by Ashley Smith
At some point they moved me into a police car. I was so glad not to be out in the open anymore. Then I thought: “Aunt Kim.” I took out my phone and dialed her number. She answered. “I’m in the back of a police car,” I said quickly. “Brian Nichols was at my house all night.” “What?” “Yeah, he was in my house.” I started crying. Tears were coming down my face. And then she was gone. An officer had taken the phone out of my hand.
“Ma’am, we need to talk to you right now.”
Now I was sitting in the back of another police car, trying to answer questions about the night and remember what had happened. Ashley, just think. Think so you can tell them what they need right here.
Suddenly, as I was talking, an officer said something and turned his head. I looked out the window to my right, trying to see what he was talking about. And right there—right there—was Brian Nichols. Walking down the hill from my building. With his hands behind his back. He’s not shooting. He’s just walking. What’s happening? He had my Willie McGee’s tee shirt tucked into those khakis that were too short. He wasn’t wearing any shoes—just the white socks he had gotten out of my drawer. And he was holding his head up as a blond FBI woman in a navy sweatshirt, with some more guys behind her, led him by the arm.
My mind was racing. “It’s over. Is it over? Is he done? I can’t believe it. No one’s shooting. Oh, God, just thank you—no one got hurt. He’s still alive. He made it. He’s going now—going to pay for what he did. He didn’t lose it. He didn’t get those guns. I mean, he completely gave himself up like he said he would.”
Then I thought, “What’s he feeling right now? God, please forgive him for what he’s done. Help him right here. I mean, he listened to me. He listened.” God, you really listened.
27
walk-through
A couple of days later, I pulled up to my apartment with a group of two lawyers and two police officers—we were doing a walk-through. The apartment had already been searched and cleaned out once by the FBI. But now I was going back with the Gwinnett County Police just to look around and point things out. And I needed some clothes. My mom was going to pack up my stuff and get it moved out in a week or so. She had come to get me at the apartment complex the day Brian surrendered. The fight we had been in before all of this started was over, and she was taking care of me and helping with all of my business. I was moving out after living in this place for just a few days—I could never stay here again—and this was my last trip inside.
The lawyer who was driving me pulled his truck into one of the parking spaces right in front of my door, and already I was having a strange, kind of eerie feeling. It was like the night was happening all over again: I was getting out of the car. I was about to make a run for my front door. Brian was in the truck behind me. Then there was that click. I didn’t know how long I could stay inside with these guys right now.
We walked up to the door, and they let me in. I was trying to be matter-of-fact about being here, but just seeing that closet door in front of me and imagining being backed up against it freaked me out. “Please don’t kill me!” I was saying to Brian Nichols. “Please don’t hurt me!”
“Look,” I said to the lawyers, pointing as we stepped into the living room. “The mirror. He hung my mirror.”
I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it was off center, but he hung it. The hammer and the Tupperware container of nails—that was Mack’s container; he kept nails and tacks in these different ones—were sitting out on the coffee table. And so was the level belonging to the agent Brian Nichols had killed.
Right then one of the police went over to the wall and took my mirror down. “Wait,” I said. “That’s like a four-hundred-dollar mirror—you can’t take my mirror.” But they took it. Oh well. Whatever.
The curtain rod with those tan and cream panels was lying there where I had left it on Paige’s toy box. I guess he wasn’t really up for hanging that. And on the side of the coffee table closest to the door was my empty juice glass and, next to it, my Bible and my book. Did he ever look at those? I couldn’t tell if they had been moved.
We walked into the bathroom now. The shower curtain was still pulled back a little. I looked in the bathtub, and I saw the FBI had taken my washcloth from off the shampoo rack hanging on the showerhead—not Brian’s. They had left his. I just kept thinking about blood, and the people he had killed, and just, was there blood on that washcloth in there? I looked away.
The picture of Paige and me at the wedding was still there on the counter next to the sink where I had left it after washing my face that morning. For a minute I could remember sitting on that vanity stool and holding the picture and just crying as I talked to Brian. “I’m not going to make it out of here,” I was thinking. “I’m going to die and never see her again. What’s she going to feel like? She won’t have a mommy or a daddy. She’ll just be sad forever.”
But I did make it. You got me out of here, God. I still remembered how it felt to be with my little girl that first night back in Augusta after everything was over. Paige and I were sitting on Aunt Kim’s sofa with the TV on. I was almost too tired to breathe, and Paige was sitting right up against me. I could barely hold my eyes open, so I just stretched out on the couch and put my head in Paige’s lap. She played with my hair and let me lie there. And my heart just about broke.
Standing in the bathroom now, I could remember thinking to myself at some point that morning, after I made it out of the apartment, “God, what did I do to make you save me?” I was like, “I can’t believe I really made it.” When Brian Nichols first came through that door that night, I thought my life was done. I just knew God was about to take me home. He was taking me home because of my mistakes. That’s what I thought. I had made too many mistakes to count, and God was through playing. It was just over.
