The Whole Truth

by Nancy Pickard

  Katherine looks at him squarely. “I have prepared myself for bad news for twenty-two years, Detective.”

  On our way out, I say privately to Paul and Robyn, “Could you guys check up on the whereabouts of a man named Frederick James Kepler? He may be living around here someplace, but I don’t know for sure. He’s Katherine’s ex-husband, and Ray’s father.”

  The detectives promise to look into it.

  * * *

  And then begin the media interviews. They go like clockwork, one after the other, with me chauffeuring the mother and daughter from one to another until we take a dinner break about eight at night. By ten o’clock, they start again, and as I have predicted, the journalists are kind and helpful, and the Keplers are extraordinarily effective on the air. Both of them cry, when interviewed. Both of them look straight into cameras and plead for mercy for their Johnnie, and they plead for the man called Ray to surrender himself.

  And the more they do, the more discouraged I feel.

  This is not going to work, I am thinking but not saying to them.

  Ray can’t read, so the print interviews are pointless. And there’s no reason to assume he is anywhere near a television set, or a radio. And even if he sees and hears these women, will he care? Will he even believe they are who they say they are?

  By ten-thirty, it is finished.

  The last television crew has left my house, and the Keplers and I are working our way through a bottle of wine out on my patio overlooking the bridge. The canal looks very beautiful tonight, and they are enchanted with my view of it. We are all exhausted, but they seem hyper, encouraged, optimistic, though I doubt that will last. I suspect it’s just a reaction to the lights and cameras, the sense of action that breeds hope. I stay up with them for another hour, rehashing every interview, reviewing all the possibilities for what might happen next, and listening again to their memories of Johnnie.

  It is spooky to think of him out there somewhere, and his mother and sister, in here with me. With the help of the wine, after a while they seem almost relaxed for the first time since I’ve met them. I get the impression neither of them drinks very much, so this may sedate them into a good night’s sleep. God knows they can use it. The wine is having an opposite effect on me, however: I’m feeling increasingly, irrationally jumpy. I fight an urge to look over my shoulder, turn on all the lights in my house, take a flashlight, and check the shadows under my cypress trees.

  * * *

  Franklin calls, just as I am dropping off to sleep upstairs.

  He knows I often work late into the night, and that I welcome his interruptions, especially when he’s calling to say that he could come over, if I want him to. Tonight, he knows I have houseguests, so he only wants to talk.

  “Nice people,” he says.

  “Um,” I agree, and roll over to turn on the light again.

  “So are the McCullens,” he adds, pointedly.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “But you don’t want me to go for the death penalty.”

  “I don’t know anymore, Franklin. All I know is that his mother’s sleeping in my house, and for the past three days, all I’ve heard is tragedy. It kills me, to think of her watching him die.”

  “I thought you wanted him to die.”

  “Yeah, I thought I did, too. When I think about Natalie, I just want Ray wiped from the face of the earth. But now I’ve met his mom, and I’ve heard his story, and I’m confused.”

  “I’m not. I don’t care if his mother was the Virgin Mary. He deserves to die, and if I get another chance, I’m going to make sure he fries.”

  “I think you may be wrong about this.”

  “No I’m not. You are.” Suddenly, he laughs. “This is how lawyers have foreplay.”

  “Don’t call me a lawyer,” I retort, and then I have to laugh, too.

  “So.” His voice softens. “Tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll still have guests.”

  “Marie?” The softening has turned to suspicion. He has heard some quality in my voice that lets him know I am putting him off again. The man is accustomed to cross-examining expert witnesses, and I’m a cream puff by comparison. Getting to the truth is what he does for a living, every bit as much as what I do. “You wouldn’t stop seeing me, just because we disagree about the death penalty?”

  “Just?” I say, in quotes, avoiding his question. “Wouldn’t that be more honorable than breaking up with somebody because he . . . snores, for instance?”

  “Are you saying I snore?”

  “No, Franklin, I’m saying some differences are important.”

  “Snoring doesn’t seem trivial if you’re the one it’s keeping awake.”

  I can’t tell if he’s trying to tease me out of my mood, or if he, too, is avoiding his own question. “All right! Snoring is important, we’ll stipulate to that, all right?”

  “It would make a hell of a lot more sense to stop seeing me because I snore, than because we disagree about some philosophy.”

  “Ray is not a philosophy, he’s a person.”

  “Ray is a monster, not a person.”

  We sound like a couple of schoolyard kids trading taunts.

  There’s a silence, before I say, “Look, I understand that if anybody seems to deserve it, it’s Ray. I get that. But I feel really uncomfortable about this, about flirting with you one minute, and sympathizing with Katherine the next.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Let me sort this out.”

  “You want me to stay away for a while?”

  Dammit. “I guess I do, at least until this is over.”

  “One way or another.”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling sad, “until it’s over one way or another.”

  “All right, but this is entirely your choice.”

  His anger and hurt crackle through the phone lines.

  “I know. I’m sorry. Good night, Franklin.”

  “‘Good night, Marie.”

