The Last Innocent Hour

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Jason walked away without answering.

  He arrived at Jimmy's office after the pizza was delivered. The box sat in the center of Jimmy's desk. They hadn’t waited but were already dipping in with gusto when Jason walked in and dropped into a chair. Jimmy pointed toward the food.

  Jason waved his hand. He couldn't eat.

  Lance said, “Give y’all ten-to-one odds the jury’ll retire before lunch tomorrow, and they'll have a verdict before suppertime.”

  Jimmy stabbed the air with his finger. “You're on. Hell, yes. Long before lunch. I should schedule a round of golf.”

  Jason spoke up. “How can you be so sure what Bert Jessup's going to do?”

  A look passed between the mayor and the deputy. Jason had seen it before, the way these two communicated as if they belonged to a private club and nobody else could be a member. He’d be a fool to believe Jimmy would leave Lance in the dark.

  Jimmy winked. “Bert Jessup's the son of an old friend of mine from UT, owes me a favor.”

  Lance nodded. “Was a big one, too, huh, Jimmy Lee?” He rested one skinny haunch on the corner of Jimmy's desk and helped himself to another slice of pizza.

  The silence lengthened. It became obvious the assholes didn't intend to share the details with Jason. He looked at Lance and imagined squeezing his neck until his eyes bugged out of his head.

  Lance smirked around a mouthful of pepperoni. He glanced over his shoulder at Jimmy. “We know how hungry a young PD is, don't we, boss?”

  Jimmy nodded, chewing thoughtfully, swallowing before he spoke. “Who could Bert get to testify anyway? It's not as if Cunningham’s got character witnesses lined up outside the courtroom. You hear of any, Lance?”

  “Shit, no.” The deputy licked his fingers, wiped them on a napkin and tossed it aside. He worked his tongue over his teeth, absently kicking his boot heel against the desk leg, then popped a toothpick into his mouth.

  “I guess you greased Jessup’s wheel.” Jason looked at Jimmy.

  “I mentioned if he wanted to step back from this a little, it could work out good for him. It wasn't like I made a federal case out of it. He understands I can help him. You do me a favor; I do you a favor. You know the drill.”

  Jimmy flicked a speck of pizza crust from his black and red striped tie. “Cunningham won't be a problem after tomorrow. That’s all that should concern you.”

  Jason looked at his hands, laid flat on his thighs.

  Lance chewed his toothpick. In the fluorescent light, the deputy's badge had a coppery glow. Outside, night pressed against the windows. Humidity fogged the glass. The deputy said, “You know, I b'lieve he'll go to Walker. What do you think, Jimmy?”

  “It's where they lock up the first offenders, right?”

  “Yeah. But that don't make it no playground.” Lance chuckled. “Anyhow, I was going to say, if he was to get to be a problem up there at Walker, well, I got me some connections.”

  Jason straightened. He and the deputy eyed each other. Jason was thinking maybe Lance wasn't as stupid as he looked.

  Jimmy wanted to know what Lance had in mind.

  Lance kept his gaze on Jason; the toothpick shifted across his lip. “It ain't what but who,” he said. “I'm thinking about a certain guard works up at Walker. The one I stopped not long ago for driving drunk. I found a gram of cocaine on him too, but I drove him right home. Never said nuthin’ about it. You remember, Jimmy? Don’t’cha? I told you about it.”

  “We've done enough.” Jimmy’s tone was hard. “Can't risk doing anything more. Get me?”

  Lance raised his hands, palms out. “Yessir, boss. I didn't mean nuthin'.”

  “I'm running a campaign for state representative. I can't be getting my hands any dirtier than they are already. Tomorrow is the end of the line with this thing. After that,” --the mayor let his glance travel from Jason to Lance and back-- “after that, we aren't going to speak of it ever again. Got it?”

  Lance said he did, and Jason agreed like he meant it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Laughter filled the room, her laughter, sounding like glass cracking, breaking, falling in slow motion. Jason wheeled, wild-eyed, gaze raking every corner. Now her voice wove through the current of her sharp amusement, calling to him. “Jaycie... oh, Jaycie....” The hated pet name hissed from her mouth, the mouth of a snake.

