by Tom Wallace
~ * ~
As I started down the stairs leading to the sheriff’s office, I was struck by the realization that the Todd Brown case had begun to haunt me. It had seeped into my soul. Without any evidence whatsoever, I had come to suspect that Todd was innocent. But was that little more than wishful thinking on my part? Was I allowing my heart to rule my head? And by taking Todd’s side on the matter, was I being unfair to Luke Felton? Someone had murdered him, and regardless of how I felt about Todd, I couldn’t lose sight of that fact. The dead, especially victims of a violent crime, deserve our respect. I knew Luke, and I also knew he’d been a cop for many years. He’d paid his dues, earned his stripes. He had served with honor. While I may never learn the truth about why he was with Todd on that deadly night, I did know he never should have died in such a horrible and violent way.
But the truth is, no one should.
It didn’t matter that I was ten minutes early for my meeting with Perry Jackson. The man wasn’t there. When I walked into his office, one of his deputies informed me that Jackson left an hour ago to take care of some business at his house, and that he wouldn’t be returning until tomorrow morning. I didn’t bother asking the deputy what constituted the sheriff’s business; I knew the man was lying. Sheriff Jackson had no interest in speaking with me. That had come across loud and clear during our brief phone chat earlier in the day.
Walking out of the office, I was convinced that if I had any hope of questioning Perry Jackson, I would have to catch him by surprise. Otherwise, he’d keep finding ways to avoid seeing me. But time was on my side, I knew. Sooner or later, come hell or high water, I would get my interview with the man.
I had an hour or so to kill before it was time for my visit with the Browns, so I decided to drive back to my motel and type up notes from my conversation with Mark Robinson, a man I found to be honest, forthright and professional, but perhaps somewhat dismissive in some areas. Once I finished that task, I’d head out to Gaslight Park for my meeting with Mary Sue and Steve Brown for what was certain to be an emotional evening. Given the situation, how could it be anything but emotional? And yet, my hope was that somewhere in the midst of all that emotion, I’d get a much clearer picture of Todd Brown.
Hope.
There was that word again.
Nine
When I was a kid growing up here, Gaslight Park was the new upscale place to live. It took serious money to purchase a lot and build a house on the property. Initially, there were only a scattering of houses, all very pricey for the times. But like everything else in my hometown, this was no longer the case. Very little was as it had once been and that included Gaslight Park. The area had expanded… there were many more houses… but the more recent ones lacked the size and elegance of the original structures. These days, the “in” place to live was out by the country club and the golf course.
Steve and Mary Sue Brown lived in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom brick home located on a corner lot. It was one of the more expensive houses built by the second wave of settlers in the neighborhood. There was a small front yard, a larger backyard, and a two-car garage. I wasn’t sure how long the Browns had resided here, but I did know this wasn’t where they lived when I was growing up.
Steve greeted me at the door, gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder, and invited me inside. Mary Sue, whom I didn’t know nearly as well as I knew Steve, surprised me with a warm hug. Then she took my hand, led me to the den, and motioned for me to sit in a chair by the fireplace. She asked if I wanted something to drink, and when I declined she excused herself and disappeared into the kitchen.
Steve sat on the sofa across from my chair. The passing years had been kind to Steve. There were a few noticeable changes…his once-black hair was completely gray and a few wrinkles lined his face… but all things considered, he wasn’t much different from the man I knew all those years ago. And considering the torment he’d gone through during the past couple of months, a torment reflected in his sad eyes, he had held up remarkably well.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?” Steve asked. “We don’t have any alcohol, but we do have soft drinks. Or water, if you prefer.”
“No, thanks, Steve, I’m good,” I said.
“Been a long time, Nick. It’s great seeing you again. And you look good.”
“So do you, Steve. The years have treated you well.”
“I’m sixty-six with no serious illness, so I can’t complain. But I do feel like I’ve aged ten years since…what happened with Todd.”
“I can only imagine how incredibly difficult that had to be for you and your family.”
Mary Sue came into the room and sat next to Steve on the sofa. She took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes were sadder than her husband’s.
“What brought you back to town?” Mary Sue said.
“I’m exploring the possibility of writing a book about Todd’s case,” I replied. “That is, unless you guys disapprove. If you do, I’ll take a pass on the project. I have no intention of going against your wishes. And that won’t trouble me at all.”
“What’s left for you to write about?” Steve said. “Todd confessed and is incarcerated for life. Where do you go from there?”
“Keep talking to people about the case, keep digging for information. I’ve already spoken with Anne Bishop and Mark Robinson, and I plan on talking to Perry Jackson and Jimmy Martin. I’m sure there are others I need to interview, and I will.”
“What about Todd? Do you plan on speaking with him?”
I nodded, said, “Anne Bishop is setting that up for me.”
“Good luck with that,” Mary Sue said. “Todd swears he can’t remember anything at all about that night.”
“Do you believe him?”
Mary Sue seemed started by my question. “Why shouldn’t we believe him?” she said. “What reason would he have to lie? So yes, I do believe him.”
“I don’t know how anyone could possibly forget something that traumatic.”
