“Patsy Cline.”
“Right. Patsy Cline. Country.”
“Like they say, ‘when country wasn’t cool.’ You liked Johnny Mathis.”
“Did I?”
“Um hum. I told you it wouldn’t last.”
I studied her studying my office, and wished I’d put away the sweaters and cleared off the Styrofoam coffee cups and all the crumbled candy bar wrappers that had missed the basket. When I get nervous, I talk. While she wandered around the room, I heard myself sounding like a tour guide in a hurry for lunch. “And that chess set's from Costa Rica; see, the pawns are peasants. When I left there, I gave a guy my car for it. ’Course, you never saw my car. And that plaster bust up here's supposed to be genuine Rodin, according to this street vendor in Paris who sold it to me for ten dollars.”
“Oh, Cuddy.” Lee's laugh didn’t sound familiar, and I wasn’t sure if I’d forgotten or she’d changed it. “I tried to imagine,” she put down one of the bright-painted pawns, “what your police captain's office would look like. It looks like you. Books and a blackboard.”
“No folks chained to the wall and a bowl full of black-jacks?”
“You obviously haven’t given up those awful candy bars.”
“I tend not to give up on things.”
The room felt too quiet after we stopped smiling. She stepped back to her chair. Nothing came to mind, so I said, “Could I get you some coffee? That glass of tea maybe?”
She didn’t seem to catch the allusion, but kept tilting her head to feel an earring as if she was afraid she was going to lose it. “No, no thanks. There's a real reason I came.”
“Well, now, I sort of figured that, Mrs. Brookside. You haven’t exactly gotten in touch to shoot the breeze over the decades.”
“Neither have you.” Her lips pressed together in a way I could still recognize as anger, and pink streaked across her cheekbones.
“True.” I started drawing triangles on a notepad. “My sergeant said something about ‘official problem.’ You haven’t been stealing loose grapes from the A&P again, have you?”
She looked up, smiled, then frowned the joke off. “Last night…” I nodded when she paused, wondering what in the world she was going to say. I sure didn’t expect what she did say. “At the Club last night, you seemed aware of how much pressure there's been on Andy to take a public stand against the Hall execution.”
“I’ve heard a little about it.”
“Not just the Hall case, but against the death penalty itself. Jack Molina, for example…” She stopped; I watched her right hand twisting her wedding ring.
“Jack Molina…,” I prodded her, “I know him.”
“Well, you can imagine Jack's position. There's also tremendous pressure, both on and off Andy's staff, not to take any such stand: that the polls say, in this state, it will cost him the election. This isn’t New York.”
“That's true. But listen here, New York would have its old electric chair back popping sparks like Frankenstein in a thunderstorm if it wasn’t for their governor's veto. Amazing how people with principle can make a difference every now and then.” She didn’t answer. I felt uncomfortable behind my desk, so I walked over to lean by the window. Pigeons waddled a few steps away, but didn’t bother leaving. Finally I asked her, “So, which side of that pressure are you on?”
Her chair swiveled to face me. “Neither. I’m a politician's wife…as it turns out.”
I said, “I’m not real sure I know what you mean by that.”
“It means, doesn’t it, I’m on my husband's side.” Window light struck her face and she frowned trying to see me. “On it. At it.”
Last night came back. The little signal of Brookside's “Shall we?” with a tiny touch on her arm. The years of reception lines and meals with strangers that had fine-honed the shorthand. “Okay,” I said. “So which side of the pressure is your husband on?”
“Personally, he's convinced by studies that prove the death penalty is not a deterrent. And that it's discriminatory.” The way she said it didn’t make it sound too personal.
“Um hum. And is he going to say so?”
Her answer was a preview of a speech. Monday in Winston-Salem, Brookside would talk to a banquet of black businessmen. He would remark on the rights of all Americans to adequate legal counsel for as long as necessary, regardless of ability to pay—now the state's obliged to pick up the bill only through a first round of appeals, after which court-appointed defenders usually skip away fast, since there's neither loot nor laurel to be gained by sticking it out with indigent convicts. At this point in his speech, Brookside would mention George Hall as a case in point: that having lost his first appeal, he had lost his public defender, and had lost years before obtaining new counsel. Brookside would then say that he applauded Governor Wollston's decision to stay George Hall's execution, and would urge the governor now to offer clemency.
