22-08-2026, 03:01 PM
CHAPTER 10: SOMETIMES, DYING IS EASIER
Debbie is gone and even if she was willing to come back to me, I know now I could never take her back. Not with the ghost of Doug Baker in our bed.
And Aline des-Jardins told me as kindly as you can tell an ex-lover that we are history and she is back with the man she was meant to be with.
Myra Martinez is as hot a woman as I have ever seen, even though for some reason I don’t have the feelings for her I had for Debbie and Aline. But I feel like she is a part of my past too. The time is close when I will walk away from all of this.
Maybe I will call Arnold Becker about that defense job. New York? Los Angeles? Chicago. No, not Chicago. Not with Doug Baker’s sorry ass within a thousand miles of me. But wherever I go, Myra won’t be there. She has a life here, so Dallas Edwards’ cutting me loose has closed off that possibility.
I remember Dan Jenkins from the Bonne Chance. He said you can never tell when your life will take you to a meeting with the person who will change your life. But when it happens, you have to take the chance, take a leap of faith.
I wonder if I’ll get that second chance he talked about. I wonder if I’ll have the sense to recognize it if it happens.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 3 P.M.
The alarm buzzer went off as I stepped through the security booth at the front of the courthouse. The two bailiffs moved toward me drawing their pistols until they both recognized me at the same instant.
I raised my hands into the air very quickly as all activity came to a sudden stop around me.
The nearest bailiff, an older guy with a few springs of whitish hair still sticking up on an otherwise bald head, put his pistol down but didn’t holster it as he stepped toward me.
“Mr. Maitland?”
I pulled my coat back to reveal the Glock in a shoulder holster.
“I have a special permit in my jacket pocket if you’ll let me get it out, or you can fish it out yourself.”
He looked at the other bailiff, then said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Mr.
Maitland, but could I see the permit. Take it out slowly, okay?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I meant to take the Glock out and show you the permit before I went through the machine, but my mind was somewhere else.’
I showed him the permit signed by the Chief Judge of the Circuit and Dallas Edwards. He looked at it for a moment, then said, “I really am sorry, but do you
mind if I call up to the Chief Judge’s office. It’s just that this is kind of unusual, even for a prosecutor.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, noticing out of the corner of my eye women and men who worked in the courthouse and knew me by sight edging away from me. Just another story to add to my courthouse legend. There were already stories circulating throughout the courthouse about several members of the largely Hispanic night cleaning crews refusing to enter my office, the lair of the “Angel de la muerte,” or Angel of Death.
It would have been funny, except they were as serious as hell.
Maybe they had a point. Half the defense attorneys in the building would plead out clients rather than take me on in court and even some of our own people would take the stairs down rather than ride with me in an elevator.
I had asked Cheryl about it a few days before and she had told me, “You probably haven’t noticed Bill but, except for the two weeks when that French woman was here, most of the time, if you’re not involved in a case, you usually walk around with a frown, or you glower at people. Or...you just...shit, Bill, you walk around looking like your best friend just died. It’s kind of a downer.”
I hadn’t realized it. I hadn’t realized it because even before my marriage went south, I hadn’t been the most light hearted of guys. The job kept me from being a happy go lucky soul. But I didn’t know that somber had shaded into gloomy and I knew that today I was probably grimmer than usual.
My mind kept drifting back to Aline’s email. You didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines. She had managed to patch up her marriage and she had her son back. How could I be unhappy at that? I wanted her to be happy, but that meant I’d never see her again. That made me unhappy.
The bailiff interrupted my musings, handing me the permit and apologizing for nearly drawing on me. I assured him there were no hard feelings and took the Glock back after I’d gone through the screening machine again.
I had gotten the Glock from an investigator, oddly enough the one who’d spotted me with Aline at the restaurant, and was given some minimal instruction in how to use it since I hadn’t had any firearms training in nearly five years. So now I was carrying and it felt awkward as hell, but I remembered Debbie’s words. I didn’t want either BJ or Kelly to come to my funeral until they were a lot older.
I had barely walked into my office when Cheryl buzzed me and I picked up the phone. Mitch McConnell, one of our investigators, was on it, talking so fast that at first I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Finally I understood and I nearly dropped the phone. “Oh shit. What hospital?”
