Night Justice

by Diane Capri

  She said, “Excuse me, please,” picked up the phone, stood and walked into the adjoining private chambers. Jess reached over and pressed the off button on the recorder and settled in to wait by reviewing her notes.

  During the research phase of the case, Jess had learned that the cell phone was never far from Governor Sullivan’s right hand. Its omnipresence was, by tacit agreement, ignored by the press because it seemed cruel to comment. But everyone knew that the phone connected Helen Sullivan directly to her husband who’d kept an identical one with him at all times since being released from the hospital three years ago.

  Oliver Sullivan’s gunshot wound had healed without serious complications, but he’d suffered a severe stroke following the surgery to remove the bullet. Through months of physical therapy, Governor Sullivan had remained by his side as much as possible.

  Now Oliver spent most of his time at their cattle ranch, some forty miles from Tampa in Thornberry, where he’d grown up next door to his high school sweetheart Helen Carter. The ranch was and always had been their only private residence.

  Almost fifteen minutes later, Sullivan returned to her seat across from Jess.

  “I’m sorry for the interruption,” the governor said, then frowned over the noise from Manson’s protestors that had increased in volume, suggesting more people had joined the group outside.

  Regular chanting, difficult to discern at first, became clear with repetition: “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Manson must have arrived, Jess thought, kicking the protest up a few notches by his very presence. The five o’clock news would be starting soon and Manson would find some way of ensuring the journalists deemed his spectacle worthy of airtime tonight. He’d started a countdown to Taylor’s execution and would stop at nothing to provoke constant attention until Taylor died.

  Jess watched as Sullivan glanced over at Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Frank Temple and inclined her head. Temple, who typically kept within ten feet of the governor, opened the room’s door and invited Jess’s photographer Mike join them.

  Now what’s that about? Jess wondered as she turned the recorder back on.

  Mike quickly set up his camera and began shooting as the chanting from outside grew louder, angrier.

  “Do you hear that, Governor?” Jess asked, knowing the video would pick up the chants as clearly as she could hear them. “The Manson Abolition Project is saying that Taylor didn’t kill Mattie Crawford. They say you should stay his execution pending new DNA evidence. Why have you chosen not to do that?”

  Jess knew the facts surrounding Manson’s DNA argument, but Sullivan’s detailed knowledge of the case would impress the magazine’s reading audience with the level of care the Governor exercised when dealing with a stay of execution request.

  Sullivan leaned forward in the chair, raising her voice a bit to be clearly heard. “Because there is no new evidence to test. They claim that newer DNA techniques used on the old evidence might reveal Mr. Taylor’s innocence, but they’re wrong. Everything was tested before the trial and twice more during his appeals.”

  “Could newer techniques reveal a different result?”

  “They might,” Sullivan acknowledged. “But only if there were any new evidence. I’ve granted a stay of execution twice before to allow the defense to find such evidence. They haven’t found it. Mattie Crawford’s family deserves our consideration too. They deserve closure for the long, painful process of moving on with their lives.”

  Sullivan stopped a few moments, cleared her throat, and raised her voice to be heard over the chanting. “We can’t wait any longer for evidence that may never be found and, if it were found, would no doubt confirm what the prior tests already revealed and two juries already concluded: Mr. Taylor was Mattie Crawford’s killer.”

  To be fair and objective, Jess raised the obvious counter-argument. “But many ask what the rush is. If Tommy Taylor is guilty, he can be executed later. You’re not concerned that the next governor will pardon him, are you?”

  Sullivan looked at Jess for a long moment before settling back into her chair and refolding her hands on her lap. If her composure had slipped a bit earlier, she had herself well under control now. She glanced briefly toward Frank Temple, for what? Assent?

  Jess leaned in closer to hear every word.

  “You and I have worked together before, Jess. We don’t agree on these death penalty cases, do we?”

  Jess held her stare. “No, Governor, we don’t.” And most of the country sides with me, she thought but did not voice.

  Helen nodded. “Right now, you’d think I’m committing political suicide by admitting that I don’t support the death penalty, especially when I’ve managed to avoid that answer in the past. Wouldn’t you?”

  The chanting outside grew louder and seemed to be moving in a sound wave closer to the room where they sat. “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess noticed Frank Temple reach into his pocket and pull out a cell phone. He pushed a button and held the phone to his ear. She read the slight furrow in his brow as concern, but not alarm. He pushed a button, and dropped the phone back into his pocket, then moved closer to Sullivan, but remained out of the camera’s view.

  What was going on?

  Jess turned the question back on the governor. “I take it you don’t think so?” She was almost shouting to be heard over the protesters’ racket.

  “I’ve worked within the legal system my entire career,” said Sullivan, looking directly into the camera, “and I believe in it, even though the system is not infallible. But the older I get, the more I understand that we don’t know everything. Crystal balls are rare. We don’t see all the nuances. We make mistakes, some impossible to correct, for which we can never atone. We can’t bring people back to life.” Sullivan glanced down a moment, but quickly returned her steady gaze toward Jess, who had all but gasped.

