Not a Sparrow Falls

by Linda Nichols

  She turned to the last page, the nail in the coffin, so to speak. Another dispatch log, this time from the Nelson County sheriff. Officers were sent to the location of the possible methamphetamine lab at 4:45 p.m.

  Sondra set down the file. There was no getting around it. The search was illegitimate. Anonymous tips required corroboration, and theirs—the drug paraphernalia found in the truck—had come after the fact. Twenty-four minutes too late.

  She turned to the last page, the judgment the Virginia Court of Appeals had handed down. They’d granted Jonah Porter a new trial, remanded the matter back to the Nelson County Circuit Court. She should feel triumphant. Why so much anguish over a victory? she wondered again.

  She heard footsteps, and Thomas Dinwiddie sailed into the room, derailing her thoughts. It was just as well. She greeted him. They shook hands, and he set his briefcase on the table and popped it open. He glanced at the judgment she’d been reading, and she felt slightly embarrassed, as if she’d been caught gloating. He didn’t seem offended, though. In fact, he gave her an ironic smile.

  “Democracy in action. Gives you a warm, happy feeling, doesn’t it?”

  She glanced at him sharply. His face was benign, apparently used to the yawning gap between justice and verdict. She shrugged, too ambivalent about what she’d done to defend it. “That’s the system,” she said. “Everyone deserves representation.”

  “Yeah. God bless America.”

  Sondra was thinking what to say next. He spared her the trouble, looked quickly through the folder in his hand, then turned clear blue eyes back to hers. “I don’t see the point of going to trial again on the original charges. I’ll deal down to possession instead of distribution. With credit for time served he can be back in Butcher Holler as soon as he pleads.”

  “I’m surprised you’re caving in so completely,” she protested, aware she was arguing against her own client.

  The prosecutor shrugged. “You won this round.”

  Sondra nodded, shook hands again, and left. She had little doubt Jonah Porter would take the plea. And be out in a matter of days. She walked to her car and felt very weary, in her spirit as well as her body. She had only one desire—to be done with this matter, never to have to lay eyes on Jonah Porter again. Or anyone like him, she realized.

  Thirty

  Jonah watched the bare-limbed Virginia winter flash by the window of the Department of Corrections bus as it jounced and bumped its way from the prison to the Nelson County jail. The woods were stark, the underbrush tangled and matted with dead leaves. He could see someone’s deer stand. They passed an apple orchard that would be covered in blossoms before long.

  He thought about his great-uncle Joshua. He had roamed and ranged over every blessed inch of Nelson County and could tell you where every beaver dam, turtle egg, and rabbit hole was. He had known everything there was to know about planting and growing and harvesting. He had kept bees and made honey—sweet and clear and pure. He had even raised peafowl for a while. Jonah closed his eyes, and there were his uncle’s hands, thick and callused. He wondered what his uncle would say if he could see him now. He opened his eyes and and gazed out the window again, not really wanting an answer to that question.

  The ride was over too soon. He stood, ducking his six-foot-four frame to meet the ceiling of the van, hobbling along as fast as his leg shackles would allow. He followed the guard into the jail and made his mind a blank while they processed him and took him to his cell. Only when he was alone inside it did he come back into focus, and even then he wished he sould stay in that other place. He felt like something was drumming and working itself up inside him. He tried to ignore it. He looked around him.

  Prison and jail cells were all the same. Didn’t make any difference if you were in North Carolina or Virginia. Those were the only two states whose hospitality he’d sampled, but he imagined a jail cell in Seattle, Washington, would look about the same as this one: concrete floor, stainless steel toilet, cot, no pillow.

  It had started raining outside. A storm had come up while they were doing their paperwork. He couldn’t hear it through the double-paned, reinforced windows, but if he positioned his face just right and stood on tiptoe, he could see it through the thin slits of Plexiglas. He used to like the rain, but now it only made him nervous. Itchy and uncomfortable in his skin.

