“That’s terrific work,” Mary told the girl. “I’m truly impressed.”
“I felt like I was doing okay,” Penny said. “Then Honeycutt took the stand.”
“Defense counsel let the accused testify?” Mary asked, surprised.
Penny nodded. “Wayne Snodgrass just turned Honeycutt loose. Under oath he admitted he’d had way too many beers, that Bratcher had scared him.”
“Scared him?” Mary checked the case file in her lap. Bratcher was slightly built, boyish. Honeycutt had shoulders like Man Mountain Dean.
“That’s right. Honeycutt claimed he was a born-again Christian. He quoted some Bible verse that said if you were even touched by a homosexual, you’d go to hell just the same as the homosexual would.”
“So he bashed Bratcher’s head in to keep from going to hell?”
Penny nodded. “Honeycutt swore he never meant to kill Bratcher, just to teach him a lesson. He cried as he apologized to the poor guy’s parents. In his summation, Snodgrass said Honeycutt had a moment of ‘gay panic’ and simply defended himself to save his immortal soul.”
“That sounds as idiotic as the Twinkie defense,” said Mary.
“Yeah, but it worked. The jury deliberated less than an hour,” said Penny. “I polled them; each one said not guilty.”
“What was the jury makeup?”
“Six men, six women. I thought I’d done a good voire dire—weeded out all the homophobes.”
“But twelve snuck in anyway?”
“I guess so. I just feel so bad for Mr. and Mrs. Bratcher. Alan was their only son—an ophthalmologist, in Charlotte.” She looked at Mary, her pale brows drawn. “Is this going under judicial review?”
“Not at all. It sounds like you ran an excellent case. The governor is just concerned that in certain counties, gay people are not getting equal protection under the law. Could I ask you a few more questions?”
“Sure.” Penny brightened now that the threat of judicial review had been lifted.
Mary pulled a notepad from her purse. “Do you know if this Buck Honeycutt belonged to the One Way Church, in Campbell County?”
“Reverend Trull’s church?” Penny shook her head. “I can’t remember his having any particular religious affiliation, other than rabid fundamentalism.”
“Any minister visit him in jail?”
“I don’t think so. Most of the guys sign up for Sunday church service just to get out of their cells for half an hour. I don’t recall Honeycutt’s name on that list.”
Mary made a note on her pad. “Has he got any family here?”
“He and his girlfriend live with his mother.”
“Does he have a job?”
“As far as I know, he still works as a tree topper for the Douglas nursery.” Penny sighed. “Other than six months in jail, not too much bad happened to Buck Honeycutt.”
Mary clicked her pen, pondering her notes. “Did he seem sincere when he apologized to the boy’s parents?”
“He squeezed out a couple tears on the stand. I heard some snickers from the back of the courtroom. I noticed he walked back to the defense table red-faced, with his head down.”
Mary took another look at Honeycutt’s mug shot in the case file. His eyes were defiant, the curve of his mouth arrogant. Nothing about his features indicated any capacity for sympathy at all. She closed the file and gave it back to Penny Morse.
“I’ve got to tell you, Penny, defense counsel must have eaten his Wheaties during this case. That ‘gay panic’ thing was a stroke.”
“He sure had an answer for everything I brought up.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. You just ran into a jury with concealed prejudice. It isn’t fair and it isn’t right, but sometimes it happens.”
Penny frowned. “There was one weird thing about Buck Honey-
cutt.”
“What?”
“You know how most defendants, when they’re acquitted, show some emotion?”
“I do.”
“Honeycutt just stood there, fists clenched, looking mad as hell. When the judge dismissed the case, he just turned and stalked out the door. Didn’t even bother to shake counsel’s hand.”
Mary chuckled. “Maybe he thought shaking a lawyer’s hand would send him to hell too.”
