Vendetta Stone (1)

by Tom Wood

His gaze never left the casket as pallbearers ushered Angela’s coffin to her final resting place.

  “God, have mercy,” Jackson whispered.

  At noon, Reverend Robert Armstrong stepped forward to shake hands and offer encouraging words of faith to Jackson and each family member, then addressed the crowd.

  “Friends and neighbors, we are gathered to say farewell to our beloved sister, Angela Stone. Join me in saying The Lord’s Prayer. ‘Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name . . .’ ”

  As a rule, reporters act as observers, not participants in a story, but this sorrowful time seemed the exception to the rule. I bowed my head and prayed with the others. For Angela.

  11

  Delmore Wolfe’s senses were edgy as he made his way across town to East Nashville. At approximately 11:45 a.m., he parked three blocks away from the Fletchers’ house and crept from house to house peering into windows to make certain of no witnesses. It seemed all the closest neighbors attended the visitation. The loud, buzzing mower made him grin again. That noise would drown out any screams.

  Upstairs, Sarah remained curled in bed, lost in her thoughts about that day Angela caught her cheating.

  Wolfe slipped on Latex gloves, jimmied the backdoor lock, and stepped inside.

  Sarah thought about that day she was with “Chuck,” the man she was almost certain had killed Angela. She knew she should have gone to the police, but couldn’t bear the shame. She had to drive Chuck back to his car, then he wanted money. She recalled driving him to the ATM and withdrawing three hundred dollars, how he asked about her friend, wanting to talk to her to smooth things over.

  “No,” Sarah shouted as they pulled into the parking lot at Darlene’s. “Just get out Chuck. NOW! And don’t let me see you again!” Wolfe eased out of the car. “Later, baby.”

  Sarah had hurried back home, showered, and tried to compose herself. She needed to talk to Angela, whose car remained parked out back. Sarah tried calling, first on the home phone, then to Angela’s cell phone. Angela’s voice answered both times: Please leave a message. But Sarah desperately wanted to look Angela in the eye and somehow explain her inexplicable actions. She’d pounded on Angela’s

  front door, crying for her to please open it. No answer. Finally, Sarah went home weeping. Getting late, with Herb due to return anytime, she’d try talking to Angela tomorrow. But tomorrow would never come for Angela.

  Those next few hours were horrible. Herb had gotten home and innocently asked what she’d been up to all day. She’d felt dirty and guilty, staying silent through dinner. Thinking she was still mad at him, Herb had given up trying to talk to her and said he wanted a beer and to watch a ballgame. She’d gone to bed. He had thoughts of staying up and watching the news, then maybe some Leno and Letterman, after the game. He noticed blue lights flashing out the window. He looked outside and counted five police cars, with another roaring down the street. “Something’s going on next door,” he’d yelled up to Sarah.

  Now her best friend was being buried, and Sarah was, again, in bed. She snapped out of her thoughts and back to the present when she heard raps on the wall down the hall. She froze when Chuck, looking very different, stepped in her bedroom. He smiled viciously, remorselessly.

  “Hello, baby.”

  What was Chuck doing here? A terrorized scream died in her throat as she cringed. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed noon, and Wolfe closed in for the kill. Sarah began reciting The Lord’s Prayer, her last rites. “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be—”

  His well-timed, left-handed chop to the throat snapped her trachea, and she died instantly. Step one proved easy enough, but staging it like an accident might prove harder.

  “What could be suspicious about next-door neighbors mysteriously dying within weeks of each other? Get a grip, Delmore,” he wrote in his diary entry.

  Maybe he’d make it look like she fell down the steps and broke her neck or banged her throat against a stair edge. Wolfe always solved messy details and worked out a solution. He hovered over the body and studied the scene and the layout of the bedroom before finding his way around the house. He made a ham sandwich and turned on the TV.

  12

  The brief, emotionally wrenching funeral service concluded with a loving and eloquent eulogy from the pastor, and each relative laid a white rose on Angela’s casket before it was lowered into the ground. Brother Armstrong said a closing prayer, and friends closed in to say a few parting words to Jackson before going back to their own busy lives.

