A Judgment of Whispers

by Sallie Bissell

  “Hey, Zack,” she said, starting the car as he grew bored with his toys. “How about we drive over to Sarge’s Flea Market? I hear they’ve got a lot of videotapes there.”

  “I want to go to Salola Street.”

  “But that’ll be mostly clothes and furniture, Zack. Those people are moving out. Sarge’s has a whole section for videotapes.”

  “We went to Sarge’s last week,” he replied. “I want to go to Salola Street.”

  “But if you want videos, Sarge’s might … ”

  “Salola Street, Mama!” he cried. “I want to see our old house.”

  “They tore our old house down, Zack. It’s not there anymore.”

  “But I want to see where it was. Adam might be there.”

  “Adam won’t be there, Zack. Adam lives far away.” Zack’s one and only friend Adam Shaw had been sent away years ago, just after they found Teresa’s body. Now he was 39, some kind of special photographer working in New York. His parents, though, had remained on Salola Street, resolute in their stand against police harassment, steadfast in their hatred of her and Zack.

  “I-want-to-go-to-Salola-Street!” With every word he hit the side of the door with his fist. Next he might turn his rage on the window, or worse, her right arm.

  “Okay, Zack.” She caved in, as usual. “If you can calm down, we can go.”

  He sat back in the seat, his hands limp in his lap. He sat like that for a few minutes, then he said, “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m calm now.”

  Grace backed out of the parking spot, dreading the prospect of seeing either Leslie Shaw or Janet Russell. Leslie, she’d heard, had become such a bad alcoholic that Richard had sold her car. And Janet had become some sort of priestess in a cult that believed everything from caterpillars to coconuts emitted vibes that controlled the destiny of the world. At least I haven’t gone that crazy, she told herself, trying to pluck up her courage. At least not yet.

  They left McDonald’s and drove to the neighborhood where Zack had grown up. A trendy new green development was going up, and most of the old ranch houses had been razed to make way for the new construction. To Grace’s dismay, tables of yard sale merchandise stretched across the front lawns of the Shaws and the Russells—the two homes she wanted most to avoid. Nonetheless, she pulled to the shoulder of the road a little way down the street and reminded her son of his manners.

  “I know how excited you get, Zack. But you can’t push people out of the way. And remember to say excuse me if you bump into anybody.”

  “Excuse me,” Zack repeated, fumbling with the latch of his seat belt. “Excuse me, excuse me.”

  He bounded out the door before she got the car parked, running to Adam Shaw’s house as fast as he could. She hurried after him, thinking this was like letting a big, rambunctious dog run loose. Like most dogs, Zack was not truly mean or vicious. He just lived in his own world, obeying urges that often defied his control.

  She watched him as he perused the tables, searching for VCR tapes. In his excitement he brushed against one little girl, sending her armload of computer games to the ground. “Excuse me,” Grace heard him say, as if on cue. “Excuse me.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” the girl’s mother cried. “You almost knocked her down!”

  But Zack did not help the girl pick up what she’d dropped; Zack just ran on to the next table. Grace hurried up to the woman. “I’m so sorry,” she said, kneeling to retrieve the games. “He didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Is he with you?” The woman’s upper lip curled in disgust.

  “He’s my son,” explained Grace, handing the games back to the child. “He’s autistic.”

  “Well, he needs to be more careful.” The woman turned to her daughter. “Are you alright, Jenna?”

  “I think so,” the little girl whined, turning injured eyes on Grace.

  “Come on.” The mother grabbed her hand. “Let’s just pay for these and get out of here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grace called as the woman strode off, her daughter following like a wounded duck. She looked around for Zack. He was now several tables away, rummaging through a laundry basket of videotapes. As much as he liked cartoons and exercise videos led by bikini-clad women, what he prized most were family videos—total strangers toasting the bride at weddings or belly-flopping into swimming pools at back yard cook-outs. He would watch them for hours, sometimes rewinding the same scene over and over. That’s not uncommon for autistic people, his therapist once told her. We think it’s how they figure out behavioral cues. You know, how people react to each other.

