Chapter 16
“What did you find?” Tessa asked, after letting Harry inside. Her tone was doubtful.
“A bone,” Harry said. “I believe it’s the proximal phalange, the bone closest to the hand. Index finger from the looks of it. The pristine condition surprised me. Florida’s heat, though that’s not always a consideration with bones. But still, one has to take the elements into account.”
“Give me your unofficial report,” Sam said.
“In layman’s terms, I’d say the finger was sliced off. The bone is sharp, sliced clean where it shouldn’t be. There is no sign of a break. It belonged to a fairly young person. Most likely a male.”
“What does this mean?” Tessa asked Harry.
“We don’t know yet, but we’re working on it. We’ll extract DNA from that bone and possibly we can find out who it belonged to, decide if it’s relevant to your case.”
“What is that supposed to mean? You don’t think this is an important find?” Tessa asked.
“It’s very important,” Harry replied. “The only problem is matching the DNA. It could be some random find. A fisherman whacks off his finger cleaning a fish. The finger winds up in the soil, through who knows by what means, and we have found it. A drug dealer in a speedboat tosses out a finger he’s removed from a rat, and, hoping to hide all traces, it winds up here.”
“It’s a good find, Tess,” said Sam, “but only if we can match it to someone in your family, which we know isn’t going to happen since Lara has all of her fingers, and Harry said it was most likely from a male.”
“Why wasn’t this discovered before?” Tessa asked. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t know, Tess,” Sam said. “As soon as Harry examines them, we’ll know how long they have been here. It’s more good news, Tess. A finger is one thing, but several bones, that’s a whole different ball game.”
“We have to have a match, right? I’d like to know where to start,” she said.
Sam seemed to consider her question. “Family first. I’m going to have Lee call Rachelle,” Sam told her. “Excuse me.”
“I have to head out as well,” Harry said, “and head back to the lab.”
Tessa waited a moment after both men had departed before she called Jill to fill her in on these latest developments.
“You think she knows more than she testified to during the trial?” Jill asked once Tessa had explained everything.
Tessa nodded. “Darned right I do. There is no way in hell she would sit idly by, waiting all these years, without knowledge of his whereabouts. He’s her only son. She’s well financed, he’s well financed. Enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. That old saying ‘money talks and bullshit walks’ would apply to the two of them. I never knew her well, but I did know, according to Joel, that she was a good mother and that Liam was the light of her life.”
“And all these years he’s been off the radar?”
“Yep, all those investigators Randall had searching for him, or at least that’s what he told me, and I have my doubts, but nevertheless, I would have thought they could have located him, but nothing. When people don’t want to be found, they can make it happen. I learned this in prison from women who sounded like they knew what they were talking about. I feel sure he’s living a life of luxury, probably lounging on some exotic beach as we speak, all courtesy of his mother since he has never touched a penny of his trust-fund hoard. He’s a low-life son of a bitch,” Tessa said, doing nothing to hide the hate in her voice.
“Any man who touches a child is beyond low. Below whale crap, if you ask me. I see a lot of kids in my practice. Their lives were ruined by these sick-ass perverts. Of course, I can’t say this to them, or to the family members, but it’s rare when a child overcomes this type of tragedy.”
“So you think Poppy and Piper would have been . . . ruined, tainted, for the rest of their lives? I thought you told me they would be all right with therapy.” Her voice rose a notch.
“I think your girls were strong, Tessa. Like you. They kept their abuse secret for a long time. When I spoke to them, they didn’t act like your typical victims. They knew that what had happened to them was a very bad thing. They also knew that telling you was the right thing to do even though they’d been terrified, and justifiably so. Poppy was very angry, as she should have been. Piper was . . . I think she was more damaged. But with your love and support, and intense therapy, I think they would have been okay as adults.”
“We’ll never know, will we?” Tessa asked, and felt another round of tears fill her eyes. She wiped them with the cloth napkin and blew her nose. “All these years I have beat myself up, over and over, wondering how I could have been so stupid? So blind. It was more than obvious they were suffering. Afraid, as they reverted to their five-year-old patterns of behavior. I will never forgive myself.”
Jill cleared her throat. “It wasn’t your fault, you know that. Joel wasn’t aware of what they were going through, either. I realize I don’t have children of my own, but I work with all kinds of abused children, of all ages, and more often than not the parents blame themselves. Unless it’s actually a parent doing the abuse, it’s not their fault, not your fault. Your case is unlike any I have dealt with. You were whisked away, tried and convicted by a system so convinced they had the right person that they never bothered with a serious criminal investigation. They wanted this case out of the news.”
“And why? There was no evidence against me,” Tessa said, her anger causing her pulse to race.
“Your trip to San Maribel, the large insurance policy Joel had taken out, plus the company. You planned the trip so quickly, the media thought you had a lover, had something to hide. They found you in the pool with their bodies. You wouldn’t speak to the police once they arrested you. In their minds, this was a perfect case of circumstantial evidence. There was no DNA, nothing to connect you to this crime. You had no obvious defensive wounds. Anyone in their right mind should have known you were innocent.
