“What kind of drawings?”
“Birds, mostly,” Monsignor Fahy replied, “small birds.” He closed his eyes as though trying to picture them. “I took it that he meant them as Doves of Peace come to take his soul…” His voice trailed off.
I leaned forward. “But you’re not sure?”
“Well, they looked a little like doves,” the old man said, weighing his words carefully. “But something he wrote under them I found rather unsettling.”
“What was that?”
“Graven images,” Monsignor Fahy said softly. “He drew an arrow to the pictures and wrote: ‘Graven images.’”
FIVE
Instead of returning to Columbia, I booked a flight into Raleigh and rented a car.
St. Anthony’s had turned out to be for me what it was for Peter. A dead end. According to the detectives who’d investigated his death, Salvatore’s parents and his stepfather, George Fazekas, were deceased. Fazekas was the salesman, the one Peter believed had doomed his mother’s soul. As I drove along the highway I pictured them, stuck together for all eternity in some unnumbered circle of the poor boy’s personal hell: the absent father; the weak-willed woman; the young suicide; and George, with a straw hat and a salesman grin, smiling the smile of the damned.
By the time I reached Myrna, the clouds were dark with pent-up rain. I pulled the rental up beside the Turner barn. The place was deserted. Varlie was in Columbia, at the trial. Last stop, I called to the empty landscape. Everybody out.
I’d made a few calls from the airport, enough to determine that a man named Lloyd, called Teeny in spite of the fact that he weighed over three hundred pounds, had kept a house trailer on the edge of the Turner property for many years; but Teeny was dead now, and no one I’d talked to seemed to remember anything about any Yankee relatives ever having visited him.
I walked past the chicken coop, toward the rows of empty cages at the rear of the barn. The wind blew up suddenly, rattling cage doors, sending up a swell of tiny feathers inside, as though the spirits of many dead birds were beating their wings against them before settling onto the faded newspaper at the bottom of the hutches, like dust.
I remembered walking with Varlie through the untended fields, toward the low wrought-iron fence that marked off the family burial plot where Jeff’s grandaddy lay, next to his granny and his uncle Jarvis.
“Seems like the place is all fallin’ to pieces now that Bird’s not around,” she’d said. “I never wanted him to go down there to Columbia. I knew somethin’ bad ud come a that art.”
“It must seem pretty quiet,” I’d commented, “now that the place isn’t filled with all of Jeff’s animals.”
She’d seemed surprised. “Ye-eas. I reckon it is.”
On a sudden impulse I’d asked what had happened to them. “Well,” Varlie said, “I guess they most of them just passed on.” She pointed to a patch of land about a hundred feet from the coops. “He always gave ’em Christian burials. Said they was goin’ to a better place with Jarvis, and Granny and Grandaddy.”
Her words echoed through my head with new meaning. I came to the exact spot where we’d stood together, fighting an incredible urge to sink my nails into the dry dirt, to paw the ground until it gave, to dig until I reached—what? a tiny skeleton? a chalky patch of nothing, the remains of something small and frail? Or a cigar-box coffin, lined in faded purple and marked with crosses?
A sudden sound came from behind me, high, unearthly, causing the hairs on my arm to stand up straight. A cat sprinted by, so close it brushed my calves. And then the sound again, same pitch, same frequency, like a hoot owl in the darkness.
From around the side of the barn, the girl slipped into view. She wore a light cotton dress sprinkled with flowers, her long brown hair freshly brushed. I raised my arm, the way a movie Injun says, “How.” It was the only thing I could think of to do. I knew the girl was deaf.
“Hello, Jenny—remember me?” I said slowly as she came closer. “Garner Quinn? I spoke to you and your mom about Jeff Turner a few months back.”
“I’m looking for my cat,” she said, in a high, consonantless monotone, each syllable melding to the next.
“I saw him. He ran past me. Over the fence.”
She smiled shyly. “Maybe he’s going home.”
