by Beth Moore
Nobody said a word for several minutes, which was just about as long as Adella could last wide-awake. When she stopped tapping her foot, David stopped tapping his pen. He spun around on the stool and eyed the two of them at the table. Adella took a deep breath and then took the plunge: “She didn’t take that money, Olivia.”
“Of course she didn’t.” Then Olivia said something Adella wouldn’t have believed if she hadn’t heard it with her own ears, even if someone swore to it on a stack of Bibles. “Get me Jaclyn’s number. Or Jade or Jam or Jewel or Juice or whatever Jillian’s mother is calling herself these days.”
Adella had no idea how to find it, but miracles seemed to have been flying around that house like hummingbirds, and she figured she was liable to catch one.
CHAPTER 39
CAL’S LEFT FOOT HIT THE PAVEMENT almost before he threw the squad car into park and turned off the ignition. When he pushed through the front door, Frank and Sanchez were both on their feet waiting for him.
“Where is he?”
Frank spoke first. “Room one.”
“Bully?”
“Pacing outside the door.” Sanchez looked like she’d seen a ghost, and she was not an easy woman to scare.
Cal had rushed back to the office during his lunch break as soon as he got Bully’s phone call saying they had brought William Crawley in for questioning. A patrol car had been summoned by a hot dog vendor to the intersection of Decatur and St. Peter, where a man—who turned out to be their suspect—was reportedly shouting nonsense and tearing off his shirt. The vendor had to yell to make his voice heard on the 911 call. “I think that’s blood on his T-shirt!” Cal had ordered that no one question Crawley until he got there.
As soon as Cal turned down the hall of the interrogation room, he could hear a man yelling maniacally. Bully’s back was to the door, his face deep red and his jaw clenched. Cal glanced over his shoulder and saw Sanchez and Frank right on his heels.
Something was wrong. Something was usually wrong. It was the nature of police work. But this particular noon something was very wrong. Cal’s ears were ringing from the whoosh of blood pumping through the arteries in his neck.
As Bully’s big hand clutched the metal doorknob and turned it, the seconds dropped speed to Cal and ticked in slow motion like a hall clock chiming midnight. The man’s voice muffled into the background and Cal could hear the sound of his own shoes hitting the floor. His right heel first. The ball of his foot. His left heel. He reached up slowly and pulled the collar of his shirt away from his neck and heard the crackling of heavy starch. He blinked like a shutter on a camera moving through thick syrup.
As Cal crossed the threshold and entered the room, the seconds found their feet and leapt back on the clock. The man’s wrists were in handcuffs pinned to the table but he’d kicked the chair to the left side of the room. Both shoes were off and in opposite corners. Flailing his upper body back and forth violently and kicking the wall behind him with the bottom of one foot, he yelled continually, disturbingly, “Crawley didn’t want to!”
Cal tried to yell over him, “Pipe down! And sit down!” He gave a look to Bully and shot his eyes over to the fallen chair, signaling the officer to grab it, come around the table, and force the man into it. Bully was the only one with the size and muscle to do it. William Crawley was enormous. In order to calm the man, Bully was forced to do what Cal knew was the last thing he wanted to do: talk kindly to the man and comfort him.
“It’s alright, buddy. It’s alright. How about some water? Want a glass of water? Looks like you haven’t slept in days.”
Crawley stiffened and Bully, wedged right behind him, patted both the man’s shoulders. “It’s okay, buddy.”
Cal lowered his head just enough to get Bully’s eyes on his own. Police officers who worked in tandem had to learn how to read one another’s expressions. Too many occasions arose when words mustn’t be overheard or would take too much time when every millisecond counted. Cal’s stare was one of extreme caution, meant to convey that Bully better tighten his stomach muscles because he might be about to take the elbow of a crazed Samson right in his diaphragm. Bully slid his grasp from Crawley’s shoulders to his elbows and he tugged them downward. The big man’s bones became like rubber and he slouched in the chair like a levee collapsing in a flood. He put his face on the table and wept.
