“As far as trying to pin it on you, it was nothing personal. The fact that Liz had changed her life insurance pissed me off royally, but it made you a convenient fall guy for me when I needed one.”
Jake smiled at Lauren. His attractive appearance in sharp contrast to the gray cinderblock walls, prison uniform, and the content of what he had confessed was eerie. “Anything else you want to know?”
“So Madison lied for you in court?”
“That dumb bitch. She would have done anything I asked. I thought for sure I was going to beat the rap but our mock juries kept coming back with convictions. Even after I testified. When that didn’t work, I started to panic. And Pratt says to me, ‘Too bad we don’t have a better alibi, like somebody that saw you between the hours of six and seven that night. Of course, it would have to be someone that saw you close to home because your cell phone says you were in that area.’ That got my wheels spinning.
“I drove through McDonald’s that same night and the girl at the drive-through can barely speak she’s so excited to see me. The funny thing is she didn’t even follow baseball. She never would have recognized me if it weren’t for the trial, but that doesn’t seem to matter to her. She’s still tripping over her words and asking for my autograph and the light bulb goes on. So I ask if she wants to go out with me after work. I start meeting up with her, making her believe I care about her. God, that’s so easy to do with chicks.”
Lauren felt the personal sting of his remark, but said nothing. She didn’t want him to stop talking now.
“I buy her some stuff, make her feel special. She’s not the best-looking girl, but at least she was a virgin so that was a bit of a bonus. Anyway, I’ve only been working on her for a short time before she starts boohooing about how much she’s going to miss me if I get convicted. Of course I have her convinced that I’m innocent, that the police are trying to frame me for something I didn’t do. I tell her what Pratt said, that I just need somebody to confirm my alibi and I’m scot-free. But I was alone in my car driving to the airport at that time, I tell her, so there’s nobody to confirm my whereabouts. I set it up so good I made her think it was her idea. Then I feed her everything to say on the stand and, I must say, for a dumb bitch, she did a pretty decent job. She rehearsed it so much, she almost convinced herself it was true. It made her feel special for people to believe I would cheat on my wife with her. Agreeing to marry her was a small price to pay for her testimony. For my freedom. Plus, after we were married, I could keep an eye on her, make sure she didn’t turn on me. The only one on the chopping block now was her, for perjury. I made sure to remind her of that frequently to make sure she never confessed to anyone.
“Of course, we weren’t married in any real sense of the word. I still did my own thing, saw other girls, did what I wanted.”
“So I guess you were never really married to Liz either,” Lauren snapped.
Jake’s eyes narrowed. He clenched his jaw. His hands balled into fists. Lauren wondered how closely the prison officers were watching the video feed, but then Jake relaxed his posture.
“Liz never got more than she deserved.”
Lauren’s blood ran cold. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to make Jake see the distortions in his thinking nor did she feel compelled to try. For the rest of his life, he was confined to an environment where he could no longer manipulate, control, or victimize women. “And now you’re finally getting what you deserve for killing Liz.”
“But I wasn’t convicted of killing Liz. I was convicted of killing Madison. Only I didn’t kill Madison.”
Chapter Seventy-seven
(Thursday, December 16)
Lauren smiled. “I know you didn’t.”
“I told you everything. Now tell me what I want to know.”
Lauren got to her feet. “No, I got what I came for. I think I’ll take my leave now.”
“What?” The metal legs on Jake’s chair screeched against the linoleum floor as he pushed back his chair and stood up, staring at Lauren now in an intimidating manner. “We made a deal. Now spill.”
Lauren took a step back. “It sucks to be lied to, doesn’t it?”
Jake lunged across the table and made a grab for Lauren’s neck. She stepped back again, narrowly avoiding his fingertips as they whiffed past her neck.
A door opened loudly and several officers dressed in brown trousers, khaki shirts, and combat boots rushed into the room. One was on a radio requesting an IMS, another ordered Jake to calm down and back up, while a third reminded Jake that he would be subdued with pepper spray if he did not comply.
