“Do you have a compact?” he asked.
“A compact? Like face powder and a mirror?”
“Yes.”
“I might.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a pretty cloisonné compact her friend Alex had given her one Christmas. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He slipped the thing in his pocket. “Now watch how criminal defense really works.”
He stood up. In a soft Charleston accent, he found common ground with the jury by commiserating over the death of the beautiful young Bethany Daws. Then he pulled out Mary’s compact.
“Shadows and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen. Shadows and mirrors. Let’s see exactly what they have to do with this boy’s life.”
With that, he took off. Brandishing the small mirror like a magician, he bounced squares of reflected light all over the courtroom—on the ceiling, on the edge of the jury box, once, sharply, in Mary’s eyes.
“See how that can blind you? That’s exactly what Mr. Turpin has tried to do to you for the past three days. Blind you. Make something appear like something it isn’t. Make you see something that isn’t really there.”
He slipped the compact back in his pocket, then turned to the jury. Point by point, he began taking Turpin’s case apart like a cheap watch. “His semen in her vagina? His fingerprints in her room? Well, of course. Those young people were in love. And though they might not have conducted themselves as decorously as you or I, a young man loving a beautiful girl is no crime. And what about motive? There was nothing keeping this boy here. If Bethany wanted to go to college, he could have gone right along with her.”
Ravenel went on—inundating the jury with facts about Bethany’s abuse at the hands of Deke Keener, and the girl’s subsequent tragic and bad behavior. As he sat down, Mary noticed jurors number two and ten were now dabbing at their eyes.
Judge Wood gave the jury their final instructions, then sent them to deliberate. As they filed out, the bailiff escorted Ridge to a holding cell, and Ravenel snapped his briefcase shut and said, “I’ll be in my office.” Mary turned to watch the courtroom empty behind her. Hugh hobbled out with young Turnipseed, then the Daws, then Dana and Jen, now discreetly not holding hands. All at once she was sitting in an empty courtroom, alone. She went over all the testimony in her mind, both Turpin’s and Ravenel’s summations. Where before she’d always felt confident when a jury went to deliberate, today she felt sick with nerves.
“You’ve done your best,” she told herself as she rose from her chair. “Now all you can do is wait.”
Wanting to avoid the crowds of press and her fellow Hartsvillians, she slipped out a side entrance to the courthouse and sat down on a shady bench in the far corner of the lawn. Earlier, she’d stashed a PayDay candy bar in her purse. As she unwrapped it she thought of Gabe, wondered what he was doing, if he’d found someone new to love. Then she thought of Jonathan and Lily, in Tennessee. She had not heard a word from him in nearly three weeks. She’d called his cell phone a dozen times, but had gotten only a recorded message saying that “the party was unavailable.” Finally, she’d given up. Maybe this move to Tennessee was a way to make himself unavailable, at least to her.
And maybe that’s just the way it has to be, she told herself, finding the sweetness of the candy oddly comforting. Jonathan had a child to think of now; he had moved on. She was the one who’d been stuck, dreaming of rekindling a relationship that apparently had no more spark than damp twigs or soggy straw.
She finished her candy bar, then leaned back against the bench. All of Hartsville was spread out before her, a bright little multicolored jewel in the lap of the stunningly green mountains. Until she moved back here, she’d considered it home. Now she didn’t know where she belonged. Maybe someplace they haven’t discovered yet, she thought as her eyelids grew heavy. Maybe some planet, far out in space.
The next thing she knew, her cell phone was ringing, interrupting a dream she was having about Jonathan. She must have dozed off. Hastily she clicked the thing on and held it to her ear.
“Jury’s back.” Ravenel sounded as if he were speaking from the bottom of a barrel. “In case you’re interested.”
She switched off the phone and ran to the courthouse. Already people were back in their seats. Ravenel and Turpin sat at their respective tables, both working hard at looking like they weren’t nervous. Mary sat down just as the deputy brought Ridge in from the holding cell. They rose for Barbara Wood, then remained standing as the jury filed back into the jury box. Her heart was thudding, and she noticed that even Ridge seemed to tremble as he stood there.
