Playing Dead by Allison Brennan Page B

just find Oliver Maddox, then she could step aside.
    Tom rubbed his head. If Maddox had learned the truth about what happened, why hadn’t the kid turned it over to the police? Why had he missed his meeting with Tom the week before the quake? Someone must have scared him into hiding, or scared him into quitting the investigation. Maybe Tom was making a huge mistake bringing Claire into this mess.
    His lower back burned and he absently rubbed it. He didn’t have a lot of time. His days were numbered either way. The only thing that mattered now was that he didn’t die a guilty man. Claire had to believe he was innocent. Then, maybe, he could die in peace.
    Seeing Claire again had hurt. He hadn’t expected the physical pain in his heart, twisting his insides like a constrictor until it squeezed the breath from his lungs. The pain in her face, the distrust in her eyes. Claire was no longer the bright-eyed, too-smart-for-her-own-good, inquisitive daughter he’d been raising. As a child, she’d wanted to know how everything worked and why. She would marvel at something as basic as a toaster or as complex as the stars in the sky.
    At least once a week on a clear night, Tom and Claire went out in the backyard and looked at the stars. Tom made a point of learning about astronomy because it pleased Claire that he knew about the universe, and it pleased him to make his girl happy. When they went on their summer camping trip—without Lydia, who didn’t like sleeping in a tent—they often stayed up well past midnight watching the sky and talking. About everything and nothing. Sometimes they were just quiet together.
    Being a father had grounded Tom like nothing else in his life. His family was the most important thing to him. Lydia—he’d loved her, even after her infidelity. If that made him weak, he didn’t care. He’d have divorced her had he known about Taverton, not killed her. No matter how much anguish he endured because of Lydia’s choices, not for a second had he considered shooting her.
    It was a few days before Christmas when Oliver Maddox had visited Tom at San Quentin for the first time. Tom had lost hope that he’d ever be able to clear his name. His last appeal had been rejected. He was scheduled for execution on July 1. Six and a half months and he would be dead. Being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit had enraged him for years, but his anger had dissipated. He would be executed an innocent man, but surprisingly he’d come to terms with dying.
    What he couldn’t accept was that he would die a guilty man in the eyes of the only person he cared about.
     
    The guard led Tom through the North Seg section of San Quentin. Tom glanced at the cage that held Scott Peterson. Peterson looked up, gave him a brightly dazed smile, then went back to the book he was reading. There was a guilty bastard, Tom thought. People equated Tom with scum like Peterson. A wife killer. But he didn’t care about public opinion. Tom only cared about the opinion of one person.
    And, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to know who’d framed him. Who’d destroyed his life and why. Why, dammit?
    He hadn’t been sentenced to Quentin. He’d spent the bulk of his fifteen years in a secure area of Folsom, where the warden segregated cops like him from the general prison population. It was lonely, and he still wasn’t completely safe. There were multiple attacks on him, and he didn’t know if they were because someone had found out he was a cop, or if he’d racked up more enemies.
    When Tom’s last appeal was denied, the warden at Folsom asked if he would like to do a final good deed. He was asked to transfer to San Quentin to befriend a killer who police suspected of murdering more than the eight young girls he’d admitted to. Tom agreed.
    Terrence Drager didn’t tell Tom squat about the unsolved cases in the months Tom was in the North Seg talking to him. But after he was executed, one of the guards handed Tom a letter.