“Which is exactly what he said happened when she came in to volunteer that morning before she went missing. He claimed after he went off shift that day, he was with another woman, his fiancée, the whole day at the Miami Seaquarium. But when police questioned his alibi, the fiancée completely denied it.”
“Crap,” I said.
“On a pointy stick,” he said. “That’s why my white-shoe firm handed the case to me when his first lawyer was disbarred for bilking his real estate clients. See, like you, I was once moronic enough to believe in Harris, too. Enough at least to take it to trial.”
“What happened in court?”
“It came down to the jury not buying that a poor black prison guard could possibly have consensual sex with an angelic white college student who volunteered there. Foster’s mother sat in the front row, and she cringed and cried whenever the notion of her daughter and Harris being together came up. The jury wasn’t too hot on the idea either. Slam dunk. Capital murder.”
Charlie yawned and licked some custard off his finger.
“I left my firm a year later. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, I guess. So there you have it. In a nutshell. Trying to dig Harris out of his hole cost me pretty much everything. How you figure you’re going to get it done in a week?”
“I don’t know,” I said standing, “but I’m going to do something that maybe you haven’t thought of this year.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Charlie said, sitting up.
“I’m going to fucking try,” I said.
Chapter 75
IT WAS FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON by the time my chartered plane brought me up to Raiford, where Harris was being held on death row.
Raiford, in North Florida near Jacksonville, was about as far from Key West as you can get without leaving the state. Charlie had suggested to Harris that a local attorney might be more practical, but Harris had refused to get someone else.
It was Charlie or no one, Harris had said. Which made me wonder about Harris’s judgment.
I passed a small group of young protesters sitting on cars parked in the brown grass across from the maximum security prison. A waiflike teen in a vintage flowered dress waved a sign at me that said, DOWN WITH THE DEATH PENALTY. FREE JUSTIN HARRIS!
“Doing my best,” I mumbled as I approached the razor-wire fence of the prison parking lot.
With its king palms, hedged grounds, and whitewashed mission architecture, the entrance of Raiford looked more like a nineteenth-century resort than a prison.
But I nearly forgot that impression forever the moment I stepped inside and took in the stark concrete-and-steel interior decoration. I was buzzed in and felt as much as heard the clack as a door bolt shot home behind my back. It was the first time I’d ever been inside a prison. Movies didn’t do justice to the demoralizing horror.
From somewhere and everywhere came indeterminate shouts, overly loud televisions, flushing toilets, steel on steel.
I thought about that night on the beach so long ago. About Ramón Peña. About the fate I’d dodged.
Or had I? I wondered. Every time I thought I’d gotten away from it, it seemed to pop up again, like a will-o’-the-wisp in reverse.
After being admitted and having my bag searched, I was escorted by a mute, broad-backed Hispanic guard down a bleak cement hallway. I had to wait twenty minutes before Justin Harris hobbled into the death row visitor area in wrist-to-leg shackles. The guard with him actually cuffed him, like a wild beast, to a raised iron ring in the floor beside the table.
And the guard didn’t go far. He stood watching us intently from the other side of a large wired-glass window.
I looked at Justin Harris for the first time. He was heavier than his Fox News picture. He was a big man, gone to fat, his massive shoulders and arms and chest crumpled toward the floor as if something at his center had caved in. He sat there breathing raspily as he stared at me blankly. I noticed a raised, bluish bump on his cropped head.
“Where’s Charlie?” he finally said. “I thought they said my lawyer was here.”
“I’m Nina Bloom. I work at a law firm in New York, and I was assigned to help out Charlie on your case. What happened to your head?”
“This?” he said, pointing at the bruise with a goofy grin. “I bumped it water-skiing.”
I let out a breath as I held eye contact with him. He had a week to live, and he was being a wiseass? Was Harris actually nuts? I wondered.
“I know you didn’t do this, Justin,” I said quietly. “I’m here to help.”