Cal released the breath pent up in his lungs and sat down in the chair opposite Crawley. Bully stepped over to the side of the table so he could see the faces of both men.
“You William Crawley?”
He kept sobbing but an affirmative answer was still clear enough for the video camera in the upper corner of the room to pick it up.
“Sir, would you sit up please and help us out? We’d like to get you cleared for anything you haven’t done and help you work through what you didn’t want to do. But you’re going to have to tell us what that is. Can you do that?”
He slowly raised his head, mumbling disjointed syllables. It sounded like nothing but bah bah bah to Cal and he couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. He knew full well that the officer from psych was behind the glass making an evaluation and he could already see the handwriting on the wall. A judge would rule this man incompetent to stand trial. The guy smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in a while but he didn’t smell like liquor. It could be drugs, but Cal had a feeling the dude’s system was as clean as a whistle.
Cal hated to have to say this, but the shape the man was in, he knew it was necessary. “Mr. Crawley, am I understanding correctly that you waived your right to an attorney and you’re willing to answer some questions?”
Bully stiffened as if to brace himself. He wasn’t the one who brought him in. Steve Gates was, and he was one infraction from nine weeks in anger management.
Crawley didn’t appear roughed up. He had a busted lip, but with all the flailing, it was probably self-inflicted and it was a wonder he hadn’t cracked his head like a hard-boiled egg. The bruising around his wrists already threw a stark contrast of painful-looking deep purple against his dark-brown skin. The oddest part of his appearance was what was left of his T-shirt. The neckband and short sleeves were still intact but the whole front was torn off, exposing the man’s expansive chest. The rest was dangling like a little boy’s superhero cape.
“Don’t want no lawyer. Crawley goin’ away fo’ a long time.” The tears streaming down his cheeks caught the fluorescent light and looked like the slender fingers of a river under a noon sun.
“Why do you think you are going away for a long time, Mr. Crawley?”
The man again broke out into loud sobs.
“It’s hot in here!” Cal yelled. “Can somebody turn up the air?” Bully glanced at the mirror behind the sergeant. Somebody on the other side of it better be jumping up and making haste to the thermostat. Cal tried to compose himself. When Crawley dropped his head on the table and cried, Cal got a good look at the back of his T-shirt. The vertical tear had an inconsistency. The bottom six or so inches had a straighter edge, like it had been cut with a knife or a pair of scissors.
“Officer La Bauve, where is the rest of this man’s shirt?”
Bully responded, “It’s been bagged as evidence. It’s gonna need to go to the lab right away, Sarge.”
Cal had a bad feeling that he heard Bully’s voice break at the end of that sentence, right there in the middle of an interrogation. Whatever was going on was still mud to Cal but it was becoming plainer by the minute that Bully either knew more than he did or had imagined something he hadn’t. This much Cal was sure of: he wasn’t about to put up with a pair of grown men crying in that room, especially a pair with a combined weight in excess of four hundred and sixty pounds.
“Officer La Bauve, do I need to get another officer in here?”
“No, sir.” Bully put his shoulders back, his hands behind him, and straightened his spine like a soldier at parade rest.
“Good, because I better not need to. Mr. Crawley, I�
��ll ask you again. Why do you think you are going away for a long time?”
The man’s face was still pressed against the table but he’d gone dead quiet. His shoulders were so massive they covered his ears.
“Mr. Crawley!” Cal picked up the volume.
No response.
The rise and fall of the man’s back was almost imperceptible. Maybe Cal had been wrong about him. Maybe he had taken something. Maybe he’d taken a lot of something. Cal shot Bully a look of concern. He reached over and nudged the man’s right shoulder. “Mr. Crawley?”
Crawley threw back his head and howled so loud, everybody within earshot nearly jumped like skeletons clean out of their skin. Cal had had enough. He scrambled to his feet, kicked his own chair out from under him, slapped his palms down hard on the table, and said, “Stop it. Get control of yourself and talk to me like a man.”
