by R.J. Ellory
I rose slowly from my chair. I stood looking down at the only friend I had. “I have nothing to say,” I told him. “I am unable to feel hope, I am unable to see anything but what I have here . . .” My voice cracked, and I felt the weight of the past twelve years bear down upon me.
“You can’t give up hope!” Hennessy insisted. “You can’t, Joseph, you can’t . . .”
His voice faded as I walked away.
An orderly let me out of the door and into the corridor. I tried not to look at him. If I was seen crying I would be sent to the box.
Hennessy came back the following day. They came to fetch me but I would not go. They told me later he had left a letter. I did not read it.
I lay on my cot and watched the shadow of bars on the ceiling.
Weeks unfolded into months. More letters came, more visits from Paul. I could not bear to see him. I lost track of time. I recognized the difference between night and day, but beyond that little else.
“Vaughan! Joseph Vaughan!”
My name was being called from somewhere out along the gantry. I turned onto my side and closed my eyes.
“Joseph Vaughan, out to see the warden. Joseph Vaughan!”
I eased myself up and sat on the edge of my cot. My heart started beating more rapidly. I could not ask myself what was happening. I felt afraid, so horribly afraid.
An orderly stood before the gate. He nodded down the gantry. “Number eight cell, open her up!”
The lock released, the gate was drawn back.
“On your feet, Vaughan. You’re seeing the warden.”
I hunted for my shoes. I worked my feet into them and stood cautiously. I felt sweat break out on my forehead.
“Move yourself, for Christ’s sake!”
I started to walk; I stumbled and grabbed the bars for support. The orderly reached out his hand and took hold of my upper arm, pulled me out onto the gantry and shouted for the cell to close. It thundered behind me, and already I was being hurried along to the stairwell at the end.
Minutes later I stood without moving for some interminable time in a windowless corridor. At the far end two trustees watched me through a grill in the door. Eventually the door behind me opened, and I was told to step through. My heart trip-hammered, missed beats, seemed too large for my chest. I closed my eyes and swallowed and waited for something awful to occur.
A young woman came through. She smiled tentatively, but I could return nothing. “This way, Vaughan,” she said, and her voice seemed strange. I realized I had not heard a woman speak for more than a decade.
Warden Forrester. Imposing in size and reputation. Eyes like headlights beneath thick brows, his nose askew to one side as if prizefighting was in his blood. He rose from behind his desk and walked toward me.
“Joseph Vaughan,” he said, and the voice that emerged from his lips was altogether misleading. There was something almost compassionate in his tone.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“You have a guardian angel, it appears.” He smiled, turned to the woman and asked her to fetch me a chair.
“Sit down, Vaughan, sit down.”
Forrester returned to his desk. He perched on the edge of it.
I sat down also, looked up at him.
“I understand that you have been unwilling to receive any visitors or open any mail forwarded to you.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have, Mr. Vaughan.” Forrester turned and gathered a pile of envelopes from his desk.
“The majority of them come from a man called Hennessy, others from a certain Arthur Morrison. You know these people?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“And might I ask, Mr. Vaughan, why you have been so unwilling to receive any contact from the outside world?”
I cleared my throat and blinked as if shedding sleep from my eyes.
“I don’t know, sir. I . . . I felt it better to be unaware of what was happening outside.”
Forrester nodded. He started to leaf through the letters. “This one here,” he said, “would have told you that an appeal had been lodged with the United States Supreme Court in May of 1966.” Forrester put the letter at the back of the pile and selected another. “This one from November of the same year would have told you that the Supreme Court had acknowledged receipt of the original transcripts of your case and were studying them. And from January of 1967 we have a letter, again from this Paul Hennessy, that the Supreme Court had agreed to session and were ready to interview a certain Thomas Billick, a Judge Marvin Baxter, a number of key witnesses that were called for the prosecution.” Forrester looked up. I believed he expected a response from me. I had nothing to say.
“This one comes from the Georgia State District Attorney’s Office. He has some very scathing things to say regarding the way in which your defense was handled . . . and here, from two weeks ago, we have another letter from Mr. Hennessy to say that your appeal was being reviewed and they should have an answer within a week.”
Forrester dropped the stack of letters on the table. He steepled his hands together in his lap and smiled. “That answer arrived this morning, Mr. Vaughan. Today, Monday, February twentieth 1967, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that your conviction was based on nothing but circumstantial evidence. They have set a new trial date, Mr. Vaughan.”
I stopped breathing. I felt the blood rush to my head, and it was all I could do to remain seated.
“Do you understand what this means, Mr. Vaughan?” Forrester asked.
I stared at him without any real comprehension.
“It means that your previous conviction has been overturned by the highest court in America, that there will be another trial.”
I started to cry.
Forrester nodded at the young woman and she came forth with a handkerchief. When I took it from her she seemed to touch my hand for a moment longer than was required. I looked up at her, and through my tears she seemed vague and indistinct. She smiled with such sympathy and feeling that it was impossible to respond.
Forrester leaned forward and placed his hand on my shoulder.
Thirteen years and nine months.
I was thirty-nine years old.
