Reversal (A working title)

Reversal (A working title)

First draft

Chapter One

Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Lucasville, July 1st 2010

Wearing a tight red, Vivien Westwood skirt and matching jacket, Alex Lord, CNN’s latest acquisition, had done all she could to make the final few strands of her red hair behave in the wind, she’d now given up. Power-walking back through the facility’s gate, she headed straight toward her cameraman.

‘Tell me you got that, Leroy,’ she said, reaching the OB van. Then, unclipping a small, innocuous-looking brooch, she passed it to him.

‘Oh, I got it all right; this little gem picked up every last word that psycho had to say. Get it, little gem … brooch?’

Alex ignored him. ‘Did it come through clearly, that’s all I’m interested in?’

‘As clear as a bell,’ he said, handing her the much larger CNN mic. ‘But at the end I think it died on me, I guess it must have been some interference from inside the prison.’ He looked again at the covert microphone. ‘Hey, why’s it wet?’

Alex gave Leroy a sideways look, quite happy about the break in transmission. ‘Oh, er … yeah, I dropped it in a puddle,’ she said, straightening her clothes and again attempting to secure the flailing hair.

Leroy frowned as he held his palms out to feel for rain then kicked the stone-dry earth at his feet. ‘A puddle?’ he said to himself.

Alex cleared her throat, quickly changing the subject. ‘Right, let’s get this over with and hit the road.’

‘Why, got a hot date?’

‘No, a cold shiver,’ she said, referring to the thirty minute interview she’d just had with a condemned man. ‘And I’ve got my kid sister coming over tonight for the weekend.’

‘If you mean Sam, I gotta tell ya, she sure ain’t no kid.’

‘Her name’s Samantha, she’s seventeen, and that makes her still a kid. And you keep well away from her, Leroy.’

Leroy showed his palms. ‘I hear ya, big sis. Okay, ready in five … four … three.’ two fingers, one finger.

‘This morning at eleven-thirty-eight, here at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, after spending ten years on death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary, thirty-year-old Karl Michael Evans, a man convicted of murdering five young women whilst still living at his parent’s house in Leyton Falls, paid the ultimate price for his horrific crimes. I, along with eighteen other guests, including Evans’ lawyers and several of his victims’ relatives, were invited by Governor James T. Whiteman to witness the execution of Evans by lethal injection.

‘Those of you, who may still recall this case, will no doubt remember Evans protesting his innocence at the start of the eleven month trial when he claimed, some might say, outlandishly, that he was not Karl Evans, but was a man named David Foley, a real estate agent from Arkansas. Who, as his company’s records proved during the trial, did indeed visit the Evans Guest house on the pretext of placing the property on the market, and has since, never been seen.

‘At the trial, Evans also claimed, whilst posing as the missing Foley, that when he arrived at the Guest House, he was attacked by Karl Evans and rendered unconscious, coming to, only to find he’d been somehow transformed into the murderer. Then, bound and gagged, he was dropped off at a police station with all the incriminating evidence the police would need to secure a conviction, including the whereabouts of his victim’s remains.’ She paused to face the wind in a bid to rid her face of the blasted stray bang, her left arm unfurling toward the prison. ‘…and that was how the scene played out just fifteen minutes ago behind these walls.’ Leroy panned to his right following the arm, and then swung the camera back to Alex. ‘As Evans, once again protesting his innocence, claimed he was the missing man, David Foley.’ She looked to her feet then back at the camera. ‘This is Alex Lord for CNN, reporting live from outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.’

‘Annnd … were done!’ Leroy said, lifting the camera from his shoulder. ‘Murray wants this patching through right away, said he needs it for the twelve o’clock.’

‘Send it. Where’s my recording?’

‘I copied it to your IPod. Do you want to keep the original?’

‘No, what was said in that interview stays hidden, erase it.’

Leroy began wrapping up the equipment. ‘You know if Murray finds out you’re holding out on him …’

‘There’s no need for Murray to find out. What do you think I was doing in the hotel room last night while you lushed it up in the bar?’

‘Please don’t say you were writing out the interview.’

