The Final Reckoning (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 4) Read online

  “I think you’re good to go now, Sammy,” she had said. “But be sure to come see me for a follow-up these next few weeks.”

  He had and, after several similar encounters, had suggested that all he would need to break out would be to get to the hospital. Could she manufacture a reason for him to be sent out in an ambulance?

  Charlotte had never seriously considered the proposition. Samuel was soft and stupid. He talked a big game, but, once out, he would be caught and everything would track back to her. She couldn’t take that kind of risk without better odds.

  And, most importantly, without something in it for her. Something big.

  Charlotte’s gaze caught on the framed photograph next to her computer. She’d put it up about a year and a half into her employment. In the picture, she held a baby girl in her arms. She was sitting in one of the wooden rocking chairs on the porch at Cracker Barrel. Behind her and the child was a man with swept-back blond hair, green eyes, and a crooked smile. He was leaning over Charlotte’s chair, with his hand draped over her shoulder. His fingers touched the baby’s head. The year had been 1988, and she was married to Aubrey Michael Thompson. Their daughter’s name was Gillian, whom they both had called “Gilly” since she had come out of the womb. Aubrey was a professor of music at Belmont College. He was also a songwriter, and Charlotte knew that eventually he’d break into the country music scene. Her husband had talent and, more than that, he was driven. He was going to make it. He would have made it.

  Only he didn’t. On Sunday morning, January 24, 1989, Aubrey had taken one-year-old Gilly to church while Charlotte stayed behind with a stomach bug. A few weeks later, she would learn that it wasn’t a virus but rather morning sickness. She was pregnant, her second child due in September.

  But by the time her ob-gyn informed her of this news, she had already tended to her husband’s and first child’s funerals.

  Charlotte hadn’t wanted them to go that morning, but Aubrey was the pianist for the eleven o’clock service and it was bad form for him to back out so late. Gilly adored her father and wouldn’t stop crying until Charlotte relented and let her go with him. She played in the church nursery while her father handled his duties. On the way home, Aubrey had stopped at the grocery store and picked up some chicken noodle soup and Sprite for Charlotte. A block after exiting the store, their car was T-boned by a drunk driver. Gilly had died on the scene after her unrestrained body—Aubrey always forgot to buckle her—had been propelled into the glass windshield. She broke her neck instantly.

  Aubrey had clung to life for two days. He was paralyzed from the waist down. During Charlotte’s visits to the ICU, he kept asking if Gilly was OK. Finally, toward the end of the second day, she had told him.

  He died the following morning of a blood clot.

  The fetus that Charlotte was carrying in her womb joined his or her—Charlotte never learned the sex—sister and father a few months later. Dr. Rushing said that she had lost the baby due to the stress of burying her husband and daughter.

  Charlotte Thompson didn’t know whether that was true or not. She had begun to believe that some folks in this world were just blessed with good fortune and others, like her, were cursed with bad.

  Her body might die today, but her soul had expired on January 24, 1989. She had been a mother and a young nurse. She had been thin and attractive. On the night of January 23, 1989, she and Aubrey had made love on the kitchen table of their apartment—they had eaten takeout Chinese, and after she put Gilly down for bed, Charlotte had returned to the dining room completely naked. She removed Aubrey’s dirty plate and sat her bare buttocks on the cool glass surface, informing him that she was dessert. When they were through, they lay on the couch and watched Cheers reruns, both of their sweaty bodies naked underneath a black-and-gold Vanderbilt Commodores blanket. The room smelled liked Kung Pao chicken, cheap beer, and sex. They were happy. They were so fucking happy.

  The plan had been for Charlotte to finish out the decade working for the prison and then get a job at Vanderbilt Hospital. She and Aubrey could have driven to work together. Eventually, after he published his first songs, she would have quit working and been a stay-at-home mom. They had it all mapped out.

  Then the twenty-two-year-old driver of a Ford Mustang, who had been drinking in Nashville’s Broadway District since the wee hours of the morning and had continued to imbibe once he got back to his fraternity house, failed to see a stop sign at one in the afternoon on a perfect sunny day. The Mustang hit her husband’s station wagon going ninety-two miles per hour.