At ten minutes after four that same afternoon, I was led out through corridors and offices that I had never seen before. I saw windows where there were no bars. I saw more sky than I ha ever remembered.
I was told to shower, to change into a clean shirt, denim pants, a cotton jacket. I was given shoes with laces. I was told to sign things, and those things were placed in folders that bore my name on the front.
I stood in a small room for a quarter of an hour. There were two doors, one to my left, the other ahead of me. Each was open, neither was locked. People walked through, some smiled, others merely nodded, and with each new face I imagined they would stop, look at me, frown awkwardly, and begin to explain that there had been a terrible mistake.
I believed I might wake and understand that I had dreamed.
Eight minutes after five a man appeared through the door to my left.
“You’re Vaughan, right?”
I nodded, tried to smile.
“We’re here to transport you to temporary holding. You’re up for a retrial, starts the day after tomorrow.”
I said nothing. No words remained. I followed directions as they were given. I answered questions when they were asked. I traveled silently in the back of a car, still handcuffed, still disbelieving, and was shown to another cell in another wing in another facility.
The edges blurred. I did not have to see them as there was always someone there to guide me. I saw Billick again, standing there in the dock answering questions about my original trial. Hennessy was there, Arthur Morrison, others I did not know. People from newspapers, people who wanted to take my photograph. Every day I left the courthouse to a barrage of flashbulbs.
Everything seemed to happen so fast, and then—before I knew it—I was once again being a
sked to stand, and someone was looking down at me, and someone was telling me that the past meant nothing, that what had happened had been in error, that there were miscarriages of justice, other such things as this. And then he smiled, and he nodded his head, and for a moment he seemed to close his eyes as if relishing what he was going to say, and what he said was: “Joseph Calvin Vaughan, you have been found not guilty of the murder of Bridget McCormack. You are free to go. Bailiff . . . see that the defendant is released.”
An hour later, standing in another office. A man faces me. “This is your pay, Vaughan.” He hands me a brown envelope. “Sign this docket here, and here . . . ”
I sign the paper.
“Dollar-eighty a week,” he says. “Ain’t much, but it’ll get you home, eh?”
He turns and disappears through the same door.
I open the envelope. Twenty-four fifty-dollar bills, some fives, a couple of ones. Twelve hundred dollars or thereabouts.
“Don’t want to make a display of that, Vaughan.”
I look up. Another man stands in front of me. He smiles. “Entirely the wrong place to make that kind of money obvious, wouldn’t you say?” He starts laughing. “Anyways, you’re ready?”
“Ready?” I ask.
“To leave,” the man says, something of surprise in his voice. “You got someone out here to collect you,” he says, and then indicates that I should follow him.
I fold the envelope with the money inside and stuff it into my jacket pocket.
I follow the man, and we walk through another office and down a long corridor. At the end he unlocks the door, steps aside, and before I walk through he extends his hand.
“Do some good out there,” he says, and shakes my hand. “You understand me?”
I say nothing.
“So go,” he says, and looks to his left.
I follow his line of sight, and there—rising from a plain chair against the wall—is Hennessy.
TWENTY-NINE
MANHATTAN WAS A VISION FROM SOME OTHER WORLD. THE cars, the people, the clothes; it seemed the universe had tilted on some unidentified axis and everything had changed.
I had changed too, perhaps irreversibly.
We drove that day, drove all the way from Auburn to Manhattan. Highway 20, Interstate 81 through Binghamton, southeast into Scran ton, Pennsylvania; Interstate 380 to Stroudsburg, east through Morris-town, Paterson, back across the New York State line and through the northern tip of New Jersey.
Sometimes we stopped merely because I had to. I stood at the side of the road and watched the horizon and could barely breathe. Hennessy stood beside me. He said nothing, merely holding my arm in case I fell. I was glad he didn’t speak, for he seemed to understand that I could not have absorbed what I was seeing and also communicate. I felt lost, without anchor, and each time I closed my eyes and opened them once more I believed I would see dun-colored walls, the stain of damp; believed I would smell that stench of enclosed humanity—the sweat, the frustration, the madness. I came out of the catacombs into daylight, and the daylight burned impressions into me that I knew I would recall for the rest of my life. Fields, ramshackle cabins, some clustered together, others farther apart, as if randomly scattered by an unseen hand; cows and horses, grain elevators standing high, proud like temples to the land; acres of milo, maize and sorghums; railroad tracks that ran straight and true for hundreds of miles every which way I looked; all of it vast and awesome.
We drove on, stopped once at a roadside diner where I took a seat in the farthest corner from the door, my back to the wall. Each time someone crossed the room and entered the bathroom I watched them, and when they exited I watched them once more until they were safely ensconced at their chosen table.
“It’s okay,” Hennessy kept assuring me, and I would nod, try to smile, and watch the people some more.
Hennessy ordered eggs, bacon, and hash browns. I ate slowly, but I ate all of my plate and much of his. As we left I felt the rush of nausea, and I turned to retch and heave everything I had eaten in the parking lot ahead of the diner. I was used to potatoes, thin strips of boiled beef, oatmeal, sowbelly and collard greens. My body was not prepared for such a meal. Hennessy returned for a cup of black coffee, and I sat in the passenger seat, the door open, my feet on the tarmac. I watched the people come and go, watched them closely. Realized I was looking for someone I would never recognize.
