“You’re aware that Sergeant Cooper’s apartment was broken into a day or two before the murders? We saw signs of the break-in, and Cooper confirmed it. The knife could have been taken then,” Sampson said.
Borislow nodded. “That’s certainly possible, Detective. But isn’t it also possible that the sergeant created the impression that there had been a break-in at his apartment? That’s what CID concluded.”
“A boy from the neighborhood saw three men in Tanya Jackson’s yard about the time of the murders.”
“The boy could have seen men in the yard. That’s true. He also may have seen shadows from trees. It was a dark night, and windy. The boy is ten years old. He gave conflicting accounts of the night to police officers. As I said, Detective, I have studied the case thoroughly.”
“Blood that didn’t match the murdered women’s, or Sergeant Cooper’s, was found at the homicide scene.”
General Borislow’s demeanor didn’t change. “The judge in the case made the call not to allow that into evidence. If I had been the judge, I would have permitted the jury to hear about the blood. We’ll never know about it now.”
“Sergeant Cooper’s military record before the murders was nearly perfect,” said Sampson.
“He had an excellent record. The army is well aware of that. It’s one of the things that makes this such a tragedy.”
Sampson sighed. He sensed he wasn’t getting anywhere. I did too. “General, one more question, and then we’ll leave. We won’t even take our allotted time.”
Borislow didn’t blink. “Go ahead with your question.”
“It puzzles me that the army made no real effort to come to Sergeant Cooper’s defense. Not before or during the trial. Obviously, the army isn’t going to try and help him now. Why is that?”
General Borislow nodded at the question, and pursed her lips before she answered it. “Detective Sampson, we appreciate the fact that Ellis Cooper is your friend and that you’ve remained loyal to him. We admire that, actually. But your question is easy to answer. The army, from top to bottom, believes that Sergeant Cooper is guilty of three horrific, cold-blooded murders. We have no intention of helping a murderer go free. I’m afraid that I’m convinced Cooper is a murderer too. I won’t be supporting an appeal. I’m sorry that I don’t have better news for you.”
After our meeting, Sampson and I were escorted back through the labyrinth of hallways by General Borislow’s aide. We were both silent as we made the long walk to the main lobby.
Once we had left the building and gone outside, he turned to me. “What do you think?”
“I think the army is hiding something,” I said. “And we don’t have much time to find out what it is.”
Chapter 29
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Thomas Starkey got a clear picture of just how far things had gone for him. The clarifying incident took place less than two miles from his house in North Carolina.
He had stopped at the local strip mall for copies of USA Today and the Rocky Mount Telegram plus some raisin cinnamon bagels from the New York–style deli. It was raining hard that morning, and he stood with the newspapers and warm bagels under the overhang at the mall, waiting for the downpour to slow.
When it finally did, Starkey started to wade through deep puddles toward his Suburban. As he did, he spotted a couple sloshing toward him across the parking lot. They had just gotten out of an old blue pickup, and they’d left the headlights on.
“Hi, excuse me. Left your lights on,” Starkey called as they came forward. The woman turned to look. The man didn’t.
Instead, he started to talk, and it was clear he had a speech impediment. “Wir frum San Cros head’n La’nce. Forgath muh wuhlet n’mah pantz —”
The woman cut in. “I’m awful sorry to bother you. We’re from Sandy Cross goin’ to Lawrence,” she said. “So embarrassing. My brother left his wallet in his other pants. We don’t even have money for gas to get back home.”
“Kin you hep’s?” asked the sputtering male.
Starkey got the whole thing immediately. They’d left the goddamn truck lights on so he could be the one to make the first verbal contact, not them. The man’s speech impediment was a fake, and that’s what really did it to him. His son Hank was autistic. Now these two shitheels were using a fake handicap as part of their cheap con to get money.
Swiftly, Starkey had his handgun out. He wasn’t sure himself what was going to happen next. All he knew was that he was really pissed off. Jesus, he was steamed.
