Everybody Called Her a Saint

by Cecil Murphey

  “But whoever killed her had to have thought far enough in advance to take a knife—or whatever it was—to the landing site.”

  “I don’t think we want to rule out Pat Borders.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Burton smiled, caught himself, and did one of those polite coughs people do to cover up emotions.

  Just then Heather tapped on the door, opened it, and came inside. She sat down. Before either of us had a chance to ask her a question, she said, “Yes, I was a patient of Twila’s. Yes, I have a lot of problems—and I refuse to discuss them with you.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, although it wasn’t really all right. “But did you know she used you as a case study?” I didn’t know if that was true, but the others had all been subjects of her book.

  “Of course I knew—”

  “And you signed a waiver?”

  “Not at first,” she said.

  “Because?”

  “She made me look, well, like a—a tart.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “That’s insulting,” she said. “Anyway, after she changed a couple more of the details, I signed it.”

  “Earlier you told me that you saw two people walking away—”

  “Sure, and that’s all I know.” She said it again. She was very straightforward. I didn’t like her attitude, but I had no reason to doubt anything she said.

  Burton asked a number of questions, and she guardedly answered them. She said she liked Twila and that she had been a client for six or seven months. “She has helped me like myself so much more.” She said she had felt like damaged goods when she started therapy, but Twila had helped raise her self-esteem. “She is—uh, she was so wonderful. She helped me so much. I could never thank her enough for all she did for me.”

  Those words were genuine. I could read Burton’s face on that one and knew he agreed.

  We learned nothing from her or from Mickey Brewer, who followed. Thomas Tomlinson came after him. Both men had been patients. Brewer had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He had been an employee of an American company selling a brand of cola called Jolt in East Africa. A group of rebels had captured him and held him for ransom. When the company didn’t immediately pay, his captors beat him and sent pictures of his bruised body to the company. He had been beaten five different times before they finally paid the ransom. When he returned, he threatened to sue the company, but they gave him a generous settlement. Months later the first symptoms of PTSD showed up. He reported acute anxiety. He tightened up, went into a panic, or began to perspire profusely whenever he heard loud noises. During heavy thunderstorms, he locked himself in a bathroom or closet—any small space that was dark. The slightest noise at night awakened him, and night sweats were so bad that he often had to change the bedding.

  He explained—and we seemed to have to pull out every detail—that Twila had helped him to confront his memories. She had used a technique she called childhood regression, as well as some medication (of which he didn’t recall the name).

  “Twila helped. She really did. It took a long time—nearly four years—but now I sleep all through the night, and I don’t take any medication.” He said he had a dozen Xanax in his room. He had not taken any so far.

  When we asked him about the Zodiac and the walk on the island, he could add no information. He said he remembered talking with Shirley Brackett. Beyond that, he couldn’t add anything.

  Thomas Tomlinson was next. Before we asked, he told us, “You might as well know, I went to her because I had been arrested for DUI five times.” He quickly added, “That was during my grad school days—before I began to teach.” The only way he could get his license back was to go to a two-day DUI course. Afterward he also voluntarily went to see Twila. “I was determined to beat this.”

  She put him on Anabuse at first, but it made him sick even when he wasn’t drinking. Once she prescribed Naltrexone—which was quite new at the time—it had done the trick for him.

  He said his father had been an alcoholic, and so had his grandfather. He went on to say that Twila had helped him realize that he was one of those individuals who couldn’t have a single drink of alcohol. “I tried cutting back to one drink, but that only started me. I couldn’t stop drinking for at least two days and sometimes a full week.”

  Both of us listened to him. I was used to hearing such stories. That’s how I make my living, but I wondered about Burton. He never showed any boredom or made any attempt to rush people. Yes, he would have made an excellent therapist.

  “And did you sign a waiver so she could use your story?” I asked.

  “Of course. I have no problem with that,” Thomas said. “She wrote my case study objectively and correctly.”

  After that we interviewed Sue Downs. She was in her mid-thirties and had dull-looking ash-blond hair and brown eyes. If it hadn’t been for her sloppy posture, she could have looked attractive. Of course, she’d have to do more than let her short hair hang straight and buy something other than those amorphous black dresses and black sweaters she favored.

  She had also been a patient. She’d gone through a lengthy postpartum depression. Her baby had lived only four hours. She struggled with guilt. “I kept asking if God was punishing me for something I had done.”

  She admitted that she had “done sinful things” before her marriage, and she was sure that God was showing her she couldn’t get away with them. Twila assured her that she wasn’t being punished.

  “In fact, Twila taught me about a God of love—something I hadn’t really understood before. Until then I believed that God was always watching the bad things I did so he could punish me.”

  She spoke with such tenderness and with deep gratitude for Twila, it seemed obvious to both of us that she wasn’t the kind who would have hurt anyone.

  As we expected, she told us that she was one of the case studies. Burton nodded and winked at me. He had already figured that out. And yes, she had signed a statement that gave Twila complete freedom to do whatever she wanted with the case study.

  “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for that wonderful, wonderful woman.”

