by Diane Capri
He closed his eyes again. “Good to know. But I never doubted Reacher’s evidence against Weston anyway. Did you?”
“That’s not the most interesting part though,” she replied.
He felt her place one of her earbuds to his ear and turn up the volume on the recording. “This was on the end of the Weston taped confession.”
For the first time, relaxed in the Tampa airport, eyes closed, almost asleep, Gaspar heard Reacher speak. It had to be him.
The voice wasn’t what he’d expected. Range was higher, for one thing. Tenor, not bass. Speech clipped. Accent sort of non-descript Midwest American. If Gaspar had been pressed to describe it to another officer, he’d have said Reacher sounded less dangerous than he knew him to be. Maybe that’s how he got close to his targets.
The words were about what Gaspar had guessed, though.
Reacher said, “You got lucky, Weston. You ever step out of line again your whole miserable life, I’ll find you. And I’ll make you sorry. Count on it.”
Gaspar felt his lips turn up of their own accord as he wondered whether Kent had pulled the trigger on that .38 this afternoon at all.
THE END
MISTAKEN JUSTICE
by
DIANE CAPRI
DEDICATION
For Evelyn
CHAPTER ONE
Wicked cold rain blackened the night outside the small country house near Plant City while brilliant light and celebration reigned inside. Noisemakers, balloons, and spiked punch encouraged merriment, but Darla Nixon was isolated from the party both by the throbbing headache between her brows and because she was the boss. Not just another member of the team, she was the principal, responsible for everything about Abraham Lincoln Elementary. She felt her responsibilities keenly. And she loved her work.
When she closed her eyes briefly, her eyelids scraped like Brillo. She winced at the burn. A soothing tear escaped each eye. Exhaustion claimed her.
How long had it been since she’d slept? More than the routine insomnia she’d learned to cope with, her failure to rest over the busy holiday season had finally caught up with her. Darla craved the silence of the rain-soaked night, imagining it might soothe her to sleep.
A comforting hand rested on her shoulder. Darla opened her eyes to gaze into Marie Webster’s concerned face. The young woman was holding a glass of something stronger than spiked punch; the glow on her face was more than pride.
“Are you feeling okay?”
Darla smiled gently, laying her hand over Marie’s. The younger woman’s selection as Teacher of the Year had come as no surprise to her principal. Darla envied the kindergarten students who flourished under Marie’s nurturing, comfortable style. Many days, Darla wished she could sit in Marie’s lap and enjoy chocolate milk and gingerbread cookies, too.
“Is it your eyes?”
The tightly-controlled Marie didn’t drink often. Her words slurred around before they emerged too slowly. Darla didn’t mind. Marie was entitled to some fun; there was precious little of it in her life.
Marie’s query referred to the retinitis pigmentosa that was destroying Darla’s eyesight, marching forward relentlessly, blocking the light until ultimately she’d be blind. The day was coming. Darla had been staving it off for twenty years but she knew her luck would run out. Most RP patients were legally blind by 40, and Darla was more than ten years beyond that. She lived on borrowed light.
At her eye exam two months ago, the specialist had confirmed the blind spots in her visual fields that Darla concealed from everyone else.
“You must give up driving, Darla. Especially at night,” he’d told her, noting his recommendations in his chart as he talked. “You have almost no peripheral vision on the right side and your night vision is extremely poor now. Driving is too dangerous. For you, and for everyone else on the road.”
She’d told no one about the results of those tests, nor did she intend to. She couldn’t give up driving. Since her two sons left home for college six years ago Darla had lived alone. She took care of herself, drove to work and back, did her own food shopping and preparation. She would not give up her independence. Her old car had so many dents from her various misjudgments, Darla had stopped noticing them. No, she would continue to do what she’d done the past three years: drive as little as possible and hope for the best.
Now, Darla patted Marie’s hand again. “I’m feeling a little tired. Would you mind if I didn’t stay for the cake?”
