Music of Ghosts

by Sallie Bissell

  “He’s my assistant.” A tall man with a shock of white hair brushed past the trooper. Though he walked with a cane, his dark eyes were sharp, taking in Cochran and his office in a single glance. A much younger woman followed him, perky breasts bobbing, high heels clattering.

  “I’m Jackson Carlisle Wilson,” the old man growled, though there was no need of introduction—every North Carolinian over thirty knew the man’s white hair and snapping eyes.

  “Gerald Cochran.” He extended his hand, but Wilson ignored it. Instead, he grabbed Cochran’s chair with the hook end of his cane and pulled it in front of the desk.

  “Tell me what the fuck happened to my little girl.” Wilson sat down, his eyes boring into Cochran like hot coals.

  Cochran glared at the highway patrolman, who stood by the door with his arms folded. He was willing to cut Carlisle Wilson some slack, but he did not intend to let some lumpy-assed traffic cop in on this. “I can only discuss this with the next of kin.”

  “Beat it, Fred,” the governor ordered.

  “Yes sir.” With a sour look at Cochran, the assistant left the room immediately, closing the door behind him.

  “Okay, Sheriff,” the old man snarled. “Let’s have it.”

  Cochran remained standing and reported the facts of the case, adding that he’d just talked to the chief pathologist in Winston-Salem, who’d determined that his daughter had died of strangulation. The woman gasped at the news; Carlisle Wilson pursed his lips in a tight line. Cochran hoped that would satisfy them. He didn’t want to reveal any more details about how his daughter had died.

  “Did Winston get any forensic evidence?” asked the governor, his voice firm and commanding.

  “They found dirt under her nails and threads from a type of denim sold at Walmart.”

  “And that’s all?” the old man thundered. “No fingerprints? No DNA? None of that shit they come up with on TV?”

  Cochran shook his head. “No. But neither did your daughter have any defensive wounds, nor was there evidence of sexual assault.” Maybe, he hoped, that would give the old man some comfort.

  Wilson blinked, distinctly un-comforted. “So you’re expecting me to believe that Lisa just lay down under a pine tree and let somebody choke her to death? What kind of moron are you?”

  “Sir, this case is barely twenty-four hours old. I’m telling you exactly what we know at this point.”

  “Where are all those people she went camping with?”

  “The interns are just now being released from jail. All freely gave detailed statements about this case. Unfortunately, none remember seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary.”

  “And you believe them?” the former governor thundered.

  “I neither believe nor disbelieve while I’m still gathering evidence,” Cochran said, feeling like an idiot. He realized now how Wilson had gotten all his pet bills through the legislature—he’d simply browbeaten his opponents into submission. “Do you have any political enemies, sir?”

  “Of course I do. You don’t spend eight years in Raleigh throwing tea parties.”

  “Could you give me a list—of any who might bear this kind of animosity toward you?”

  The old man stared at his cane, shook his head. “None of ’em would do this. None of ’em hate me this hard.”

  A silence fell in the room. Carlisle Wilson’s wife attempted to rub his shoulders, but the old man brushed her away. “Sweet little Pisgah,” he whispered, all the fury seeming to drain out of him. “I can’t believe this happened here.”

  “It’s a terrible tragedy, sir. I’m deeply, deeply sorry.” Cochran was sorry. The governor had no idea how much he regretted this.

  The old man sat there, resting his hands on his cane, a single tear rolling from his left eye down to the furrow that bracketed that side of his mouth. Its saltiness must have startled him, because suddenly he snapped out of whatever fugue had gripped him. He straightened his shoulders and looked up at Cochran. “I want to see the pictures.”

  “Excuse me?” Cochran’s heart began to beat faster. Please dear Christ, he prayed. Not the pictures.

  “You take pictures of bodies. I want to see Lisa’s.”

  “Sir, it’s not our policy to allow that. Those pictures are police property and—”

  Wilson slammed his cane down on the floor. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your policy! I want to see those pictures.”