  I am left staring at my own phone, and thinking in dismay, How did that happen? And also, What have I done? Maybe the right thing, maybe not. Maybe I’m a woman of principle, and maybe I’m just an impulsive, pigheaded fool. One thing for sure, I have definitely proved it is not wise to date any of the principals in my books before they’re published. I already knew that, but Franklin DeWeese could charm the freckles off a tomboy’s face. If Ray is recaptured, will Franklin charm a jury into sentencing him to die? If he does, I don’t know if I can go on feeling the same about him as before. Maybe I can, but maybe not. I know he’s put other people to death, but that seemed far removed from me. I could almost overlook it, as terrible as that sounds. But this hits close to home—as close as down my stairs, where Ray’s mom is sleeping.

  I’m too tired to trust my feelings, which are raw.

  I lay back on my pillows and stare out my windows at the canal. My bed feels too big for me, alone, and this view is too beautiful to keep to myself. I miss him already, but I know there won’t be any give in his position. Why should there be? He’s the prosecutor, for heaven’s sake, in a capital punishment state, and I knew that going into our relationship. He’s not going to change his mind, and I’d be crazy to expect him to. But can I balance passion for him with compassion for Katherine, and for a little boy named Johnnie?

  Eventually, I lie awake long enough to remember that I haven’t checked my messages since I turned down the ringer on my telephone to accommodate the television crews.

  There’s one from my editor, and guilt floods me when I hear her voice: “Marie! Were you going to call me today? I can’t wait to hear how the book is coming. Call me tomorrow, for sure, okay? If you’re not quite finished with the manuscript, maybe you want to send me some chapters?”

  I definitely do not want to do that, but I swear I’ll call her.

  Now my agent has jumped in: “Sweetie! Your editor showed me your new cover today, and I love it, except your name’s not big enough, and I told her that’s got
to be bolder. Give me a call tomorrow, and let me know when I can expect my copy of your manuscript. Bye, love.”

  I can imagine the conversation between them: “Have you heard anything from Marie?” “No, have you?” “Not a word. You don’t think she’s having trouble with the book, do you?” “I think she’d let us know.” “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right, she’d let us know . . .”

  I have to let them know, it’s only right.

  And then I discover I’ve missed the most important call of all, a second one from the anonymous woman:

  “I called once before, looking for Marie Folletino,” she says, sounding really nervous this time. There’s a long silence while the tape plays, and I wait with my fingers crossed. Finally she says, hesitantly, and so softly she might be whispering into the phone: “She’s got to hear what I have to say. She’s just got to. I think I can call back at eight o’clock tomorrow night, but that’s the last time. I won’t be able to call anymore after that. Please . . .”

  She hangs up.

  Feeling so frustrated I could scream, I lie back down on my pillow.

  After Ray had his hypnosis session, I got one, too. Turns out I’m not nearly as good a trance subject as he is. Humbling, that. All I “saw” was a dreamlike sequence in which “I” was a baby, lying on a blanket in the backseat of an old-model car. I “saw” the back of a man’s head in the driver’s seat. Dark hair. It’s night in the scene. I’m hot in my baby clothes, but my face is cold. Is the man my father? Maybe that’s a memory of him driving me to the motel on the edge of Birmingham where they left me. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just a scene from a movie, my own Raintree County.

  I wish this weren’t happening to me now.

  Bad timing, is my last thought before I sleep.

  11

  Raymond

  “Nothing’s going to happen right away,” I predict to the Keplers over breakfast on my patio. I’ve forced Katherine to sit down for once and let me fix them pancakes. We have coffee, and grapefruit picked from a tree in my yard. “So there’s no point in sitting by the phone all day. I could be wrong, but I think it would be safe for us to leave the house. Is there anything you’d like to do?”

  Mother and daughter glance at each other, as if to ask: Is there?

  All of Bahia Beach stretches out around us, on a gorgeous day with the temperature in the low eighties and no clouds in the sky. Now and then we hear a vehicle honk on the bridge, or a boat on the water. There’s a faint citrus smell to the air, and a lovely breeze off the canal.

  I’m thinking they might like to be distracted for a little while, although I should know better than that, just as I should have allowed Katherine to cook, if she wanted to, if it made her feel better. Foolishly, I’m thinking they might like to do some sightseeing. Maybe I can be excused for thinking that, because I love my hometown so much I want everybody else to enjoy it, too. Already, I know that they think it’s too hot and sticky down here, and they’re afraid of our crime.

  Lots of people feel that way, a sentiment to which I have a knee-jerk defensive reaction: Well, of course, what rational person wouldn’t prefer shoveling snow to the bother of washing sand off your feet? It’s so annoying to have to keep that hose in the yard, right? As for our crime, not all of it’s horrible, some of it’s hilarious in its own warped Florida way. My favorite is the gang of transvestites who stole courturier clothing from retail shops some years ago. When caught, they were wearing the evidence. As Dave Barry, one of our famous south Florida writers says, I am not making this up. And as Carl Hiaasen, one of our famous novelists says, in south Florida fiction is just nonfiction waiting to happen.