It made me wonder what Brookside had planned yesterday on saying at this banquet, since until last midnight nobody had any reason to think George Hall wouldn’t be dead and buried by Monday morning, and way beyond the clemency of Wollston or anybody else. I almost said so, but stopped myself.
Plus, it sounded to me like Brookside was still fox-trotting on the fence rail, but of course that's the trick of political balance: his comments on capital punishment would be limited (apparently against Molina's urging) to Hall's case alone.
“The staff's been arguing all morning,” Lee said, “how even saying this much is going to cost Andy votes.”
Not a one, I thought, that Brookside had a blind polevaulter's chance of winning anyhow, but I didn’t say that either. All the while Lee spoke, light in a dance on her hair, her eyes lowered against the sun, I hadn’t a clue if she felt this upcoming speech of her husband's was the best thing she’d heard since Kennedy's inaugural, or political suicide, or a mediocre mishmash, which made me realize how dumb it was to think I knew who this woman was just because a long time ago we’d talked on the phone for hours every night ’til my bones would ache from lying on the cold kitchen floor. A long time ago, I knew the quickest detail of her feelings: fret over a grade, tears over a lost ring her grandmother left her, pleasure at a stepfather's rare compliment. Now, here was this woman with sad eyes and elegant clothes, a photogenic politician's photogenic and very rich wife, and a stranger. I didn’t know what she thought, or wanted, or didn’t want, or even what she’d done with her life except marry an amateur mountain climber who’d died, and a college president who wanted to be governor.
Coming around to sit on a corner of my desk, I rearranged a set of little fold-out photos—Mama and Daddy on their wedding day, my sister Vivian's yearbook portrait; a snapshot of some kids I’d taught in Costa Rica in front of our school's new shade tree; a photo I took of Justin and Alice at Williamsburg.
Out of the blue, Lee said, “He’ll be a good governor. If you think Andy is only president of Haver University because of my name, you’re wrong. He had offers from Washington he turned down.”
“I don’t doubt it. And if you think your name didn’t help a heap, here and in Washington, you’d be wrong too, because let me tell you—”
“That's not the—”
“It is too the point, and—”
We both stopped, and laughed at the same time. “God, Cuddy, can you believe we’re already arguing again just like we used to?”
“Hey, what else are old friends for?”
She moved to the front of the desk, and looked at the photograph of my parents. “For good advice…like always? That's what I hope.”
“Okay. Did you want to ask my advice about this speech, or what?”
And she surprised me by saying, “Somebody's threatened to kill Andy.” She held up a hand to stop my response, then reached into a small leather purse and took out an envelope. “I know, I know. Public figures are always vulnerable, but…”
“Who threatened him?”
“It's a letter. And I feel a little,
well, guilty, coming to you without his knowledge. Because he thinks it's silly to take this seriously.” She handed me the crumpled dime-store white envelope, penciled “BROOKSIDE.” “It was stuck under the windshield wiper of his car, on campus. Andy started to tear it up, but I asked to see it. It gave me the creeps.”
I tapped the letter out, and shook it open by a corner. Also in pencil, printed in block letters on paper torn from a spiral notebook, was an unsigned message, which I read aloud. It was succinct.
BROOKSIDE.
WE DON’T WANT ATHIEST YANKEE COON-LOVERS RUNNING OUR STATE. WE KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR KIND. REMEMBER DALLAS. 11/22/63. THIS IS A WARNING.
I said, “That last bit sounds a little redundant, doesn’t it?”
