by Jack Ford
Jessup turned serious and looked out at the now-hushed crowd.
“It’s a shame when any man dies. And it’s certainly a shame that Mr. Graves died before my lawyers had a chance to show the world what a devious and despicable liar he was. But I’ll tell all y’all what. I’m a great believer in the power of the Lord. I don’t know what Mr. Haynes was babblin’ about. But I do know that that damn liar had a heart attack right here in front of y’all. Right there on the witness stand as he placed his hand on the Bible and then proceeded to tell lie after lie.” He paused and then added in a dramatic, evangelical preacher voice, “Perhaps that was the Lord rendering his verdict on the evil life of Ricky Earl Graves as he took him right here in this tabernacle of justice.”
“Yes?” Jessup said, nodding toward another reporter who was gesturing wildly with both arms.
“But, Senator,” Ella persisted, raising her voice over the other shouted questions, “what about the fact that you weren’t found not guilty by a jury? No one in this courtroom—judge or jury—has actually determined that you weren’t involved in the killing.”
Jessup, his features now taut, directed a swift, icy glare at Ella, and then turned away, pointing instead in the direction of another reporter who was frantically waving his notebook.
“Yes, I think you were next,” he said smoothly.
As Jessup spoke, offering up self-congratulations in response to every question, regardless of the various reporters’ queries, Jeff finally stood and began to work his way past the swelling gathering inside the railing. Pausing to let two new revelers enter, he caught Royce Henning looking his way, a smirk curling the corner of his mouth. Fighting back a flash of anger and an urge to break the sleazy political aide’s jaw, Jeff simply shook his head in disgust and turned away.
Navigating his way through the heaving horde, Jeff caught a glimpse of Kendra Leigh Jessup in the back of the courtroom. She was staring in the direction of her husband, an unlikely look of what appeared to be sorrow and revulsion engraved on her fragile face. He caught her eye for a fleeting moment and she nodded to him, a look of sadness creeping into her gaze.
As he watched, she took a deep breath, raised her chin high, and slipped silently out of the courtroom.
CHAPTER 59
Jeff and Ella had been sitting on his balcony above the Square, drinking beer, finishing off their dinner of pulled-pork sandwiches, and mulling over the courtroom events of the morning, when the marked police cruiser pulled up on the street below. A sheriff’s officer jumped out and peered up into the darkness.
“Mr. Trannon? That you up there?”
Jeff stood and leaned over the railing.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“It’s Officer Walls. Detective Jackson sent me to find you.”
“There a problem?”
“He didn’t say. Just radioed in and told me to find you. Said—and these’re his words, sir—‘to find you, throw your ass in the car, and get you to him right away.’”
“Okay. Be right down.”
Jeff turned to Ella, a puzzled look on his face.
“What’s that all about?” she asked.
Jeff shrugged. “Don’t know. C’mon, let’s go find out.”
They hustled out of the apartment and down the stairs to the waiting police car.
“Okay if she joins us?” Jeff asked, nodding toward Ella.
“Guess so,” the officer said, opening the rear door.
“Where we headed?” Ella asked.
“An address outside of town,” the officer said, jumping into the front seat and throwing the vehicle into gear.
Ten minutes later, after speeding along darkened country lanes, they pulled into a large circular driveway that fronted an impressive three-story, rambling, white-columned mansion. Two other sheriff’s vehicles were parked in front of the house.
“What the hell . . . ?” Jeff muttered to Ella. “I think this is Jessup’s place.”
As they approached the house, Terrell Jackson appeared in the doorway, a look of deep concern etched across his face.
“What’s going on?” Jeff said. “Why’re we here?”
Jackson gestured for them to step inside. The entrance foyer was vast, with hallways radiating out in four directions. Jackson took Jeff by the arm, nodded to Ella, and guided them down the nearest passage toward what looked to be a large library.
“Need y’all to see this,” Jackson said somberly. “One of my guys caught a 911 call about some kind of emergency out here. Soon as he arrived, he called me.”
