The Cutting Season

by Attica Locke

  24

  Eric asked her to replay it.

  She asked him if he was seeing the same thing she was.

  There was only one type of motor vehicle that sits that high off the ground, and Caren was convinced that those were the headlights of a pickup truck. Eric shook his head; he wasn’t nearly as certain. But it was an automobile for sure, and when she mentioned showing the disc to Detectives Lang and Bertrand, he, surprisingly, didn’t resist.

  They would not mention Morgan or the bloody shirt.

  The rules were the same.

  But even Eric couldn’t deny the significance of Donovan’s footage.

  They rode together to the sheriff’s station in Gonzales, Caren sitting beside Eric in his rental, the DVDs in her lap. At the courthouse, Detective Lang greeted them first, in the hallway outside the Criminal Investigations Division, having earlier received her call saying they were on their way. It wasn’t until the first disc was out of its case and loaded into a DVD player in one of the station’s two interrogation rooms that Lang finally understood the connection between Donovan’s “school project” and the scenes playing out on the TV screen. The three of them, Caren, Eric, and Lang, watched the film’s story in silence. When Detective Bertrand came in carrying a Styrofoam cup of black coffee, she told them both the image they needed to see was on the second disc. But Lang approached this with an investigator’s pace, wanting to see each frame of each scene lined end to end, so that he could comprehend the whole of the discs’ meaning in the context of his murder investigation—one he believed he’d already solved. And so Caren watched, for the second time, the story of Jason and Nadine and Eleanor, the mystery of his disappearance, and the black sheriff determined to find the truth. Bertrand stared at the screen and frowned, asking no one in particular, “What in God’s name is all this?”

  On the television screen, the roles were reversed.

  Donovan, their suspect, was the lawman.

  Having cast himself in the role of Sheriff Aaron Nathan Sweats, he was wearing a wide-brim hat and Eddie Knoxville’s black knee-high boots. Bo Johnston was doing his bit as Jason’s employer and the cane farm’s manager, Mr. Tynan. The scene was shot in the old schoolhouse, which had been made over to resemble a country jailhouse. Tynan was being interrogated about the last time he’d seen Jason alive. The sheriff’s investigation seemed to turn on a cane knife, one used by Jason in the fields. It seemed odd to Sheriff Sweats that the knife had been returned to Tynan at the end of the workday, when Tynan swore he hadn’t seen Jason again after he walked out of the fields.

  The television screen cut to black.

  Finally, they were at the very last shot, in front of Manette house.

  “Here,” Caren said to the cops.

  Lang turned up the volume, as if that might help him see the fuzzy image more clearly. Bertrand, whose coffee had turned cold sitting on the tabletop, had his arms crossed tight against his chest, the shoulder seams of his sports coat so strained that Caren could see each mustard-brown thread. Eric watched from the back of the room.

  It was all there: Donovan’s whisper, the white light, the camera’s long zoom.

  When the light split, when it became clear that Donovan’s camera had captured twin headlights parked in the distance, in the cane fields, Caren kept her eyes on both Lang and Bertrand. Bertrand’s arms dropped to his sides. He bent at the waist, staring at the nineteen-inch screen, his thick hands on his hips. Lang hit rewind. He watched the shot two more times, in complete silence. When he finally turned away from the screen, he looked at his partner first, then Caren. “This was Wednesday night? You’re sure?” She nodded, although at present her only way of proving this fact was the word of her nine-year-old daughter. There was no time stamp on any of the scenes on the discs, and she had no way of knowing where the originals—the digital videotapes from the camera itself—were, not without talking to Donovan first.

  “We’re going to need to keep these,” Lang said.

  She shook her head. “You can make a copy.”

  Lang nodded at Bertrand. “Jimmy, go get Tommy from across the hall.”

  Bertrand backed out of the room, still staring at the headlights on the television screen, until he was all the way on the other side of the door. Lang stood. “I’m not sure I understand why this wasn’t brought to my attention earlier.” He looked at Caren first, before leveling a vexing gaze on Eric. “Especially seeing as you were in here passing yourself off as the boy’s attorney, Mr. Ellis, not to mention practicing law in the state of Louisiana without a bar card.” Eric started to speak, but Caren stopped him. She didn’t need him coming down hard with some Yankee attitude, speaking with anything less than the respect this small-town detective was sure he deserved. She would handle Lang.

  “I don’t believe Donovan killed anybody, sir,” she said to the cop.

  Eric jumped in impatiently. “Why in the world would she withhold anything that potentially exculpates him?”

  “Is that what you think this is?” Lang said, nodding toward the grainy video.

  “It raises the possibility that someone other than Donovan killed Inés Avalo. Someone else was clearly present at the scene. It’s right there on the tape.”

  Lang nodded absently.

  “Well, see, the problem with that is . . . Donovan has already confessed.”

  “What?” Eric said.

  Caren was sure she’d heard it wrong. “What do you mean he confessed?”

  “He and his attorney are already in the process of working out a plea deal with the district attorney’s office. He’ll admit to guilt, and if he’s lucky get the charge knocked down to second-degree homicide, manslaughter even. But that’s all up to the folks in the DA’s office.”