And then to walk out the door that morning? I knew I might have been the only person Brian Nichols had come into contact with and not killed. He had shot those people at the courthouse, and the agent. He had admitted to me right here in this apartment that he had killed that man. Brian Nichols could have done whatever he wanted to me. But he didn’t hurt me. He hardly touched me. I mean, he taped me up. He carried me into this bathroom right here. I put a Band-Aid on his finger at the kitchen sink. But that was about all there was for contact.
And yet, at the beginning he was pointing that gun in my face and all I could think was, “He’s going to pull that trigger. He’s crazy, and he’s about to lose it and pull that trigger. God’s taking me home.” Just what did I do, God—to make you save me?
I glanced over at the bathroom counter again and saw that the last line of ice was gone now. Maybe the FBI got it—I hadn’t let law enforcement know about it yet. Maybe Brian did something with it before he surrendered. I didn’t know. I was just glad I could stand here with these people and know that I didn’t do it. I didn’t do those drugs. And God was proud of me for that. Even right now I could feel him smiling down on me and saying, “Good job, Ashley.”
We were standing in the bedroom now. That pile of tape and the curtain panel and the extension cord were all gone. Those guns. For some reason, I got down on the floor at the end of the bed and lifted up the skirt. I didn’t know why. I mean, I knew those guns weren’t going to be there. Of course the guns were gone. But I just wanted to look. I was thinking back to that morning: “Is he done—is it over? Are they under here because he’s done with this, God?” Now I knew the answer was yes. They were under the bed because he was done.
Just as I was getting up, I saw something on the floor by the nightstand that was nearest my closet. I stepped over there and bent down. It was the small key chain tin I had kept the ice in. How did it get over here? I tried to think back. I thought I’d left it with the zipper pouch on the bathroom counter after laying out those lines for Brian. But maybe not.
I could still remember what I was thinking after Brian untied me, and I went for that pink zipper pouch under the fold of my comforter. I stood
there at the bed and for the first time ever, I thought to myself, “I would rather die because I didn’t do those drugs than die doing them.” And then there was what I told Brian in the bathroom before he snorted that first line up his nose. I said, “This is God’s way of telling me, ‘Look, Ashley, stop now. I’m giving you one more chance. You better stop right now, little girl, or I’m bringing you home. It’s your choice.’ ” It was my choice.
Well, it seemed I had to be faced with death to really take a stand for God and say, “This is who I am. I’m choosing God now. I’m through with that other way.” I mean, I had been faced with death before—when I got into my car accident, I could’ve died. And there were those times when I thought, “Whoa, I’ve done way too many drugs—Lord, please don’t take me home yet.” But I’d never had death staring me in the eyes like this. Never a gun in my face. And I guessed that was what it took. God finally just had to put his foot down: “I’m here, Ashley. You can stop. You can live for me.”
Looking at that tin on the floor now, I thought, “What if it’s still got dope in it?” I picked it up right then and stuck it in my pocketbook. I would let the authorities know about the ice soon. I would let them know about it soon.
Walking into the kitchen, I saw Brian’s juice glass sitting on the bar near my picture frames. I could still imagine him bending over those tools to look at the photographs. That was when I was standing at the sink washing the breakfast dishes, and I was thinking, “Maybe he just wants some normalcy in his life.”
“Let me show you who those people are,” I had said to him. And at the time I was remembering what he had said to me at breakfast: “Maybe God led me to you because of the families—to let me know how they felt because you’ve gone through it yourself.”
Looking around the kitchen now, I saw that the breakfast dishes I had washed that morning were still sitting in the drying rack next to the sink. And across the room on the counter by the microwave was the raspberry soda bottle. I could just see Brian coming into that bathroom with that thing and pointing it at me: “Want something to drink?” I was sitting cross-legged in the tub. “Make yourself at home, dude,” I was thinking.
Suddenly one of the lawyers turned to me. “You ready?” he asked. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah,” I said. Yes, I was ready to go. I was starting to feel tired. And kind of freaked out from all of the flashbacks. I needed to leave this place now. Leave it for good.
Walking back around the bar, I thought back for a minute over the whole night—the whole seven hours with Brian Nichols. And what stood out right then as I was adjusting my bag of clothes on my shoulder and getting ready to leave it all behind was just—I don’t know—freedom. Somehow, I felt free when I was in here that night. Free to be myself. I really found myself in this apartment. I stood up for God and said, “I’m living for you. I don’t care if it’s popular. It’s all about you, God.”
And maybe taking a stand like that, making that choice, just set me free. I mean, I was through with the drugs for good—and this time it was solid; I felt that in my heart. I was free to have another chance at life. God gave me that chance. I sure didn’t deserve it—I’d blown so many others. He gave me my family back; he let me live so I would have another chance to love them right and quit lying to them. He gave me another chance to be Paige’s mom. I was amazed, totally amazed by it all. God just had mercy on me.
Really, I didn’t even know how I had done what I did—how I got through the night and talked to Brian Nichols so he could see what he needed to do. I only knew that God did it. God was helping me. He gave me things to say and showed me how to open up my life. He worked on Brian so that he could hear what I was telling him. He gave me strength, faith, hope, and love. It was just God—helping me and doing what needed to be done.