  She was so effusive I studied her closely. Sometimes it’s the bit about overdoing the explanation. But she convinced us of her innocence with the last thing she said.

  Twenty-Six

  “I wanted to get pictures of me with a lot of penguins. Mark—that’s my husband—adores studying pictures, and he makes beautiful albums for me.” Sue’s husband worked for the postal service and had been unable to get his vacation changed to go with her. “I don’t think he really wanted to come anyway.” She started telling about all the times she had begged him to travel, but he always said no. “But he’s nice in that he doesn’t mind my going without him.”

  “What about the pictures?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, the pictures. Sorry,” she said. “I have one of those 35mm cameras and I was having trouble getting the film threaded. It’s an old camera—belonged to my father and—”

  “And what about the camera?” I asked. I knew it would take an hour to get the information I wanted unless I kept intervening.

  “Oh yes, that. Well, that nice Laird Hege came to my rescue. He was in the other boat, but he stayed with me until it was time for his Zodiac to start loading. Just then Jeff walked up to where we were. He was so helpful. He stayed with me until we finished up the roll of film, and he put in a new roll for me. Wasn’t that nice of him? I can hardly wait to see the pictures. He took at least one of me standing next to a sea lion. Well, of course, I don’t mean next to one, but I was very quiet and stopped about five feet from the ugly old thing. He didn’t make a move while I stood there. It’s so funny to see them scoot across the ground when they want to go back to the sea and—”

  “Was Jeff with you the whole time?” I asked.

  She thought for a minute before she said, “No, actually, he wasn’t. He joined Laird and me. I hadn’t noticed him before because I
was busy trying to get the best photo angles. And I had to step very carefully to avoid all the guano. It’s so smelly and so—”

  “And so Jeff just walked up to you.”

  “Yes, and he was so nice. I teased him because he didn’t have on his life jacket—”

  “No one had them on, did they?” I asked. “We all left them at the landing site.”

  “That’s what I meant. But I had seen Jeff shortly after we got off. He had his on and started to walk away with somebody—I’m not sure who it was—and when he showed up later, without one, I teased him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jeff and I were classmates at North Clayton High School. Did you know that? I actually dated him twice, but he lost interest in me or something.”

  “About the teasing,” I said and hoped my voice sounded soft.

  “Oh, well, yes, that’s why I mentioned North Clayton. We had a principal named Jim Steele, who didn’t like Jeff. He was always calling him to tuck in his shirt or to tie his shoes or something.”

  “So?”

  “Oh yes, well, he didn’t have the life jacket on when he joined me, so I called out, ‘Did Mr. Steele catch you and make you go back to the Zodiac and leave your life jacket?’

  “He laughed and said something like, ‘No, I noticed it before anyone caught me.’ And then we laughed about old cue-ball Steele. He was bald, you see, and—”

  “Yes, I see,” I said. I looked at Burton and met his gaze. “How long were you and Laird together before Jeff came up?”

  “I really don’t know. It must have been ten minutes. No, probably more like fifteen. But I don’t know for sure. I know that by the time he came, the third Zodiac had started to load. Maybe someone else could be more precise about the time.”

  “Thanks, Sue,” Burton said.

  “I don’t know if I had anything helpful to add. Did I?”

  “Thanks,” I said, not wanting to give her a direct answer. “We know how much you cared about Twila. It’s nice to hear your experience. She was a wonderful woman.”

  “A saint,” Sue said. “An absolutely true saint of God.”

  I got up and gave her a quick hug and guided her out the door. “Would you ask Jeff Adams to come in?”

  Once Sue closed the door behind her, Burton said, “That was interesting.” I knew he entertained the same thoughts that ran through my mind.

  On a piece of paper I wrote Jeff’s name. It wasn’t that I needed to write it, but I wanted to keep notes. By the time we interviewed eleven people, I knew their stories would run together, and I wanted to keep them separate.

  I wrote that he had left the Zodiac with the life preserver. When Sue saw him—which would have been at least ten to fifteen minutes later—he wasn’t wearing the life jacket. I didn’t know how much time Twila spent out of sight with the killer, but I figured ten minutes certainly would have been enough.

  Burton said nothing, but I knew he had the same thought I had. Jeff had not been with Sue the whole time. He was no longer wearing his life jacket. That proved nothing, but it was the first significant thing we had learned.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jeff Adams came in next. He was one of the half dozen or so people on the cruise I didn’t know. Burton seemed to know him well and gave him an enthusiastic hug when he came into the room.

  Jeff was about medium height and what I would call hefty—not fat, but what people used to call stout. He wore tight jeans, which made his legs seem even more bowed. He wore a tight T-shirt with a wool shirt slung carelessly over his right shoulder. He had thin hair, pulled severely back and tied in a ponytail. I was surprised that he wore only a T-shirt, because I thought it was always a little cool on the ship and wore either a hoodie or a sweater.

  Jeff had tattoos on both arms. No words, only designs, but I didn’t know what they were. From the color of them, they looked as if they had been there a long time. He wore a small gold earring in his right ear.

  “I don’t think I’ve met you,” I said and extended my hand. “But I know who you are.”

