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Surrendering himself to Gerard’s custody — and, more important, staying surrendered — was one of the hardest things Richard had ever done. Given that, one time, he'd run for miles through the desert with a bleeding bullet wound in his leg, that was really saying something.
There was still so much that could go wrong. Richard’s appeal could be denied, or Lloyd could change his mind about testifying. The only other person that knew the truth of what happened the night Helen Kimble was murdered was lying dead on the ground at the amusement park, shot down by Gerard. It would be Richard’s word alone, and the jury already proved last time that Richard’s word wasn’t enough.
Richard couldn’t stop himself from compulsively looking for ways out. He’d gotten a good look at the amusement park’s layout from the top of the water tower; there was a fence around the park, but it was meant to keep people out instead of in, and he was pretty sure there were a couple of points where he could get over it. Gerard wouldn’t be able to chase him, not with the amount of blood he’d lost, and at this point Richard was pretty confident Gerard wouldn’t shoot him in the back.
Lloyd wouldn’t either. The man was following them both, silent, looking a little dazed.
Gerard’s hand tightened on his arm. “Relax, Kimble,” he said. “As soon as we get back to headquarters, I’m going to ask the district attorney to file for a stay of execution and then an appeal given new evidence that has come to light. There’s no reason why the judge should deny either one.”
Richard nodded, tight.
“Given your, ah, history of escaping custody, you probably won’t be given the option of bail. But, if you want, I’ll make sure you stay here in my custody in Stafford while we wait,” Gerard continued. “It might be a couple of weeks and we’re not exactly set up to house prisoners long-term, but you might be more comfortable than in the county jail anyway.”
Two days ago, that exact scenario would have been Richard’s worst nightmare. Even now, the idea of being Gerard’s prisoner made his stomach cramp and his breathing speed up. But the county jail was nearly an hour from Stafford, and Richard couldn’t help the irrational fear that, if he was out of sight for awhile, Gerard might just…change his mind again. Might decide that going to all the trouble of securing a new trial for Richard wasn’t worth the effort, and quietly sit back and let the state carry out the sentence it had rendered upon Richard four years ago.
Making such a long trip would be a burden on Donna, too, if he was allowed to see her.
“Will I be able to talk to my sister?” Richard asked. “She’ll want to know what happened.”
“Of course,” Gerard said. “You can call her when we get back, and I’ll make sure she can come and visit.”
“As long as she doesn’t bring a file baked into a cake,” Richard said, only halfway joking.
They were coming up to where they left the car, and Richard could see the open gate. He could get through it, he was pretty sure, and this was Stafford, where he’d lived almost his whole life. There were half a dozen places he could think of off the top of his head where he could lie low if he needed to, creeks he could follow if he needed to get dogs off his scent. He could disappear, start all over again.
Gerard followed Richard’s gaze and then shook his head. “Don’t. If you run again, I can’t help you.”
“If I let you bring me in,” Richard said, still looking at the gate, “Can you guarantee I’ll survive it?”
“Yes,” Gerard said, no hesitation at all. “I devoted four years of my life to chasing you. I didn’t give up, even when you slipped through my fingers time and time again, even when everyone else swore you were dead. I swear to you, I will dedicate that same amount of energy to making sure that you walk free.”
That was enough to make Richard turn away from the gate to look at Gerard. “It would be easier on you if you didn’t,” Richard said. “You could be the hero that finally caught Richard Kimble. Take some time off, spend it with your family.”
Gerard just looked offended. “It was never about being a hero. It was about ensuring that the law was upheld. And that work isn’t finished.”
“I’ve been telling you I was innocent ever since the night of the murder,” Richard said. “I literally threw Johnson and his recorded confession at you one time. None of that was enough to change your mind before.”
“I may have allowed myself to become somewhat…single-minded in my pursuit,” Gerard admitted. “But I believe you now. There’s no justice in letting a man die for a crime he didn’t commit, and I will not allow it to happen.”
“You believe me,” Richard echoed, faint. The words he’d needed to hear for almost half a decade, words he’d almost given up hope on.
Gerard scowled. “You heard me the first time, I’m not going to repeat it.”
They were through the gate. If Richard was going to run, he had to do it now.