  I took it all in and headed back to the funeral home where I compared notes with fellow TenneScene Today reporter Shelley Finklestein, who would write the online story and handle a sidebar for print.

  “I felt so bad for Stone and his family,” Shelley said. “That preacher made me feel like I’d known Angela all my life. Very touching.”

  “And very compelling. Let that come through in your story. You want to evoke emotion,” I advised her.

  “So now what? Sorry I got here late and we didn’t get a chance to talk before the visitation. I saw you talking to a few people in line and did the same. I corralled Casey and got her to shoot some of the people I spoke with.”

  “Great. Stone said he would talk with the media after the funeral, but I don’t know if he’s going to do it now that we’re here or will want to hold off awhile. I’m going to find Greaves and see what he knows.”

  Jackson had remained under the tent staring down at Angela’s casket for a final time, searing it into his memory. He looked up as a heavy hand closed over his left shoulder.

  Herb, tears streaming down his face, pulled dry-eyed Jackson into his arms. “Oh man, I am so, so sorry.”

  Jackson returned the genuine bear hug.

  “You’re a good friend,” Jackson said. “I just can’t believe this happened. It’s unreal.”

  “I know what you mean.” Still embarrassed for having to explain his wife’s absence, he added, “Sarah sends her love, too. She’s still too broke up to make it this morning. You know how close they were.”

  Jackson understood. He didn’t like funerals himself. “No problem. We all handle grief in different ways. We’ll come visit Angela whenever Sarah thinks she can handle it.”

  “She’d like that. So what are you doing the rest of the day? Angela wouldn’t want you to be alone right now. C’mon home with me.”

  Jackson looked around the sun-splashed grounds, feeling Angela’s presence in the serene setting.

  “Thanks, Herb. Maybe I’ll see you guys later. The rest of the family’s headed over to Patrick’s, and I’m going over a little later. Right now I’m going to talk to the press. If I’m going to find Angela’s killer, I need to keep this in the news. Maybe somebody will see or hear or read about it and divulge something they wouldn’t tell the cops. Say, why not pick up Sarah and come over—if she’s up to it, that is.”

  “I’ll check—if she’s talking to me, that is.” He hesitated, then continued. “I guess Angela told you we’d been having some problems.”

  Jackson nodded.

  “Well, it got pretty nasty a couple of weeks ago . . . it was right after that last trip with y’all out on Old Hickory Lake. You remember,” Herb said, “We all probably had too much to drink. All but Angela, that is. Well, we got home, and Sarah started right in on me for not trying very hard to find a steady job. You know what this economy’s like. But I was half-drunk and overreacted. I swear, I almost felt like hitting her.”

  The last sentence felt like a death sentence for his marriage, and his shoulders slumped. Jackson put a hand on his shoulder to say something sympathetic, but Herb beat him to it.

  “Aw, man. I’m feeling sorry for myself and look what you’re dealing with. You’re a rock, Jack. You inspire me. Life’s too short. I’m going home and talk to Sarah and straighten this mess out right now, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  13

  Jackson Stone recognized Clarkston, several other reporte
rs, and me in the visitation room. I flipped through the registration book. Reporter Shelley Finklestein and Casey the photographer were on the other side of the room. The TV station cameramen took strategic spots about a dozen feet in front of the lectern where their microphones were scrunched together. Shelley and I added our microcassette recorders to the pile, all aimed at Stone as he stepped forward.

  “I know this isn’t something the media hears very often, but thank you for the professional manner in which you all conducted yourselves during the visitation and services. It was a fitting, emotional, and proper farewell to my darling wife, Angela, whom I know I’ll see again someday in heaven. Our family has suffered through a tragic week, and my comments yesterday reflected that nightmare. Clearly, none of you—nor my attorney, nor the police, nor my fellow Nashvillians—expected that reaction, and I didn’t anticipate some of the backlash I’ve encountered.”

