A Judgment of Whispers

by Sallie Bissell

  “Cadets,” he whispered, remembering how they’d turned out everybody who’d ever worn or hoped to wear any kind of public servant’s uniform. “Cadets from the police academy searched this shed three times.”

  He stared at the notations a moment, remembering how scared he’d been back then, how even though he hadn’t wanted to leave, he was secretly glad that morning when his father turned toward the airport instead of his school. “If I had a kid, I’d do exactly the same thing,” he whispered. “Nobody deserves to be bullied like that.”

  He stepped over and with the side of his hand, wiped the chalk marks off the wall. Even though the shed would be kindling in a few weeks, he wanted those marks gone forever.

  After that, he opened a plastic trash bag and began taking stuff off the shelf that ran along one wall. He dumped in a petrified box of Miracle-Gro, an old can of white enamel, a glass jar full of old fuses. He was working his way down the shelf, dumping everything in the bag when his fingers curled around a dog-eared paperback. Cupid’s Arrow, read the title, above a picture of a man and a women in bed. An Illustrated Guide to Sexual Pleasure.

  A curious thrill went through him, as if he’d run into an old friend at some foreign airport. He opened the book, finding the photographs of the naked man and woman who’d instructed him—who’d instructed all of them—in their youth. He saw that the man’s penis, which at the time had seemed impossibly large, was now not much bigger than his own. The woman had dark nipples, big as silver dollars. She reminded him of a translator he’d once slept with in Nepal.

  He flipped through the book as they’d done so long ago, marveling at all the positions—the man doing it doggie-style, the woman with her feet waving over the man’s shoulders, and most eye-popping of all, the woman sucking the man’s penis while he tongued her twat. Somebody (the printing looked like Shannon’s round, girlish hand) had drawn all through the book, pointing arrows at the models in the most amazing positions, giving them the initials of people they knew. AS + JM—that would be he and Jennie Mason. DM + MCF was Devin and Mary Catherine Frensley, a girl he claimed to hate. BR (Butch) had TE (Teresa Ewing) sitting in lap, his hands on her breasts. Only someone had later added NO!!!!! HE’S TOO FAT!!!! in bright pink marker.

  “Those cadets really fucked up,” he whispered, “if they searched this place three times and didn’t find this.”

  He started to toss the book in the trash bag, but stopped. If that prick reporter was snapping shots through Zack’s fence, what would keep him from going through their trash? The whole county would go crazy if a sex manual with Teresa Ewing’s initials in it surfaced now.

  He brushed the dust from the little book and put it in the back pocket of his jeans. He could take it up to the house and when his parents went out, burn it in the fireplace.

  “Or I could do something else,” he said aloud, taking the book from his pocket and smiling at the photographs they’d found so fascinating. “I could keep it. Maybe show certain pages to Butch and Dev. Let them know I’ve leveled the playing field a little bit.”

  Twenty

  “Are you sure you won’t need me to come and get you?” Ginger Cochran asked as she pulled up in front of the Justice Center. She wore a big shirt and horn-rimmed glasses and her red hair was gathered in a ponytail, high on the back of her head. It was a bookwormish schoolgirl look that Cochran found incredibly sexy.

  “No, I can get a lift over to the garage.” Jerry turned to smile at Chloe, who sat in her car seat, chewing a teething biscuit. “What are you two up to today?”

  “Chloe’s going to Mommy’s Day Out,” said Ginger.

  “What’s Mommy going to do?”

  Ginger smiled at him over her glasses. “You won’t like it.”

  “You’re getting a tattoo.”

  “No.”

  “Your nose pierced?”

  “No.”

  “Then it must have something to do with Mary’s campaign.”

  “Bingo,” cried Ginger. “You’re not the sheriff for nothing!”

