Three Classic Thrillers

by John Grisham

  One side of the condos was the parking lot with a closed gate leading to the only entrance and exit. A uniformed guard manned the small, boxlike, air-conditioned gatehouse. Few cars were in sight. It was almost 10 a.m. The outline of the guard could be seen through tinted glass.

  Wedge ignored the fence and chose instead to penetrate from the bluff. He crawled along a row of boxwoods, clutching handfuls of grass to keep from sliding eighty feet onto Riverside Drive. He slid under wooden patios, some of which hung ten feet into the air as the bluff dropped fast below them. He stopped at the seventh condo, and swung himself onto the patio.

  He rested for a moment in a wicker chair and toyed with an outside cable as if on a routine service call. No one was watching. Privacy was important to these wealthy people, they paid for it dearly, and each little terrace was shielded from the next by decorative wooden planks and all sorts of hanging vegetation. His shirt by now was sticky and clinging to his back.

  The sliding glass door from the patio to the kitchen was locked, of course, a rather simple lock that slowed him for almost one minute. He picked it, leaving neither damage nor evidence, then glanced around for another look before he went in. This was the tricky part. He assumed there was a security system, probably one with contacts at every window and door. Since no one was home, it was highly probable the system would be activated. The delicate question was exactly how much noise would be made when he opened the door. Would there be a silent alert, or would he be startled with a screaming siren?

  He took a breath, then carefully slid the door open. No siren greeted him. He took a quick look at the monitor above the door, then stepped inside.

  The relay immediately alerted Willis, the guard at the gate, who heard a frantic though not very loud beeping sound from his monitoring screen. He looked at the red light blinking at Number 7, home of Lee Booth, and he waited for it to stop. Mrs. Booth tripped her alarm at least twice a month, which was about the average for the flock he guarded. He checked his clipboard and noticed that Mrs. Booth had left at nine-fifteen. But she occasionally had sleepovers, usually men, and now she had her nephew staying with her, and so Willis watched the red light for forty-five seconds until it stopped blinking and fixed itself in a permanent ON position.

  This was unusual, but no need to panic. These people lived behind walls and paid for around-the-clock armed guards, so they were not serious about their alarm systems. He quickly dialed Mrs. Booth’s number, and there was no answer. He punched a button and set in motion a recorded 911 call requesting police assistance. He opened the key drawer and selected one for Number 7, then left the gatehouse and walked quickly across the parking lot to see about Mrs. Booth’s unit. He unfastened his holster so he could grab his revolver, just in case.

  Rollie Wedge stepped into the gatehouse and saw the open key drawer. He took a set, marked for Unit 7, along with a card with the alarm code and instructions, and for good measure he also grabbed keys and cards for Numbers 8 and 13, just to baffle old Willis and the cops.

  Twenty-six

  They went to the cemetery first, to pay their respects to the dead. It covered two small hills on the edge of Clanton, one lined with elaborate tombstones and monuments where prominent families had buried themselves together, over time, and had their names carved in heavy granite. The second hill was for the newer graves, and as time had passed in Mississippi the tombstones had grown smaller. Stately oaks and elms shaded most of the cemetery. The grass was trimmed low and the shrubs were neat. Azaleas were in every corner. Clanton placed a priority on its memories.

  It was a lovely Saturday, with no clouds and a slight breeze that had started during the night and chased away the humidity. The rains were gone for a while, and the hillsides were lush with greenery and wildflowers. Lee knelt by her mother’s headstone and placed a small bouquet of flowers under her name. She closed her eyes as Adam stood behind her and stared at the grave. Anna Gates Cayhall, September 3, 1922–September 18, 1977. She was fifty-five when she died, Adam calculated, so he was thirteen, still living in blissful ignorance somewhere in Southern California.

  She was buried alone, under a single headstone, and this in itself had presented some problems. Mates for life are usually buried side by side, at least in the South, with the first one occupying the first slot under a double headstone. Upon each visit to the deceased, the survivor gets to see his or her name already carved and just waiting.

