CHAPTER 47
“Where the hell you been?” Tom Daniels asked as he stormed into my office.
I was back in my office because he had removed the crime scene tape and had it cleaned, and he had asked me to meet him there.
“Miss me?” I asked.
There was no evidence that an unspeakable act of violence had taken place here, no blood crying out from the ground about the murder of innocence, but I felt uncomfortable, as if a residue of horror hung in the room like a lost spirit hovering aimlessly.
“You better not have been screwing around in my investigation,” he said.
“Wasn’t within a hundred miles of it,” I said with a smile.
“Don’t get cute with me, dammit,” he said. “I’m not your buddy.”
“We may not be buddies,” I said. “But we are family.”
He shook his head.
“Susan and I-”
“That’s just a technicality,” he said.
“Actually, Dad, we’re trying to patch things up,” I said.
He started to say something, but instead shook his head, his contempt seeming to indicate the comment wasn’t worthy of a response.
“I’m not your enemy,” I said. Then amended, “Well, you’re not mine. Why’d you even notice I was gone?”
“I’ve got some questions for you,” he said, pulling a pen out of his wrinkled suit coat and opening a file folder. His movements, like his words, were often exaggerated, a compensation for his alcoholinduced unsteadiness. “You’re a witness. This thing happened right here in your office. Hell, you’re a suspect.”
“A suspect?”
“You had access to this office. Hell, it’s yours. You were here. What can you tell me?”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
He laughed. “Well, who did?” he asked.
Outside my window, the last of the first shift officers ambled past the last of the second shift arrivals rushing to their post. Both groups carried lunch boxes or small coolers to help them get through their eight-hour shifts in posts they could not leave.
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“Let me explain how this works,” he said, holding up his pen. “I ask the questions, you answer them.” When he noticed that his pen was shaking, he pulled his hand down and rested it on the folder. “Now, let’s try that. I ask. You answer. Got it?”
“Is that one of your questions?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed into bloodshot slits, his face turning red and strained as if his blood had become mercury and was rising.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve just got a couple of questions. If you answer them, I’ll answer all of yours.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. He then sat there in silence for a long time before he opened his eyes again. When he did, they seemed calmer, if not clearer.
“I’ll cooperate either way,” I said. “But I’d really like to know just two small things.”
“You got anything really good you could trade me for them?” he asked as if we were on a school yard.
I nodded.
“Let’s have it,” he said.
“Was Nicole sexually assaulted?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Was there any indication that she ever had been?”
“Inconclusive,” he said. “But we don’t think so.”
“Was-” I began.
“That’s two questions,” he said.
“Actually,” I said. “That was two parts of the same question.”
“You really are a sneaky SOB,” he said wearily. “What’s your other question?”
“Was there blood in my office bathroom?” I asked. “Nicole’s blood?”
“Yes,” he said.
“There was a greeting card and a wad of cash under the desk,” he said. He pointed at the small stack of greeting cards on the corner of my desk. “Tell me about those.”
“Each month I give the inmates cards to send to their families and significant others,” I said. “Did it match one of the ones on my desk?”
He nodded. “I think it fell off while they were struggling,” he said. “But what about the money?”
“I don’t give it out,” I said.
A metallic clanging drew my attention toward the window. Outside two inmate-powered push mowers were beginning to cut the grass between the chapel and visiting park. The dew on the blades of grass and rose petals glistened in the morning sun, and the wet clippings stuck to the metal mowers.
“So where’d it come from?” he said.
“Sounds like a payoff to me,” I said.
“Yeah, I came to that same conclusion,” he said. “Any idea who?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe Bobby Earl’s paying off someone to do his business behind bars or to turn their heads while someone else does it.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He didn’t respond, and we sat in silence for a few minutes.
“I didn’t look for very long,” I said. “But it looked like her face had been beaten very badly.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“So her killer probably knew her pretty well,” I said.
“Possibly,” he said, pulling a small plastic bag from his coat pocket. “We found this on the floor near the door.” Handing me the bag, he added, “I think he hit her so hard it flew out of her mouth and across the room. It’s a piece of candy.”
I held up the plastic bag and examined its contents. It held a round pink piece of hard candy that was circled by red and white streaks.
I swallowed hard, my heart and stomach in my throat, my forehead breaking out into a cold sweat.
“Not finding very much about the Caldwells,” he said. “We need to get them back down here, but that’s not gonna happen.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m doing a memorial service for Nicole,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up along with the corners of his lips and he nodded in appreciation. “That just might work, but I thought you were against her coming in-why memorialize her in front of all the inmates?”
“To see what happens,” I said. “And not all-just those who were here the night it happened.”
“I like it,” he said. “Still, we don’t have any real evidence yet.”
“We will,” I said.
