A Judgment of Whispers

by Sallie Bissell

  He started to gather up all the old photos. He’d just put the cold case file back in its box when he heard a knock on his door. Wondering if Whaley had found something, he said, “Yeah? Come in!”

  The door opened. His wife, Ginger, stood there in a yoga outfit, holding Chloe on one hip. “Ready for a surprise?”

  Cochran loved surprises from Ginger. Sometimes she brought apple strudel, sometimes fresh coffee, sometimes, in the privacy of their bedroom, treats of a different nature. He closed the case file. “Bring it on.”

  “Get the camera on your cell phone ready.”

  Cochran reached for his phone. “Ready.”

  “Okay. Hit record!”

  Cochran turned to the open doorway. Ginger put Chloe down and pointed her at Cochran, saying, “Go on, honey. Go see Daddy!”

  As Cochran filmed, the chubby little red-headed baby walked toward him, wobbling as if she’d had too much to drink.

  “She’s walking?” Cochran cried. “All by herself?”

  “She started when I got home from Mary’s speech!” said Ginger. “She let go of the dining room table and walked into the living room, all on her own.”

  “Chloe!” Cochran called, keeping his phone trained on the child. “Look at you, sweetheart! You’re walking!”

  Chloe listed far to the right, but then regained her balance, heading straight for Cochran. “Daaa-deeee!” she cried. She walked a few more steps then fell laughing into his arms.

  “What a big girl!” he cried, scooping her up, nuzzling behind her ear. How he loved her! The way she smelled, the way her hair curled when her neck grew damp, the way she slept, her little rosebud mouth quivering as she dreamed. He’d thought that Ginger had completed him; then Chloe came along and he wondered how they had ever lived without her. He lifted her high in his arms. As she squealed with delight, he brought her down, catching a glimpse of the Teresa Ewing file on his desk. He thought of the girl’s father, Bob. He’d probably once held his arms out to his toddling daughter and thought that he would provide all the shelter and protection Teresa would ever need until she was grown and gone.

  How wrong he had been about that, thought Cochran, remembering the picture of the little girl’s body under that tree. How very, very wrong.

  Six

  Grace Collier was gripping the steering wheel of her car so hard that her fingers had gone numb. She and Zack had fled the Salola Street yard sale immediately after their encounter with Leslie Shaw, Zack cradling his box of old videotapes as another man might carry a child. For a long time Grace just drove—over to the college, then up into the Reservation, wanting to put as much distance as possible between them and their old neighborhood.

  “It’s good they’re tearing all those houses down,” she said to no one in particular. “That street’s been cursed ever since Teresa.”

  Teresa. The name stuck in her throat—she hadn’t spoken it in years. Te-reee-saaaa. The syllables themselves seemed to give voice to the tragedy—an explosive T, then a reee like a scream, then a lingering soughing of sadness and mystery. Never had the little priss been Terry, or Tee, or any of the sweet nicknames she might have engendered. Always, she was Teresa. First shouted by the searchers, then cried by her mourners, then whispered for what seemed like forever. What do you think really happened to Teresa Ewing? Where was she for those three weeks? How do you think Zack got away with it? He’s retarded, you know. Dumb as a post but strong as an ox. And he loved her …

  “Mama!” Zack cried from the backseat, interrupting the soundtrack playing in her head. “Watch out!”

  Grace’s attention snapped back to the highway. She was driving down Fodderstack Mountain on a narrow two-lane and had drifted over to the shoulder of the road. Her tires crunched in the gravel, veering to the edge of a fifty-foot drop. She jerked the steering wheel in the opposite direction, only to hear the angry blast of a horn. She looked up to see a red semi chugging up the mountain in low gear. She turned the wheel again and zoomed by the truck with only inches to spare, garnering another blast of the horn and a fleeting glance of the driver’s angry, cursing face.

  “Mama, are you okay?” Zack’s voice was shaky.

  “I’m fine, honey.” She felt weak, her hands tingling now, thick and useless on the wheel.

