A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

“I’m on my way,” she declared.  “And Warden, I’m holding you personally responsible -- there’d better not be a mark on him.”

“Far as I can tell, he’s clean as a whistle,” the warden told her.

. . .

Lily and Dancer covered the ten miles from Broad Street to the jail in little more than ten minutes.

“I think maybe this is a conversation that has to be just between Jason and me,” the lawyer told the bodyguard.

He understood.  He had dealt with attorney/client privilege before.  He leaned back against his seat and closed his eyes.  After the week he had had, chasing all over the county and back, he decided a little downtime would be welcome.

Perhaps because there had never been such an occurrence in his thirty-four years at the Jackson County Jail, the warden didn’t insist that Jason be immediately returned to his cell.  He gave Lily and her client the privacy of his own office.

“All right, talk to me,” she exclaimed the moment the door closed.  “Tell me what the hell is going on.”

He looked as though he had been out for nothing more than a Sunday stroll.  He was bathed, his jeans and T-shirt were clean, he had on a nice pair of moccasins, and the orange jumpsuit he had been wearing when he made his escape was folded in a neat, river-scrubbed bundle beside him.

Jason shrugged.  “I needed to clear my head,” he said.  “I needed to breathe.”

Lily couldn’t believe it.  “You needed to breathe?” she echoed.

“Look, Lady Lawyer,” he said amiably, “I ain’t sayin’ that you’re not good at your job, or anything like that, but I’m gonna die.  I know that and you know that, and there’s nothin’ gonna happen to change that.  And I just couldn’t stand the idea that I’d never see another sunset or hear another bird singin’ or catch another fish or swim in a mountain stream again.  I just wanted to feel like a man and suck in some fresh air and sleep under the stars one more time before I got locked away for good and that noose got put around my neck.  The wall was there and the guard wasn’t, so I figured it was the right time to go.”

She didn’t get it.   “I guess I can understand the going part,” she said, “but what I can’t understand is -- why did you come back?  You’d made it.  No one would ever have found you.  You had to know that.”

Now it was Jason’s turn not to get it.  “I killed a man, didn’t I?” he reminded her.  “One way or another, I gotta pay for that, don’t I?”  Then he grinned.  “And besides, I felt real bad about leavin’ you high and dry.”

It was at that moment that Lily Burns really saw Jason Lightfoot for the first time -- not the drunk, not the killer, not the client, but the man.  And any doubts that may still have been lingering disappeared.

“My clients rarely surprise me,” she told him.  “You are certainly an exception.”

. . .

Lily wasn’t the only one who was stunned by the return of Jason Lightfoot.

“He did what?” people asked.

“He came back on his own?” several asked in clear disbelief.

“You mean, the cops didn’t catch him?” others wanted to know.

“Oh, come on, you’ve got to be kidding,” some declared.

“Is he crazy?” a few wondered.

“I’ve never heard anything like it,” one of the town barbers said.

“He was out of it, he was free,” a gas station owner observed, shaking his head.  “All he had to do was -- nothing.”

“The guy must be certifiable,” a local dairy farmer insisted.

“They don’t understand,” Charles Graywolf said.  “It ain’t in Jason to walk out on unfinished business.”

“Even if it means he might die?” Joe asked.

“There are a lot of ways to die,” the Indian told him.  “And when all is said and done, the only way that counts is the honorable way.”

And then there was the fellow who went to talk to his pastor.

“You know,” the parishioner declared, “if he escaped from that jail, and he ran and got away with it, and there was no one who was going to find him, and then he came back, all on his own, for no reason -- well, maybe he’s not as guilty as everyone around here thinks he is.  I’ve been having some pretty angry thoughts about him all this time, when maybe I should have been more charitable.”

. . .

Judge Pelletier was notified, and the trial was scheduled to resume on Wednesday.  Jason would once again have to wear the suit that Lily had bought for him, but he would no longer have to be shackled at the waist and ankles.

“Why bother?” the warden had said with a hint of actual respect in his voice.  “He walked right out of the place when he wanted to, and then he walked right back in again when he was ready to.  That told us something -- that told us plenty.  Putting the rig back on him now would only be for show.”

“I guess that means they don’t expect you to escape again,” Lily said.

Jason grinned.  “Don’t really think I could get away with it twice.”

She called Joe.  “Vacation’s over,” she told him.  “Get back to work.”

. . .

Antonio Morales wasn’t hard to find.  Joe found the Mexican American and his Indian wife and children at their ranch on the edge of the Cypress Ridge Reservation, west of Port Hancock.

Untouchable on sovereign territory, he was known as the Indian drug czar, although more of his customers were Hispanics who sometimes lived miles away, even in other counties.

With good contacts in Mexico, he was able to move everything from meth to cocaine to heroin, in quantities that compared only to the Van Aiken brothers.  With casino money flowing freely, it hadn’t taken him long to find out what they already knew -- how easy it was to turn alcohol-addicted people into drug-addicted people, and a drug-addicted person was