I pictured the neat little farmhouse Jenny shared with her mother—every threadbare inch of sofa decked with a quilt and a cat. “I’ll walk with you,” I offered. We set out across the field together. Ahead of us, rain clouds the color of a day-old bruise spread across a pale skin of sky. When we reached the place where I judged Teeny Lloyd’s trailer had once been, I touched her arm.
“Did you know Teeny?” Jenny nodded. I went on, pausing a little after every word. “I got a letter from a young man who said he was a relative of Mr. Lloyd’s. He said he and his mom stayed here one summer, about eleven or twelve years ago.” Shadows masked the girl’s face, rendering it unreadable.
“His name was Peter,” I told her, “Peter Salvatore. He must have been about your age. He said he was a friend of Jeff Turner’s.” Jenny nodded again. “Yes, you understand?” I asked. “Or, yes, you remember?”
“I remember,” she said. “I saw them.”
We’d stopped walking. The Price farmhouse was only about fifty yards away. There was a light in the front window. “Playing together?” My heart was beating fast now. Again, the nod. “What else, Jenny? What else did they do?”
Jenny’s eyes widened. “I don’t know,” she cried, her voice somewhere between a wail and a computer tone. “I didn’t see the other things!”
And then she ran inside, leaving me to wonder about the things unseen.
In the moment it took to follow the girl into the house, everything changed. Jenny would no longer speak to me, except through her mother.
No, she signed to Mrs. Price, who in turn told me, she couldn’t remember any more about Bird Turner and the Yankee boy. The words “graven images” had no meaning for her, besides what was said in the Good Book. She knew nothing about strangled birds or Catholic funeral masses.
When I suggested that perhaps the prosecutor might have more questions for Jenny, Mrs. Price immediately became suspicious. “What for? There isn’t nothin’ else to say.” She stood, ready to walk me to the door. “Bird was like a brother to that girl, Miz Quinn. Always watching out for her. Carryin’ over baby kittens. Makin’ drawings. Bringin’ books.” She turned to her daughter. “Bird treated you real special, didn’t he, honey?”
Jenny’s head bobbled up and down. “Ye-sss,” she said. The word came out sounding like a foghorn, insistent and mournful. I would’ve liked to ask the girl a few more questions, but I was put off by the look in her eyes.
She was obviously still afraid of me.
SIX
Nick Shawde was on a roll.
“Now I don’t know if you good people are believers in the Christian faith,” he said to the jury, when, of course, he did, “but you have heard Susan Cox testify…No”—he gently reprimanded himself—“you have heard Mrs. Cox witness to the fact that on a fateful Sunday in April of last year she accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.”
Juror Six, the Pentecostal, whispered “Amen” under her breath.
Shawde went on. “And for those of you who may not know,” he said, as if with the exception of himself, there could be an agnostic within direct earshot, “to a Christian, being born again means shucking off one’s sins as a reptile shucks off his skin.” His voice lowered, sadly. “And we have heard here, in this courtroom, that Susan Trevett Cox had, in her young life, many sins to count, and to account for—
“We have heard testimony, from members of her family, and from those who knew her best, that Susan was robbed of her innocence at an early age.” The defense attorney turned away from the jury, his shoulders sagging a little under the impeccably tailored suit—American-made and purchased especially for cases tried in venues such as this.
; “Molested by her stepfather and her brother from the age of four”—he looked down at the floor, and then up again, all hellfire and damnation—“from the age of four—a survivor of the most devastating breakdown of trust and protection that any child should have to suffer, is it any wonder that Susan grew up thinking that her only worth was in her sexuality?”
Shawde strolled confidently over to the jurors’ box. “Mrs. Cox has told us how years of guilt and shame over past wrongs done to her, and from years of promiscuous behavior which—try as she might—she could not control, drove her to the brink of a complete emotional breakdown.” He sighed, letting his clipboard slip onto the railing, then looked up from it directly into Juror Three’s eyes.
“And, when you think about it,” he said, “isn’t that understandable?” Juror Three nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“The newspapers that spring and summer were filled with stories of a maniac on the loose.” Shawde picked up the pace. “A monster who attacked young women. Carved crosses into their skin. Raped and murdered. A sick man, yes, but he held a strange fascination for this fragile young girl, because he was a man who made women pay.” Nick paused. “Made them pay for some deep, dark, perhaps carnal, sin.