  Jason sank to the edge of the bed in the room he’d shared with Lucy and dropped his head into his hands. He was losing it--

  You are such a stupid boy.

  Shut up, Jason told her. He covered his ears and heard his breath, loud and fast. A dry sob. But he couldn’t fight her anymore. She forced him to remember, to relive it. It’s what she wanted. Her revenge like all the rest of them. Jason folded onto his side and drew his knees up close. He felt her weight on the mattress, her fingertips stirring the hair at his temples. Words spun from her mouth like a spider’s fine silk. He saw her face hovering above him, a washed out moon. She accused him of plotting to leave her.

  You’ll find a girl, she said.

  No, no. He swore he wouldn’t. No one can take your place. How many times had he promised her? Over and over. And he'd meant it, too. Oh, how he'd meant it. Even now, curled on his side, lost in this dark, terrifying place, it hurt him to think of how much he had loved and adored her. He would have done anything, anything she asked of him. He was her boy, her own sweet son.

  I’m old now and ugly, she said. No man wants me.

  Jason listened, eyes closed, as though he hadn't heard it a thousand times, as though the sugared stench of bourbon on her breath didn’t sicken him … except … except that underneath that was her other smell, that fresh as sunshine scent. It opened an ache inside him of such exquisite painful yearning. . . .

  Stupid! She slapped his head and stood up. You’re only a stupid boy. What do you know of women?

  Shut up. Please shut up. . . .

  But still her voice floated on wisps of air, the breath of his dreams, his longing.

  Jason had tried so hard not to give in, not to push his hand against the burgeoning heat in his groin. He knew it was wrong. He was her son, but he hadn't fought her pulling him up, pulling his face against her breasts, taking whatever pleasure she wanted, making him take his, and it was shameful and sick. Evil and yet. . . .

  Sometimes, holding him, she had only cried, and he had felt her tears bleed among the hairs on his scalp. She’d speak of leaving, her feverish unresolvable need drifting above him like acrid smoke.

  He shook with fear when she talked that way. Don't, Mama. Don’t leave me. He flung himself at her, whispering his plea against the naked hollow of her throat. Say you'll wait until I'm grown. I’ll take you out of here; I'll give you everything.

  She would kiss him then, full on the mouth, and laugh, ruffling his hair.

  He wanted her promise. Getting it was the game. Him begging, her resisting, finally saying she'd wait, of course, she'd wait. Wasn't he her little man? He'd always be her only man....

  But the night before his fifteenth birthday, he'd caught her in the apartment building stairwell, packed suitcase in hand.

  Where are you going? he had asked.

  I met someone.

  But you promised. He came down a step.

  Her hand sliced the air as if to sever their tie. You can’t go sniffing after your mother the rest of your life. She patted her hair, a preening, teasing gesture. What chance have I got if I drag you with me? A half-grown boy? She turned to go, the cloying stench of bourbon rising on the ugly melody of her laughter.

  The next morning, the building super found her dead in that dirty stairwell as the result of injuries she’d sustained when she fell. No one had doubted it. She’d been a drunk after all and a whore, they said. Half the time, she’d left her kid for the neighbors to raise.

  Jason sat up now. He was wet with sweat, beneath his arms, down his spine; it soaked his groin. His hands tremored, and he wiped them down his thighs. She'd been
wearing spiky red heels that night. Red heels worn not for him but for her lover. Red heels that would have taken her away. In his mind's eye, he could see the narrow straps crossing her arched instep and above them the hem of her short tight dress. More red. Made of some shiny fabric ... cold in his fingers the way her lips had been cold when he’d pressed his mouth to them after he’d pushed her.

  Jason turned his palms up and stared at them. He could still feel it ... the cold stiff fabric of her shiny red dress, the blued chill of her lips ... as if the memory were imbedded in his flesh.

  o0o

  He was sitting in the courtroom the following morning; Jimmy hadn’t arrived yet, but Lance was there bent over the table for the prosecution whispering some kind of nonsense to a young woman seated there. She swatted him away, not playfully, and he straightened, red-faced, and met Jason's eyes and the glance they exchanged was filled with meaning. Jason would be in touch about the guard Lance had mentioned; Lance nodded; he'd be waiting for Jason's call.

