A Beautiful Child

by Matt Birkbeck

  “That don’t bother me,” said Floyd.

  “Well, where did you get her?” said Fitzpatrick.

  “Get? Get? I didn’t ‘get’ her,” said Floyd, annoyed at the suggestion.

  “Well, we know she’s not a relative of yours,” said Fitzpatrick. “Where did she come from?”

  Floyd paused.

  “I was living in Indianapolis in 1974 and was seeing a woman, a prostitute. Her name was Linda Williams. She was a drug user. I wanted to marry her but she said no. She had a little girl, and I couldn’t leave her there. Just wasn’t right. Was a bad environment, so she came with me,” he said, relaying the story clearly and succinctly.

  “So Williams is her last name?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Floyd. “I told you who her momma was. I didn’t say her name, and I’m not gonna tell you.”

  “But her name was Suzanne Davis when you lived in Oklahoma City, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did you go after that?”

  “Just around. Don’t really remember,” said Floyd, shrugging his shoulders.

  Fitzpatrick continued, not bothering to look at his notes, spitting out facts from memory.

  “And later you moved to Louisville in 1980, where her name was Sharon Marshall, and your name was Warren Marshall?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Sharon is Michael’s mother, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can you tell me his date of birth?”

  “April 21, 1988. Born at Tampa Hospital.”

  The interview continued, and Floyd was alternatively talkative and combative, answering most questions but dodging others. He rationalized his life as the result of one misfortune after another and blamed others for the way it turned out. He claimed to have used more than forty aliases during his flight from justice, delighting in the fact that he was never caught.

  “You people were so stupid. I could still be running if I didn’t love my son so much,” he said.

  “Where did you get the names?” said Fitzpatrick.

  “Took ’em off tombstones. Was real easy. I’d move from city to city, without saying so much as good-bye,” said Floyd, leaning over the table toward Fitzpatrick. “Let me tell ya’. That’s the only way you can be a successful fugitive, is to move around. You people couldn’t catch me.”

  Fitzpatrick looked Floyd dead in the eye.

  “Mr. Floyd, you were not a fugitive from the FBI. If you were, believe me when I say this, we would have found you long ago.”

  Floyd fell back into his seat as the interview continued, the questions centering on Floyd’s seventeen years as a fugitive.

  “I was a painter, you know, and a damn good one,” he said proudly. “I’d always go to a new town, do a good job to get referrals. And you know what, I’d always get work from Jewish people. I’d always take the mezuzah off the side of the door. Other guys would just paint over it. Not me. I was real careful. They loved me.”

  Floyd boasted how he befriended doctors and lawyers, and how he’d join various organizations—from the Kiwanis club to the Fraternal Order of Police—to help him maintain his cover. The second he thought someone was on to him, he said he’d pack his bags, grab “Sharon,” and bolt to the next city.

  “And her name was Sharon,” said Floyd. “That’s what I always liked to call her.”

  That was fine with Fitzpatrick, who had heard enough about Floyd’s talents for evading the law and wanted to hear more about the girl he stole long ago.

  “Oh, Sharon was smart as a pistol,” said Floyd. “She was a pleasure, but you see, she ruined her life. She got pregnant. I told her, ‘Sharon, how could you do this to yourself? How could you soil yourself with those boys?’ She was such a good girl, it was a shame.”

  “What happened to that baby?” said Fitzpatrick.

  “Which one?”

  “The first one, when she was in high school.”

  “Can’t tell ya,” said Floyd, who wouldn’t identify the baby’s gender but said the child was born in Atlanta and adopted.

  “We found a nice home for it before we went to Phoenix.”

  “That’s where Sharon met Greg Higgs?”

  “Yeah, Greg Higgs,” said Floyd, his face twisted with disgust. “He didn’t care about her. He just took her wholesomeness and used her. He got her pregnant but wasn’t going to take care of her, so we left.”

  “You seemed to leave a home whenever Sharon found some other attachment,” said Fitzpatrick.

