A Judgment of Whispers

by Sallie Bissell

  Grace started to cry. Mary stepped inside to hold her, then Zack wandered in from the den. “Mama?” he said, his voice full of concern. “Are you okay?”

  Grace wiped her eyes. “Oh yes, sweetheart. I’m so much more than okay.” She smile at Mary. “Set another place at the table, Zack. We’re having company for dinner.”

  They ate in the living room, in front of the fireplace. Grace had fixed spaghetti, a Friday night tradition at their home. She lit candles and asked Mary if Zack might open the champagne. “Amazingly, he loves to hear it pop.”

  Mary handed him the bottle. Zack carefully removed the foil wrapper and wire, then wrenched out the cork with a single pull, laughing as it gave a loud pop. After Grace filled their glasses, Mary offered a toast. “To the future. Brighter than it was yesterday.”

  They ate then, Grace telling her about Rugby and all the hiking they’d done. Zack had lost ten pounds and had developed a remarkable sense of direction in the woods.

  “Maybe it’s his Tsalagi genes,” said Mary, noting that both of them did look fitter than when she’d brought them here.

  “He found this wonderful little waterfall, not on the maps,” said Grace. “It’s high—about twenty degrees cooler there, so we take our lunch when it’s really hot. The cold spray feels terrific.”

  Zack shoveled his spaghetti in quickly, hunched over his plate, then asked to be excused.

  “You want to watch your tapes?” Grace asked.

  He nodded. “I just started one of Adam’s.”

  “Okay, then. We’ll be in here.”

  Zack took his empty plate to the kitchen. A few moments later the tinny, recorded voices of children came from the den.

  “He’ll watch his tapes awhile,” explained Grace.

  “You know, he doesn’t seem to need nearly as much medication here, and he goes to bed a lot earlier.”

  “Maybe it’s all the hiking,” said Mary.

  “But you know what’s been the most wonderful thing here? Nobody knows about us. We don’t have to stay hidden. Zack’s even made friends with the man who owns the grocery.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Mary smiled.

  They sat for a moment, listening to the birds outside and Zack’s video from the den. Grace disinterestedly pushed some spaghetti around her plate, then she looked at Mary with sadder eyes. “This DNA report won’t change anything for us, will it?”

  Mary shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “So we’ll go back to our pretty little prison in Hartsville and live in limbo all over again.”

  Mary stared at the bubbles rising in her champagne. Grace had just voiced what she’d realized the moment Victor told her about the report. All this had solved nothing—Teresa Ewing’s killer remained a mystery. “I wish I could say you’re wrong, but you’re not. Until they figure out who killed that girl, Zack and those other three men will remain suspects for the rest of their lives.”

  Grace was about to say something more when suddenly a high pitched scream split the night.

  “No!” shrieked Zack, sounding like some wounded animal. “No! Stop it! No!”

  Grace leapt up from the table. Mary followed. They raced through the kitchen and into the den. Zack stood in front of the television, his mouth square, both hands fluttering like trapped birds.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?”cried Grace.

  “Teresa!” he cried, jumping up and down as he pointed at the screen. “I just saw Teresa get killed!”

  Forty

  Mary and Grace turned to the TV screen. The picture careened wildly, topsy-turvy, light to dark, then it seemed to focus on a wall with peeling paint. The audio was a dragging sound, then a young male voice cried, “You shouldn’t have laughed at me!” A dark thing obscured the wall for a moment, then they heard another scraping sound. After that, the screen faded to black.

  “What are you talking about, Zack?” cried Grace.

  He pointed at the screen. “Teresa! She was right there!”

  “Can you rewind the tape?” asked Mary.

  Hands flapping, he refused. “No! I don’t want to watch it again!”

  “You don’t have to,” said Grace. “Just rewind the tape for us. Then you can go in the other room.”

  He rewound the tape, but instead of leaving, he sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes squeezed shut, his hands over his ears. Mary and Grace watched as Teresa, the dark-haired gamine, came on the screen.

