90_Minutes_to_Live (15 page)

Lewis felt a shiver run from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. His blood ran cold at the sound of that name. The name he had not uttered for some time. The name he hoped he would never hear again.

“Oh, are you surprised?” the man asked, reading Lewis’s thoughts. “Did you think no one remembered? I remembered. I never forgot. You could run Adam, you could run for the rest of your life. But I would have found you eventually. I would have found you one day.”

Lewis now knew why the man was familiar. He had lied to himself, almost convinced himself it was all because he had seen him in other places those past few days, because the man had been following him. That was the story he had told himself but now he was painfully aware that no, Lewis had known him much longer than that.

*   *   *

Malinda Jackson called herself Lindy and that’s how her friends had always known her. She was a cute girl, not beautiful, but pretty enough that the boys always noticed. Her teachers in high school commented amongst themselves, she was a particularly clever young lady and with time she would find a nice man to marry, one who would take care of her and build a world for her, in which to raise her children. And that, in the little town she called home, was the highest aspiration for a middle class girl such as herself.

College came and it came fast. In it, far from the little town where her daddy was the pastor at the local Church of God, she found herself in a world she did not understand and it scared her. She made friends slowly and at times she was desperate in her loneliness. So when an older boy she had met in her Calculus class asked her to a party at his fraternity, she accepted without question or qualification.

He was to pick her up at 7:00 p.m. sharp, though he was early. He patiently waited in the lobby of the all-girls dorm, the severe-faced matriarch of the place never ceasing to scowl at him over her reading glasses. He smiled when he saw Lindy, told her she was lovely in her light pink dress with a matching bow in her hair. He even held the door open for her, like a gentleman should.

He had picked a place on the river for dinner. However, it was crowded, and he was foolish and the waiting list was long for a couple without a reservation. His fears evaporated as she just smiled when he told her about the wait. For the next hour they fed the ducks bread and watched the barges float coal down the sluggish, brown water of the Choctawhatchee River, laughing at each other’s awkwardness. When dinner finally came, the two of them sat outside and watched as the sun dipped into the flowing water. They were both too young to drink but he knew the waiter and for a cool twenty he brought them a bottle of sweet, bubbling Prosecco. She had only had alcohol once before—at her cousin’s wedding when she was twelve—and then only for a singular toast that she was permitted to give. Lindy didn’t tell him that now. It was funny, she had known him only for a few hours but she was terrified this new boy would find her boring or naïve. To prevent that, she would do anything.

So she smiled and sipped her wine, though she was surprised by what she found. It was not as harsh and bitter as she remembered. It did not burn her tongue or make her scrunch up her nose in disgust. Instead it simply tickled a little, while different flavors seemed to dance like fire on her tongue. As it sat in her stomach, warming her from the inside, the sensation of the subtle flames was complete. Everything was going so well.

The party was different.

The fraternity house sat on a hill overlooking the main boulevard. The pure white columns and ornate brick façade conveyed a message of wealth and power, of future influence and past glory. Not that night, though. That night the very structure seemed to be alive and it pulsated with energy and sound. The house breathed in the young and stole their youth. And when Lindy left the porch and stepped through the front door, she felt an overwhelming sense she should flee, that turning and running was the best thing, perhaps the only thing, to do. Back to the romance of the night’s beginning, away from the debauchery of its end.

She told herself that was foolish and when Lewis offered her a beer she took it. It was the first of several, though she promised herself she would stay in control, that she wouldn’t let the liquor’s influence take hold of her. She probably would have succeeded but in the end, it wasn’t the alcohol she had to fear.

Lewis would later swear he wasn’t the one who slipped the pill into Lindy’s drink. Lindy didn’t notice, not really. She simply felt herself float away but not like she was falling asleep, not that peaceful. It was a total collapse of her mind and her will. She fought against it but her struggle was futile. She disappeared and whoever replaced her, whoever peered out from her eyes and took control of her body, it was no longer Lindy.