  “What the hell does that mean?” said Floyd. “I took care of that girl. I couldn’t leave her with someone like Greg Higgs! Aren’t you a daddy? Don’t you understand that?”

  Fitzpatrick didn’t want to answer the questions, so he looked down to his folder and flipped a couple of pages.

  “After Phoenix you went to Tampa?”

  “Right, Tampa. That’s where Michael was born. It was a beautiful sight, watching him come into this world. That’s what no one understands about all this. I was there. I took care of him when he was sick. I was his father.”

  Floyd’s demeanor changed when the interview turned to Michael. He sat there, handcuffed, acting as if he were the victim and his actions the result of a grave injustice. Fitzpatrick didn’t want to hear it. He was sick of Floyd. He had chased him for two months, and he knew everything about his sordid and sorry history. If one thing was certain, in Fitzpatrick’s eyes, Floyd was not a victim.

  Fitzpatrick decided to change the subject away from Michael and back to Sharon, but Floyd was angry. And as proud as he was of Sharon just moments earlier, he now spewed venom.

  “She was a whore. A fucking whore. She ruined her life and that’s where she belonged. With all those sodomites. I hated that life she chose for herself. She did drugs. It was a tragedy. She got pregnant again after Michael. But I didn’t care. You see, I wasn’t attached to her anymore. I raised her, and she was a good girl who went to church, but she became a whore and a drug addict. I only cared about Michael.”

  “What happened to that other baby, after Michael?”

  “It was a girl. She was adopted by a nice family in New Orleans.”

  “That’s where you married Sharon, right? Why?”

  “To give Michael a name. It was a marriage of convenience.”

  “Did you ever have sex with Sharon?”

  “Hell, no. Don’t even ask me a question like that. Do it again and I ain’t saying another word.”

  Fitzpatrick paused and fumbled through his files to give Floyd a chance take a breath and relax his tone. After a few minutes, the questions started again.

  “So you left Tampa for Oklahoma in 1989. Where did you get those names, Clarence Marcus Hughes and Tonya Dawn Tadlock?”

  “From tombstones. Like I said, I got all my names from tombstones.”

  “And what about Michael, what was his real name?”

  “Michael Gregory Marshall.”

  Fitzpatrick paused again, going through his notebook.

  “Mr. Floyd, let me ask you about David Dial. You knew him, correct?”

  “We were friends in prison. I helped him with his legal defense. I became a lawyer in jail. Not a real lawyer, but I studied the law. I knew lots of guys in jail who were smart like me and studied the law. I saw him again after Sharon died. Stayed with him for a few days but the son of a bitch slapped me around and I had to leave.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “No.”

  “OK, Mr. Floyd, let’s talk about September twelve, nineteen ninety-four. You were at the Indian Meridian School, correct?”

  “I was there. I was being chased by people in the Mafia. They were following me because Tonya took money from them. A lot of money. I know where it’s buried, so they were following me around. I didn’t take Michael. I left my car there because it wouldn’t start. It was the Mafia guys who took him.”

  “So why leave Oklahoma City and violate your parole?”

  “Because
I was being followed by these people.”

  “You know this doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think. I’m telling you what happened.”

  Floyd said after leaving Oklahoma City, he traveled to Kansas City, Dallas, Atlanta, and then Louisville.

  “Why did you go to Atlanta?”

  “For psychological reasons.”

  “You want to explain?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you go to Louisville?”

  “I like it there. I used to live there.”

  While Floyd talked, agents from the Louisville field office searched his apartment and interviewed his neighbors and coworkers. Everyone had seen Floyd since his arrival in October. No one saw Michael.

  The interview finally concluded, but Floyd offered nothing about Michael’s whereabouts. He was led out of the room while Fitzpatrick and Bond remained inside.

  “That bus ticket was dated September thirtieth, one way, from Atlanta to Louisville, for one passenger. Whatever happened to Michael happened in Atlanta,” said Fitzpatrick.

  Fitzpatrick returned to Oklahoma City while Floyd was taken to a federal holding cell in Indiana to begin extradition proceedings for his eventual return to Oklahoma to stand trial for the kidnapping of Michael Hughes.

