Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  'Garrett was the first interviewer?' Father John asked.

  'Yes, Lieutenant Garrett… hard bastard, unforgiving.'

  'And the first interview you had was without any legal representation present?'

  I nodded. 'It wasn't classed as an interview, that's why the information from it wasn't thrown out in court. They read my rights back at the house, apparently told me I could wait until legal representation arrived before I spoke, but Garrett said that I'd started talking, that he was there at the time… like it was just a coincidence that he heard what I had to say.'

  'And what did you say?'

  I shook my head. It was hard to recall the exact sequence of events.

  'I remember talking about the men that came to the house, that I'd seen them at Eve Chantry's house, things like that.'

  'And Garrett didn't question any of it?'

  'No, he didn't say anything really. He sat there with this patient expression on his face, like he was waiting for a bus or something. He prompted me every once in a while, but he never really asked me a direct question.'

  'And you were in shock?'

  I smiled. 'I was on a different planet. I was sat in Greenleaf First Precinct in an interview room, my clothes covered in blood, my hands and feet cuffed… and I was dying to take a piss, I remember that, like I was gonna burst.'

  'And a lawyer came down?'

  'Yes, a lawyer came down, someone from the D.A.'s Office or someplace, but he seemed like he really didn't want to be there. I remember how he first appeared to me, like we'd woken him up, or dragged him out of a dinner party, something like that. He seemed in an awful hurry to get out.'

  'And while he was there Garrett asked questions?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'He asked a lot of questions. He asked me how I knew Nathan. He seemed to know about the fact that we'd been gone from Greenleaf for eighteen months. He knew about Nathan's Draft Notice. He knew who Nathan's parents were.'

  'And all of this within a couple of hours of your arrest?' Father John asked.

  'Less, maybe an hour… it wasn't long between when I got to the Precinct and the lawyer coming down.'

  'And what else did he ask you?'

  I shrugged. 'What we'd done when we left Greenleaf, where we'd been. He asked me about my parents, about where I'd gone to school… all kind of things.'

  'And during this interview neither he nor the lawyer mentioned Linny Goldbourne.' 'Right,' I said. 'Her name didn't come up 'til the second or third interview -'

  'And there was no lawyer present at that interview?'

  I shook my head. Details were becoming clearer, almost as if the more I looked the more I remembered.

  'So what was the scene with the confession?'

  I shook my head and sighed, it was not a confession.'

  Father John leaned forward expectantly, a sudden look of heightened interest in his expression.

  He nodded, prompting me to go on.

  'I was talking, rambling a little… I remember I was tired, really tired. Garrett was asking me about my relationship with Nathan, asking me about things we'd done together, how my ma had felt about me befriending a negro in the '60s, how many times I'd been to Nathan's house, how I got on with Nathan's folks… that kind of thing. He asked me about these men at Eve Chantry's house -'

  'I told you already.'

  Garrett smiled, a practised smile. He was a hard-faced, brutal-looking man, a man who looked like he had little time for emotions other than suspicion and anger. From the moment I met him he frightened me.

  'Tell me again,' he said, trying his damnedest to sound interested, to sound understanding and compassionate, though no such qualities were in his emotional vocabulary.

  'Dark complexions, the first one shorter, heavier-set, the second one tall, thinner altogether,' I said. 'Suits and ties, dressed like Feds or something.'

  Garrett smiled again, a little sarcasm in his expression. 'Like Feds?'

  I nodded. 'You know, dark suits, white shirts, dark ties, and the car they drove was this sort of nondescript sedan.'

  'Nothing specific, nothing about them that could help us make some kind of identification?'

  I thought for a while. I thought of nothing. I shook my head.

  Garrett nodded, and for a split second there was a smirk of satisfaction around his mouth, as though he was pleased I could give him nothing specific.

  'So tell me some more about Nathan… if these guys warned him off when you spoke to them at Eve Chantry's house, then why didn't you go back and tell him?'

  I shook my head. 'I was mad at him.'

  'Because he was fucking your girlfriend?'

  'Not that he was fucking my girlfriend… that they were so indiscreet about it.'

  'Indiscreet?'

  I nodded. 'I suppose I half-expected that something would happen between them, but I wished it had taken a little longer, and they'd been less exhibitionist about it, you know what I mean?'

