Taken to the Edge (5 page)

The guard seated his prisoner in a chair across the table from them and chained him to it. Jasperson’s gaze was on Robyn—and it was hungry. A surge of protectiveness welled up in Ford, so strong it stole the air out of his lungs.

“Robyn.” Jasperson’s voice was low, cultured. “This is a surprise.”

“Hi, Eldon.” She sounded soft, comforting, full of emotion. “I’ve brought someone to see you—someone who might be able to help.”

Eldon spared a quick, dismissive glance for Ford. “Another lawyer?”

“I’m an investigator with Project Justice. Ford Hyatt.” Ford nodded, since they weren’t allowed to shake hands. “Are you familiar with Project Justice?”

Eldon’s interest ratcheted up a notch. “You’re the folks who get innocent people out of jail.”

“Sometimes.” Ford spent a couple of minutes telling him the basics of how the foundation worked and his role there. “Robyn brought your case to my attention. I’d heard of it, of course. But I hadn’t realized how many unanswered questions remained. The information she provided was compelling enough for me to want to look into it.”

“A little late, isn’t it?”

“We’re often the avenue of last resort. Mr. Jasperson, I’ll get right to the point. I’ve read the police report, and I have strong reason to believe you were not alone the night Justin disappeared.”

Fear and surprise flashed briefly in Eldon’s sullen gray eyes, but he quickly hid his reaction. Not quickly enough, however. Ford knew he was on to something.

“Why would you think something like that? If anyone could back up my story, don’t you think I’d have said something?”

“Why did you order a large, half-and-half pizza?” Ford asked.

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Because I was hungry? Who the hell told you what kind of pizza I ordered? Why would anyone care about such a stupid detail?”

“It was in the police report,” Ford replied. “Police often ask for small details when they’re questioning victims or witnesses—or potential suspects. The details will trip people up.”

“Or help them out,” Robyn said. “Eldon, you ordered a large pizza, half black olives. You
hate
black olives.”

“That’s just not true.” But he swallowed several times. The questions were making him nervous.

Ford continued to push. “Mr. Jasperson, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t tell us who you were with. Whatever your reasons for keeping that secret—surely they don’t matter anymore. You have nothing to lose.”

“I’d like to help, believe me,” Jasperson said politely. “But I was alone.”

Robyn banged one fist on the metal table. “You were cheating on Trina while she was away at a conference,” she said, suddenly harsh. “Why can’t you admit that?”

“Where would you get such a foolish idea?” Jasperson sounded less polite now.

“Because you cheated on me. And I know what it looks like. I watched the video of your interrogation, and I know the look that was on your face. I’ve seen it before—when you’d been with Trina and you were trying to hide it from me.”

He sat up straighter, defiant. “Maybe I looked guilty on that video because I killed our son.”

Ford expected Robyn to flinch at the words, but she came right back at him. “I know damn well you would never have hurt Justin. Tell me who she is.”

Robyn and her ex-husband stared at each other, challenging, until Ford was sure blue sparks would fly between them. But finally Eldon looked away, defeated. “I can’t find her,” he said softly. “I saw no reason to involve her at the beginning. I had no clue things would turn out as they did, not an inkling that I’d be arrested for Justin’s murder. So I said I was alone. Later, when I knew I was in trouble, I couldn’t find her. She’d left town. So I said nothing. Changing my story—with no one to corroborate it—would only make me look like a liar. And a cheating husband on top of that.”

Ford resisted the urge to grin. He really hadn’t been sure Robyn’s hunch would pan out.

“So what’s her name?” Ford asked, pad and pencil ready.

Eldon shook his head. “You won’t find her. She hid her tracks well. Anyway, she wasn’t there when Justin was taken. She was back at my house.”

“But she can verify that Justin was alive at the time you left to get pizza.” Ford was amazed that Jasperson didn’t grasp this. “The prosecution has always maintained the pizza run was a cover story used to stage a phony kidnapping, and that you’d probably killed Justin hours earlier and spent a good amount of time disposing of the body.”