“Neither can we.”
“Has anyone suggested hypnosis?” I said.
“That was never brought up,” Steve said. “Why? Do you think that might work?”
“I don’t know, but it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. If Todd is going to be locked up for life, wouldn’t you want to be absolutely sure he actually committed the crime? I would, if I were in your shoes.”
“If Todd is hypnotized, will he remember what happened?” Mary Sue asked.
“Look, guys, I’m not a detective or a homicide investigator, so maybe I need to keep my mouth shut. But from what little I’ve learned about the case, I definitely see some blank spaces that need to be filled in. Questions I’d like answered, beginning with how well did Todd know Luke Felton?”
“We weren’t aware he knew Luke at all,” Steve said.
“Okay, so what reason would Todd have for being in Luke’s car that night?”
“In case you didn’t know, Todd has a serious drug problem. Maybe he got his drugs from Luke.”
“Has any solid evidence been uncovered that suggests Luke was a drug dealer?”
“None that I’m aware of,” Steve said.
“What if Todd was never in Luke’s car that night?”
“His driver’s license was found in the car. Plus, Todd’s clothes were covered with Luke’s blood. How else can you explain that unless Todd was in the car?”
“It was all staged. A set-up to implicate Todd.”
The look on the faces of Steve and Mary Sue was all it took for me to realize that I had better change course, and fast. To continue down this path would only lead to more disappointment for them. All I was doing was offering a glimmer of hope to two people who had accepted the darkness. I was shining a light into that darkness, yet it was a light that might easily lead to a deeper darkness. I had no desire to create hope only to see it crushed by further disappointment.
I braced for the inevitable question I knew was coming.
“Do you genuinely think there’s a chance Todd is innocent?” Mary Sue asked.
“I’d be lying if I said yes.” This was the only answer I felt I could give, even though I didn’t think I was being totally truthful. “But if I have your blessing to continue gathering material for a book, I’ll keep digging for answers.”
“Yes, by all means, go ahead,” Steve said. “You have our complete support.”
“Just don’t let your hopes get too high. There is a lot of evidence against Todd. But I’ll talk to a few people, including Todd, and see if I can come up with anything new.”
“We’ll help you in any way we can,” Mary Sue said.
“I appreciate that,” I said, standing. “And I’ll definitely keep in touch. If I learn anything new, you’ll be the first to know.”
We walked to the front door. Steve opened it, shook my hand, and said, “Good luck, Nick. And thanks for everything you’re doing. I mean that.”
Mary Sue gave me a hug, then silently watched as I headed to my car. Darkness had settled in, which somehow seemed appropriate to the occasion. I started the car and drove away, a portrait of Steve and Mary Sue standing arm-in-arm on the porch captured in my rear-view mirror. Two decent people had been put through hell and were still living there. My heart ached for what they were going through. And here I was, a hack writer, offering to help when there was little chance in hell that I could. Sometimes I let my mouth write checks my ass can’t cover. This was, I’m sorry to say, one of those times.
My next stop: Karen Tucker’s for a drink, which didn’t at all seem appropriate.
~ * ~
Three hours later, after we’d had several drinks, Karen excused herself and went to the bathroom. She had done most of the talking, primarily asking questions about the time I spent writing for the movies. Like virtually everyone else, she greatly inflated the work I had done, and my importance to the overall process of making a movie. She had the misguided notion that I was on the set the entire time, always just a snap of the fingers away from being summoned by the director to rewrite or rescue a scene that was failing miserably. I would swoop in and somehow magically turn dreck into gold. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I explained to Karen, I was rarely on the set at any point during production, and on those occasions when I was, it was usually at the behest of a panicked actor who was dissatisfied with his dialogue, or else he wanted me to beef up a big speech he was about to deliver. I could tell Karen was surprised when I told her that, with a few notable exceptions, being a screenwriter was a thankless, unappreciated job. Most of what a screenwriter puts on the page is eventually rewritten, often many times over. That’s different with playwrights; no word is ever changed without the playwright’s permission.
As a script doctor, my work normally ended up on the screen, although few people knew it. As an example, which I pointed out to Karen, was the work I did on a war movie that garnered glowing reviews. The two men who got screen credit for writing the movie were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay even though I had written seventy-percent of the dialogue that ended up in the film. If most screenwriters are underappreciated, I told Karen, script doctors are practically invisible.
While I politely answered all of Karen’s questions, my thoughts continued to linger on Todd Brown’s situation, and more specifically on what impact it had on his grandparents, who by any standards had provided a loving, supportive family structure for their own kids and then for the grandkids. Until Todd, not one family member had ever been in serious trouble. Now he was behind bars for life, having been convicted of committing the worst crime of all… murder.
How did that happen? What caused him to go off the rails? And what could Steve or Mary Sue, or Todd’s parents, Tony and Susan, have done differently that might have prevented it from happening? Nothing, as I see it. In life, we kid ourselves if we believe we are in charge? We aren’t. Life is a cosmic crapshoot and we don’t roll the dice. Try as we might, some…many… outcomes are beyond our control. We can only watch helplessly as the dice tumble toward a result we have no choice but to accept.