As they stepped into the room, Ella gasped and Jeff stopped in his tracks. Kendra Leigh Jessup was seated calmly at a small writing desk, a cup of tea in her hands. Across the room, sprawled in a leather armchair, was Tillman Jessup. There was a small, neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were wide open, staring vacantly into nothingness, a rivulet of drying blood meandering down along the bridge of his nose to his cheek.
“Oh, my God,” Ella whispered.
“What . . . ?” Jeff murmured, turning to Jackson.
“Not sure,” Jackson said, looking over at Kendra Leigh. “She was sitting right there when I got here. Just sippin’ tea. Said she’d tell me what happened . . . but only if you were here.”
“Me?” Jeff exclaimed. “Why me?”
“Not a damn clue,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Let’s go find out.”
Jeff and Jackson walked over to the desk, Ella lagging behind. Kendra Leigh, wrapped in a dark crimson, silk brocade dressing gown, turned toward them, a tight, joyless smile on her face. The corner of her lower lip was cut and swollen, a patch of blood smeared on her chin.
“Thank you for coming,” she said to Jeff, sounding as if she was welcoming them to some sort of social affair. “You, too, Miss Garrity. I hope this isn’t a terrible inconvenience for you.”
“No, ma’am,” Jeff said uncertainly.
“Are you okay?” Ella asked kindly.
Kendra Leigh touched her lip absently and tilted her head slightly.
“Oh, this? It’s nothing.” She let out a small, ironic chuckle. “Nothing compared to . . . well, never mind that, now. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
“Mrs. Jessup,” Jackson said gently, “now that Jeff and Ella are here, can you tell us what happened?”
Kendra Leigh sat still as a statue for a moment, her eyes fixed on the death mask of her dead husband. She turned back toward her teacup, raised it, took a demure sip, as if she were enjoying their companionship at a tea party, and then replaced the cup on the desktop.
“He was such a bastard,” she whispered, as if sharing teatime gossip. Then she straightened, looked toward them, and began to speak, her voice now clear and firm. “I’d had enough. And today was the last straw.”
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. The abuse. The beatings. The insults. The lies. And after what happened today in the courtroom, and then back here . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Jeff interrupted. “Did you shoot him?”
Kendra Leigh looked at them, a strange bewilderment in her eyes, apparently puzzled as to why he’d ask the question when the answer was so obvious.
“Of course I shot him,” she answered, matter-of-factly.
“Terrell, stop right now! No more questions! Her rights—you’ve got to give ’em to her now. Before she says anything else.”
Jackson shot him an angry glance, shook his big head, and then pulled his Miranda card from his pocket and reluctantly proceeded to read the warnings to her. When he had finished, he asked her if she understood them.
“Of course I do,” Kendra Leigh said, a slight tone of annoyance in her voice.
“And are you still willing to speak to us?” Jackson asked.
“Certainly. That’s why I called you here.”
“Mrs. Jes
sup,” Jeff said. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be talking about this without talking to a lawyer, first.”
Jeff turned toward an obviously frustrated Jackson. “Sorry, man, but I’ve got to tell her.”
“Damn lawyers,” Jackson muttered, a mix of annoyance and appreciation for his old friend in his voice. “Just can’t help yourself, can you? Always buttin’ in.”
“It’s all right, Mr. Trannon,” Kendra Leigh said soothingly. “I appreciate your concern, but I really would prefer to tell you what happened. And when I’m finished, I think you all will be very happy that I did.” she added.
CHAPTER 60
“The perfect couple. The beauty queen and the rich politician,” Kendra Leigh said, a mocking smirk curling her damaged lip. “The perfect marriage. At least, that’s what everyone thought. Maybe it was, early on. But then it all went bad. His political star was rising and he was traveling a lot. We were trying to have children but nothing worked so, of course, he blamed me. He started having affairs—a bunch of them. Then I started having affairs to get back at him. He started drinking. I started drinking. Sounds pretty much like a textbook case, doesn’t it?”
