Page 76 of The Devil's Advocate

Do this and I’ll be waiting for you.

Your loving wife,

Lucy x

Lomax stared at the letter, unable to speak. Unable to move.

He jolted when a teardrop appeared on the page, smudging the ink. Carefully, he placed the letter on the nightstand and wept for his wife.

And for himself.

After a while, he got up and opened the wardrobe. There was a shoebox beside the lockbox for his personal weapon. He took down the shoebox and opened it up. Inside was a pen drive containing the security footage that covered the gas station for the forty-eight hours covering the disappearance and murder of Skylar Edwards. This was the only copy of that footage. He’d deleted the original from the server in the gas station.

Once the medical examiner’s report threw up some inconsistencies, he had continued his investigation into Skylar’s murder. A couple of days after Dubois was charged, he’d found the gas-station footage. He still couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Skylar got into a car. That same car came back the next evening, just after dark. By zooming in, he had seen the driver take something heavy out of the trunk of the vehicle and make his way to the grassland beyond the lot.

He knew the driver. The real killer. More importantly, on the night she went missing, Andy Dubois could clearly be seen leaving the area, and he never returned.

It was time to make his confession, and to stop Randal Korn before he put another innocent man in the execution chamber.

CHAPTER FORTY

EDDIE

I met Kate and Harry in a chop house fifteen miles from Buckstown. It was a side-of-the-road kind of place, with blue and white checkered tablecloths and food that came on plates with dividers. Three different sections. One for meat, one for hushpuppies or onion rings and one for greens. Harry and I ordered barbeque pork. Kate opted for a chargrilled chicken salad.

‘So, what’s got you so excited?’ I asked.

Kate’s right heel had been bouncing on the hardwood floor beneath the table since she sat down.

‘I saw the ring that caused the wounds on Skylar Edwards,’ she said.

I leaned forward.

‘We were looking for a large ring with a five-pointed star,’ she said. ‘Ryan Hogg has the exact same ring,’ she said, and produced a photo.

I could see Harry’s forearm in the picture, so I presumed she’d taken this photo today. The next picture she showed me was a close-up of the ring. An ostentatious gold ring, with a white jewel star in the center.

‘Can you zoom in any closer?’ I asked.

Kate adjusted the picture, but it wasn’t good enough quality to see the smaller details on the ring.

‘I talked to Farnesworth. There’s good news and bad news,’ I said. ‘Good news is he is pretty specific about the markings on Skylar’s body from the ring. There are actually two letters above the star, an “F” and a “C” but I can’t tell if there’s lettering above Hogg’s ring.’

‘We could always go back and get a closer look,’ said Kate.

‘I don’t know how wise that would be right now. You haven’t asked me the bad news yet.’

Harry closed his eyes. He was way ahead of me. Kate hung her head. They’d both clocked the problem.

‘Farnesworth won’t testify,’ said Kate.

‘Right. He’s beyond scared. And with good reason. The lawyer who instructed him is dead, along with his office manager. He’s taking the warning seriously. It doesn’t matter if we find the real killer and the matching ring ; without Farnesworth we have no way of introducing the marks on her skin into evidence for the jury. It won’t be part of the case at all.’

‘And we can’t get another medical examiner to testify because Skylar’s body was cremated,’ said Harry.

‘What about we hit Farnesworth with a subpoena?’ asked Kate.

‘That’s possible, but it’s professional suicide. Even if he answered the subpoena and came to court, he wouldn’t co-operate on the witness stand. We’d have to treat our own expert witness as hostile and that is a recipe for disaster in a death-penalty case. It’s Andy’s life on the line, here. We can’t afford any mistakes,’ I said.