  But what’s not to love about gorgeous weather, relaxed people, and an easygoing lifestyle? Sure, there are traffic jams, and crowds in the malls, and in high tourist season it can take an hour on a Friday night to drive a mile along the beach, but so what? Big deal. There’s a trade-off for everything, right? What’s the upside of ten feet of snow, I ask you? Skiing? Pretty leaves in the autumn? Thanks, I’ll visit that. I’d rather live in the sunshine. There are so many compensations here—the beach itself, which you can stroll every day if you like, and the canals, and Butterfly World, and Cuban food, and restaurants on the water, and boats, and convertibles, and fresh fruit, and Cuban coffee, and—

  Katherine says, “I need to see where my son has been.”

  “Of course,” I say, slammed back to the harsh reality of their lives, where sightseeing takes a very low priority. I feel ashamed for even thinking she might be interested in trivial pursuits. “Do you have any place in particular in mind? We can go anywhere you say.”

  “Can you drive us by the jail where they kept him?”

  “Yes. And the courthouse is near there.”

  “Good. And what about that place where he worked?”

  “Checker Crab? I think it’s closed, but we can drive out there.”

  “Thank you, and . . . I want to see where he killed that poor man.”

  She’s referring to the aging hippie who owned the trawler from where Ray made his phone call to me. I keep my tone carefully neutral. “Okay. Would you want to see where Natty’s family lives?”

  “Yes, I want to see that, too.”

  “Mom!”

  “I need to see these places, Kim. You don’t have to go.”

  Her daughter looks fearful, undecided, but finally blurts, “I want to go with you, but I just can’t. Do you mind if I stay here?”

  “Of course not, honey.”

  So that’s what we do: Katherine and I leave Kim at my place, and then I drive her past the recent landmarks of her son’s violent life. It takes a long time, because it turns out that she doesn’t feel satisfied merely with staring at them from my car. She wants to get out, and actually go into the jail. We have to park, and walk up to the courtroom, slip into a trial that’s in progress, see the judge’s bench, the table where Ray sat, and get a glimpse of the elevator on which he rode down on the gurney. Then she wants to go down to the basement garage, to see where he staged his attack and escape, to see where he ran, holding his lawyer as hostage.

  We follow a path down to the New River.

  Katherine wants to sit there for a long, peaceful time, staring at the water and the boats going by, while I sit silently beside her.

  Finally, she says, “I’ve been thinking about what you told me about the pineal gland, Marie. And I put that together with how my son looks from his pictures . . . as if he never grew up, not normally, not physically. And I was wondering, do you think that could be why he took it? Out of some strange notion that it might help him develop into a man?”

  “It’s an interesting theory.” It had crossed my mind, but I eliminated it for the reason I’m about to give her. “But the pineal gland is markedly larger in a child under the age of six, and Natty had just turned six. If that’s what he was after, I think he would have taken a younger child.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know her age.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.” She hasn’t mentioned her older son in all the time she’s been here, and I’ve gotten the feeling that Kim doesn’t know that part of the tale. “Katherine, how’s Cal?”

  “Not good.” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t want to tell anybody, not his wife, not even his sisters. He would die if he knew I had told you and Jack, and if you put it in your book—”

  “I’ll figure out a way to leave it out.”

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do, he’s been so badly hurt. How could I let such a thing happen to him? How could I not know? There aren’t enough days left in my lifetime to say I’m sorry.” She glances at me, and I glimpse pain deep in her eyes. “Marie, all these years I’ve been grieving for Johnnie, and there was Cal who was hurt, and needing me, too.”

  “I suspect Cal and Johnnie aren’t the only children he . . .”

  “No, probably not.” She takes a breath, to steady herself. “Where did Johnnie go fro
m here?”

  We visit the trolley stop where he got a ride.

  She even wants to go to the beach, to see the rest room there, which was the last place he was officially spotted by anybody. Over a long lunch down at the beach, she has me tell her again everything I can remember that her boy ever said to me.

  “He could survive for a long time, couldn’t he?” she asks me.

  “It sounds as if he could,” I agree.

  “He did survive for a long time, before any of this.”

  “Yes, I guess he did, Katherine.”

  “And Donor Miller taught him how.”

  She shakes her head, as if there are no words to describe the hideous irony of that. “I want to see that boat now, where he killed that man.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, and then show me where the McCullens live.”

  “Okay, Katherine.”

  * * *

  The trawler that the old hippie called home is still tied up to a mooring on a canal just outside of Bahia. When Ray called me he was only fifteen miles away from my house, a fact I have been slow to grasp until now, as I stand beside Katherine five feet from the deck of the boat. It is strung with multicolored drapes of old fabric, so it looks as if the biblical Joseph has strung his coat over it.

  “The old man’s body was found in the river,” I tell her.

  “Why do they think Johnnie killed him?”

  I hesitate before answering her. These are very difficult things to tell a mother. “He died the same way Natalie did, with pressure to his carotid artery. Things are knocked around inside,” I point to the boat, “As if they struggled. But he was a lot older than Ray, and probably couldn’t have put up much of a fight.”

  She reaches for my hand.

  “I’d like to say a prayer, Marie.”

  Under the broiling Bahia sun, the mother of the killer offers up a prayer for the soul of his most recent victim.