“Get on your knees, both of you,” he yelled, and thrust the gun into the male’s unshaved, miserable excuse for a face. “Now you apologize, and you better talk right, or I’ll shoot you dead in this fucking parking lot.”
He struck the kneeling man in the forehead with the barrel of his gun.
“Jesus, I’m sorry. We’re both sorry, mister. We jus’ wanted a few bucks. Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot us. We’re good Christians.”
“You both stay on your goddamn knees,” Starkey said. “You stay right there, and I don’t want to see you around here again. Ever, ever.”
He put his gun back in his jacket as he stomped off toward his car. He got to the Suburban and thanked God his teenage daughter had been listening to rock music and not watching what had gone on in the parking lot. Melanie was off in her own little world as usual.
“Let’s skedaddle home,” Starkey said as he scrunched down into the front seat of the Suburban. “And Mel, could you turn that damn music up?”
That was when his daughter looked up and spotted the couple kneeling in the lot. “What’s the matter with those two?” she asked her father. “They’re like, kneeling in the rain.”
Starkey finally managed a thin smile. “Guess they just been saved, and now they’re thanking the Lord,” he said.
Chapter 30
ON A COLD day in early October, Sampson and I made the six-hour trip by car back to Central Prison in Raleigh. We talked very little on the ride down. The clock had run out on Ellis Cooper.
Two days earlier, Cooper had been officially informed of his execution date by North Carolina’s Department of Correction. Then he had been moved to the prison’s deathwatch area. Things were proceeding in an orderly, and deadly, fashion.
Sampson and I had been authorized by the Division of Prisons to visit Sergeant Cooper. When we arrived at Central Prison, about a dozen protesters were out in the parking areas. Most were women, and they were singing gentle folk songs that harkened back to the sixties or even earlier. Three or four held up signs condemning capital punishment.
We hurried inside the prison and could still hear the mournful hymns beyond the heavy stone and mortar walls.
The deathwatch area at Central had four cells lined up side by side and opened to a dayroom with a TV and shower. Ellis Cooper was the only prisoner on deathwatch at that time. Two corrections officers were stationed outside his cell twenty-four hours a day. They were respectful and courteous when we arrived.
Ellis Cooper looked up as we entered the area and seemed glad to see us. He smiled and raised his hand in greeting.
“Hello, Ellis,” Sampson said in a quiet voice as we took chairs outside the cell. “Well, we’re back. Empty-handed, but we’re back.”
Cooper sat on a small stool on the other side of the bars. The legs of the stool were screwed into the floor. The cell itself was immaculately clean and was sparsely furnished with a bed, sink, toilet, and a wall-mounted writing table. The scene was depressing and desperate.
“Thank you for coming, John and Alex. Thanks for everything that you’ve done for me.”
“Tried to do,” said Sampson. “Tried and failed. Fucked up is all we did.”
Cooper shook his head. “Just wasn’t in the cards this time. Deck was stacked against us. Not your fault. Not anybody’s,” he muttered. “Anyway, it’s good to see the two of you. I was praying you’d come. Yeah, I’m praying now.”
Sampson and I knew that vigorous legal efforts we
re still proceeding to try to stop the execution, but there didn’t seem much reason to talk about them. Not unless Cooper chose to bring the matter up, and he didn’t. He seemed strangely at peace to me, the most relaxed I’d seen him. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his prison coveralls were neat and looked freshly pressed.
He smiled again. “Like a nice hotel in here, y’know. Luxury hotel. Four stars, five diamonds, whatever signifies the finest. These two gentlemen take good care of me. Best I could expect under the circumstances. They think I’m guilty of the three murders, but they’re pleasant all the same.”
Then Cooper leaned into the steel bars and got as close as he could to Sampson. “This is important for me to say, John. I know you did your best, and I hope you know that too. But like I said, the deck against me was stacked so goddamn high. I don’t know who wanted me to die, but somebody sure did.”
He looked directly at Sampson. “John, I have no reason in the world to lie to you. Not now, not here on deathwatch. I didn’t murder those women.”
