Graven Images

by Jane Waterhouse

  Thunderous applause broke out in the courtroom. Susan Trevett Cox cried out, “Praise the Lord!” Several people laughed.

  I had my eyes trained on Jeff, but just then Nick leaned over, blocking him from sight. From behind me came the sound of crying. Jeff’s aunt was sobbing into her hankie. Varlie remained dry-eyed and motionless, as though she had no comprehension of what had just happened.

  The judge made a closing statement; but his soft-spoken drawl was no match for the onslaught of emotions in the courtroom. New Year’s Eve had broken out. People were on their feet, embracing, waving, calling from all sides. I fought my way through the crush, bumping into Bryant, the reporter from People, who picked me off my feet and kissed me violently on the mouth. “This ending,” he said, “oughta translate well in Hollywood.”

  I had the urge to slug him, to leave him howling in pain, but just then the crowd parted so that all at once I was facing Jeff Turner for the first time since the verdict had been announced. A man I’d never seen before stood with him, pumping his arm up and down, clapping him on the back. Jeff looked dazed.

  “Congratulations.”

  He pulled me close. The heady bouquet of Brut and Life Savers was almost overwhelming. “How can I ever thank you?” he whispered.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “It was Susan, and Nick.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “What mattered most was you believing in me.”

  I tried to think of something to say. But what? I don’t know if I really do believe in you, Jeff. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. The lights in the courtroom seemed unusually bright. They hurt my eyes. I put up my hand to shield them, but Jeff grabbed it.

  “Look, I know things have been a little tense recently.” The lights were affecting him, too. Little beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. “I just hope now it’s all over, we can—”

  I lost his train of speech. The room had turned liquid, lapping at my legs. Out of nowhere, a hand slipped around my waist. Nick Shawde shouted into my ear. “Whatsa matter, Garny? You look like shit.”

  “Nothing a year in total seclusion won’t cure.” I managed a smile.

  “You?” Shawde dug an elbow into my ribs. “Never happen.” Someone grabbed him; when I looked up again Varlie Turner and her sister were standing next to Jeff.

  I started to edge away. “Well, good luck to all of you.”

  “We sure do appreciate everything, Miz Quinn,” Varlie said.

  “I didn’t really do anything.”

  “Well, we thank you, anyway.” Her voice was bereft of warmth or gladness.

  Before I could leave, Varlie’s sister spoke up. “Miz Quinn? I almost forgot. Did Bird tell you?”

  Turner ducked his head, sheepishly. “Darn, Aunt Dot. With all that’s been going on, it slipped right by me.”

  The woman opened up her purse. “That young assistant of yours?”

  “Jack Tatum?”

  “I believe that’s the one. Well, he called about that boy and his ma, come to stay with Teeny?” My heart thudded. “And I got to remembering that was about the time my husband first got his Polaroid?”

  “Just show her the picture,” Varlie said impatiently.

  She handed me a small black-and-white snapshot with perforated edges. “It’s Bird and that boy,” she said. “I run by it when I was home yest’dy, and it set me to thinkin’.” She turned to her nephew. “It start comin’ back to y’all, too, don’t it now, Bird?”

  He flashed a dimpled grin. “Yes, ma’am. Guess now I see it, it does.”

  I looked down at the picture. Two young boys were standing near Turner’s barn. The tall, nice-looking one held a cat under its front arms so that its hind legs were dragging. The small, fat one had some sort of scarf around his neck. Something was embroidered at each end. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it might have been the sign of the cross.

  I stuffed the photograph into my pocket and quickly said goodbye.

  As I reached the door, I looked over my shoulder in time to see Jeff Turner posing for photographers, his arm draped casually over Susan Trevett Cox’s shoulder. “Smile!” someone called.

  And they did, on cue.

  NINE

  I sat alone in the darkened suite that had once served as the defense’s war room, pressing the back of Nick’s swivel chair against the wall, my feet up on the desk, scuffing the expensive blotter. In the hollow of my lap I held the snapshot. I couldn’t actually see it, but I knew it was there. I ran its sharp edges against the pads of my fingers.

