Walking Woman (Gratis Book 2)

by Jackson, Jay

  36.

  Mister Brother was pretty much the only person taking care of Baby Brother by now. Mom and Dad were getting more and more distant. They often went hours without saying a word. Sister, for her part, rarely left her room. Between listening to Top 40 radio and reading teen magazines, she couldn’t be bothered.

  To his surprise, Mister Brother didn’t really mind the recent apathy of the others. Baby Brother demanded all of his attention. Caring for a small child was a time-intensive enterprise.

  At night, Baby Brother slept on the race car bed, with Mister Brother on a pallet beside him. Baby Brother was usually looking at him, cooing softly, when he awoke. The older brother looked back, getting lost in the child’s wide, new eyes.

  After getting up came the feeding and changing, and sometimes bathing. The two would then go sit on the back patio. Due to the large fence going all the way around the property, they would be alone except for the occasional deer or bird. Baby Brother would crawl out to the soft grass of the lawn and, once there, roll around. Mister Brother made sure the backyard was baby friendly. No weeds grew between any two blades of grass. The lawn was a fine carpet.

  Before the day got too hot, he’d put the child in a baby car seat strapped to the front seat of his golf cart. Mr. Brother then drove the cart onto the paths winding behind the house, still cloaked in the privacy of the fences that stretched all around. The older brother named all the trees and other plants for his little brother. He made sure to make the sound of each animal they passed.

  “See that black bird? That’s a crow. It makes a caw-caw sound. Can you say caw?” The small child just looked at Mister Brother, serene but quiet. This didn’t deter him. If anyone had been able to follow them, they would have heard Mister Brother randomly call out hoot, hoot or any number of other bird calls. His books all agreed that talking to a child accelerated his or her development.

  The nature lesson over, the two would go back to the house and eat a late lunch. Mister Brother was still refining Baby Brother’s meals. The child ate them, perfect or not. While the rest of the family stayed to themselves, the two brothers dined in Baby Brother’s room. There, the little boy threw his mac and cheese and goldfish all over. Mister Brother loved it. After lunch they napped, the child nestling in the race car bed and tucked under his Bill Elliott blanket. Usually Mister Brother slept in the chair beside the bed, but sometimes he slept with the child, curling himself around the blanket and engulfing Baby Brother. Some days, they slept that way for hours.

  As the days wore on to almost a week, Mister Brother was finding that he enjoyed Baby Brother much more than he enjoyed the others. The child smiled every time he gazed in his direction. The others gave him little more than empty stares, except Mom. She smiled at him every day, telling him that she loved him. Mister Brother, though, couldn’t help but to compare the two smiles. Only one of them warmed his heart, making it full.

  I really love this child.

  The thought startled him the first time it bubbled up. He loved all of his family, of course. That was the reason he got them all together again. He thought that kind of love was enough, until he reclaimed his little brother. He wasn’t prepared for the baby’s smile. A curl of his small lips, the way his eyes brightened when he was happy, and Mister Brother’s concept of love changed completely. Maybe what he felt for the rest of the family wasn’t love at all, but only a weak impersonation.

  The differences in that love nagged at Mister Brother. For now, though, he enjoyed this gift of a child. He had waited so long to feel again, to really know another person. Nothing, whether it was the outside world—or even the world he created inside his new home—would stop him.

  37.

  Amy loved her new title, Assistant District Attorney, and the badge that came with the job. It all felt very official, very grown up. She had recently worked her way out of the complaint room at the DA’s office, which was the awful duty of every newly hired assistant, and was assigned to the Crimes Against Women and Children division. When she first got there she felt outclassed by everyone. Being in private practice for a couple of years in Gratis was nice, but nothing compared to working in a big-city DA’s office. It was a big deal to have one murder a year in Gratis. In Atlanta, they had at least one a day, usually more if the weather was good. She soon learned to be glad for rainy days, because crime always went down. Even bad guys hated getting wet.

  Before she knew it, Amy was knee deep in every type of crime that victimized women and children in Atlanta: sex crimes, assaults, murders. It didn’t matter. Amy loved going after it all. Looking into the darkest corners of her new city interested her, and the darker the better.

  Her favorite part, easily, was going out with her investigators to crime scenes. Walking the scene was like walking through a movie on pause. She imagined she saw the crime itself, as it took place. Every detail, from the dirt on the walls to the dank smell of the dirtiest trap house, helped her understand a case. The details showed you the real nature of the people involved, gave insight into their motivation. In Atlanta, the motivation for crime was usually a mix of money and desperation. Whether people were selling drugs or hurting someone, money and desperation poked their heads up when it came to why. When people had nothing, like a lot of folks in Atlanta, they would do anything to have something. Between morality and hunger, hunger almost always won.

  As much as she enjoyed her new job and her new city, she was not quite happy. Meeting new friends at work was fun, as was experiencing the variety of advances made by some of those new friends. Some, like the one by another new hire, Tommy Pennick, were classic. Their first day there, he got directly to the point.

