Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

  “But does he ask for different food? For a book to read? To be kept away from people who want to fuck him in the mouth?” It was only part of the litany of complaints she’d heard from Atlanta inmates.

  Ravenel shrugged. “We haven’t had that discussion.”

  Mary leaned forward. “I know you haven’t had it. And you haven’t had it because Ridge Standingdeer has told you exactly what he’s told everybody else, which is nothing!”

  She knew she’d struck pay dirt. Ravenel’s face grew so red that she expected steam to start spewing from his ears. “Like I said before.” He slammed his fist down on the desk. “I don’t need to know that!”

  “But how can you defend him if you don’t know how much he comprehends of your defense? That compromises you, right there. You don’t even know how much English your client understands!”

  “What do you suggest I do, Ms. Crow?” Ravenel spoke through gritted teeth. “Learn Kituwah Cherokee in the next month?”

  “Let me be co-counsel. Ridge knows me, I think he trusts me. And I speak Cherokee.”

  “Fluently?” asked Ravenel with a sneer.

  “Better than you do.”

  Ravenel glared at her, furious. She glared right back. They looked like two dogs about to square off over a bone, then a slow smile spread across Ravenel’s face.

  “Okay, Ms. Crow,” he said. “If you’re itching to work this case so badly, then I won’t stand in your way. I will, however, maintain my position as lead counsel.”

  “All right,” said Mary, amazed at the fragility of the male ego. She could stay on the case as long as she wanted, if she let Ravenel go first and ride in the front seat and have the biggest slice of pie. Fine. She didn’t care. All she wanted to do was keep Ridge Standingdeer from being railroaded into prison by dopey George Turpin.

  “And I will present the case in court.”

  “Okay.”

  “And since you speak Cherokee, you can be in charge of explaining everything to our client.”

  “Fine,” said Mary. “When would you like me to start?”

  “Right now,” replied Ravenel. “Go over to the jail and see if you can get him to say anything more than the six words he keeps repeating to me.”

  “And they are?”

  “I did not kill Bethany Daws.”

  Miles away, at the scene of Ridge’s alleged crime, Avis Martin looked up, terrified. For a moment, all she could do was stare at the pages of Bethany’s diary, the girl’s words looking like script written in a foreign language. Finally she realized that she couldn’t just stay crouching in front of the Daws’ toilet, holding what could be the clue of a lifetime. Quickly she shoved the other magazines back in the basket and rose, clutching the small notebook to her chest. She opened the bathroom door, turned out the light, and hurried into Kayla’s room. Kayla was sitting on the floor, with Darby sprawled across her lap. Both of them looked up when Avis entered.

  “Are you okay?” Kayla asked, as if puzzled by Avis’s lengthy sojourn in the bathroom.

  Avis held up the spiral notebook. “Look what I found.”

  Kayla frowned. “What is it?”

  “I think it’s your sister’s diary.”

  Pushing Darby off her lap, Kayla jumped to her feet. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the bathroom. I accidentally knocked over that basket with all the magazines,” admitted Avis. “This was stuffed in the Christmas issue of Elle.” She held up the page where Bethany had stopped writing. “It looks like she got interrupted, and hid it, fast.”

  “Holy shit!” said Kayla, rifling through the pages. “Let’s see what it says.”

  Kayla shut her door, then the two girls huddled close together on the bed. With the notebook spread across Kayla’s lap, they switched on the bedside lamp and started at page one.

  Avis held her breath, hoping for revelations that might immediately exonerate the handsome Cherokee boy, but Kayla read nothing more than page after page of complaints. Bethany griped about her mother (Why can’t she remember what it was like to be young?), her father (All he cares about is his job. I hate him––he doesn’t believe a thing I say.), and Mr. Rogers, her algebra teacher (He’s so mean, particularly if you aren’t good in math.). She had kinder words for her French teacher, Madame Bailey (elle est très drole), her friend Chloe Smith, and even her sister Kayla (she’s so much smarter than me, she’ll probably get a full ride at Tennessee). The two girls read all the way to page eight when suddenly, their eyes caught on one line: I wish D would get cancer and die.

