by Ann Warner
“I can’t believe it shook you up, Thomasina.”
“Then you didn’t know me at all.”
“I tried to know you. But I was just one of the girls.”
“Of course you weren’t. You were much more. The daughter I once hoped for. Ah, but that’s all so long ago.”
“It still hurts, what happened to us.”
“It hurts me too.” Thomasina fell silent, and after a time Clen knew she was gone.
Quiet lapped around her then, like water touching gently along the Ever Joyful’s hull, and when morning came she awakened to the sound of birds and a cool breeze lifting the curtains. She lay for a time, thinking about her night visitor. She looked at the spot where Thomasina sat last night. Nothing there, not even a chair. Yet what they’d said to each other...all of it true. Clen had thought she was competing for Thomasina’s love and approval and she’d acted no better than a two-year-old and with the same degree of understanding of how love worked. For when it seemed Thomasina was rejecting her, Clen turned her back, firmly and finally, on the nun.
It all happened years ago. By now, she should no longer miss Thomasina. Odd that she did, while she could barely remember Paul or what it was like to be married to him. Of course, she had been another person married to Paul. A person encased by duty and habit. Numb to both grief and joy. Mummified until Gerrum set her free.
Gerrum. God, how that loss hurt.
At the reminder, something essential inside of her clenched with misery.
Chapter Twenty-five
It required a day and a half of phone tag with his contact in the Seattle prosecutor’s office for Gerrum to come up with the name and number for the clerk of courts for the Johnson County Kansas District Court. The morning after he spoke to that individual, Gerrum stuck his head in ZimoviArt and invited Hailey for coffee. She put up the back-in-fifteen-minutes sign, locked the door, and walked with him over to Maude’s. Once they had mugs of coffee in front of them, he outlined what he’d learned.
“Bottom line, while the county should still have the transcript, they might not be willing to go looking for it, but if they do, they’ll charge you for a copy. A one-week trial could run you several hundred dollars.”
Hailey’s face fell at the news.
“However, since it was first degree murder, there’s another possibility. The verdict was likely appealed. That means the defense attorney may have a copy of the transcript.”
“But he might be retired.” Hailey wrinkled her brow. “Or dead. He was old.”
Adults all look old to children the age Hailey had been. At least Gerrum hoped that was true, or he’d have little chance of getting his hands on the transcript, and he wanted to be able to do that for her.
“You have to decide. If you go ahead, it’s going to take time and effort to track this down.”
She was silent a long time, looking past him out the window. Finally she sighed. “I want to try. Will you help me? I’ll pay you for your time.”
“I’m happy to help, but only as a friend.”
“You’re a good man, Gerrum Kirsey. If Clen didn’t have a firm hold on your heart, I’d be tempted to hang in there.” She smiled.
It wasn’t much of a smile, but he smiled back, feeling uncomfortable and at a total loss for a more appropriate response.
A helpful clerk at the Kansas Bar Association helped him locate Mr. Dillon.
“Kenny Connelly, sixty-seven?” Dillon said. “Sure, I remember it. My first murder one case. Got trounced. Figured on a second degree guilty. Jury surprised me. Recollect that little gal, too. Sweet little gal. Held it together real well. Did better than most of the grownups. Give her my regards, will you. Be happy to send the transcript. Only kept it because it was my first.”
When it arrived, the transcript was the size of War and Peace. Gerrum delivered it to Hailey’s house, and she invited him in for a cup of coffee. While he sipped, she removed the stack of onion skin pages from the box and piled them on her kitchen table. The last thing she took from the box was a large brown envelope, its flap secured with red twine. She opened it, glanced inside, then re-fastened the twine and dropped the envelope back into the box.
Gerrum knew she eventually began to read it, because at intervals over the next several days, she waylaid him to ask questions. The first was about jury selection. She told him the twelve people originally called were retained, despite one of them being acquainted with a prosecution witness.
“Does that make any sense, Gerrum? Why didn’t Mr. Dillon challenge her?” she asked.
“Well, you usually go by your gut instincts on a jury, Hailey. Although attorneys do have some information about potential jury members. But a juror acquainted with a prosecution witness...” He trailed off as Maude arrived to top off his cup. He waited until she moved out of earshot before continuing. “If it was my case, I’d remove that person. Take my chances on the rest of the pool.”
“So why do you think Mr. Dillon kept her?”
“It could have been an attempt to bluff the jurors into believing he was confident his client wasn’t guilty. But it might have been inexperience. He told me he remembered the case because it was his first murder trial. And he did say the jury surprised him.”
“Surprised him how?”
“He said he expected a guilty verdict but on a lesser charge.”
