Chapter 59
I SAT THERE very confused. Breathing slowly, trying to calm myself, I looked everywhere on my desk except the screen. I perused the snazzy gold embossing on a leather-bound copy of McKinney’s New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, smiled at the framed picture of Emma and me on our Vermont ski trip last January. For a little while, I even watched the minute hand of my gag lawyer’s desk clock that broke every hour down into ten six-minute increments, the same way we fun-loving corporate party animals billed our clients.
Then I looked back at the computer screen and winced.
Justin Harris was still there. Nothing had changed in the slightest. He was still black.
Which didn’t compute. Harris was definitely not the man who’d tried to kill me the night I hightailed it out of Key West. The terrifying, muscled wacko who’d put a gun up my nose was definitely Caucasian, or a mixture of Asian American and white.
Staring at the goateed black man, I came up with the most probable scenario. The one that the Mission Exonerate people kept on harping about: The Florida authorities had convicted and were about to execute an innocent man.
With a queasy feeling in my stomach, I clicked on the link for the most recent Miami Herald article. After I read its first paragraph, I kicked back my rolling office chair and clicked my forehead onto the varnished edge of my desk.
The execution was going to take place on April 29? Which was next Friday! Justin Harris was going to die in nine days.
Unless I did something about it.
I spent some time staring down at the industrial Berber carpet between my pumps as I took it in. Then I began to moan.
I was the only person who could.
I would have to come forward. It wasn’t fair. I’d spent so many hard years keeping the lid shut on the can of worms I called my life. Coming forward would mean exposing every one of my dirty little secrets once and for all, up to and including my part in Ramón Peña’s death.
I’d lose my job, everything I’d struggled and scraped for.
And what about Emma? Her life would be flattened. Good-bye, dream MOMA internship. Good-bye, Brown. Not to mention: Good-bye, her trust in me. How was that going to work?
That’s when I made the mistake of peeking back up at the screen. Justin Harris’s sad, deer-in-the-headlights gaze seemed to look directly into my soul.
It wasn’t a choice. A man’s life was at stake. I would have to come clean.
Chapter 60
THEY SAY that a lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client.
That described me to a tee.
For the next hour, I used my astute legal mind to go over my current situation. I started off by compiling a detailed damage assessment on a legal pad. I began scratching down notes under happy headings like “Friends I’d Lose” (pretty much all of them). “Likely Legal Ramifications” (firm would fire me and I’d lose my license to practice law). Then I wrote, “Statute of Limitations for Manslaughter”(?) and “Emma” (in family services?).
I had my reading glasses on the edge of my nose and was flipping through my trusty McKinney’s when I suddenly pushed the glasses up on my forehead and slammed the law book shut.
Because there was actually another option.
It was nuts. Absolutely insane. Not to mention an outrageously long shot. Of course it was. Insanity and long shots went together in my life like Ben and Jerry.
What if I did switch cases with my friend Mary Ann? I thought. What if I took Harris’s case?
I could stay on top of it. Maybe I could even figure out a way to free Harris without dismantling my life and especially Emma’s. Harris didn’t do it, right? I knew that. Therefore, there had to be something in his case, some overlooked detail, that proved it. It was just a matter of finding it and bringing it before the court.
“Down in Key West” came a tiny dissenting voice.
Right. I knew there was a rub. I’d have to consult with Harris’s lawyer, who lived in the last place I wanted to go.
Just the thought of setting foot in that beautiful, dangerous place again made me want to swallow a handful of Xanax.
I sat there for a little while on the horns of my dilemma.
Choice A: finally face up to my buried past.
Choice B: lie my ass off and try to continue the con that was my life.
It was no choice at all.
I’d have to figure it out, I decided. Key West was a big town. Sort of. I could just lie low. Maybe Peter wasn’t even living in the area after seventeen years.
I lifted my cell phone. It felt like it suddenly weighed twenty pounds. I spun down to Mary Ann’s number before I could change my mind.
“What?” Mary Ann said sharply.
“I’ve been thinking. Let’s trade cases,” I said.
“For real?” she said ecstatically now. “Are you sure?”
I wasn’t sure of anything, but I had to do it anyway.
“Say yes before I change my mind,” I said.
“Yes,” Mary Ann said. “See? I knew you were a good friend. I’ll help Emma with her SAT, whatever you need, I promise. Just remember, no backsies.”
“No backsies,” I agreed, biting the inside of my cheek.
Chapter 61
AS I DID WITH each of my long-shot plans, I arranged my newest one with gusto.
By the next morning, I’d managed to nail down everything. The flight to Key West, the hotel, the car to the airport. Emma was happily surprised to find out she’d be spending the next week at her best friend Gabby’s town house in Brooklyn. The only thing left to do was swing by my office on the way to Kennedy to pick up Harris’s case file, which Mary Ann had messengered over.
Then all I had left to do was try not to get killed by Peter as I saved a man from execution.
In a week’s time.
“Piece of cake,” I mumbled as I rolled my bag into the kitchen.
Em was listening to her iPod and drumming a pencil against her open trig book in front of a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. I stole a spoonful as I e-mailed Harris’s lawyer, a man named Charles Baylor, to tell him I was coming down.
I winced when I turned on the kitchen laptop and opened Internet Explorer. In “History,” I found searches for “Bloom Family” and even “County Wicklow,” the place I’d said Emma’s fictional dad was from.
Great! Another headache. What timing. As if my in-box weren’t currently full of disaster. The tape I’d made before Emma’s party had only whetted her appetite for more, I realized. More juggling. I was getting it from all sides at once. Leave my secret identity alone! I felt like yelling.
“Mom, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Emma said, taking back the spoon. “Why don’t I look more like my dad?”
That was one of my biggest worries. That Emma might notice that Aidan Beck was fair instead of black Irish like Peter.
“I have no idea,” I said cheerfully, making it up as I went along. “I do know you have his good nature and his laugh.”
Emma, no dummy, frowned at my utter bullshit. “Why do I get the feeling that you don’t want me to find out about him?” she said.
I had to struggle to keep from pulling my hair out. “Do I give you that impression?” I said.
“Whatev,” Emma mumbled, fat tears suddenly springing into her big blue eyes.
I knew that Em was just being a sixteen-year-old girl, a ball of hormone-charged emotion. But I couldn’t let her do this. I couldn’t afford it, and neither could she. What the heck was I supposed to say? Sorry to have to tell you this, kid, but your dad’s a psychopathic killer, and I’m a pathological liar?