A Judgment of Whispers

by Sallie Bissell

  Mary crawled toward the edge and, with the gun in one hand, grabbed Shaw by the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” he sobbed. “It was an accident.”

  “Too bad you didn’t say that years ago.”

  Mary sat up, dug in her heels, and finally found purchase on the face of the rock. She and Grace pulled him back from the edge. His face looked ashen in the moonlight, his eyes huge as he stared down the barrel of his own gun. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Get you back to Hartsville. I want everybody to find out who really killed that little girl.”

  Grace untied the rope that joined them. As Mary held the gun on Adam, Grace hog-tied him, hands and feet together behind his back. As she worked he glowered at Mary, his eyes dark pits of anger. “Zack never was up here, was he?”

  “Zack is at Carson’s Store, in Rugby,” Grace replied. “Didagedi means ‘glasses.’ It’s Zack’s name for William Carson.”

  “They may not catch killers like this in Myanmar,” said Mary as Grace started to untie her hands. “But it works pretty good for us Cherokees in Tennessee.”

  Epilogue

  – Two Months Later –

  “How are we doing?” Mary asked Emily Kurtz, who had commandeered Annette Henry’s desk and telephone. Ginger Cochran was pacing around her office, cell phone at her ear.

  “Hang on!” Emily held up one finger while listening to someone on the phone. She grabbed Annette’s While You Were Out tablet and scribbled down some numbers. “Okay, thanks,” she told the caller. “Talk to you later.”

  She turned to Mary, her eyes bright. “The Quallah vote went for you 80–20. The Hartsville vote looks good, maybe up by seven points. The ’burbs are still out.”

  “And that’s Turpin’s territory,” said Mary.

  “Maybe not this year,” said Emily. “Bringing that Shaw guy in was pure gold. You know, Mary, I honestly thought you’d lost it when you said you were going to solve that case.”

  “Probably I had.” Mary laughed. “Must have been the same day I decided to run for DA.”

  “Well, you may have to get used to that idea, honey. By the end of the night you might be moving your law books up to the courthouse.”

  “Don’t say that!” Mary cried. “You’ll jinx me.”

  “Okay, okay.” Emily pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “Look, there’s nothing to do here but bite your nails while we wait for the returns. Why don’t you go down to HairTwister’s? That’s where your party is.”

  “I didn’t think you were supposed to go there until you’d won. Or lost.”

  “No, go down there and enjoy yourself. I’m sure the press will be there—make nice with them if they want an interview.”

  Mary said, “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do here?”

  “No.” Emily smiled. “Go and have fun. Ginger and I will keep you posted.”

  Mary started downstairs, then turned and walked into her office. Though no one was in there, the lights were on, making her mother’s tapestry glow along one wall. Slowly Mary walked toward it, a thousand memories flashing through her mind. She and her mother swimming at Atagahi, her mother gathering ramps in the spring and telling her all the old Cherokee stories of how the world came to be. What a fine childhood that had been; how much it had given her then, and still gave her to this day. “Thank you, Mama,” she whispered, running one finger along a silver thread that ran through the design. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, but I’ll always try to make you proud.” She stared at the tapestry, then her gaze fell on a photograph on her credenza. She and her mentor Judge Irene Hannah at her graduation from Emory Law. “And you, too, Irene. I owe you both everything.” She was reaching to touch the photo when someone knocked on the door. She turned. Victor stood there in a shirt and tie and a new haircut that made the hair on the top of his head stick straight up.

  “You like my new do?” He grinned, turning his head from right to left.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Looks right out of GQ.”

  “Ross and Meilani are giving free cuts down at HairTwister’s. Everybody who voted for Mary Crow gets one.”

  “Well, hey,” said Mary, patting the tapestry a final time. “I’d better hurry down there and get a trim.”