Judge Wood turned to the foreman, a tobacco farmer Ravenel hadn’t challenged because he thought the man could relate to Ridge’s job as a farm laborer. “Have you reached a verdict?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The man handed a piece of paper to the bailiff, who presented it to the judge. She read it without expression, then turned back to the foreman. “How do you find the defendant?”
The man cleared his throat. “Your Honor, we find the defendant not guilty.”
Mary had heard courtrooms erupt before, but never like this one. Half the people cheered, the remainder started to boo. The judge gaveled the room to order, then with a glare at George Turpin, thanked the jury and ended the proceedings, quickly returning to her offices behind the bench. As she exited the courtroom, pandemonium broke out all over again. Mary grabbed Ridge and hugged him.
“Do I have to go back to jail again?” he whispered in Cherokee.
“Tlano, Ridge,” Mary assured him with great joy. “You’ll never have to go back to jail again.”
45
September 30,
One Month Later
After the trial, a stillness fell over Hartsville. September ended the muggy summer’s siege of the town, and as the deep green grass began to yellow with autumn, a dry breeze rattled the leaves on the trees, as if beckoning colder temperatures and the high blue skies of fall. Though people still gossiped over breakfast at Layla’s and chatted on the sidewalk in front of the barber shop, they spoke mostly about inconsequential things—what teachers their children had gotten for the new school year and which baseball team might win the pennant. The true subject that obsessed everyone was discussed indoors, and in whispers. Deke Keener had been a killer as well as a child molester.
When Mary had given Jerry Cochran her scenario as to what had happened to all of Pisgah County’s runaways, the sheriff had taken a team of deputies and had gone over Keener’s mountaintop home brick by virtual brick. When that had revealed nothing, they’d gone outside. After a search of his ten-acre mountaintop turned up only the bones of a dead fox and three spent .22 shells, Jerry acted on a hunch of his own. He took his men over to old Firescald Campground on Tuckaseegee Creek. There, after estimating the distance a fit, twelve-year-old Scout could cover in an hour, he sent his team to search in a 1.4-mile perimeter around the picnic area. At .96 of a mile, 332 degrees north/northwest of the campground, in a rocky little ravine cut out by the creek, they found six shallow graves. All held the remains of adolescent white females. DNA tests positively identified one as Valerie Fleming; results were pending on the others. Mary gave a sad sigh when Cochran told her that. Now the pink-bathrobed lady with the weepy eyes would finally find out what happened to her child. It would not be the news she’d hoped for, but at least it would be something.
If the revelations about Keener subdued the normally garrulous Hartsville, they totally shattered Glenn Daws. Although Mary first had seen him only when his family went into counseling, as the days passed she ran into him more often. Glenn would trudge up the stairs to Dana’s with the look of a man who’d walked away unscathed from a plane crash that had killed everyone else on board. He no longer glared at her as if she were some Cherokee devil, and he became such a fixture at their offices that she asked Dana about it one evening, as they finished a hard-fought set of tennis.
“I take it you’re seeing Glenn Daws on a regular basis?”
Dana nodded. “I’m seeing them all. We meet once a week as a family, then I see all three individually.”
Mary bounced a ball on her racquet, trying to imagine the layers of guilt and anger the Daws must be sifting through. “You think they’ll be okay?”
Dana toweled the sweat from her forehead. “Kayla will. School’s keeping her busy, plus she has a very sympathetic and understanding new best friend in Avis Martin.”
Mary remembered how Deke had always spoken of Glenn Daws being like his own brother. “What about the parents?”
“Between you and me, I think Paula will probably get back on her feet. If Glenn could, he would tear Keener apart with his bare hands. In a way, it’s a shame you can’t kill someone who’s already dead. Glenn would find that highly therapeutic.”
Mary gave a bitter laugh. “Then there would be a long line of people waiting to do Deke Keener in.”