Anger flashed in Harris’s suddenly wide eyes. His chains jingled as he sat up. “Oh, really. How do you know I didn’t do it? Because I’m black, and you voted for Obama? Listen, I fought for this country with honor with the Army Rangers in the first Iraq War, and now they’re closing down Gitmo. Maybe you and your ACLU pals should skip me and try springing a terrorist.”
“I know you believe in this country, Justin,” I said even quieter now, as I took his medal out of my bag.
“Who gave you that?” he said, outraged.
“Your mother. I’m here for her as well as you.”
He stared at the medal. He took a breath, held it. He shook his head, quickly closing his eyelids before a tear could escape.
“They executed Ted Bundy here. Did you know that?” he said matter-of-factly. “The electric chair is down the hall. They said there’s a new portable one I could choose if I want. Or I can go the needle route. Problem is, they botched one a few years back when they missed the vein. Left foot-long chemical burns up both of the guy’s arms.”
“I’m going to get you out of here, Justin,” I said.
He huffed out a breath, then looked at me for a long beat. Finally, he smiled at me. A genuine smile for the first time. He had straight teeth, dimples. For a split second, I saw the resemblance to the young, grinning drum major on the Carnegie Hall stage.
“I’m sorry about the Obama crack. I didn’t mean it,” he said, squeezing his hands together as if in prayer. “I understand what you’re trying to do, Miss Bloom. I admire it. Trying to help out desperate people is a nice thing. You really seem like a nice person, and I thank you for believing in me. But the governor of Florida isn’t going to grant me a stay. I got myself into this mess, and I’m resigned to suffer the consequences. I lived my life. It didn’t turn out so hot. Now it’s going to end.”
“Look at me,” I said passionately. “I’m not talking about a stay. I’m going to get you out of here, Justin. I know your DNA was from consensual sex with Tara Foster and that your fiancée lied about you. I’m going to straighten the whole thing out. Can you remember anything at all that can prove your alibi?”
“It’s been really nice talking to you, Nina, but I need to get back to my reading now,” Justin said, knocking on the wired glass.
As the guard was taking him away, Justin turned back. “Wait, there actually is one thing,” he said.
“What? What is it?” I said, sitting up.
“If you hear from my mom, tell her I love her, and that I’m OK, and that I don’t want to see her at the execution, OK?”
I nodded and let out a breath as I watched Justin be led away.
Chapter 76
CHARLIE WAS ON THE FRONT PORCH of his Key West bungalow, playing an electric steel guitar, when I arrived at his house at around nine on Saturday morning. He actually had an amplifier and everything. His eyes were closed as he maneuvered the glass slide over the strings, really getting into the jangling blues tune he was playing.
He opened his bloodshot eyes immediately when I stormed up the stairs and yanked the amplifier’s plug.
“I see that writing isn’t the only occupation that you share with Papa Hemingway,” I said as I kicked the half-empty box of Heineken keg cans between his feet. Had he been drinking all night? Or just all morning?
“How’s Justin? Still as optimistic as ever?” Charlie said, finally looking up at me after a slow sip of breakfast beer. “Did you know the
Today show called me to see if I wanted to go on and plead Justin’s case? I asked Justin, and he went crazy. He wouldn’t let me do it. He doesn’t want to be defended. He’s sick of living in prison, sick of living, period. How do I fight for the life of a man who so obviously wants to die?”
Charlie really was playing the blues, I realized. He looked depressed as well as drunk. It was obvious that Justin wasn’t the only one who was listening to the ticking of a dwindling clock. Charlie was blaming himself for Justin’s fate. He felt that he’d let the man down.
Worst of all, like Justin, he seemed to think the whole thing was over. I had to change that.
“Justin is hopeless, as hopeless as his lawyer,” I said, waving Harris’s thick case file along with the printer sheets from the research I’d done at my hotel the night before. “Which has to change right now. We need to turn this around, Charlie. We need to go over this case with a fine-tooth comb. What about justice?”
