Read Online Sweet Little Lies by J.T. Ellison - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: J.T. Ellison
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in
her city a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were
perfect cover for gunfire. That’s what she told herself, but there
was another reason she’d stayed in her office this holiday night.
Protecting her city was a mental ruse. She was waiting.
A memory rose, unbidden, unwanted. Trite in
its way, yet the truth of the statement hit her to the core. “When
I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.” Or became a woman. Her days of purity were behind her
now.
Taking one last glance at the quickening
night, she closed the blinds and sat heavily in her chair. Sighed.
Ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Wondered why she was
hanging out in the Homicide office when she could be enjoying the
revelry. Why she was still committed to the job. Laid her head on
her desk and waited for the phone to ring. Got back up and flipped
the switch to the television.
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
her city a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were
perfect cover for gunfire. That’s what she told herself, but there
was another reason she’d stayed in her office this holiday night.
Protecting her city was a mental ruse. She was waiting.
A memory rose, unbidden, unwanted. Trite in
its way, yet the truth of the statement hit her to the core. “When
I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.” Or became a woman. Her days of purity were behind her
now.
Taking one last glance at the quickening
night, she closed the blinds and sat heavily in her chair. Sighed.
Ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Wondered why she was
hanging out in the Homicide office when she could be enjoying the
revelry. Why she was still committed to the job. Laid her head on
her desk and waited for the phone to ring. Got back up and flipped
the switch to the television.
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
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