  A moment later, Jimmy squeezed into the seat beside Jason. “I went to visit Cunningham,” he said keeping his unhappy gaze bent on the still-vacant judge's bench.

  Some undercurrent in Jimmy’s voice sent a thrill of alarm up Jason’s spine. “What did you go and see him for?”

  “He asked for me, figured I’d hear what he had to say.”

  “So?”

  “So he says you’re the reason Beth ran away after her high school graduation.” Jimmy whipped his glance to Jason, drilling him with his stare. “He says you did things, dirty things to her. Did you?

  Jason’s gut squeezed. The noisy buzz swarmed in his ears. Beth had told. Jason couldn’t believe it. He had sworn to her that he’d kill her if she told. He had made sure she understood that he meant it. She should never have done it, ratted him out, betrayed him. Bitch. Goddamn fucking bitch, just like the other one, like all the rest. He closed his eyes. A series of pictures reeled through his brain: red shorts, red heels, red blood....

  He didn't want others knowing. Didn't want their filthy thoughts probing what was his and Beth’s private business. It made him sick.

  “Is it true?” Jimmy asked on edge, ready to wash his hands, if it was.

  Jason hunched forward, elbows on his knees. He said, “They’re liars.”

  “You’re saying you never touched her, that Cunningham’s a liar?”

  Jason looked sidelong at Jimmy, and he saw how badly Jimmy wanted to believe him; it was in Jimmy’s best interests if he did. On his own, he couldn’t close the deal with the Japs; he couldn’t get himself elected. Without Jason, Jimmy couldn’t wipe his own ass. Jason straightened. “Maybe it’s not Cunningham; maybe Beth is the liar. You know women. They’re all liars.”

  Jimmy looked toward the judge’s bench. “I'd feel better if we knew what happened to her and her kid. It doesn't make sense that she hasn’t come forward. Cunningham’s her husband, for Christ’s sake. She could help him. Why doesn't she?”

  Jason didn’t answer.

  “What about the detective? What do you hear from him?”

  “Bradenton? He’s got nothing.” Jason shot a quick glance at Jimmy. “You know if she ever does show up, we'll have to--”

  Jimmy’s finger rose, stabbing the air in front of Jason's face. “I told you, I’m done.”

  No, Jason thought, you aren’t. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Thirty

  Sixteen years. Charlie picked the number from the blur of the judge’s speech. He thought of his old man, how he was buried in a prison cemetery up in Illinois. No one had come to his funeral. No one had mourned his passing. Charlie had sworn he would never end up like that. Other realities hit him in a hard succession of brutal moments: that Chrissy would grow up without him, and that he would come out old, with nothing, if he came out at all.

  He closed his eyes, feeling rage swim behind his lids. Feeling it roar down the throat of his fear. He turned, searching the courtroom and finding Tinker’s gaze, he spoke to him as if they were alone. “Tell me what you’ve done with my wife and little girl, and maybe I can forget this.”

  Tinker didn’t react; he didn’t move. A low rumble of protest went through the crowd of spectators. Charlie made as if he’d go through the rail and was stopped by the bailiff and a couple of the deputies. They pinned his arms. Handcuffs bit the flesh of his wrists. Other uniformed men stepped in on either side, yanking him around, dragging him through a back entry to the courtroom, but they couldn’t stop his mouth, couldn’t keep him from shouting: “I'll never forget you, Tinker. Sixteen years or sixty, I'll never forget you, asshole.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jane sat on a concrete bench beneath a stand of yaupons in the backyard of the women's shelter. It was only the first week of September, but the weather was unseasonably cool. She lifted her face and closed her eyes against the wan, fall sunlight. What had her summer been like? The question wrinkled across her brain, a trick to help her remember something. Anything. She'd been here over a month, the exact age of her memory.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  She glanced up. Glenda's brother, Tim, came toward her across the grass. She scooted over, and he sat beside her, not saying anything at first, just breathing in the same fresh wind that had drawn her outside. Jane liked his stillness. She liked his dark hair and clear blue eyes, too. His tall lanky frame moved with easy grace when he walked. Sometimes she wondered what might happen between them if she were a regular person with a regular memory.