  Though Grace found it unsettling and slightly creepy, Zack took endless pleasure in the antics of strangers. Never did he talk about the people, or express any desire to meet them. He just dissected little slices of their lives, over and over again. She watched as he rifled through the basket, discerning as an oenophile seeking an aged bottle of port.

  While Zack shopped the videos, she stepped back to look at what was left of her old neighborhood. In the distance she could see the top of the Spanish Oak, still standing majestically behind the Russell house. After Teresa had turned up dead beneath it, Leslie and Richard Shaw had led a drive to have the tree cut down. “It holds too many horrible memories,” they said. “People will say it’s haunted. It will lower our property values.” But the Cherokees had risen up in protest. Though it was no longer on tribal land, they called the tree Undli Adaya, or Big Brother Tree, and regarded it as holy. Ultimately it had been spared, much to the delight of the new developers, who were now using its stylized silhouette as their logo.

  Grace turned away from the tree to watch Zack as he finished looking through the one basket of VCR tapes and began making his way through the other merchandise strewn along the tables. She

  followed him at a distance. His initial excitement had cooled, making his movements slower and his passage through the crowd less disruptive. Still, she noticed that once people realized they were standing beside a forty-two-year-old man ogling exercise videos, they quickly moved away.

  What’s going to happen to you, Zack? she wondered, rubbing her arms against a sudden chill. She was almost sixty, an adjunct art professor living on a small salary and child support from her ex-husband. Though she made enough to keep them afloat now, what would happen to them when she retired? What would happen to Zack when she grew too old to drive him to these stupid yard sales? Or when in a rage, he might strike out and break her arm or hip?

  Don’t think about that now, she told herself. Today’s a good day. He’s happy. He’s trying. Just be grateful for that.

  She watched him, hoping some new item might catch his eye and make him forget all about the Shaws, but as soon as he crossed the Russells’s driveway, he headed straight for their house. They had done considerable remodeling—turning their side porch into a sunroom and paving a circular drive across their front yard. What had not changed was the look that Leslie Shaw was aiming at Zack. Though her hair was now gray and she’d gone from svelte to dumpy, the hatred in her gaze glowed like an ember. Grace decided she’d better hurry and get between the two of them. Richard and Leslie Shaw had always blamed Zack for Teresa’s death. It was clear that time had not altered that opinion.

  “Hi, Ms. Shaw.” Shy about speaking to people, Zack bobbed on the balls of his feet, his eyes downcast. “Is Adam here?”

  “No.” Leslie’s reply was final.

  Zack stared at her as if he’d been struck mute.

  “Hello, Leslie.” Grace came up and stood beside her son, the fruity smell of alcohol wafting across Leslie’s table. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine.” Leslie’s mouth was a pinched slash across her face.

  “Zack wondered if Adam might be here.”

  “Adam lives in New York.” Leslie spoke as if her words were coins that she hated to part with. She glared at Zack, who’d stooped to rumma
ge through another basket full of old VHS tapes, then turned to Grace. “You got some nerve, bringing him over here.”

  “To a yard sale?”

  “To this yard sale,” said Leslie. “I just hope Richard doesn’t catch you.”

  “For God’s sake, Leslie. He’s just looking at your old tapes.”

  “He cost me my son.” Leslie’s dark eyes narrowed.

  “That was your call. All the other boys stayed here.”

  “And look at them—freaks and misfits.” She pointed at Zack. “And all because of him!”

  Her face burning, Grace walked over to Zack. “Come on, honey. We need to get out of here.”

  “No!” he cried. “I want to buy some of these!”

  “Pick two, Zack,” said Grace, cursing herself for bringing him here in the first place. “You can’t buy the whole box.”

  “I don’t know,” he started to flip through them. “I have to look at them.”

  “Leave now and I’ll sell you the whole box,” said Leslie.

  “The whole thing?” Zack frowned, as if she were making fun of him.

  “How much money have you got?”