  The door opened a crack. Some of the light from the corridor spilled inside before a hand hit the switch on the merciless overheads. I sat up straight, blinking away the brightness.

  “Goddammit, Garn.” Nick Shawde’s voice was husky. “You trying to give me a coronary?”

  “I didn’t think anybody’d be around this late,” I said, truthfully. “How come you’re not out celebrating?”

  Shawde shrugged. “I was.” He crossed to the desk and removed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from a bottom drawer. “I am.” He took out two shot glasses, setting them down so hard the sound echoed in the empty room. “And I will be.”

  I shimmied the chair forward on its casters, watching as he poured the golden liquid and handed it to me. We drank without looking at each other. Then he took out a pressed handkerchief, blew his nose, and went over to the television.

  The news was on, the headline story, Jefferson Turner’s acquittal. We watched for a while. Nick doled out another round and we stared at the set, sipping. When the segment was over, I expected Nick to switch the channel and check out the other network coverage; but he didn’t. Instead we sat through a report about a car accident on Route 20 that had killed three motorists; the weather report; and a special feature on a soup kitchen for the homeless run by kids.

  During the commercial Nick raised the Jack Daniel’s again. I shook my head. “What if he’s guilty?” I asked finally.

  “Not my problem,” Shawde replied. “The law has just found him an innocent man.”

  “That’s not good enough for me.”

  “What are you, on some fucking crusade?” His small dark eyes taunted. “Garner Quinn, Seeker of Truth? Pul-lease.” He sat on the other side of the desk, propping up his feet, one at a time, as though sublimely bored. “Get off your high horse, Garny. My job is to represent the guy to the best of my ability, and yours is to write about what happened. Period. I mean, the books you write are supposed to be nonfiction, right? You think you got some kind of poetic license? Let me clue you in—the ending’s the ending, toots.”

  I tossed my shot glass on the table, where it rolled around with a marbled cat’s-eye sound. “Spoken like a true lawyer.”

  “Sure, go ahead, keep playing the self-righteous act,” he said, his voice surprisingly angry. “But you know, I’m gonna sleep tonight. I’m gonna go out, have a late dinner, get laid if I’m lucky, and then I’m gonna dream sweet, like a baby. What about you? When’s the last time you got any? Or was that the question that landed the Birdboy in deep shit for asking?”

  I slapped him. On the television, four young black kids were singing a rap song about burgers and fries. Nick managed a smile. “I’d heard you never ended a case without slugging the attorney. I was beginning to think you didn’t respect me.”

  He walked toward the window, rubbing his cheek. “You know what the difference is between us?” he asked. “You never stop digging. Me? Once something’s over, I’m ready to fuckin’ bury it.”

  I went over to the small refrigerator and wrapped an ice cube in a paper napkin. “Here,” I said.

  He took it. “You must be a tiger in bed, Quinn.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  “Yeah,” the attorney agreed, “ain’t it the truth?” Something on the television caught his eye, and he looked past me. A pretty young reporter was speaking directly into the camera, a picture of Dane Blackmoor over her shoulder.

  “—Diana Gold, attorney for
the sculptor,” said the reporter, “issued a statement today saying that Blackmoor’s art was being, quote, manhandled and destroyed, as investigators searched for additional body parts. A human hand was discovered just last week when—”

  “I tell you, Garn,” Nick said, “your next book.”

  “No effin’ way, Shawde.”

  “Not even if they found the head?” He smoothed out his suit jacket and adjusted his tie.

  “Not even then.”

  “Well, see you in court, Quinn. Unless you want to do a little partying with Lombardi and me?” The eyebrows went up twice.

  “Oh darn,” I sighed. “I’d love to, but I’ve got to wash my hair.”

  “You staying?”

  “Yeah. Thought I’d run up your phone tab a bit.”

  “Heads it’s Blackmoor. Tails it’s your daughter.” Nick pretended to flip a coin in the air. “Oops.”

  I caught him at the door. “Wrong on both counts. It’s your wife.” He stopped dead in his tracks for a moment before slipping into the hall.

