Field of Graves (38 page)
Authors: J.T. Ellison
The crowds were a pulsing mass at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. Police had cordoned off sections of the yard of the prison, one for the pro–death penalty activists, another comprised the usual peaceful subjects, a third penned in reporters. ACLU banners screamed injustice, the people holding them shouting obscenities at their fellow groupies. All the trappings necessary for an execution. No one was put to death without an attendant crowd, each jostling to have their opinion heard.
The young reporter from Channel Two was breathless, eyes flushed with excitement. There were no more options. The governor had denied the last stay two hours earlier. Tonight, at long last, Richard Curtis would pay the ultimate price for his crime.
As she watched, her eyes flicked to the wall clock, industrial numbers glowing on a white face: 11:59 p.m. An eerie silence overcame the crowd. It was time.
Taylor took a deep breath as the minute hand swept with a click into the 12:00 position. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until the hand snapped to 12:01 a.m. That was it, then. The drugs would have been administered. Richard Curtis would have a peaceful sleep, his heart’s last beat recorded into the annals of history. It was too gentle a death, in Taylor’s opinion. He should have been drawn and quartered, his entrails pulled from his body and burned on his stomach. That, perhaps, would give some justice. Not this carefully choreographed combination of drugs, slipping him serenely into the Grim Reaper’s arms. There, the announcement was made. Curtis was pronounced at 12:06 a.m., July 5. Dead and gone.
Taylor turned the television off. Perhaps now she would get the call to arms. Waiting patiently, she laid her head down on her desk and thought of a sunny child named Martha, the victim of a brutal kidnapping, rape and murder when she was only seven years old. It was Taylor’s first case as a homicide detective. They’d found Martha within twenty-four hours of her disappearance, broken and battered in a sandy lot in North Nashville. Richard Curtis was captured several hours later. Martha’s doll was on the bench seat of his truck. Her tears were lifted from the door handle. A long strand of her honey-blond hair was affixed to Curtis’s boot. It was a slam-dunk case, Taylor’s first taste of success, her first opportunity to prove herself. She had acquitted herself well. Now Curtis was dead as a result of all her hard work. She felt complete.
Taylor had stood vigil for seven years, awaiting this moment. In her mind, Martha was frozen in time, a seven-year-old little girl who would never grow up. She would be fourteen now. Justice had finally been served.
As if in deference to the death of one of their own, Nashville’s criminals were silent on this night, finding better things to do than shoot one another for Taylor’s benefit. She drifted between sleep and wakefulness, thinking about her life, and was relieved when the phone finally rang at 1:00 a.m.
A deep, gruff voice greeted her. “Meet me?” he asked.
“Give me an hour,” she said, looking at her watch. She hung up and smiled for the first time all night.
Copyright © 2007 by J.T. Ellison
ISBN-13: 9781459294165
Field of Graves
Copyright © 2016 by J.T. Ellison
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.