Mary left Penny Morse reassured that she’d done a fine job, that Mary herself could have done no better. The two women exchanged cards, Penny telling Mary she could call anytime if she had further questions about the Bratcher case. As Mary drove back to Campbell County, she wondered if Penny could have gotten a conviction even if homosexuality had been in the hate crime statute. Somehow, she doubted it. The injunction against homosexuality was Scriptural; not even Ann Chandler could rewrite the Bible just to bring more jobs to North Carolina.
She drove back to her motel. If she was going to this baseball game as Victor Galloway’s girlfriend, she needed to change clothes. Showing up in the One Way stands dressed in a skirt and heels would cause more notice than she wanted. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then checked her messages. One frantic one from Ann Chandler’s aide Jake McKenna, wondering what she’d found out. Nothing from the little boy who was so concerned about his sister. Nothing from Jonathan Walkingstick, of course. Nothing from Walkingstick in nearly two years.
“No surprises there,” she whispered, running a comb through her hair, wondering if she would check her messages for the rest of her life, always hoping for a call from him. Putting that thought out of her mind, she laced up her running shoes and headed for the door. She had a ball game to attend and a rookie right fielder to cheer for.
By the time she found the ball park, the game was in the fifth inning. The One Way Saints were at bat, going up against the Asbury United Methodist Circuit Riders. Mary knew immediately that the Saints were far more into baseball than the Methodists. The Saints wore tight black uniforms, their letters and last names emblazoned across the back. The Methodists just played in jeans and seemingly whatever T-shirts they’d grabbed from their closets. The score reflected the differing attitudes—the Saints led the Circuit Riders 12–0. Mary took a seat in the One Way bleachers and looked for Galloway. She found him, sitting at the end of the bench, intently watching one player who was walking up to bat. She followed his gaze, then caught her breath. The young man who was digging into his stance over the plate wore the number eleven and the name honeycutt on the back of his jersey.
She craned her neck, tried to see if it was the same man in Penny Morse’s case file, but the batting helmet hid all but the lower half of the man’s face. Still, Mary could see he took his sport seriously. As the Methodist pitcher laughed at some joke from his catcher, Honeycutt just hunkered over the plate, not cracking a smile.
Finally, the pitcher got serious. As he began his windup, two girls several rows down from Mary stood up and yelled, “Come on, Buck! Kick some butt!” The One Way crowd laughed as the pitcher threw a fast ball. It looked like Honeycutt was going to let the thing pass, then, at the last possible second, he lowered his shoulder and swung. The bat cracked as the ball flew just inches over the pitcher’s head. Everyone leapt up and cheered as the ball flew past the pudgy Methodist short stop and ripped up center field. Honeycutt raced for first base, then went for second. By the time the hapless Methodists had gotten the ball back to the infield, Honeycutt was standing on third base, his right arm lifted, his index finger pointing toward heaven. Everyone around Mary mirrored his gesture, lifting their arms and pointing their fingers upward. Instead of lifting her arm, Mary touched the smart phone in her pocket. I should send Ann Chandler a picture of this, she thought.
The rest of the game went quickly. The One Way team fielded as well as they hit, dispatching the Methodists with a murderous efficiency. Galloway played a credible right field but struck out in the ninth inning. By then, it didn’t matter—the Saints
were ahead 20–0. After the game ended, Mary again kept her eyes on Honeycutt. Though he bumped fists with the Methodists, his face remained stern. Only when he turned to greet his other teammates did he display any exuberance—leaping onto the catcher’s back, again pointing his finger at the heavens. The team trotted off the field together, finally dispersing among the people in the bleachers. Victor Galloway came up to her, sweatier from his chest-bumping celebration than his efforts on the field.
“So what’d you think?” he asked, out of breath.
“I think they put you in the right position,” said Mary.
“I really suck, don’t I?”
“You did okay, considering you’re playing with semi-pros.”
“I’m probably lucky they let me play at all.” Galloway laughed, unembarrassed by his lack of baseball skill. “You want to go get a beer? I found out some stuff about your kid.”