  “You want me to drive?” he asked, laughing.

  “No, but thanks for offering.” Zack had never driven. She kept her car keys hidden, to make sure he never would. She took a deep breath and tried to stop trembling. “Want to go to Hornbuckle’s?”

  “Sure!”

  Hornbuckle’s had been part of their lives since Zack was a baby. One of the curious little Tsalagi shops that sold everything from tomahawks to hunting licenses, Fred Hornbuckle scooped up ice cream from behind a small counter in the back of the store. At two years old, Zack had eaten his first bowl of ice cream here, shivering at the sudden cold, then grinning as the sweetness melted in his mouth. By four, Zack’s speech was still garbled, but he could gurgle “ice cream!” when they pulled up in the parking lot. By six, they’d gotten the official diagnosis of autism and Zack had settled on his dish of choice— Bear Tracks in Snow, chocolate ice cream with marshmallow sauce, topped with chocolate sprinkles. For nearly forty years, Hornbuckle had brought Zack a Bear Track and a tall glass of water, ice cream spoon placed precisely on a paper napkin perpendicular to the table. As Hornbuckle had gone from a middle-aged man to a senior citizen, Grace figured Zack’s lifetime total for Bear Tracks in the Snow was around two thousand.

  She came off the twisty mountain road and took a right, pulling up in Hornbuckle’s small parking lot. Zack hurried into the store, heading straight for the ice cream counter in the back. Grace followed more slowly, nodding to the wizened Fred Hornbuckle, who stood behind the cash register wearing a tattered straw cowboy hat.

  “Sheeoh,” he greeted her in Cherokee. “Doehuhduhnay.”

  “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

  He gave a noncommittal Cherokee grunt as he cut his eyes toward Zack. “A Bear Tracks in Snow and a caramel sundae?” Though their order never varied, he always checked, to be sure.

  Grace smiled. “Same as always.”

  She threaded her way through the tight aisles to the little counter and took a seat next to Zack. As Hornbuckle scooped their ice cream, she noticed Zack frowning.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Never did Grace know what Zack was ruminating about. Sometimes it was a bit of overheard conversation, sometimes the way someone had looked at him, sometimes a bird in the sky or the sequence of numbers on a license plate.

  He shook his head, his eyes downcast.

  “What’s the matter? You got so many new tapes today.”

  He cracked his knuckles, a habit reminiscent of his father. “I miss Salola Street.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “I had fun there.”

  “What was fun about it?” she asked, wondering what he would say.

  “Playing with Adam. But Teresa was fun too. When she didn’t squeal.”

  Zack’s hypersensitive hearing had always been an issue. Certain noises—high-pitched sounds, loud voices—would send him either running away with his hands over his ears, or into a rage, where he screamed Smackertalker and lashed out at whoever was speaking. With a chill Grace looked at her son’s big hands, now folded on the table. Had he bashed Teresa Ewing’s skull in, just to stop her from squealing?

  She pushed the thought away. Zack was compromised, true. But where strangers saw a hulking man obsessed with inappropriate videotapes, she saw a tender boy who kept their bird feeders filled and cried when they passed a rabbit killed on the highway. He could not have killed that girl, she told herself for the thousandth time. It’s just not possible.

  They ate their ice cream, Zack scraping the last bit of chocolate from the frosty little dish, then he stood up, ready to go.

>   “Hurry, Mama.” He bounced on his feet. “We need to go home.”

  She paid Hornbuckle and followed Zack out to the car. As he began admiring his new videos, she headed for home. Despite Leslie Shaw’s hatefulness and their near miss with the semi, it had been a good day. Zack hadn’t had one meltdown, he’d apologized for bumping into that little girl, and he’d behaved respectfully toward Hornbuckle. She hoped his new tapes wouldn’t disappoint him.