  Fitzpatrick wanted to add the murder of Michael Anthony Hughes to the list of charges.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was 6 P.M. on November 15, and Jennifer Fisher Tanner was washing dinner dishes in her San Diego, California, home when she received a phone call from her mother, Sue.

  She said she had some news.

  “We found Sharon.”

  “Oh my God!” Jennifer shrieked, bouncing up and down on her kitchen floor with delight. “Where is she! How can we find her!”

  It had been six long years since Jennifer last spoke to her friend, losing contact in 1988. Jennifer had since spent countless hours trying to find her, and now her mother was on the phone with the news Jennifer hoped she would one day hear.

  But Jennifer’s questions were met by silence on the other end of the line.

  “Mom? What’s wrong?”

  “Jenny, Sharon is dead.”

  “Dead? Mom, what are you talking about?”

  “She’s dead, Jenny,” said Sue. “You better sit down. It gets worse. She was on the news. You’re going to have to call the FBI. It appears that Warren was not her father. His real name was Floyd. Franklin Floyd.”

  Jennifer stood rigid. Her profound happiness transformed in a second into confusion and shock.

  “What do you mean?” she said, holding one hand on the phone and the other to her head, not sure that any of this was making sense.

  “Jenny, Sharon was kidnapped when she was a little girl.”

  Jennifer was nauseous. She fell to the floor, screaming “No! No! No!” and clutching her chest, her heart bouncing inside, tears rolling off her cheeks.

  Her husband, Zach, walked into the kitchen.

  “Jenny? Jenny? What’s the matter?” said Zach, trying to lift his stricken wife off the floor.

  Jennifer shook her head. She couldn’t talk and couldn’t breathe, the air having been pressed out of her lungs by the startling news. She waved him away, then sat for ten minutes trying to collect herself while her mother waited patiently on the other end of the line.

  Jennifer recovered enough to produce a low, slow drawl, her voice cracking.

  “Mom, when did she die?”

  “According to the news, about four years ago. She was hit by a car. They think Warren did it.”

  “Oh my God. How did she get on the news?”

  “Jenny, there’s still more. This is hard. Remember her little boy? When Sharon died he went into foster care. Warren took him. They found Warren in Kentucky, but the boy is gone and they don’t know who Sharon is. They don’t know anything. The FBI has a hotline for anyone who knew her. You need to call them immediately.”

  Jennifer was numb, her body in agony.

  “FBI? Give me the number.”

  Sue said she’d send Jennifer the newspaper clippings and record the television news.

  “Jenny, are you ok? Have Zach make you some hot tea. Call me if you need to talk.”

  Sue hung up, and Jennifer slowly lifted herself off the floor, the phone still in her hand. Zach walked over to her, grabbed the phone, and then asked her what was wrong.

  Jennifer shook her head back and forth.

  “Sharon is dead.”

  “Sharon? Your friend from high school? What happened?” said Zach.

  Jennifer stared at the FBI hotline number she’d scribbled on a piece of paper, still trying to comprehend the awful news.

  The two friends had remained in touch after Sharon’s teary-eyed departure from Atlanta in 1986, writing letters and calling every few months. They were more like pep talks with Sharon urging Jennifer to lay off the marijuana and to pick up her grades.

  “Jenny, you have to get your act together! You have to go to college!”

  Jennifer would learn about Sharon’s romance with Greg Higgs and her job at the Phoenix hotel. And she remembered the Christmas card, wishing the entire Fisher family a happy holiday from “The Marshalls.”

  During the summer of 1987 Sharon called to report that she had broken up with Greg, saying he was too “clingy.” Later, in the fall, Sharon called again. She said she was in South Carolina, only Jennifer knew there was something terribly wrong.

  “Jenny, I need you to come see me.”

  Sharon sounded awful.

  “Sharon, are you all right?”

  “No, Jenny. I need you to come up. My daddy will call your parents about coming up for a week or two.”