Lee leaned over the desk toward me. “This is a direct threat, doesn’t it sound like that to you? The Kennedy thing? I told him to call the police, the FBI, but he just kept saying, it's a typical nut, it's a scare tactic.” She crossed her arms tightly, her fingers rubbing the lilac wool. “He said he’d been finding them like that since he announced, telling him to get out of the governor's race. I was so upset I called Jack, but he…I guess what I’m asking is, would you come see Andy? Tell him he can’t make light of this.” She lifted a hand toward me, then let it fall to her side. “It's like the sky-diving, and the rest of it.”
“Excuse me? What?”
“That speedboat he races.”
“What are you talking about, Lee?”
“About risks, needing danger, liking it.” She sank into her chair. “He misses the war, isn’t that strange?”
I pulled back on my hair. “Well, honey, it's strange to me. But if there weren’t the kind of guys who’re going to miss wars when they’re over, starting wars probably wouldn’t be so popular.”
I was thinking about her first husband, the young French mountain climber who’d died in the hotel fire. She must have come to believe that, like Love and Glory, Death is after heroes too, tries to steal them away as young as it can. Funny, I felt a low kind of sadness about how much she must love Brookside.
I pulled out a plastic folder to slip the letter in. “You called Jack Molina? What was his attitude?”
“Like Andy's; he brushed it off. I think he was mostly angry I was going to try to use it to get Andy to pull back from some of the positions Jack wants him to take. Because I did say it made me worry more about this speech in Winston-Salem Monday. Jack and I aren’t…close.”
“Okay.” I pulled a pencil out of the Cherokee bowl I keep them in. “Give me a number where I can call your husband.” I wrote down the three different phone numbers she recited. “Lee, probably it is just some vile-spewer with nothing on his mind but shooting off his mouth. But anybody running for office in this country ought to recall enough history to know that sometimes nuts do exactly what they warned you they were going to do. I’ll check it out.”
“Thank you, Cuddy.” She rested her hand on mine for a second; the rush of my response scared me.
My phone buzzed; Zeke said he was sorry, but a car had swerved across the 28 divider, gotten sideswiped by a semi; there was a fatality, and Wes Pendergraph had called in to say he thought there was something I needed to look at.
Lee stood up quickly. “I’m sorry to take up your free time.”
“Don’t be stupid.” While I walked her to the door, I asked, “Is there anything on your husband's car to identify it as his?”
“Oh. You mean, the letter's being on the windshield? The parking space. There's a sign. ‘Reserved. President Brookside.’ The car's just a gray Porsche.”
I grinned at her. “He didn’t happen to win it in a church lottery, did he?”
She smiled back, puzzled. “I don’t think so.” Then she looked up at me. “But there’re a lot of things in Andy's life I don’t appear to know.” She touched my arm while she said, “Cuddy, it's good to see you again.” And her smile came back.
Outside in the corridor sat a young black man in a navy-blue suit; on the chair beside him was an immense glistening fur coat. He was on his feet, holding the coat out as soon as he saw her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brookside. They made me move the car. I brought your coat.” She smiled at him too, like he’d done her a kindness, but she didn’t introduce us.
The accident was on I-28, south of Hillston, a little west of the Shocco River. I took Cadmean Street, named for old Briggs's grand-father, who’d built it right after the Civil War to get from the river up to the railroad tracks that he’d also built so he wouldn’t have to pay a Virginia line to haul his wares. Every block or so, I’d see a lowered flag mourning the mill owner. From the sidewalks Christmas shoppers gawked, hearing my siren.
I sped the last half mile along the break-down lane; traffic on the Interstate was still backed up. When I reached the wreck, I saw “Action News” already videoing a stretcher being shoved into one of the ambulances parked on the shoulder. An attendant with “Haver University Hospital” sewn over his pocket kept his face to the camera. Under the low, gray-clouded sun, flashes of red and blue lights gave the scene that ghoulish look passing sightseers can’t resist slowing down for. Highway patrolmen near the smashed-in truck were flagging a single line of traffic along without bothering to answer all the “What happened?” questions shouted from car windows.