  “Look, we could talk and gradually become friends, and then go out one night and get drunk at Fado’s. Then we could cab it back to my place, I would offer you the couch, and then finally we’d hook up and have loads of shameful and drunken sex. That would take at least a month though, and I thought, instead of waiting, we’d go ahead and do that tonight. What about it?” He laughed, trying to sound confident of his wit, but failing.

  Amy politely declined, saying, “That’s nice of you, and if I get incredibly desperate, like Lifetime movie desperate, I’ll let you know.”

  They both had a laugh at that. Both also knew that Tommy’s fantasy hook up would never happen.

  There were others, from a variety of police, attorneys, and others in the courthouse, who were far more subtle. They usually started with a “let me know if I can help you with anything” and ended with a “we can even have lunch sometime and go over any questions you have—I’m glad to help.” Amy was ready for this approach as well. One of her sorority sisters called it the “Old Trojan Horse method.”

  “They’ll sneak up on you, all nice, and then once they get you alone, bam! They pull out a Trojan and try to ride you like a horse! Men are sneaky bastards.”

  So far, she had always said thank you, and that she would call if she needed any help. To her disappointment, she wasn’t tempted to take any of them up on their advances, well-conceived or not.

  Her problem was Delroy. Being with him the last few months, before she left, was great. He was a kind, funny, good person. Working with him, she even found herself becoming a better attorney. She wanted to surprise him by getting the new job in Atlanta. In her mind it would only be for a couple of years, enough time to get a slew of trial experience under her belt and then come home. They would only be two hours apart, and he could come to Atlanta on the weekends and help her explore the city. The whole idea felt romantic.

  Then, one night at her little house outside of Gratis, she told him. He looked odd at first, as if he was going to get sick. She tried to explain why she was taking the job. She believed it added to what they already had. Delroy wouldn’t listen.

  At first he tried to talk her out of it, telling her that everything she could want was already there. He told her how Atlanta wouldn’t be what she hoped, how it chewed people up. Finally, when it became a
pparent that Amy’s mind was set, Delroy left without saying good-bye. It was an old trick of his, fighting by not being there at all.

  This angered Amy, but at the time she decided to give him a pass. He was only angry because he didn’t want her to leave. Later that night, almost asleep, her phone rang. It was him.

  “I’m glad you called,” she said.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Delroy, can you hear me?”

  After a moment, Delroy replied.

  “Yes, I can hear you.” He slurred his words. Amy knew he was drunk.

  “Yes I can hear you, Amy. Let’s just say I heard you today . . . let’s just say I knew it.”

  “Delroy, what does that mean? You knew what?”

  Another moment of silence, then “I knew you would leave. You are just like my ex-wife. Enjoy Atlanta.”

  Then Delroy hung up.

  Amy was willing to let Delroy’s running away slide, but not the comparison to his ex-wife. The woman did, after all, sleep with Delroy’s boss when he was in Atlanta. It was the lowest blow he could think to give Amy. Maybe moving to Atlanta was a better idea than she knew.

  Still, all these weeks later, she missed him. Some mornings, when she awoke, she moved her hand to his side of the bed, thinking he was there. He was a jerk at times, but that pretty much came with his gender. Working in Atlanta, she was starting to see how much bad was actually in the world. The bad ran deep. She wanted someone good.

  Maybe that good person was Delroy.

  On top of missing him, she was worried about the Peters sisters, too. She got to know Kero while in Gratis, which meant knowing his family. Claudia was different, but to Amy that made her special. She believed Claudia would never hurt a child.

  The night before, she spoke with Delroy for almost an hour. He recounted to her how Claudia said she watched and helped people. She collected things, children’s things, to help her remember those she helped. Delroy also asked Claudia, on a second visit, what she meant by “helping” others. Claudia kept saying that was her business. He asked Amy what she thought about Claudia’s watching. Amy didn’t have a clue.

  Now, thinking about her conversation, she kept running over why Claudia would watch. Why would she push a toy baby carriage filled with children’s items around the county? What did Claudia do to help?

  Those questions kept her up late that night. Those, and thoughts of Delroy. When she slept the two mingled in her dreams, dancing in scenes she forgot as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning.

  She did know, however, a call she needed to make. Her mind graciously figured that out for her as she slept. Getting anything from the call would be a long shot, but that was okay.

  A long shot is better than nothing. Nothing just sucks.

  About to make the call, she looked at her bed. One side was still neatly made up. Too neatly, she thought, and dialed the phone.

  38.

  Monday, a week after she was arrested, Claudia had a bond hearing on her charges. These hearings are conducted by the court to determine whether a person gets out of jail pending resolution of his or her case. Both sides present evidence for the court to consider. The court then decides whether to set a bond, and for how much. A dollar value is put on the bond to ensure the presence of the defendant at trial. A Defendant could decide to skip out and take a chance on running away to Bolivia. The problem was that the person on their bond, whether secured by money or property, would lose that money or an equal amount of property, in such an event. No one wanted their parents to lose the family home, or to be the target of bounty hunters. Most folks came to court once they were released.

  Some crimes, however, almost never got a bond. These crimes, like murder or some sexual offenses, carried such long sentences that the temptation to run away to Brazil was just too great. Claudia was charged with kidnapping, which in this case was nearly as serious as anything else she could be charged with. If she was guilty, the likely result of her crime was that Teddy was dead, or dying from neglect. That, and all that the children’s items found in her carriage implied, made this case bad. Delroy would just about rather handle a case with a dead body already in the morgue. Just about.