Ignoring them, Jake yelled at Lauren, “Tell me now, you fucking bitch.”
The officers were cautiously approaching from several directions, one clearly brandishing a canister of pepper spray.
Lauren lowered her voice. “Too bad you only played one perfect game. And you wasted it on baseball.”
“I’ll fucking kill you myself when I get out of here.”
“Without possibility of parole. That means you’re never getting out of here.” Lauren smiled and headed toward the exit as the officers muscled Jake to the ground.
As she exited the front entrance of the prison, she felt free. The air seemed sweeter, the sky more expansive, the sun setting in a glorious blaze of red, orange, and pink.
Ryan greeted her with a firm hug and gentle kiss. As he had so many times before, he gallantly opened the passenger door for her.
Chapter Seventy-eight
December 31, the same year
Unlike Phoenix, it was cold in the small town of Tehachapi, California, where Liz and Lauren had grown up. Lauren glanced around at the familiar rolling hills and majestic oak trees. Fortunately, there was no snow on the ground. She pulled her long winter coat tightly around her and sat on the frigid grass next to the granite marker topped with an angel. After more than a year of wrangling with the Wakefield family lawyers, Lauren had finally gotten legal permission to relocate Liz’s cremains to this scenic location nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.
“I wish you could have been here for your ‘real’ memorial service,” Lauren said to the angel. “You really would have enjoyed it. I swear your entire graduating class showed up as well as half of mine. Even Lori Grimwood came. You would be impressed to know that she has six children now. She’ll be able to supply our alma mater with an entire volleyball team in a few years.” Lauren laughed briefly and then continued in a more serious tone. “I know you always felt confined by this little town, but they really turned up in droves to show their respects. There were lots of stories about how funny and creative and fiercely loyal you were. Say what you want about this crazy hometown of ours, but these people really knew you. And they really loved you.
“You should have seen Jake’s face when I saw him at the prison a couple of weeks ago. Orange, by the way, is not his most flattering color. He was so furious that he was practically frothing at the mouth. But now I’ll tell you what I refused to tell him.”
“I’ve been working at a hospital in Scottsdale since I finished my residency. I was working late one night, about 12:30 in the morning. I was supposed to get off at midnight, but I had just finished up with another case. The ER was really busy that night, and we had just gotten a call from Scottsdale Fire about another incoming. They were bringing in a victim from a single vehicle accident. The victim wasn’t responding to resuscitation efforts, but paramedics can’t call death so they had to bring her in. I figured I’d go ahead and take it. I was already right there. Why bother another doctor just to call a time of death? I’d just call it real quick and then go home.
“The paramedics were still performing CPR when they arrived, but they were shaking their heads. DOA. It was a Jane Doe case. She had been pulled out of the car right before it caught on fire so they hadn’t been able to recover any ID. We tried shocking her a couple of times, but
it was no good. She’d been down for too long so I called time of death. After that, I finally looked her over. She had massive head trauma to the right side of her head. I was taken aback because her injuries looked so much like yours. That’s why I decided to dismiss the nurses and clean up the body myself. As I was pulling the sheet up over her mangled head, I realized she looked familiar. She was pretty messed up, but her hair color was distinctive. When I looked closer, I realized who it was. The same girl that lied to get Jake acquitted in your trial. I was thinking about the irony of her coming into my ER on a night I was working. It was all too coincidental. And that’s when I got the idea. I propped Madison up in a wheelchair and rolled her right out of a side exit, one of the ones without video cameras.
“It was actually pretty easy after that. But the plan was only going to work if Jake hadn’t changed the home security code or locks. But of course, he hadn’t. Why would he? In reality, he knew I wasn’t any real threat. I snuck into your guys’ house and put a cloth soaked in Sevoflurane in front of his nose as he slept. It’s a nice little inhalation anesthetic. I needed to make sure he wouldn’t wake up for a couple of hours while we set things up.
