Now You See Her

by James Patterson

  Not all of my secrets, I reminded myself. I had yet to mention Ramón Peña, but I guess it was a start.

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Charlie,” I said. “For me, for my daughter. I’ve been holding this inside for so long. I’ve never told anyone. I’m so sorry I lied to you.”

  Charlie lifted the phone. “I should have known you were trouble the second you crushed your doughnuts in my door, Nina. Or do I have to call you Jeanine now? Never mind. What’s the number for your hotel? That bathrobe is probably too casual even by Miami standards. If we’re still going to go up there to find Justin’s ex-fiancée, I have a funny feeling you’re going to need your bags.”

  Chapter 91

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Charlie and I were in Miami. It was around nine when we rolled up in front of the address Fabiana’s cousin gave us, a tiny stucco house in the northeast Miami neighborhood known as Little Haiti.

  I looked anxiously down the block at the bars on all the neighboring windows, the chain-linked front yards cluttered with garbage and barking dogs. Loud Caribbean hip-hop blasted as a bunch of muscular kids in gangbanger do-rags sat on a battered gray leather sectional on the corner, giving new meaning to the word loitering.

  “Wait in the car,” Charlie said, opening his door. “With the doors locked.”

  “No way,” I said, following him out. “You’re not leaving me out here.”

  We hurried up the cracked concrete path to Fabiana’s tiny house and rang her doorbell.

  “Fabiana!” Charlie called, giving the door a couple of quick pounds for good measure.

  A minute later, one of the larger corner “kids” rolled past on a BMX trick bike, alternately sizing us up and glancing at our rental.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anyone home,” I said quickly as the kid rolled back toward his posse. “Why don’t we check for Fabiana at her mom’s restaurant?”

  “That’s funny. I was just thinking the same thing,” Charlie said as we raced each other back to the car.

  After Little Haiti, Fabiana’s mother’s restaurant, the Rooster’s Perch, was a happy surprise. It was half an hour away in South Beach, a block west of the trendy art deco hotels of Ocean Drive and the beach. Behind the eatery’s battered wooden sidewalk tables, a wall mural depicted cattle and chickens under palm trees, smiling black kids in plaid school uniforms, dark women in colorful dresses carrying wash.

  “We do not open until lunch,” said a very dark old woman who was cutting open a bundle of tablecloths at the bar just inside the door when we walked in. She wore an expensive cream-colored dress, pearls, and a suspicious, sullen expression.

  “Let me guess. You’re Isabelle,” Charlie said.

  “Who are you? How do you know my name? What do you want here?” the woman said, her eyes gleaming as she came immediately around the bar.

  Now I understood what the trailer park manager meant when he compared her to his paper cobra.

  “We’re here to speak with Fabiana,” Charlie said.

  “There is no one here by that name,” the old woman said, pointing at the door with her knife. “Leave, I tell you. Now.”

  “It’s OK, Mama,” said a younger black woman in an apron who suddenly appeared in the swinging kitchen doorway.

  Charlie and I looked at each other in happy surprise.

  “It is not OK!” Isabelle insisted as she turned.

  The younger woman barked something in French. The old woman’s eyes went wide before she reluctantly stepped out of our way.

  “I am Fabiana Desmarais,” the young woman finally said as she waved us into the kitchen. “How can I help you?”

  Chapter 92

  FABIANA WAS PETITE with very light blue eyes and cinnamon-colored skin. Though she was almost in her fifties, she looked maybe half that. She wore a simple, wide-necked peasant blouse with a fuchsia cotton skirt that seemed much cheaper than her mother’s.

  Behind her, several quartered chickens sat on a cutting board beside a pile of Scotch bonnet peppers. From an industrial-sized bubbling pot on the stove came the strong but comforting smell of chicken broth. Immediately hungry, I had to resist the urge to ask for a bowl.

  “Hi, Fabiana. I’m Nina, and this is Charlie,” I said, taking the lead. “We’re really sorry to bother you, but we’re here about Justin Harris.”