“Of course not. I’d offer to drive you home, but I’m a bit tipsy.”
Before Marie’s words were spoken, Darla refused. The last thing she wanted was to spoil the party and draw attention to her condition. She suspected that her team would really cut loose once the boss was gone, and that was perfectly okay. They worked hard. They deserved to celebrate.
“Well, at least, let me see you out, then,” Marie’s selfless compassion seemed limitless, despite her own personal challenges. Marie handled her life as a single mother of a mentally-handicapped eight-year-old son with such aplomb. Oh, many times Darla had been the one to console Marie. Paul could be quite a handful. He acted out often, more like an irritable two-year-old than a child his age.
Paul had several medical problems and he was often mistreated by other children. Such inevitable events of childhood were especially cruel to the young woman and her hopelessly immature son. Still, Darla suspected Marie was stronger than she, even if Marie didn’t realize it.
Darla glanced up at the banner over the kitchen table. Teacher of the Year. Darla was proud of Marie, of all she’d overcome, of all she’d managed to accomplish. But she knew Marie had a tough road ahead, too. Paul’s mental capacity would not improve, but he would grow taller and stronger. His uncontrollable rages would become impossible for Marie to manage on her own. They’d discussed all of this before, and Darla had asked for legal advice about Marie’s options from her friend, Judge Willa Carson. Darla planned to persuade Marie with Willa’s help, but Darla said nothing more tonight. A party wasn’t the time or place for serious conversations.
Darla patted Marie’s shoulder saying, “Congratulations, honey.”
Marie replied, “I couldn’t have done it without you. You believed in me when no one else did. You’ve helped me so much with Paul. I can’t thank you enough, Darla. Really.”
“Where is Paul tonight?” Darla asked as they walked to the door. She watched Marie’s expression anxiously. The child meant everything to his mother, a situation destined to bring heartache.
“He’s staying overnight with a neighbor’s boy. It’s the first night I’ve had to myself in years.” Marie placed Darla’s sweater over her shoulders, opened the door, and held the umbrella over their heads while they walked across the muddy yard to Darla’s car.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Don’t worry so much,” Marie chastised her gently. “Paul’s played over there before. I think it’ll be all right. If not, I guess Ginny will call me and I’ll go pick him up.”
When Darla was safely inside, Marie leaned into the front seat and said, “Watch those trash bags out there. This wind is likely to have blown them into the street. Pickup isn’t until tomorrow.” Marie closed the car door firmly and stood looking into the window.
Darla started the car, turned on the lights, flipped the windshield wipers to high and waited. The wind blew hard, cold rain across the driveway, pushing Marie to hurry back to the house, unsteady on her feet. She waved to Darla from the doorway until something inside captured her attention. Marie closed the door firmly, extinguishing the stream of light that had brightened the sidewalk, plunging Darla into almost total darkness. Only her headlights dimly illuminated the yard. She shivered.
“No time like the present,” Darla said aloud, took a deep breath, pressed her foot on the brake pedal and shifted into reverse.
CHAPTER TWO
No street lights lined the country road. Darla glanced back toward the decrepit home once more.
Marie could barely afford to pay the rent on this old place. Darla worried about the kinds of neighbors that surrounded Paul here. The area housed thugs and thieves who committed violent crimes almost daily.
She scolded herself. “Marie is just one of thirty teachers at school. The principal can’t handle the personal problems of all of them.”
But she wanted to take care of them all. Marie’s situation pierced her heart more than some of the others, although Darla felt responsible for each of her teachers. All of the students, too.
“Well, quit stalling. It’s not going to get any better out here,” Darla said under her breath. She turned off the radio. Her head was already pounding and only total concentration would help her to drive home in the darkness that consumed the car and everything around her.
She lifted her foot bravely off the brake pedal, backed with care down the driveway and out into the dark street, shifted her shoulders and turned her head as far as possible to the right to peer into the black night.