  “Sir, it would be better if you didn’t.”

  Suddenly the old man leapt to his feet, put both hands on the opposite corners of Cochran’s desk. “Son, I was running this state when you were in diapers. Do not try to tell me what I should or should not see. Get me the pictures.”

  Cochran said, “Sir, wouldn’t you rather remember her as she was rather tha—”

  “Get me the goddamn pictures!” the governor screamed, spit flying into Cochran’s face.

  Cochran reached for his bottom drawer, suddenly fed up with the man’s bullying. He wanted to see the pictures, fine. Cochran only hoped the sight of them wouldn’t lay the old bastard out with a coronary in the middle of his office.

  He pulled out the folder, but warned Carlisle Wilson once more. “Sir, these are truly nothing any parent—”

  Wilson gave a snort of disgust as he ripped the pictures from Cochran’s hand. He sat back down and opened the folder. The photo that Cochran had been studying while talking to Merkel was on the top of the pile. It was the worst of the lot—the one that showed in horrific detail what acts evil could visit upon flesh and bone.

  For a moment, Carlisle Wilson just sat there staring at the photo, still as a statue. Then his old jaw dropped open and he made a sound unlike any Cochran had ever heard.

  “Noooo!” he screamed, howling, it seemed, all the rage and grief and pain of every parent who’d ever lost a child. “Noooooo!”

  Cochran lowered his eyes, not wanting to witness the old man’s agony. He heard the woman clucking and shushing, but Carlisle Wilson suddenly grew deathly quiet. Cochran lifted his gaze to find the old man staring directly at him, snot running from his nose, tears from his eyes.

  “Let me tell you something, you candy-ass college boy. I’m going to set up camp here in Hartsville and keep your feet to the fire until you find who did this to my little girl. I’ll have this story on every front page in the state and believe me, everybody’s going to be talking about Sheriff Gerald Cochran!”

  “That’s your prerogative, sir,” said Cochran.

  “Damn straight it is! Until you get Lisa’s killer behind bars, you’re going to have reporters crawling up your nose and out your ass.” The old man struggled to his feet and wagged a gnarled finger at him. “I built this little pissant county up, son. And believe me, I can take it down just as fast. You want your tourists to keep coming, your rich Yankee retirees to keep planting their know-it-all asses up here, then you’d better find out what the fuck happened to my little girl!”

  Ten

  It was just past dawn when Mary Crow finally pulled back into her own driveway. Night had morphed into a colorless light that turned green trees gray, red roses black. She’d hoped to find Jonathan still drinking coffee before his trout fishing gig, but both he and his truck were gone.

  “Where’s Daddy?” asked Lily, who’d slept in the backseat all the way home.

  “He’s taking some clients fishing,” said Mary.

  Lily yawned. “Why do they always go so early?”

  “Because that’s when the fish bite.” Mary opened the kitchen door. “Go on to bed. I’ll take you to camp a little late today.”

  Mumbling something that sounded vaguely like “okay,” Lily trudged up the stairs, leaving Mary alone in the kitchen. She looked around the room. Jonathan had, apparently, just left. The coffee pot was half-full, the iron skillet warm to her touch.

  “We us
ed to get up together,” she said aloud, her voice ringing in the empty room. Unless she was knee-deep in some case, she would wake up with him, fix breakfast while he loaded his gear. They would eat, and then he would kiss her good-bye. She’d always loved those mornings—just the two of them sitting in a quiet house, drinking coffee at first light.

  “See you later,” he would say, his arms strong around her. “Save me a seat.”

  They’d used that old code phrase for the past twenty years—ever since they’d been sixteen, and in high school. He had not uttered it once since he’d returned from Oklahoma.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, again wondering what had hijacked their lives into this alien terrain. A younger woman? A prettier woman? A woman who would totally devote herself to him and Lily? She didn’t think so—he’d never been that self-centered a man. But something or someone had ridden back from Oklahoma with him, and they weren’t letting him go.