  TEN

  The pale marble floor of the hotel lobby gleamed like the deck of an ocean liner. Although it was after midnight, the atrium was well lit and shadowless, a place with no dark crevices or corners. This reassured people, helped them forget that they were far away from home, sleeping in used rooms, on sheets where strangers had slept, one launder ago.

  I’d thought about grabbing a nightcap in the bar, but now that I was down here the idea no longer appealed to me. I headed back toward the elevator banks.

  Jeff Turner was sitting in one of the silvery-blue wing chairs. “Hey, lady.”

  “Jeff,” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to give you something.” He held out a rolled sheet of paper. “Open it up. Please.” I unfurled it gingerly.

  It was a drawing of a bird. He’d used thousands of delicate, controlled pen lines to create a feathery texture. There was something unsettling about the dead-on perspective—beak forward, black eyes so wide apart.

  “It’s lovely.” I stared at Jeff Turner, trying to imagine him sheathed in black, his fine features blurred under a shimmer of greasepaint; but somehow the image got sucked up into the fern-lined heights of the atrium. There was only an attractive young man in a navy blazer and a pale button-down shirt, standing at a respectable distance, in a well-lit, shadowless place.

  “I guess you’re already onto the next thing,” he said. “Thinking about another book.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Well, I’d better let you go,” he said. “I have a friend waiting out in the car for me.” This surprised me. Many people had claimed to like Bird, but now that I thought of it, only Peter Salvatore had said he was his friend.

  I rolled up the drawing, and extended my hand. “Good luck, Jeff.”

  He pressed it to his lips, gently. “I’ll never forget you, Garner,” he said.

  ELEVEN

  I was on my knees, digging with a small spoon. The earth felt moist. My arms were streaked black with it. Little clots of packed dirt, laced with earthworms, stuck between my fingers.

  I hit upon something hard.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. A perfect row of animal caskets, each lid marked with words in a language that seemed strangely familiar. Almost against my will, I began prying the first coffin open. Inside, I found a dead sparrow. Beak forward. Eyes set wide apart. Its body shrouded in purple cloth, marked with crosses.

  One after the other, I opened the other caskets. A mouse. A rabbit. A cat. A dog. A feeling of dread built inside me as I worked my way toward the largest box. This one was nailed good and tight. I wedged the spoon under the lid. A surge of hot, acrid air wafted out, filling my nostrils.

  I almost had it, when I sensed the shadow on my back. A slow, soft voice said, “Open it, Garner. Open up the big one,” and I saw, without turning, the face, white as the moon, the rut of dimples like craters…

  The phone pealed. I pushed my way up from the depths of the dream. The numbers on the clock read two forty-five. Another pretty little ring. I groped for the receiver. “Yes?”

  “The bars are out,” a voice said on the other end.

  “Nick?”

  Shawde’s laughter was like a whooping cough sucked inward. “What’s going on?” I demanded. Then my heart sank. “Has something—?”

  “Relax, babycakes,” he drawled. “I just wanted to give you the news.”

  “What news?”

  “The bars are out, did I tell you that?”

  I heard giggling, and wondered whether he was alone. “Yes, you did,” I said, impatiently.

  “Well, that’s where I saw it. Big as life, on one’a them giant TV screens. And I said, shit, I gotta call her. I gotta call the G Woman.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sharpen your pencil, kiddo—”

  “You’re drunk. I’m going back to bed.”

  “You can’t sleep now, Garny. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Nick let out one of his enormous, donkey-boy hee-haws. “They found the head! Did’ja hear me? They found the fucking head!”

  IV — THE MILL

  “PRAISE THE LORD, GO HOME WITH MY HUSBAND, AND HAVE LOTS OF BABIES.”