  Cochran sighed. Officially, he was supposed to have no opinion in elections—certainly no opinion in a race that would affect his office so profoundly. And though he had not publicly expressed his views at all, he could not say the same of his wife. She had been Mary’s fiercest supporter since the get-go—making calls, raising money, advising Mary on what to say to the press. Though Ginger had tried to be discreet, her actions would likely turn his already cool relations with Turpin into permafrost if the man remained in office.

  He looked at her. “If you really want to help Mary, go down to the paper and tell them to stop those newsfeeds about the Ewing case. They aren’t making my job any easier, and Turpin’s going to start calling her out for defending that Collier kid.”

  “I can’t make a miracle, sweetheart. The Herald’s box sales are up and their website traffic’s through the roof.” She reached over and ran her fingers through the hair on the left side of his head. “You’ve got a gray hair!”

  He looked in the rearview mirror. “I’m surprised I don’t have more between you, Chloe, and this Teresa Ewing stuff.”

  “Poor baby,” said Ginger. “Come home early tonight. We’ll put Chloe to bed and I’ll give you a massage.”

  Smiling at the prospect, he kissed Ginger good-bye, then leaned back to nuzzle Chloe’s bare foot. “See you two girls later.”

  He got out of the car and watched them drive away. In that moment he was a happy man; happy that they were his, happy that at the end of the day, he would return to them. Whistling, he started walking toward the side door of the Justice Center when he heard someone call him.

  “Sheriff!”

  He looked around to see Louise, his new secretary, bustling out the front door. “Hey, Louise.” He noticed a rare look of excitement on her long, slightly horselike face. “What’s up? Somebody set off the smoke alarm in the jail?”

  “I was going to text you, but I saw Ginger pull up,” she said, breathless. “One of those boys—those men—who came to give DNA in the Teresa Ewing case, wants to make a statement.”

  “Which one?”

  “Devin McConnell,” she said. “And he’ll only talk to you.”

  Ten minutes later, Cochran entered the interview room that held Devin McConnell. Though he and Devin were close to the same age, he had seemed younger. He’d dressed up, misbuttoning a white dress shirt and crookedly knotting a green tie. He reminded Cochran of a kid sent to the principal’s office, waiting to plead his case.

  “Mr. McConnell?” Cochran nodded. “You wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yeah,” he said, working a piece of gum double-time.

  “Have you today been advised of your rights?”

  “I signed the paper.”

  “Do you want an attorney? We can get you one if you can’t afford one.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer. I—I just need to put an end to this.”

  “An end to what?”

  “Teresa Ewing.”

  “Okay.” Cochran turned and nodded at a camera in the corner of the room, giving the signal to start the machine rolling. “Just so you’ll know, we’re recording this.”

  He shrugged. “I figured as much.”

  “So what do you want to tell me?”

  “I, uh, I—” Devin coughed, his forehead shiny with sweat. “I want to clear something up. Something that happened a long time ago.”

  “Okay.”

  “That last afternoon—that last afternoon that Teresa was alive—Butch Russell and I saw something.”

  Cochran opened the file. “And what was that?”

  “Well …” Devin continued to fidget in his chair. “We’d been playing. I’d borrowed some marked cards from my brother. We were trying to get the girls to play Bottom Up, but we pissed them off and they went home all mad. Then Two Toes McCoy appe
ared.”

  Cochran looked up. “Appeared?”

  Devin shook his head. “I don’t where he came from. We just looked up, and there he stood. Mad as hell.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. He started giving us a lot of grief about the tree … that it was holy to his people, and not a place for little white boys to play cards. He pulled out a knife.” Devin brushed his hair back and gave a weak laugh. “It seems pretty lame now. But back then, I was scared. I thought he might cut us up.”

  “Go on,” said Cochran.

  “Well, anyway, Two Toes threw his knife at the tree. It landed right over Zack’s head. We all just took off running. Everybody went home as fast as they could. I didn’t realize until later that I’d left my gym lock behind.”

  “Your gym lock?”