With his palms still flat on the table, Cal dropped his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and swallowed hard. He had no idea where his next words came from. Nobody could have thought they were more out of character for him than he did. “William? Or is it Willy? Did they call you Willy? Willy, what would your mama say to you right now?”
“My mama? Or Miss Earnestine?” Saliva had collected on his bottom lip.
“Who?”
Crawley looked over Cal’s shoulder to something miles beyond the wall. His mind seemed to follow his gaze straight into a wormhole. “Miss Earnestine. She care fo’ me. She take me in.”
Cal righted his chair and sat back down. “That’s good. That’s good, Willy. What would Miss Earnestine say to you right now?”
“She say, ‘Tell the truth, boy. You bettah tell the truth.’”
“That’s right, Willy. You better tell the truth. That’s always best. It can set a man free. What is the truth, Willy?”
“That woman tell me—” Crawley stopped in the middle of the sentence and his eyelids hung to his pupils.
“Willy, you talking about Miss Earnestine?”
“No! Not Miss Earnestine!” Agitated, Crawley pounded his fists against the table. “Miss Earnestine a good woman. She a churchwoman! Ain’t you ever met a churchwoman?”
“Then who? Who is that woman who told you something? That woman who ain’t no churchwoman?”
“You know who!”
“No, Willy, I don’t. Help me. Tell me who.”
“She play cards.”
“At the casino, Willy?”
“No, man. You ain’t listenin’!”
“I’m trying to. What do you mean by cards?”
“Devil cards! She say they tell me to.”
“The cards told you to do something?”
“She say they did.”
“I need a name, Willy. What’s that bad woman’s name?”
“She play like she like me. Like she gon’ be nice to me. She gimme money. Say, ‘Go eat, Crawley.’”
Cal spoke calmly and quietly. “And what did you say to her, Willy? What did you say to the woman who gave you some money and told you to go get something to eat? Right after she gave it to you, Willy. Think. What did you say?”
“I say, ‘Thank ya, Miss Stella.’”
Cal sat back with his brows drawn, tilted his head, and stared at the wall, his mind scrambling to connect dots that, five minutes ago, hadn’t been on the same page. It could be a different Stella. It was a common enough name. The trouble was, the square wasn’t a very big square. Without moving anything but his eyes, he shifted his gaze to Bully’s face and followed the young officer’s dead stare to Crawley’s.
Cal bolted straight up in his chair. “Willy, what did she say the cards told you to do?”
“No, no, no! Crawley say he don’t want to!” He began thrashing again, screaming something incoherent. Before Cal could anticipate the move, Bully lurched behind Crawley, wrapped his left arm around his neck, pressed his forearm to his Adam’s apple, and without tightening his grip, hollered as loud as he could in the man’s ear, “What did you do?”
“Crawley don’t wanna kill dat girl!”
Cal scrambled to his feet, lunged for the door, and yelled, “Sanchez! Get me a search warrant!”
She was already flying through the hall.
CHAPTER 40
SUMMER 1921
REVEREND BRASHEAR had promised his daughter an outing. She’d had a touch of pneumonia the month before. Tonsillitis prior to that. The doctor had told Raymond privately that the child’s frequent ailments and increasing fatigue did not bode well toward a normal lifespan. Though Raymond knew that Evelyn Ann had to have shared his doubts that they’d ever see her grown, he’d strangled all the volume of his dread and voiced only confidence. Now he didn’t know how to break through the protective cocoon his wife had spun around herself and their daughter to convey the unwelcome news.
Evelyn Ann had grown increasingly detached from everything and everyone but Brianna, and Brianna’s world had gotten smaller and smaller until it fit snugly, safe from all alarm, in the palms of two hands. With painstaking patience and effort, Evelyn Ann had created a world within those walls woven in embroidery threads, slathered in watercolors, and alive in storybooks. Still, the child’s immune system weakened as though it required the contamination of community to survive.