  SUSAN TREVETT COX

  ON WHAT SHE WAS PLANNING TO DO NOW THAT

  THE TURNER TRIAL WAS OVER

  PEOPLE

  (NOVEMBER 14, 1994)

  “WELL, MA’AM, I WOULDN’T BE SITTING HERE, EXCEPT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, AND GARNER QUINN. WE GOT REAL CLOSE DURING THE TRIAL, BUT OF COURSE I HAVEN’T SEEN HER RECENTLY. SHE’S OFF WRITING ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT THAT SCULPTOR…”

  JEFFERSON “BIRD” TURNER

  WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE SOON-TO-BE-PUBLISHED

  BOOKALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

  The Today Show

  (NOVEMBER 22, 1994)

  ONE

  The studio was in an old gristmill. Blackmoor’s assistant said I couldn’t miss it, and he was right. In a countryside smattered with picture-book farmhouses and ivy-covered salt-boxes built on the tippy-tops of winding roads, it loomed like a Druidal monument—strange, mysterious, a little frightening. Bare trees lined the driveway, limbs outstretched like the hands of surrendering men. In addition to the main structure, I counted at least four outbuildings. A brick chimney served as a sort of watchtower.

  Or a crematory, I thought. Maybe that was where he’d disposed of the other body parts.

  I followed a series of small painted signs that read simply: the mill. The place was a relatively new acquisition for Blackmoor. According to my research, he’d moved his entire Manhattan operation here shortly after the Vestri scandal broke. There was a parking lot behind the main building. I pulled my trusty old Volvo 190 into an empty space and shut off the ignition. From here I had a good view of the mill wheel and, beyond the bluff, the steel-gray ribbon of the canal.

  I got out of the car and strolled toward the water. My attention was immediately drawn to the three large, lumpish shapes that lurched on the embankment before me. They looked almost like tombstones—tombstones that had been blanketed with stiff, heavy coverings. I leaned over to touch one. It was hard. Ungiving as granite.

  I turned backed toward the Mill, squinting the morning sun out of my eyes. Given all his money, the properties he owned, and the fast life he led, I wondered why Blackmoor had chosen to live in the middle of nowhere.

  Of course, if his hobby was chopping up young women, this would make an ideal location. Nobody but the crows would hear the screams.

  A young man with long, sandy hair tied back into a ponytail answered the door. “Can you believe this is November?” he asked. “Hey, if this is global warming, I’m all for it. You’re Garner Quinn, right?” He beamed proudly, as though he’d just given the correct answer on a game show. “I saw you at the museum gala.”

  I felt my cheeks flush as if I’d been drunk that night, singing lewd songs on the top of a table, instead of simply wearing
a red dress. The young man ushered me into a small, drafty foyer. Narrow beams of light spiked the floor from slits in the stone walls. A bleached pine table held an earthen bowl of white tulips.

  “You know, you look a lot younger than those pictures on your book jackets,” Mr. Ponytail chattered.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Remind me to fire my photographer.”

  He snorted and held out his hand. He had a way of shaking without grasping. “I’m Roberto. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Everybody’s in the studio,” he explained. “Dane’s starting a new piece on Thursday, so it’s scamper, scamper, busy, busy.” He turned the latch on a thick wooden door. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  I followed him into a vast open space. Massive stone walls rose to vaulted heights. On one wall, a walk-in fieldstone fireplace glimmered with copper pots. Tall wrought-iron candleholders trailed a lifetime’s worth of wax onto the brick hearth.

  Everything was much brighter, and less gloomy, than I had expected it to be. Natural light fell in tubular shafts from skylights, or slanted through the tall, arched windows. A theatrical lighting grid had been suspended from the ceiling. Several men were hanging on scaffolds, adjusting barn-door flaps, so that they shone down in brilliant patterns on the raised platform that was in the center of the room. From invisible speakers, a singer crooned—Ohhh! I love to hate you.

  Other scaffolds, decked with chicken wire and bolts of muslin, divided the studio at odd angles. A tall woman stood on the platform, giving directions to the technicians. I recognized her as the pale-faced beauty in the Juliet dress who’d come to fetch Blackmoor from the backseat of the Rolls that night.

  She cupped a hand over her eyebrows, calling, “Roberto?”

  “Duty calls.” Roberto shrugged cheerily. “Please. Make yourself at home.” He sprinted away. Scamper, scamper, busy busy.