  The driver never even hit the brakes.

  His name was Jeffrey Gullan. He was charged with vehicular homicide but pled guilty to manslaughter on the eve of his trial. He served eighteen months before being paroled. He got out of prison in October 1990. By the summer of 1994, when Al Cowlings was driving O. J. Simpson all around Los Angeles in the back of a white Bronco, Gullan had graduated law school from the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville.

  In one of life’s cruelest ironies, the murdering son of a bitch had become an attorney. A criminal defense lawyer, no less.

  Meanwhile, Charlotte Thompson had stayed at the prison. She had gained fifteen pounds in the first twelve months after her husband’s and daughter’s deaths and had never lost the weight. Because everyone else at the institution smoked, she did too. First, a pack a day. Then two. Now she was up to three. When you’ve buried the only things you care about in the world six feet underground, the risk of lung cancer, or anything else, becomes pretty minute in the grand scheme.

  Lost hope is a terrible thing. A cancer in its own right. A sickness that eats at a person. At the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, lost hope was served with mashed potatoes and gravy in the chow line. And truth be known, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the employees and the inmates. Nobody tells their third-grade teacher that they want to grow up and be a prison nurse or a security guard on death row. No, that sort of occupation just kind of happens to a person. Like shit, Charlotte thought.

  I didn’t mean to end up here. I was supposed to be an empty nester by now, and the kids would have been in college. Aubrey would have taken me to the Ryman every couple of weeks to see a new artist playing one of his songs. That was supposed to be my life.

  But it hadn’t been. Instead, after walking around in a numb sort of daze for two decades, being the good employee and slowly building the trust of every law enforcement officer at the facility as the toughest, most reliable worker at the prison, Charlotte Thompson had gone rogue. Like the chemistry professor in Breaking Bad, but without the redeeming qualities of trying to provide for her family.

  Charlotte had no family left. When she had seen Samuel Helstowski’s cock rise to full attention while she applied ointment to his stank testicles, something inside her broke. She had grabbed hold of his penis like it had been some kind of gateway to another life. A better life? No.

  A more interesting existence than the soul-crushing experience of her day-to-day? Charlotte nodded as she allowed her eyes one last sweep around the medical unit that had become her own personal prison these last twenty-seven years.

  Unlike Samuel Helstowski, James Robert Wheeler had offered her a return for the investment she was about to make. And “big” wasn’t a strong enough adjective to describe the nugget that the convict had dangled in front of her.

  “Priceless” was probably the more apt term.

  And he’s already delivered.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Charlotte Thompson forced her legs to move down the hall toward the corridor that would take her to death row.

  3

  By the time Charlotte arrived at the cell, JimBone was dry heaving again.

  “Anything I can get you, Ms. Charlotte?” Sergeant Davies asked, his voice deferential, the relief in his tone palpable. There were two other officers hovering over JimBone’s contorted body, and Charlotte shooed them off with a wave of her hand.

  “Space, boys.
Give an old woman some space.” Then she turned to Davies, the oldest and more experienced of the three men. “I need a cup of water and a warm washcloth. Can you grab that for me, hon?”

  But Davies didn’t budge, sending a piercing glare at one of the younger guards. “You heard the lady, Benny. Warm washcloth and some water. Hop to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard responded.

  Charlotte knelt over JimBone’s body and barked her first question. “Mr. Wheeler, what’s going on?”

  With his face wrinkled in agony, the inmate peered up at her with bloodshot eyes. His face was even paler than the white cinder-block walls that adorned the cell. The effect was vampire-like. Perfect, Charlotte thought, setting her bag on the floor and unzipping it. First, she took out the portable oxygen saturation kit and placed the tubing along Wheeler’s index finger. Knowing this was the most important part, she turned and scowled up at Davies. “Where’s that washcloth, Glenn? Goddamnit, this man is in bad shape.”

