It was hard for me to imagine what could be more personal than some of the conversational ground Miss Georgia had already trampled with abandon. I nodded nervously. “Go ahead.”
“I’ve had some surgery. I got these boobs; maybe you noticed?” I nodded again. “As a first step, you know, toward seeing how I might like being a real woman.”
“And?”
“I think I want to go the rest of the way.”
“Does ‘the rest of the way’ mean what I think it means?”
“If you thinking Lorena Bobbitt, it do,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Actually, iss a lot more complicated than that. Iss called ‘sex reassignment surgery,’ and they don’t just whack everything off. They kinda split everything open, and turn it inside out, and do some serious tuckin’-in. They do empty the marble bag, and take out most of the hydraulic tubing, if you know what I mean. But they make you a vagina and even a little clitoris, with nerve endings and everything.” She got a wistful look on her face. “I’ve seen pictures; I could look like a real woman. Make love like a real woman, too. Do everything but have periods and have babies, and who wants to mess with all that?”
“The surgery sounds pretty drastic,” I said. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Pretty sure, Dr. Bill. I been trying to get out of this male body ever since I hit puberty. The fit just don’t seem right, you know?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I reckon you do,” I said. “But you wanted to ask me something?”
“They’s a plastic surgeon up in Knoxville at the UT hospital, supposed to be pretty good,” she said. “He trained over in France with the doctor pioneered this fancy operation.” She hesitated. “I got me an appointment a while back. If I come up there and have this done…” She trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Would you come visit me in the hospital, Dr. Bill?”
I laughed. “That’s it? That’s what you were worried about asking me? Good Lord, Miss Georgia. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”
As we left the deli and headed back to my boring white car, Miss Georgia took my arm. And when I got in, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed hers, too. It felt smooth and soft—like a real woman’s—and it was the most human, compassionate, comforting moment I’d experienced in the five days since I’d found Jess’s desecrated corpse at the Body Farm.
I decided not to take the interstate back to Knoxville; instead, in hopes a different route might distract me from thoughts of Jess, I took U.S. 27, which crossed the river a half mile downstream from the glass-peaked aquarium. It had been years since I’d taken 27; the highway had been mostly four-laned since then, but the surrounding countryside remained virtually unchanged. The road roughly paralleled I-75—both of them angling northeast from Chattanooga—but while 75 ran through the broadest, flattest part of the Tennessee Valley, 27 lay about twenty miles to the west, skirting the base of Walden Ridge, the mouth of the rugged Chickamauga Gulch, and the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau.
Forty minutes north of Chattanooga, highway 27 bypassed Dayton, and on a whim, I angled left into the business district. On the north edge of the four-block downtown, I saw an elegant old courthouse on my left, three stories of brick with a bell tower rising another two stories above the main structure. It hit me with almost physical force: this was the court house where Williams Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow had tried the case of John Scopes, the high school science teacher arrested for teaching evolution in 1925. Had I subconsciously chosen this route so that I would pass this historic spot, site of a debate that remained as unresolved today as it was eight de cades ago? Probably, I decided.
There were plenty of parking spaces along Main Street, and—irrefutable proof that Dayton was a small town—no meters to feed. I pulled into a spot directly across from the court house and strolled across the shady lawn toward the front doors. To the left of the entrance stood a life-size bronze statue on a pedestal; the inscription identified it as William Jennings Bryan, U.S. senator and three-time presidential candidate, nicknamed “the Great Commoner” for his affinity with ordinary folk of the time. Already famous for his dire pronouncements about the nihilistic implications of evolution, Bryan was recruited as the celebrity spokesman for the prosecution. I looked around for another statue; surely there was one of the lead attorney defending Scopes, Clarence Darrow. Darrow, like Bryan, was considered a titan. To his admirers, he was “the Great Defender”; to his detractors, “Attorney for the Damned.” If there was a statue of Darrow, it was well hidden.