  He stopped watching and began to pace around the cell. The first day he and Mary Bridget had run off, it had been raining. Hard, gully-washing rain. He had driven through the white sheets that pounded the windshield of his old truck, and she’d slept, her head in the crook between his shoulder and neck. His arm had gone to sleep, but he’d never even thought about waking her up.

  He stopped pacing abruptly and lay down on the cot, stared at the same sort of white pockmarked insulated ceiling he’d seen a hundred thousand times. He felt a surge of anger. Now that freedom was in sight, it couldn’t come soon enough. He couldn’t wait any longer. A day was too long. An hour was too long. He needed things right now.

  Here in the county jail he couldn’t get anything. None of the little tidbits the old fellows smuggled out of the infirmary. Nothing at all to take the edge off.

  He clenched his jaw and told himself to take ahold. There wasn’t any other way. To get out he had to plead guilty in court tomorrow, and to do that he had to be transferred here. He would just have to stand it until he could get out and get what he needed. He made himself think about something else. He went over the things he was going to do when he got out, who he would call on, and in what order. How he would track her down. He lay there and stared at the ceiling of his cell until lights out, counting the ceiling tiles and the hours till his release.

  ****

  Sondra turned toward the door of the holding area. Here came her client, looking like a hardscrabble farmer in the Salvation Army suit and shirt she’d bought with her own money. He hadn’t thanked her. Not that she’d expected him to. She wondered again why she bothered with him and all the others like him. It was a rhetorical question. The answer had everything to do with who she was and nothing to do with them. The guard led him to the counsel table, and Jonah Porter sat down beside her, silent and stoic. His dark hair was too long but combed back neatly. His high forehead bespoke intelligence, and she had to admit he was bright. One conversation with him had revealed that. There might be a few fried spots from his steady diet of meth, but so far she hadn’t seen them. Still, something about him gave her the creeps. His eyes were dark empty caverns. You could peer inside, and instead of seeing his soul, there were only miles and miles of nothing. He was completely without natural affections, as far as she could see. Without emotion of any kind. His affect was paper flat, as if everything had stopped mattering to him a long time ago. As if he would—literally—just as soon kill you as look at you. She suppressed a chill. And this was the man whose release she’d obtained.

  The judge entered. They rose. She wondered if it was too late to rescind their plea agreement. Even bringing up the matter would be outrageously unethical, she reproved herself. The judge called the court to order before she could pursue her thoughts any further. Mr. Porter stood when his name was called, pleaded guilty to the charges they’d agreed on. She said her bit, Dinwiddie said his, and then it was over.

  Porter gave her another look from those eyes and walked away without a word to her. She watched his receding back and resisted the urge to cross herself.

  Dinwiddie tapped on her table, a cheery little salute.

  “I’ll get him next time,” he said, reading her mind, or perhaps just her guilt-twisted face. “And trust me, there will be a next time.” He smiled. No hard feelings.

  “I know.” She felt the weariness again, and along with it a sense of shame.

  Thomas Dinwiddie gave her a snappy nod, then sauntered off, whistling softly.

  “Wait,” she called after him, feeling as if he were the last lifeboat pushing off from the sinking Titanic.

  He turned, eyebrow rai
sed. She shoved the handful of papers into her briefcase, snapped it shut, and then trotted to catch up to him.

  “I was just wondering …”

  He waited, politely expectant.

  “Are there any openings in your office?”

  ****

  Jonah walked from the jail into downtown Lovingston. He could try to thumb a ride out to Woodbine, but nobody would pick him up. He probably had prison written all over him. Besides, there wasn’t any point in it. There was nobody for him there, nothing he cared about, and going home wasn’t on his list of things to do. He walked along the highway, turning back toward the mountains every so often. There they were, the misty blue hills, their tops covered with a low-hanging bank of clouds today. He walked, then turned and looked, then walked some more.

  He passed the school, the Baptist church, the grocery store, the furniture store, the farm supply, then cut across the parking lot of that old gas station Ted Willis sold heating oil out of and went behind the building to the back entrance of the bowling alley. Just like he’d thought. The same bunch was there. More or less. There were a few new faces, and some of the old ones gone, probably enjoying a little of the state’s hospitality, same as he’d been. But he recognized a few, one by name, and he jerked his head in greeting.

