by Jack Todd
“Did you see a car there?”
“Nope. Like I said, we didn’t see nothin. We was hidin behind the sunflowers.”
“But you’re sure it was a car? That sound you heard? Like a windshield breaking?”
“Coulda been. Or it coulda been a beer bottle. Or maybe neither one. Glass, anyhow. Some kinda glass. It sounded like a car window smashed, that’s all I can say for sure.”
“But you didn’t see a car out there? Or a man who wasn’t Poe?”
“Nope. We didn’t see nothin. We only heard things, but I ain’t exactly sure what we heard.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothin.”
“What do you mean, nothing? Something must have happened.”
“Well, it was quiet awhile. Then we heard Poe runnin. Sounded like a freight train.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“Ain’t no normal man makes a noise like that. We tracked him back to the road and we got close enough once or twice to see he was carryin a woman. We wanted to get closer but we was afraid, and Poe was movin fast for a fella that big. We followed along until we seen him get to the highway, and that cop puttin the handcuffs on him, and the ambulance come and the paddy wagon. They put the girl in the ambulance and Poe in the wagon.”
“And you didn’t see anyone else out there? You didn’t see a man other than Poe?”
“Yeah. We seen the cop.”
“That was the sheriff. I mean did you see anyone else, other than Poe and the sheriff?”
“No, ma’am. Just Poe and the girl and the cop and then the other cops and the ambulance people. Then we took off out of there because nobody wants to be around where there’s cops and trouble. We wasn’t gone far when that little fella picked us up on his motorcycle and gave us a lift the rest of the way. Never had a ride like that. We was home almost before we started.”
“That was Airmail. He’s a courier,” Maeva says. “Friend of ours, or he was. He kinda disappeared around that time. Look, somebody stole Alf’s camera, too. He was ready to skin one of you kids alive. It was gone for a couple of days, and then it was back where he left it. Was that you took his camera?”
“Yep. We was only borrowing it to take pictures of the Sasquatch we could sell to the papers.”
“And did you take any pictures?”
“A whole bunch. Maybe a dozen pictures. Somethin like that.”
Rose leans forward. “So you have twelve photographs?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“Well, the pictures didn’t turn out. We was holdin the camera up above the sunflowers, see, so we didn’t notice the lens cap was still on. We took the film to a drugstore when we got back to the city here, and the fella there told us we had a whole lotta nothin.”
Rose sags back in her seat. She lets her coffee go cold while she stares out the window at the river of yellow cabs pouring along Morris Avenue. It seems to go on day and night without pause. It doesn’t seem natural to live in the middle of this, but she supposes that you get used to anything with time. Anything but Poe behind bars.
Moe tucks into his breakfast and finishes off every last bite. When he’s done, he wipes his mouth on a napkin. “Look, I’d be happy to come up and tell a judge I seen somebody else beatin on that poor girl. Would that help?”
“We can’t let you do that, Moe,” Rose says. “If you did, you’d be tellin a lie, and then you’d be in trouble and it would go even worse for Poe. One last question: is there any chance Skeeter saw anything you didn’t see?”
“No, ma’am. We talked about it. We always wondered what happened up there. Only other thing I can tell you is something strange happened a while before. We was trackin Poe one day, and a man in a big black car, maybe a Cadillac, was followin us. Fella pulled up right beside us on the county road, man in a funny hat. Looked at us real hard like we was dinner on a plate, but then he took off. Stranger for sure, outta state plates. I didn’t get what state, though.”
Rose looks at Maeva and shakes her head. “Poe says there was a big black car out there, but I don’t guess it means much unless you saw it the same time you heard the girl getting beat on.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’d like to help old Poe, I really would. I hope we get to see him when we come up next summer.”
“The Kids Kamp has closed,” Rose says. “But if you want to come up next summer, you can stay with me. Help out with the goats.”
“I’d like that. I’m gonna miss the camp, if it ain’t there no more. Most fun I ever had.”
Rose takes a napkin and prints her name, address, and phone number in careful block letters, then tucks the napkin in the pocket of Moe’s hoodie. “You write to me and we’ll figure out a way to get you a bus ticket to come up and see us next summer. Skeeter, too, if you know how to find him.”
Rose calls the waiter over and orders a bunch of sandwiches off the menu for Moe, then asks the waiter if he can throw in a couple of quarts of milk from the refrigerator for the baby. She pays the check and they leave the restaurant and walk Moe to the door of his apartment building. He gives Maeva and Rose little hugs and takes the milk and sandwiches and heads on up the stairs. Rose turns and walks right out into the traffic, forcing the cabs to dodge her, and crosses the street to the park bench, where she sits down heavily. A weary sigh escapes her, like steam from a grate. Maeva waits until the light at the corner changes and darts across. She sits next to Rose and takes her hand. Rose says nothing, but she lets Maeva hold her hand. The wind picks up and Maeva feels it biting even through the pink parka. Finally, Rose struggles to her feet and heads toward the 149th Street subway station, with Maeva trailing behind.
