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.