  “Which one do you want to do?” Her was voice was childish, but she sounded put-upon, as if she been talked into doing someone a favor. “I’ve got to get home for supper.”

  “Let’s do the one where he puts it inside her,” said the huskier voice off-screen.

  “The missionary position,” she said. “You swear you won’t tell? I don’t want Shannon and Janie to find out.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  Whoever was operating the camera moved it back, getting a broader view of the girl, who flopped down on a plaid blanket and started unzipping her jeans. “And you promise to give me back my underpants?”

  “I promise.”

  She sighed. “All right.” She took her jeans off, then pulled her green jacket down to cover herself. “Okay. Now you take your pants off.” She sat there, eyes bright, watching her companion with considerably more interest. Suddenly she started to giggle. “That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” the deeper voice said gruffly. “What of it?”

  “It doesn’t look like the ones in the book.”

  “It gets bigger,” he replied.

  Laughing harder, she pointed. “It’s not even as big as Butch’s. You’re like a baby!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Adam is a ba-by,” she started to sing-song, her bow of a mouth curling in a mean little smile. “I’m gonna te-ell. I’m gonna tell Shannon and Janie and Marie and Miss Kalman, the math teacher!”

  All at once her teasing stopped. Her eyes grew wide as her companion moved in front of the camera. Suddenly her face was obscured by an oversized blue-and-white football jersey emblazoned with the name SHAW above the number 15.

  “Quit it, Adam,” she squealed. “That hurt! Now I’m really gonna tell! My parents and the police!”

  The picture became a blur of color and motion, Mary and Grace watched, horrified, as the pair struggled, fighting and yelling.

  “Shut up!” said the huskier voice. “Just shut up!”

  “Make me.”

  For a moment they heard nothing, then Teresa gave another vicious little laugh. But that laugh was cut short as a blur of an arm lifted once, then twice as number 15 brought something down hard on Teresa’s head. Then he said, “Just try and tell now, Teresa. Just try and tell now!”

  The tape showed a brief glimpse of Teresa’s limp body, then it went into the wild, topsy-turvy picture they’d seen before. As it again faded to black, Mary and Grace stood there, stunned into silence.

  “Oh my God,” Grace whispered. “It was Adam.”

  “No kidding!” The words came loud—hard and fast as bullets—from behind them. They jumped, turned. Adam Shaw stood at the doorway to the kitchen, dressed in black, pointing a pistol straight at them. Mary recognized the weapon; a fifteen-round Glock. He could kill them five times over.

  “Adam?” Zack jumped up from the floor. “How did you get here?”

  Adam smiled at his old friend. “I’ve known where you were all along, buddy.”

  “You have?”

  “Remember the day we buried those animals? I played a trick on your mom while you were watching cartoons.”

  Zack grinned, video forgotten. “What did you do?”

  “I put a little spyware on her phone. I’ve heard about everything you’ve done—your phone calls, your hikes, your visits to Carson’s grocery. You and your mom have a nice life up
here.”

  “Is that a real gun?” Zack asked, more excited than scared.

  “Yeah, buddy. It’s real.”

  “You’re not going to shoot any animals, are you?”

  “No, all I ever wanted was to get that tape back. Now, I don’t know what I might have to do.”

  “Don’t get in deeper, Adam,” said Mary. “Put the gun down, get a lawyer, and confess. You were what—twelve at the time? Better to have killed one as a juvenile than three more as an adult.”

  “I’m sure that’s good advice, Ms. Crow. But I don’t like the idea of prison, for any length of time.” He turned to Grace. “I don’t think you want to see Zack there, either.”

  “Zack didn’t do anything to that girl,” said Grace.

  “He didn’t kill her,” Adam replied. “But he did help me get rid of her body.”

  “Zack?” Grace looked at her son. “What’s he talking about?”

  Zack stared at all of them, his jaw flaccid.

  “Remember the rug in the shed, Zack? The one you helped me put in my dad’s wheelbarrow?”

  Zack nodded. “It was too heavy for you to lift.”

  “It was too heavy to lift. But it wasn’t too heavy to push, once we got it in the wheelbarrow.”