Lewis really didn’t care who she was or who was responsible when Lindy fell into his arms and looked up at him dreamily, before pulling his head down into an open mouth kiss. He just accepted it and counted his good fortune. When he looked in her eyes, he saw only desire.

What happened next was a frenzy of activity and energy, all directed at one goal. They stumbled up the winding steps of the house, past amused coeds and their dates, up to a place where they would not be bothered. A semblance of privacy. By the time they fell into one of the senior’s rooms and collapsed into the bed, her shirt was on the floor and her bra unclasped.

Then something happened, something that changed what should have been merely one of many drunken mistakes made that night, into a far more terrible thing. In the back of Lindy’s mind, something snapped. A voice emerged from under the drug-induced shroud and it said one word: “No.” And then Lindy said it too. Mumbled at first and then said it louder and more clearly. It grew to a word and finally a scream.

Lewis didn’t hear it. He was too drunk and too high to notice. That’s what he told himself in the weeks and years that followed. The thing he would repeat in his mind on most days. But in the darker moments of the many nights to come, he would know differently. When it was over, he sat on the side of the bed and she cried.

Lewis had just pulled on his jeans when there was a knock on the door. It was a senior, someone he recognized only from the tortures of Hell week. The boy looked over his shoulder and smiled.

“You mind?”

The combination of the alcohol and the adrenaline and the look in the other boy’s eyes made Lewis sick.

“No, man. She’s my date.”

The boy cursed and pushed Lewis out of the way. He would have fought him; Lewis had made the decision. He wouldn’t have let it happen, as much for his own sake as for hers. But when he turned around the other boy was just standing there, staring out towards the small balcony jutting from the side of the house. Lindy was crouched on the railing, most of her body over it but with her face turned back towards the boys inside. The catcalls of the people below, who saw nothing more than a naked girl, trickled in on the breeze as it whipped the curtain up in the air, alternately obscuring and revealing the terrified child beyond.

“Lindy!” Lewis cried. “Lindy, come back baby,” he held out his hand to her and crept forward, though she seemed to inch closer to the edge with every step he took. Lewis was afraid, for in her eyes he saw a wildness, a lack of reason or rationality, brought on by alcohol and drugs and fear and pain. He started talking to her but even at the time he wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying. Perhaps he was merely telling her it would be OK, that he was sorry. He had crept to only ten feet away from her but every step seemed like a mile as she leaned farther and farther—impossibly far—out over the ground below.

He was almost to her when his world ended in a crescendo of tragedy. Another second and he would have been there. All it would have taken was a few more steps. But it was a few steps too far. The police investigators could never be sure exactly what had happened. Whether she slipped. Or whether she jumped. In that last moment Lewis lunged forward and grabbed. For one singular instant he held something and in that isolated moment Lindy’s fall was halted. But it was only for a second. Then she gave way and Lewis was left with only a clump of her brown hair and a bloody bit of scalp in his hands.

The trial was a sensational affair. The district attorney wanted blood, while the judge smelled fame and Lewis faced a life sentence for second degree murder and rape. Truth was, the actual evidence against him was thin at best. Nobody could prove he drugged Lindy’s drink and a dozen different witnesses testified she was throwing herself at him during the party. There was no one to testify about the rape, no one alive at least. The path to his freedom was clear and Lewis took it. He watched as his attorney painted a picture for the seven women and five men who sat in judgment of him, a picture of a lost girl. He listened as Lindy was described as little more than a sorority harlot, an immoral seductress who dressed provocatively and got exactly what she was asking for. Hell, she probably took the drugs herself, just another delinquent chasing a high and losing her life. Why compound the tragedy by stripping Lewis’s future away from him as well? The lawyer talked and the jury nodded. Even the judge seemed convinced. It had almost worked. But there was one witness they hadn’t counted on. One witness who would not be denied.