“Honeycutt?”
“No, your little kid in the peach truck.”
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She followed him to a quiet restaurant far from the church league baseball crowd. They sat at the bar, underneath a television that was airing a soccer game.
“That’s my sport,” said Victor as the barkeeper put two beers in front of them. “I’m a much better fullback than I am a right fielder.”
Mary looked up at the screen. She hadn’t watched soccer since Lily played in the nine-year-old league, in Cherokee. The memory was bittersweet—Lily had loved soccer, but back then, Lily Walkingstick had also loved her.
“I played in high school, then some club soccer in college,” continued Galloway. “My mother’s brother, Alejandro, played forward for Argentina.”
He pronounced Argentina with a Spanish accent. Until that moment, Mary had forgotten that he’d been hired for being bilingual. “So your mother’s Argentine?”
“Sí, senorita. Maria DeCampos, des Buenos Aires. My father’s Pete Galloway, from Brooklyn.” He grinned. “I got my mother’s charm and my father’s hustle.”
“Yeah, I saw all your hustle, out there in right field.”
Shrugging, he nodded at the TV. “Like I said, soccer’s my game …
not baseball.”
“So have you found out anything about your teammates?”
“Only that they take baseball almost as seriously as they take God.”
“I found something interesting on your number eleven. Honey-
cutt.”
“What?”
“He’s the guy Sligo County indicted for Alan Bratcher’s murder.”
Galloway put down his beer. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. They were in a bar, after a baseball game. Bratcher was gay, put his arm around Honeycutt’s shoulders. Honeycutt took offense and beat the shit out of the guy in the parking lot. He died three days later, after which Sligo charged him with manslaughter. His lawyer got him off with some idiotic ‘gay panic’ defense.”
“Gay panic?”
Mary nodded. “Claimed Honeycutt believed some obscure Bible verse that said if you’re even touched by a homosexual, then you’ll go to hell along with the homosexual.”
“And the jury bought that?”
“Apparently. The prosecutor was too much of a rookie to wiggle out of it. The DA may have set her up, too. Come election day, he won’t look like a gay-rights activist.”
Galloway gave a low whistle. “So I’d better not pat Honeycutt’s ass, huh?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Mary took a sip of beer. “What did you find out about my little kid?”
“After you left I pulled the phone records on Ralph Gudger’s landline. They did get a call from a cell phone about the same time the kid claims to have heard from his sister.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. But it’s from a stolen cell with a 704-999 exchange—that’s Mecklenburg County.”
“Charlotte,” said Mary.
“Exactly where the boyfriend is from, according to Crump. Did the sister sound like she was in trouble when she called?”
“The boy said so, but I think he was scared his stepfather would catch him on the telephone. This Gudger character sounds like a real Nazi.”
“Well, that pretty much corroborates what Crump told us,” said Victor. “The girl’s miserable at home, hates her stepfather, so she gets her boyfriend to pick her up as she’s on her way home from a babysitting gig. She leaves her car running, hops in with him, and off they go. She probably felt bad and called home to let her mother know she was still alive. Instead of her mom, she gets her psycho brother.”
“But why would she tell her brother that she’s in trouble?” Mary asked. “Why didn’t she take her purse and her babysitting money? Has anybody questioned the boyfriend? The little brother says he doesn’t exist.”
“Crump said it was probably an Internet romance she hadn’t told anyone about.” Galloway shrugged. “It sounds like the girl was determined to leave the stepfather and just took the first way out that came along.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I honestly think that after assault weapons and drunk drivers, the most hazardous thing to your health is your own family.”
“You might be right.” Mary scooped up some cheese on a nacho chip. “Tomorrow I’ll call the boy and tell him that his sister was calling from Charlotte, probably just to let them know she was still alive.”