“And so this disturbed young woman,” he continued, building momentum, “after yet another one-night stand with a nameless, faceless person picked up in the bar where she worked, fell apart. Literally went over the edge. And, using a paring knife on her own flesh, she carved crosses into her skin as some sort of bizarre atonement for the life she had led.”
He spun on the jury. “Afterward, in the throes of shock and confusion, she gave police the description of a van with North Carolina license plates—a van she had seen before, in the parking lot behind Annalee’s. A van that belonged to a young man, a college student, not much more than a boy, who’d never in his life gotten so much as a parking ticket.”
Nick let his gaze travel over the faces of the jurors. “Is anyone ready to cast the first stone at an abused and tortured girl for an act of self-hate, an act—warped as it was—of repentance and contrition?
“Is there anyone here who can doubt her when she comes here to finally tell the truth? That Jeff Turner did not attack her on that August night. How can we question her testimony when she stands before us—no longer a mixed-up, guilt-ridden child, but a happily married woman, and a new person in the eyes of her accepted Savior?”
Shawde looked up at the chandelier. This was one of Dudley’s tricks. I did a ten-count, watching as he struggled not to blink or swallow. When he finally turned toward the jury again, there were tears in his beady little eyes. “Susan Cox has come to believe that the truth shall set her free. Is there anyone here who would deny her that truth? Especially when, by doing so, it would mean condemning an innocent man?”
Nick’s voice rose toward the ceilinged heights, bounced off the palmettoed cornices, and fell like spent fireworks to the courtroom below. He was building to an emotional close now, ticking off, point by point, why the jury should find Jefferson Turner innocent of all charges.
Make me believe again, Nick, I pleaded inwardly, make me believe. But I’d stopped believing in lawyers long before I’d stopped believing in Santa Claus. Cynicism was one of the only gifts my father had ever given me.
“If the State had any other witnesses who could connect my client with those terrible murders, we would have heard from them by now,” Shawde was saying, “but we haven’t.
“One person, and one person only, was responsible for his arrest,” he reminded the jury. “And she has willingly admitted that she lied.” Nick looked out into the courtroom, challenging the spectators. “I ask you—is there anyone here, anyone at all, who can call Mr. Turner anything other than a victim of the cruelest of circumstances?” He let the answering silence sink into the jurors’ minds.
Peter Salvatore might have, I thought. But the way things stood, we’d never know.
SEVEN
On the eve of the prosecution’s summation, I visited Jeff in his jail cell. I knew this would probably be our last interview together before the verdict was read. He’d been sitting on his bunk, sketching; but he stood as soon as he heard us coming, waiting politely as the guard turned the key.
“Thanks, Bobby,” he said.
“No problem, Jeff.” The guard locked the door behind me. I heard his shoes squeaking all the way to the end of the corridor.
“Have a seat,” Jeff said, pointing to the bunk, “please.” I remembered his words to me the day we met—Can I get you anything? A Coke, maybe, or a glass of wine?
“You’ve done wonders with the place,” I said, referring to the dozens of pen-and-ink drawings he had taped to the wall.
Jeff laughed. “Yeah”—he flushed, eyes settling on the rusty commode—“all the comforts of home. Sure won’t miss it.” One way or another the boy knew he’d be leaving here in a matter of days. I could tell he was banking that his next destination wouldn’t be prison.
His expression turned serious. “I’m sorry what happened to that fella over in the seminary,” he said. “I guess it just proves he was a pretty messed-up character.”
“I guess.”
“Look, I hate that this has put doubts in your mind. I just want you to know, I’ll understand if you feel you have to pursue it, even if it means it takes longer for me to be completely vindicated.” He sat on the far edge of the bunk, across from me. “Do what you have to do.”