“We?” he said.
“You,” I corrected. “You will.”
“When is the service?”
“This afternoon,” I said.
“This afternoon,” he yelled, jumping to his feet and heading toward the door. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Where’re you going?” I asked.
“To try to get enough evidence to build a case by then.”
CHAPTER 48
As I began to study for my homily, I noticed again the stack of greeting cards on my desk. I picked them up and rifled through them. To my surprise, all the cards had envelopes. More to the point, all the envelopes had cards. Finding an actual clue, I almost didn’t know what to do. And before I could do anything, Pete Fortner knocked on my door and walked in.
Sitting down, he looked around my office uneasily. As he stared at the spot where Nicole’s body had lain, I remembered that he had been the second one at the scene, and I knew he still saw her broken little body there just as I did.
“How can you-” he started, but stopped when his eyes rested on the picture Nicole had colored for me. I had framed it and hung it on the center of the wall behind me. The most prominent place in my office.
“How can you work in here?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t. I’ve pretty much just been working her case. And she helps me with that. It’s like she’s still present. I don’t know… I feel her guiding me. I like being in here. I think soon the violence will fade and just her precious spirit will remain.”
He nodded without saying anything. There w
as nothing in his body language or facial expression to suggest it, but I got the sense that I had made him uncomfortable.
His mustache had thickened and he rubbed at it absently. When he turned to the side the sunlight outlined his profile, illuminating several nose hairs which had grown so long they blended with his mustache.
“That was good work with Malcolm and Muhammin the other night,” he said. “But are you sure they didn’t kill Nicole?”
“As sure as you can be about such things,” I said.
“You’re probably right. Guess what we found inside a small hole in Paul Register’s mattress?”
“Nicole’s crayons?” I asked.
His mouth dropped open. “Just how the hell did you know that?”
“I didn’t until just now,” I said. “You told me to guess.”
He shook his head and smiled appreciatively.
“Who found them?” I asked.
“Officer Coel,” he said.
I nodded. “When?”
“Yesterday,” he said. “The hole was tiny. I don’t see how he ever found them.”
“Did you ask him what made him look there in the first place?”
“Yeah,” he said. “At first he said it was just part of a routine search of the cell. They toss them every two weeks or so, but then when I pressed him on it, he said he got an anonymous tip.”
“He say from who?”
“Never would,” he said, shaking his head. “Said he’d lose his informants if he gave them up, but that the person was credible.”
I thought about it.
“You wanna talk to him?”
“Who?”
“Either one.”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Both of them,” I said. “Please just help make sure all our suspects are here for the memorial service.”
“Word on the compound is Nicole’s killer’ll be arrested today,” he said.
I shook my head. “That’s not good.”
“Is it true?” he asked.
“You’d have to ask Daniels.”
“You think he knows who did it?”
I shrugged.
“If he had any sense, he’d ask for your help,” he said. “I-” he started, then paused for a moment before awkwardly beginning again. “I–I’ve got a lot of respect for you-as a man of God, of course, but as a… I don’t know… cop, too. You’re the best I’ve worked with. I can’t believe you’re not up in Atlanta working high profile cases.”
“Pete, in Atlanta I was a small town cop,” I said. “I wasn’t APD. I was a cop for the little tourist town of Stone Mountain. I did it while I was in seminary. I had worked for Dad down here and it was an easy job to get. It just happened to be at a time when a high profile case was going on.”
“You’re the one who stopped him-the Stone Cold Killer. You’ll always be the one who stopped him.”
We were silent a moment and he shifted in his chair and recrossed his legs. His movements were hesitant and awkward, his eyes seeming to search for criticism or ridicule. I felt sorry for him and regretted not having done more to encourage and edify him.
“And always the one who let the Atlanta Child Murderer get away,” I said.
His eyes widened in surprise, his eyebrows popping up into question marks. “You worked the Williams’ case,” he said, adding quickly, “and let him get away?”
“No,” I said. “He’d been in prison a good while when I went up there. But there was another one-some say a second one. I say he was working at the time of Williams and hid his victims like trees in Williams’ forest. The point is, I not only let him get away, I let him kill a little boy I should’ve been protecting. There are no experts in murder investigations. Not really. And if there are, I am certainly not one of them.”
“Well, I think you are,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“I got that information you asked me to,” he said, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “Three inmates have sent Bobby Earl Freeing the Captives Ministries very large contributions since you’ve been back from New Orleans.”
“Any of our suspects?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Most of them don’t send or receive much mail. Porter hasn’t gotten a single letter the entire time he’s been inside. Register is the only one who sends and receives a lot, but none of it to or from Bobby Earl.”
“The three who sent contributions mailed them to the post office box, right?”