Dana dropped her tennis balls back in the can. “So what are you going to do? Have you changed your mind about leaving?”
Mary gazed up at the barn swallows that swooped for insects over the tennis courts. Though her business had picked up and the early morning diners at Layla’s were now nodding at her when she came in the door, she had no real reason to stay. Turnipseed had still not found water, her chances of getting on Turpin’s staff were totally sunk, and her only communication from Jonathan had been one wild red and purple finger-painting from Lily, enclosed with a note that said, “Hope you are well—will call soon.” “No,” she finally answered. “I’m going back to Atlanta.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t,” said Dana, her eyes glistening. “I feel like we’ve become friends.”
“I’ll come back and visit,” Mary lied. She smiled. “When I get my game good enough to give you a run for your money.”
After tennis she went home, exhausted. The night was thrashed by thunderstorms, and when she stepped outside the next morning, the air sparkled with a crisp clarity she had not felt in months. When she drove into town she noticed a difference in the people as well. Their steps were quicker and the men wore their shirts buttoned at the neck, their neckties knotted tight. The last visible remnant of all that had happened was a shrine to Sylvia that Ruben Morales had erected in front of the hardware store. A little statue of the Virgin Mary, a small photo of Sylvia, now soggy with humidity, surrounded by sad little bouquets of plastic flowers. Though Mr. Sutton, who was Baptist, disapproved of such garish papist displays, he’d told Ruben he could keep it there for a little while, out of respect for Sylvia. In the past month Mary had grown accustomed to the thing, and she wondered if the sidewalk would look empty when Mr. Sutton finally made Ruben take it down.
“Don’t guess I’ll be around to see that,” she whispered as she walked up her stairs, ready to start repacking all the books she’d brought from Irene’s.
Dana’s door was closed, as was Ravenel’s. One, no doubt, was hard at work while the other was probably at home, nursing a hangover. Oh, well, Mary thought. At least Ravenel can finally have my office. He and Mr. Henchy can turn it into a combination environmental museum and cocktail lounge.
She unlocked her door and surveyed everything that needed to go. The books and office supplies she could move herself. Maybe after she got them back to Irene’s, Hugh might again loan her his truck to move the bigger pieces of furniture. With a sigh, she took an empty box she’d scavenged from the grocery store and started packing up the first bookshelf. She realized, as she took down Corbin’s text on contracts, that she’d never asked Ridge what his plans were. She wished he would stay on and continue to help Hugh, but she doubted that would happen. He’s just like me, she thought. Too many memories of this place . . . and not enough of them good.
She packed up one shelf of books and had just started on another when she heard a knock on her door. “Come in,” she called over her shoulder, figuring it was Dana. When the door opened, however, Ridge stood there. He wore jeans and a denim shirt, and carried a knapsack over his shoulder.
“Sheoh.” He greeted her. “Ahyole deza?”
“I’m fine,” she replied, genuinely glad to see the boy. “How are you?”
He raised his shoulders as if shrugging off a heavy burden. “Out of jail is much better than in.”
She glanced at the pack he carried, surprised, in a way, that this day had not come sooner. “Are you planning a trip somewhere?”
He lowered his eyes and gazed at the floor. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative, as if he didn’t trust himself not to cry. “It’s time for me to leave here. I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“You don’t want to stay the winter with Hugh?” Mary had hoped that he might stay with the old man a few months longer.
He shook his head. “Hugh’s a good man, like my father. But his ways aren’t mine. I’ve told Turnipseed what needs to be done.”
She studied the boy, knowing that the real reason he’d stayed was gone forever.
“Anyway, I want to pay you for all you’ve done. Mr. Ravenel told me that he couldn’t have won the case without you.”
“I did what I could, but I had a lot of help, Ridge.”
“Help?” He cocked his head. “Who from?”
“Several people.” She thought of Avis Martin and Kayla Daws, then she glanced across the room at the bear mask. Its face brought back that night on Deke’s mountain, and she turned to the boy with the one question she still couldn’t answer. “Did your people have anything to do with Deke Keener’s death?”