  “Sharon, you know I would, but can’t. It’s impossible for me to get away. My parents would never go for it.”

  Jennifer knew that was a half-truth. Her parents would never let her visit alone, but Jennifer would never put herself in a position like that again, alone with Warren. She remembered the one night she stayed with the Marshalls, when Warren barged into Sharon’s room. His face was cherry red as he fell into a crouched position, holding a handgun with both hands, his arms extended, screaming, “I told you girls to get to bed!”

  He pointed the gun at Jennifer, then at Sharon. Jennifer thought he was going to pull the trigger. Instead Warren started laughing, as if it was some kind of joke. Sharon stood there, half naked, trembling. Jennifer thought she was going to pass out.

  The next morning Sharon had made breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast, and no one mentioned the incident until Warren left the house.

  “Jenny, I’m sorry about last night,” said Sharon. “Are you all right? My dad gets like that every now and then. He’s just kidding around, you know. He always threatens me with a gun.”

  Jennifer wished her mother would come quickly and get her out of there. She never told her parents about that night. She knew she couldn’t if she wanted to remain friends with Sharon Marshall.

  The memory was still fresh as Sharon begged her friend to visit with her in South Carolina. “Jenny, I need you. I really need you.”

  Sharon spoke with a strangeness Jennifer had never heard before; there was something in her voice that suggested Sharon didn’t really want Jennifer to visit but was being forced to make the request. She could hear Sharon saying, “I want you to come” but could see Sharon’s head shaking back and forth, “No, don’t come!”

  Sharon was crying, and Jennifer could hear the phone being yanked out of Sharon’s hand.

  “What kind of friend are you if you can’t come up and visit her?”

  It was Warren. He asked to talk to her parents, but Jennifer said they weren’t home.

  “Mr. Marshall, I can’t come up. It’s impossible. I’m sorry,” said Jennifer, who heard a click, then a dial tone.

  Months would pass before Jennifer heard from Sharon again. It was in May 1988, when a card arrived congratulating Jennifer on her graduation fro
m high school. Sharon didn’t know it, but Jennifer earned a B average her senior year and acceptance to Georgia Southern University. It was a major accomplishment, one achieved with the help of Sharon, whose encouraging voice remained somewhere in the back of Jennifer’s head, imploring her to finish school on a positive note.

  The envelope was postmarked “Tampa, Florida,” but had no return address. On the cover of the card were dancing animals, rabbits and cats and dogs holding pom-poms and wearing blue sweaters that spelled out “Way To Go.” Inside Sharon had written: “I hope all the festivities of graduation flow smoothly. They’ll be moments you’ll cherish and never forget. I’m sorry that I can’t be there to share them. Good Luck in all your plans and goals!!! Love ya, Sharon.”

  Several weeks later, in June 1988, Jennifer received a two-page letter from Sharon.

  Dear Jenny,

  How are you? I am fine. Long time, no hear, huh? You may think it was because I was mad about you not coming up. I got over that a while ago. But, I wasn’t hurt at the time. No, life’s just been so busy with work and everything.

  You’ll notice by the return address that I’m in Tampa now. We moved not long after we talked last. There wasn’t enough work in S.C. to support us. We saw ourselves going broke. We heard there was some good work going on here and tadah! It’s an OK town. There’s not much that I’m interested in here, but it’ll do for now.

  I work at a bar again cocktailing. It’s good money. Daddy recently retired from painting permanently. He fell off a ladder a couple of weeks ago and was told to stop his profession. He figures he’ll get into some kind of sales work. Life’s been pretty decent financially anyway. We have a truck and an AMC now. It’s a great little car!

  I met some nice guys here. The nicest would have to be Steve. He’s from California and is the carpenter for Van Halen. I’m not lying! When the Monsters of Rock Tour came through, a bunch of the roadies came in the club. We (a couple of girls and me) partied with them the whole week they were here. I met Metallica and Sammy Hagar. Steve and I promised to keep in touch and meet again someday. I pretty much just look but don’t touch.