He nodded. “How’d you know they would?” he asked. “And before Bobby Earl came, not afterward.”
“Because,” I said, “the checks aren’t to support a ministry, but a habit.”
“Huh?” he asked, a look of confusion on his face.
“The inmates are buying drugs,” I said. “They prepay for drugs that are brought in from the outside.”
Eyes wide, he sat there for a moment, then said, “What do you need me to do?”
“Arrest Tim Whitfield,” I said, “and see if you can get him to give up his supplier.”
CHAPTER 49
“‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering to the Lord,’” I read from Genesis to begin my homily for Nicole Caldwell’s memorial service.
She had already been eulogized. Her life had already been celebrated. Now it was my job to deliver a message that spoke to the heart of the matter. To give reassurance and hope to her loved ones. And I would try. But I had no easy answers. No quick fixes for the ancient problem of evil and the unwelcome guest of grief.
I looked up from the Bible on the pulpit to the congregation before me. The Caldwells, dressed in black, were on the front pew, DeAndré beside Bunny. Behind them, in a sea of blue, were many of the inmates who had attended the service the night Nicole was murdered. Across the aisle from the Caldwells, Theo Malcolm sat stiffly beside Edward Stone, who sat even more stiffly. Next to him, Pete Fortner and Tom Daniels looked uncomfortable and out of place.
“These words are among the most shocking in all of sacred literature,” I continued. “They resound throughout history as an echo of madness by a God who could only attract the deranged, the disturbed, and the fanatical. A God who, after making Abraham wait for twenty-five years to receive his promised son, the boy whose very name means laughter, because of how hard his decrepit old parents had laughed when they received the promise, demands that Abraham give him back. Not just surrender him, but sacrifice him with his own hands.”
Several inmates in the congregation winced at my words, and gave me looks like they wondered where I could possibly be going with this.
My response to them, that which Frederick Buechner had convinced me should be the foundation for every sermon-most of all this one-came from Shakespeare: “‘The weight of this sad time we must obey,’” I said. “‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.’”
If I was right about who had killed Nicole, there could be no better source for a quotation than King Lear, but if my audience perceived the message within the message, they didn’t give any indication.
“I am here to tell the truth,” I added. “No matter how tragic it might be.”
The only response I got was a sea of blank stares.
“From the very beginning, Nicole has been compared to Isaac; Bobby Earl, her father, to Abraham.”
Bobby Earl nodded earnestly as Bunny looked up at him admiringly.
“And though the connection was never obvious to me, it has caused me to meditate a lot lately on Abraham, his God, and his son.
“How could God ask for the sacrifice of this innocent lamb whose very life was the heartbeat of his father?
“How could Abraham do it? Was he mad? Or was he, as the three world religions that sprang from him claim, the most faithfilled and faithful man ever to live?
“These questions are as old as mankind, and they’ve been asked by so many of us at one time or another in
one way or another. And in the deepest part of our hearts, I think we’ve all come to the same terrifying conclusion: We don’t know.”
Anna’s intense eyes rested heavily upon me, her head nodding agreement and support. I looked at her often.
“Just as we don’t know why God allows bad things to happen to good people. We don’t know why God lets children suffer and die. We don’t know.
“I’m not saying there aren’t answers to these questions. In fact, there are some pretty convincing ones, but none of the answers, no matter how logical or convincing, can ever remove that wordless darkness from the corners of our hearts and minds that says we don’t know. Not really.
“Let me ask you the real question in my heart and on my mind. Why did God allow little Nicole be murdered?
“I don’t know. I wish to God I did. She knows I’ve asked that question a thousand times.
“But I’ve been thinking more and more that perhaps that’s not the right question anyway. God didn’t kill Nicole. God didn’t ask for the blood of this little lamb to be shed. So, really, shouldn’t the question be: why did you kill Nicole?”
Time seemed to stand still. No one moved. No one made a sound. No one looked directly at me.
Unfortunately, no one answered my question either.
“Whoever killed Nicole,” I continued. “That’s who we need to ask. Why’d you do it? How could you? We can ask God, ‘Why’d you let them do it?’ but only the murderer can answer ‘Why’d you do it?’”
As I spoke, I thought about Susan and how often she had sat in a church and listened to me preach. She had been a good wife in so many ways, and now that there was a possibility that we might have a future together, I found myself missing her.
“So why was Nicole taken from us?
“I don’t know.
“I do know that God was the first one to grieve. Tears fell from the eyes of God long before they fell from anyone else’s.
“Abraham, the madman of faith, lifted his knife to plunge it into the heart of his son, Isaac, and God said: ‘NO! Don’t touch him. It was just a test. I just wanted to see how much you loved me. How much you trusted me.’ Then Abraham looked, and there in a thicket was a ram. God had provided a lamb.
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