  Still, he was determined to put up the best evidence he could for his client. He found seven character witnesses, from Claudia’s preacher to Kero, lined up to testify about her gentle soul. Delroy also had the advantage of already having every law enforcement report in this case, courtesy of Tommy.

  The sheriff’s office already pulled the trash compactor and was sifting through its contents. Some of Teddy’s other clothes were found. Tommy hoped the remaining contents of the compactor would tell them whether Claudia, or someone else, put Teddy’s clothes in there. The problem was that half the county stopped by that compactor every few days. The trash from hundreds of donors was hopelessly intermingled. The sifting would take weeks, even months. By then, Teddy could be long gone.

  Delroy found two people who would swear they saw Claudia at least five miles away from the kidnapping. Unfortunately, their memories of exactly when they saw her were a bit hazy. One of those witnesses was Alec Watkins, known around the county as Crazy A. Since being hit by a farm truck when he was ten, Crazy A was never the same. He walked the county roads, like Claudia, but also had a record of going on to random farms when the mood hit him. That mood seemed to strike whenever he went by the right cattle herd. Crazy A already stood convicted of having twice attempting bovine violation. The second time an offended Angus had kicked him, breaking his leg. He laid in the mud until the farmer’s son came out to feed the herd. There he found Crazy A, his leg mangled and his pants down to his ankles.

  No witness is probably better than Crazy A, Delroy thought. Still, every little bit helped. Delroy would put him on the stand. He needed to start a record of Claudia being nowhere near the kidnapping.

  The other witness was Tallie Davis, a resident of the county for all of her seventy eight years. She was a credible witness and would swear she saw someone who had to be Claudia, not two miles from where Crazy A saw her. If Tallie was to be believed, there was no way Claudia could have been the kidnapper, given how far she was from town. Tallie’s problem was that her eyesight was poor, and she only saw “somebody in a dress pushing something down the road when I looked out the kitchen window at lunch time.” Of course she believed it to be Claudia—Who else could it be?—but couldn’t describe in detail what she saw. It was a good ninety-five feet from her kitchen window to the road. Even wearing bifocals, Tallie had a hard time watching her shows on the television only five feet in front of her.

  Still, Delroy planned to use her. Attacking the prosecution’s case meant pecking away at the details. The more you frayed the ends of the case, the rattier it looked to a jury. Delroy would start the fraying as early as possible. The magistrate judge, Wilton Pierson, got the rest of the court’s business done before hearing the case, as it would take the longest. He wanted to clear his courtroom of as much as he could before starting the hearing. With the press and others curious about this case, the courtroom was already standing room only.

  Judge Pierson didn’t have a law degree, but that wasn’t a prerequisite in all Georgia counties. Some attorneys complained, but the judge suited Delroy just fine. Whatever Pierson may have lacked in legal expertise he made up for with common sense. He was a deputy for ten years before running for office and was regarded as a fair man even then. The determination for bond was based largely upon common sense. Pierson fit the proceeding just fine.

  The hearing started around ten thirty that morning. District Attorney Broyles put up Deputy Pinky Winters as his first witness. The deputy relayed how Claudia refused to comply with his directions, knocked him on the ground, and then refused to get on the ground when commanded to do so. DA Broyles got Pinky to come off the stand to demonstrate how Claudia had knocked him down, and how she was standing when he was forced to tase her. Pinky made a great show of both. Claudia appeared unreasonably
rude in defying his “lawful commands.”

  He then testified about finding the shoe and all the other children’s items, which numbered over forty. Numerous toys, onesies, and more were listed for the court to consider. After Broyles got through, Delroy had the opportunity to cross-examine Pinky. Claudia was there with him, her bald head glinting under the courtroom lights.

  “Sir, exactly which law did my client break before you approached her that morning?”

  Pinky hesitated, and then answered.

  “No specific law, but she just seemed a little suspicious. I wanted to tell her to be careful, that’s all. That’s when I saw her place the item in her hand into that little carriage thing of hers.”

  “So you didn’t see her break any law, right?”

  A wave of red broke over Pinky’s face.

  “Right, not then. Anyway, she refused to show me what she had, and we all know it turned out to be little Teddy’s shoe.”

  Delroy smiled.

  “All right, Deputy, but let me make sure of how things went. Did you see what was in her hand before she placed it in the carriage?”

  “Objection!” Broyles had to slow down Delroy, as he knew exactly where he was going with the question. Besides, Mary Alice and the rest of the Johnson family were in the courtroom. He wanted them to hear his voice, and loudly.

  “What’s the basis of your objection?” Pierson asked.

  “That question doesn’t really help in this inquiry, so relevance,” Broyles answered.

  Pierson, as he always did on the bench, was chewing on a large chaw of Red Man. He considered the DA’s objection and spit into an old coffee mug.

  “Well, he’s your witness, and counsel has the right to a thorough and sifting cross-examination, so I’m gonna overrule your objection.”