I smelled the fresh sheets and looked longingly at the thin quilt folded at the bottom, an item I might need in their generous air conditioning. When Diane handed me a pile of fresh towels and a spare robe, I realized another reason she had escorted me to the bedroom. Covered in blood and sweat and who knows what else, I was in no fit condition to touch her furniture. I took a shower to get the muck off as quickly as possible, but I was looking forward to a bath later in their claw-foot tub.
I slept all day, and when I woke mid-afternoon Diane made me a turkey sandwich, sliced diagonally with chips and a pickle on the side. She set my plate on a place mat and joined me at the kitchen table with a glass of iced tea. When she brought out a box of Little Debbie’s snack cakes, I felt like I was 8 years old again visiting my grandmother. I unconsciously began to swing my legs and was surprised to find my feet touched the floor. But still just barely.
Now that I had enough sugar to sustain me through any maternal tirade, I called Ben’s house. He answered the phone, sounding slightly groggy. The big news was that he had a broken arm, courtesy of Deacon’s crow bar was my guess, so I’d better think of something creative for his cast and I’d better do it soon. Kelly (girl Kelly) was coming over tomorrow, and she was welcome to do anything she liked with it. I’ll just bet she was.
I called Noel next, and she was groggy as well. She said she’d been awake for a while—really, she had—but I’d told that lie myself too many times to believe it. Ralph and Diane had plans for the evening, so Noel said she’d drop by with supplies and her baking expertise. We were going to try to make a batch of my no-bake oatmeal cookies more diabetic-friendly for Ralph. It turns out Grandma Harrison is diabetic, so Noel had some experience. Maybe that’s why the old bag was so mean. She just couldn’t tolerate sweet.
When Noel arrived, I was waiting on the front stoop. She handed me a six-pack of Mexican beer she’d no doubt seen in my own house, and I took it from her awkwardly.
“The most important supplies,” she said, then went back to retrieve a bag from the health food store. It contained things I’d never heard of and things I’d sworn I’d never try, but having eaten Noel’s cooking, I was willing to give her and her ingredients the benefit of the doubt.
We went in the kitchen and mixed everything up, or rather she tasted and measured and mixed and I watched, and sometimes tasted. The cookies had to set up in the fridge, so we took a little cooler of beer and went out back. Diane’s patio was lovely, but we opted for bare skin on the grass. Once we’d gotten settled, I handed Noel the only thing I’d brought outside with me—her mother’s letter that her cousin Sarah had given to me, presumably to give to her. It was time.
Noel read in silence. I’d stretched out flat on my back, looking up at the sky to give her privacy. It really was beautiful, so green and lush and steaming with life. It’s easy to forget how beautiful the world is when you’re busy living in it every day. The sky directly above me was pale blue, and dense banks of clouds moved quickly through my field of vision. I sat up with a pained grunt to get a better view and brush an adventurous ant off my calf. We were about to lose the sun to masses of clouds, and the sky to the west was a deep dark blue-gray that smelled of metal and promised lightning. I love that color. It reminds me of the ocean at dusk.
When Noel had finished, she folded the letter and placed it back in its envelope. “Sarah gave it to you?” she asked.
“Yes.” I told her about the box of letters Viola had wanted her to have, and how her grandmother had destroyed them. Noel shook her head, but she didn’t seem angry.
“Typical grandmother.” She leaned over on one elbow and began fidgeting with the grass. “When I got that clipping in the mail, I started thinking a lot about my mother and father. I hadn’t thought about either of them for years, not about my memories of them. Maybe that’s why it was so hard. I just couldn’t remember what my life with them was like, what they were like. When I did remember things, I wasn’t sure if it was real or another one of my grandmother’s stories. I had nightmares about things I couldn’t recall, and I’d wake up terrified without knowing why. The first time I had one, I threw up next to my bed before I could make it to the bathroom.”
“Then you started telling me things about my family, things I didn’t want to hear but I needed to. That’s when I began to remember. It’s as if suddenly I had permission to remember the bad things. I wasn’t making them up, and I wasn’t being disloyal, because they were true. After I left your house, the day I took the message from your sister, I went to see my grandmother. I told her I wanted to know the truth about my mother, and we had a huge argument. I don’t think she even knows the truth anymore. That’s when I knew it had to come from me.”
She took another sip of beer. “I went to the coast for a few days, didn’t tell anyone where I was.” She smiled. “As you noticed. Sorry. But that’s where I found my memories, and I keep finding more every day. My mother was an amazing person. She was everything my grandmother said, everything you told me, and more. And my father loved her passionately, so much that he stayed with her even when she couldn’t stand to be with herself.”
Noel held up the letter. “I didn’t remember the miscarriage, but I did remember the nursery. For a long time, it smelled like talcum powder, even though the baby never made it there. Mom sometimes slept there after the miscarriage. I’d find her when I got up in the morning for school, and I’d lie with her for a while and let her spoon me. Then when she started having… substance problems, she slept there again, but I knew it was different. The room didn’t smell like talcum anymore. It smelled like Jimmy’s—cigarettes and sweat and vomit. She wouldn’t wake up when I looked in her. She’d just lie there, sleeping, holding a little stuffed lamb.”