Back at the hotel, they pack their bags and get ready to head home. Maeva asks if there is any point telling Lambert Cain or the sheriff about whatever it was that Moses heard or didn’t hear, especially that last part about the black car.
Rose shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Seems to me it would just confuse things. Put a twelve-year-old kid on the stand and you don’t know what’s going to come out. It’s a damned shame they didn’t stand up just the one time to peek over them sunflowers.”
~ VI ~
The Trial
Erased by the hand of God
Poe’s trial begins on the fourth day of January, with curiosity seekers packing the Belle Coeur County Courthouse, anticipating an irresistible concoction: beauty and the grotesque, sex and violence, a villain who will be satisfyingly pilloried at the end.
The first row behind the tables for the attorneys is reserved for families of the victim and accused, and the row behind that is for reporters. There are the local types who have known Poe all their lives, a couple of breathless TV reporters, even a distinguished writer for a national magazine who is thinking of writing a book on the trial, although he’s rarely sober enough to attend. Behind the reporters, another hundred spectators are wedged into the benches of the lower gallery, with fifty more squeezed into an upper gallery behind a curved wooden railing, the first time it has been pressed into service since a murder trial in 1955.
Rose arrives early, but a plump reporter in a flowered dress has already claimed the seat directly behind her. She seems to have drenched herself in a cheap cologne so cloying that Rose has to fight down the urge to retch. The woman is there every day of the trial wearing the same stink like a second skin, so that whenever Rose thinks of the trial afterward, the stench of that cologne is the smell of Poe on trial.
The fluorescent ceiling lights give everyone present the pallor of late-night patrons in a fast-food joint. Rose sits behind the defense table, with Joey Ballew on one side and Maeva Miller on the other. Maeva holds her hand and gives her a little squeeze now and then. Rose wears a new blue dress she has sewn for herself, because the nice dresses they carry at the J.C. Penney don’t fit
a big-boned gal. She washes the dress by hand every night and hangs it by the fire to dry for the next morning. No one is going to look at Poe’s mother like she’s poor white trash and doesn’t know how to dress proper.
The bailiff mutters something and the spectators rise. Rose hauls herself to her feet as the judge strides in. He looks like a buzzard, with a prominent beak and great black eyebrows that sweep back like a buzzard’s wings. Lambert Cain has told Rose the judge’s name, but it goes in one ear and out the other, so she thinks of the man as Judge Buzzard for the duration of the trial.
Poe is brought in by a paunchy bailiff. There are gasps in the gallery from those who have never seen Poe before and are overwhelmed by the sheer size of the man. “My God, he really is a giant,” someone says, and Judge Buzzard raps his gavel. Poe is handcuffed and dressed in a freshly laundered orange prison suit. Rose blows him a kiss before he is seated in a special oversized chair in the prisoner’s dock. The thin-lipped state’s attorney, whom Rose knows only as Savich or Savage, calls Sheriff Jim Dunn as his first witness. There is a scuffling and scraping as everyone leans forward to hear the questioning.
“Sheriff, you have been an officer of the law in this state for many years, is that correct?”
“Twenty years with the state police, the last seventeen as an investigator with Major Crimes before I retired. Then I got elected as sheriff here in Belle Coeur County.”
“So you would characterize yourself as a very experienced criminal investigator?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“And you have at one time or another investigated almost every sort of crime an officer of the law might encounter, is that correct?”
“I suppose there are a few situations I haven’t come across, but if that’s the case, I’d just as soon avoid them.”
Rose misses the next exchange. Something about how often the sheriff had encountered perpetrators in the act during his career. Then Savich or Savage asks what the sheriff was doing on the day in question.
“I was patrolling that stretch of old Highway 116 out near the gravel pit. Not much traffic out there since the four-lane went through, but I’d been out to check the bridges after the storm. It was getting late in the afternoon, about a quarter past five, and I was heading back into town. Luckily, I was driving pretty slow, or I might have missed him altogether.”
“Missed who, Sheriff?”
“The defendant, Poe. An individual known to me since we were both seven or eight years old. He was walking out of the woods with a half-naked girl over his shoulder, and she was in rough shape. I braked hard and jumped out of the car. Poe had blood all over his coveralls, and he was so exhausted he could barely walk.”
“What did you do then?”
“I put in a quick call to dispatch to tell them I was going to need an ambulance and possibly backup if there was anyone available, in case I had trouble subduing the suspect.”
“And did you have trouble with him?”
“No, I did not. I asked that he put the girl down gently, and he did as he was asked. She was unconscious, she had suffered bruises over much of her body, and she was bleeding pretty badly from the nose and mouth. I made sure that her airway was open and that her pulse and breathing were steady. I made her as comfortable as I could while I waited for the ambulance to arrive.”
“Was the defendant saying anything to you at the time?”
“He kept repeating the same thing, over and over. ‘Get help. Get help. Get help.’”
“Can you tell the court what happened next, Sheriff Dunn?”
“I did what I could in the way of first aid for the girl, then I put the handcuffs on Poe and read him his rights. I could see it was going to be a pretty serious situation because the girl had been badly beaten.”