Karen came back into the room wearing a thin, silk see-through negligee. I hadn’t anticipated her being dressed in such a provocative way, but I must confess I wasn’t completely surprised. Deep down inside, I knew this was why I had been invited in the first place. With Mike out of town, what other reason would she have for inviting me? It wasn’t to talk about movies or writing.
She leaned over and kissed me hard on the mouth. I knew I should pull away and say something inane like, “This is a mistake, we shouldn’t do this, Mike is my best friend,” but there was no way that was going to happen. Instead, I responded by pulling her closer and meeting her kiss with one of my own.
Karen knelt between my legs and began unbuckling my belt. Seconds later, she had unfastened my pants and was slowly working the zipper downward. At that point, my fate, shall we say, was literally in her hands. We had officially reached the point of no return. I knew what the ultimate outcome was destined to be.
One other thing I knew for certain: The pleasure I was soon to experience would almost certainly lead me straight to hell.
Ten
My Divine Rebel, William Blake, despite his iconoclastic opinions on many subjects, had a long and successful marriage. His wife Catherine was illiterate when they married… she signed the marriage certificate with an X—but Blake, through infinite patience and caring, taught her to read and write. He also taught her to paint and draw in a style very similar to his, a skill that proved to be beneficial to him professionally.
Blake’s views were very liberal-minded and forward-thinking for the times in which he lived. He was a product of the Enlightenment, and many of his ideas, judged to be scandalous at the time, are viewed in a more favorable light in today’s modern world. He detested child labor, particularly the abuse of young children forced by greedy profit-driven adults to slave away in London’s ‘dark satanic mills.’ He advocated sexual freedom and ‘gratified desire’ for both men and women. (However, despite his liberal views on such matters, there is no record that he ever strayed from Catherine). He had enormous respect for Jesus, yet his assessment of organized religion was that its primary aim was to suppress man’s natural desires and to stifle his imagination. Blake had little use for a God residing in the far-off heavens, saying in a statement that echoes a central Gnostic belief ‘that all deities reside in the human breast.’
I wonder how Blake would have judged my tryst with the wife of my best friend. I have a hunch he would have condemned it as misguided and foolish, but a living experience just the same.
For the next two days, Tuesday and Wednesday, the rain came down in wind-blown sheets. It was a monsoon. Tornado warnings were issued for the entire area, but thankfully, none materialized. With a single exception, an excursion to a grocery store to purchase food and drinks, I stayed in my hotel room. I was eager for Thursday to arrive. Anne Bishop called Tuesday morning to let me know she had scheduled a meeting with Todd at the prison for ten on Thursday morning. And later that day Angel should be getting here. I couldn’t wait to see her, and to hopefully begin ironing out some of our many differences.
Karen Tucker showed up at my room at nine Wednesday night. Again, I didn’t expect to see her, but I can’t say I was all that surprised. She stepped into the room, held up two bottles of Merlot, and gave me a kiss on the lips. Every instinct in my body cried out for me to demand that she leave. But I didn’t. And even if I had, I doubt she would have followed my directive. Obviously, she’s every bit as immune to feelings of guilt as I am.
She stayed until a little past two and then departed for her house. There was enough wine remaining in one of the bottles for me to have two final drinks, which I did. I lay back in the bed and did my best to wipe out what had happened during the past five hours. I was only partially successful. Thoughts of my morning meeting with Todd, and then seeing Angel in the afternoon kept bein
g interrupted by Blake-like visions of a disheartened Mike Tucker upon discovering his so-called best friend had violated his wife.
That was more than enough to keep me awake the rest of the night. Could be I underestimated my feelings of guilt.
Bleary-eyed but wired, I showered, dressed, grabbed my bag, and went down to the lobby to wait for Anne Bishop to pick me up. She had phoned to say she would be there at nine. I stopped at the area where breakfast was being served and had a cinnamon pastry and a cup of orange juice. Sitting at a table, I opened my bag and made sure I had plenty of tapes, and that my recorder was in good working order. I also had a legal pad and plenty of pens. Everything checked out fine; I was fully prepared for my interview with Todd Brown.
I had made a promise to myself that I wasn’t walking away from my talk with Todd until he answered one or two specific questions I had for him. Whether he truly couldn’t remember or was just bullshitting everyone was irrelevant. I was going to insist he provide something… anything… that would give me solid cause to remain involved. There was no good reason why I should invest my time and energy in writing a book if he wasn’t willing to make the effort at uncovering the truth about what occurred that night.
~ * ~
Anne showed up a couple of minutes before nine. When I got in her car, I was surprised by how she was dressed… jeans, a denim shirt and sneakers. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She looked more like a convict working on a chain gang than an attorney. Considering our destination, perhaps that’s the look she was aiming for.
Neither of us said much on the ride to the prison. For no particular reason, I checked the contents in my bag a second time. As I did, Anne committed what I regard as a cardinal sin… texting while driving. I’ve always considered driving to be a full-time occupation. I didn’t complain, but I was fully prepared to take command of the steering wheel if a life-threatening situation arose.