  “Whoa!” Avis perked up, noting that Bethany had under-lined the whole sentence, and even circled the word “die” twice. She looked at Kayla. “Who is D?”

  “I don’t know.” Kayla frowned, mystified. “She was friends with Diane Merritt and she dated David Lawrence. But she didn’t want them to die. I don’t think either of them would have sneaked up here and bashed her head in.”

  “How about Darby?”

  Kayla shook her head without hesitation. “Bethany raised Darby from a puppy. That can’t be it.”

  They continued to read. As they turned the pages, although Bethany began to talk about Ridge Standingdeer in wildly glowing terms, she also continued an accompanying recitative about the mysterious D: Saw D early––wanted to vomit. D’s jokes are so lame. With every line, her hatred of the mysterious D grew right along with her deep love of Ridge. She devoted pages to the boy—how sweet he was, what a wonderful lover, how they were going to marry as soon as she got settled at college.

  “Wow,” said Kayla. “My folks sure didn’t know about that.”

  “Let’s read this next page real carefully,” said Avis. “It’s the last one she wrote.”

  The first paragraphs were nothing more than a lengthy complaint about some customer at the café, then Kayla read the last words Bethany ever wrote out loud: “Ridge hid my insurance policy last night. D is really fucked now. Hooray!”

  “Gosh,” said Avis, reassuming her role of lead detective. “Don’t you have any idea what she could have meant?”

  Kayla shook her head. “She had her own money. Maybe she bought an insurance policy.”

  “But that’s just a paper you keep in a drawer,” said Avis. “Why would Ridge need to hide that?”

  “Maybe D wanted it.” Kayla frowned.

  “But why did she hate D so? Was D a girl or a boy?”

  “I don’t know.” Kayla’s voice cracked. She dropped down to the floor and again cradled Darby in her arms. “This is terrible. Now we know all this new stuff about somebody named D, but it still won’t help get Ridge out of jail.”

  For a moment Avis gazed out the window, panicked, thinking both her investigation and her budding friendship with Kayla were stymied. Then a new idea occurred to her. “Not right now it won’t,” she said, trying to sound as confident as Nancy Drew. “But we’re not finished yet.”

  “What do you mean?” Kayla looked at her through her tears. “How can we find out about all this now?”

  “We need to get to the jail,” said Avis. “We need to ask Ridge Standingdeer who D was.”

  24

  Mary’s decision to rejoin Ridge’s defense team pleased only Hugh. Deke Keener whined for days, calling her every morning to beg her to drive out to the Bear Den property or look at some other mountain he wanted to carve up for new homes.

  “Aw, come on, Mary,” he’d plead, his voice bright as new money. “I really need you on my team.”

  “Thanks for calling, Deke,” she replied firmly. “But you’ll have to consider me benched until after the Standingdeer case.” This would continue, like Ping-Pong, for another round or two, then he would say good-bye only to call again the next morning. Though she always refused Deke politely, every day she didn’t spend working for him felt like a day she’d been sprung from jail. Only when she avoided all her Keener Construction duties did she realize how much she detested them.

  Jonathan, on the other hand, neither whined
nor wheedled. He accepted her decision quietly, only once revealing his sorrow late one night, as they sat beside the river, watching the moon rise. “Lily and I aren’t going to be enough, are we?”

  “What do you mean?” Mary asked, stalling, knowing exactly what he meant.

  “I’ve watched you these past two weeks. You walk like a panther when you leave to work for Standingdeer.”

  She laughed, though the sting of truth lay just beneath the surface of his words. “And how do I walk when I leave to work for Keener?”

  “Like someone headed for a long stretch in jail.”

  Ravenel, at least, remained consistent. After the lawyer’s first appearance in court, he’d immediately reverted to his mud-caked jeans and musky shirt, burrowing back into some environmental case he called “the road to nowhere.” Though he did hire a sad looking PI named Elmo McGruder and a team of forensic defense experts, neither came up with anything new. McGruder had found Bethany to be a typical teenager. The murdered girl had no police record, though she had once been driven home when officers broke up a keg party after a football game. She’d made excellent grades in both junior and senior high, and was popular with her classmates and teachers. She went to the Baptist Church and had been awarded a Keener Construction scholarship that she planned to use at Chapel Hill, where she’d planned to study nursing. According to Elmo McGruder’s expert opinion, the girl had just pissed off the wrong boyfriend.