I reached out to touch her hand. “I’m sorry, Noel.”
“I’m not. She’s a person again.”
“How did you know last night? About Deacon?”
“Well, I knew what you and the guys were up to, what you’d found, and I started putting some of the pieces together, but I didn’t know until after you did. When was it? I’ve lost my days. I guess it was the night before last, the day all hell broke loose at the prison. It’s funny because I hadn’t turned on the TV all week, and I happened to turn on the late news that night. Maybe to check the weather, see if there was a storm in the gulf, I don’t know. They had a story about it. They didn’t give your name, but I knew it had to be you. Who else could it be? They did give the suspect’s name—Deacon James. That’s what did it. That’s when I remembered that night.”
“The night your mother was killed?”
Noel nodded. “She picked me up at Miss Johnson’s. I don’t know what possessed her to take me to Jimmy’s, but she did crazy things sometimes. Jimmy’s always scared me, but it was exciting too, to be out so late with my mother. Everyone knew her, and she had to introduce me to each one of them, all these men. I tried not to be shy. I knew I was too old not to speak. Then a man came up and whispered in her ear. He was a white man, pretty unusual in Jimmy’s, but I think he was also wearing a uniform, which might have made it less unusual. I don’t know. That was when my mother had to leave.”
“There weren’t many women in Jimmy’s either, but she took me over to one—I can’t remember her name, skinny woman—and asked her to watch me until she got back. Whoever she was, she disappeared about five minutes after my mother did, took off somewhere with a man. It was so loud in there, you had to yell to be heard, and I remember my mother saying, ‘Deacon, my ass! If that prick ever set foot in a church he’d burst into flames.’ They both laughed, and mother said she’d be back soon, not to worry, that it wouldn’t take long. They both laughed at that too.”
Noel began picking at the label on her bottle, waiting until she had every bit of paper and glue before pulling it from the bottle, a couple of millimeters at a time.
“I never saw her again. When the fire broke out in Jimmy’s, one of the men grab
bed me and carried me outside, but then he left and I didn’t know what to do. People were screaming, and I didn’t know anyone. Finally my father came. I knew he would, but instead of staying with me, he went looking for my mother. He didn’t know she was already dead. She must have been.”
“When I heard Deacon’s name and saw his face, the picture of him, even after 20 years… and he shot at you. I knew it had to be him.”
I nodded. “Noel, when did you—”
When did you get your grandmother’s gun, before you went to the coast or after you came back? That was the rest of the question, the part that went unspoken. It went hand in hand with, did you bring the gun in with you and decide not to use it once you saw Deacon’s on the counter? And the doozey, had Deacon really started to swing? Really started to go for a second gun?
“When did I what?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
The air had grown cool and the sky darkened to twilight. A nearby rumbling vibrated through my body to the ground. Pine tops swayed and palmetto fronds curled and tickled the air like windblown hair, the sound of their rustling both reassuring and spine-tingling. Noel and I rose together and headed inside to avoid the approaching storm. As I slipped through the sliding glass doors, a solid mass of rain began to pelt the patio unrelentingly. The force of the impact caused a fine spray, but I stood there, smiling, getting damp, marveling at the wonder of it all. I’d never imagined there could be answers I didn’t want to know.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Over the next few months, we filled in some of the gaps. I say we, but it was mostly Sutton and Jim Gilbert. In 1983, soon after Isaac pled guilty to Vanda’s murder, Deacon had been investigated for “inappropriate behavior” with prostitutes. There were never any charges or official findings of wrongdoing, but the investigation led to his voluntary resignation. He did private security work for a year or so before getting on at WFC. While not officially designated as missing, some of the women mentioned in the investigation could not be accounted for, although Sutton continued to try. With some help, I suspected, from Rudy Nagroski.
Deacon had manipulated the investigation into Vanda’s murder from the inside. How much couldn’t be determined 20 years later, especially after what Deacon had done to the investigative and State Attorney files. It seemed likely that he’d been responsible for crucial follow-up interviews, had failed to pass on information and sown misinformation. Claire Johnson had confirmed that Deacon interviewed her, although she could no longer be sure of the substance of their conversation.
Mike discovered that Deacon had also been influential in the shuffling of personnel prior to Isaac’s alleged suicide. Most of the people working in his area at the time of Isaac’s death were now under indictment for their involvement in Deacon’s visitation extortion scheme. They universally denied any knowledge of wrongdoing in Isaac’s death, as well as any knowledge of Deacon’s sexual extortion tactics. People who still cared (i.e. Jim Gilbert) maintained high hopes of turning one young man who seemed particularly disgusted with their actions. Was he the masked man who’d let me escape, that night that seemed so long ago? And perhaps the spelling-impaired author of the warning that reached me too late?