  “I thought you was gone,” Bobby Lee Wilcox said, returning the nod and flicking an ash off his cigarette with his thumb. “I heard you and Heslop was doing some time.”

  “My time’s done,” Jonah answered, without going into the details.

  Bobby Lee nodded and took another draw of his Colt 45.

  Jonah passed him by and went inside. He blinked a time or two until his eyes adjusted to the dark. There was no one he knew in here. He went to the bar, bought a pack of cigarettes, and ordered himself a beer. Another. Drank quickly, listening to the music thumping and the clatter of the balls and pins. When he’d finished, he went into the tiny bathroom, latched the door, and counted what was left of his release money. Eighteen dollars and some change. Not enough to buy anything. He needed to get some clothes. He needed to find Mary Bridget and get his money back. But first he needed to take the edge off. He went back to the bar and ordered a third beer. By the time it was on its way down, he was feeling a little better. He took it back outside. Bobby Lee was still holding up the wall.

  “I need some ice,” he said. Bobby Wilcox wasn’t his first choice, but there didn’t seem to be many others.

  Bobby rubbed a hand over his pocked face and shook his head. “Ain’t got none.”

  Jonah waited. There was more coming.

  “It’s hard to come by nowadays. They been cracking down.”

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  Bobby Lee didn’t get the joke. “Once upon a time I’d of sent people to you,” he said. “Why don’t you just cook you up some?”

  Jonah didn’t bother to answer. He had no equipment, no makings, and no money to buy what he needed. Thanks to her.

  “Try Tim McPhee,” Bobby suggested. “He had some a while back.”

  Jonah tossed his bottle onto the pavement. It broke with a satisfying pop. He’d decided what he’d do. There were still another few hours before the shift was over at the furniture factory. Time enough to pop a stereo or two. That would get him enough to buy his equipment, and then he’d be back in business. He cut through the woods and headed toward the factory parking lot.

  Thirty-One

  Sondra rubbed her temples and resisted the urge to lay her head on the table and weep.

  “How come it is Jonah gets out and I don’t?” her client repeated, his eyebrows puckered, his lip poked out in a massive pout.

  God had a sense of humor. Just as soon as she’d dispatched the case of Jonah Porter, one of the other attorneys on the rotation for assigned counsel had had a heart attack, and his caseload had been divided up among the rest of them. She’d been assigned that of Porter’s partner in crime, one Dwayne Junius Heslop. Compared to Mr. Heslop, Porter had been Stephen Hawking. She took a deep breath and began again.

  “Mr. Porter was awarded a new trial because he was arrested as a result of an illegal search. The prosecutor didn’t think he had enough evidence to convict in a second trial and released him with credit for time served. You, however, were not arrested during the raid that ensued from the anonymous tip. You were picked up in downtown Charlottesville with methamphetamine on your person, which you were attempting to sell to an undercover police officer. Just because the two events happened on the same day doesn’t mean your situation is the same as his.”

  Sondra watched Dwayne Heslop strain to put two with two and arrive at four and wondered if it was too late to go to nursing school.

  “It ain’t fair, him getting out and I don’t.” Dwayne Heslop’s massive face collapsed into a sullen pile. “We was all in it together. Now he gets out, and I’m still in, and them others ain’t got in no trouble at all. It just ain’t fair.”

  “Well, sometimes life isn’t fair, Mr. Heslop.” Sondra gathered up her things. She felt a stab of guilt. She was supposed to represent her clients aggressively, and not just the ones whose IQ was larger than their shoe size. She had a thought, a dim possibility, but she felt obligated to mention it. “Who are these others?”

  Heslop raised his huge shaggy head. “They was a couple of fellas who sold the stuff for us, and Jonah’s gal bought the makings for the candy. It just ain’t fair all of them and Jonah getting clean away and me still sitting here for another six months.”