This isn’t a large town. Lots of local ass-kissers in the political field. Michael Chen wanted your ass on a platter, and he got what he wanted. When you refused to speak, it sealed your fate. And now, it just might be the key to overturning your conviction. Getting all charges dropped. This is all good, Tessa. Despite the past ten-plus years, you’re still young. You can have a full life—”
“Don’t you even dare say I can have another family. I cannot and will never have children again! No matter what the court decides.”
“I know you feel that way now, but I say, never say never.”
“Let’s not talk about this, okay? Please?” Tessa begged. Yes, she knew she was just young enough to start over and have a family again, but she would never betray Joel and the girls.
“Fair enough, but it’s going to come up in the next few days. Just do what you have to in order to prepare yourself. Michael Chen and the local police are going to do their best to convict you again, regardless of what the Florida Supreme Court says. An exoneration or, perhaps worse for them, having the charges dismissed because the investigation your private detectives are doing turns up evidence of your innocence and someone else’s guilt would embarrass them no end. Expose their utter incompetence.
“And let’s not forget the media. This is fodder for all the new crime shows on damned near every local and cable channel. Just know you can come to me anytime, okay? I’m with you every step of the way.”
“I appreciate your sticking by me, especially after the way I treated you. Denying your visits. Refusing your letters. When I was locked up, I just wanted that to be my life. I’d accepted it, and I still do, but now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. And I want to move past this, but it’s hard, Jill. Harder than my life before. You know, when I was a kid in and out of foster homes, that was a breeze compared to losing my family.”
“Of course it was,” Jill said, her voice soothing.
Before Tessa could respond, Sam returned to the kitchen again. Tessa quickly ended her call with Jill so she could listen to Sam’s update.
“Harry’s expecting the new bones. Apparently, there are quite a few of them, though not large. Pieces.”
“What does this mean?” Tessa asked. “The pieces part?”
Sam raked his hand through his mussy hair. “Just that. The bones are small, in tiny pieces. Hard to say if they’re human just yet, though the tech is pretty sure they are. They’re taking them to Harry now. I spoke with Lee, and he has spoken to Rachelle and arranged for her to meet him in his office first thing tomorrow morning.”
Tessa felt a strong surge of irritation. Rachelle’s son killed her family. Why would she be so quick to involve herself in the case again? Did she think she could get more money out of Jamison Pharmaceuticals? Or was this her way of playing the role of grieving mother as she had for a decade? Keep the investigation away from Liam.
Tessa didn’t know what to say as she had not expected Rachelle to comply so easily. But she was sure the woman had ulterior motives.
“Tess?” Sam coaxed. “Are you good with this?”
“No, I’m not. Her lousy-piece-of-garbage son ruined my life, took my family’s lives. Of course I’m not good with it. However, I know it’s necessary. I’m just surprised she agreed.”
“She’s insisted all these years she’s had no contact with him. Lee says he wants to go over her testimony, and she’s agreed. She also said she would provide a DNA sample. Usually, people who have something to hide aren’t so quick to involve themselves in a case that has supposedly been solved. So, think what you will, but again, Tess, this is all good for you. The more people who come forward, the more evidence we discover that wasn’t presented at your first trial, the more likely it is that you win this time around, either because the case is dropped or you fight through to an exoneration.”
“You believe her?”
“I need to see her. Face-to-face. Lee said she sounded as though she was encouraged by the new evidence. Again, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just a damn good actress, or maybe Liam really did fall off the face of the earth, and he hasn’t contacted her. If he’s the ass you say he is, and I’m sure you would know, he just might be the type who wouldn’t care if his mother knows whether he’s dead or alive.”
“He’d need money,” she added.
“Liam had a trust fund. Though there hasn’t been any activity, at least none that could be traced, and that’s virtually impossible in this day and age. We don’t know, but we are going to find out. I promise you, Tess. We, I, will find out what happened to your family.”
She hoped he wasn’t telling her this just to calm her. She knew what had happened to her family. She knew they were killed in such a savage manner that it defied all belief, and she knew that Liam Jamison was responsible for their deaths. Her brother-in-law, the girls’ uncle, Joel’s brother. She needed him to suffer as she had, to feel such angst, loss, the broken heart that had been her life since she walked into her home all those years ago and discovered their bodies. He had to suffer because Tessa wasn’t sure how she could move forward if he didn’t.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tessa told him. “I don’t think I could deal with . . . life, at least a disappointment of this magnitude,” she ended flatly. And she knew that she spoke the truth. It was tough enough to get through the days and nights in prison. Now that she was on the outside, in the real world, getting through a minute was ten times harder than she had ever anticipated.
“I’m not making any promises, just so you know. I do have faith in Lee and his team. I don’t think you’d be here now if he didn’t believe in your innocence. I wouldn’t be here, either,” he added.
The room was quiet for a moment, then Tessa spoke. “Evil destroyed my family. And it’s about time I fought back.”