Chapter 31
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS earlier, Sampson and I had signed an agreement to be searched before we entered the execution room. Now, at one o’clock in the morning, sixteen men and three women were led into the small viewing room inside the prison. One of the men was General Stephen Bowen from Bragg. He’d kept his promise to be there. The U.S. Army’s only representative.
At twenty minutes past one in the morning, the black drapes to the execution chamber were opened for the witnesses. I didn’t want to be there; I didn’t need to see another execution to know how I felt about them. On the order of the prison warden, the lethal-injection executioner approached Cooper. I heard Sampson suck in a breath beside me. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for him to watch his friend die like that.
The movement of the technician seemed to startle Ellis Cooper. He turned his head and looked into the viewing room for the first time. The warden asked him if he’d like to make a statement.
Cooper’s eyes found us, and he held contact. The eye contact was incredibly powerful, as if he were about to lose us as he fell into the deepest chasm.
Then Ellis Cooper spoke.
His voice was reedy at first, but it got stronger.
“I did not murder Tanya Jackson, Barbara Green, or Maureen Bruno. I would say so if I did, take this final injection like the man I was trained to be. I didn’t kill the three women outside Fort Bragg. Someone else did. God bless you all. Thank you, John and Alex. I forgive the United States Army, which has been a good father to me.”
Ellis Cooper held his head up. Proudly. Like a soldier on parade.
The executioner stepped forward. He injected a dose of Pavulon, which is a total muscle relaxer and would stop Cooper’s breathing.
Very soon Ellis Cooper’s heart, lungs, and brain stopped functioning.
Sergeant Cooper was pronounced dead by the warden of Central Prison at 1:31 A.M.
Sampson turned to me when it was over. “We just watched a murder,” he said. “Someone murdered Ellis Cooper, and they got away with it.”
Part Two
JAMILLA
Chapter 32
I WAS EARLY to meet the flight coming into Gate 74 at Reagan National; and once I was at the airport, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was definitely nervous, good nervous, with anticipation. Jamilla Hughes was coming to visit.
The airport was crowded at about four on a Friday afternoon. Lots of weary, edgy businesspeople sitting around ending their workweeks on the computer, or already off the clock at the bar, or reading magazines and popular novels that ranged from Jonathan Franzen to Nora Roberts to Stephen King. I sat down, then popped up again. Finally I walked close to the large, expansive windows and watched a big American jet slowly taxi to the gate. Well, here we go. Am I ready? Is she?
Jamilla was in the second wave of passengers getting off the plane. She had on jeans, a mauve top, a black leather car jacket that I remembered from our stakeouts together in New Orleans. The two of us had become fast friends on a bizarre homicide case that had started in her hometown of San Francisco, weaved its way through the South, including the Big Easy, then ended up on the West Coast again.
We had been talking about seeing each other ever since, and now we were actually doing it. It was pretty courageous on both of our parts; I just hoped it wasn’t dumb. I didn’t think so, and I hoped Jam felt the same way.
Jesus, I was twitching as she came walking up to me. She looked great, though. Nice, big smile. What was I so worried about?
“Where are the thick white clouds that are supposed to be covering the city as my plane approached? God, I could see everything — the White House, Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac,” Jamilla said, grinning.
I leaned in and gave her a kiss. “Not every city has mountains of fog like San Francisco. You need to travel more. Your flight okay?”
“Sucked.” Jamilla grinned again. “I don’t like flying much these days, but I’m glad to be here. This is good, Alex. You’re almost as nervous as I am. We never had trouble talking on stakeouts. We’ll be fine. We’ll be just fine. Now calm down, so I can calm down. Deal?”
She grabbed me in both arms, hugged me, then kissed me lightly, but nicely, on the lips. “That’s much better,” she said, and smacked her lips. “You taste good.”
“You must like spearmint.”
“No, I like you.”