As I puzzled over the sculptural imbalance, an older gentleman emerged from the court house, approached me, and said hello. “Where’s Darrow?” I asked. “Seems like they ought to have both lawyers out here.”
“Anybody wants to put up the money, we’d be glad to have him,” the man said. It turned out that he was the volunteer curator of the Scopes Trial Museum, housed in the basement of the court house. The court house had just closed, but when he found out I was passing through from out of town and hoped to see the courtroom, he graciously offered to let me look around not just the courtroom but the museum as well.
Stepping into the courtroom was like stepping back in time. The room occupied the entire second floor of the building; high windows lined every wall; the stamped-tin ceiling was the perfect counterpoint to the scuffed wood floor. Even the seats—old auditorium-style wooden seats bolted to the floor—were original. I sat in one of the front-row seats, imagining Darrow and Jennings hammering away at one another, and at one another’s philosophies: Darrow’s fierce belief in human free will and self-determination, Bryan’s dogged belief in the necessity of divine salvation. They staked out their positions in their opening arguments. “Scopes isn’t on trial,” Darrow proclaimed; “civilization is on trial.” Bryan set the stakes even higher, claiming, “If evolution wins, Christianity goes.”
I had long known that the trial was a media boondoggle; what I hadn’t fully realized, until I explored the exhibits in the basement, was how thoroughly orchestrated a publicity stunt it had been, from start to finish. Tennessee’s 1925 antievolution law was real enough, and so was the ACLU’s interest in challenging it. What was nearly pure hokum was the trial itself. It was the brainchild of local businessmen, Chamber of Commerce types who dreamed of putting Dayton on the map in a big way. When similar challenges to the new law began gathering momentum in other, larger Tennessee cities, the Dayton boosters maneuvered to get the date of the Scopes trial moved up, so Knoxville and Chattanooga wouldn’t steal Dayton’s thunder. Even the defendant, earnest young John Scopes, was a ringer: Scopes taught chemistry, not biology; he was persuaded to play the part of educational martyr as his contribution to the town’s economic salvation. Several students were carefully coached to confirm that, yes indeed, Mr. Scopes taught that man was descended from apelike ancestors. At one point, when a technicality came to light that threatened to nullify the charge against Scopes, Darrow—the Great Defender!—hastened to assure the court that the defense did not want the charge dismissed. Darrow hoped for a guilty verdict, one he could appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In short, the noble script of Inherit the Wind notwithstanding, this landmark case in American jurisprudence was as carefully choreographed as any professional wrestling exhibition.
As planned, evolution lost in the local court, so presumably Christianity won. But the victory, even at the time, rang hollow. Bryan—who’d taken the witness stand to defend the truth of the Bible—was portrayed in the press as a “pitiable, punch-drunk warrior.” Six days after the trial, the Great Commoner died in a house on a side street in Dayton.
Finding out how thoroughly the “landmark” trial was a sham and a gimmick was a bit demoralizing; I hated to learn that our court system was as susceptible to self-serving manipulation and grandstanding as, say, political campaigns. On the other hand, the debunking did put my banana cream pie in a broader historical perspective. If Bryan was the Great Commoner and Darrow the G
reat Defender, maybe—just maybe—history would remember Brockton as the Great Meringuer. At the very least, I might be able to land a celebrity endorsement deal with Sara Lee pies.
CHAPTER 37
THE DAYLIGHT FILTERING THROUGH the dusty screens of the cabin was even dimmer than usual when I awoke the morning after Jess’s funeral. I rolled across the lumpy mattress and pressed my face to the window. Through the grime on the glass and the dust and cobwebs on the screen, I thought—though it was hard to be sure—that I saw dark clouds scudding above the treetops. That meant I would have to work on my textbook revisions indoors, by kerosene lamp. Although the image seemed romantic, in an Abe Lincoln sort of way, I knew that a day of hunching over to read fine print by flickering lamplight would leave me with knotted shoulders and a screaming headache. As I wrestled with my choices—the case of cabin fever I’d get if I didn’t work, versus the aching head and neck I’d get if I did—the cellphone Jeff had loaned me began to ring. The display read PRIVATE NUMBER, so I considered not answering—what if a reporter had somehow gotten hold of the number? By the third ring, though, I decided I was being excessively paranoid. Somebody was out to get me, and I did want to be cautious, but I didn’t want paranoia to run away with me.