  “Daddy was fifty-six when Mother died,” Lee explained as she took Adam’s hand and inched away from the grave. “I wanted him to bury her in a plot where he could one day join her, but he refused. I guess he figured he still had a few years left, and he might remarry.”

  “You told me once that she didn’t like Sam.”

  “I’m sure she loved him in a way, they were together for almost forty years. But they were never close. As I grew older I realized she didn’t like to be around him. She confided in me at times. She was a simple country girl who married young, had babies, stayed home with them, and was expected to obey her husband. And this was not unusual for those times. I think she was a very frustrated woman.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want Sam next to her for eternity.”

  “I thought about that. In fact, Eddie wanted them separated and buried at opposite ends of the cemetery.”

  “Good for Eddie.”

  “He wasn’t joking either.”

  “How much did she know about Sam and the Klan?”

  “I have no idea. It was not something we discussed. I remember she was humiliated after his arrest. She even stayed with Eddie and you guys for a while because the reporters were bothering her.”

  “And she didn’t attend any of his trials.”

  “No. He didn’t want her to watch. She had a problem with high blood pressure, and Sam used that as an excuse to keep her away from it.”

  They turned and walked along a narrow lane through the old section of the cemetery. They held hands and looked at the passing tombstones. Lee pointed to a row of trees across the street on another hill. “That’s where the blacks are buried,” she said. “Under those trees. It’s a small cemetery.”

  “You’re kidding? Even today?”

  “Sure, you know, keep ’em in their place. These people couldn’t stand the idea of a Negro lying amongst their ancestors.”

  Adam shook his head in disbelief. They climbed the hill and rested under an oak. The rows of graves spread peacefully beneath them. The dome of the Ford County Courthouse glittered in the sun a few blocks away.

  “I played here as a little girl,” she said quietly. She pointed to her right, to the north. “Every Fourth of July the city celebrates with a fireworks display, and the best seats in the house are here in the cemetery. There’s a park down there, and that’s where they shoot from. We’d load up our bikes and come to town to watch the parade and swim in the city pool and play with our friends. And right after dark, we’d all gather around here, in the midst of the dead, and sit on these tombstones to watch the fireworks. The men would stay by their trucks where the beer and whiskey were hidden, and the women would lie on quilts and tend to the babies. We would run and romp and ride bikes all over the place.”

  “Eddie?”

  “Of course. Eddie was just a normal little brother, pesky as hell sometimes, but very much a boy. I miss him, you know. I miss him very much. We weren’t close for many years, but when I come back to this town I think of my little brother.”

  “I miss him too.”

  “He and I came here, to this very spot, the night he graduated from high school. I had been in Nashville for two years, and I came back because he wanted me to watch him graduate. We had a bottle of cheap wine, and I think it was his first drink. I’ll never forget it. We sat here on Emil Jacob’s tombstone and sipped wine until the bottle was empty.”

  “What year was it?”

  “Nineteen sixty-one, I think. He wanted to join the Army so he could leave Clanton and get away from Sam. I didn’t want
my little brother in the Army, and we discussed it until the sun came up.”

  “He was pretty confused?”

  “He was eighteen, probably as confused as most kids who’ve just finished high school. Eddie was terrified that if he stayed in Clanton something would happen to him, some mysterious genetic flaw would surface and he’d become another Sam. Another Cayhall with a hood. He was desperate to run from this place.”

  “But you ran as soon as you could.”

  “I know, but I was tougher than Eddie, at least at the age of eighteen. I couldn’t see him leaving home so young. So we sipped wine and tried to get a handle on life.”

  “Did my father ever have a handle on life?”

  “I doubt it, Adam. We were both tormented by our father and his family’s hatred. There are things I hope you never learn, stories that I pray remain untold. I guess I pushed them away, while Eddie couldn’t.”