  She turned down the shady, meandering lane that led to her house, wondering if Zack might get engrossed in his tapes long enough for her to get some work done. She had a landscape show coming up in an Asheville gallery, and volunteering for Mary Crow’s campaign had put her behind schedule. If he got involved in a tape for a couple of hours, she could get back to her painting. Selling a couple of canvasses would do their bank account a lot of good. She and Zack might be able to go to the beach for a long weekend. It had been years since either of them had seen the ocean. She was dreaming of warm sand and seagulls when Zack began to scream.

  “No!” he cried. “No, no, no!”

  She jammed on her brakes, her heart pounding. “What’s wrong now?” she cried.

  With wide, terrified eyes, Zack pointed at their house. “He’s come back! He’s here!”

  She leaned over to peer through the passenger window. Her house stood on a small hill, overlooking the street. Parked in her driveway was a white Crown Vic with a whip antenna and a state license plate. Her stomach clenched. Detective Whaley was here. The day that she had just deemed good was turning sour, fast.

  She turned to her son. “Remember what you do when he comes, Zack? You stay in the car and sit still. That way you won’t get hurt.”

  “Don’t let him zap me, Mama. Please!”

  “I won’t, Zack. But you’ve got to sit still, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.”

  She turned into the driveway, trying to take a deep breath. The last time Whaley had come, Zack had run out of the car, flapping his hands and crying. Whaley had spooked and tasered him. Zack had lain on the ground, twitching, urinating on himself while the big cop stood there laughing. If she’d had a gun, she would have shot Whaley dead on the spot.

  “Just stay in the car, Zack,” she whispered as she parked beside the police car. “Sit there and look through your new tapes.”

  She got out of her car, lifting her hands high over her head. Whaley had never drawn a gun on them, but she’d seen too many cops on television, killing people of color for not much reason at all.

  “Is there a problem, officer?”

  Whaley looked at her as if she were an idiot. “You don’t need to put your hands up. I’ve come to talk to your boy.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m asking for DNA.”

  “But you took some, years ago.” She remembered another long-ago nightmare, where three cops wrestled with Zack in a jail cell, trying to pull hairs from his arms and groin. They finally had to sedate him to complete the test.

  “We need more.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “So you just come out here and demand it? Do you know how traumatic that is for an autistic person?”

  “A lot less traumatic than getting your head bashed in.”

  Grace closed her eyes. Always, it was Teresa Ewing; it would forever be Teresa Ewing. She’d made a big mistake in staying here. She should have followed Mike to Colorado. So what if he didn’t want to be married to her anymore? She could have gotten a new start, in a new place. Painted the Rockies instead of the Appalachians.

  She looked at her son. He was sitting in the passenger seat with his head down, clicking the tapes together. He was scared but trying to control himself. And it had been such a good day.

  She turned back Whaley. For once, she was going to stand up to him. “Do you have a court order for this?”

  “No.” He straightened a little, as if she’d surprised him. “Right now you would be cooperating with an ongoing investigation.”

  “What would it be if I refused to let him give you any more DNA?”

  “Then it would look as if you had something to hide.”

  “We don’t have anything to hide, officer. You have badgered my son for most of his life and have gotten no more evidence against him than the day that little girl disappeared.”

  “So you’re refusing to comply?”

  Grace took a deep breath and nodded. “Until you come with a court order, Zack Collier will not be giving any DNA.”

  Whaley looked at her, his eyes flat with hatred. “You need to rethink this. If I have to come back with a warrant, it’ll mean handcuffs, a cage in a squad car, the whole nine yards.”

  She turned and walked back to her car. “I’ll take that chance, officer. Sorry you wasted a trip over here.”

  Seven

  “What do you call this muscle?” Victor Galloway asked as he cradled Mary Crow’s foot in his lap.

  “That’s my toe, Victor. It’s not a muscle.” Mary was sitting in bed, foregoing the Sunday New York Times for a thick report from Emily on George Turpin’s tenure in office. Emily had done her homework—Turpin was twice as likely to go soft on domestic abuse cases, and twice as likely to double down on females charged with crimes. The statistics were so clear Mary was amazed that some judicial oversight committee hadn’t already pointed this out to Turpin.