It was late when we arrived in Brooklyn. The streets were as bright as day, sodium-yellow lamps, neon signs, brightly illuminated shop fronts and store windows.
I followed Hennessy along unfamiliar sidewalks to a three-storey brownstone walk-up. Second floor, overlooking the new world, he had a comfortable apartment. He showed me his own room, and a smaller room facing it where a bed had already been prepared. I stood for a moment, and then I turned toward him. I held out my arms, I hugged him, held him tight enough to stop him breathing, and then I walked into the room and lay down on the mattress. I slept with my clothes on, and when I woke it was the evening of the following day, and Hennessy had removed my shoes. Beside the mattress was a small cardboard box. I opened it cautiously, and what I saw inside stopped my breath. My newspaper clippings, dusty yellow in color, turned at the edges, and as I leafed through them I saw every face, read every word as if I was right back there. Beneath them was a photograph of Bridget, and as I lifted it from the box I believed the whole world would close up around me and I would suffocate inside. I did not cry to see her. I could not. I had exhausted myself of crying within my first month at Auburn. At the bottom was the letter from the Atlanta Young Story Writers’ Adjudication Board. It was a box of dead dreams and distant hopes. And of nightmares. I put the things back inside, closed the box tight, and sat cross-legged on the floor with it in my lap.
“From the room,” Hennessy told me later. “Aggie Boyle’s place. I went there, later, you know? Afterwards—” He looked at me, pained. “After everything was—”
I smiled at Hennessy and he fell silent.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “And thank you.”
I stayed inside for two weeks. I saw no one but Hennessy. The little I said was meaningless and inconsequential. Hennessy tried to make me go out. He spoke of people I should see—Arthur Morrison, even Ben Godfrey. He said that newspapers had called, people from magazines and periodicals. They were asking for interviews. They wanted to speak with the man who had written A Quiet Belief in Angels.
I could not face them, and so I did not.
February became March. Leaves began to show on the trees in the street. Often Hennessy would be gone for hours at a time, and I would sit at the window and watch cars pass by, the people on the sidewalk. One day I saw a group of children, a young woman at the head of the line, and they held hands to navigate the junction at the end. I cried when I saw them, and then I stepped away from the window and dared not look outside for another two days.
I felt I was being watched. I felt my every move was preordained and externally determined. Not an hour would pass without me thinking of Bridget, my unborn child, the man that had done this thing. I believed it was the same man, believed he had brought his madness all the way from Georgia, and destroyed everything I possessed. He had stripped away the innocence of my childhood, had shown me a dark and depraved world where nightmares became reality, where children were taken from their families, were beaten and abused, raped and killed. This man had haunted Haynes Dearing, possessed his thoughts both waking and sleeping, and Dearing had been compelled to do something that he would otherwise never have considered. Dearing had seen to it that Gunther Kruger hanged. By his own hand, or by the hand of Dearing directly. I did not know what had happened that morning, and did not need to know. I knew that Gunther Kruger had not killed those children. I believed this in my heart and soul. My mother had been wrong. She had thought Gunther guilty, so she had tried to rout him out by setting fire to the house. I considered that her guilt had been the predominant factor, that perhaps her mind had
turned long before the fire, that she believed that ridding Augusta Falls of Gunther Kruger was the only way to cease the daily reminders of her infidelity.
I believed that the child killer was still out there, that he had followed me all the way to New York and killed Bridget. I also knew that whatever his motive might have been I would not understand it until I faced him. I asked myself, Why? Why had this life been chosen for me? But there was no answer and I knew such a question would never be resolved until I found him. It was with this ghost that I existed, somewhere in a vague territory between living and dying, afraid to look at the world, afraid that the world would find me. I cared so much for Paul Hennessy; I understood that he had rescued me from Auburn, but I knew he would never comprehend what I had been through. When everything has been taken from you, then what fear is there in losing? There is none, and thus I resigned myself to leaving Brooklyn and returning to Georgia. I was adrift, without any real purpose or reason, and I knew I could not inflict such a thing on the person that cared for me the most.
Georgia stood at the center of my memories like some dark and poisoned tree—its branches sufficient to enclose the sky. Georgia was my home, my nemesis, and my imagined salvation.
The third week of March, 1967, I told Hennessy what I intended to do.
He shook his head slowly and looked away toward the window. I followed his line of sight, and there through the glass were the myriad lights of a city I had forgotten the importance of. New York had beckoned me away from Georgia, and here I was wishing to return there. New York had represented the future, represented everything I had ever wished to become, yet here I was heading for the past. Fear sat inside me like a Gordian knot. Whichever way I turned, whichever way I tried to wrestle away from it, it grew tighter and more complex. They were all out there—the little girls, the memory of Elena, Alex, even Bridget—and sometimes, lying awake in the chill half-light of dawn, I would remember their faces, and then their voices would come, and I would understand the fear would never pass until this thing was done.