  They waved at Ginger and Emily and headed for HairTwister’s. As they made their way down Main Street they saw Turpin’s election-night party in full swing at the Ridgeview Restaurant. Red and blue balloons decorated the entrance, and the place was crowded with people inside. By contrast, the party-goers at HairTwister’s spilled out on to the sidewalk, drinking cider, showing off their free haircuts, and dancing to an old-time music band. To her surprise, Mary saw Grace Collier dancing with the man she’d called Didagedi.

  “Look,” said Victor. “There’s Grace. Who’s that guy she’s with?”

  “William Carson. She met him at Rugby. He’s the one who called the cops when Zack showed up at his store.”

  “And preserved the evidence, I assume?”

  “Carson couldn’t quite make sense of what Zack was telling him, but he figured that tape was important. He locked it in his safe.”

  “And now he and Grace are a couple?”

  “Grace says they’re moving in that direction. I worked out a deal with my clients where Grace can stay at that little cottage—maintenance in exchange for cheap rent. And William Carson has given Zack a job at his store.”

  “That’s a pretty sweet deal,” said Victor.

  “I can’t think of any two people who deserve it more.”

  They plunged into the crowd at HairTwister’s. Juanita had dyed her hair red, white, and blue and set up a long buffet line of refreshments—fry bread, squash, and barbeque made with Turpin’s own special sauce. “You cooked Turpin’s goose,” Juanita cackled as she served Mary’s plate. “So now he can do barbecue sauce full time.”

  “Juanita, this is amazing,” said Mary. “There must be two hundred people here.”

  “I told you I’d give you a party if you won.”

  “But I haven’t won yet.”

  “Shoot, after that Teresa Ewing business? Honey, Turpin should have thrown in the towel the day that story broke. I hear all the scuttlebutt around here, and that’s all anybody talks about—how Mary Crow caught the man who killed Teresa Ewing, over in Tennessee.”

  Mary laughed. The gossipmongers who’d once turned Zack into a homicidal maniac were now making her sound like Davy Crockett. “Thanks for the support, Juanita, but don’t say anymore about winning. I’m getting superstitious.”

  “You got it.” Juanita grinned. “The TV people will call it any minute now, anyway.”

  She and Victor took their plates over to one corner of the salon and tried to eat, but it was impossible. Campaign workers, well-wishers from the tribe, and people she’d never seen before in her life came to congratulate her, to tell her they had a good feeling about this election. She’d managed to get one bite of barbecue down when she saw a tall, gray-haired man starting through the buffet line.

  “Would you hold my plate a minute, Victor? There’s somebody I need to speak to.”

  He sat down at a hair dryer while she dived back into the crowd. She made her way to the buffet line and tapped the man on the shoulder. “Jack?”

  Jack Wilkins turned and stopped to give Mary a hug. “I’m so glad to see you. What a great night this is.”

  “Thanks, Jack. How are you?”

  “Fabulous!” He grinned. “Hang on—I want to introduce you to someone.”

  She waited while he reached down the buffet line and touched a woman’s shoulder. Smiling, she came to stand beside him. Like Jack, she had Swedish good looks—incredible blue eyes, amazing skin.

  “Mary, I’d like you to meet another of your voters, my wife, Jan.”

 
“Hello, Mary.” Jan extended her hand and smiled. “Jack’s told me so much about you.”

  For an instant, Mary didn’t know what to say. She’d known of the rift between Jack and Jan, but only from other people. “I’m so glad to meet you. I understand you’ve been in Minnesota with a grandchild?”

  “I have been.” She stepped closer to Jack and patted his chest, a gesture affectionate and proprietary. “But now I’m back.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” said Mary. “I know Jack missed you.”

  “I missed him, too,” she replied. “But now we’re both back. Together again.”

  Mary was going to say something else, when Ross stood up on a hairdryer.

  “Here it comes, everybody. Watch for it!” He lifted a laptop over his head. The room grew quiet as an election update came on.

  A pretty blond reporter gave the totals in Jackson and Swain Counties, then said, “There could be an upset in the making in Pisgah County, where Cherokee challenger Mary Crow has a slim lead over long-time District Attorney George Turpin … ”

  Whatever the reporter said next was lost in the din. Jack and Jan both hugged her, then she was engulfed by the crowd. Grace and William Carson, Ginger and Jerry all came and threw their arms around her. As the old-time band struck up a version of “Carolina in the Morning,” another pretty reporter shoved a microphone in her face.