  Jeff pumped my hand with such vigor, I felt as if I might not have circulation restored for an hour.

  “I know who you are,” he said. He had a wide, infectious grin. “I’ve seen your picture on Twila’s desk.”

  I had forgotten about the picture. We had climbed Stone Mountain together in September. Despite her bad leg, she went all the way up to the top with me—although she was a little slow. We saw someone she knew who had a digital camera. He snapped the picture of us together and emailed it to both of us the next day. Twila had her copy printed and put in a frame on her desk.

  “So you must have been one of Twila’s clients,” I said.

  “Oh, absolutely. I was with her nearly three years, but she changed my life. I’m a different man today—totally, totally new and born again by the blood of the Lamb and sanctified by the atoning work of the Messiah Jesus.” He had a preacher’s loud voice, and I sensed he was just about ready to launch into a sermon.

  “Are you a preacher?”

  “A lay preacher, ma’am. How did you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess.” Burton’s eyes said he would like to kick me, so I decided to behave.

  “Yes, ma’am, I preach at the county jail every Saturday night and conduct a prayer meeting every Thursday night at the DeKalb County—”

  “I see,” I said in my most noncommittal voice. “You and Burton seem to know each other. Tell me a little about yourself—I mean, other than your preaching tasks.”

  That may have been a mistake. A little turned out to be nearly half an hour of lurid detail about his criminal past. He also told me that he and Sue Downs had been in high school together. If he told us the truth, however, he had done more in those years than most criminals do in a lifetime. He described four cases of armed robbery and two tales of extortion, and in one of them he broke a man’s legs. He had tried to kill someone—shot her three times—but the woman lived. He also had served county jail time on minor charges. He explained that he was not in prison today only because the police had made an illegal search.

  “But that’s where the grace of God began to flow into my sin-filled life and utter despair and brought me into deep repentance and—”

  “What about Twila? How did she come into your life?”

  “That’s when she came into my life. She knew my sister, Ev Lewis, and at my sister’s urging came to see me just before they released me.” He told us (in what must have taken ten minutes) that Twila talked to him with a kind voice. Just before she left, she asked, “Jeff, don’t you want God’s peace? Aren’t you tired of being alone in this world? Don’t you want a friend who will love you no matter what you do?’

  Jeff went into vivid detail of the power of her words. “It wasn’t just her words, either, but the blessed and most holy magnitude of God’s loving Holy Spirit behind them.” It took him five minutes to tell his conversion story—and despite the redundancy and over-the-top language, it was a poignant tale.

  I’ll admit that once I got past his preacherly tones, his story fascinated me. He spoke with deep conviction, and the intensity of his eyes convinced me of his sincerity.

  When he paused, I said, “Jeff, did you kill Twila?”

  “Oh no, ma’am, I couldn’t do that. I am no longer capable of such degradation and violence.”

  That’s the short version. The real one would have taken a full page to tell. Everything about him said he spoke the truth.

  But I wondered. I had met people in my practice who had done really terrible things, but they were able to convince themselves they had not done anything wrong. I wondered if Jeff was one of them.

  Like the others, he had seen Twila’s written account of his life and had approved it. “The only thing I didn’t like was that she cut out a lot of the terrible things I did BC—before Christ.”

  “But you signed a permission form?”

  “Yes, and in fact, she used my real name. I insis
ted.” His chest seemed to puff out with pride.

  I pulled my portion of the manuscript and skimmed through the pages. His story was chapter eight. I showed it to him.

  “I’ll bet it’s the best of them.”

  “I’m sure it’s the most violent—”

  “Oh, that too.”

  Jeff Adams left shortly after that. I was weary with talking to people. We still had to talk to nearly half of them. “So far, do you have any gut reaction?” I asked Burton.

  “I want to keep my mind clear until we’ve interviewed them all.”

  “Good answer, Burton. But you do have some doubts already, don’t you?”

  “You know me too well.” He laughed and added, “But that’s all right. It works both ways, doesn’t it? And you’re wrong about Jeff.”

  “How did you know I had doubts?”

  “I read your mind,” he said. “No, that’s not true. I know you well enough that I felt you had doubts.”

  “How so?” That’s another good way to get an answer without saying anything.

  “I think he’s genuine.”

  “Because he preaches when he talks?”

  “No, I believe him because of his eyes. His eyes don’t lie.”

  He had me there. “Agreed,” I said.

  This time he laughed out loud. He was mentally tired from all the interrogation, and he laughed far too much for such a stupid comment. But I’ll take any kind of positive response to my smart mouth.

  “Someone has to be lying,” he said.

  “Or maybe . . . maybe we haven’t asked the right questions.” I have no idea why I said that. I mean, I didn’t know at that moment.

  Twenty-Eight

  Shirley Brackett came in next with her older brother, Frank. I felt as if I were the big, bad wolf preying on Little Red Riding Hood. Neither of them had married. Frank had been the janitor at the Methodist church for nearly forty years. Shirley was the senior librarian at the Riverdale library.

  Shirley spoke openly and candidly when we asked them anything—but Frank said nothing.