  His anger rose close to the level reached when Chief King visited earlier that morning. He pondered calling out King in his press conference and decided against it. As he needed the media, Jackson might someday require the help of the cops—and didn’t wish to alienate them.

  But that was in the future, and for now Jackson focused on the next phase of his plan.

  The idea to use his advertising skills to honor Angela had popped into his head earlier that morning.

  It was a peaceful drive back from the cabin to West Meade and the perfect time to think about acting as a force for good in her memory. He thought Angela might approve of that use of her name, even if she disapproved of the method he used to keep the spotlight focused on her death. Jackson looked around the room. He had the media hanging on every word, waiting to hear his next outlandish statement. We didn’t wait long.

  “I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again now. I’m not interested in justice. I will find the animal that killed my wife and burn his eyes out with a hot poker.”

  In that instant, no trace of the fog-headed, sympathetic widower remained. Only a cold-blooded, ruthless avenger. Menace hung in the air.

  “A quick death won’t happen, whoever and wherever you are. Preying on defenseless women, does that make you feel like a man? Let’s see how you do against me. You know where I live, tough guy. Anytime, anywhere. Gutless.” He spat out the last word before changing his tenor. “Now I’ve saved some money and if anybody out there has any—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Allenby shouted from the back of the room as he strode to the lectern and all but pushed Jackson aside, “you must forgive Mister Stone for his emotional outburst. He just buried his wife and is under great strain. I hope you all take that into consideration when you file your stories. But this press conference is over. Now.”

  “That’s bull,” Jackson shouted as Allenby grabbed and pushed him toward the door. Allenby, a Navy officer thirty years ago, clamped his iron grip on the nape of Jackson’s neck and pulled him down nose-to-nose and whispered in harsh tones. The fight left Jackson as he obeyed marching orders and calmed down. It made, as they say, for great television.

  Away from the microphones, the shocked reporters viewed a heated dressing-down from the bulldog lawyer and angry gesticulations from Stone. In the back of the room, Darrin Jensen flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed his boss, who’d just sat down to lunch. “Chief, you won’t believe what’s happening.”

  Allenby approached the microphones as the transfixed media waited to see what transpired next. Jackson straightened his tie and smoothed down his hair. Looking disheveled and acting crazy would not do. His rage had gotten the better of him, and despite the way Allenby treated him in front of the cameras and reporters, Jackson appreciated his being there. The fit of anger evaporated, and it might make him a more sympathetic figure to the public, Jackson thought, going into his spin-doctor advertising mogul mode. Allenby took off his glasses and wiped at smudges before beginning.

  “Since I don’t know all of you, let me introduce myself. My name is Stan Allenby, and I am Jackson Stone’s attorney . . . and his friend. Against my advice, Jackson wants to continue this press conference. I can’t stop him, and I can’t tell you what to write or say.” Allenby paused and glanced at Jackson before addressing the media as if addressing the jury instead. “But it would be a mischaracterization to paint Jack Stone as some obsessed, revenge-minded, Rambo-type lunatic whose stated desire to find his wife’s killer makes him a public menace. An upstanding citizen, Jack has served his country proudly and his community well. A terrible tragedy has now taken place, and he is grieving and expressing his anger. Does he want to find the person who killed his wife? Of course. Would he take the law into his own hands and resort to torture if he were to find the murderer? Of course not. Jackson is a law-abiding citizen who respects the police and wants to see his wife’s killer caught in a swift, timely manner and then prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  The persuasive lawyer then turned all his oratory skills on the media, addressing each of us as if we were jurors, not journalists.

  “Mister Clarkston, have you ever lost a loved one to a horrific crime?” he asked. “How about you, Mister Hilliard? Or you, Ms. Jones? Or any of the rest of you? Have any of you ever arrived home late one night to discover no one home, then go upstairs and find your bedroom splattered in blood?”

  Jackson chewed at his lower lip and visibly shook as his attorney continued.