“Let me finish this,” Gerard said. “For both of us.”
Richard got in the car.
***
True to his word, the first thing Gerard did after sending Lloyd off with an officer to make a statement and escorting Richard to the temporary holding cells was to request the paperwork to file for a stay of execution. He filled it out sitting on a bench in plain view of Richard’s cell, waving off the increasingly upset medic who kept trying to examine his leg.
“You should let him look at it,” Richard said quietly. “You’ll probably need surgery to remove the bullet.”
“He can wait until I’m done with this,” Gerard said.
“It’s okay,” Richard said. “They’re not going to execute me tonight.”
“I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”
Richard should have protested more, but the fact was, watching Gerard scribble his signature on form after form was the only thing keeping him steady right now.
Finally, Gerard waved over one of the guards at the end of the hall and handed the papers off to him. “Take these to the district attorney’s office,” he ordered.
“It’s a Sunday,” the cop protested.
“You take them to the district attorney’s office,” Gerard growled. “And you make sure they get filed and marked as top priority.”
“Yes sir,” the cop said, sounding resigned, and headed down the hallway.
The medic descended on Gerard immediately, ignoring his protests that he still needed to fill out the prisoner intake forms. “Someone else will do that,” he said, tone brooking no argument. “You are going to the hospital.”
Gerard scowled, but couldn’t hide the way he was braced against the wall to keep himself upright. “Fine,” he said. “But you make sure that Kimble gets to call his sister.”
The medic glanced at Richard, his expression unreadable. “Deal,” he said, and helped Gerard to his feet, one of Gerard’s arms wrapped around his shoulder for support.
Richard bit his lip to keep himself from asking Gerard to stay. It was stupid; Gerard had featured in practically every one of his nightmares for five years, but now the man was also the only person in this building that Richard thought maybe he could trust.
The entire police force knew who he was. His murder trial was a big deal in a small town like Stafford, and it got extensive media coverage; they would have watched it, and most would have decided he was guilty along with the jury. After he escaped, they’d have hung his wanted poster on the wall and passed by it just about every day. They would have dealt with Gerard’s bad temper as he failed again and again to catch Richard. As far as they were concerned, Richard Kimble was nothing but a convicted criminal who’d made them look like fools for far too long.
He watched until Gerard was out of sight, and then got up and paced in his small cell, trying to burn off the nervous energy. Richard knew how quickly gossip could spread in a prison. By now, they’d all know why Lloyd was here, and might have even heard his statement. They’d have Johnson’s body in the morgue too, and some of them would have noticed Johnson’s missing arm and remembered Richard’s defense. Maybe it would be enough to start changing their minds.
He still felt trapped, though. Vulnerable, with his life in Gerard’s hands. Nobody had tried to take out their frustration on Richard yet, but that could just be because Gerard had been there. Without him, Richard was alone in a station full of angry cops. He’d been living on borrowed time ever since the train crash, but he still wasn’t ready to die.
There were other things, too, that he was actively avoiding thinking about. Things like the reason Lloyd had been in his house that fateful night.
Helen had loved Richard enough to try to open her heart to an adopted child. If Johnson hadn’t picked that night, hadn’t picked their house to rob, Richard and Helen could have had a family together. They could have finally been happy. When Johnson killed her, he stole not only her life and Richard’s, but the lives of the children they could have raised as well.
He was pulled from his thoughts by the rattle of a key and then his cell door clanking open. A policeman Richard didn’t recognize beckoned him over, and Richard came warily, allowing the man to handcuff him and then lead him out of the cell.
They didn’t go far, just a few hallways down, to a room with a telephone. The policeman gestured to it impatiently. “Go on,” he said.
Richard glanced between him and the phone. This felt like a trap of some kind — even though Richard had been promised a call, he hadn’t expected he’d get it without Gerard there to supervise.
But when the policeman just said, “Well? What are you waiting for?” he moved forward to pick up the handset and dial, awkward with his hands still bound. His wrist twinged, sore from the fight with Johnson, but he ignored it.
Donna picked up after just one ring; she must have been waiting by the phone for hours, ever since Richard and Gerard left her house.
“Hey, Donna,” he said, not knowing where to start.