Now both Robyn and Eldon
did
flinch.

“I’m sorry, but there’s no time to worry about delicate sensibilities. Eldon, this woman could clear you.”

“I doubt she’ll talk, even if you do find her.”

“Let me worry about that. What’s her name?”

“You can’t do this!” Eldon roared. “Trina…Trina has been so loyal through all this. I can’t face death knowing I’ve turned her against me.”

“Eldon,” Robyn said. “It’s too late for that. She already knows.”

“She’s okay with it,” Ford added, lying through his teeth. “She understands. She won’t hold it against you, not at this late date. It was a long time ago.”

Eldon shook his head stubbornly.

“You’d rather die than take this chance?” Ford asked.

He didn’t respond.

“We’ll find her without your cooperation,” Ford said with steely determination. “And when we do, I won’t be gentle with her. I’ll feed her name to every sleazy reporter in the country. Her life will be a living hell.”

When Ford had shielded her from the media vultures, she had thought she’d seen a speck of caring there. But she must have been mistaken. The man was a machine.

“Eldon,” Robyn said gently, grasping his attention. “No matter what happens, you won’t die alone. I will be here for you. I still care for you.”

“How could you?” he asked. “After what you’ve been through…”

“You lost a son, too. Maybe you aren’t the most faithful of husbands, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t love your son—or that you should die for someone else’s crime. For the love we had for Justin—for the love we once shared. Help us help you.” A single tear escaped, and she dashed it away. “Tell us the woman’s name. We’ll handle it sensitively.”

Eldon closed his eyes, battling some internal demon. Finally he looked at Robyn, shutting out Ford. “Heather.” He barely whispered the word. “It was Heather.”

“Heather Boone?” Robyn asked, her voice coming out a hoarse accusation. Oh, God. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to say anything.

“Do you understand now?”

Robyn was afraid she did. “How old was she at the time?” She chanced a look at Ford, gauging his reaction. He leaned back in his chair, his face a granite wall. But she noted a faint flicker of displeasure in his eyes. He wasn’t happy with the conversation’s direction.

“She was above the age of consent,” Eldon said.

Ford suddenly sat forward. “Look, would somebody mind telling me who Heather Boone is?”

“She was one of my art students. Someone I took a special interest in. Apparently Eldon did, too,” she added bitterly. “Damn it, Eldon, she was a troubled child. How could you take advantage—”

“I was helping her.”

“By sleeping with her?”

“Time-
out!
” Ford silenced them with his outburst. Robyn looked at him, startled at his show of temper. But there was a time to be sensitive, and a time to play hardball. Ford instinctively knew which strategy to use. “If you want me to move forward with this case, y’all are both gonna have to shut up and listen to me. Eldon, you’re dealing with me now, not your ex-wife. Tell me from start to finish what happened that night. And if I sense any bullshit, I’m walking out of here and never coming back.”

Robyn switched her attention to Eldon, positive he would be the next to explode. Her ex had never tolerated anyone speaking to him in such a manner—which hadn’t boded well for him during police interrogations. But to her surprise, he didn’t strike back. He folded his arms and looked down in a classic posture of submission.

He hardly looked like the man she knew. Or thought she knew. God, he’d had an affair with a teenager. A girl still in high school. Barely legal. Of course, Robyn had been the same age when Eldon had first become interested in her; Trina had barely been out of her teens at the time Robyn discovered that affair.

“I’ll go over the story again,” Eldon said calmly, as if the outburst hadn’t happened. “If you think it will help.”

He started at the beginning, when he had picked up Justin from Robyn’s house and they’d argued about his mother’s interference. His story lined up with her own—possibly because they had both told it so many times that their memories had become identical.

When he got to the part about Heather, he spoke barely above a whisper, so that Ford had to ask him to speak up so the digital recorder could pick up his voice.

They had spent the evening as people having illicit affairs generally did. Then Heather, with a case of the postcoital munchies, had begged Eldon to order pizza. He’d gone to pick it up, he said, because the restaurant didn’t deliver past midnight.

