inside me for so many years. I’d had to accept that he had got away with murder by incriminating me. Nobody believed my story. In the face of all the evidence and Crane’s emotional testimony it wasn’t surprising.

  That was why it had been impossible for me to resist the temptation to come here. Having been given the opportunity I knew I had to confront him and then to kill him. For what he had put me through and for what he had put Marissa and Emily through. Not to mention what he had done to his own wife.

  I’d been watching him from the bushes at the edge of the lake before climbing the fence into his garden. Getting here had been relatively easy considering it was a gated community. A sign at the entrance had stated that the development was protected by a company called Security Inc., but I’d figured that even if the alarm was raised it would take them time to respond and then they’d have to find me. In the dark I’d been able to mount the perimeter fence without being seen and because the houses – all modern colonials – were so far apart, it’d taken only a few minutes to locate Crane’s property.

  Killing him was going to be easier than I thought. I hadn’t expected him to be outside smoking a cigar and getting slowly drunk. And now that he was in front of me all I had to do was pull the trigger and leave.

  ‘I know you killed your wife,’ I said. ‘I’ve always known. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. I hit out in a blind panic and the gun struck her on the head. But she was alive when I ran from the house. I made sure of it. I didn’t shoot her so it must have been you.’

  He clasped his hands together as though in prayer and said, ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’

  And there it was. An admission. Given willingly because he was drunk and thought I was a ghost that had come back to haunt him. It was almost laughable.

  ‘You let me rot in a cell for ten years,’ I said. ‘All the time you knew I was innocent.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, his voice pleading. ‘Please.’

  ‘My wife died because of what you did, Crane. And so did my sister. You’ve destroyed so many lives.’

  He was sobbing now. The high-flying, powerful politician who cut a sharp and authoritative figure on TV was now a whimpering wreck. It made me want to drag this out, to watch him suffer, to wallow in his pain. But there was no time.

  ‘You’re a piece of shit, Crane,’ I said. ‘You don’t deserve to live.’

  A frown creased his brow suddenly and he leaned his head to one side.

  ‘You’re not a ghost,’ he said. ‘You’re real.’

  I grinned sardonically. ‘Of course I’m real, you idiot.’

  He was stunned. ‘But I was there in the death chamber. I saw them kill you.’

  ‘You thought that’s what you saw,’ I said. ‘But it didn’t happen. And now I’m here to kill you.’

  ‘This is not possible,’ he said. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Why did you kill your wife?’ I asked him.

  Crane unclasped his hands and raked his fingers through his hair. His body shuddered with an involuntary spasm.

  ‘Answer the fucking question,’ I yelled. ‘Why did you kill your wife?’

  A sudden panic overcame his features and he said, ‘It was too good a chance to pass up. I had an opportunity to get rid of her. It was a way out of the marriage.’

  ‘You bastard,’ I said.

  I raised the gun and thought about the woman he had killed and all the years I’d spent on death row waiting to die.

  And then I thought what a tragedy it would be if this vile man ever became President of the United States.

  I started to squeeze the trigger.

  But just then a voice behind me said, ‘Don’t shoot, Mr Jordan. If you do I will kill you.’

  50

  I TURNED MY head slowly. Pauline Crane was standing there in a light-coloured dressing gown aiming a pistol at me.

  I recognized her immediately from the TV and from the witness room in the execution chamber. She looked pale and dishevelled and her body was ramrod stiff.

  The light from the pool danced in her eyes and her face was taut and serious.

  ‘Please put the gun down,’ she said. ‘I promise I’ll shoot if I have to.’

  Her husky voice contained a controlled determination that left me in no doubt that she would.

  I lowered my arm, placed the gun gently on the table, and cursed under my breath. I should have been more careful. Seeing Crane outside by the pool had caused me to drop my guard.

  ‘Thank God,’ Crane said, getting quickly to his feet. ‘This bastard was going to kill me.’

  But his relief was short-lived. As he took an unsteady step towards his wife she shifted the gun away from me and pointed it at him.

  ‘That’s far enough, Gideon,’ she said.

  He stopped dead and stared at her.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ he hissed.

  She regarded him with utter contempt and said, ‘When I was upstairs I heard breaking glass. Then I heard voices. Just before I came outside I heard what you said about Kimberley. What you did to her.’

  The sudden silence was electrifying. I watched the blood drain from Crane’s face. Then he curled his lip and shook his head.

  ‘I made it up, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘It’s not true. None of it.’