When Deacon was killed, the enthusiasm for discovering the depth and breadth of the corruption surrounding him died with him, at the state and federal level. I wasn’t surprised. My thoughts often lingered on connections, connections made and unmade. Vanda’s death, the 1983 prostitute investigation, Isaac’s contact with and probable initiation of the corruption investigation 20 years later—all connected, and yet the connection had gone unrecognized. Or had it? I didn’t think so. While investigating Deacon, while investigating Isaac’s allegations and credibility, I felt sure that someone somewhere had figured out Deacon’s connection to Vanda. Figured out that it was likely Deacon killed her, and even more likely that an innocent man pled guilty and would spend his life in prison. That is, until Deacon killed Isaac too. Or maybe I’m just cynical and paranoid.
After all, why would an innocent man plead guilty to murdering his wife? I found out from Sutton that when Deacon’s body was searched, there were condoms in his pocket, so I asked Sutton to do a little more checking. He confirmed that Deacon had a practice of using condoms with the prostitutes and women he coerced to have sex. Yet there was no evidence of a condom at the scene. I now knew that, as he’d been so proud to point out, Deacon was not a stupid man. Perhaps he’d taken the evidence—the condom—with him. Of course, this was years before DNA testing. Maybe he wouldn’t have taken it because he thought it didn’t matter. So long as they couldn’t tie him personally to the scene, evidence of sex with another man gave Isaac motive to kill his wife.
There is an alternative explanation. Imagine that a man discovers his wife dead, apparently killed by one of her many lovers. Imagine further that in a moment of profound but misguided love for his dead wife and for his daughter, this man decides to alter the scene, to remove the evidence most damaging to his wife’s character and memory. In minutes he can have the items in his own or his neighbor’s garbage cans, which go unsearched when he is arrested at the scene. He doesn’t intend to take responsibility for her death, but the police arrive—recall the anonymous tip by our savvy killer—before he can leave the scene. He can’t bring himself to explain his actions, and even if he did, who would believe him now?
Or maybe not. That’s the version that feels right to me, but we’ll never know. So many questions unanswered. I knew I’d left things in good hands with Jim Gilbert, and I think he shared many of my suspicions, though we didn’t speak of it. Had I really found the unthinkable—an honest, justice-minded prosecutor? Perhaps he was the exception that proved the rule. Occasionally I’d hear stories from Mike, who was as shocked by Jim’s character as I, about Jim’s dogged pursuit of the corruption investigation, and the corruption investigators. He was determined to fix the system, to prove it could still work.
As for me, I was healing, physically and in other ways. Loud noises, quick movements still made me flinch sometimes. It had been hard to stay out of my head at first, hard not to wonder what would have happened if Noel hadn’t shown up when she did. Would I have lived? Would Ben? I don’t think about it much anymore. That son of a bitch gave me enough nightmares already—I’m not volunteering for any more.
Still, I found it difficult to muster interest in the big picture, particularly on this day. Noel and her newly rediscovered aunt Ida had spoken on the phone a few times, and yesterday I finally drove Noel to meet her. Noel said she needed the moral support, and I needed to reassure myself that something good had come of the chaos I’d created. Their speech and their touches had been tentative at first, but they’d gotten along well, as I knew they would. Ida had made up the guest room and asked us to stay overnight so we could do something special this morning. I knew what she had in mind.
I’m sitting in the car, a discreet distance away, while Ida and Noel visit Isaac’s grave. Noel asked me to accompany them, but this is something she needs to do without me. Not to worry. Now that I know he’s here, I’ll be back. Alone. There are things I have to say to him, this man I never met, that no one else, least of all Noel, needs to hear. It’s a good time to be here though, already muggy but early enough that the heat hasn’t yet baked the dew from the grass. I found a shady spot to park and put the top down. There’s the scent of something sweet blooming nearby, as there almost always is in north Florida, and birds are the only creatures audacious enough to break the silence. It’d be a downright idyllic scene if it weren’t for the man digging a fresh grave two rows over. The mask that protects his lungs from the toxic earth of Lazarus lends a touch of the surreal.
Before Noel left the car, she handed me a slip of paper and left her cell phone on the seat, “just in case.” It’s my sister Lisa’s phone number. Little does Noel know I’ve been carrying it, on my own cell phone, in my purse for weeks. Waiting for the right moment. The imp on
my shoulder says that would be my most masochistic moment. Maybe, but I think I’ll take Noel’s hint. What else do I have to do, sitting in a hot car in a cemetery on a Sunday morning?
THE END
About the Author
A recovering criminal attorney with a Master’s in Tropical Conservation Biology, Judy writes from her home in Hawaii, where she is surrounded by husband, dog, cat, and assorted geckos. If she’s not tapping away at her computer, she hopes she’s in her snorkel fins.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to my husband Paul for the patience, love, support, and pancakes (pasta or otherwise) that keep me going. My resilient mom Sandy has always believed in me, no matter what, and probably still has my first marker-rendered books in a drawer somewhere. Thanks to mom-in-law Gloria as well, and her not-so-subtle nudges of support (Judy, there’s someone I want you to meet).
I spent a chunk of time working on death row appeals, so this book draws on my exposure to that world. If I had stayed, I’d be very unhealthy and quite likely insane. Some amazing people have dedicated their own lives and sanity to it, several of whom I’ve been lucky enough to get to know. Thanks to them for keeping up the good fight, and for allowing me to be a part of it for a while. Thanks also to my guys, for letting me go.
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