  “Sure it’s a muscle,” Victor went on. “You have to move your toe with something. It’s not just there, hanging on to your foot.”

  “I don’t know what muscle it is,” Mary said absently. She looked up from the Turpin report and stared at Victor’s bare back. The word Rosaria was tattooed on his left shoulder blade, a youthful declaration of love he now claimed to regret. Suddenly she remembered that he’d ducked out of the League breakfast yesterday, and had crawled into bed long after she’d gone to sleep. “Where did you disappear to yesterday?”

  “You working any criminal cases now?” He was always careful to make sure she wasn’t playing defense in the great battle for justice.

  “Nothing more criminal than the Hargood Burton estate. Properties in three different states, heirs who remind me of the suspects in Clue.”

  Victor laughed. “Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard?”

  “All arguing with Mrs. Peacock.” Mary flopped back on her pillow. “I wish I had a capital case. It would be more fun than the squabbling Burtons.”

  “Do you remember the Teresa Ewing murder? Back in 1989?”

  She thought back. 1989. Fourth grade, Cherokee Elementary. Miss Batson was her teacher. Jonathan Walkingstick sat across from her. He wore jeans and black Chuck T’s. Even then it was hard to keep her eyes off him. “Everybody remembers that one,” she said, willing Jonathan Walkingstick’s image back into the ancient-history file in her brain. “Little girl vanishes while delivering food to a neighbor, then turns up dead under the Undli Adaya.”

  “Well, your officer Saunooke stopped off to check on some bulldozers on the girl’s old street. The stray dog he was taking to the pound dug up a pair of underpants with Teresa’s name on them.”

  Mary lowered her pencil. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. But the capper is that the old detective who’d worked that case was wandering around that Ugly Adama tree … ”

  “Undli Adaya,” she corrected. “It killed one of Desoto’s scouts. They say there’s a Spanish helmet up in the branches.”

  He frowned. “The tree killed a Spanish scout?”

  “So say my ancestors. Probably the Spaniard got drunk and ran into it.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, this old cop claimed he wanted to have a look at the neighborhood before they built that new development.”

  “And maybe plant some evidence he’d been withholding? Get something off his chest before he k
icks the bucket?”

  “That’s Cochran’s take. Whaley’s not so sure.”

  Mary looked at him, even more surprised. “Hang ’em High Whaley’s squirting the milk of human kindness?”

  “Whaley and this old guy were partners back then. Lead detectives on the case. Grandpa could recite every detail of that homicide like it happened last week.”

  “So you took the underpants to the lab in Winston?”

  He nodded. “Handed them over myself. They’re trying to date them. If they’re new, then it’s probably some sicko’s idea of a joke. If they’re original, then it’s a whole different ballgame.”

  “No kidding,” said Mary. She was about to ask Victor when he expected results back when her work phone buzzed. “That’s odd,” she said, reaching for the thing. “Work doesn’t usually ring on Sunday morning.”

  She cleared her throat. “Mary Crow,” she answered in as professional a voice as she could muster. After a long pause, a soft voice came on the line.

  “Mary? This is Grace Collier.”

  Mary sat up straighter in bed, looking at the campaign signs she’d brought home from the breakfast. “Grace, how are you? I’m sitting here admiring those incredible signs you designed.”

  “I’m okay,” Grace said, then came another pause. “Well, actually I’m not so great.”

  “What’s up?”

  “There’s a situation with a family member.” Grace spoke in a hush, as if she were afraid she might be overheard. “It’s been going on for a long time … ”

  Mary pictured the pretty woman who always wore her shirts long-sleeved and buttoned to the wrist. She’d seen it before, far too many times in Atlanta. Someone was abusing Grace and she didn’t want the bruises to show. Maybe that was why she’d been so passionate about Mary’s stand on domestic violence.

  “The police were here yesterday … ”