I barely remembered to alert security as I went out but I had a driver waiting before I hit the street and he drove me in one of the SA car pool to Baptist Medical Center and went to park while I headed to the cardiac section. McConnell was waiting for me as I walked into the waiting area.
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” he replied. “Pat Peterson, the cop assigned to watch him, heard him gasping and found him lying on the floor in the bathroom at about 2 p.m. He was having a really hard time breathing and complaining of a pain in his right shoulder and arm. I just talked to the doctor examining him and he said it’s pretty obvious he’s had a major heart attack.”
The treating physician, a youngish cardiologist who looked like he had just started shaving, came out a half hour later and confirmed what McConnell had told me.
Wilbur Bell, our star witness against William Sutton, had had a major heart attack. They’d had to go in and clean out four blocked arteries.
“What’s the prognosis?”
“At his age and with his health problems, not real good. I’d give him 50/50 at best of making it through the night - much worse odds of making it a week or two.”
“Shit, shit, shit. Look doctor, the State Attorney’s Office, that is the state of Florida, will be paying for his care. Do whatever he needs to improve those odds. If you manage to bring him back, my office is going to be very grateful and our gratitude can be very profitable or useful in a lot of ways. Understand?”
“Yeah, but you understand he’s an old, very sick man and I’m not a miracle worker. I’ll do the best I can, but it’s going to be a long shot.”
“Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got and hope for luck.”
Before I left I told McDonnell to arrange with the Sheriff’s Office for an around-the-clock security guard to watch over Bell.
“You really think Sutton would try to get to him in a hospital?”
“I don’t know, but any man who’d do what he did wouldn’t mind throwing the dice if he thought it would save him from the Death Chamber. He or his mother could hire someone. Nature might do his dirty work, but I don’t know if he’s religious enough to rely on God taking the old man out without some help.”
On my way back up to the office, I wondered if I was glowering again. Probably. That son of a bitch Sutton was halfway home to getting rid of his most dangerous witness. Without the old man I wasn’t sure I could nail him, and this was entirely out of my hands. There was nothing I could do to alter events. It was up to the doctor, the old man and God. It was, to put it mildly, irritating as hell.
The only good thing about it was that the anger had driven out the sadness of knowing I’d lost the second woman I’d loved in my lifetime. So far I was batting zero for two.
Debbie is gone and even if she was willing to come back to me, I know now I could never take her back. Not with the ghost of Doug Baker in our bed.
And Aline des-Jardins told me as kindly as you can tell an ex-lover that we are history and she is back with the man she was meant to be with.
Myra Martinez is as hot a woman as I have ever seen, even though for some reason I don’t have the feelings for her I had for Debbie and Aline. But I feel like she is a part of my past too. The time is close when I will walk away from all of this.
Maybe I will call Arnold Becker about that defense job. New York? Los Angeles? Chicago. No, not Chicago. Not with Doug Baker’s sorry ass within a thousand miles of me. But wherever I go, Myra won’t be there. She has a life here, so Dallas Edwards’ cutting me loose has closed off that possibility.
I remember Dan Jenkins from the Bonne Chance. He said you can never tell when your life will take you to a meeting with the person who will change your life. But when it happens, you have to take the chance, take a leap of faith.
I wonder if I’ll get that second chance he talked about. I wonder if I’ll have the sense to recognize it if it happens.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 3 P.M.
The alarm buzzer went off as I stepped through the security booth at the front of the courthouse. The two bailiffs moved toward me drawing their pistols until they both recognized me at the same instant.
I raised my hands into the air very quickly as all activity came to a sudden stop around me.
The nearest bailiff, an older guy with a few springs of whitish hair still sticking up on an otherwise bald head, put his pistol down but didn’t holster it as he stepped toward me.
“Mr. Maitland?”
I pulled my coat back to reveal the Glock in a shoulder holster.
“I have a special permit in my jacket pocket if you’ll let me get it out, or you can fish it out yourself.”
He looked at the other bailiff, then said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Mr.
Maitland, but could I see the permit. Take it out slowly, okay?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I meant to take the Glock out and show you the permit before I went through the machine, but my mind was somewhere else.’