Hailey bit her lip so hard it turned white.
He laid a hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”
She ducked her head, blinking fast.
“Kenny Connelly’s your father, isn’t he?”
She hitched in a breath. “Of course. Stupid of me to think you wouldn’t figure that out.”
He picked up her hand, which was icy, and chafed it between his.
“S-so you’re saying Dillon thought he was g-guilty.”
“Or, he knew he had a weak case.”
“But if a person is innocent, it shouldn’t matter.” She looked up briefly, her eyes swimming with tears.
“You’re thinking in moral terms, Hailey. The law deals with what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s why defendants are found not guilty instead of innocent.” He held her hand until her breathing smoothed out, then he let go.
She brushed at the dampness in her eyes. “There’s something else I need to ask you. Every time a witness starts to tell the jury something my mom said, the defense objects, and the judge always sustains the objection. Why is that?”
“Judges follow rules of evidence to ensure fundamental fairness. It means they usually exclude testimony relating a one-on-one conversation with the deceased since it would be impossible to corroborate.”
Hailey took a careful breath. “Sometimes it seems more like a chess game than justice.”
“Hey, why do you think I’m now a grubby Alaskan fisherman?” He looked at her over the rim of his mug.
“I thought it was because you know how good you look in flannel shirts.”
That startled him, but then he decided she was teasing, a sign she’d caught her emotional balance. At least for the moment.
“Can you come by my place this afternoon, Gerrum?” Hailey said two days later. “I have more questions, but I hate asking them in front of Maude.”
By then, he was spending most of his free time with Clen, so he suggested meeting Hailey in the early evening while Clen was busy with dinner at the lodge. At Hailey’s, he found the transcript now sat divided into two unequal piles.
Hailey poured him a beer without asking and sat kitty-corner from him, sipping a glass of iced tea. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but as I read, I keep remembering things.”
“Is that what this is about? You trying to remember?”
“God no. I wish I never had to think about any of it again, but my brother left me no choice.”
Gerrum raised his eyebrows in question and Hailey sighed. “It’s a long story, but the gist is after Mom was killed, Adam and I went to live with our grandmother. Adam left Edgington when h
e was sixteen, and we never heard from him or about him again. Until a couple of weeks ago. I got a letter. From Adam’s...widow.” She stopped and chewed on her lip. “For years, I had no idea if Adam was even alive.” She took a deep breath. “It surprised me how much it hurt to find out he isn’t. His...Sally found me through Tess. She’s the one who does the quilt squares. Sally wrote because she and Adam have a son and she wants him to know his dad’s family. It made me realize I don’t know for sure what happened to my mom, and I need to know. I thought the transcript would help.”
“Has it?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m reading about two strangers who just happen to have the same names as my parents. And I’m discovering things I didn’t know. My dad’s I.Q. is seventy-six. Borderline retarded. My I.Q. is nearly twice his. How can that be?”
“Maybe your mom was really smart.”
“If she was so smart, why did she marry him and let him abuse her?” She rubbed her forehead. “Although, I don’t really remember that, but after I read about it, I had a dream. I don’t know. Maybe none of it’s real, what I think I remember.” She stopped and shuddered. “How do people do it? Make it their life’s work to deal with this sort of thing? And then to talk about it as if it’s a picture in a book, a setting on a stage.”
“I don’t know.”
“Mom was shot in our apartment. In the bedroom. After it happened, Dad kept the door closed. One afternoon, I snuck in to get Mom’s photograph out of the drawer where it was kept. I tried not to look, but as I turned to leave, I saw the bed. It had a huge brown stain. And there was this smell...unlike anything I’d smelled before. Dark, moldy, sweet. It made my stomach heave. I got out and pulled the door shut, but I couldn’t get away from the smell.” She stared at her hands, clenched in her lap.
Gerrum sat without moving, waiting to see if there was anything else she needed to say.
“A month after it happened, the police came. They brought Mom’s sister with them, and they took Dad away. Aunt Iris helped us put our clothes and toys into grocery bags. She was rushing us, and I almost forgot the photo of Mom.” Hailey propped her head on her hands.
“She took us to Grammie’s with our stuff still in those paper bags. Grammie lived in a house that wasn’t much more than a cabin. Edgington wasn’t much of a place, either, but it was such a relief to get away from Kansas City, I didn’t care.
“The first thing Grammie did was hug us and pat us and murmur sounds that weren’t even words, but they were so much better than any of the words we’d heard since Mom died. Then she fed us a big meal. I ate so much I thought I’d burst.
