Free Fatal Distraction by Diane Capri Page A

continued with her game. “I heard. About the truck and the explosion. I figured it was him. I didn’t hear anything about Manson, though. Is he dead?”
    Jess had seen victims of shock many times, recognized it in Vivian, she thought. The flat affect and lack of emotion that sometimes accompanied the receipt of terrible news. Unfortunately, the numbness didn’t last forever. How much more tragedy could Vivian handle? After Tommy Taylor was executed, would she fall apart?
    â€œManson wasn’t hurt.”
    â€œToo bad,” Vivian said, continuing to play the game. The stark words struck Jess like a sucker punch. In all her prior interviews with Vivian, Jess believed her an irretrievably broken spirit, but not vindictive and never less than compassionate.
    â€œWhy did Arnold do this, Vivian? Do you know?”
    â€œTo stop Manson from getting Tommy Taylor out of prison with his new DNA evidence, what else?” Vivian’s matter-of-fact explanation might have been a description of the IRS tax code. No concern entered her tone. She spoke as if the answer was obvious. And it was anything but.
    â€œWhat evidence, Vivian? There is no new evidence. The governor told me that herself. Taylor’s going to die tomorrow. He’s run out of rope. That’s it. He’s done.”
    Jess felt her anger growing. It was just like Manson to goad Arnold into attempted murder by pretending to have new evidence that didn’t exist—and the Wards’ lousy luck for Manson to survive while a good man like Arnold died.
    â€œOh, there’s evidence all right,” Vivian said, continuing to play with the cards. “Always has been. Or at least, there was.”
    Jess was confused. Had Vivian lost her mind? Was the pressure, once and for all, more than she could take? Jess watched Vivian’s face for signs of madness, but if insanity dwelled within her, its existence was well concealed.
    â€œThat can’t be right,” said Jess. “Arnold testified at all three of Taylor’s trials. He was examined and cross-examined. If he’d known about any other evidence, it would have come out back then.”
    Vivian didn’t argue. She raised her eyebrows, tilted her head to one side and flipped over another set of cards. She took a last drag on the cigarette and pulled the butt out of her mouth long enough to replace it with a new cigarette and light it from the still smoldering butt before she crushed and twisted it down hard into the ashtray, knocking every last tobacco ember out of the filter.
    â€œGotta be careful. Land’s as dry as tinder out there. They been fighting little wild fires all around these parts the past few weeks.” She picked up the deck and continued the game.
    Jess thought back to Arnold Ward’s testimony. At all three trials, his testimony had been consistent – and sufficient to convict Taylor in the end: Arnold had been watching Taylor’s house for hours, a long, lonely vigil, when he saw Taylor walk around from the back yard, the red tip of a cigarette dangling from Taylor’s lips and glowing in the dark.
    As he neared the streetlights, Arnold saw that Taylor was carrying Matthew Crawford’s body.
    Taylor struggled to open the trunk of his car and then bent over to put the body inside. When he stood upright, the glowing cigarette ember was gone.
    Taylor bent over again and looked into the trunk, rummaging around for something, then closed the lid. Arnold waited until Taylor went into the house and then he drove to the nearest pay phone and called the police.
    It was a straightforward account. No variation. The same story, each time he told it, consistent with the statement he gave to the police, the defense investigators, and the reporters.
    Jess wondered whether the story was too consistent. “Did Arnold lie? Is that it?”
    Vivian let the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Lies don’t hold no DNA,”