“The one thing I still needed was something that could serve as the murder weapon. Madison wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and she had struck her head on the rounded frame of her sports car. I spotted Jake’s championship baseball bat centered so lovingly on the trophy room wall and figured that would work nicely. Of course, I didn’t yet know that was the same weapon he had used on you. I made a point to get a nice set of Jake’s fingerprints on the bat. I was wearing gloves and scrubs from the hospital, a great little idea that Jake’s defense team had provided. Oh, and I also made sure to use Madison’s fingernails to scratch Jake a little bit while he was knocked out. Lucky for me, she had those ridiculous long fake nails, which made it pretty easy.
“I couldn’t hit her head with the bat because forensics would reveal post-mortem wounding. So I drew a vial of her blood with a syringe from a discreet location on her body where it wouldn’t be detected and put that on the bat. I swung the bat a few times in order to get the blood spatter right for the forensics experts. I guess it must’ve worked pretty well. Lucky for me, I swing a bat left-handed.
“Now that everything had been set up in the house, I let myself back out, making sure to set the alarm and lock the door behind me. All that was left to do was alert the police to loud screaming coming from Jake’s house earlier that evening. I made a quick anonymous phone call from a nearby pay phone. I said I was a neighbor and I was worried about the blood-curdling screams I had heard coming from the Wakefield home. I mean, at first, I figured Jake and Madison were just having another domestic dispute, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why the screams had stopped so abruptly. I mean, after all, Jake had been accused of killing his first wife. I knew the cops would respond, even if just out of curiosity to meet the Jake Wakefield. The anesthetic should have been wearing off by then so Jake would be alert enough to answer the door when the cops arrived. I made sure to leave the body so as to be visible from the front door. I figured Jake would enter the front hall from the side so he wouldn’t even notice the body before he opened the door. I must say, it worked like a charm.
“Of course, I couldn’t pull that off all by myself. But, luckily, I married the most amazing man.
“Madison’s car had been pretty well destroyed by the fire and it was hauled off to a junkyard where it was completely destroyed. Ryan made sure the license plate also disappeared. He’s an expert on the city computer system so he made sure that all of the documentation on that Jane Doe case disappeared. Scottsdale Police and Fire share the same databank for incoming calls. Isn’t that convenient? And, I was able to make sure that the treatment record got deleted from the hospital system, too. No loose ends.”
There was some condensation on the grave marker, and Lauren used the sleeve of her coat to wipe it off.
Elizabeth Rose
Beloved Daughter, Granddaughter, and Sister
Never Forgotten
“I dropped the Wakefield from your name. You’re back with Mom and Dad now.” Lauren looked at the nearby marker that contained the names of her parents. “When I went in to emergency medicine, I wanted to try to save accident victims like Mom and Dad. And sometimes we do. Just the other day, I had an amazing save. The other doctor had given up, but I wanted to try one more thing and it worked. I saved the life of a forty-five-year-old car accident victim, mother of three teenagers. But you know what else I do a lot of at my job? Counsel victims of domestic violence. Did you know that women are treated in ERs for domestic assaults more often than car accidents, muggings, and rape combined? So I really try to empower them to get out of unsafe situations. It really seems to help when they recognize me as your sister. I feel like I’m making a really big difference in that area.
“We finally got justice, and Jake will never be able to hurt another woman again. I hope you are still proud of me.
“Rose-ma is doing really well. Still taking everybody’s loose change in bridge games at Desert Pointe. She was here for the memorial service. Ryan took really good care of her while I exchanged memorable stories with friends. I really wish you could have met him. You promised me that I would meet the perfect man some day. And you were absolutely right.”
Lauren paused to artfully arrange the bouquet of fragrant lilies she had brought with her. “I love you, Liz. Always remember that you’re my favoritest sister.”
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