I showed him the permit signed by the Chief Judge of the Circuit and Dallas Edwards. He looked at it for a moment, then said, “I really am sorry, but do you
mind if I call up to the Chief Judge’s office. It’s just that this is kind of unusual, even for a prosecutor.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, noticing out of the corner of my eye women and men who worked in the courthouse and knew me by sight edging away from me. Just another story to add to my courthouse legend. There were already stories circulating throughout the courthouse about several members of the largely Hispanic night cleaning crews refusing to enter my office, the lair of the “Angel de la muerte,” or Angel of Death.
It would have been funny, except they were as serious as hell.
Maybe they had a point. Half the defense attorneys in the building would plead out clients rather than take me on in court and even some of our own people would take the stairs down rather than ride with me in an elevator.
I had asked Cheryl about it a few days before and she had told me, “You probably haven’t noticed Bill but, except for the two weeks when that French woman was here, most of the time, if you’re not involved in a case, you usually walk around with a frown, or you glower at people. Or...you just...shit, Bill, you walk around looking like your best friend just died. It’s kind of a downer.”
I hadn’t realized it. I hadn’t realized it because even before my marriage went south, I hadn’t been the most light hearted of guys. The job kept me from being a happy go lucky soul. But I didn’t know that somber had shaded into gloomy and I knew that today I was probably grimmer than usual.
My mind kept drifting back to Aline’s email. You didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines. She had managed to patch up her marriage and she had her son back. How could I be unhappy at that? I wanted her to be happy, but that meant I’d never see her again. That made me unhappy.
The bailiff interrupted my musings, handing me the permit and apologizing for nearly drawing on me. I assured him there were no hard feelings and took the Glock back after I’d gone through the screening machine again.
I had gotten the Glock from an investigator, oddly enough the one who’d spotted me with Aline at the restaurant, and was given some minimal instruction in how to use it since I hadn’t had any firearms training in nearly five years. So now I was carrying and it felt awkward as hell, but I remembered Debbie’s words. I didn’t want either BJ or Kelly to come to my funeral until they were a lot older.
I had barely walked into my office when Cheryl buzzed me and I picked up the phone. Mitch McConnell, one of our investigators, was on it, talking so fast that at first I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Finally I understood and I nearly dropped the phone. “Oh shit. What hospital?”
I barely remembered to alert security as I went out but I had a driver waiting before I hit the street and he drove me in one of the SA car pool to Baptist Medical Center and went to park while I headed to the cardiac section. McConnell was waiting for me as I walked into the waiting area.
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” he replied. “Pat Peterson, the cop assigned to watch him, heard him gasping and found him lying on the floor in the bathroom at about 2 p.m. He was having a really hard time breathing and complaining of a pain in his right shoulder and arm. I just talked to the doctor examining him and he said it’s pretty obvious he’s had a major heart attack.”
The treating physician, a youngish cardiologist who looked like he had just started shaving, came out a half hour later and confirmed what McConnell had told me.
Wilbur Bell, our star witness against William Sutton, had had a major heart attack. They’d had to go in and clean out four blocked arteries.
“What’s the prognosis?”
“At his age and with his health problems, not real good. I’d give him 50/50 at best of making it through the night - much worse odds of making it a week or two.”
“Shit, shit, shit. Look doctor, the State Attorney’s Office, that is the state of Florida, will be paying for his care. Do whatever he needs to improve those odds. If you manage to bring him back, my office is going to be very grateful and our gratitude can be very profitable or useful in a lot of ways. Understand?”
“Yeah, but you understand he’s an old, very sick man and I’m not a miracle worker. I’ll do the best I can, but it’s going to be a long shot.”
“Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got and hope for luck.”
Before I left I told McDonnell to arrange with the Sheriff’s Office for an around-the-clock security guard to watch over Bell.
“You really think Sutton would try to get to him in a hospital?”
“I don’t know, but any man who’d do what he did wouldn’t mind throwing the dice if he thought it would save him from the Death Chamber. He or his mother could hire someone. Nature might do his dirty work, but I don’t know if he’s religious enough to rely on God taking the old man out without some help.”
On my way back up to the office, I wondered if I was glowering again. Probably. That son of a bitch Sutton was halfway home to getting rid of his most dangerous witness. Without the old man I wasn’t sure I could nail him, and this was entirely out of my hands. There was nothing I could do to alter events. It was up to the doctor, the old man and God. It was, to put it mildly, irritating as hell.
The only good thing about it was that the anger had driven out the sadness of knowing I’d lost the second woman I’d loved in my lifetime. So far I was batting zero for two.
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