  “So does it feel fine to be in Carolina tonight, Ms. Crow?” she asked above the noisy celebration.

  “Absolutely,” said Mary.

  “This was a hotly contested race. Should you pull off an upset, do you feel like you have the political capital to make serious changes in the DA’s office?”

  “I ran on transparency and a more equitable dispersion of domestic abuse cases,” said Mary, trying to make herself heard. “If I win, I’ll implement those changes immediately.”

  “Tell us a little about the cold case that you were so instrumental in solving. People are talking a lot about that.”

  “With a lot of luck, I helped the police in Morgan County, Tennessee, arrest this man. He’s currently awaiting trial here, in the Pisgah County Justice Center.”

  “Should you win, do you intend to prosecute? Or are you going to recuse?”

  Mary thought of the slimy way Adam Shaw had used Zack Collier, all of the damage he’d done to so many innocent people. She looked straight into the camera. “Absolutely I’m going to prosecute. To the fullest extent of the law.”

  The camera lights went off; the reporter disappeared into the crowd, no doubt buzzing across the street to interview Turpin. As more people milled around her, Mary felt someone touch her shoulder. She turned. A young man from Hartsville Florist stood there with three red roses in a silver vase.

  “Mary Crow?”

  She nodded.

  “For you.” He gave her the flowers and disappeared into the crowd. With a thought that Turpin might have sent her a poison-laced bouquet, she opened the card attached. When she read it, she gasped.

  Utluhgwodi. Congratulations.

  With Jonathan underneath.

  She looked around the room. Was he here? Standing by the punch bowl? Waiting in some nook for her to notice him? She swirled around, searching for the face that she’d somehow been born knowing. It was not there. She hurried through the crowd and out to the sidewalk. More people were standing around, drinking cider and laughing. Again she searched for him by the storefronts, even in the parking lot across the street. But he wasn’t there anymore than he’d been inside. And yet—he’d known about her, known about this night. How could that be? She didn’t even know what country he was in. A teenager brushed past her, his eyes focused on the bright screen of his smartphone.

  All at once, she felt like an idiot. Of course Jonathan would know what she was doing. Anybody with a cell phone could find out exactly what was going on in Pisgah County.

  She walked away from the party angry, feeling as if she were being played by a ghost—a man who could not show his face, but who also could not leave her alone. Every time she thought she’d forgotten about him, something—garnets on her fence post, flowers at an election party—brought him back as real as if he stood in front of her. As she looked down a dark alley, she almost felt he was there—then suddenly, she realized he was. Not in the light and laughter of her life, but in the shadows of her memory, the darkness of her regret. There, Jonathan Walkingstick would always be.

  She turned. Across the street, HairTwister’s glowed like a beacon. Music was playing, people were dancing. As she watched, another tall figure came out on the sidewalk.

  “Mary?” Victor called, searching up and down the street. “Are you out here?”

  “Over here.” She lifted her hand. “Just looking at things from a different perspective.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “Any better from over there?”

  “Actually not,” she said, hurrying toward him and all that he promised. “But everything looks incredible right where you are.”

  © Sallie Bissell

  About the Author

  Sallie Bissell is a native of Nashville, Tennessee, and a graduate of George Peabody College. Bissell introduced her character Mary Crow in her first adult novel, In the Forest of Harm. A Judgment of Whispers is Bissell’s seventh Mary Crow book (third with Midnight Ink). The first four titles in the Mary Crow series are available in print from Bantam Doubleday Dell and as e-books from Midnight Ink. Bissell is a Shamus Award nominee, and her work has been translated into six foreign languages. She currently divides her time between Nashville and Asheville, North Carolina, where she enjoys tennis and an occasional horseback ride. Visit Sallie on Facebook or at www.salliebissell.com.