“After dinner, she had us bathe, and while our hair was still wet, she sat us in the middle of the kitchen. First, she cut Adam’s hair short. When she finished, she gave Adam’s head a rub, and he ducked and smiled. When I saw that, something tight inside me started to loosen.”
Gerrum didn’t try to comment on what Hailey was saying. He thought what she mostly needed was to know someone was listening.
“Grammie combed my hair and I leaned back against her. She told me, ‘You know, Hailey darling, I used to do the same thing for your momma when she wasn’t no bigger than you are. My, your momma had pretty hair. Just like yours.’”
Hailey’s gaze was unfocused. Her words slowed and took on a Southern lilt, and she had just a hint of a smile on her face. “Grammie made us feel safe. She fed us and kept us clothed and warm. Every day we went to school and did chores and our homework, ate and slept. And then we repeated it the next day. Eventually, we put away the memories of that time, just like Grammie put away our toys when we weren’t playing with them anymore. Or at least I thought we did.”
She stopped and blew her nose. “God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”
“It’s okay. Sounds like your grandmother was a wonderful woman.”
“She was. I miss her a lot.”
He pointed with the nearly full beer at the transcript. “You said you had some more questions?”
“Actually...I want you to look and tell me what’s in here.” She handed him the brown envelope that came with the transcript.
He undid the twine and pulled out the contents, a series of photographs. He glanced at Hailey who was focused on her glass of tea.
The first photo was of a bed with a huge dark stain in the middle and a gun lying to the side like a question mark. He turned it over without showing it to Hailey.
The second photo was worse—taken from above and to the side by a photographer looking through a small lens, framing and focusing carefully, so no detail would be lost. The same bed, but with Hailey’s mother lying there, hair in a cloud, obscuring the source of the blood that had formed a dark pool under her head.
It wasn’t a picture Hailey should see.
“Do you ever notice,” Hailey said, “how this time of day the sun slants through the window and the dust motes look like tiny specks of gold. Dancing like angels are supposed to dance on the head of a pin.” Her voice was dreamy. “Do you believe in angels, Gerrum?”
“I believe people can play that role.”
She shook herself. “Yeah, I don’t believe in them either.”
The next photo had to be Hailey’s dad. He was a small, almost frail-looking man with hair pulled into a wispy ponytail. He was wearing a T-shirt with a logo Gerrum didn’t recognize. It had several dark smudges on the front and one sleeve. His face was smudged as well, and he had a startled look, as if the camera flash awakened him from a nightmare.
Gerrum turned the photo toward Hailey. “Is this your dad?”
She stared at it, then she nodded. “I’d mostly forgotten what he looked like. The last time I saw him was after the trial. Neither of us could think of anything to say.”
“Is he still in prison?”
“I don’t even know if he’s alive. Although someone would have told me, right? If he wasn’t.”
“I expect so.”
She looked again at the picture of her dad. “You know, there’s something wrong with that picture.”
“What?”
She shook her head, looking frustrated. “It’s like when you know a word is misspelled because it looks odd, but you don’t know how to change it to make it right.”
“Is something missing? Or is something there that shouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’ll figure it out if you sleep on it.”
“Maybe.” She set the photo down. “I need to let you go. I’ve imposed on you long enough.”
“Hey, isn’t that what friends are for? To help when they can. I’m happy to do it.” He slipped the two crime scene photos back in the envelope. “I don’t think you should look at these.”
“Could you just...dispose of them for me?”
“Of course.”
They both stood. At the door, she put her arms around him in a brief hug. “Thank you, Gerrum. I don’t know how I’d manage this without your help.”
Gerrum began stopping by Hailey’s house every couple of days. Often she asked him questions about how the trial was being conducted, or she would give him a section of the transcript and ask him to read it and tell her what he thought.
Tonight she answered the door, looking wan.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m not sleeping very well. I need to finish the transcript.”
“How much more do you have to go?”
“About a hundred pages. There’s something else I want you to read.”
“Sure, be happy to.”
In the kitchen, Hailey handed him a cluster of pages. He started to read, then looked up at her in surprise. “Mr. Dillon called you to testify?”
She nodded. “That’s another reason I wanted to see the transcript.”
Gerrum began reading the back and forth between Dillon and Hailey.
Q: Now, Hailey, you remember when I came to your grandma’s and we talked about your dad and your mom?
&n
bsp; A: Yes.
Q: Well, we’re going to chat, just like we did then. I’ll ask you questions, and all you have to do is tell me what you told me when we were sitting in your grandma’s kitchen.
A: Okay.
Q: Hailey, did you ever see your dad threaten your mom in any way?
A: No.
Q: Did you ever see your dad hit your mom?