The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller

now u die

Adrenaline pumped up my spine and made me shiver. I sucked in a breath, forgetting for a moment to let it out as I moved closer. This time it sounded like more than a threat. It sounded like a promise.

Things were moving to a bad place.

The door I’d heard closing wasn’t a dream; it was real. Someone had been in my room while I slept.

But the message wasn’t written while I was in the shower. It was an old trick I remembered as a kid. Write something on a dry mirror with your fingertip, and the oil residue will cause the words to appear once it mixes with steam.

Clever.

This wasn’t just about pushing the envelope anymore; it was about crossing a line. Someone was aggressively pursuing me. I didn’t know who, but I knew one thing: the rules of the game were changing at breakneck speed. While they hadn’t harmed me yet, it would only be a matter of time before they did.

Time to be proactive.

I checked out of my motel and into another several miles outside of town. Paid with cash and used an alias. My name was now Ron Braverman as far as they or my stalker were concerned. Next, to the local gun store—I wasn’t taking any chances. Unfortunately, that ended up being a bust. The owner refused to sell to out-of-state customers. I’d have to get by without one for now.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A young public defender during the Lucas trial, Jackson Wright was now in his sixties with his own private practice, serving as the town lawyer, and handling all matters common. Divorces, probates, bankruptcies—you name it.

His office was a 1930s bungalow converted for commercial use. A grandmotherly woman with flaming red hair and wire-rimmed glasses paused her busy typing long enough to peer over her glasses at me and smile a greeting. After I introduced myself, she directed me to a small waiting area. They had the latest copy of News World. I smiled and began thumbing through the pages.

A few minutes later, Wright appeared, a tall, white-haired man with a round, pleasant face.

“Mr. Bannister,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand.

“Appreciate you taking the time. Hope I’m not throwing you off schedule.”

“Not at all,” he said, then led me back to his office. It was a tightly contained mess, bookshelves overflowing and document boxes scattered throughout. Somewhere in the midst, I saw a desk. Found a chair and sat. He reclined in his, a black leather high-back. With fingers locked in his lap, he said, “I figured it was only a matter of time before you got to me.”

I smiled. “Who gave you the heads up?”

He gazed toward the ceiling, eyes narrow, fingers drumming on his desk. “Let’s see. Millie at the bar, Dottie at the beauty shop, and Mary at the bank… Oh, and CJ Norris over at The Observer. But she was more trying to hook us up than gossip. As for the others, well …”

“Strange thing,” I said. “Besides CJ, I haven’t met any of them.”

“Small town,” he said with a smile and a wink. “Word travels faster than spit through a straw around here. So how can I help you?”

I got right down to it. “Do you believe Ronald Lucas was innocent?”

“Absolutely,” he said without hesitation.

“Can you tell me why?”

“There was information that never made it into the courtroom. Things that would have made all the difference in the world.”

“The evidence that went missing…and the girlfriend’s alibi?”

He paused a beat, then nodded. “You’ve spoken to Nissie, I take it.”

“I have.”

His mouth slid toward a frown, and he let out a long sigh. “Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about Emma’s note until it was too late.”

“His intentions were noble.”

“Noble, yeah, but also pretty foolish. And the real tragedy is that he didn’t need to hide that alibi note at all. As far as the kid went, we probably could have remanded custody to Nissie and kept her away from Emma’s husband—especially since it turned out she didn’t even belong to him. Unfortunately, Ronnie was too unsophisticated about the laws and how they worked to know better. And a bit paranoid. I could hardly blame him after what he’d been through.”

“And the other evidence?”

“Well, I’m sure Nissie told you about our mailman.”

I nodded.

“But there’s even more that she didn’t tell you. Did you happen to hear about the D.A.’s dramatic performance in court? The one with the window and the much-celebrated Nathan Doll?”

“CJ told me something about that.”

“Very impressive, a real showstopper, but more smoke and mirrors than anything else, because what they failed to mention during their big production number was that a key piece of evidence went missing. Evidence that would have proven their little dog-and-pony show completely meaningless.”

“Really,” I said, leaning forward. “Tell me about it.”

“A fresh shoe print found in the dirt just below that famed windowsill.”

“Whose was it?”

“Not Ronnie’s, that’s for sure. He wore a nine and a half, and this was an eleven.”

“So who’d it belong to?”

“Don’t know. Never got the chance to figure it out since the plaster mold mysteriously got lost on its way to trial. I didn’t find out about it until years later. Believe me when I say that if I’d known sooner, I would have been all over it like white on rice.”

“How does that happen? Evidence just disappearing like that.”

“Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair and gazing toward the ceiling, “the story went that someone screwed up, but I think someone covered up. That print was part of the evidence that initially went missing, only it never came back with the rest of the stuff. Odd that it was the one thing that could have cleared Ronnie.”

“How’d you find out about it?”

“At the Alibi bar, of all places. I overheard some blabbermouth talking one night. You know the type—five hundred words per minute with gusts up to a thousand. She worked for the sheriff’s department and was letting off steam, I suppose, telling everyone about it. At first I thought it was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo—you know, false bravado fueled by liquid courage. But when I looked deeper, it all checked out.”

“Any idea who lost it?”

“One of Lindsay’s flunkies at the time, guy by the name of Flint Newsome was in charge of the evidence when it went missing.”

“So where did it go during the time it was lost?”

He shrugged, lifted both hands, palms up. “Don’t know. Not sure anyone does, really.”

“Suspicious.”

“As a pink fur coat,” he said, eyeing me, nodding slowly. “Indeed.”

“And odd, too, that the shoe print was never reported missing. Don’t you think?”

“Not really. I mean, they had a … situation on their hands.” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “So what do they do? Well, the short answer, and the easiest one, is to turn over what they have and keep their mouths shut about what they don’t. Then pray to God it all works out.”

I thought about Jerry Lindsay and his defensive posture.

He continued, “As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing stunk like someone’s rotten trash. They sent an innocent man to the electric chair. That’s murder on top of murder in my book.”