‘Yep, Murray gets his interview, albeit fake, and I get two weeks off to follow up on what Foley said in-’

‘Whoa, wait a minute … tell me you’re not serious; tell me you don’t actually believe what Evans just told you.’

‘Not one single solitary word, but I do believe what Foley told me!’

‘Ah, come on, Alex. The guy was a fucking psycho, a fruitcake, and all that bullshit you got just now is exactly that … bullshit.’

Alex wasn’t so sure. ‘He knew things, Leroy, personal things. You heard what he said on that recording; don’t try to tell me there wasn’t sincerity in his voice.’

‘Sincerity? You want to talk about sincerity? You just called his claims outlandish, and now you’re saying you believe him, where’s your sincerity?’

‘Indifference, Leroy, ever heard of that? It means having no particular interest or sympathy, to remain unconcerned. It’s something that comes with the job, we can’t be seen to take sides, you know that. And, as you obviously missed it, I used the words, “Some might say, outlandish”, which makes me indifferent. Not only that, if anyone suspected I believed what he said I’d’

‘You’d be labelled a crank, and in my opinion, justifiably so. But this isn’t about taking sides, Alex. That man was going to die no matter what he said, and no matter who he said it to, of course he’d sound sincere, even Jesus Christ’d have a hard time disbelieving the guy.’

‘So if that was you in there, if you were in his shoes just now, would your dying wish be to spend the final few minutes of your life trying to convince someone, someone who couldn’t do fuck-all about shit for you, that you were trapped in another person’s body?’

‘Alex, you’re talking the fucking “Twilight Zone” here, man! Fucking black magic for Christ’s sake.’

‘He knew everything about Foley, Leroy, Everything!’

‘That don’t mean shit. So what, Evans did his homework. It wouldn’t be the first time a psychopath knew all about his victim. Probably spent weeks, maybe months following the guy, watching him.’

‘That’s definitely not the case here, Leroy. Last year when I interviewed him, he gave me a list of things to find out, things that he could verify. Things Evans couldn’t possibly have known anything about. Things his dead college friend’s parents’ told me, things his ex-girlfriend, who’s been living in France for the past ten years, told me. Everything I questioned him about he answered, off-the-bat, and without thinking, including him carving two sets of initials into a tree in Baltimore some seventeen years ago. And that little snippet came from his ex-girlfriend. David Foley laughed when I mentioned it, an absent laugh, like he was recalling a fond memory, a fond memory Evans couldn’t possibly have known anything about.’

Leroy raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘So you believe Ev … Foley … you believe Foley told you the truth when he said he was trapped inside Evans’ body?’

Alex raised both her finely manicured eyebrows. ‘Yes, I do!’

Shaking his head, Leroy turned and climbed in the back of the van to start patching the news report through to Angus Murray at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. Without looking away from the console, he said, ‘Okay, let’s say … “hypothetically speaking”, that, whoever it was in there, what they just told you, was true. What are you going to do about it?’

‘Find him.’

Leroy snapped his head round. ‘Find who?’

‘If Foley is the man lying in that prison morgue, and I have no doubt he is, then Evans is still out here somewhere, and I’m going to find him.’

He swivelled in the chair to face her full-on. ‘Well, I’m glad we were speaking hypothetically. So, what are you really going to do?’

Alex looked at him, a tilt to her head, and a hand raised to shade her steel-grey eyes from the sun. ‘I’m going to speak to Gregg.’

‘Pieroni Gregg?’

‘Yep!’

‘Alex, that guy ain’t been right ever since that shit went down in Martinsville three years ago.’

‘I know, but if it wasn’t for him giving me an exclusive on that story, I’d still be changing toner cartridges at the Richmond Gazette. So I owe him, and besides … if anyone is going to believe all this, it’s him.’

‘Okay, say Gregg does believe, then what … he arrests Foley, Evans, or who ever this guy is?’

‘No, I want to know about the switch. I want to know how it works.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because how ever he does it, this has to be the biggest story since man first stood erect, and I want to be the one who breaks it.’