“You subsequently identified the victim?”
“I did. She was a young woman known to the defendant and to myself. As you know, the law says she can’t be identified.”
“Having taken the accused into custody, did you subsequently attempt to interrogate him?”
“I did, sir. Matters were delayed somewhat by the storm that broke as we were driving the suspect back to town. Because of his condition and because he did not have an attorney present, we delayed the first interview until the following day, the Monday, in the presence of his mother and his attorney, Mr. Lambert Cain.”
“Can you tell us the result of that interrogation?”
“He kept repeating the same phrase, ‘Get help, get help, get help.’ He did claim that there was another individual who had attacked her and that he had grabbed this man and thrown him into a car window before carrying the girl to the highway.”
“You made subsequent attempts to interrogate the defendant?”
“I did, always in the presence of his attorney, Mr. Lambert Cain. Altogether, we had six conversations with the defendant.”
“And were the results any different?”
“Somewhat. He was calmer. The claim was made again that there was another man present and that it was this individual who attacked the victim, although the defendant claims not to have seen the man’s face. He said only that he threw the man off the victim and subsequently carried her to safety.”
“Did you attempt to verify this claim by examining the crime scene?”
“Yes, I did. Unfortunately, the crime scene had vanished by the time I got there.”
“Can you explain that for the court, Sheriff Dunn?”
“The storm kept us away for a time because we were overburdened with public safety work in the county. When I got back out to the gravel pit, I saw that there had been a huge cave-in. The lake is a lot bigger than it used to be and I almost drove right into it. Everything out there was gone, including the tower for the old gravel chute. There was nothing left of the scene. It’s all gone, like it was erased by the hand of God.”
“Thank you, Sheriff. Now I’d like to show you State’s Exhibit Number Thirteen. Have you seen this item before?”
“Yes. That’s the white summer dress the victim was wearing when I encountered her. It was found to be stained with blood and semen and sent to the state lab. They were able to confirm that the blood was the victim’s and the semen belonged to the defendant. The victim was partially clothed in this dress when I found her.”
Poe gazes up into the fluorescent lights overhead. The lights make him feel sleepy. He wonders if they make everybody sleepy the same way. Some of the people have gone away, and those who are still in the courtroom look very tired. He tries to listen to the voices, the lawyer fellow talking to the sheriff, but he can’t keep his mind on what they’re saying. The lights make a humming noise and that noise makes him sleepy, too, so he tries to concentrate on the dress Miranda wore that day. It was a pretty white dress. Such a pretty dress, with so many buttons. Poe remembers seeing it once before that day at the gravel pit. Miranda was wearing it when she left the house late one afternoon right after she came back from Cane Bridge, and she waved at him before she drove away. The next time he saw the dress, she was wearing it at the gravel pit. She was wearing it, and she was lying down reading, and he could look up her legs at the seeing-through panties.
The lawyer fellow is done talking to the sheriff. The judge says it’s time for lunch. Lunch is a good time, but after lunch Poe is even sleepier and it’s hard to stay awake in the big wide chair.
~
Mr. Cain for the defense
Rose senses a tremor in the courtroom when Lambert Cain in his blue suit stands to begin his cross-examination of the sheriff. A straightening, as though people are sitting up, slouching less, minding their manners. Lambert has that kind of effect on people without trying. Something about the way he carries himself, tall and lean and graceful and dignified and always proper, but not snooty about it the way some people are. If Poe has a chance, it depends on Lambert Cain. The country
doesn’t seem to make men like Lambert anymore, but maybe it’s just that you have to be a little older to have that air he has, like he’s easy with himself and knows what he’s about and how to do the right thing in any situation. She listens intently as Lambert begins.
“Sheriff, I hate to impose any more upon your time than we already have, but I do have a few questions, if I may.”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Cain.”
“Thank you. Now, Sheriff, I’d like to take you back to that first moment, when you were out on patrol on Highway 116. You came around a bend, if I understand correctly, at a fairly low speed?”
“That’s right. I’ve never seen the point of patrolling at high speed. You don’t see a thing.”
“Makes sense. Now that was when you saw the defendant coming out of the woods, carrying the victim?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And you hadn’t been called to the scene? There was no reason to suspect that anything was amiss?”
“Correct.”
“You’ve testified already, but I’ll ask you to repeat it because I think it’s an important point: you had no difficulty getting Poe to give up the girl or in arresting him, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. No difficulty at all.”
“You didn’t have the sense that he might not want to release the victim or that he would resist arrest?”
“Not in the least. He had run a long way with the victim and he was exhausted. All he wanted was for us to get help.”
“Did you draw your firearm, may I ask?”
“No, I did not. I thought it far better to keep things nice and calm.”
“I see. Of course, you read him his rights at the scene?”
“Yes, I did. Slowly and carefully because Poe can have a little trouble grasping things. He seemed to understand. I emphasized that he had the right to remain silent, repeated it a couple of times for his benefit.”
“And did he? Remain silent, that is?”
“No, he did not. He kept repeating the same thing, telling me to get help.”