Ella nodded sympathetically while Jeff and Jackson stood by quietly.
“Anyway,” Kendra Leigh continued, “before long, the screaming and the nasty words just weren’t enough for him. First, it was just a push or a shove to make a point. Then, one night, after a particularly bad argument—I’d found a woman in my bed when I got home early from a trip—he slapped me. Somehow, I think he got some kind of cheap thrill out of it. Well, from then on I became a punching bag. Nothing that couldn’t be covered over by a lot of makeup—had to protect the image of the ‘perfect couple,’ after all. I tried like hell to just stay away from him, only going out together to political events. But . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Mrs. Jessup,” Ella pleaded. “Jeff’s right. Please let us get you a lawyer before you say anything more. I really think . . .”
Kendra Leigh raised her hand and stopped Ella mid-sentence.
“Thank you, no. I promise you, I know what I’m doing.” She looked them each carefully in the eye. “I know you’re all probably thinking, ‘Why didn’t she leave him, if it was really that bad?’ Well, I certainly thought about it.” She shrugged. “I know this sounds terribly simple, but my generation was raised to stay married. We didn’t divorce. We stayed together and worked through our problems. Does sound pretty silly, nowadays, doesn’t it? And, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really want to give all this up,” she said, gesturing at the splendor of her surroundings. “I know that sounds awful, but I guess it was just the pact I made with the devil. My own personal Faustian bargain.”
She stopped and took another sip of tea. Ella reached out to touch her arm and Kendra Leigh patted her hand gently and reassuringly. “So, what happened tonight?” Jackson asked.
“After the case was thrown out this morning,” Kendra Leigh began, her face hardening, “and all the sycophants had finished sucking up to him like he’d just won some heroic battle, he ended up back here. I stayed upstairs. Didn’t want to be anywhere near him. He was down here with that disgusting aide of his, Royce Henning. I could hear a lot of other people coming and going and, after a while, it sounded like everyone had left. So I came downstairs to get something from my desk before I went to bed—I always kept a bottle hidden there and figured I’d need it tonight—and was surprised that he and Henning were still here, just sitting around drinking. When I walked in, he told me to get out, that they had business to discuss. So I came over here to my desk, got what I needed, and left.”
Pausing for another sip of tea, she looked up. Her hard, angry expression had changed, replaced by a sly, mirthless grin.
“But I didn’t go back upstairs. I snuck around to the sunroom— it connects to this room through that door,” she said, pointing to a closed door on the far wall of the library, “so I could listen to what they were saying.”
She paused once again, a faraway look on her face, as she seemed to be wrestling with something within herself. Then she took a deep breath and looked directly at Jeff.
“He did it, you know.”
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.
“He killed that preacher.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard him say so. When I was listening at the door. ‘Can’t believe that shootin’ a damn nigger forty years ago almost got me put in jail’— those were his exact words. Then he and Henning started laughing. Then Henning said that maybe the trial ended up being good for his campaign, that now he’ll probably get more votes from the old racist rednecks out there.”
“Did you know?” Ella asked. “I mean, before you heard him admit it to Henning, did you know that he was the killer?”
Kendra Leigh thought a moment. “I had my suspicions. The way he talked about the case. His attitude. Even asked him directly one time. Got a smack in the face for being so nosy. I guess, deep down, I think I knew. Just didn’t want to admit it. It’s one thing to be married to a wife-beater, quite another to be married to a murderer.”
“But you’re sure that he admitted it to Henning?” Jeff asked.
“Absolutely.”
Jeff exchanged a knowing glance with Ella, and then turned to Jackson.
“What do you think?” Jeff said to the detective.
“Think it’s time we have a little ‘come-to-Jesus’ talk with Mr. Henning,” Jackson said.
“Before you do,” Kendra Leigh said, “there’s something else you need to know. I also heard them talking about that Ricky Earl Graves fellow. About how he died.”