Once on the road and facing forward, Darla placed the car into gear, pressed the accelerator gently, and cautiously navigated around the potholes in the dirt trail. Her concentration was so fierce she could almost see the rough road ahead in the inky blackness.
Darla pulled around the crater in the middle of her lane, swerved to port and crossed the centerline. Her left front tire fell into a hole the size of Lake Okeechobee and she jerked the wheel too quickly to the right to steer out of it. The car bounced into another pothole, when simultaneously the gale slammed a plastic trash can into the right-front side. A solid but muffled thud added percussion to the slapping windshield wipers and the howling wind.
“Shoot!” Darla swore, grinning when she heard the sanitized epithet acceptable for an elementary school principal. Had she forgotten how to curse, even privately?
The sedan lurched to a brief stop, its right wheel stuck in the deep hole. Darla punched the accelerator to heave out. The wheels caught some traction and the car moved abruptly. She felt a trash bag under the right rear wheel and pressed the accelerator a bit harder, suffering the prolonged, rough bounce of the old seat against the springs.
“What a mess!”
Briefly, Darla considered venturing into the cold rain and cleaning up the raunchy garbage she’d no doubt strewn over the entire road. But fatigue overwhelmed her.
“I’m sorry guys,” she said aloud to the county collectors who would have to clean up after her tomorrow. They would no doubt be able to recall many unsuitable names to call a principal who set such a bad example.
Half an hour later Darla reached her small ranch style house in a modest Tampa neighborhood. She parked in the driveway, regretting that she’d never built a garage, or at least a carport. Raising and educating two sons had produced too many expenses and too little cash.
Eschewing the inevitable losing battle between her umbrella and the wind, Darla struggled out of the car, rushed to the side door, and let herself into her home. Fifteen minutes later, she’d taken a sleeping pill, gone to bed, turned out the lights and laid her head gratefully on the down pillow.
The sleeping pill would leave her groggy tomorrow, but tonight she would rest. As she settled into sleep, a small flash of memory teased her subconscious.
She heard the plastic can bomb her vehicle and felt again the rolling motion her seat made as the car’s right rear tire passed over the lumpy bag of waste.
Her last thought before chemical oblivion overcame her was that she hoped the garbage she’d strewn over the road was not toxic to animals roaming the countryside that night.
How lucky she’d been that she’d only hit a trashcan and not a dog or a cat.
CHAPTER THREE
Darla’s screams awakened her from nightmares of blindness and dependency. The dreams were always the same: Her RP had progressed. She could discern only dim shapes in a small field of tunnel vision directly in front of her face. She couldn’t read or experience her friend’s expressions of joy or sorrow. Immersing herself in films or television was impossible. Her hair was disheveled and her lipstick smeared. In the most terrifying night scenes, she lived in a filthy institution where vicious mental patients attacked her and she didn’t know who they were or why they hated her so.
Darla knew that blind didn’t mean helpless. She realized lack of sight was not a death sentence.
But at night when she was alone, her conscious defenses down, fear overwhelmed her reason. Many mornings, she awakened shaken, sweating and trembling. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her the root of her insomnia was her overwhelming fear of the perpetual, unrelenting darkness.
After her shower she felt better. Darla flipped on the television in the kitchen as she pushed the bread down into the toaster and poured coffee into the mug Marie’s son, Paul, had given her for Christmas. The mug displayed two stick figures drawn with crayons, one taller, wearing a skirt and the other with short, spiked brown hair. The hand-printed inscription said, “We love you, Darla.” Paul had made the drawing himself, but his mother had printed the words. This tangible evidence of Paul’s affection for Darla brought tears. On his good days, he could be such a gentle child.
Darla glanced outside. Still raining. The dull gray sky pressed down on the wetness stealing all color from the normally vivid Florida landscape. Wind whipped the palm trees from side to side as if their trunks were rubber. On mornings like this Darla longed to bundle up in her warm bathrobe, drink strong, sweetened coffee with heavy cream and read. She loved reading and she’d lose the ability, too soon. Marie encouraged her to learn Braille. Darla wasn’t ready to surrender to that yet.