“Dick!” she exclaimed. “Did you find him? Are you okay? What happened, where are you?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “It’s…um. It’s good news, mostly.”
“Oh thank goodness,” she said. “You got him, then? The one-armed man? And Lloyd?”
“We found them,” Richard said. “Johnson is…Gerard killed him.” He rushed to add, “But we got confirmation that Lloyd was there that night, and he’s willing to testify that he saw Johnson kill Helen.”
“That bastard!” Donna spat. “I’ve had him round for coffee a dozen times, let him spend hours with the boys, and this whole time he could have saved your life and he chose not to. Why? Why would he let you die for a crime you didn’t commit?”
“I think he was scared,” Richard said.
He wasn’t angry like Donna was, at least not at Lloyd. Maybe he would have been a few years ago, but in his time on the run he’d been betrayed over and over again by people he thought he could trust. Now, he was mostly just tired.
“He should be scared,” Donna muttered darkly, and Richard couldn’t help but smile at that. His big sister, always getting into fights to protect him, even now that they were all grown up.
“Don’t beat him up too badly,” he told her. “I need him to be able to talk during my appeal.”
“I can’t make any promises,” she said. Then, “So there’s going to be an appeal?”
“Gerard seems certain there will be,” Richard said.
“Certain enough for you to turn yourself in? You still haven’t told me where you are.”
“I’m at the Stafford police station,” he said. “And yes, I turned myself in.” He couldn’t tell his sister how frightened he still was; he didn’t want her to worry. “Gerard said he’d arrange for you to come visit.”
“I’m coming now,” she said.
Richard wanted a friendly face, a hand to hold. But he was pretty sure that, without Gerard’s intervention, the cops wouldn’t let her into the police station, and he didn’t want her to get in trouble trying anyway.
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s late, and you’ve got the kids.”
“Time’s up,” the policeman told Richard, who nodded quickly.
“I have to go,” Richard said. “I love you, sis. Tell Len and Jean I’m all right, would you?”
“Of course,” she said, and snuffled before adding, “I love you too, Dick.”
He hung up the phone, and the policeman escorted him back to his cell. Once the handcuffs had been removed and the door securely locked, Richard lowered himself gingerly onto the cot and leaned back against the wall. Adrenaline had been keeping most of the pain from the fight earlier that day at bay, but now it was getting harder to ignore the way his cheek throbbed where he’d been kicked in the face and the way his abdomen ached where Johnson had punched him.
Richard prodded both gently. He was going to have some spectacular bruises, but he was pretty sure nothing was broken and there was no internal damage.
He slid the thin pillow behind his head and tried to get as comfortable as he could. Between the injuries and the constant awareness of where he was, Richard doubted he’d be getting much sleep tonight.
***
The clanging of metal as the cell block door slid open roused Richard from the light doze he’d eventually managed to slip into. He scrambled to his feet, wincing at the injured muscles that had stiffened up overnight, and approached the bars of his cell.
Gerard was back. On crutches and looking drained, but alive and present. The intensity of Richard’s relief surprised him.
There was a young cop with Gerard, carrying a paper bag that smelled like coffee. The cop passed the bag through the bars, and Richard opened it to find a paper cup of coffee and a slightly-squished pastry. He removed the lid from the cup and took a grateful sip.
Gerard looked him over and frowned. “Have you seen a doctor yet?” he asked.
Richard shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.
Gerard ignored him. “I’ll get one down here today.”
It was at the tip of Richard’s tongue to reiterate that he didn’t need the doctor — it had become instinct to refuse medical treatment for anything that wasn’t life-threatening — but he swallowed it down. He wasn’t a fugitive anymore; he didn’t have to worry about not having a legitimate ID card or the possibility of a police report getting filed. He had a little bit of money too, enough to pay the doctor. And he was pretty sure that, even if Gerard was given a report on Richard’s injuries, the detective wouldn’t use those injuries against him.
The pediatrician in Richard was aware that he wasn’t good at being objective about his own health anymore. He’d spent so many years in emergency triage mode, only seeking help when he physically couldn’t make it on his own. It had left permanent damage — multiple badly-healed bullet and stab wounds plus dozens of vehicle accidents and tumbles down cliffs had left him a mess of aching joints every time it rained, and it was getting harder to ignore. Richard wouldn’t have been able to run for much longer, even if Gerard hadn’t caught him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’ve already been to to see the district attorney,” Gerard continued. “He’s agreed to a stay of execution, given new evidence come to light, and signed off on an appeal.”