  Last week out of curiosity, she'd walked to the municipal courthouse on Jessamine where he was defending a woman named Patsy Dawkins who'd shot and killed her husband in the act of assaulting her. The state called it murder. Tim called it self-defense, and he was fighting to keep Patsy from going to prison on a manslaughter charge.

  “How did things work out today?” Jane asked Tim now. “Did you get to closing arguments?”

  Tim shook his head. “Tomorrow. I called my last witness this afternoon, the doctor who treated Patsy after her husband almost killed her. If I was reading them right, I think his testimony had a pretty strong effect on the jurors.”

  “Surely they’ll acquit her; I know I would.”

  “It was murder.”

  “Her husband beat her over and over. What was she supposed to do?”

  Tim smiled and tapped her nose, then touched her cheek. “You sound like me,” he said softly.

  “Well, if anybody can get Patsy off, it's you.” Jane ducked her head and kept her tone lighthearted, casual.

  “It may be a lost cause.”

  “Glenda says you're the champion of those. You’re a hero in her eyes.” Did she have a brother, Jane wondered, a family, anybody? Lightning fast, the question shot across her brain, an arrow searching for a mark. It fell short.

  Tim was onto the game she played with herself, the way she treated her memory as if it were something she could catch in the act and force to give up its secrets. He put his arm around her. “If you've got family, they want to find you as much as you want to find them. They'll be doing everything they can.”

  Jane glanced up at him. “Do you really think so?”

  “I know I would be,” he said, and Jane had to look away from his eyes that were full of his feelings for her. Tim lifted his arm from her shoulders and let it rest along the back of the bench behind her, yet she still felt held within the half circle of his embrace. “My offer still stands.”

  “The detective?” Jane looked sidelong at him.

  “The detective. I know there's not much to go on, and I admit my interest is more than professional.” Tim seemed to sense her protest and laid his finger against her lips. “I don't mean to put any pressure on you. I just want to help.”

  He reached across her, picked up her left hand, ran the tip of his forefinger around the base of her third finger, tracing the circle of slightly paler flesh. They were silent, and from his touch, Jane was swept with longing. But for what? Tim's lips on
hers? She'd been aware of the pull of mutual desire from their first meeting. Seemed she hadn't lost her ability to recognize when a member of the opposite sex had an interest in her. But she'd lost almost everything else.

  Am I married? The question flashed across her brain unanswered.

  “You think about hiring the detective, okay?”

  Jane met Tim’s glance. “Maybe I should go back out to the place where Sharon found us.”

  “But you've done that twice already. I don't think you should put yourself through it again.”

  “I got a job today,” she said after a pause.

  “Doing what?”

  “Working at a nursery. The Natural Garden. I can walk there from here.” She stretched out her legs, pleased with herself. The man who owned it, Hollis Cornell, wasn't overly concerned with her lack of credentials. Driver's license and social security numbers were less important than whether she would show up regularly and work her shift. He paid in cash, and although it might be risky for some, that suited Jane fine.

  Tim said he knew Hollis, that he was a good man. He gave her a quick hug. “This calls for a celebration, don’t you think? You have to let me take you out to dinner.”

  “Thank you, but remember, I’m moving tomorrow.” She’d found an apartment, three tiny rooms in a building nearby.

  “You’re still determined to go?”

  She flattened her palms on her thighs and straightened her elbows. Above her head, the yaupon branches made deep green and heavily berried lace. “I have to live on my own, sometime, which doesn’t mean I’m not nervous. I'm going to miss your sister.” Jane sighed. “But at least now I've got a job, and I know I can pay back the money she's loaned me.”

  “Glenda hates to see you go too, but you're close by. You can still see each other.”

  Jane smiled. “Yeah, I know.” She was quiet a moment and then said, “This may sound odd, but it feels as if by starting over this way, I'm giving up on my old life, whatever it was. What if I move on and never know?”