“Even now,” Jeff said, “they seem so real. Grandaddy’s always standing. Leaning over my bunk in the cell. I can feel him looking at me, and then I open my eyes, or at least I dream that I do.” His voice sounded far away, like down a well. “He asks me how this could have happened. And I say, ‘Honest to gosh, Grandaddy, I don’t know. I just don’t know.’”
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “He always believed the Lord would provide, you know? That you could make yourself a life, if you worked hard enough. Even after it started turnin’ on him, when the big government-run farms started killin’ off his business, he never lost faith.
“But in my dreams, he looks so beat up. Sadder than I ever saw him. Like this is one thing he just can’t understand. Over and over, he asks me, ‘Did you kill those girls, Jefferson?’ and I say, ‘No, Grandaddy, I swear I didn’t.’
“Then he comes real close, so I can just ’bout see him in the dark, with his pinstripe overalls, and the red hat he always wore, just like himself, and he asks me, he says, ‘Then why are you here, son?’ And I try, Garner, I really do, but it’s like I can’t move my lips, like nothing comes out to answer him. Because I don’t know. I just don’t know…I don’t…”
When he laid his head on the table and sobbed, I touched his shoulder. It was an automatic gesture of comfort, not meant to signal anything much; but he found my hand, quickly, without looking, and tucked it under him. I felt the cold metal of the tabletop, the texture of his skin against my palm. We stayed that way for several seconds before I slipped my hand away. Gently.
SEVEN
On my last Sunday in Myrna I accompanied Varlie Turner to church. Looking back, this was something I should have done earlier. Chalk my procrastination up to the fact that I’m a lapsed Catholic—which means I have a sort of love-hate, jilted-lover ambivalence toward anything that smacks of organized religion. I was totally unprepared for the Myrna First Baptist.
Drab and boxy, painted mud brown, it looked more like a VFW hall than a house of worship. A theater marquee with the words ARE YOU FORGIVEN? spelled out in raised white letters announced the time of the service and the minister’s name, B bby H ward Brigham, Past r, the church apparently being short a few o’s.
The interior was another revelation. Jeff Turner’s home church had no altar, just a plain wood table topped by a vase of plastic chrysanthemums. A metal lectern served as pulpit. There were no stained-glass windows, no statues of saints, no crucifixes. Pastor Bobby Howard Brigham turned out to be a florid-faced man in a baggy brown suit, who looked as if he might sell used cars Monday through Friday, which I found out later was exactly what he did.
My heart began to beat wildly. “Where’s the Catholic church in town?” I whispered to Varlie.
“Can’t say there is one,” she whispered back.
“Where do Catholics go to attend Mass?”
Varlie shook her head. “No Catholics around these parts,” she said, “that I ever knew.” Then, perhaps sensing my urgency, she added, “We had a Jewish family once. The Petermans. Stevie played on the baseball team over at the junior high ’fore they all moved back down to Chapel Hill.”
All through the service Susan Trevett’s words roared in my head. He wore black, she’d told me, and he’s whispering this mumbo-jumbo stuff in my ear, Dominoes, Nabisco; so by the time I stood with the others for the final blessing, it was as though I’d experienced a kind of epiphany.
I called Jack from the nearest payphone.
“Garner, thank God it’s you—” he began.
“There are no Catholics in Myrna.” I cut him off, breathlessly. “Jeff Turner doesn’t know Latin. He’s never seen a Catholic Mass.”
“Yeah, well, get this.” The excitement in Jack’s voice matched my own. “I just hung up with some guy who says he’s Susan Trevett’s husband.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” he said. “Guy named Shelby Cox. He says he and Susan were married this morning.”
“And here we weren’t invited.” I tried to sound flippant, but my pulse was racing. Instinctively I knew. I knew something big had happened.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Apparently it was quite an event. A second after the preacher pronounced them man and wife, the bride fell to the ground and started confessing her many sins. Topping off the list was that she once told a lie.”
“What do you mean—?”