  His wife’s eyes lit up with a sudden fury.

  ‘You’re a liar. You murdered Kimberley. And likely as not you’ll do the same to me so you can be with your whore.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Please, Pauline. Stop this.’

  She turned to me and said, ‘I’ll apologize on his behalf, Mr Jordan. I honestly had no idea.’

  Crane snorted, a phlegmy back-of-the-throat noise.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he ranted, slurring his words. ‘This guy has come back from the fucking dead. He wants to kill me and he’ll kill you too. So wise up and shoot him.’

  But she kept the pistol trained on Crane. His anger mounted, fuelled by shock and whisky.

  ‘Pauline, listen to me,’ he said. ‘I love you. I’d never hurt you. And I didn’t kill Kimberley. You have to believe me.’

  ‘I know what I heard,’ she said. ‘And right now it’s all I can do just to look at you.’

  ‘If you pull the trigger you’ll be making a terrible mistake,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to kill you because I don’t want the world to know what you did. People will think I was a party to it.’

  Crane snapped his eyes on me and said, ‘This is a dream, right? It’s the whisky. I’m hallucinating.’

  For just a split second I thou
ght of pleading with Pauline to spare him so that he could face a trial and clear my name. But of course there was no guarantee it would work out that way. He would simply deny what he’d said and there would be no way to prove it.

  So I kept my mouth firmly closed.

  ‘You’re a despicable man, Gideon,’ Pauline said. ‘It shames me that I actually fell in love with you.’

  Crane turned back to his wife and then suddenly lunged at her. But with all the whisky inside him there was no way he was going to reach her in time.

  She squeezed the trigger and the gun went off with a sharp retort.

  51

  THE BULLET HIT Gideon Crane in the chest and the force of it sent him sprawling backwards into the pool with a loud splash.

  Blood from the wound immediately poured into the bright blue water like leaking oil from a stricken ship.

  I stared, mesmerized, as his body floated on the surface, a shocked expression frozen on his face. His dead eyes stayed open and his limbs drifted out from his torso to form the shape of a star.

  I looked anxiously at his wife, expecting her to turn the gun on me. But she’d already dropped her arm and the weapon was hanging at her side.

  She turned to me and I was surprised to see that she appeared so calm and unruffled despite the fact that she had just murdered her own husband. I could see tears in her eyes but they didn’t fall.

  ‘You need to go, Mr Jordan,’ she said wearily. ‘Someone will have heard the shot. The police and security teams will be here soon.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I will be. In time.’

  ‘What are you going to say to the cops?’

  ‘I’m going to tell them that he was shot by an intruder.’ Then she held out the pistol. ‘That’s why I want you to take this with you, along with your own gun.’

  ‘But if it’s registered they’ll know its missing.’

  ‘This is not my husband’s revolver,’ she said. ‘It’s mine and we’ve never bothered to register it. So please take it.’

  I stepped up to her and took the gun.

  ‘He got what he deserved,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I denied you the pleasure of killing him. You must hate him even more than I do.’

  ‘At least he’s dead,’ I said.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I was there you know. At the execution. I saw you die.’

  ‘The execution was faked,’ I said.

  She creased her brow into a dark V. ‘And the authorities just let you go? That makes no sense.’

  I shook my head. ‘I got away from them. They want me dead. I’m on the run. For your own sake don’t tell anyone I was here.’

  ‘It’ll be our secret,’ she said. ‘But would you tell me why they let you live?’

  ‘It’s a long story. There’s no time.’

  She thought about it a moment and said, ‘If you’re still able to get in touch by phone in the weeks ahead then call me. You’ll have no trouble finding the house number, I’m sure.’

  ‘So you can satisfy your curiosity?’

  ‘That’s partly the reason,’ she said. ‘But I also want to send you some of my husband’s money. You lost ten years of your life because of him. He owes you big time. And I feel that I do too.’

  I heard the distant shriek of a siren.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said, picking up the gun.

  ‘Good luck, Mr Jordan,’ she said. ‘I think you’re going to need it.’

  Epilogue

  TEN WEEKS LATER

  I CAME AWAKE to the shrill sound of a child’s laughter. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. I’d probably dozed off shortly after we finished our picnic. Hardly surprising since I’d downed two glasses of sangria with the sandwiches that Kate had made.

  Thankfully I was still wearing my shades so they protected my eyes from the fierce glare of the sun. It was still high in the sky and full of strength.