Eleven
Chase grubbed the poison ivy long past sunset, pulling the green vines off the fence, hacking at the roots with a pickax, all the while thinking he’d managed to screw everything up again. Though he’d managed to hang up the phone and run to the bathroom before Gudger came inside, he had a bad feeling that the ex-cop suspected something.
“What are you up to in there, boy?” Gudger had demanded, pounding on the bathroom door.
“I had to go to the bathroom,” Chase cried.
“Haven’t you heard of pissing in the woods?”
“It’s not piss.” Chase crouched on the toilet, shaking. “It’s the other.”
“You can do that in the woods, too, Olive Oyl.”
Chase held his breath, wondering if Gudger was going to open the door and throw him off the john, but his footsteps thumped down the hall and into the bedroom. Chase waited a moment, flushed the toilet for show, then scampered back up to the poison ivy.
Now he sat by the fence in the growing dark, arms and legs aching, hiding until his mother returned home from work. Over the course of the afternoon he’d been tortured by the notion that Gudger had figured out that he’d been on the phone. If so, then he’d probably had one of his cop friends trace the call. Gudger would know then that he’d called Mary Crow. That would be bad enough, but what if the cops had also said, “Gudge, you had another call on that line yesterday, and it wasn’t from any Jamaica Cruise company, either.”
That made him sick inside. He couldn’t imagine what Gudger would do if he found out that Sam had called and that he, Chase, had lied to him about it. Beat him, probably. Or lock him in his room for the rest of the summer. Better to stay out here until his mother got home. Gudger wouldn’t do anything to him in front of his mom.
He huddled in the shadows, watching the sky turn from pink to a soft, hazy blue. As fireflies began to blink close to the ground, he saw distant headlights threading through the trees along the driveway. He watched as his mother’s old Dodge slowed to a stop under the oak tree. A moment later his mother emerged, juggling an armload of packages. She hurried toward the house with her head down and her shoulders hunched, as if she slogged through a private world of frost and despair, instead of the warm summer night that surrounded him. Already he’d seen new wrinkles bracketing her mouth and he often caught her staring out the living room window, as if waiting for Sam to roll up in the driveway and say hello, Suzie Q’s radio blaring.
“I should t
ell her,” he whispered. “Tell her that Sam called, that she’s still alive.”
It seemed mean to keep that kind of secret, but telling her would unleash a torrent of questions—When did she call? What did she say? Where is she? Why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t you tell me this the instant she called?
He knew if he answered truthfully, they’d never see Sam again. His mother would go to Gudger and though he would make a big show about getting the cops involved again, secretly he would make double-sure that this time, Sam would stay gone for good. His sister’s only chance of coming home depended on Gudger thinking that she was already far, far away.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered to her as she opened the back door. “I’ve got to keep this secret.”
He waited until he saw the lights come on in the kitchen, then he figured it was safe to go inside. Gudger’s attention would be on his mother and supper, rather than him. Grabbing the pickax, he lugged it back to the shed. His arms and shoulders ached from all his chopping, and as he headed toward the house, the skin on his face and shoulders felt too tight for his own body. When he opened the back door, he found Gudger in the kitchen, holding a bucket of fried chicken as if it were dog shit. His stomach clenched; Gudger was already mad, and he hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet.
“You roll in here at nine thirty at night?” Gudger was yelling at his mother. “With this for my supper?”
“I’m sorry,” Amy replied. “I caught my hand in a door at work—I had to fill out an accident report and have the PA examine it.” She held up her right hand—it was purple, her wrist swollen to twice its normal size. “I thought maybe we could just have take-home chicken tonight.”
Gudger’s face was turning the same color as his mother’s hand, when Chase stepped forward. “Thanks, Mama,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I love fried chicken.”
His mother looked down at him. Suddenly her eyes grew wide. “Chase! What happened to you?”
“For once he’s made himself useful.” Gudger looked at him, his mouth stretching in mirthless grin. “I had him dig poison ivy off the back fence.”
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