Richard sucked in a breath. It was happening. It was really happening. He was being given chance to clear his name.
“They’ll set a date for your new trial tomorrow,” Gerard continued. “You have the option of going in front of a judge instead of a full jury. There was concern about locating impartial jury members, given the amount of media coverage there’s been on you over the years.”
Richard nodded slowly. Gerard was right; most people would already have made up their minds about his guilt or innocence long ago. He just hoped that the judge hearing his case wouldn’t be one who had decided he was guilty.
“So you’re aware, there will be some new charges brought against you as well. Escape from federal custody is a felony, and there is documented evidence of you assaulting several police officers over the course of the past few years, myself included. Given your particular circumstances, though, a good lawyer could plead guilty and get the sentence reduced to time already served.”
Richard nodded again. He’d known that was a possibility. The idea of going back to prison for a few years didn’t even bother him so much, knowing that there wasn’t a death sentence waiting for him at the end of it.
“Do you have a lawyer you’d like to call to represent you? Victor Leonetti offered to pay your legal fees after recanting his confession regarding the murder of your wife, and I suspect that Anne Leonetti will honor his wishes.”
“Maybe,” Richard said. Frank Hobart had seemed confident in his ability to get Richard off, provided that he could get a new trial. And Richard wasn’t a fugitive anymore, so Hobart wouldn’t be jeopardizing his career to help him. But…if Richard had a choice, he’d prefer someone who actually believed in his innocence, not just someone who thought his first trial had been mis-handled.
G. Stanley Laser, maybe. But Laser had been in poor health years ago when Richard had gone to him for help, and even if his condition hadn’t deteriorated, it would still be difficult for him to get to Stafford for the trial.
“I have a suggestion or two if there’s nobody in particular you have in mind,” Gerard said. “Norman Roth is good with cases like yours, and he owes me a favor. I can give him a call later.”
“You don’t have to use up your favors for me,” Richard said.
“I made you a promise,” Gerard reminded him. “You’re going to walk out of here free, whatever it takes.”
Richard’s eyes burned, threatening to tear up. To avoid crying in front of Gerard, he took another sip of his coffee.
“I’ve also taken the liberty of contacting your sister and arranging for her to visit you this afternoon. I couldn’t get passes for anyone but immediate family members yet, but I’ll work on getting your lady friend in to see you soon, if you’d like.”
If it hadn’t been for Jean, Gerard’s trap in Los Angeles would have worked. Richard would have been arrested and sent back to death row, and Johnson would have walked free. He’d never be able to repay her for that, but he wanted her to know how grateful he was.
“Yes,” Richard said. “I’d like to see Jean.”
Gerard nodded. “I have work to do. I’ll be back to deliver your lunch, and give you any more updates if I’ve got them.”
He started to walk away, then paused and turned back. “Nobody’s given you a hard time here, have they?”
“No,” Richard said.
“Good,” Gerard said, looking grimly satisfied, and Richard wondered what exactly he’d said to the others. “Let me know if that changes.”
Richard nodded, and after Gerard left, he finally let himself relax enough to fall asleep for real.
***
The next few days passed in a blur. Richard got ice for his ribs and face, a splint for his wrist, and a bottle of painkillers from the medic that had examined Gerard. He got to see Donna and Len, got to hold his sister close and bury his face in her hair while she sobbed into his shoulder.
They didn’t bring the children, and he was a little relieved. The cops removed his handcuffs for the duration of the visit, but Billy and David were old enough now that they would notice the bars on the windows of the visiting room and the armed guards outside the door.
“They know all about their Uncle Dick,” Donna assured him. “How brave he is, and how smart, and how much he loves them and looks forward to seeing them when he’s finally able to come home.”
Richard clutched her even harder and tried his best to hold himself together.