  The officer raised his eyebrows, but Charlotte didn’t see anger in his pupils. Fear was the only emotion that she felt in the room. James Robert “JimBone” Wheeler was supposed to be lethally injected in three weeks. His sentencing for murdering a Pulaski attorney named Raymond Pickalew on the Giles County Courthouse Square had garnered national attention, and his execution was expected to also attract the media. Nobody wanted to screw it up by letting the killer die before he rode the needle.

  What a country, Charlotte had thought to herself more than once as she and Wheeler had concocted a plan. An inmate on death row who was sentenced to die was still entitled to health care under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

  Sergeant Davies took a step back and gazed down the hallway before grabbing the other deputy by the forearm. “Go see what the hell is taking Benny so long.”

  While the men were distracted, Charlotte took the reading off the oxygen saturation machine. The digits on the screen read 94. Low but not an emergency.

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “What?” Davies yelled from behind her.

  “Oxygen sat is 88. We’re gonna have to get him to the ER.” She put the kit back in her bag, placed the thermometer in the inmate’s mouth, and ran it over his cheek. This time she didn’t have to lie. “Temp is 101. Glenn, did those two guards take a vacation, or are they going to bring me a washcloth and some water?”

  As Charlotte slid the blood pressure cuff up JimBone’s arm and tightened it until the inmate yelped, Davies tramped down the hallway, snapping into his receiver. “Benny! Taggert! What the hell is taking so long?”

  Charlotte pumped the cuff twice and checked the gauge. His blood pressure was 130 over 85, which was just above normal. Glancing behind her, she saw Davies shaking his head in the hall. Blinking, she sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “60 over 40, Glenn!” she yelled, stepping back and looking at the supervisor. “He’ll be dead in twenty minutes unless we get him out.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Davies said, fumbling in his pocket until he had retrieved his phone. But Charlotte had beaten him to it, gripping her cell phone in her right hand. “You take care of the paperwork on our end. I’ll get the ambulance.” She dialed the number and yelled into the microphone when the call was answered, “Got an inmate whose pressure has bottomed out, and his sat is 88. Need assistance immediately.” She nodded and clicked off her phone. When she spoke to Davies again, her voice was calm and cool. “Let’s get him on a gurney and have him waiting in the sally port when the EMTs arrive.”

  “Are you sure we should move him?” Davies asked, his voice high and panicky.

  “Do you want him to live, or do you want to be on the front page of the Tennessean tomorrow explaining how we let him die?”

  Before he could respond, the two deputies finally arrived with the washcloth and water. Charlotte grabbed the items from them and turned to the one named Benny. “Go down to medical and get one of the gurneys in the supply closet and be up here on the double. Ambulance should arrive in less than five minutes.” When Benny glanced at Davies for approval, Charlotte snapped, “Move, gentlemen! I haven’t had a death on my watch in twenty-seven years, and I don’t want to start tonight.”

  “You heard the lady,” Davies finally chimed in, following the two officers down the hall.

  Charlotte took the water and brought the glass to JimBone Wheeler’s mouth, rubbing her thumb over his lips.

  “Very good, Charlotte,” he whispered, gently pressing his teeth against her thumbnail. “Very good.”

  4

  Five minutes later, an ambulance, sirens blaring, pulled into the sally port of the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Before the emergency vehicle had come to a complete stop, a paramedic hopped out of the passenger-side door. She had yellowish-brown skin and wore green scrubs with “Nashville Emergency Medical Transport” across the front of her shirt. Her hat, also green, had the shortened “NEMT” adorned in white on the crown. “Tell me,” she said, looking at Charlotte.

  “Pressure is 60 over 40, and sat is 88. Fading fast.” Charlotte’s voice was clipped, but it did not waver, and Sergeant Glenn Davies felt a reassuring warmth when he heard the weight of experience in Charlotte’s tone.

  “We’ll check again on the way,” the paramedic said. Then she turned and helped the driver, a compact, barrel-chested Mexican man, slide the ambulance stretcher out of the vehicle. Seconds later, they had moved Wheeler from the gurney onto the stretcher and placed him in the back of the ambulance.

  “I’m coming with you,” Charlotte said, grabbing the door handle and beginning to climb inside. The paramedic caught her by the forearm and pulled her backward. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” she said.