  A look of fear wafted through Fabiana’s blue eyes. Her mouth opened in a tiny O. “What about him?” she said, collecting herself after a moment.

  “You mean you don’t know?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Know what?” she said.

  “Justin Harris is going to be executed, Fabiana,” Charlie said. “In two days, he’s going to receive the death penalty for killing that girl, Tara Foster.”

  Fabiana pinched her chin as she stared wide-eyed at the tiled floor. “Are you from the police?” she said.

  “No, we’re here to help Justin,” I said. “We’re his lawyers. We want to save him. But we need everyone to tell the truth once and for all so that he will not have to pay for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Fabiana walked over to a stainless-steel counter where a large mortar and pestle sat. “I loved Justin,” she said as she began violently grinding a pile of spices. “He was a good man, always a gentleman. He had a car. He would take me everywhere. I never knew that the world could be so wonderful. He said he was going to marry me. He said he was going to take me away from Mama.

  “Then the police said that he had done a bad thing with that white woman. That he had done nasty things to her at his job. He lied. He was no gentleman. Mama was right. I could never love such a man.”

  “But he was with you on the day the girl was abducted, Fabiana. We know that he was. You went to the Miami Seaquarium together.”

  “That never happened,” she said as she dropped the pestle. “On that day, I was with my church group. Mama will tell you. Justin was mistaken. I must get back to work.”

  “Wait,” I said, grabbing her wrist. “What Justin did with Tara Foster was wrong. To treat you in such a manner was unconscionable. But he shouldn’t have to die for it. If he was with you on that day, then everyone needs to know. Or you’ll be the one who is responsible for his death.”

  Fabiana shook her head. “I have nothing more to say. You must leave now. I must get back to work.”

  “Yes,” Queen Isabelle said, coming through the swinging door. “Leave now.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said, putting his hand into his jacket pocket. “You know the South Beach Marriott?”

  “The hotel around the corner?” Fabiana said, puzzled. “Yes. What about it?”

  Charlie handed her his card with a room number scrawled on the back. “Well, we’re going to be there for the next two days. If you want to come by, you can watch the coverage of your ex-boyfriend’s execution with us.”

  “But you said you were his lawyers. Won’t you be there to help him?” Fabiana said, confused.

  “It’s out of our hands, Fabiana. You’re the only one who can help Justin now,” Charlie said as we left.

  Chapter 93

  “ROOM SERVICE?” Charlie said into our phone at the Marriott ten minutes later. “Please send up two turkey clubs and a pitcher of—”

  I kicked Charlie in the back of the knee with my pump.

  “Um, lemonade,” he finished, hanging up.

  I dropped my laptop and briefcase in a heap by the couch. I walked across the suite and drew the drapes. Reeling with disappointment and exhaustion, I shook my head at the too bright Florida sky, the too bright glittering ocean.

  My return to Florida wasn’t going as I had hoped. I’d wanted to avoid Peter, but I failed. I was continuing to lie to someone I was starting to have feelings for. And now, after we’d finally found Fabiana, she was refusing to help Justin. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. What the hell were we going to do now?

  Behind me, Charlie kicked off his shoes and lay down on the couch.

  “Do you thi
nk Fabiana will take the bait?” I said.

  “Do I know?” Charlie said, closing his eyes. “Depends on how much she hates Justin, I guess. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right? It’s looking like Justin must have scorned the living crap out of Miss Desmarais. Is it actually possible for a woman to hate a man to death?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said grimly. “How long do we wait?”

  Charlie let out a tired breath. “Two, three hours at the most,” he said. “If she doesn’t show, then we won’t have any other choice. We’ll have to go with Plan B.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “We still go up to meet with the clemency board in Tallahassee, but instead of Fabiana recanting her testimony, you’re going to have to tell the board your bizarre life story instead. It’s gonna suck, and it probably won’t even work, but it’s like you said. Other than that, we don’t have a damn thing.”