Officer Wes Pendergraph leaned against the side of an over-turned, crumpled Subaru, his head in his arms. His uniform was wet with the blood and urine of the young man who’d been flung through the window down into the culvert. Wes had sat there holding him ’til he died. Wes is twenty-three. He keeps asking me if he should quit the force: “The other guys say I take things too hard.” I tell him that's why I need him to stay. Now I just looped my arm over his shoulder and walked him, not talking, beside the highway until he was ready to show me the body. At the bottom of the incline, in scrub brush and hard red clay, the driver lay still covered by a hospital blanket. Another ambulance attendant stood beside it yawning, his fingers laced over his upstretched arms.
Wes said, “I didn’t want them to move him ’til you got here. It's hard to tell, all the blood, and everything's so mangled up. But was I right, Chief? Look over here.”
The dark face was crushed in, covered with blood and clay, but I knew who it was. It took me a while to get my throat to work so I could say. “No, you’re right. It's Cooper Hall.”
But that's not what Wes meant. He’d never seen Coop Hall before, except on television news, and hadn’t recognized him. Wes knelt and turned the head to show me why he’d wanted me to come here. It was a small round cavity just under the ear. He said, “I didn’t notice it at first. But, Chief Mangum, I swear that looks a lot like a bullet hole to me.”
chapter 5
The factory whistles kept crying over Hillston, grieving for the old industrialist who’d built them. Decade after decade they’d summoned the town each morning to come weave for him, told it at noon to eat lunch, sent it home each evening to rest; now they wailed that Cadmean was dead, wailed loudest here in East Hillston where the factories loomed. Messengers of death, like me. From the porch of Nomi Hall's house on Mill Street, past the patrol car that would wait and watch all night, I could see lights glitter the sooty brick smokestacks, the stained pastel water towers, the lowered flags, and the rusty teeth of the skylighted roof with its neon greeting, “HAPPY HOLIDAYS!” Mrs. Hall lived a few blocks from the C&W gates; a few blocks from the stucco duplex I’d grown up in. The Hall house was a one-story box, with an asphalt walkway and an old scarred sugar maple in the dirt yard. Years ago, somebody had added a porch but hadn’t gotten around to painting it the yellow with blue trim that was fading from the rest of the wood.
I told Cooper's mother myself. Jordan West was still somewhere in Raleigh with the vigil group, and I couldn’t find Isaac. Mrs. Hall and I stood together just inside her front door, because she stepped back when I tried to lead her to the couch behind us. She was a small woman, her hair still a crisp black, her features—like
her son George's—almost Asian, flattened across the dark plane of her face. She’d come from the kitchen, flour on her hands and apron. Seeing me there meant something bad, why else would I come? And naturally she thought only of George. Living all these years under his sentence, four different specific days and times pronounced for the death of her child, how could she think it would be anything but George? Before I spoke, she said, “The governor stopped it. He stopped it at 10:30 last night. What's the matter?”
At first she couldn’t hear “highway accident” and kept asking, “Has something happened to George?” The word Cooper struck her like a fist, so hard her breath rushed out with the sound of wind.
She repeated the name. “Cooper?…Cooper?” “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“But he's not gone? He's alive?” Carefully, she took off her glasses, and her eyes in a strong unblinking pull drew the truth out of mine.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Hall. No.”
“No?” She was staring hard in my eyes for some chance of a different meaning. Then her pupils shrank away from mine, and she cried out, “My Savior, no! Lord Jesus, no, not my boy.” I reached for her hands, but she lifted the apron to cover her face.
Finally when she took it away, wet white flour splotched her cheeks. Her head still shook that “no” while she said, “I want to see him. Where is he?”
I said, “He's at the hospital. Mrs. Hall, we’re going to have to do an autopsy. I’m afraid there's evidence that Coop went off the road because he was shot.”
She stepped back. “Shot? I can’t understand you. You said nobody was in the car with Cooper.”
“We think he was fired at from a passing car.”
She swayed suddenly forward, and I reached out for her. “Ma’am, please, come take a seat here, please.”
But her fingers rested on my arm only an instant, then she straightened, and wiped the backs of her hands across her face. “Let me be alone by myself for a few minutes now.”
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