  She took his hand again and they strolled into the sunlight and down a dirt path toward the newer section of the cemetery. She stopped and pointed to a row of small headstones. “Here are your great-grandparents, along with aunts, uncles, and other assorted Cayhalls.”

  Adam counted eight in all. He read the names and dates, and spoke aloud the poetry and Scriptures and farewells inscribed in granite.

  “There are lots more out in the country,” Lee said. “Most of the Cayhalls originated around Karaway, fifteen miles from here. They were country people, and they’re buried behind rural churches.”

  “Did you come here for these burials?”

  “A few. It’s not a close family, Adam. Some of these people had been dead for years before I knew about it.”

  “Why wasn’t your mother buried here?”

  “Because she didn’t want to be. She knew she was about to die, and she picked the spot. She never considered herself a Cayhall. She was a Gates.”

  “Smart woman.”

  Lee pulled a handful of weeds from her grandmother’s grave, and rubbed her fingers over the name of Lydia Newsome Cayhall, who died in 1961 at the age of seventy-two. “I remember her well,” Lee said, kneeling on the grass. “A fine, Christian woman. She’d roll over in her grave if she knew her third son was on death row.”

  “What about him?” Adam asked, pointing to Lydia’s husband, Nathaniel Lucas Cayhall, who died in 1952 at the age of sixty-four. The fondness left Lee’s face. “A mean old man,” she said. “I’m sure he’d be proud of Sam. Nat, as he was known, was killed at a funeral.”

  “A funeral?”

  “Yes. Traditionally, funerals were social occasions around here. They were preceded by long wakes with lots of visiting and eating. And drinking. Life was hard in the rural South, and often the funerals turned into drunken brawls. Nat was very violent, and he picked a fight with the wrong men just after a funeral service. They beat him to death with a stick of wood.”

  “Where was Sam?”

  “Right in the middle of it. He was beaten too, but survived. I was a little girl, and I remember Nat’s funeral. Sam was in the hospital and couldn’t attend.”

  “Did he get retribution?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  “Nothing was ever proven, but several years later the two men who’d beaten Nat were released from prison. They surfaced briefly around here, then disappeared. One body was found months later next door in Milburn County. Beaten, of course. The other man was never found. The police questioned Sam and his brothers, but there was no proof.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Sure he did. Nobody messed with the Cayhalls back then. They were known to be half-crazy and mean as hell.”

  They left the family gravesites and continued along the path. “So, Adam, the question for us is, where do we bury Sam?”

  “I think we should bury him over there, with the blacks. That would serve him right.”

  “What makes you think they’d want him?”

  “Good point.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Sam and I have not reached that point yet.”

  “Do you think he’ll want to be buried here? In Ford County?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t discussed it, for obvious reasons. There’s still hope.”

  “How much hope?”

  “A trace. Enough to keep fighting.”

  They left the cemetery on foot, and walked along a tranquil street with worn sidewalks and ancient oaks. The homes were old and well painted, with long porches and cats resting on the front steps. Children raced by on bikes and skateboards, and old people rocked in their porch swings and waved slowly. “These are my old stomping grounds, Adam,” Lee said as they walked aimlessly along. Her hands were stuck deep in denim pockets, her eyes moistened with memories that were at once sad and pleasant. She looked at each house as if she’d stayed there as a child and could remember the little girls who’d been her friends. She could hear the giggles and laughs, the silly games and the serious fights of ten-year-olds.

  “Were those happy times?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t know. We never lived in town, so we were known as country kids. I always longed for one of these houses, with friends all around and stores a few blocks away. The town kids considered themselves to be a bit better than us, but it wasn’t much of a problem. My best friends lived here, and I spent many hours playing in these streets, climbing these trees. Those were good times, I guess. The memories from the house in the country are not pleasant.”

  “Because of Sam?”