“According to the new hubby, Susan accepted the Lord as her personal Savior,” Jack chuckled, “and all hell’s broke loose. It sounds like you should get down there as fast as you can.”
EIGHT
I found the house, an unassuming split-level in a vast, treeless tract of unassuming split-levels, twenty miles out of Columbia. Shelby Cox met me at the door. He was a big man, with soft, pink hands and a jowlish chin. “She’s in the family room,” he told me, his voice an even mix of deference and concern, as though I were a physician called to treat a gravely ill patient. I followed him down a set of stairs.
Susan was cowering on the sofa in the corner. She wore a calf-length dress of cream-colored polyester and a limp corsage. Her face looked as if it had been buffed raw in a car wash. Shelby dropped to one knee and put his arm around her. I couldn’t help thinking he seemed unusually serene for a man who’d just discovered that his wife of only minutes hadn’t been disfigured by a psychopath, but had instead confessed to a churchful of wedding guests that her past had been one great big old sexual binge, that she herself had carved crosses into her skin as some sort of bizarre penitence, and that—on a whim—she’d pointed a finger at a totally innocent man.
“The Lord forgives the guilty, and washes sin away from the blackest of hearts,” Susan said, by way of a greeting, as she rocked back and forth under Shelby’s steady arm.
“That’s great,” I replied. “I’m glad He does.” I crouched next to her, turning over her hand to inspect the crosshatched scars, still puffy and the same angry pink as Susan’s eyes. “But are you really saying you did this to yourself?”
“The marks are there because of me”—she rocked faster—“because of my lustful and adulterous life.”
“Why would you cut yourself?”
“My body is the temple of the Lord,” she responded. “The temple must be cleared of all that is unclean and unholy. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
This was going nowhere fast. I shot a glance toward Shelby, who had the desperate look of someone who could use a potty break. “Maybe Susan would like a glass of water,” I suggested.
“Water,” the poor man repeated, gratefully. “Yes, surely. Be right back, darlin’.” He kissed his wife on the forehead. Her flinch was almost imperceptible. I watched him go back up the stairs before taking a seat beside her. “How long have you known Shelby?”
“What does that matter?” Susan cried, defiantly; then, the change, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s good to me,” she said simply.
“What about Jeff Turner?” I asked. “Are you saying he isn’t the Holy Ghost?”
“The Lord knows Mr. Turner is an innocent man,” Susan Trevett Cox said, her voice rising and rising. “Innocent as a lamb! I have seen the Truth and it has set me free!”
“But you picked him out of a lineup. You described his van,” I reminded her, “the inside and everything.”
Susan Cox stood, thrusting a scarred wrist in my face. “And the Lord set a mark upon Cain,” she cried. “Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Shelby had come back with the water. He stood to one side, his face devoid of surprise as his bride broke into a strange litany of nonsense syllables that sounded, to me, like a page of Dr. Seuss being read backward.
“Hey, Suse,” I tried to joke, “help me out with the translation.”
Her voice ebbed and swelled like the sea. “Whether in the body, I cannot tell,” she cried. “Or whether out of the
body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.”
“What does that mean?” I wanted to know.
She pointed a small, childish finger, the nail bitten to the bone. “Judge not,” she screamed, “that ye be not judged!”
For once, I could think of no snappy repartee suitable to the occasion.
“What happens now?” Shelby Cox asked quietly. The blind trust in his eyes made me want to cry.
NINE
I glanced down at my watch. Three forty-five. This would surely be the last witness called today.
“Could you state your name and occupation for the court, please?” Nick Shawde asked.
“Tom Kelland,” the man on the stand replied. “I’m the, uh, night manager for Vickers Offset and Printing.”
“You were Jeff Turner’s boss?”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Kelland said.
“How did you come to hire Jeff?” Nick Shawde asked.
“Well, sir, uh, Loy Meachum, up in Myrna, wrote me,” Tom Kelland said. “Mr. Meachum’s the principal at Myrna High School. He and my daddy go way back. Anyhow, Loy said he had a boy graduated few years back was coming to Columbia to take up art over at USC and could we maybe use him at the print shop. Well, as it happened, Mr. Vickers, that’s, uh, the owner, he was looking for a night pressman around then, and it worked out real well, with Jeff taking classes during the day and all.”