“My people?”
“The Ani Zaguhi. Did they send a bear to kill him?”
He, too, glanced at the mask in the corner. Then he gave her a cryptic smile. “That first night at Hugh’s, you said the Ani Zaguhi were just old myths. What old myth could send a bear out to do its killing?”
“None, I suppose.” Mary leaned against her desk, thinking Ridge was more adept at words than she’d realized. “So where are you headed?”
He pointed out one of her tall windows, to the mountains that glowed purple in the distance. “Hugh says if you walk the mountains and keep the morning sun on your right shoulder, you’ll wind up in Canada.”
“Yes.” Mary nodded. “Why do you want to go to Canada?”
“I want to see the aurora borealis. I saw a program about it on television. At night lights shimmer from the sky like curtains of gold.”
She looked out at the Old Men—Dakwai, Ahaluna, Disgagistiyi. The mountains did, indeed, lead north. For one instant she considered joining Ridge on his trek. If they hiked fast, they could perhaps reach the Adirondacks by November, then cross over into Ontario. They were Cherokee—tough, good walkers. They could resupply themselves for winter and skirt Lakes Huron and Superior—surely before they reached British Columbia they would see that curtain of gold. She was just about to open her mouth and ask if he wanted any company when she realized that this was Ridge’s trip to heal, not hers. Walking to Canada would not assuage the pain in her own heart. She would have to find her salvation elsewhere. She looked at him and smiled.
“Then Canada’s where you need to go. Do you have food? Warm clothes? It gets cold up there—ooyutla.”
He nodded. “I have enough of what I need.”
“Then here.” Impulsively, Mary stepped over to the corner and reached for the bear mask. “Take this with you. I have a feeling it’s got powers that we haven’t dreamed of.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They meant it for you, Koga. That much I do know.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Now here’s part of your payment. I went out to your farm early this morning. If you tell Turnipseed to drill at half-speed just south of those sycamore trees, he’ll find water.”
Mary looked at him, surprised. “He’s drilled there before, Ridge. He’s drilled everywhere. The place looks like an artillery range.”
“He’s drilling too fast. He needs to drill slow, then the water will come.”
She laughed, thinking this was the strangest paych
eck she’d ever received. “Okay, I’ll tell him. What’s the other part of my payment?”
“I’ll send it later,” Ridge promised, his dark eyes serious.
Suddenly they had nothing more to say to each other. He hugged her once, gave her a wide, brilliant smile, and walked out the door. She listened to his light tread on the stairs, then she crossed over to the window to watch him set out for Canada. She tapped on the glass and waved at him. Already he’d crossed the street. He turned and waved back at her, then a cement mixer lumbered down toward the courthouse between them, for a second obscuring him from view. When the truck passed, she started to wave to him again, but he was gone. Quickly she raised her window and leaned out, craning her neck to gaze up and down both sides of the street, but she saw only Ruben Morales bringing more plastic flowers to Sylvia’s shrine and two laughing teenagers going into the music store.
“Golly,” she whispered as an unseasonably cold breeze surged up from the street below. “He is one strange kid.” She gazed out the window a moment longer, then she turned back inside. Four more shelves to pack up, then her desk, then she could start loading her car. She’d just started on the shelf that held her criminal procedure books when she heard another knock. Ridge must have forgotten something, she decided. She walked to the door, thinking she should remind him to stop at Niagara Falls, but Ridge hadn’t knocked on her door at all.
Jonathan stood there, Lily in his arms.
She was stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“Meyliiii!” Lily, who was wearing a bright orange Tennessee cap, squealed as she flung herself into Mary’s arms. Mary hugged the little girl tight. How good she felt! How young and strong!
“Hi.” Jonathan pulled Mary close. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
For a long moment she just stood there, loving the feel of his arms around her. “Where have you been?” she finally asked. “I’ve called you fifty times! All I ever get is this ‘your party is unavailable.’ ”
Legacy of Masks Page 35