  Emboldened by Sullivan’s candor, Jess pressed harder: “Tell us why you’re going out of your way, then, to ensure Tommy Taylor is executed before you leave office, Governor.”

  Although her run for the U.S. Senate hadn’t been confirmed, speculation had been rampant for weeks that Sullivan would declare her candidacy tonight. Everybody knew she had the full weight of the party machine behind her. Helen Sullivan was the people’s politician. Voters in this state loved her, perhaps more so since her son was killed and she’d continued to serve selflessly, but it seemed foolhardy to test that devotion when she didn’t need to.

  Again Jess wondered what made this woman tick. Why? She jotted on her pad.

  Sullivan’s straight posture and squared shoulders projected strength, invulnerability. If Jess’s question angered her, she gave no outward indication but simply nodded again.

  “Fair question. If Governors made the decisions of office based only on our personal opinions, the job would be too hard, Jess. No decent human being could survive the weight. We’re not God. The people didn’t elect me to substitute my own judgments for the laws on the books. I promised I would follow the law because it’s the right thing to do, and—” her breath caught momentarily “—it’s the only way I can carry the load.”

  “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  The crowd seemed to be directly outside the window, on the lawn. But Jess knew that was impossible. Security would have stopped the protestors long before that point. Manson must have some sort of amplification system set loud enough to deafen them. The volume pulsed stronger than a rock concert. Jess could feel the vibrations as voices shouted, “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess kept her tone raised to be heard over the din. “Are you saying governing isn’t a matter of individual conscience?” As Jess awaited the governor’s answer, she lowered her eyes to avoid the naked pain in Helen Sullivan’s gaze.

  “To answer you simply, Jess,” said Helen, “those who govern must abide by the law. Despite our best efforts, humans sometimes make mistakes in its application. That is what I would change if I could.”

  Helen glanced tow
ard Agent Temple, perhaps concerned about the rising volume of the protesters, before she continued. “But the law is all we have to separate us from the criminals. I intend to enforce the law of the State of Florida as long as I have the job. That’s exactly what I have done and will do until my term ends next week. I have to. It’s who I am: a woman who does the job she’s elected to do, whether she likes it or not. In the end, that’s all I have to offer.”

  Governor Sullivan’s last words were almost lost in the deafening explosion that seemed to shake the entire room. As the floor vibrated, the walls moved, and a heavy picture fell onto the floor, breaking its frame and glass into pieces.

  Agent Temple rushed toward Sullivan, simultaneously pulling out his service weapon. He grabbed the Governor’s arm and almost lifted her from the chair, pushing her in front of him toward her inner chamber. He opened the door, pushed her into the room, and swept inside behind her.

  Jess squeezed the arms of her chair until it stopped rocking, then she knelt on the floor next to Mike, her photographer. He’d fallen and the skin over his eye was bleeding where the camera’s viewfinder had struck him during the explosion. A rivulet of blood trickled down the right side of his face.

  In the deafening quiet, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” he said. He wiped the blood off with his hand, glanced at it, then looked around the room at the chaos. “But what the hell was that?”

  2

  Tallahassee, Florida

  Thursday 4:45 p.m.

  Jess hunkered down a few moments longer in case more explosions followed the first. An unnatural quiet still enveloped the room; Governor Sullivan and Frank Temple were nowhere to be seen. When no security or other personnel arrived Jess wondered why not but she didn’t know what had happened or what the protocol was for handling the situation.

  She looked over at Mike. Despite the bloody cut, her young photographer didn’t seem to be in shock. No vomiting, trembling or obvious sweating.

  “Nothing broken, right?” she asked.

  Mike patted himself down, checking for shattered bones. If he had any fractures, he wouldn’t have to look so hard to find them, she knew, but she waited patiently while he ensured that he remained in one piece. Under different circumstances, she might have laughed. Just now it wasn’t funny.

  “Nope. I’m good to go.” His words were full of bravado, but his tone was shaky. Mike was a newbie, maybe a year or two out of school. She guessed he was some staffer’s kid brother or something. She’d known he was just a beginner when she brought him out for this interview, but she hadn’t expected to need a more experienced photographer for a glossy-magazine assignment like this.

  She reached down to help Mike stand. “Come on. This is the fastest way out.”

  She opened the door to the secretary’s office and trotted quickly into the hallway, then the foyer, and finally to the front entrance of the building and out the door of the Governor’s Mansion. Mike’s heavy footfalls pounded behind her until she stopped abruptly and he bumped into her back.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  Mike raised his camera to his injured right eye and began to video the chaos around them. The Capitol Police had begun to take control of the scene and more law enforcement personnel poured from the building.

  The Greek Revival style mansion was intact, its six tall Corinthian columns remained upright, majestically guarding the front entrance to the Governor’s residence. But the red brick pillars at the gate leading from the park across the street and the black wrought iron fencing separating the park from the building’s lawn had been demolished. Twisted ironwork and broken bricks had fallen everywhere.

  The bronze sculpture of five children and a dog playing follow-the-leader had blown apart. Pieces of the sculpture rested entwined with sections of a white truck which lay in the midst of fire licking the live oak trees clean of their Spanish moss, leaves, and bark. The noxious smoke burned Jess’s nose; she raised her arm and breathed through her sweater.