  Eric was frowning.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “A plea deal isn’t necessarily a confession.”

  “It is in my book.”

  “So you’re not even going to look into this?” Caren said, trying to control her anger, nearly shaking from the effort. Lang pointed to the bluish screen and the video image. Dryly, he said, “The Sheriff’s Department thanks you for bringing this in.”

  And that was it.

  Caren looked at Eric and said, “I don’t understand. Why would he take a deal?”

  Lang was damn near smiling.

  Sheer arrogance was the only thing that could explain why he said what he said next, why he laid his whole hand face up on the table. “We got the knife,” he said.

  Caren didn’t believe him.

  She was at Betty Collier’s house. The police had been through with a warrant, but Betty said they’d walked out with nothing. Lang’s whole case was bullshit, and they knew it. “I want to talk to him,” she said suddenly. “I want to talk to Donovan.”

  “No, ma’am,” Lang said, shaking his head.

  Eric grabbed her arm. “Come on, Caren, let’s go.”

  “He’s not the boy’s lawyer, and you’re not family.” Lang was treating them as troublemakers, involving themselves in something that had nothing to do with them.

  But Donovan was family.

  He was part of the extended family of Belle Vie, her family.

  “He can’t take a deal,” she said.

  Lang smiled broadly, as if he was expecting this. “Well . . . if he doesn’t, you want to know what’s going to happen, Ms. Gray? The district attorney is going to put this evidence to a grand jury, and you, ma’am, will be among those subpoenaed. I know you’ve been lying to us from day one. You were the main one vouching for the fact that Donovan wasn’t on the plantation Wednesday night, and now you’re hand-delivering a videotape you’ve had in your possession for who knows how long, hard evidence that proves you knew where he was the whole time.”

  “Caren, let’s go,” Eric said.

  “You digging yourself a hole, Tulane,” Lan
g said. “Don’t look good, neither, you looking at plane tickets to Washington, D.C. You got some reason to be making a fast exit out of the state?” She started to say something, to ask how he knew about that. But Eric grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Don’t say another word,” he said.

  “I want to talk to Donovan,” she told Lang.

  Eric reached for Caren’s hand, just as Bertrand returned with a skinny kid in Levi’s and a black Eagles concert T-shirt. He had a second DVD player tucked under one arm and two slim black-and-red cables draped over his right shoulder. Eric, without being asked, held Caren’s hand while copies of the video discs were made.

  She posed it as a last favor, asking Eric to get her inside the jail. Donovan was officially a ward of the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Department, and they could pretty much do with him as they pleased, could withhold privileges such as phone calls or visits from family or friends. So Eric placed an urgent call to a friend of his in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas. And that woman, an old law school classmate of theirs, placed a call of her own, to the jailhouse in little Gonzales, Louisiana.

  Less than an hour later, Caren entered the jail alone.

  Her name was already waiting on somebody’s clipboard.

  She left her personal effects with a female clerk, a black woman with brandy-colored braids and gold hoop earrings who eyed Caren and her expensive Patagonia jacket and muddy ropers with no small amount of curiosity. She offered no pleasantries, no friendly comments about the weather. Instead, she pointed to where Caren should sign her name and the red plastic tray where she was to leave her driver’s license and keys. Her escort was a young deputy with an ash-blond buzz cut and rolls of fat above the starched collar of his tan uniform. He led her down a hallway with cracked linoleum tiles and fluorescent lights to a plain door with a small window.

  Inside, Donovan sat alone, uncuffed, in a dingy jailhouse jumpsuit, and Caren could tell from first glance that he was expecting someone else. He didn’t stand or greet her in any way. The deputy asked if she wanted him to stay, and she answered no, that she thought they’d be all right. She watched the cop disappear on the other side of the door. She heard the lock click, and then it was just the two of them. Donovan didn’t look good. His eyes were red, and his cheeks were dappled with tufts of unshaven hair. He had his elbows on the table and his head held down low.

  Caren sighed and said, “What are you doing, Donovan?”

  He shook his head at her. “Just go.”

  “You can’t take this deal.”

  Donovan clasped his hands under the table, shrugging his shoulders. “I can do two and a half,” he said. “I might have picked that up on the trespassing charge, anyway.” Then, trying to convince himself, he said again, “I can do two and a half.”

  “You’re not serious, Donovan?” she said. “You don’t really think they’re going to give you two and a half years on a murder charge?”

  “Manslaughter,” he said. He tapped his index finger on the white tabletop, as if he were counting out the days. “That guy, my lawyer, he’s saying it’s all worked out. I plead guilty to a lesser charge, and it’s two and a half, that’s what he said.” He kept repeating the words, as if he were hammering a nail, closing his own coffin from the inside. “He says it’s a good deal for somebody like me. The cops, the DA, they all know I got a felony record. So, yeah, I can do two and a half.”

  He thrust out his chin, playing with the idea of himself as a soldier, a man who’s learned to take his licks. Caren couldn’t think of a more dangerous way to test one’s strength. She pulled out the second chair, sitting down across from him. “Listen to me,” she said. “That lawyer of yours works for Raymond Clancy, and he’s doing what he thinks is best for Clancy, not you. You need to understand that before you agree to anything.”