  “Yeah. We had to clean out our lockers every Tuesday night and leave them open for inspection. If you didn’t have your lock the next day, you’d be in trouble.” He sighed. “Junior high is just so fucking stupid, you know?”

  Cochran grunted, thinking of his own miserable days in seventh-grade gym.

  “Anyway, I had to get that lock. I didn’t want to go back to the tree by myself, so I called up Butch to come with me. He didn’t want to go either, but I made him.”

  “How much time had passed when you decided this?”

  “I don’t know—maybe half an hour.”

  “And how did you make Butch go with you?”

  “I told him he had to. You know, we were tight—better friends than with Adam or Zack.” Devin cleared his throat. “It was almost suppertime, so we both hurried out of our houses and sneaked back up to the tree, in case Two Toes was still there.”

  “Then what?”

  “We got to the opposite side of the tree and dropped down to the ground. We heard a noise, like something hitting the ground really hard. I thought maybe something had fallen out of the tree. A second later, I heard someone crying. I knew that wasn’t Two Toes, so I looked around the tree.” He looked at Cochran and swallowed hard. “I saw somebody tall, carrying Teresa over his shoulder.”

  “How tall?”

  “I don’t know—not Michael Jordan tall, but taller than Butch and me.”

  “How was this tall person dressed?”

  “Jeans, and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.”

  “Who was crying? Teresa or the person carrying her?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it was more like a whimper than a cry.”

  “Was the hooded person a man or a woman?”

  “I thought it was a man. It looked too big to be a woman.”

  “Were they white? Black? Cherokee?”

  “I couldn’t tell. It was almost dark and honestly, I was looking more at Teresa.”

  Cochran didn’t blink. “Where did this person appear to be going?”

  “Toward Zack’s house.”

  “Did Teresa look conscious?”

  Devin shook his head again. “Teresa looked dead.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I ran the hell home. So did Butch.”

  “What about your gym lock?”

  Devin looked surprised at the question, then shrugged. “I forgot all about it. Nobody gave a shit about the gym lock after that, anyway. Everybody was too busy looking for Teresa.”

  For a while Cochran studied his notes. Then he said, “You know, Mr. McConnell, you could have saved the police a lot of time if you’d included this in your original statement.”

  Devin’s bad eye rolled toward the ceiling. “I know I should have. But I was scared shitless.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of being a snitch, of getting in deeper than I already was. Everybody had gone crazy. Cops were questioning us night and day, my old man was beating the crap out of me, people were saying we’d gang-raped and killed her. Hell, I wasn’t even sure of what I’d seen. For a long time, I thought maybe I’d dreamed it.”

  “But now, suddenly you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I saw a tall person in a hooded sweatshirt carry that girl off. I’m sure I heard someone crying. I’m sure Butch Russell saw and heard the same thing I did.”

  “But not Adam Shaw?”

  “If Adam Shaw was there, I didn’t see him.”

  “And you didn’t actually see anyone kill Teresa Ewing?”

  “No. But someone who looked was as tall as Zack found her and carried toward his house.”

  “Why do you think he would do that?”

  “Because he’s Zack,” said Devin. “Because he wouldn’t have known what else to do.”

  Twenty-One

  Jack Wilkins was sitting at the counter of the Waffle House when his pal Irving slid onto the stool next to him.

  “I see you’re back to your usual today.” Irving glanced at Jack’s half-eaten hamburger and French fries. “Loading up for the Geezer Invitational?”

  “Not this year. How about you?”

  “Playing partners with Ray Mears. How come you’re sitting out?”

  “Too many chores at home,” said Jack, “with the new dog and the chickens.”

  “Aw, tell him the real reason, Chief.” Linda came by and poured Irving a cup of coffee.

  “What?” Irving blinked at the two of them through his thick glasses.

  “Haven’t you heard the news?” Linda reached for the paper that someone had left on the counter. “Chief’s cold case has just gotten hot. He’s the man!”