Charlie tipped up his can and dropped the empty on the porch floor.
“Ours is a world where justice is accidental and innocence no protection. Someone said that. Euripides? Smart fuck, whoever he was,” Charlie said as he cracked open another beer.
I went over and snatched it out of his hand and threw it off the porch before I sat down next to him.
“Did you know that at the time of Harris’s arrest,” I said, showing him my papers, “the local West Palm news showed his picture and broadcast his perp walk? Several local newspaper editorials called for swift justice before the trial even began. A motion to move the trial upstate to a neutral venue by his first lawyer was dismissed out of hand. You and I both know Harris was ramrodded.”
“I hit on those points at his direct appeal and at the writ of certiorari we sent to the state supreme court, but no sale,” Charlie said. “I was at that trial, sweet peach. I actually held the envelope that had Foster’s underwear and Harris’s DNA. I killed myself on that case. I did everything possible. I brought in the phone-book-sized record of all the men in South Florida who have been in Airborne units to show how circumstantial the state’s evidence was, but they didn’t want to hear it. Harris getting capital punishment is what got me to hang up my briefcase. I’m against the death penalty.”
“But he didn’t do this!” I yelled.
“But so what!” Charlie yelled back.
This was crazy. I’d come down here and risked everything to help out an innocent man, and I was getting resistance from both him and his lawyer.
I struggled to think up a way to inspire Charlie. I needed him on board. I couldn’t do this alone. At least not without revealing the dangerous lie that was my life.
“And maybe he did do it. How do you know? Were you there?” Charlie said.
“I just know,” I said.
“I get it,” the Southern beach bum lawyer said as he began tuning his steel guitar. “You’re a psychic bitchy New York lawyer.”
“Haven’t you ever believed in anything?” I said. “Believed in something not for any reason, but just because you believed in it with every square inch of your body? That’s how I feel about this case.”
Charlie lifted a new can to his lips. He let out a breath before he lowered it. “And if you only believe, then fairies will sparkle magic dust on Justin’s jail cell door and make it disappear,” he said, angrily putting down the guitar. “Fine. You win. I guess you should go in and put on some coffee while I take a look at the old file yet again. Gee, this is going to be fun, dredging up my life’s worst failure for the thousandth time.”
I smiled as I walked past him toward his front door.
“New York City pain in my ass,” he mumbled as he opened the folder I’d brought. “Milk with two sugars, you hear me? And one of those doughnuts and… and I hate you, Nina, whatever the hell your name is.”
“I love you, too, Charlie,” I whispered to myself as I found the kitchen.
Chapter 77
CHARLIE AND I spent the rest of that Saturday working our asses off. On a beat-up leather couch in Charlie’s office, we went over Harris’s trial transcript line by line. Later Charlie, humming, sitting behind his desk, spun a rugby ball as he drank coffee, nodding as he read to himself.
Charlie really had done one hell of a job, I soon realized, as I turned the trial transcript and appeal pages. Pointed out inconsistencies. Objected to every cheap emotional trick the DA tried to pull. But the cards were stacked against Harris. The judge, more than the DA, seemed to want to convict Harris.
The worst of it was the excessive victim-impact testimony the judge had allowed during the sentencing portion of Harris’s trial. A total of sixteen family members, friends, and classmates gave over three hours’ worth of sobbing, heart-wrenching, emotional testimony as to the damage done by the loss of Foster. No wonder the jury had voted unanimously for the death penalty.
By the afternoon, we’d both pretty much gone over everything. We even got down on the Oriental carpet and arranged Foster’s original 1994 homicide case file, compiled when her body was originally found, beside the 2001 file, begun when the case was reopened.
I stood there, rubbing my eyes. All the photos, evidence lists, time lines, alibis, and lab reports seemed like one giant postmodern art installation. One that was making my brain ache as I tried to make heads or tails of it.