“Did Jeff perform satisfactorily on the job?”
“Lordy, yes.” Mr. Kelland broke into a smile. “Jeff was a hard worker! Always on time, meeting the deadlines. Nights is tough on some people. I mean, when it’s busy, you’re on your own with nobody to help you, and when it’s slow, well, the tendency is to goof off. But not Jeff. He was always one for doing extra. Had an artistic touch about him, I guess you’d say.”
“So you had no complaints?”
“No, sir. None at all.”
“How long did Jeff Turner work at Vickers?”
Kelland had obviously rehearsed this part. “He came, uh, on the nineteenth of August, 1993, and stayed until they…you know…until the arrest.” Everyone in the courtroom understood how critical these dates were. The first girl had been killed on September 17, a month after Jeff Turner arrived in Columbia.
Nick paced in front of the witness stand. “And what were his hours?”
“Ten to six,” Mr. Kelland replied.
“That’s ten p.m.,” the attorney stressed, “to six a.m.?”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct.” This was a major point. All the murders had been committed between eleven at night and three in the morning.
Shawde looked directly at the jury, enunciating each word carefully. “And during all that time—roughly one year, from August to August—did Jeff Turner ever miss a night at work?”
“No, sir,” said Tom Kelland, loudly. “Not a one.”
Nick matched the man’s volume. “Mr. Kelland, on the night that Susan Trevett was attacked, where was Jefferson Turner?”
“In the print shop, working.”
“How do you know?”
“I seen him,” Mr. Kelland said solemnly. “He signed in and signed out just like usual. His name’s in the book for all them other nights, too—”
“Objection!” The prosecutor, Charlie Biggs, was on his feet.
Judge Stuart waved a hand, impatiently. “Sustained. You will confine yourself to answering the question at hand, sir,” he reminded Kelland, before motioning Shawde to proceed.
“So you’re saying Jefferson Turner was in the print shop working on the third of August, 1993—the night that Susan Trevett was allegedly attacked?”
“Yes, sir.” The man nodded his head vehemently.
Nick Shawde smiled. “No further questions.”
Charlie Biggs stood, halfheartedly. “Mr. Kelland,” he began, “were you in the same room with Jeff Turner during the entirety of his shift on the night Susan Trevett was attacked?”
A look of impatience crossed Kelland’s face. “Not the whole time, uh, no—”
“Where were you?”
“In my office,” Kelland said. “But I come into the print room, regular.”
“Then it would have been possible,” Biggs went on, “for Mr. Turner to leave the building for, oh, say, an hour, without your noticing?”
“It weren’t likely—”
“I didn’t say likely,” the prosecutor reprimanded, “I said possible.”
Tom Kelland shifted in his seat. “Like my mama used to say, anything’s possible, Mr. Biggs,” he said sulkily. “I s’pose maybe even pigs could fly.”
As he had every Friday since the trial had begun, Judge Nelson Stuart looked at his watch at exactly four o’clock, shook his head, sighed deeply, and called a recess until ten o’clock the following Monday morning.
“Come on, Garn, let me buy you a drink,” Nick Shawde offered.
“Not today,” I said. “I’m heading to the airport right after I talk to Jeff.” I’d struck up an acquaintance with the guards who took Turner to and from the courtroom. They usually let me have a few minutes with him before they transported him back to Kirkland.
“Hey, lady.” Jeff waved his cuffed hands awkwardly as I entered the holding room. “What do you think?”
“Looking good,” I told him.
“What about that last thing with old Tom?” His blue eyes were anxious.
“Biggs fumbled it,” I said, annoyed that Shawde’s sports metaphors were creeping into my own vocabulary. “The prosecution’s just going through the motions. You’d be in decent shape, even without Susan’s testimony.”
Turner’s face brightened. “Think so?” He leaned forward. “That’s thanks to you, you know.”