“Hello?”
“Bill? It’s Art.”
I felt my shoulders relax, not simply because it wasn’t a reporter, but because it was someone who actually still had faith in me. I’d called and left my number on Art’s voice mail and Miranda’s voice mail; I’d also given it to Peggy, my secretary, and Burt DeVriess and his assistant Chloe. That small circle of people, plus Jeff, seemed to represent the sum total of human beings whose loyalty and faith I retained. It wasn’t many, but they were all good people to have in my corner. Well, Burt DeVriess was an unsavory person to have in my corner, but nonetheless a crucial one.
“Hi, Art. How goes the pursuit of the pedophiles?”
“I set up a date yesterday with one of my boyfriends. We were supposed to meet at the food court at the mall. He stood me up. I’m feeling rejected.”
“You think he got suspicious? Figured out that Tiffany was really a cop?”
“Maybe. But I think he’s just skittish in general. I sent him a hurt-feelings e-mail last night, and he wrote back to apologize. Made some lame excuse about work. Sometimes it takes two or three times before these guys follow through—I’m not sure if they’re just chickens, or if they have some tiny shreds of conscience. But I’ve told him we need to take a break from each other for a week or so.”
“You playing hard to get?”
“No. I’ve taken some time off, actually. I thought maybe there might be a higher and better use of my investigative talents.”
“Higher and better than catching child molesters? What would be better than that?”
“Figuring out who killed Jess. Figuring out who’s setting you up. I’m off all week. How about we rough out some sort of plan?” Art’s generosity astonished me and moved me. “Bill? You still there?”
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Thank you, Art. Thanks.”
“You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would.”
“Okay, then, we’re even. You got any bright ideas for how we track down this diabolical killer?”
“Not so far.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t figure you would. Lucky for us, I do.”
“That is lucky. Whatcha got?”
“I keep thinking the Willis murder must be tied to Jess’s,” he said. “No pun intended. Jess had just released Willis’s name to the media, and it’s the one case you and Jess were working on together. Right?”
“Right. I keep thinking about Willis’s mother. The way she acted was really strange. It’s like she was less upset over the fact that he was dead than over the way Jess described him to the media. Almost as if his reputation were more important than his life.”
“Grief’s a funny thing, though,” he said. “People express it in wildly different ways. That could’ve been some weird version of denial.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but if so, then killing Jess might have been an extension of it—taking that assault on Jess to the extreme. That would fit with the threatening note that got thrown through my window, too.”
“But didn’t you say that came from one of those creationist protesters?”
“Looked that way,” I said, “but maybe she was trying to throw me off the scent. Then again, there’s another possibility.”
“Namely?”
“The cop that caught Craig Willis in the act. Given that he rushed in, didn’t follow procedures, and even roughed the guy up a bit, he sounds like a bit of a cowboy. Might he be capable of killing Willis, once the case got thrown out?”
“Maybe,” said Art. “The line between good cop and bad cop can be mighty easy to cross. You bend a rule here and there, pretty soon you’re breaking ’em right and left. Be a mighty big leap, though, to go from exterminating a pedophile to murdering a medical examiner—and then framing a forensic scientist for it.”
“Hmm. That does seem like a stretch.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let me try to track him down and have a talk with him. If nothing else, he might have some ideas about other folks who may have wanted Willis dead, and whether any of them were capable of the rest of this stuff.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Naw,” he said. “Let me talk to him, cop-to-cop. You think you’d be taking a chance if you went and talked to Mrs. Willis?”