  I pieced through that excruciating scenario. I’d had trouble enough telling my secrets to Charlie. How exactly was I going to give them up to the governor of Florida?

  A long hour later, after my third game of solitaire, I was heading out onto the balcony to give Emma a call when there was a soft knock on the door.

  “Lunch. Finally,” Charlie mumbled from where he lay dozing on the couch.

  “No, please don’t get up. I got it, really,” I snapped as I crossed to the door.

  My mood definitely lifted when I opened it.

  It wasn’t room service.

  I stepped back and let Fabiana in.

  Chapter 94

  “THANK YOU SO MUCH for coming, Fabiana,” I said. “I promise that when you testify that—”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not testifying. I came to give you this,” she said, taking a sheet of newspaper out of her pocket.

  I unfolded it. It was a yellowed page of classified ads from the Miami Herald. I held my breath after I spotted the date in the corner. It was from June 19, 1993. From reading and rereading the case and trial transcripts, I knew that was the day after Tara Foster had been abducted.

  “What is this, Fabiana?” I said, quickly scanning the classifieds.

  Fabiana took it out of my hand and turned it over. My eyes fell immediately to the photograph at the bottom. A group of people were sitting in some stands by a pool with a woman in a wet suit and some dolphins.

  “Floridians beat yesterday’s heat at the Miami Seaquarium,” said the caption.

  “Justin and I are in the picture,” Fabiana said. “Right there in the front row. You were right. I lied.”

  I peered at the photograph more closely. It was true. You could just make out Justin and Fabiana sitting in the front row.

  “Charlie!” I yelled, handing him the page. “You’re not going to believe this. Look!”

  He took the newspaper page out of my hands, looked at the picture, looked at the date.

  “Yes!” he said with a triumphant grin. “Finally, a break!”

  “All you need to do is show this to the authorities, and my lie will be exposed,” Fabiana said. “Then they can set Justin free, yes?”

  “Actually, well, no, Fabiana,” Charlie said. “It’s not that simple. This is extremely helpful, but you need to come to Tallahassee with us and bring this forward yourself. You’ll have to give your testimony as well.”

  “I’m absolutely not willing to do that,” Fabiana said coldly.

  “Why not?” Charlie said.

  “Nina?” Fabiana said, looking at me. “Can I speak to you alone?”

  I eyeballed Charlie to get going.

  “Fine. I’ll be out in the hall, I guess.”

  “Don’t judge me,” Fabiana said after Charlie left.

  I shook my head. “Of course not, Fabiana.”

  “Seventeen years ago, Justin made me pregnant. He told me that he couldn’t afford a baby and a wife, but that if I… got rid of the baby, he would eventually marry me. He even bought me a ring. So I agreed. I didn’t want to kill my baby, but in the end I decided I didn’t want to lose Justin more. It was three months later that I found out through a friend that he was cheating on me. Not with just one woman, but with several.”

  Ouch, I thought. Justin really had scorned the living crap out of her.

  “When the detective told me years later that Justin had admitted to having sex with Tara Foster in the prison, it brought back all that horror and hatred and pain. So I lied. I wanted to hurt Justin as much as he had hurt me. The last thing I want to do now, after all these years, is tell my dirty little story to the whole wide world. You can understand that, can’t you? I’ll probably be in some trouble myself for lying.”

  “That’s true, Fabiana. But there’s no other way. You don’t have to get into specifics about why you lied. All you need to do is explain that you did lie and that Justin was with you the whole day.”

  “Can’t you do it for me?” Fabiana said, closing her eyes.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Fabiana. I know it’ll be painful to testify, but how do you think you’ll feel if you don’t come forward and Justin is executed? Seventeen years is a long time to hold on to your pain. It’s time to let yours go.”

  Fabiana let out a breath. “You’ll be there?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “OK,” she said. “I guess I don’t have a choice. I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 95

  JUST BEFORE DINNER, on the second-to-last day of his life, Justin Harris lay on his cot with a book open in his large hands. It was a cheesy old paperback about a brilliant and bulky detective named Nero Wolfe.