It was a more supportive sentiment than I’d gotten from my agent. “Don’t be anal, Garner,” Max Shroner had said when I told him about the letter. “You’re not a detective, you’re a writer. People out there want to know about this Holy Ghost thing? Fine. Write a bestseller. Readers don’t expect you to solve the fucking case. Leave that to the cops and the goddamn lawyers.” When I’d started to object, he’d put his arm around me. “So what, maybe two years from now, they find out the handsome farmboy really did it?” His face lit up. “Then you write another book, you know, like whosits and the-stranger-Ted-Bundy-among-us? Make a few more million.”
I said to Jeff, “Nick thinks Salvatore was trying to horn in on the publicity. Even the prosecutor’s office is treating it like a crank letter.”
“Tell me about that.” Jeff smiled, shaking his head. “You should see some of the stuff I get.” He reached under the mattress and pulled out a sheaf of papers, fanning them out on the cot between us. When I leaned forward I caught a whiff of wintergreen Life Savers, and something dusty and sweet, like lilac sachet. Jeff Turner’s fans wrote to him on scented stationery. “Listen to this,” he said, his voice lowering conspiratorially. “Dear Jeff,” he read. “Everytime I see your picture in the paper, I cut it out and put it in my scrapbook.” He looked up and shrugged sheepishly. “I think about you in bed at night, behind bars, all by your lonesome. My pussy gets wet just imagining the things we could do together—”
“I get the idea,” I told him.
Jeff held up a photograph. “They send pictures. Naked, just about.” He sounded amazed. “Get a load of this one.” He handed me a Polaroid. A woman was crouched on a bed, wearing a string bikini bottom, no top, her hands cupping her immense breasts.
“Looks like a class act.”
“Maybe you could use some of them for the book.” I realized with a start that he was serious. He began reading again, his voice barely above a whisper. “I dream of taking you in my mouth. I want to swallow your hard cock, to feel you going down on me, lapping my clit with your tongue—”
“Hey.” I stood suddenly. My voice must have been louder than I’d thought because down the hall I heard a metal chair scudding against the wall. Bobby the guard was on alert.
“Sorry,” Jeff stammered, “I embarrassed you, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t embarrass me,” I snapped.
His eyes were guileless, a perfect blue. “I didn’t mean to.” He gathered up the pictures and the letters. “I just wanted you to see how much they love me,” he
said, “is all.”
EIGHT
The deliberation lasted three hours and eleven minutes.
Shawde called to let me know. “Your voice is frogged,” he said. “What’ve you been doing, sleeping?”
“Thinking,” I told him.
“Forget that shit.” For once he sounded sincere. “It’s too late.”
Inside the courtroom it was like the first hour of an Irish wake, before the mix of alcohol and closely pressed flesh have had time to do their trick. I spotted all the telltale signs. The bright eyes. Over-loud conversation. Movements much too big for these cramped, hot quarters. I knew there’d be booze and bodies combusting together, real soon.
Maria Lombardi met me in the corridor. She’d changed from the suit she’d worn earlier into a dove-gray silk dress with a linen blazer. The jury coming back so soon had evidently interrupted a quiet little dinner for two, and it wasn’t hard to guess the name of the other party. “Nick’s nervous,” she said, giving herself away. “I told him, the earlier the better, but he just gave me one of those what-do-you-know looks.”
She sighed. “I’m sure it’s going to be okay.” I gave her one of those what-do-you-know looks, then went in to find my seat.
When Shawde spotted me, he leaned his head back. I could smell anchovy on his breath. “It’s showtime, kid.” He winked, with a vestige of the old bravado.
Varlie Turner and her sister were already there, as were the Coxes—Susan looking pale and ethereal, Shelby in his usual state of stoic bewilderment. A side door opened. Two guards escorted Jeff into the room. The lapping tide of whispers again—Bird… Bird…Bird…I thought of the narrow cot covered with small squares of writing paper, the scent of lilac, and mint.
“I wanted you to see how much they love me,” he’d said.
“Has the jury reached a verdict?”
“We have,” the foreman said. “We find the defendant, Jefferson Turner, not guilty of all charges.”
Graven Images Page 12