  Ravenel’s forensic experts fared no better. When they turned their own microscopes on the case, they came up with exactly the same results as the state. Bethany’s time of death was around four A.M.; the cause of death was head trauma from a blunt instrument, wounds consistent with the primitive tomahawk found beside her pillow. The house had no signs of forced entry, no defensive wounds marred her body; no skin or hair was trapped beneath her nails. Her blood alcohol level was 1.7, Ridge’s semen was in her vagina, Ridge’s fingerprints were in her room, on the tomahawk; Ridge’s footprints were all over the muddy path behind her house that led into the woods. To Mary, the case felt as oppressive as the heat that bore down from the August sun. Every day she drove over to the Justice Center to meet with Ridge. Every day the same thing happened. The boy would come in, bid her a polite “sheoh,” then sit like a stump while she attempted to cajole words out of him. She’d begged, she’d demanded, she’d tried to reason with him in every language she knew. The only thing he ever said beyond “hello” was “I did not kill Bethany Daws.” Mary wanted to scream. In two weeks they would go to trial, and she knew nothing more about what happened the night Bethany was murdered than she did that first day in Hugh’s barn.

  “How’s it going, Ms. Crow?” Ravenel asked her one day as she was about to make her umpteenth trip to jail. He was sitting with his office door open, plotting some course on one of his topo maps. “Hiawatha talking yet?”

  “Not yet,” she replied with an acid smile. “But at least I’m working on it.”

  He looked up, feigning hurt. “You think I’m not working?”

  She leaned against the doorjamb, almost knocking over his stick with its bear bell. “Not unless you’re mapping out his escape route to Canada.”

  Ravenel snorted. “I’m doing something a little more important than that, Ms. Crow. These acres within the lines of my pencil will be an inviolate ecological preserve, much like the Kilmer Forest.”

  “The Kilmer Forest?” Mary was tempted to crack Ravenel over the head with his own stick. “Are you aware that you’re only two weeks away from a murder trial? Has it dawned on you, Mr. I’m-the Attorney-of-Record, that you need to prepare a defense?”

  “Ms. Crow, I’ve saved as many people from death row as you’ve sent there. I don’t need you to tell me how to plan a defense, but since you’re so concerned about how I spend my time, let me assure you that when we next appear in court together, I, at least, will have made a contribution to this case.”

  She wanted to kill him; instead she slammed his door so hard that she heard his stick crash to the floor. She stormed down the steps, ignoring Dana’s house rule of quiet. Ravenel was the most infuriating man she’d ever met. If he was half as good a defense attorney as he was a jackass, then Ridge had nothing to worry about.

  She got in her car and sped to the Justice Center. The afternoon was sultry and sullen, and as soon as she walked into the lobby, she saw her nemesis, Officer Jane, the Loganite clerk who commanded the front desk. When the cop caught sight of Mary, her thin lips tightened sourly and she immediately turned her attention to her computer screen. At that moment Mary realized that the number of townspeople who truly hated her had not diminished in the past eight weeks; if anything, their number had grown. Not only had she killed Stump Logan, but now she was helping the Cherokee witch who had bludgeoned the town sweetheart to death. A headache began to throb at her temples as she scrawled her name on Officer Jane’s register, only to receive her snippy instructions to “go down the hall to room three.”

  Gritting her teeth, she passed through security, and took her usual place in room three. Moments later, Ridge sat in the chair opposite hers.

  “Sheoh,” he greeted her, polite as ever, calmly content to let her make all the effort.

  Suddenly he enraged her as much as Ravenel and Officer Jane. How dare this boy take such a cavalier attitude toward his own life? Did he think she found this fun? Did he not realize that there were other, equally innocent men sitting in jail who would salivate at having an attorney beg them for their story? And not just once, but every frigging day of the week? She snapped her still-blank notebook shut.