  “The hell you can’t,” Charlotte snapped, poking the woman with her index finger. “That’s my patient in there, and I’m not leaving his side.”

  The paramedic gazed past Charlotte to Sergeant Davies, who stepped forward. “Mr. Wheeler is a death row inmate, and we will need at least one guard in the ambulance with you. I’ll have a cruiser following behind you and one out front leading the way.” He paused, glancing down at Charlotte. “We’d also like Nurse Thompson to stay with him.”

  “Let’s move!” Charlotte yelled, again grabbing the handle.

  This time, the paramedic relented and held the door open while Charlotte and Officer Benny Cruz climbed inside. Once they were in, she entered behind them and turned back to Davies before closing the doors. “The hospital will call once we’ve arrived.”

  “Ten-four,” he said, nodding at her and grabbing his voice unit. “Ambulance with inmate pulling out. Benny’s inside. Follow close and report back as soon as he’s in the emergency room.”

  Davies clicked off and watched as the ambulance moved away from the curb. His heart was pounding, and despite the cool of the morning, he had perspired so much that the fabric of his uniform stuck to his back. If JimBone Wheeler croaked on his watch, he could kiss any chance of a promotion goodbye.

  C’mon Charlotte, he thought, saying a silent prayer. Don’t let the son of a bitch die.

  5

  Seven minutes after leaving the prison, the ambulance pulled to a stop outside the emergency room of Nashville General Hospital. Charlotte and the female paramedic jumped out of the back and lowered the stretcher out of the vehicle. When two emergency room technicians arrived to help, Charlotte began dishing out instructions. “His blood pressure was 60 over 40 at the prison, but we intubated him on the trip over and it’s up to 80 over 50 now. Oxygen sat has increased to 89, but still not good. Need to get him to the back immediately.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” one of the techs said, pushing the stretcher through the entrance to the ER with the other tech on his heels.

  “I’ll be right in. I just need to notify the prison we’re here.”

  But the techs ignored her and moved through the lobby with effortless precision. Charlotte watched as the doors that led to the patient care wing in the back
opened and the stretcher disappeared behind them. Adrenaline surged through every blood vessel in her body. Almost there, she thought, turning and heading back to the ambulance. The female paramedic was gone, and though she couldn’t see the front of the vehicle, she knew the driver was waiting for her signal before he departed too. To her left, she saw the four uniformed officers who had escorted them from the prison to the hospital approaching her.

  “Where’s Benny?” the one named Taggert asked. “I didn’t see him get out of the van.”

  “He’s gone to the ER,” Charlotte said. “With the inmate. Everything is cool. We’re here and there’s not a damn thing we can do now. You guys need to get back to the prison.”

  Taggert started to protest, but Charlotte grabbed his forearm and gave him a nudge. “Since you were on Wheeler’s hall, you probably need to help Glenn with the write-up. Take your partner with you, and the other two guys can stay here for additional security. I’ll call Glenn and get him up to speed.” Not waiting for a response, she turned and took out her cell phone, clicking the number for the prison.

  Behind her, she heard Taggert say, “You heard the lady. Seeley, you and J. P. stay close and check in with Benny. Me and Dexter will head back.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Taggert and his partner jogged back to their cruiser while the other two uniforms strode toward the entrance to the emergency room. Meanwhile, Charlotte listened to the ringtone, heart pounding in her chest. When the dispatcher finally answered, Charlotte barked, “Get me Sergeant Davies.”

  Seconds later, she heard Glenn’s voice. “He there?”

  “Yes, and he’s still alive.”

  Charlotte heard a sigh on the other end of the line. “Thank God.”

  “I wouldn’t thank him just yet,” Charlotte said, walking past the ambulance at a normal pace. As she did, she nodded at the driver, who returned the gesture. Seconds later, the van moved forward and approached Albion Street, which ran adjacent to the hospital. “With that pressure and sat rate, we aren’t out of the woods. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty he survives, and even if he does, his brain may end up scrambled. How long was he up there vomiting, Glenn?” She inserted the slightest hint of challenge into her voice. Up ahead, she saw the ambulance turn right onto Albion.