  “I pray to God none of you ever walk in Jackson Stone’s shoes over such an act of violence. Unfortunately, it happens every day somewhere across the U.S.A., and everyone deals with tragedy in his own way. Jackson is emotional right now and has every right to be angry.”

  Allenby sipped at a glass of water. He hoped the media would swallow his explanation and continued closing arguments in the media versus Jackson Stone.

  “I’d be worried about him if Jackson wasn’t upset, grief-stricken, outraged, and to a certain degree vindictive,” Allenby said. “The difference is that most citizens don’t call a press conference to express that outrage. Jackson has done so, and struck a raw nerve with the media, the police, and his fellow Tennesseans. I’ll now turn this over to Jack, who gives me his personal assurance that he will cooperate with the police in every step of this investigation in every way.”

  As Allenby moved back to his right and Jackson stepped to the lectern, nobody noticed the police spokesman in the back of the room talking into his cell phone.

  “Yes sir, you heard that okay? This is Stone,” Jensen said, taking a seat on the back row and holding aloft his cell phone so Chief King could listen in on the press conference.

  14

  Wolfe worked up a good sweat while dragging Sarah’s body down to the basement. The stairs creaked and groaned with every step. She’s going to commit suicide, the poor thing, he giggled. Her husband said she’d been depressed since the death of her best friend. Herb could testify to her recent mental state. It sounded like he might even be happy she disappeared. Wolfe threw the piece of rope over the old plumbing pipes near the washing machine, looping the end around again and fashioning a noose. He figured a broken neck and a rope around her throat would cover up the way she died. He grunted as he lifted the body, so he could slip her head in the noose. That’s when he heard the back door open and close.

  “Sarah, I’m home. I hope you’re not still in bed. We need to talk,” Herb said.

  Wolfe lowered her body to the floor and crept up the basement steps, cracking open the door into the kitchen.

  “Sarah?” Herb’s voice echoed from the bedroom or maybe the bathroom. He tried a gentler tone. “Where are you, hon?”

  Footsteps approached from down the hall, and Wolfe ducked out of view on the far side of the refrigerator.

  “What great timing. I decided his death would be what drove Wifey to commit suicide,” Wolfe would write in his diary entry of Fletcher’s last trip home.

  Herb re-entered the kitchen and looked around. The lid of the mustard jar lay on the granite co
unter, the twist-tie to the loaf of bread on the floor. He saw the basement door ajar

  and wondered if she might be downstairs doing a load of laundry.

  “Sarah, you down there?” he said, opening the door and flipping on the lights.

  Wolfe squatted and waited until Herb reached the door before rising, then tapped Fletcher on the left shoulder. Expecting to see Sarah, Herb got the shock of his life, or what remained of it. The odd man in the visitation line stood right behind Herb in his house.

  An evil smirk touched the wide-open, gleaming eyes. “Have a nice trip, Herb.”

  Wolfe gave Herb a hard, two-handed shove down the steps.

  He thought it comical the way Herb’s eyes popped open so wide and his arms flailed like windmills as he tried to balance to no avail. Tipping over backwards, Herb’s head cracked hard on the edge of the fifth step and bounced off the next three before splitting open on the concrete floor. Just like a small melon smacked with a mallet by that half-crazed comedian Gallagher. Momentum had carried heels over head in a bizarre death somersault.

  Wolfe’s hands shot over his head, holding an imaginary sign.

  “A perfect ten.” His laugh bordered somewhere between hysteria and insanity. “Way to stick that landing, Herbie.”

  Wolfe worked fast. He turned and grabbed a carving knife out of the utensil drawer, then headed down the stairs. Neighbors could return home from the funeral any minute. After several minutes, he stood and surveyed his handiwork. Herb’s twisted body lay at the bottom of the stairs with the knife sticking out of his back between the third and fourth ribs. The bloody knife bore Sarah’s fingerprints all over it. Sarah’s body hung limp in the noose. Her dress was torn in several places and deep scratches marred the left side of his face. Red fingernails, but not from polish, and damning evidence caked under them. Wolfe grinned.