  Zack stood up and pulled bills from his pocket. “Fifteen dollars.”

  “Fifteen dollars it is, then,” said Leslie, grabbing the money from his hand. “Now take them and get out of here.”

  “Zack, that’s all your lawn-mowing money,” said Grace.

  “I don’t care.” He grinned, easily lifting the heavy box. “I can make more money. I might never get another box like this!”

  Five

  “You get a new dog?” Irving Stubbs strolled into Jack Wilkins’s carport, keeping well away from a galvanized tub that held a smelly wet dog lathered in shampoo.

  “I did.” Jack washed behind the dog’s ears. Though he’d wanted to open his Teresa Ewing files as soon as the cops turned him loose, he knew Jan would kill him if he brought a dog this filthy into the house. So he’d stopped on the way home and bought a new collar and leash, plus a bag of dog food.

  “You tell Jan about this?” asked Irving.

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you think she’ll say?”

  “She won’t mind.” Jack scrubbed some kind of tar off the animal’s chest. “As long as he doesn’t bite the cat.”

  Irving asked, “Where’d you get him?”

  “Over on Salola Street. A cop was about to take him to the pound.”

  “What were you doing over on Salola?”

  “Went to a yard sale,” Jack lied, scrubbing the dog harder.

  “You sure you weren’t investigating Teresa Ewing?”

  Irving’s question took Jack by surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “We were talking about it the other day, on the golf course.” Irving looked at him as if he’d suddenly come down with Alzheimer’s disease. “Then again this morning at the Waffle House.”

  Jack stopped his dog washing. This morning seemed weeks ago, but of course bean-counter Irving would remember everything. “No, I went over there to see if anybody was selling a pair of decent hedge clippers.”

  Irving kept digging. “But why was a cop over there?”

  “He had a 10-91,” Jack explained. “A stray dog call. He was taking this guy here to the pound. I felt sorry for him, so I brought him home with me.”

  “So no news on Teresa Ewing?”

  “Teresa Ewing’s still a real cold case, Irving.” The lie came with amazing ease, but he didn’t care. Irving gossiped like one of his hens. If Jack told him about those underpants, everybody in the county would be talking about it tomorrow. He was still cop enough to know to keep his mouth shut.

  For a long moment, Irving just stood and watched him wash the dog, his accountant brain running the numbers. Finally he said, “Want to play golf tomorrow? Get up a foursome with Norman and Hank?”

  Jack shook his head. What he really wanted to do was get the dog dry and go back to the files in his den. “Thanks, but I’ve got some chores to do. Maybe next week.”

  “Suit yourself.” Irving started down the driveway toward his own house, then stopped. “Hey, what’s your dog’s name?” he called.

  Jack looked at the dog, whose coat was turning out to be a rich chestnut brown instead of a dirty, muddy gray. “Lucky,” he said. “I’m going to call him Lucky.”

  Jerry Cochran sighed as he looked at the cold case files spread across his desk. However addled old Jack Wilkins might be, he knew the Teresa Ewing case dead on. On February 13, 1989, at approximately 5:24 p.m., ten-year-old Teresa Ewing’s mother sent her across the street to deliver a tuna casserole to Melanie Sharp, a neighbor who’d recently had a baby. At 7:16 p.m. a missing person call came into dispatch. On March 8, after a manhunt that included cadaver dogs, wildly varying readings from psychics, and sightings that ranged from California to Canada, John Ferguson was out for a jog and found the child’s body not a hundred yards from her house.

  Cochran shook his head, flipping through the old black-and-white police shots, feeling as if he were turning the pages of an old school yearbook. Sheriff Stump Logan, with sideburns and a white cowboy hat, stood arms akimbo as Jack Wilkins and an amazingly skinny Buck Whaley pulled the body from beneath the tree. Though Logan had put it out to the press that the little girl looked more asleep than dead, the photos showed a grimmer image. Her skull had been fractured, her hair matted with dried blood. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and a green nylon jacket. Her clothes bore minimal traces of red clay soil, and her body did not look like it had been decomposing for almost a month.