By the time Lindy’s father had left the witness stand, Lewis thought he was going to jail for sure. The old preacher poured his passion, his fire and his love for his little girl into the testimony. The fact he never took his eyes off the boy he swore had killed his daughter was simply unbearable. Lewis could not match that gaze, even though he knew to look away from it was to admit guilt. Lindy’s father damned Lewis and when he had finished, the easy path to freedom no longer seemed so assured.

But the prejudices Lewis had counted on were too much to overcome. Most of the jury was swayed by the old man's vehemence, but there were three who weren't. Three who were not convinced or perhaps even blamed Lindy’s father for what had happened, for the disappointment his daughter had surely become. The jury hung and the television cameras and newspapers moved on. The D.A. didn’t have the heart to retry Lewis and Lewis didn’t have the stomach to fight any more. He never wanted to feel those eyes upon him again. Lewis agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. He served less than a year.

Lewis did his time. He had a bit of an epiphany between the cold gray walls of the penitentiary and he swore he would atone for what he had done. He promised Lindy, as he hid his tears from the men who surrounded him—he would live his life in her honor. And in the years that followed, he liked to think he had kept his word. After nine months, he was a free man. Then he disappeared. Or maybe it was more accurate to say Lewis was born that day, in front of an Alabama prison. He changed his name and his parents paid to enroll him at a small college in the mountains, where no one had ever heard of Adam Langston. It was there he met Sophia and it was there he made a promise, to himself and to his new wife, he would leave the past behind. But every night when he turned out the lights, he still saw the image of Lindy on the concrete below, her neck broken and her open eyes empty of life.

*   *   *

“Please,” Lewis said, “please.”

“Ohhhh, so now you’re begging me? No more talk of right and wrong, huh? No more talk of God and my damnation. Now you want mercy? The truth is—you've had mercy. You’ve had a reprieve. All these years, you've been living on borrowed time.

“I waited for you, you know. I had it all planned out. The day you walked out of that prison I was going to be there. The day you tasted freedom, I was going to take it away from you. I bought a gun and I waited. Do you know why you lived? A stupid thing really. A simple twist of fate. They publicized your release date wrong and you got out a week early. By the time I realized it, you were gone. You covered your tracks well and it took a long time to find you. But I didn’t give up. And now here we are. Together.”

“Mr. Jackson, please…”

“That’s what I like to hear, son. Now you know who I am. And I know exactly who you are. You’re the man who killed my daughter.”

“Mr. Jackson I promise you I did not kill your daughter. I did not kill your daughter. It was an accident. It was an accident.
It was an accident!
I wish I could take it back every day. I wish I could stop it. I wish I could trade places with her. I’d do it gladly if I could.”

“Well that’s just the problem isn’t it? You can’t trade places with her and you can’t go back. You might as well join her. Cause I tell you what, you did kill her. You killed her as much as if you had pushed her out of that window.”

Neither man spoke then. Thomas Jackson, standing over a mound of dirt, staring down at it with a walkie-talkie in his hand. And Lewis Freeman, in a coffin beneath him. Lewis Freeman—who had been Adam Langston many years before. Both men thought back on that night, the night that had come to define their lives. The night that now threatened to end the life of one and the night that had, for all practical purposes, killed the other. When Lewis spoke again, Thomas could hear him sobbing and the sound of it made him smile.

“Please, Mr. Jackson, this is not justice. Killing me is not justice for your daughter.”

Thomas stopped smiling. It was time to end this.

“Justice?” he said through clenched teeth. “You speak of justice? Funny Adam, I guess we can agree on something can’t we? On this one thing. Killing you is not justice. Do you know your scripture Mr. Langston? Have you read your Bible?” Lewis didn’t answer and Thomas didn’t wait. “No, I don’t guess you would have. Well there’s one verse I’m sure even you are familiar with. ‘You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’ You’ve heard that one, haven’t you Adam? Haven’t you? An eye for an eye? You didn’t just kill my daughter that night all those years ago. You killed me too, just as sure as if you shot me in the heart. No…justice for you requires something more.”