I knew I needed to try everything to come up with a way to clear Harris, but after a while, even I was starting to lose hope. I yawned, fighting exhaustion. We needed something. Anything.
“Look at this girl, would you?” Charlie said, sadly shaking his head as he waved his hand over the list of Jump Killer victims. It felt like I’d just had a shot of espresso when I realized he was pointing at my picture.
“What a beautiful young woman,” he said, suddenly looking at me. “She remind you of anyone?”
I stared back at him, wide-eyed.
He snapped his fingers. “Renée Zellweger,” he said. “A young Renée Zellweger.”
Renée Zellweger? I thought, relieved but suddenly frowning. Renée was OK, but how about a young Gisele Bündchen?
I jumped back as Charlie suddenly threw the rugby ball against the wall, almost knocking down his Harvard diploma.
“I got it!” he said, pacing back and forth. “I could slap myself. How could I be so stupid? Why the hell didn’t I see this before?”
“What? What?” I said, standing.
“The hairs. Where the hell are the hairs?”
“What are you talking about, Charlie?”
Charlie knelt down and pointed to the evidence list from the 1994 file.
“Right here. Look. There were three hairs found on Foster’s body underneath the paracord ligature she was bound with,” he said, pointing at the original file.
“But here,” he said, indicating the 2001 lab report, “there’s no mention of them. They test the semen found on the girl’s panties, but not the hairs. Why not?”
“They forgot?” I offered.
“Maybe,” Charlie said as he lifted his phone. “Or maybe they tested them and then deep-sixed the results when they came up inconclusive. Maybe the cops and DA conveniently left out the lab report when it didn’t match.”
“Who are you calling?” I said.
“The airport,” Charlie said. “We need to be on the first flight up to Boca tomorrow morning to get our hands on those hair samples in the old case file. We need to have them tested. Maybe you should head back to your hotel and get some rest. I know I need some. The cops up in Boca are a real pain in the butt. We’re going to need to kick ass. Speaking of ass-kicking, I want to thank you for kicking mine.”
“Anytime,” I said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Chapter 78
I HARDLY RECOGNIZED CHARLIE when he picked me up in an airport taxi wearing a crisp blue serge suit.
“You own shoes? Wingtips? I’m in shock,” I said.
“I shaved and even took a shower,” he said as he lifted his bulging briefcas
e. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll categorically deny it.”
Our plane was on time, and so were we when we arrived at ten sharp at the Boca Raton PD station, about 150 miles to the north. We had an appointment to meet with the detectives who originally arrested Justin Harris, but we had to sit in the department’s lobby for the better part of an hour before Person Crimes Unit Detectives Roberta Cantele and Brian Cogle buzzed us in.
Instead of going back to their office area, we were seated in an interview room by the front door, as if we were suspects.
“What’s this about?” Cogle, a tall detective with a white goatee and a huge gut under his Cuban shirt, wanted to know.
“Didn’t the DA tell you?” Charlie said. “We need to take a look at Tara Foster’s original case file. The evidence envelopes, the whole nine.”
“Why?” Cantele said.
“Because Justin Harris is about to be executed in five days, and we want to make sure it isn’t a mistake,” Charlie said.
“You goddamn defense liars, uh, I mean lawyers, never quit, do you?” Cogle said. “Are you aware that one of Harris’s victims was the wife of Peter Fournier, Key West’s chief of police? She was, like, twenty years old. That doesn’t chill you?”
Peter was the police chief now? I tried not to pass out. That was unbelievable. Not to mention terrifying. As if I didn’t feel paranoid enough coming down here.
“I know Fournier,” Charlie said. “My taxes pay his salary, unfortunately. I saw his dumb ass on the Today show on Thursday spouting all his victims’ rights, fry Justin, Jump Killer crap to Al Roker. I have no doubt his wife was killed by the Jump Killer. The problem is, and I know it’s a hard one for you guys to follow, Justin Harris isn’t the Jump Killer.”
It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
Now You See Her Page 15