“Here take this.” I was remembering what Brian said to me as I was trying to get out the door that morning. He was standing near the bar, trying to hand me that forty bucks. He must’ve known then what he was going to do. I didn’t trust him. I thought he might start running. I didn’t know why those guns were in there under the bed. But he knew. He really must’ve known he was done. Now he was paying, and I’d given that forty bucks to the authorities and it was over. I hoped Brian knew he had done the right thing. And that his heavenly Father was pleased with the choice he made to give himself up, to surrender.
“Wait,” I said now, as the men were walking out the front door.
I went to the coffee table and got my Bible and my Purpose Driven Life. I wasn’t leaving those—no way. I still had another seven or eight days left to do in my book. And I wasn’t missing. I wanted to hear every word God was going to say to me now. Every single word. It was like I could just feel his pleasure right then—the way my book said. I could still feel him smiling on me. It was an amazing feeling. Somehow I’d made him proud. And all I cared about as I turned around to leave, all I could say was, just, “God, what can I do to make you smile again?”
epilogue
In the months since being held hostage by Brian Nichols, a great deal in my life has changed. Some days I wake up and think everything has changed. My life is by no means perfect, but it is different. In many ways—the most important ways—it finally seems to be on the right track; and for that I am grateful.
Probably the most obvious difference in my life is the publicity that has followed the events of March 12. Within a day of Brian Nichols’s surrender, people found ways to contact me with media requests, and later with book offers and movie offers. I never expected the kind of attention I received; I just did what I could to stay alive that night in my apartment, hoping I would get to see my daughter again. Until then, I was a struggling single mom trying to battle drug addiction, regain custody of my child, and put my life back together. I didn’t feel prepared for publicity when it came. But I didn’t feel prepared for Brian Nichols either, and if God got me through that experience, then he can give me what I need now. I know that sharing my story is important, and my sincere desire is to bring hope to others who need it.
Along with the publicity have come so many gracious demonstrations of support. I’ve received mail from people all over the world—some letters were addressed simply to “Ashley Smith, Bridgewater Apartments.” I’ve tried to answer many of these letters to show my thankfulness, and I donated the checks I received to my church in Augusta, The Church at Greenbrier. To those people who have prayed for me, though I may never know you by name, I want to thank you from my heart. God is moving in my life, bringing healing and change; and I know he is moving in response to prayer. I owe you a debt of gratitude.
Another big change in my life is the financial blessing that has resulted from my ordeal. On March 24, in a ceremony at the Georgia capitol, I received reward money from Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and other officials and was given a chance for a new start. For the first time ever, I can take care of my daughter’s material needs, something I never believed I would be able to do without my husband. My twelve-year-old brother, Christian—this year’s state gymnastics champion for floor—did a back flip in the governor’s office the day I received the reward. He expressed just how I felt inside: grateful, humbled, and blown away by the appreciation of others and the goodness of God to me.
I have tried to be very careful with the money given to me and with the money I have received for writing this book. I’ve donated some to my church and taken steps to stabilize my finances after years of struggling. I bought a reliable car to replace the old Pontiac Bonneville I was driving when Brian Nichols took me hostage. I also put money toward something very important to Paige.
One day Paige asked me, “Mommy, where are yours and daddy’s wedding rings?” I was surprised by the question, and I really didn’t want to answer her. The truth was, I had pawned those rings—for less than a hundred dollars—about a year after Mack died. I pawned them to get money for drugs, if I remember correctly. And I pawned them without even caring; that was my state
of mind at the time. I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t care about anything.
When my daughter asked about the rings, I couldn’t believe I had let go of something so precious to her without even thinking of her feelings. And even though I had pawned those rings three years ago, I decided I would go back by the pawnshop and just look. “Who knows?” I thought. I didn’t really expect anything, but I was curious. It couldn’t hurt to look.
So I went. I walked in the shop’s front door and went straight to the glass jewelry case. I couldn’t believe it. There they were—the rings Mack and I had bought together—almost like they were sitting there waiting on me. I bought those rings back and took them home. And I set them aside for my little girl.
One of the most significant developments in my life since leaving my Duluth apartment March 12 came with a phone call I got one evening in late June. A law enforcement official was on the line, and he told me that two arrests had been made in the stabbing death of my husband. New testimony had been given, I learned, and a grand jury had indicted two men for Mack’s murder.
This news was huge for me—just shocking. I don’t know what role publicity from the Brian Nichols crisis played in helping the investigation, but the timing made it hard to believe there was no connection. More than anything, getting that phone call brought an overwhelming sense of relief. After nearly four years of my husband’s death being unsolved, learning about the arrests has provided some of the closure I’ve desperately needed. At the very least, the arrests have helped me begin the process of closure. Now I know that in time our memory of Mack will become more peaceful. Now I can tell my daughter that progress has been made in the case of her daddy’s death and that justice will be served.