  “You killed her, then rolled her up in the rug,” said Mary. “Then you pushed her out to the tree.”

  “I had a new moon, the Cadillac of wheelbarrows, and I waited until two in the morning. It took me five minutes and nobody saw a thing.”

  “Teresa’s body was in your shed the whole time?” asked Grace.

  Adam nodded. “I couldn’t believe they didn’t find her. Still can’t. I think they had rookies searching that shed.”

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Grace.

  “Zack’s going to give me that tape. Then we’re all going on a hike. In the moonlight. We might even hear some owls.”

  “But it’s my tape!” cried Zack. “I bought it with my own money!”

  “It’s a bad tape, Zack. It will give you nightmares.”

  Zack shook his head, stubborn. “No.”

  Adam pointed the pistol at Zack’s chest. “Give it to me, you moron.”

  “I’ll get the tape, Adam,” said Grace. “Please just stop pointing the gun at him.” She gave Mary a furtive glance, then walked over and knelt in front of the television. Fumbling with ejecting the video, she looked up at her son.

  “Can you help me, Zack? My hands are a little shaky.”

  As Zack stooped down to help his mother, Mary realized that Grace was up to something. Mary stepped forward. She dared not look into the round, black gun barrel, but kept her eyes focused on Adam’s, hoping to find some trace of rationality. “I’m telling you again, you don’t need to do this. You were a kid back then, teeming with hormones and insecurities. On that tape Teresa comes across as a mean little flirt who threatened you with exposure, the worst thing imaginable for a pubescent male. She humiliated you. You got angry, wanted to hurt her back. There’s not a man in America who wouldn’t understand that.”

  His gun wavered slightly; she could tell she was getting to him.

  “Hell, I’ll even represent you. We’ll go for a jury trial, ask for a change of venue, seat twelve men on the panel. Teresa’s family is all gone. No weeping parent will be there to hold up her picture.” She licked her dry lips, praying her voice would remain even. “I’ll get you off, Adam. It’ll be a slam dunk.”

  She watched the barrel of his gun sink lower. Five more seconds, she thought, and I’ve got him. “Only Pisgah County cares about that little girl. It’s their great unsolved mystery. But even Pisgah County just wants to—”

  Suddenly Zack sprang up from the VCR and barreled to the front door, the tape tucked under his arm.

  “Didagedi, Zack,” cried Grace. “Fast!”

  The spell Mary had almost worked on Adam broke. He pushed her backward then leaped over the coffee table, hot after Zack. Grace lunged forward, managing to grab his ankle as he rushed by. Adam fell with a crash that jarred the cabin. He and Grace struggled on the floor, Grace desperately trying to wrench the gun from his grasp. But before Mary could help her, Adam shook free and scrambled after Zack, gun in hand. He tore out the door but stopped just past the screened porch. His old friend had vanished, taking the tape somewhere into the thousand acres of dark forest that surrounded the cabin.

  He turned back to Grace and Mary, his gun gleaming in the dim light. “You stupid bitch,” he told Grace as he wiped blood away from the corner of his mouth. “Get over there and sit with your counselor. You two are going to pay for this.”

  Grace came over and plopped down beside her. At first Mary thought Adam Shaw might put a bullet in both their heads, but he pulled a length of twine from his back pocket.

  “Hands out, wrists together,” he ordered.

  Mindful of the Glock pointed at them, they complied. Adam tied their hands, then he tied them to each other with another length of rope around their waists.

  “This is a trick I learned in Myanmar,” he explained. “When they catch two thieves on an expedition, they tie them together. If one falls, the other goes too. Saves them a lot of time and energy, trial-wise.”

  When he had them bound to his liking, he pulled them toward the door. “Okay, Grace. Take me to Zack. Any tricks and you’ll be dragging your dead pal right along with you.”

  Mary tried to remember all the things she’d learned from Jonathan, desperate to come up with some kind of plan. She did not recognize the Cherokee word Grace had used, but she knew that in the forest, at night, their best chance would be to outmaneuver Adam Shaw. “Amaskagahi?” She stared at Grace, praying she knew the word for waterfall.