“Why did you take Justin with you?” Ford asked. “Why didn’t you leave him at the house if Heather was there?”

“He woke up just as I was about to leave, crying and cranky. Heather didn’t know anything about taking care of children, and she wasn’t comfortable alone with him. I scooped him up and brought him along because he liked to ride in the car. It usually put him right to sleep, which I thought would be a good thing.”

“And did he fall asleep?” Ford asked, scribbling notes.

“The restaurant was less than ten minutes away. By the time I got there, Justin was out like a light. That was why I left him in the car. I didn’t want to wake him up. I know it was wrong—crazy wrong—but the pizza place was in a nice neighborhood. The parking lot was well lit. I was going to run in, grab the pizza and run back. I was gone less than two minutes.”

“And when you came back?”

He shook his head. “I almost didn’t notice he was gone, at first. The car was dark, and I was anxious to get back home. I turned around to back out and…that’s when I noticed.”

“What did you do?”

“For a minute, I just stared in shock. Your mind goes through all the usual stuff—maybe I was seeing things. Maybe he got out of the seat and moved to a different part of the car. Maybe he wandered off. He’d just recently learned to get himself out of that car seat.

“Or maybe I hadn’t brought him with me—maybe he was at home. I considered everything, including that I might be going crazy. Then I started searching. And calling. I had every employee from the restaurant searching inside and out. And when he didn’t turn up after a few minutes, I called the police.”

Despite everything, Robyn’s heart went out to him. She could see the torture on his face. His lawyer had elected not to put him on the stand during his trial, claiming that it was always a risky move. The D.A. could trip up even the most innocent defendant.

Now she believed it had been a mistake not to let the jury see Eldon’s raw pain. He hadn’t shown this side of himself to the media, but if they saw him now, they would never refer to him as cold again.

She couldn’t even imagine the guilt he must feel. If she’d been in his shoes…well, she never would have left Justin in a car unattended, under any circumstances. But children were snatched from even the most attentive parents.

Robyn thought the interview was over. Eldon had finished his story. But Ford had more questions.

“What happened to Heather?” he asked. “When you didn’t come home with the pizza—did she call you? Did she come looking for you?”

“No. I was so focused on finding Justin, I completely forgot about her. And when I came home—hours later—she was gone. She’d left an angry note, which I destroyed.”

“Did it surprise you that she didn’t call?”

Eldon hesitated. “She was…melodramatic. She probably assumed I was with another woman. Such a reaction is not completely normal, I know, but it’s what she likely would have done.”

Ford looked to Robyn for confirmation. She nodded. The Heather she had known was borderline paranoid. Everything was about her. In her mind, people and events all conspired against her.

“Did you continue your affair with her?”

“God, no. I was living in a fishbowl after Justin disappeared. By the time I realized I was a suspect, Heather had left town. I didn’t see the point in dragging her into it—tearing up my marriage and my character in the process—if she couldn’t be found to back me up.”

Robyn watched Ford. His face gave away little, but she sensed a prickle of excitement coming to life inside him. They’d barely started, and already they had a new lead.

Still, the questions continued. They talked almost three hours, until a warden told them they had over-stayed their welcome.

As they took their leave, Robyn searched for something to say to Eldon. Something to ease his pain, to reassure him, to give him a thin shred of hope to cling to.

But she could see nothing they’d done here today gave him hope. He was a defeated, broken man.

“Eldon,” she said. It was the first she’d spoken since her outburst. “You’re not alone. I won’t abandon you, and neither will Trina. She loves you.”

Eldon shook his head. “You both loved a man who didn’t really exist.” On that note, a guard escorted him away.

Robyn didn’t take a good, deep breath until they were outside. She had never appreciated hot, muggy,
fresh
air so much in her life.

“It must be awful for him,” she said as they walked across the steaming parking lot toward the car. “Eight years behind bars, most of them in that place.”