“Shawde’s the one—”
“You,” he repeated. “More’n Mrs. Cox. More’n Nick Shawde, or Tom Kelland, or anybody. You were the first to believe in me.”
“Don’t get mushy until the jury has their say,” I protested, uncomfortable with such unbridled gratitude. “That’s the only thing that matters.”
Jeff’s gaze shifted to my leather tote. “Heading north to see your little girl?”
“Yeah. What about you?” It was a game we played.
“Aw, I thought I’d hole up in a little room somewhere.” He grinned. “Bang out a few license plates, eat some greasy food.”
“Sounds tantalizing.”
“Got a few good books to tide me over, though.” He was working his way through my bestsellers with a zeal I found almost embarrassing. “It’s your descriptions of the way the victims must’ve felt that really blow me away,” Jeff said, as though we were trading insights at a writing seminar, instead of waiting for the van that would take him back to jail.
“You put your readers right into the action,” he went on, “make ’em feel all closed up and suffocated, like Dulcie Mariah’s little boy, in that closet, and poor Deirdre Purdy from Dust to Dust after Harold Beech buried her alive.”
“I’m drawn to crimes that play on my own deepest fears,” I admitted.
He leaned forward, in that overly earnest way of his. “What is it about my case? What do you see in this one?”
“The chance to do some good, for once.” It was the truth. If Jeff Turner hadn’t attacked Susan Trevett, then the Holy Ghost was still out there somewhere. I didn’t want the public to forget that.
The guard’s walkie-talkie squawked. “Your chauffeured limousine’s here, Jeffie boy,” he announced.
I stood, shouldering my bag. “Keep your chin up,” I told him.
“I’ll be okay.” He smiled. “Say hey to that Yankee daughter of yours for me, will ya?”
TEN
My flight was delayed due to weather conditions in Newark. Because of some mix-up with the car company, I had to wait another hour while they dispatched a driver. By the time the rented limo left the Garden State Parkway, golfball-sized hail was hammering its roof; visibility cut off sharply at the hood. I guided the driver down the winding roadway, talking him through each
curve, relying on a sense other than sight, mentally counting off the distance between invisible town and invisible town—a whole peninsula kidnapped by the mist—until we reached Rumson. “It won’t be much farther now,” I lied.
When we finally reached my private road it was all but impassable. The massive gate looked unreal, untethered to solid earth, a manifestation of fog and sleet. “All the way to the end,” I directed.
The windows were fogged. The driver started to wipe the inside of the windshield with his handkerchief. “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath; then, perhaps thinking of his tip, he added politely, “You sure are off the beaten path.”
“Yes,” I said. Tall pines hovered on either side of us, their drooping boughs forming a dark tunnel. I didn’t tell the driver that conifers were the first to topple over in strong winds such as this. He was already nervous enough. As we emerged from the trees, I heard his sigh over the clack of the windshield wipers—relief mingled with something like awe. The house seemed a mirage, rising out of the massive stones of the seawall. Mist had flattened the roof, obscuring the guest house and office so that they looked like the tumbledown rubble of some ancient fortified city.
“Home,” I said, more to myself than to him.
Cilda opened the front door in her robe and slippers. “The child’s in bed,” she said, in the accusatory tone I’d known her to use whenever she was frightened. Her strong arms bustled me out of my raincoat. “Fever a ’undred and two.”
Years ago, in my father’s house, Cilda’s official title had been housekeeper; but she was also my keeper, my nurse and teacher, alternately the blessing and bane of my existence. She had abruptly quit her job at Dudley’s the day Temple was born, showing up, unannounced, at my New York apartment, with two old suitcases and a large aloe plant.
I loved her for that. For leaving Dudley for me.
“Have you called Dr. Boden?”
“She won’t ’ave none of ’im,” Cilda said. “Says ’e’s only a baby doctor.” While I was covering Jeff Turner’s trial, my daughter had outgrown her pediatrician. I stored this piece of information away, along with the many other milestones passed in my absence.
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