  I sat up, pressing my hands into the soft white sand. Beneath me the multi-coloured towel was wet with my perspiration.

  The beach was still pretty crowded and there were lots of people in the sea. They were swimming, splashing, messing around in rubber dinghies.

  Kate was at the water’s edge playing with Anna. The sight of them filled me with a deep sense of joy. I stroked my new beard and shoved out a grateful sigh. We were ten weeks into our new lives and there was every reason to believe we had a future.

  My name is now Edward Riley. Kate’s name is Cheryl Fuller, and her daughter is Bella.

  I bought our new identities from a guy I sought out during two weeks we spent in Mexico City after leaving Texas. It cost me ten thousand dollars and for that I obtained ID cards, passports and even social security numbers.

  I was confident that the FBI didn’t know where we were. How could they? We’d been careful not to leave a trail.

  Our apartment was here in Cancun, with a terrific view of the Gulf of Mexico. We’d leased it for six months – long enough to decide where we wanted to spend the rest of our lives.

  And if we wanted to spend them together.

  It was the one good thing to come out of all that had happened. I’d found love again. At least I thought so. Put it this way – I couldn’t imagine a future without Kate, and I was pretty sure she felt the same way about me.

  Money was not a problem. With our new IDs we were able to open a joint account with a Mexican bank and deposit fifty thousand dollars of the money I took from Garcia and Cruz. The rest I spent on a car and the apartment.

  Plus, I called Pauline Crane from Mexico City as requested and told her about the faked execution and why the Feds did it. True to her word she quickly arranged for the sum of three hundred thousand dollars of her late husband’s money to be paid into an offshore account to which I was given sole access.

  Which meant I was rolling in cash!

  The story of how an intruder murdered Pauline’s husband dominated the media for weeks afterwards. Pauline described how Gideon Crane was outside by their pool enjoying a drink and a cigar when the attack happened. She told the police that she saw the killer from her bedroom window and described him as a black man in his early twenties. The cops were still looking for him.

  Meanwhile, the FBI had announced that they had identified the man who murdered my sister and two of their agents as well as Frank Larson. According to the Feds the killer was one Raymond Garcia, a San Antonio-based lawyer whose company was under investigation for alleged links with organized crime.

  Garcia was conveniently found shot dead in his home but the Feds said there was plenty of evidence linking him to the murders.

  It was a smart move by Aaron Vance. He managed to clear up much of the mess he’d created in one fell swoop.

  In fact he was still the man of the moment, following the arrests of a dozen or more senior members of the Texas Syndicate. His team had also seized many of the gang’s assets and frozen some of their bank accounts in Panama and the Cayman Islands. According to reports the Feds had been given a ton of incriminating evidence by someone on the inside.

  There had been so many big stories around since we fled from Texas that the flow of news from Huntsville during the past couple of months had attracted very little attention.

  But in that time no fewer than five inmates had been executed at the Walls prison. I remembered each of them from my time on death row, along with all the gory details of their crimes. As far as I was concerned they’d all deserved to die. The world was a better and safer place without them.

  I just prayed that none of them was actually still alive – courtesy of the federal government.

  ‘So you’re awake at last,’ Kate said as she walked up the beach towards me with Anna in her arms.

  ‘You should have woken me,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘You were out to the world.’

  She looked beautiful in her bikini. Her slender body was tanned and her dyed blonde hair made a striking contrast.

  She s
at down beside me and Anna immediately pointed back at the sea.

  ‘She can’t get enough of it,’ Kate said. ‘She loves it here.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  Kate looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you really think we can make this work, Lee?’

  I smiled back at her. ‘Absolutely. Everyone deserves a second chance and this is ours.’

  She leaned forward and gave me a long, lingering kiss.

  ‘What was that for?’ I said.

  ‘That was for abducting me at gunpoint. If you hadn’t I’d still be living in fear of losing my child – and maybe even my life.’

  ‘But you’re on the run from the federal government,’ I said. ‘You’re with a guy who’s wanted by the FBI and you’ve been forced to adopt a new identity.’

  She laughed again. ‘Exactly. So how did I ever get to be so lucky?’

  By the Same Author

  Rollover

  Urban Myth

  Copyright

  © James Raven 2013

  First published in Great Britain 2013

  This edition 2013

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1252 1 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1253 8 (mobi)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1254 5 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0920 0 (print)

  Robert Hale Limited

  Clerkenwell House

  Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.halebooks.com

  The right of James Raven to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988