  “Underpants?” Cochran looked at the evidence inventory. She’d been found wearing unzipped jeans, but no underpants. He stared at a school picture of the girl someone had clipped to the file. She was a gorgeous child—dark hair framed a pale face with startling blue eyes. Her features were small, her mouth a perfect little bow that turned up on the ends, somehow promising more than it truly revealed. She would have been trouble, Cochran thought. Had this girl lived, a long string of broken hearts would have followed behind her.

  He flipped to the autopsy report. Death was due to blunt force trauma to the anterior left skull. Almost instantaneous, the coroner, a Dr. A.W. Core, had penciled in the margin of the report. The girl had not been raped, either vaginally or anally, and they found no other wounds on her body. Her stomach contents revealed a chocolate bar. Cochran looked to see what DNA panels they’d gathered, but he found only two pages with very sparse data. Then he remembered: criminal DNA sampling hadn’t even started until ’87, and that was in the big, well-funded police departments. In 1989 Stump Logan was still working out of a jail heated with a Franklin stove.

  “So much for forensics,” he whispered. He closed the autopsy report and opened the thick binder of case notes. Wilkins and Whaley and three SBI agents had seemingly interviewed everyone in the county. By all accounts, Teresa Ewing was a precocious child who dressed as a gypsy every Halloween and took acting classes at the Flat Rock Playhouse. Father Bob sold insurance and mother Corinne worked two mornings a week at the county nursing home. Until the night Teresa disappeared, the police had never received a call from

  the Ewing home.

  Cochran read through pages of interviews with dozens of possible suspects. With the sex offender registry seven years in the future, they ranged from the janitor at Teresa’s school, to a funny old bachelor who sat on his porch, giving candy to passing children, to the Ewings themselves. The prime suspects ultimately evolved into six people—the four neighborhood boys (Zack Collier, Devin McConnell, Lawrence Russell, and Adam Shaw), a Cherokee ex-con named Two Toes McCoy, and Arthur Hayes, a college sophomore by day and Peeping Tom by night. Logan and Whaley had actually gotten the Collier boy to confess to the crime, but his lawyer had his confession thrown out, on grounds that the kid was mentally incompetent. After that, they didn’t have e
nough evidence to arrest anyone else. Still, Jack Wilkins hadn’t given up. His notes indicated that he’d worked the Teresa Ewing case until the day he retired.

  “The only case he didn’t clear,” said Cochran, turning to Wilkins’s employment record. He earned a BS from the University of Minnesota, then a stint with the 82nd Airborne brought him to North Carolina. Logan hired him in ’79; he retired in 2004. With several commendations, his record indicated that he was a smart cop—probably smarter than either Logan or Whaley. So why did he drive in all the way from Azalea Road to wander around that old tree? To bury a pair of fake underpants and get the only case he couldn’t clear ginned up again?

  “Possibly,” said Cochran. But a lot of other scenarios were possible too. Practically everybody involved in the construction of Lone Oak Development had tromped around that tree—from architects to site planners to backhoe drivers. Any of them could have heard about the murder and buried those underpants as a prank. And the yard sale was a factor too. Yard sales started at daybreak. Who knows how many shoppers could have gone up there before Saunooke arrived.

  He uncapped a pen and started an outline on a yellow legal pad. On the first line he wrote Jack Wilkins; on the second line Sick joke. On the third line he scribbled the thing he dreaded most: Trophy/warning.

  That would be the worst. That would mean that whoever killed Teresa Ewing was still alive, still in town, and still taunting the police. Maybe even planning to abduct another child.

  He thought of his own daughter, Chloe—eleven months old, red-haired like her mother, an angel he’d loved at first squawk. The idea of some stranger touching her made him sick to his stomach, and his first inclination was to bring all the old suspects in and let Whaley grill them until they screamed. But he could not do that. He had to tread carefully. Pisgah County had once gone on a witch hunt; Cochran was not going to let that happen again. He would not officially re-open the Teresa Ewing case until he found out more about those underpants.