I felt more nervous than I cared to admit. “I’ll be okay,” I said, hoping Art would think better of it, try talking me out of it. He didn’t.
“Let’s touch base after lunch,” he said. “I’ll give you a call around one unless I hear something from you before then. By the way, do you know where Mrs. Willis lives?”
“Um, no.”
“That’s okay. I just happen to have her address handy.” He read it off—she lived on a street of small bungalows near West High School, and I knew the neighborhood well.
Relieved not to be facing a day of flickering eyestrain, I downed a bowl of Cheerios (Honey Nut, which I’d chosen over Jeff’s objections), took a quick shower in the bath house, and donned a pair of khakis and a polo shirt for the trip to Knoxville. I was still the best-dressed person in the park—a truly startling distinction for me—but at least I’d scaled back from church clothes (and arrest clothes) to business casual.
One lane of I-75 South was closed for repaving, so traffic was crawling today. The drive back to Knoxville, which normally took thirty minutes, required nearly an hour this time. I got off at the Papermill Drive exit—also a bottleneck, as it had been for a couple of years now, during a massive interchange reworking—and wound through small residential streets to Sutherland Avenue, the main artery that led to West High and Mrs. Willis’s neighborhood. I had just parked across the street from her house when she emerged from the front door. She was wearing work clothes—blue jeans and a dingy T-shirt and boots—and carry ing pruning shears. She headed for a hedge of boxwoods lining the front of the yard and began hacking at the new growth with a vengeance.
My camera was in a bin in the passenger-side floorboard; on impulse, I fished it out and zoomed in on her face. She looked nearly as angry as the day she had stormed into my office, and the look brought the altercation back vividly into my memory. You know, I thought, I bet there’s a lot of rage inside that woman. Any mother whose son turns out to be a child molester, and then gets murdered—be enough to turn anybody pretty hateful. I snapped a few photos, then stowed my camera and got out of the car.
“Mrs. Willis,” I called as I crossed the street, “could I talk to you for a minute?”
She turned slowly, and when she recognized me, her eyes flashed. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you about Dr. Carter,” I said.
“Dr. Ca
rter’s dead,” she snapped, “and I’m glad. And you’re going to jail for killing her, and I’m glad of that, too.”
“I didn’t kill Dr. Carter,” I said. “I had no reason to.”
“I don’t give a damn,” she said. “I’m glad she’s dead, and I hope they give you the death penalty. The paper said they might try.”
The conversation was not going quite the way I had hoped it would. I tried to imagine what Detective John Evers would do if he were interrogating Mrs. Willis, but the only thing that came to mind was the feeling of his knee crowding the space between my legs, edging up toward my crotch and making me extremely uncomfortable. It was not a tactic I could use with a woman—especially a woman holding a pair of pruning shears.
“I think there might be a connection between your son’s death and Dr. Carter’s,” I said, hoping to appeal to her more maternal instincts. “Dr. Carter and the Chattanooga police were working to solve his murder when she was killed.” She didn’t say anything, but she lowered the shears to her side. I took that as an encouraging sign. “You got any idea who might have killed him?”
“I already talked to them detectives from Chattanooga,” she said. “Like I told them, I can’t imagine why anybody would have wanted to kill Craig.” I could think of some reasons, but it didn’t seem wise to mention them at this particular moment.
Something Miss Georgia Youngblood had said to me about pedophiles occurred to me—the phrase “Shit flow downstream,” which had gotten linked in my mind somehow with the phrase “Each one teach one”—and I wondered if Mrs. Willis could shed any light on her son’s pathology. “Mrs. Willis, can you think back to when Craig was about ten years old? Do you remember him at that age?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I remember him at every age. Why?”
“I’m wondering if maybe something happened around that time. Something that might have been very frightening or upsetting to him.” Her eyes darted back and forth as she thought, and it seemed to me that she fixed on something, because they stopped darting and she looked away, her jaw clenched. “An incident, maybe, that might explain things that have happened more recently.”
Flesh and Bone Page 26