  “You can end this with six words,” she reminded herself for the umpteenth time. Jonathan, have you found someone new? But those six words scared her—who knew what other words they might evoke? Sometimes she wanted to laugh at the irony of it. For years she’d questioned defendants mercilessly, dogged in pursuit of an answer. Now, every time she thought of uttering that simple six-word question, she felt sick to her stomach. The question itself wasn’t so bad—it was the answer that terrified her.

  “You need to end this,” she told herself, her eyelids drooping despite the coffee. “Ask him tonight, after Lily goes to bed. Whatever he says will be better than not knowing.” She put her head down on the table and closed her eyes, imagining all the ways the conversation might go. I’m so sorry, but I’ve found someone new … I’m so sorry, but I’m just not attracted to you anymore … I’m so sorry, but I’ve decided to raise Lily by myself. She was thinking of how she might respond to that when suddenly the telephone broke the silence of the kitchen.

  “Hello?” She grabbed the receiver, hoping it was Jonathan.

  “Ms. Crow?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Leonora Blackman, from Carmichael, California. I got your number from my cousin James Blackman, who lives in Sylva?”

  Mary frowned. Why would a woman in California be calling her at six o’clock in the morning? “How can I help you?”

  “I’ve never made a call like this, so I’m not really sure what to say, except that my son Tony just called me, and he’s in jail! One of his friends was murdered last night and the sheriff thinks Tony did it. I’m just desperate to get some help for him, and James says you’re the best lawyer in town. Won’t you please take his case?” The woman’s voice dissolved in tears.

  Mary straightened in her chair and peered at the clock over the stove. 9:47. She blinked, unbelieving, wondering how she’d lost almost three hours of time. Then she saw the cup of cold coffee in front of her, her car keys tossed on the table. When she’d put her head down to think about Jonathan, she must have fallen asleep.

  “Ma’am, where is your son in jail?” she asked the woman.

  “Right there in Hartsville! They think he killed the governor’s daughter, but he swears it was a ghost!”

  Mary realized she was going to need a cup of hot coffee to deal with this. “I’m not in my office right now, Mrs. Blackman, but if you’ll give me your name and number, I’ll call you back as soon as I get downtown.”

  “You won’t take any of the others, will you? Remember, I called first!”

  Mary wrote down the woman’s number, then reheated her coffee in the microwave. As she sat back down to make sense of everything, she turned the TV to the Asheville station. After five minutes of commercials, a mini-news break started. The lead story was that early yesterday morning, former governor Jackson Carlisle Wilson’s daughter, Lisa, had been found strangled to death.

  “We are questioning several persons of interest in this case,” said Jerry Cochran, his bleary-eyed face suddenly filling the screen.

  That’s why he didn’t show up at the dedication yesterday, thought Mary, remembering the lone empty chair on the stage. Her incredulity grew as the news continued.

  “Lisa Wilson had been appointed to one of the coveted internships at the Pisgah Raptor Rescue Center,” said a pretty blonde reporter. “She was specializing in raptor rehabilitation with Dr. Nicholas Stratton.”

  “Nick Stratton?” Mary almost choked on her coffee. “Dr. Lovebird?”

  She watched, unbelieving, as a video of the sports park ceremony came on, showing Stratton flying Sequoia, the big bald eagle.

  After that, the news skipped on to happier topics—new parking meters in downtown Asheville, Henderson County’s burgeoning apple crop. Mary turned off the TV, stunned. Not six hours ago Stratton treated a wounded owl in a darkened kitchen. Now they were showing him on television, in connection with a murder.

  “No wonder he acted odd last night,” she said, remembering his strange laughter at her business card. At the time she’d chalked it up to fatigue, to his being awakened in the middle of the night with a bird emergency. But it wasn’t that at all, she realized as she put a slice of bread in the toaster. One of his students had just been murdered. The guy was probably in shock.

  “At least he appreciated the irony,” she said. “The night after his intern gets bumped off, a lawyer shows up at his front door, hurt owl in hand.”