  Grace started to reply, then a knowing look flickered in her eyes. “Amaskagahi. That’s exactly where we’re going.”

  They left the cabin—doors open, lights on—and plunged into the forest. Though the aroma of cedar and the call of screech owls were familiar, this part of the Appalachians was new to Mary. The trails seemed rockier, the undergrowth thicker than in the woods at home. They walked in silence, Adam keeping up with them. After a steep, half-hour climb, the trail divided, encircling the top of a mountain.

  “This seems like a pretty stiff trail for Zack,” Adam said, his eyes gleaming feral in the moonlight. “You wouldn’t be leading me away from him, would you?”

  “This is where I told him to go,” Grace said flatly.

  She led them down the right prong of the trail. Distantly, they could the low rumble of water, a steam rushing far below them.

  “What are you going to do when we find Zack?” Mary asked. She’d learned long ago that it was better to know what your enemy was willing to reveal.

  “Get my tape back.”

  “Then what?”

  “Another thing I learned in Myanmar,” he said. “Bad accidents happen in the mountains, and nobody gives them a second thought.”

  No kidding, Mary thought, appreciating the man’s spiteful cleverness.

  They went on. The September moon was a bright white orb glowing through the black lacework of trees. The air went from chilly to cold, making them shiver to keep warm. As the rush of the creek grew louder, the trail ended, spilling them onto a rocky mountaintop, slick with icy wetness. On three sides the forest loomed; to their right a cascade of water spewed out of the rock face like a geyser, tumbling into the vast expanse of darkness below.

  “Well?” said Adam. “I’m not seeing your boy anywhere.”

  “Zack?” Grace called over the roar of the waterfall. “Zack, are you here?”

  They listened for his reply. All they heard was the water, pouring out of the mountain.

  “Zack?” Grace called again. “You can come out now. Everything’s okay!”

  Again, Zack did not answer.

  �
��He must have gotten lost,” Grace said. “This is where I told him to come.”

  Adam looked at her for a moment, then a slow smile stretched across his face. “You’re awfully calm, Grace. Considering your precious little boy could have taken a header off this waterfall.”

  “He knows to stay away from the edge,” said Grace, her words frosty on the air. “He’s not an idiot.”

  Mary noticed then that Adam wore only a T-shirt; he was shivering as badly as they were. If she and Grace could get the gun away from him, they might have a chance. Slowly she inched closer. As the gun in his hand started to shake, she took her shot. “Hega, Grace. Asdawadega!”

  Jerking Grace toward her, Mary kicked at the Glock with her right foot. She caught Adam by surprise; the gun flew out of his hand and slid along the icy rock. Mary ran for it, dragging Grace along with her. She fell into Adam, catching him across his hips. As he and Grace fell down together, Mary lunged for the gun. It was wet and slippery as a minnow. Twice it squirted out of her grasp, her fingers pushing it farther toward the waterfall. Then she tried to hold her hand like a claw and clamp down on the thing. Finally it stopped sliding, trapped by her icy fingers. Never had any gun felt so precious. Clutching it tightly, she twisted to turn it on Adam, who was scrambling to his feet on the sleet-covered rock.

  “Grab him, Grace!” Mary yelled.

  Flat on her back, Grace struggled to flip herself over. She grabbed Adam’s arm, but his momentum was too great. Suddenly all three of them were tangled together, sliding helplessly toward the waterfall.

  Mary crawled toward them. Gripping the gun, she threw herself over Grace’s legs, knowing her weight would either stop them or they would all die together. For a moment the hideous slide continued, then slowly it stopped, with Mary pinning Grace to the rock, and only Grace’s tied hands keeping Adam Shaw from plunging over a waterfall.

  “What now?” Grace’s breath was rapid little puffs of smoke.

  “I’ll get his other arm,” gasped Mary. “And pull him back on the rock.”

  “Where’s the gun?”

  “I’m aiming straight at him.”