We were a whole lot more comfortable during the ride into Washington in my old Porsche. We talked about everything that had been happening since we’d last seen each other. At first, it was work stuff, but then we got into the whole terrorist mess, then how my family was, and hers, and as usual neither of us shut up once we got started — which I love.
It was only as I pulled up to the house that things began to feel tense for me again. “You ready for this?” I asked before we got out of the car.
Jamilla rolled her eyes. “Alex, I have four sisters and three brothers back in Oakland. Are you ready for that?”
“Bring them on,” I said as I grabbed hold of her black leather duffel bag, which felt as if it held a bowling ball, and headed toward the house. I was holding my breath, but I was definitely glad that she was here. I hadn’t been this excited in a long time.
“I missed you,” I said.
“Yeah, me too,” said Jam.
Chapter 33
OBVIOUSLY, NANA HAD been thinking about the appropriate welcoming dinner for a while. Jamilla offered to help, and of course Nana refused to let her so much as lift a little finger. So Jam trailed her into the kitchen anyway.
The rest of us followed to see what would happen next. Two immovable forces. This was high drama.
“Well, all right then, all right.” Nana complained some, but I could tell she was pleased by the company. It allowed her to show off her wares, put us all to work, and test Jamilla at her leisure. She even managed to hum a little of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” while she worked. And then so did Jamilla.
“You okay with pork chops in apple gravy, squash casserole, overcreamed potatoes? And you’re not allergic to a little corn bread, are you? Or fresh peach cobbler and ice cream?” Nana asked several loaded questions at once.
“Love the pork chops, potatoes, peach cobbler,” Jamilla said as she examined the food. “Neutral on squash casserole. I make creamed corn bread at home. My grandma from Sacramento’s recipe. You add creamed corn, which makes it extra moist. Sometimes I throw in pork rinds too.”
“Hmm,” Nana said. “That sounds pretty good, girl. I’ll have to try it.”
“If it ain’t broke,” Jannie decided to contribute.
“Keep your small mind open,” said Nana, wagging a crooked pinkie finger at Jannie. “That’s if you ever want it to grow bigger and don’t want to remain a small person all your life.”
“I was just defending your corn bread, Nana,” said Jannie.
Nana winked. “I can take care of myself.”
Dinner
was served in the dining room, with Usher, Yolanda Adams, and Etta James on the CD player. So far, this was pretty good. Just what the doctor ordered.
“We eat like this every night,” Damon said. “Sometimes we even have breakfast out here in the formal dining room,” he told Jamilla. I could tell that he already had a little crush on her. Hard not to, I suppose.
“Of course you do, like when the president stops over for tea,” Jamilla said, and winked at Damon, then at Jannie.
“He comes here often,” Damon said, nodding. “How did you know? My dad tell you?”
“Think I saw it on CNN. We get that on the West Coast, you know. We all have TVs out by our hot tubs.”
Dinner and the small talk were a success — at least I thought so. The laughter was constant, and mostly relaxed. Little Alex sat in his high chair grinning the whole time. At one point Jamilla pulled Damon out of his seat, and they danced a few steps to Aretha’s “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” on the CD player.
Nana finally rose from the table and proclaimed, “I absolutely forbid you to help with the dishes, Jamilla. Alex can pitch in. That’s his job.”
“C’mon, then,” Jamilla said to Jannie and Damon. “Let’s go out front and trade gossip about your daddy. And your Nana too! You have questions — I have questions. Let’s dish. You too, little man,” she said to Alex Jr. “You’re excused from kitchen detail.”
I followed Nana out to the kitchen with about half of the dirty dinnerware stacked in my hands and arms.
“She’s pleasant,” Nana said before we got there. “She’s certainly full of life.” Then she started to cackle like one of those pesky crows in the old-time cartoons.
“What’s so funny, old woman?” I asked. “You’re really getting a big kick out of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I am. Why wouldn’t I? You’re just dying on the vine to know what I think. Well, surprise, surprise. She’s a real sweetheart. I’ll give you that, Alex — you pick nice girlfriends. She’s a good one.”
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