  Garrett shook his head. 'No, Mister Ford, I don't know that I do know what you mean. All I see is that some people apparently warned you that there would be trouble for Nathan Verney if he didn't stop seeing Linda Goldbourne, and you had plenty of time and opportunity to warn him of this, this supposed best friend of yours, and yet you said nothing, absolutely nothing. Seems to me, if you consider it in this light, then either there was no warning and there were no such men, or you and Nathan Verney were not friends at all and you wished for something to happen to him.'

  'No, it wasn't that way… they did speak to me, they did tell me to warn Nathan, but I was mad, I was upset with Nathan and Linny, and I should have told him and I didn't. That was all there was to it… nothing else.'

  'And what would have happened if you'd told Nathan about your discussion with these men?'

  I shook my head. 'I don't know.'

  Garrett leaned forward. He steepled his hands together and rested his elbows on the table. 'Tell me what you think might have happened.'

  I shrugged my shoulders. 'Hypothetically?'

  Garrett nodded. 'Hypothetically.'

  'Maybe he would have done something… maybe both of them would have done something. Maybe they wouldn't have been so obvious about the fact that they were seeing each other.'

  'So if you'd said something then maybe he would be alive today… assuming, of course, that the men you spoke to at Eve Chantry's house really did exist, and that they were the ones who came and killed him?'

  I nodded. 'Right.'

  Garrett leaned back. 'How d'you feel about that?'

  'I feel bad… worse than bad… guilty for not saying anything, for not telling him -'

  'So hypothetically,' Garrett said, 'you could say that had you said something you might have saved his life?'

  I nodded. 'Yes, I suppose so… possibly.'

  'And the fact that you said nothing was therefore a contributory factor to his death.'

  'If you look at it in that light, yes, I was responsible for his death.'

  'And that was my confession,' I said, and reached for another of Father John's cigarettes.

  'And you were aware that every conversation you had with Garrett was being recorded?'

  'No, I was never told that anything was being recorded.'

  'And the tape was spliced.'

  I nodded. 'Yes, the tape was spliced. When the recording of that interview was played in court, the prosecuting attorney said -'

  'We need to know that this is your voice, Mister Ford.'

  I nodded.

  'Yes or no, Mister Ford?'

  'Yes.'

  'That is unquestionably your voice?'

  'Yes, it's my voice.'

  'Your Honor… request for the bailiff to play the interview section once again.'

  'Granted.'

  I turned to see the judge nod at the court bailiff.

  The bailiff rose, he spent a few seconds rewinding the tape, and then pressed play.

  '… he was fucking my girlfriend… they were so indiscre
et about it… I wished they'd been less exhibitionist about it, you know what I mean? I was mad, I was upset with Nathan and Linny, and I should have told him and I didn't. I feel bad… worse than bad… guilty for not saying anything, for not telling him. In that light, yes, I was responsible for his death.'

  'And that was considered an adequate confession?' Father John asked.

  I nodded. 'A death penalty confession.'

  'And the prosecution said that the tape recording had been analyzed and no signs of tampering had been found?'

  'And the defense… even the defense said the tape had been independently analyzed. "Of unquestionable integrity" was the term used, the tape was of unquestionable integrity.'

  'So your defense wasn't really a defense?'

  I shook my head. 'It was a joke.'

  'Why didn't you change lawyers?'

  'With what? I got what I was given. Either a court- appointed defense or a private lawyer. You don't get a private lawyer without serious money.'

  'But the house was yours… why not use the house as collateral?' 'The house was still tied up in all the legalities after my mother's death.'

  'Convenient,' Father John said.

  'Very,' I replied.

  'And Linny was not permitted to make a statement or testify because she was in the State Psychiatric Hospital.'

  'Yes, classified as mentally unfit to give credence to either defense or prosecution.'

  'But Garrett was permitted to enter a statement that Linny Goldbourne named you as the killer?'

  'Yes… apparently when she was found Garrett was the first person to speak to her. She told him that I had killed Nathan and attacked her.'

  'How was that statement permitted as evidence to the court?'

  'Because Garrett wasn't classified as mentally unfit to testify, and because there had been another police officer present when Linny had said this.'

  'That would have been Jackson, Karl Jackson.'

  'Right,' I said.

  'And Karl Jackson confirmed that Linny Goldbourne had named you as the killer in the presence of himself and Lieutenant Garrett?'

  'Yes, he testified to that.'

  'And the defense didn't object.'

  I leaned back and smiled, somewhat half-heartedly. 'Father John, you've got to understand that very little went on in that courtroom that made any sense at all. The public defender assigned to me was nervous about the whole thing, sweated like a pig, fidgeted with his papers, his pens, spilled water down his pants at one point and had to leave to get changed. The trial was less of a trial and more of an opportunity for as many people to say as many bullshit things as they could possibly think of, and for no-one to protest or object or imply anything was a leading question. If that was a trial, then hell I was guilty.'