  “Okay, Ridge,” she seethed. “You need to ditch this noble savage routine. If you don’t start talking right now, you’re going to spend what life you have left in prison, and then they’re going to execute you.”

  His dark eyes regarded her curiously, as if she were a monkey in a zoo.

  She repeated her words in Cherokee. Still, the boy made no response.

  “Do you understand execute?” She wanted to shake him. “It means kill, Ridge. Atsidihi. Atsidihi until you’re dead!”

  He sat motionless.

  The headache that had flirted around her temples now clamped down across the base of Mary’s skull. All at once she realized she’d been suckered into the most foolish of undertakings, that of trying to force somebody to do what they were determined not to. She might as well have spent the past two weeks of her life trying to alter the orbit of Mars.

  “Okay, Ridge,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to ask you one last time, then I’m not going to bother you anymore. Tell me what you did the night Bethany was murdered.”

  His dark eyes flickered. For a moment she thought she’d gotten through to him, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he said only: “I did not kill Bethany Daws.”

  At that instant, her head flooded with such a rage that she feared she might have a stroke. Then the hot, squeezing pressure dissipated as swiftly as it had come, leaving her strangely calm, as if she were looking down on this mess from a great height.

  “All right,” she said, giving him a bright smile as she rose to her feet. “Since you won’t explain your innocence, I can only assume you’re guilty. I wish you all the luck in court. Except for one thing, you’ve been the perfect Cherokee.”

  He raised his brows, as if to ask, “What?”

  “You forgot that it’s no disgrace to take help when it’s offered.”

  With that she turned, and for the first time, left the interview room first, leaving Ridge to the care of the Pisgah County jail. She gave Officer Jane a jaunty wave as she walked through the lobby and out the door. She was crazy to have thought she could practice law in Hartsville. Most of the town hated her on sight, and those who didn’t wanted her to be something she was not.

  “So be it,” she muttered as she unlocked her car. “I’ll sell Irene’s farm and go back to Atlanta. I can start a practice with Alex and Joan, buy a little house in Virginia Highlands. Lily c
ould have her own bedroom, Jonathan could still hire out as a guide. I could make it work!” Suddenly everything seemed so clear that she thought if she looked up at the sky, she would see clouds spelling out “Come back, Mary” and a finger pointing toward Georgia.

  “Okay,” she said as she pulled up in front of Sutton’s Hardware. “Sounds good to me.”

  Feeling lighter than she had in weeks, she skipped up her stairs. Ravenel’s door was locked, so she went into her office and scribbled him a note: Standingdeer still won’t talk, so I feel that my usefulness to this case has come to an end. Best of luck on August 27. She pondered a moment about whether to add that it had been a pleasure working with him, but since it had truly been about as much fun as a root canal, she simply signed her name.

  Grabbing her checkbook, she slipped the note under Ravenel’s door and headed for Dana’s office. Since it was exactly four o’clock, she doubted she was disrupting a therapy session, but she tapped softly on the door just in case. Seconds later, Dana opened it, looking as if she’d just awakened.

  “Hi,” she said, blinking.

  “Are you okay?” asked Mary.

  “Yeah.” Dana yawned. “I was just cleaning out my files. Work like that makes me drowsy. What’s up?”

  Mary gave her a regretful smile. “I’ve come to pay next month’s rent and to tell you that I’m moving out.”

  “Moving out? But you haven’t even been here two months! Is something wrong with your space?”

  “Oh, no. The space is fine. It’s everything else. I don’t think Harstville and I were meant to be together.”

  “But you seemed to be going great guns.” Dana glanced at Ravenel’s door. “Did Sam say something to offend you?”

  “Ravenel hasn’t said much that didn’t offend me,” replied Mary. “But that’s not why I’m leaving.” She knew she should explain further, but she didn’t wish to dredge up the Logan saga or the Standingdeer fiasco or the grimmer prospect of an endless career brokering land deals for Deke Keener. “Some people can come back home, and some people can’t. I guess I’m one of the latter.”