  “News flash, fatso,” Justin mumbled as he tossed the book under his bunk. “In the real world, the killer gets away with it.”

  He sat up immediately as boots squeaked and metal clicked out in front of his death-watch cell adjacent to the execution chamber.

  “Harris, visitor,” the day captain, Johannson, said, opening the gate.

  Visitor? he thought as Johannson cuffed him. Must be that irritating new lady lawyer, he guessed, smoothing his orange jumpsuit.

  The white execution chamber Johannson brought him past could have been a large doctor’s examination room, except for the singular black velvet curtain covering one wall and the leather restraints on the gurney.

  “Oh, yeah, by the way, Harris, since you were a guard, all of us got together and chipped in on a little gift,” Johannson said, showing him a box. “We thought maybe if you got bored, you’d like to see a movie tonight.”

  Harris glanced down at the box. Dead Man Walking. “Nice of you guys,” he said, cheerily refusing to let these bastards or anyone else get to him. “Some of Sean Penn’s best work right there. Too bad I don’t have a DVD player, though.”

  “You won’t need one where you’re going, lowlife,” the guard cooed in his ear.

  “Yeah, you deserve it, you sick freak,” called out Jimmy Litz, one of his neighbors down the row. Litz had dropped a cinderblock off an overpass and then, pretending to help the victim, a twenty-three-year-old Jacksonville housewife, raped and killed her instead.

  “Well, I guess we all can’t live up to your moral standards,” Harris said with a smile.

  Yup, it was the lady lawyer, he told himself as he turned the corner and saw her and Charlie in the visitor room. Then he saw the second woman in the room, and the stone-hard set of his face buckled.

  It was Fabiana. No. Not her, he thought. He could face anything. Tomorrow, even. But not her.

  He turned to Johannson, fighting back his emotions. “Take me back to my cell.”

  He had turned around in the corridor when there was a loud bang behind him.

  It was Fabiana. She was at the wired glass. She bashed it again with her fist. “It’s OK, Justin,” she yelled, with tears in her eyes. “I forgive you. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Please talk to me.”

  Justin turned again and stood there in the corridor, biting his lip as he stared at her. This woman he had hurt
beyond reckoning was saying she was sorry to him?

  Charlie and Nina were grinning from ear to ear.

  “We got news. Good news. You’re going to like this, Justin. I promise,” Charlie called.

  “What’s it going to be, Harris?” Johannson said, annoyed.

  “I guess I got some visiting to do,” Harris finally said.

  Chapter 96

  AT NINE THIRTY the next morning, Charlie, Fabiana, and I arrived, crisp and scrubbed and combed, at the state capitol in Tallahassee.

  The last thing to do was the most important. We needed to deliver Fabiana to our ten o’clock meeting with the executive clemency board.

  All in all, Fabiana seemed nervous but ready. The emotional meeting between her and Justin at the prison the night before had made them both feel better, I thought.

  Maybe confession really was good for the soul. Who knew? Maybe I’d look into it myself at some point.

  We were crossing the street toward the capitol’s plaza when we noticed the commotion. People holding signs were filing off a tour bus. About two dozen people were walking across the manicured capitol grounds or had already taken up position in front of the modern capitol building’s main entrance.

  “What’s this? A tea party?” I said.

  Then I saw the signs.

  MEET YOUR MAKER, JUSTIN HARRIS! one said.

  An attractive brunette in jeans and an American flag T-shirt waved a banner that said, NA, NA, NA, NA. HEY, HEY, GOOD-BYE, JUSTIN!

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Charlie said as a news van pulled in behind the bus. A reporter got out with a beefy guy in a Braves cap and a shoulder cam.

  “Pro– death penalty people are here!?” Fabiana said.

  “Damn it,” I said to Charlie. “That’s all we need. The circus is starting, and it looks like we’re in the center ring.”

  “And that’s not the worst of it, not by a long shot,” Charlie said, pointing toward the bus.