He met with the lawyer Gerard had suggested, and they went over the transcript of Richard’s first trial together as well as everything Richard had had learned later about what really happened the night of his wife’s murder. “With Mr. Chandler’s and Lt. Gerard’s testimony, I should have no trouble getting you off on the murder charge,” Mr. Roth said.
He sounded so certain. Richard wished he could be too. Mostly, though, he just felt numb. He spent most of his time in his cell dozing as his body tried to adjust to the lack of a constant flood of cortisol and noradrenaline, and to make up for more than four years of sleep deficit.
Gerard came by regularly, bringing meals and newspapers and the occasional update from Richard’s lawyer if Mr. Roth couldn’t make it in that day. His visits tended to be brief and professional, serving mostly to reassure Richard that he hadn’t been forgotten about, until one evening Richard woke to find Gerard standing outside his cell looking contemplative.
Still groggy and disoriented from his nap, Richard’s heart skipped a beat as, for a moment, he thought he was back in Northoak waiting for extradition.
Then his head cleared, and he remembered that he was already in Stafford, and that he didn’t need to be afraid of Gerard anymore.
Gerard had seen that flash of fear — Richard could tell by the way his lips thinned — but he didn’t say anything.
Richard pushed himself to his feet and approached the bars. Gerard had something in his hand — it looked like a magnetic travel chess set.
Sure enough, he held it up and said, “How would you feel about a game?”
Richard hesitated. He had effectively been playing three-dimensional chess with Gerard for years, with the threat of death hanging over his head if he made a single wrong move. He wasn’t sure if he was up for a casual game, and he wasn’t sure why Gerard wanted one.
“You won,” Richard said. “You caught me. You don’t need to prove anything.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Gerard said. “Just to pass the time. You must be bored down here by yourself.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” Gerard confirmed.
There had to be something else he wanted, some reason he’d come down to see Richard. Richard was curious what that might be, and didn’t want to go back to sleep. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But you come in here and sit down and rest your leg.”
This time, it was Gerard’s turn to hesitate, looking at the lock and then at Richard, trying to gauge the risk.
“I’m not trying to escape,” Richard said. “I have no reason to.”
“I know that,” Gerard said, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than Richard. Still, when Richard backed away and sat down on his cot, Gerard unlocked the cell door and sat down on the other end.
He unfolded the chess set, and they each grabbed a handful of pieces to start setting up the board.
“You go first,” Gerard said, turning the board so that the white pieces were closest to Richard.
That, combined with the way Gerard was looking at the board, made it seem like he did want to prove something after all. And Richard was wrong before about not needing to be afraid of Gerard; he was still vulnerable here, relying on Gerard to keep the rest of the police away from him, to keep giving him access to Donna. He couldn’t actually afford to make Gerard angry.
But he’d already agreed to play. And Gerard was right, when there was no one around, Richard was bored and lonely, and this would be a good way to take his mind off the upcoming trial.
Richard selected a pawn and moved it forward two spaces.
Gerard responded by moving his own pawn forward, but not close enough to Richard’s to threaten it. Richard advanced his knight, testing the waters. Gerard was playing cautiously too, avoiding immediate confrontation and keeping his pieces out of Richard’s reach.
Richard moved his pawn forward again, and now Gerard had to take it or lose a bishop.
“I always wondered what this would be like,” Gerard said as he took Richard’s pawn. “Matching wits with you, with nobody else in the way.”
Richard studied the board. Gerard’s defense was solid, and he was only just starting to go on the attack, but Richard thought he might be able to wear Gerard down, keep him busy enough that he couldn’t spend much time on the offensive.
“I didn’t ask anybody to help me,” he said. “I never wanted to put them in danger.”
“But they lied for you anyway. Law-abiding citizens warned you when the police were coming, hid you, slipped you keys and lock picks when you did get caught.”
“They did what they thought was right,” Richard said.
Gerard frowned but didn’t respond. It must be such an alien concept to him that, sometimes, the only morally correct thing to do was to break the law. Richard wasn’t sure Gerard would ever be able to accept it.
Richard reached for the other knight.
“Do you still hate me?” Gerard said.
Richard let his hand drop.
“I never said I hated you,” he said.
“Not in so many words.”
Richard sighed. “If you’re asking for my forgiveness, I don’t think I’m ready to give that yet. I’m not sure if I ever will be.”