  Sirens grew louder as the fire trucks and other emergency vehicles arrived. In vain, Jess scanned the scene for David Manson. Several injured protesters lay around the wreckage at the center of the park. She ran to the first victim and did her best to render first aid until the paramedics took over.

  Within thirty minutes, reporters were everywhere, holding microphones, running cameras and Florida television news programs had video of the explosion on the air. Jess stood near the young NBC television reporter, listening to the story as he’d gathered it thus far.

  The pick-up truck was a white Ford 150. Based on almost nothing Jess could discern, the reporter said its bed had been filled with an explosive mixture of fertilizer and nitro methane using a recipe easily available on the Internet. The driver was photographed attempting to bail out of the front seat at the last minute. Maybe he’d miscalculated the instability of his two-minute fuse. When the bomb exploded prematurely, he was ripped in half; the left half of his body landed on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion and was buried in rubble from the destroyed entrance pillars while the right half roasted in the fire.

  The NBC reporter identified for viewers the owner of the truck: a father of four, name was withheld pending notification of the family.

  “Why on earth would a father of four children do something like this?” Jess muttered aloud. She was startled to hear her words repeated verbatim by the young reporter, who signed off with the question, handing the story back to the anchors in the studio.

  Jess approached the reporter with her hand extended, presenting a business card. He took the card, glanced down to read it, then back at Jess. He pushed the card into his shirt pocket and extended his hand. “Hayden Smith. Good to meet you. I’m a fan of your work.”

  Fan or not, Jess appreciated his attempt to establish a friendly rapport. She still felt jarred by the explosion. The surreal scene before her was almost like watching a movie with uniformed personnel pouring on from an unseen troop transport.

  “Thanks. Could you let me know the driver’s name?”

  He glanced down at his notes. “Unconfirmed. But the truck belonged to the driver, we think. My news desk says it was a guy named Arnold Ward.”

  Jess gasped involuntarily.

  “You know who he was?”

  “No,” she lied, thinking, Vivian will be devastated. Major details ran quickly through her mind. Arnold Ward was the father of two of Tommy Taylor’s victims. Murders three and four. The boys had been eight and ten when Taylor abducted, tortured, and killed them. He was never tried for those murders because the small-town police from Dentonville, a crossroads hamlet near Ocala where the Wards lived, had made a number of errors collecting the evidence against Taylor. The prosecutor had decided not to take the cases to trial because all of the evidence that would have convicted Taylor was excluded. A much younger Helen Sullivan had been a junior member of the prosecutor’s team then, too, Jess remembered, a connection not mentioned during their aborted interview.

  Arnold Ward had made it his life’s mission to secure Tommy Taylor’s execution. Jess had met and interviewed him and his wife Vivian several times in the past four months as she worked on the Tommy Taylor story. Of course, a father of two murdered sons could be driven to a desperate act like this, aimed perhaps at David Manson and those who sought to save Taylor from his appointment with lethal injection.

  But Jess had found Arnold to be a reasonable man, driven to ensure justice for his sons, but not crazy. At least, he hadn’t appeared so when she’d seen him last. But his actions here seemed those of a man driven insane by rage.

  “How many people died today?” Jess asked Hayden.

  “It looks like the driver, Ward if it was him, is the only fatality. They’re telling us they’ve got about ten folks injured, but no report on their condition from the hospital yet.”

  “Thank god. What about David Manson?”

  Hayden lowered his eyes and consulted his notes, as if he didn’t k
now who Manson was or why she’d bring up his name. Jess recognized the stalling tactic. She’d used it herself many times.

  “He’s not on the injured list,” Hayden finally offered.

  Jess took that to mean that Hayden knew where Manson was and most likely he was somewhere being interviewed right now, either by the authorities or, more likely, for a news story.

  “Are you willing to give us a few moments of interview time yourself?” Hayden asked, signaling for his cameraman. “Analysis, maybe? You covered this story from the start.”

  “Maybe in a couple of days, when we know a bit more about what’s going on here. None of this makes any sense to me.”

  “Amen, sister,” Hayden said, dismissing his photographer with a shake of his head.

  “Thanks for understanding. I’ll call you if I have a comment I can make.”

  “Works for me. I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Do that.” She turned to find Mike, then stepped back with one more question of her own. “How long will it take to notify the family?”

  Jess wondered how the authorities would investigate the explosion. Law enforcement had already mobilized, but Jess needed to make sense of the situation for herself and Vivian Ward was the place to start.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost full dark now. If she drove like a maniac, she could make it before the time Vivian’s shift at the local diner normally began. Vivian had already suffered enough heartache in her life. Families of violent crime victims, and particularly those whose children have been murdered, often suffered serious, long-term psychological problems. The moment they first learned of the death typically became their own traumatic experience, often relived over and over.

  Jess wanted to spare Vivian that extra harm if she could. She could break the news more gently than a stranger would, and while doing so maybe find out what had driven Arnold to this inexplicable madness. She and Vivian had developed a strong rapport previously. Then again, that was before her husband blew himself up.