“What’d they say?” Jeff asked.
“Seems that they were the ones responsible for his death.”
“What?” Jeff said. “How?”
“I didn’t hear a lot of details. They just laughed about God taking him when he did, right there in the courtroom. And then Henning said something about God, ‘with a little help from our friend.’ That’s the term he used, ‘our friend.’”
“Did either of them say who that ‘friend’ was?” asked Jackson.
Kendra Leigh shook her head. “Not right then. But a little later, just before Henning left, he told Tillman to make sure he came up with the money right away because he’d promised to deliver the rest of it soon.”
“Deliver the money? To who?” Jeff asked.
Kendra Leigh looked directly at Terrell Jackson.
“Henning’s exact words were: ‘Once he gets the rest of his money, my guess is that’s the last we’ll see of the sheriff. Probably spend the rest of his life off fishing somewhere in the Florida Keys.’”
Jackson looked like he’d taken a shoulder to the ribs. His jaw dropped open and his face was a twisted mask of confusion.
“‘The sheriff’?” he stammered. “Sheriff Poole?”
Kendra Leigh nodded sympathetically, as if consoling a child after giving bad news. “I’m sorry, dear, but that’s what he said.”
Jeff looked at Ella, stunned by the revelation.
“I’m afraid it makes sense,” Ella said. “The sheriff could get access to Ricky Earl anytime. And Ricky Earl probably trusted him.”
“But Clayton Poole?” Jeff said, his voice wrapped in painful bewilderment. “He’s one of the good guys. Always has been. How could . . . ?” His voice trailed off.
“Money,” Kendra Leigh said. “My guess is a lot of it. They say that everybody has a price. Sounds like Tillman found Sheriff Poole’s. He was very good at that.”
“Did they say anything else about the sheriff or the money?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Kendra Leigh said. “They just laughed some more, and then I heard Henning leave.”
“Then what happened?” asked Jeff.
“After what I’d heard, I decided right then that I was leaving him. No matter what. I came
into the room—he was standing over by the window with a drink in his hand—and I told him I was packing my bags and leaving. He laughed at me and told me to get on up to my room and drink myself to sleep. Then I told him that I’d heard what he’d said to Henning. That I knew he killed that poor preacher.”
Kendra Leigh paused and placed her hands over her face. A quiet sob shook her frail body once, and then again. She sighed, gathered herself, wiped a tear from each eye, and continued.
“Before I could move, he lashed out at me, punched me in the face and knocked me down. He stood over me, shaking his fist, and said if I ever said that again, to anybody, they’d be fishing my body out of the lake.”
“What’d you do then?” Jeff asked gently.
“I picked myself off the floor and pushed past him. He sat down in that chair—he still had his drink in his hand—and started laughing at me, calling me a run-down, drunken whore. So, I walked over to my desk and grabbed these.”
She pulled open the top drawer and removed a small .22-caliber revolver. Terrell Jackson swiftly reached out and grabbed it from her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have given that to you right away.”
Then she reached back into the drawer and pulled out a small, dark object and held it out to them. They all stared at it, puzzled.
“A tape recorder,” she said. “Voice activated. Been here in the drawer forever. When I’d gone to my desk earlier to get my bottle—after Tillman told me to get out—I reached in and flipped the ‘on’ switch. Not sure why, really. Maybe it was just some kind of premonition, I don’t know. Anyway, I held this up and told him that I’d taped everything he and that weasel Henning had said. And that I’d make sure everyone heard it if he didn’t agree to let me go.”
“What’d he do?” asked Ella.
Kendra Leigh looked over at the body and slowly, sadly, shook her head.
“He said he’d kill me first, and he started to stand up.” She paused and took a deep breath.
“So I shot him.”
CHAPTER 61
Silence filled the room. No one spoke while Kendra Leigh sat at her desk, tape recorder in hand, staring again at the body of her dead husband. Finally, Jeff broke the spell.