  Jack glanced again at the paper he’d already read twice. The headline trumpeted—Teresa Ewing Murder Reopened. A reporter named John Cooksey rehashed the case, complete with old pictures of him and Buck Whaley—both of them looking earnest, determined, and incredibly young. He flinched at the bushy blond sideburns he’d worn back then. He’d thought they looked dashing, but really they just looked silly. How kind Jan had been not to mention it.

  Irving pushed his glasses up on his nose and devoured the story. “They’ve really got new suspects? After all this time?”

  “They just found some new evidence,” said Jack, trying to tamp down Irving’s enthusiasm. “Same old suspects—only now they’re men instead of boys.”

  “I remember that Salola Street gang,” said Irving. “Crazy kids. One was, what, retarded?”

  “Autistic, according to the paper,” Linda chimed in. “They’re the really odd ones. I’ve got one who comes in here with his family. Sits in that back booth, orders the same thing every time.”

  “Ha!” Irving poked Jack in the ribs. “A burger and fries?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. But the autistic kid goes crazy if it isn’t exactly the way he wants it. Tomato on the plate instead of the bun, fries all lined up like logs. I’m telling you, those autistics look normal, but they’re a few bricks shy of a load upstairs.”

  Jack suddenly thought of one of his chickens, Tallulah. The other hens considered her odd and had pecked her mercilessly, the dominant hen Sequoia leading the charge. Then one morning Tallulah got fed up. She flew at Sequoia like a rooster, feet forward, as if she had spurs. The two had quite a dustup, but afterward, none of the chickens ever messed with Tallulah again. Too bad that autistic kid couldn’t beat up the people who talked about him.

  “So, you think they’ll get him this time?” asked Linda.

  “Who?” Jack was still thinking about Tallulah.

  “The retarded boy!”

  “I don’t know that he’s guilty. I’m retired, remember? Right now I know as much about this case as you two.” Which wasn’t exactly true. He knew considerably more about this case, and kept checking his phone in hopes that young Sheriff Cochran or even Buck Whaley would call him and ask him to consult on it. But his phone had remained silent, except for this John Cooksey, who’d started pestering him yesterday.


  “Well, it’ll be interesting to see what happens,” said Irving. “Personally, I never thought the retarded kid did it, anyway.”

  “You did the last time we talked about it,” said Jack.

  “No, I really always thought it was that Cherokee guy.”

  “Two Toes McCoy?”

  “Yeah. He did yard work in that neighborhood. I think he was hanging around, saw the girl, and grabbed her.”

  “And then hid her for a month and brought her back?” Linda pursed her lips, skeptical.

  “Sure,” Irving insisted. “The Cherokees can hide anything they want to in these mountains.”

  Jack tucked back in to his hamburger, leaving Irving and Linda to debate the merits of Two Toes as the murderer. He’d just dipped his last French fry in his ketchup when his cell phone rang. He hoped it might be the sheriff, but John Cooksey’s name appeared on the screen. Disappointed, he switched off the phone. He wasn’t going to spin his wheels talking to some idiot reporter.

  He finished his burger and got up from the stool, leaving eight dollars under his plate, the price of his meal and the two-dollar tip. “I’ll see you guys later,” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”

  “Let me know if you ever want to play golf again,” Irving said, sounding wounded.

  “I will.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Good luck in the tournament. Hope you take home the trophy.”

  He walked out into the parking lot, feeling as if he were in limbo. Before he’d gone over to that old tree, golf had been an enjoyable pastime—walking outdoors, navigating the perils of old age with his friends. Now trying to flail a tiny white ball into a distant hole seemed ridiculous, a waste of time insulting to the hours remaining in your life. Better to read. Better to watch his chickens. Better to figure out who killed that little girl.

  He got in his truck. Lucky, who’d curled up in the passenger seat, woke up and wagged his tail. He gave the dog a pat as he turned on his engine. It was only when he’d pulled back out on to the highway that he realized the twitching had returned to both his thumbs.