  Donovan cocked his head to one side. “What’s Clancy got to do with this?”

  “He got you that lawyer,” she said. “The man didn’t tell you he works for Raymond Clancy?”

  “I thought the judge sent him. I thought he was court-appointed.”

  Caren shook her head. “He’s a private attorney.”

  “My grandmama know about this?”

  Caren avoided mentioning her trip to Betty’s house that afternoon. She didn’t want him to know how broken the old woman was, how it seemed she’d all but given up. “You ought to know . . . that Clancy is selling the plantation,” she said instead.

  Donovan shook his head in disbelief. “No way, man.”

  “It’s sold, Donovan. Belle Vie, the farm, all of it. He’s selling it to the Groveland Corporation.”

  Donovan didn’t say anything right away.

  He wore the expression of a man who thinks he’s being lied to.

  “But what’s that got to do with me?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. This is Raymond Clancy’s deal. And he needs it to go through without any problems. He’s got big plans for his political future, plans that involve Groveland, and you taking the fall for this is something he’s willing to invest money in. It’s a setup, Donovan,” she said. He shook his head, turning to look away from her. Caren grabbed his arm. The skin felt fevered and hot. “Look at me,” she said. “Don’t you dare do this, Donovan. Don’t you dare let them put you away for this. You are not your past, understand? I don’t care what you’ve done or how many times you’ve been arrested. Don’t let them make you into something you’re not.”

  “What choice I got?”

  “Go back in front of that judge and don’t lie.” She knew from experience that he could get a hearing to change his plea. But he needed a lawyer who was on his side.

  “Aw, I’m fucked anyway,” Donovan said. “I put myself on the grounds the night of the murder, admitted I’d stolen a key to the property. A jury might make a lot worse of that than whatever this lawyer, Wilson somebody, can work out with the DA.”

  “Where was the knife, Donovan?”

  “They saying they found it in my car.”

  “Well, then somebody must have put it there.”

  “You don’t fucking think I know that!” he said, slamming his fist on the table so hard that it shook and skidded an inch across the floor. Caren waited for the door to fly open, for the deputy to come in charging. Donovan held his breath, waiting, too. But no one came. A silence settled between them. It felt as thick as the door that closed them in this room. Donovan broke through it first. “I never saw that woman in my life and what difference does it make?” He gestured to the jail clothes and the locked room with an armed guard on the other side. What did the truth have to do with any of this? He was in jail anyway. Caren stared at him for a long time. Outside, she heard car engines, trucks passing on the road. All of it seemed very far away.

  “Those tapes are evidence,” she said. “They’re proof somebody else was out there that night. You saw it, and I saw it. The headlights out by the field. It’s right there on the DVD. If you tell me where the originals are, if the tapes have some kind of time stamp on them, a date, something, then that information goes to trial with you.”

  “You think they give a shit?”

  He looked at her, a sad, crooked smile on his face. “Come on, Miss C,” he said. “You think I didn’t even try? It was a truck, I said. I told them. It was parked out there by the fields. But it don’t look like that’s going to change a damn thing, does it?”

  She asked him to tell her exactly what he’d seen, the make and model. Donovan waved her off, mumbling, “Naw, man, I didn’t see what it was.”

  He couldn’t be sure of the color, or any details.

  It was just another dead end.

  “Two and a half,” he said again. “I’d rather take the deal than gamble on a life sentence at trial.” He stole a sideways glance at her. “I suppose you think that makes me some kind of a punk,” he said, and Caren
finally understood that it mattered to him, that it had, all along, mattered what she thought of him. He actually looked up to her. “Don’t do this, Donovan,” she said. She was out-and-out pleading now. He didn’t respond, choosing now, of all times, to remain silent. When he finally spoke again, his voice was soft and dry. He ducked his head and asked her, “So you watched it?” he said, referring to the movie, the history project that meant so much to him. “Yes, Donovan, I watched it,” she said, telling him finally, “I think you should finish it.”

  25

  It was late by the time they left the station. So, together, Eric and Caren drove to Laurel Springs to pick up their daughter from school, arriving a few minutes before the final bell. Eric parked the rental car a few yards down the road from Morgan’s school, beside a newly planted Japanese maple, held in place by rope and wood stakes in the bark-covered ground. The rain had stopped, and Eric shut the car engine and rolled down the windows while they waited. The air was warm and smelled of wet grass. Through her sideview mirror, Caren could see the redbrick schoolhouse behind them, the state flag flying atop the Stars and Stripes.

  “Hunt Abrams met with Raymond Clancy this week.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s the project manager for Groveland.”

  “The cane farm?”

  She nodded, adding, “He drives a truck.”

  Black, she remembered.

  “What was he doing with Clancy?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But all of a sudden Raymond gets a lawyer for Donovan, and he’s ready to take a plea deal? Just days after I see Abrams go behind closed doors with Clancy?” She shook her head. “It stinks, the whole thing. This is Raymond trying to protect his deal. The sooner this murder investigation goes away, the better it is for both of them, Clancy and Groveland.”

  Eric made a face. “What’s at risk for the company?”