  Sondra sighed and turned back to her client. “If you’d give names and details, I could go to the commonwealth attorney and see if he’d be willing to cut you a deal.”

  Heslop’s dull eyes glinted with a sly light as he considered. “I ain’t no squealer,” he said, as if she’d accused him. “But it just ain’t fair they get off and me still sitting here.”

  She waited, hoping he would talk, and feeling a slight twinge of guilt at her motive. She’d been looking for an excuse to call Tom Dinwiddie to see if he’d decided whether or not to hire an assistant.

  “Yeah, all right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

  She sat back down and took out her pad, uncapped her pen.

  “The two fellas was Eldon Hightower and Smartie Henderson. Now, Smartie’s already doing time in North Carolina for a job over in Wautauga County. But Eldon’s around somewhere. I could probably find him.”

  Lord, give me patience, Sondra prayed silently. “And the woman?”

  “Her name’s Mary.”

  Sondra lifted her eyes and pen, waiting for him to finish. “Her last name?” she prompted.

  “Hold on. I’m thinking.” His face crumpled in concentration, the massive head shook. “Started with a W. Winston? Worthington?” He slumped. Sondra put the cap back on the pen.

  “Washburn!” He almost shouted in triumph. “Gal’s name is Mary Bridget Washburn.”

  Sondra nodded and made a few notes as he filled in the details. This Mary Bridget Washburn had apparently made a break for it the day Mr. Porter had been arrested. According to Mr. Heslop, she’d run off with the money. That made sense. And she’d been the anonymous informant, no doubt.

  Sondra frowned, remembering that she’d shown Mr. Porter a copy of the 9–1-1 transcript. Suddenly the set of his jaw and the glint of his eye when he’d read it took on an ominous meaning.

  “I’ll get back to you,” she said. She stood, took her leave of Mr. Heslop, and headed straight back to her office and placed a call to Tom Dinwiddie. She didn’t even ask about the job, just told him about Mary Bridget Washburn and her concerns. She finally calmed down when he promised her he’d take care of it.

  The sooner they issued a warrant for the arrest of Ms. Washburn, the better she’d feel. Not because Sondra had any burning desire to bring her to justice. It was just that she would rest easier when this young woman was safely locked in jail. She recalled Jonah Porter’s dead eyes, and suddenly the discovery of Mary Bridget Washburn lying in a ditch som
ewhere with her throat cut didn’t seem like much of a stretch for the imagination.

  ****

  Jonah went back to the apartment and knocked, taking care not to burn his knuckles on the numbers, for they were white hot, just like the mat on the concrete step in front of him.

  Somebody was home this time. He could hear the television. Nobody’d been home when he’d come before, so he’d gone and gotten himself fixed up again. But now he was back, and pretty soon he’d know what he’d come to find out. He rubbed a hand across his jaw and thought again about what she’d done. She’d run off and left him. Stolen things from him. She didn’t care a thing about him, and as it all came back, it was like something sharp plunging into his soft parts.

  He hated her.

  He let the hate take hold inside him and fill up the hurt place. It was a hard, cold, gunmetal gray hate, and it felt good to him. It helped him. It felt like armor, like one of those concrete and steel bunkers inside his chest. Yes, that’s exactly what it was like. It was just exactly like one of those inside him.

  He knocked on the door again. A woman opened it. She was scrawny, skinny, with earrings and tattoos. She was carrying a baby. She stared at him, and Jonah tried to remember the name of the fellow he’d come to see.

  “You want Eric?”

  He nodded. That was it.

  “Just a minute.” She shut the door on him.

  Jonah lit a cigarette while he waited. A kid came out of the apartment next door. He bounced one of those big red rubber balls. Probably stole it from school. He cast a glance toward Jonah, then stopped bouncing and went back inside. Who was he? Who was he going to call? Jonah thought about going after him, but before he could decide, the door opened again. It was the redheaded fellow. Jonah had forgotten his name again, but he remembered what he wanted.