  An elderly lady in a flowered dress and large straw hat was sweeping around her front steps as they approached. She glanced at them, then she froze and stared. Lee slowed then stopped near the walkway to the house. She looked at the old woman, and the old woman looked at Lee. “Mornin’, Mrs. Langston,” Lee said in a friendly drawl.

  Mrs. Langston gripped the broom handle and stiffened her back, and seemed content to stare.

  “I’m Lee Cayhall. You remember me,” Lee drawled again.

  As the name Cayhall drifted across the tiny lawn, Adam caught himself glancing around to see if anyone else heard it. He was prepared to be embarrassed if the name fell on other ears. If Mrs. Langston remembered Lee, it was not apparent. She managed a polite nod of the head, just a quick up and down motion, rather awkward as if to say, “Good morning to you. Now move along.”

  “Nice to see you again,” Lee said and began walking away. Mrs. Langston scurried up the steps and disappeared inside. “I dated her son in high school,” Lee said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “She was thrilled to see you.”

  “She was always sort of wacky,” Lee said without conviction. “Or maybe she’s afraid to talk to a Cayhall. Afraid of what the neighbors might say.”

  “I think it might be best if we go incognito for the rest of the day. What about it?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  They passed other folks puttering in their flower beds and waiting for the mailman, but they said nothing. Lee covered her eyes with sun shades. They zigzagged through the neighborhood in the general direction of the central square, chatting about Lee’s old friends and where they were now. She kept in touch with two of them, one in Clanton and one in Texas. They avoided family history until they were on a street with smaller, wood-framed houses stacked tightly together. They stopped at the corner, and Lee nodded at something down the street.

  “You see the third house on the right, the little brown one there?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where you lived. We could walk down there but I see people moving about.”

  Two small children played with toy guns in the front yard and someone was swinging on the narrow front porch. It was a square house, small, neat, perfect for a young couple having babies.

  Adam had been almost three when Eddie and Evelyn disappeared, and as he stood on the corner he tried desperately to remember something about the house. He couldn’t.

  “It was painted white back then
, and of course the trees were smaller. Eddie rented it from a local real estate agent.”

  “Was it nice?”

  “Nice enough. They hadn’t been married long. They were just kids with a new child. Eddie worked in an auto parts store, then he worked for the state highway department. Then he took another job.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Evelyn worked part-time in a jewelry store on the square. I think they were happy. She was not from here, you know, and so she didn’t know a lot of people. They kept to themselves.”

  They walked by the house and one of the children aimed an orange machine gun at Adam. There were no memories of the place to be evoked at that moment. He smiled at the child and looked away. They were soon on another street with the square in sight.

  Lee was suddenly a tour guide and historian. The Yankees had burned Clanton in 1863, the bastards, and after the war, General Clanton, a Confederate hero whose family owned the county, returned, with only one leg, the other one lost somewhere on the battlefield at Shiloh, and designed the new courthouse and the streets around it. His original drawings were on the wall upstairs in the courthouse. He wanted lots of shade so he planted oaks in perfect rows around the new courthouse. He was a man of vision who could see the small town rising from the ashes and prospering, so he designed the streets in an exact square around the courthouse common. They had walked by the great man’s grave, she said, just a moment ago, and she would show it to him later.

  There was a struggling mall north of town and a row of discount supermarkets to the east, but the people of Ford County still enjoyed shopping around the square on Saturday morning, she explained as they strolled along the sidewalk next to Washington Street. Traffic was slow and the pedestrians were even slower. The buildings were old and adjoining, filled with lawyers and insurance agents, banks and cafés, hardware stores and dress shops. The sidewalk was covered with canopies, awnings, and verandas from the offices and stores. Creaky fans hung low and spun sluggishly. They stopped in front of an ancient pharmacy, and Lee removed her sunglasses. “This was a hangout,” she explained. “There was a soda fountain in the back with a jukebox and racks of comic books. You could buy an enormous cherry sundae for a nickel, and it took hours to eat it. It took even longer if the boys were here.”