Gerard’s jaw was tight, but he nodded, accepting that.
“But no,” Richard continued. “I hate what you’ve done to me and to my family. There are things about you that I don’t understand and never will, even after all these years of trying to figure you out. But I don’t hate you.” He moved the knight, and then met Gerard’s eyes. “Do you still hate me?”
“It was never about emotion,” Gerard denied. “It was about upholding the law, about seeing that the sentence rendered was carried out.”
“Are you sure?” Richard said. “I escaped from your custody on the train, and then at least half a dozen more times after that. The papers made me out to be a dangerous criminal, but they made you out to be a fool, and that must have stung every time. You chased me back and forth across the country, threatened good people with imprisonment if you so much as suspected they had helped me.”
“I will admit that I felt…frustrated, at times,” Gerard said. “And I deeply regret that I allowed my desire to bring your case to an end to take higher priority than things that I should have valued more, particularly time spent with my family.
“It is with those regrets in mind that I wanted to let you know that I’m resigning from the police force,” Gerard added.
When Richard’s head came up, sharp, he hastened to add, “Not right away. I’ll see you through this. But once you’re free… I’ve spent my whole life believing in the importance of the law. I still believe it. I think you do too. But now I understand that the human beings responsible for ensuring that it is carried out are not infallible.
“I was so sure that I’d done my due diligence in your case and that the jury’s verdict was correct. But I was wrong. And now, as I work on other cases, I can’t help wondering if I’m condemning another innocent man.”
“So I’m responsible for ruining your career?” Richard said.
“No,” Gerard said. “I don’t blame you. My actions were my own, and I take responsibility for the decisions I made.”
It was hard to imagine a world without Gerard The Police Lieutenant. He’d been a constant presence in Richard’s life for the past four years, even when he wasn’t physically there. And, in Richard’s head, he’d become larger than life, overwhelming, liable to strike at any moment if Richard ever let his guard down.
It had been almost comforting, in a strange way. Nothing else was constant, as Richard traveled from town to town, as he donned and shed identities more frequently than he changed his actual clothing, but there was always Lieutenant Gerard.
“I’m sorry anyway,” Richard said.
“So am I,” Gerard said quietly.
Richard didn’t try to reach for the knight again, and Gerard didn’t ask him to.
***
The morning of Richard’s appeal, he dressed in the suit Donna had dropped off for him the day before, and spent more time than he was willing to admit fussing with his hair. Someone had come by to trim it, but nobody had been willing to give him dye, and it had been long enough that the grey was showing in his roots.
Gerard arrived promptly at seven-thirty. If he had any doubts about the appeal being granted, he gave no sign of it, and Richard tried to let some of that confidence bolster him.
Gerard cuffed Richard’s hands together before directing Richard out of the cell, but his hand was gentle on Richard’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he said. “But in the eyes of the law, you’re still guilty until proven innocent.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Richard.
Gerard sent a couple of cops ahead to clear a path through the mob of reporters that had already formed outside of the police station. Richard tried to keep his head high as they flung questions at him and jostled each other trying to get the best photograph, but he’d spent a long time being desperate to avoid attention, and having an entire crowd focused on him was deeply unnerving.
There was a police car waiting at the curb. Gerard opened the door for Richard, and Richard ducked into the back seat, clumsy with his hands bound. Gerard slid in after Richard, and put his hand back on Richard’s shoulder like he didn’t trust Richard not to throw himself out of the moving car and make a run for it.
Richard had been content to let the legal battle that would decide his fate play out when it was more of an abstract concept in the distant future, but now that the time had come, he had to admit that the thought of running was tempting again. Richard had counted on truth and justice to prevail before, and they hadn’t. Circumstances were different this time, but he had lost some of his faith in the system, and it was terrifying to put his life back in its hands.
From the way Gerard was looking at Richard, he knew every thought that was passing through Richard’s head. His hand squeezed tighter for a moment — not threatening, just grounding, and Richard tried to match the steady and deliberate pattern of Gerard’s breathing.
The car pulled up outside the courthouse, where more reporters were already waiting.
This was it. One way or another, the running was over.
“Are you ready, Dr. Kimble?” Gerard asked.
Richard nodded.