  She’d considered just taking the day off but then decided she’d better go into the office. Her partner, Sam Ravenel, was settling an estate in Charleston and she’d long ago learned that it was good for one of them to be on duty when something big broke in town. After dragging a cranky Lily to Camp Wadulisi, Mary arrived at her office. The Wilson murder story had grown like a crop of kudzu, and the town was now jammed with network TV vans uplinking to NBC, ABC, and a couple of BC’s she didn’t even recognize. Dodging three news crews clustered around the entrance of Sadie’s coffee shop, she walked up the stairs to Ravenel & Crow. She headed immediately to her desk, where her answering machine blinked with fifty-six new messages.

  “Wow,” Mary whispered. Usually she got fifty-six messages a week rather than in a single morning. Sitting down at her desk, she punched the retrieve button and listened as voice after agitated voice filled the room. All were parents of the surviving interns, all were near panic, all were totally convinced of their child’s innocence, and all wanted her to represent their offspring as soon as possible.

  As Mary listened to their weepy desperation, she sat back in her chair and stared at the list of prospective clients. All of them sounded like intelligent, caring parents who never dreamed that the children they’d sent to learn about raptors would wind up as suspects in a murder investigation. She gave a wistful sigh. As much as she longed to call one of them and say she’d be happy to represent their child, she knew she could not do it. Long ago she’d promised Jonathan no murder cases. Right now they were travelling a bumpy enough road on their own. Defending a homicide charge might push them beyond the point of no return.

  She’d just picked up the phone to call Mrs. Blackman in California, when suddenly she heard a loud speaker start blaring from the courthouse steps. Intrigued, she left her desk and went into the conference room, the one room that had a spectacular view of Main Street. The courthouse, the hotel, the chamber of commerce—the core of Hartsville spread out before the tall Palladian windows.

  She walked over to a window and looked out. A tall man with a shock of white hair stood behind a makeshift podium, facing at least fifty reporters and three times as many citizens.

  “I’ll be damned!” she whispered aloud. “That’s Carlisle Wilson.”

  Wilson thumped the end of the mike a couple of times, then started to speak. “I want to thank everyone for coming and being so supportive of an old guy like me.” He began humbly, with an aw-shucks attitude.

  “I don’t know ho
w many of you know this, but yesterday, my little girl Lisa was murdered. Right here in Pisgah County. I got the call last night in Wilmington.”

  His voice began to wobble. He stepped back from the microphone and wiped his eyes with a white handkerchief. A moment later, he spoke again.

  “I guess I still can’t believe something like this would happen in Pisgah County,” he said, his tone choked. “I’ve always known it to be a county of good people, law-abiding citizens, the sons and daughters of pioneers who’ve led quiet, decent lives for generations. You’ve helped me out on election day many times in the past and I’m hoping that today, you’ll find it in your hearts to help me out once more.

  “Now you’ve got a good man as sheriff. Jerry Cochran’s young and smart and his police department is working on this full-time. He’s called in the SBI and the FBI and a bunch of folks in Washington. But you know, sometimes local folk do the best police work. Remember that Eric Rudolph? Them fancy federal guys spent years looking for him and came up empty every time. A mountain boy from Murphy found him, digging food out of a trash bin.”

  The crowd applauded, justifiably proud of one of their own. Mary smiled. The old politician really knew what buttons to push.

  “Anyway—I’m convinced that somebody in this county knows something about what happened to my little girl. That’s why I’m going to stay right here in Hartsville until I find out. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is—today I’m offering a reward to anyone who has information about Lisa’s murder.”

  A low murmur went through the crowd. “No!” Mary whispered, fighting an urge to run down there and clamp a hand over the old man’s mouth. She knew that a reward would muddle the case beyond all hope.

  “How much of a reward?” someone called eagerly.

  The governor’s eyes blazed with a dark fire that promised to char anybody who dared stand in his way. “I’m offering one million dollars for any information that will bring my daughter’s killer to justice.”