“It’s bad,” Ford agreed. “Guilty or innocent, it changes a person forever.” He opened the passenger door of the Crown Vic. “Robyn, what do you think he meant when he said you loved someone who didn’t exist?”

She leaned her back against the car. “I guess because we both thought he was a devoted husband. When in reality he was jumping everything in his path with an X chromosome.”

“There were others?”

Robyn slid into the passenger seat and waited until Ford was behind the wheel. “Trina was the third one I knew about. When I caught him with the first one, he swore it had been a onetime deal, a momentary lapse, and that it would never happen again. I was pregnant with Justin at the time, and I didn’t want to make waves, so I chose to believe him.

“After the second one, I threatened to leave, but he said he would get counseling, and he did. The salon where Trina worked as a shampoo girl was next door to the counselor’s office.”

“What a bastard,” Ford muttered.

“I know you must think I’m an idiot.”

“Not at all. Eldon’s a good liar, very convincing. He turns those emotions on and off like a faucet.”

Robyn sat up straighter. “You think he was lying?” she asked, alarmed. If Ford believed Eldon was guilty, he would drop this case so fast her head would spin.

“No. The story he told today sounded legit. I tried every which way to trip him up and I couldn’t. But he was faking some of that angst. Milking his anguish and regret for all it was worth. For your benefit.”

“Mine?”

“You’re his last ally. He might lose Trina and he knows it. He’s going to manipulate your emotions every which way to make sure you give this your all. He’s a master manipulator, Robyn. I’ve been dealing with his type my whole life.”

Robyn squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re going to drop the case.”

“What? No. I told you, I believe his story. The guy doesn’t deserve the needle for being a cheater. I just want you to promise me one thing.”

“What?” she asked warily.

“If we get Eldon out of jail, you’ll have nothing to do with him. Ever.”

“But if he gets out, he’ll need—”

“Ever. Promise me, Robyn.”

Why did Ford care? “I could promise anything. How do you even know I would keep my word? I’m a liar, remember? I lied about stealing those art supplies.”

Oh, hell, why had she brought that up again? It was so many years ago, and revisiting that time only served to put her and Ford against each other. But the memory had never completely lost its kick. Whether falsely accused of a murder or a minor theft, it felt awful.

“So you admit you were lying?” His tone was conversational, curious.

“Of course not. I didn’t steal the damn art supplies.”

“Look, whatever I believed about you then is immaterial. If you make me a promise today, I’ll trust you.”

“I promise I won’t ever become involved, romantically, with Eldon Jasperson. But if he should be freed from prison, I wouldn’t turn my back on him. I told him he wasn’t alone, and I meant it. Deal with it.”

“In high school, you never would have stuck your neck out for someone else.”

“You think you knew me in high school. Had me all figured out, huh? After one conversation?” Her face heated as she remembered how rudely she’d rebuffed him. But what had he expected? She’d had no reason to trust him or his motives.

“I knew more about you than you might guess.” Ford actually smiled. His gaze was faraway, but something about the past tickled him. It was the first time she’d seen him even crack a smile since she’d walked up to him at that seedy bar. The brief show of humor lit up his face and changed his whole countenance.

“What?”

“Just that I had a crush on you as big as a football field.”

“No way.”

He quickly sobered. “I don’t blame you for doubting me. But why else do you think I came up to you in the cafeteria?”

“How should I know? Maybe it was a bet. Or…or you wanted to make fun of me somehow. Everyone else did. I made an A or two, turned in a few homework assignments, and people looked at me like I’d grown horns and a tail.”

“That’s not how I looked at you.” His voice had gone rough, and Robyn’s skin prickled as a tiny kernel deep inside her grew hot.

His meaning was clear. He’d wanted her. Her body was reacting to a boy’s passing fancy he felt twelve years ago. Ridiculous. Nothing could have possibly happened between them then, and it sure as hell couldn’t now.

To this day, Ford thought she’d stolen a closetful of art supplies. Despite the fact she’d lived an exemplary life. She was done allowing anyone to judge her in any way, especially an ex-cop who apparently judged himself the most harshly.