As if her thoughts had conjured the young teacher, Darla noticed Marie’s picture on television, a crowd gathered around her. Where was she? A hospital? Darla turned up the sound.
Rosa Rodriguez, a local reporter, said, “Paul Webster was struck by a hit and run driver last night. Because he was supposed to be spending the night with a neighbor, his mother didn’t know he was injured until early this morning when she found him lying on the side of the road. He was airlifted here to Tampa Southern Hospital and remains in intensive care. His condition is listed as critical.”
Darla’s hand shook as she drew the coffee mug from her mouth and set it on the counter. Paul hurt and in the hospital, lying outside all night in the rain, alone. Her stomach roiled and her legs weakened. She sat heavily onto the chair, stared at the screen, and clasped her hands together to steady them.
She remembered the sickening thud against her car, the lump under the wheels. Surely, a plastic garbage can the wind tossed against her car? She couldn’t have hit a child? Paul was slight, but he weighed eighty pounds. If she’d hit him, wouldn’t she have known it?
Rodriguez turned to the uniformed man standing next to her. “This is Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Traffic Homicide Detective Kevin Cook. Detective Cook, can you tell us why you’re investigating this traffic accident? Homicide detectives don’t normally investigate hit and run vehicle accidents, do they?”
And Paul’s not dead, Darla whispered, Thank God.
Kevin Cook stood erect, his hands folded in front of him, shoulders broad, eyes staring forward, mouth pressed to judgmental hardness. Detective Kevin Cook had been one of Darla’s students long ago. A straight-arrow even then, she was not surprised when he joined the Sheriff’s Office after three years of service in the Navy right out of high school. He’d advanced rapidly and had to be one of the youngest detectives on the force. What was he? Twenty-five, maybe thirty? It was hard to keep track of her students, she’d taught so many.
Darla watched him now with a mixture of pride and fear. Detective Kevin Cook would exhaust all leads. Marie could be comforted by faith in his persistent resolve. Darla should expect hot pursuit until every aspect of the crime she’d committed was exposed.
She thought briefly of calling Willa Carson, but rejected the idea immediately. Willa was a friend, but she’d advise Darla to tell the police everything. At
the moment, Darla wasn’t ready to face the consequences. She could always call Willa later. After she knew more facts.
“Paul Webster is in critical condition. We take the matter very seriously,” Detective Cook said, not actually answering the question Rodriguez asked him. Was Paul that close to death, then? Was the Sheriff’s office expecting the matter to become a homicide?
“Do you have any information you can share with us about the incident?” Rodriguez asked, seeking a pithy sound bite the local news stations could replay later.
“There is a witness,” he said. “A neighbor saw the car strike Paul, although he didn’t realize the driver had hit a child at the time. He describes the car as an older model, mid-sized sedan, dark color.”
“Oh, my God,” Darla whispered. She glanced at her six-year-old navy sedan sitting in the muddy driveway.
“We hear a lot about forensics. Can we expect some dramatic forensic solution to this crime?” Rodriguez suggested.
Kevin frowned. Anger roughened his tone and edged his features. “Rain washed most of the forensic evidence away.”
“So you’re saying you don’t know who hit Paul and you don’t think you’ll find the driver?” Rodriguez asked.
Detective Cook turned his hard gaze into the camera’s lens where he stared directly into Darla’s guilty heart.
“Oh, we’ll find him,” he said. “We won’t give up.”
Darla dropped her head onto the table and sobbed, tears meant for Paul, Marie and herself.
After awhile she moved to the back door, pulled an umbrella open, and walked out into the storm. She maneuvered around the puddles to the right side of her now monstrous car and stared.
Rain pelted the umbrella without mercy while the wind turned it almost inside out. Cleaner than the car had been in a long time, rain had washed away everything, even the crusty white bird droppings that had adorned the hood and roof for weeks.