The doctor let Brianna overhear him tell her parents that the girl could use some fresh air. It was all the permission she needed to bleat like a calf and kick against the stall. “The lake!” she cried again and again, referring to Pontchartrain, a body of water she’d seen only a handful of times. Brianna had been infatuated with water all her life, swimming in her imagination where she could not walk. The fact was, she could swim better than she could walk, a feat she’d mastered out of mildly strong arms and raw determination.
“Out of the question, Brianna. Don’t even entertain it!” her mother replied. The trip was doable in a day, but it would be a long one and too taxing on the child.
“Then, the river!” she countered.
An argument ensued between her overprotective mother and her overindulgent father, a rarity right in front of her, and Raymond declared that he’d take her by himself.
One of his church members owned a small boat and they’d fished from it on several Saturdays. The older parishioner had seen little promise of a fisherman in the man of the cloth, but he’d seen something of perhaps greater value. He’d seen the reverend submit his bravado to the great deep, quiet his command, and lower his volume. Maybe the parishioner was making too much of it, but he’d been known to comment loudly enough that the sermons after a good fishing trip were particularly fine. The man had offered the boat to Raymond whenever he wanted it, teasing that it was “for the sake of the flock.”
He’d never taken him up on it, but he was doing so today. The winds were calm and cotton clouds with kind intentions scattered themselves across the blue sky. Evelyn Ann went along, miffed and brooding, only to see to it that they didn’t drift too far from the shore. Soon she’d loosened her grip on the edges of the boat and let herself bask in the child’s mirth.
The sun slid down the auburn locks of Brianna’s hair and brushed her ivory cheeks with dashes of pink. She was frail of body but abundantly alive with expression and imagination. She caught sight of a mama duck in the distance with five ducklings paddling behind her and squealed with delight.
Raymond reflected on how long it had been since they’d all laughed like that. This was a good idea. They’d all needed the gentle breeze in their faces. He winked at Evelyn Ann, and he could have sworn she blushed like she had when they were courting on her daddy’s front porch. She’d pulled so far away in the last several months and he’d let her. He knew today that had been a mistake, and he planned to woo her again. He must fight for her, especially if their fight for Brianna could one day be lost.
CHAPTER 41
THE DOOR TO STELLA’S APARTMENT gave way to Bully’s shoulder on the first try. Bully headed into the kitchen and Sanchez checked the small bathroom. Cal storm
ed toward the bedroom, yelling, “Police! Get your hands up!” He kicked the door open with his weapon drawn. When Bully came through the bedroom door, Cal signaled for him to open the closet door while he aimed his weapon at it. With it clear, Cal threw open the door of the master bath.
“She’s not here.” He holstered his gun.
“Sarge?” It was Sanchez, standing in the doorway to the bedroom with a stainless steel kitchen trash can in her hands.
“So, what’s the significance?”
She set it down and stepped on the pedal, and the lid popped open. With her thumb and index finger, she carefully lifted a crumpled piece of fabric from the can. As Cal walked across the room to study it, Sanchez held up the garment by two shoulder seams so he could get a good look at it. The bottom edge was silted in coffee grounds but there was no mistaking it. It was the dark-blue top Jillian had on at Saint Sans two days earlier when Cal and Bully were there. He nodded. “That’s hers.” He paused a few seconds to steady his mind and temper his anger. Then, “Tear this place apart.”
Sanchez instantly turned the trash can over and spilled the contents out on the floor. An empty tomato sauce can rolled under the bed. Bully got down on his knees, grabbed the can, pulled everything else out from under the bed, and started for the closet. Cal dialed his phone with one hand and rummaged through a drawer in the bedside table with the other. “Frank, whatcha got?” He’d left him and another officer behind at the station to see if they could get anything else out of Crawley. “That’s not going to cut it. When are they going to let you back at him?” Bully and Sanchez stayed on task, trying to work both quickly and carefully, but they quieted down enough to hear the sergeant.