  Father John smiled. 'Careful what you say, Danny. This is all on tape, remember?'

  I shook my head and sighed.

  Father John reached out and closed his hand over mine. 'I'm sorry… I'm just amazed that all of this hasn't been chewed to pieces on appeal.'

  'Because of me,' I said. 'Because I didn't want to go through it all over again. Because I didn't want my hopes raised and crushed…'

  'And because you felt guilty for not saying anything to Nathan.'

  I nodded. 'Because I felt guilty for not saying anything to Nathan.'

  'And now?' Father John asked.

  I leaned forward. I was tense, wound-up inside, and yet there was a wave of desperation and grief rumbling along the edges of my awareness. I could feel it there, like a shadow, a ghost of everything I should have felt over the last twelve years, but never did.

  'I don't want to die,' I said, my voice a whisper. 'But it's a little too late to say that now, isn't it?'

  Father John gripped my hand. He smiled as best he could.

  'I'm afraid so, Danny… I'm afraid so.'

  The wave of grief arrived.

  I folded soundlessly beneath it.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-One

  That night, long after Father John had left, I lay in my bed and thought of the years I had spent in this cell, these four walls, and the world that lay beyond them.

  Despite the absence of Frank Wallace and Cindy Giddings out of CKKL, Mr. Timmons had still left that small transistor radio playing, punctuating our existence with news from a different time and place, somewhere all of us knew we would never see again.

  I recall Jimmy Carter being elected President in 1976, and twelve days later how his home town of Plains, Georgia at last ended the color bar. That brought it home to me once more that all the things we believed back then were true. Nathan had said he wouldn't see the changes that Martin Luther King fought for realized in his own lifetime. How right he was.

  Before stepping down, Gerald Ford had pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in Watergate, the last act of a desperate man working his authority for the benefit of his compadres and co-conspirators.

  We heard of Gary Gilmore, the first man executed in the States for ten years. After a lengthy campaign across the country against the return of the death penalty, he walked from his cell in Utah State to the firing squad with the words Let's do it.

  James Earl Ray broke out of the penitentiary in Tennessee, went on the run for three days. A month later Carter gave Martin Luther King a posthumous Medal of Freedom.

  And then Elvis died.

  Grown men cried in their cells like it was their mother who'd gone.

  Riots ensued after Leon Spinks beat Ali in February of '78, and a little-known research study showed that murder was the primary cause of death of young blacks in the United States. Regardless, in August of the following year, a fifty- mile White Rights March from Selma to Montgomery reminded the world that the things we'd believed we were resolving nearly twenty-five years before were still alive and well and living in the good ol' U.S. of A.

  Nine months later five people were killed in race riots, and the National Guard was called in.

  Reagan became President.

  John Lennon was shot by a man with three names.

  Reagan gave a million and a half dollars to investigate the murdered and missing children of Atlanta.

  Someone took a shot at Reagan too.

  These things, such things as we were told through that small window into the world, were simply reminders that it was crazy out there, perhaps as crazy as it was in here.

  It told me that there was no such thing as true justice. That a great deal of life was a lie. Bitter, yes. Cynical, definitely. Hopeful… not any more.

  I slept with the face of Caroline Lanafeuille floating behind my eyelids.

  I was happy she was alive and well and living somewhere down in Charleston.

  October 18th, a Saturday.

  Outside it was raining heavily. I could hear it when I woke.

  I lay for a time imagining that I was elsewhere, somewhere quiet, somewhere free from bars and guards and the promise of dying.

  My imagination worked overtime but did not succeed in vanquishing the awareness of these things.

  These things were certain, constant and finite. They were there when I closed my eyes, there when I opened them, there whether sleeping or waking, and they would not change.

  Duty Second came down before the bell went. Told me a message had come from Father John. He would not be able to see me again for five or six days, the best part of a week. And some time after that I would move to Death Watch and I would have a week left. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes. Just over six hundred thousand seconds. And how long would it take to count those seconds? Same amount of time it would take to live them.

  It didn't seem that long.

  I walked to breakfast in a quiet daze. I felt distant, disconnected, out of touch.

  Someone spoke to me, another shoved past me in his hurry to eat, and these things went by like ghosts.

  Dead meat walking.

  For the first time in nearly twelve years
I understood what Mr. West meant.