He smiled. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I remember now.” Then he must have remembered the way his superior had tried to humiliate him because he blushed again. The poor kid blushed so much he reminded of an exotic lizard or octopus, some sort of creature gifted (or in his case cursed) with an excess of appearance-altering pigment.
“I’m Sydney.” I sat across from him and explained that I was looking for people who knew Isaac Thomas. I was trying to get information for his daughter.
“Did you know why he was sent to prison?” I asked him.
“Yes, ma’am, I did, not that he ever talked about it. To tell the truth, I found it all kinda hard to believe, but then you never know what somebody can do.”
“His daughter was very young when he was sent to prison, and she never saw him again. She didn’t even know he was dead until recently.” As I suspected, his sense of southern chivalry helped bring Charley out of his shell.
“That is a shame. I was pretty new to the job when I worked on Isaac’s wing. He seemed like a real nice man. I never knew him to cause anybody a bit of trouble. He was good with the new guys, helping them to settle down, to understand how things work and what’ll get them in trouble.” He smiled. “Not just the inmates either. He told me a few things too, about how to deal with the inmates, how to deal with the other guards. And he always did it private-like, so’s nobody would hear.”
“Would you say Isaac was a leader?”
He considered this for a moment. “Well, not really. At least, not the way most people mean leader. Isaac looked out for people, and he got things done, but he never took credit for it. He was sorta quiet. I mean, he’d have conversations, but he wasn’t one of those guys who talks just to hear the sound of his own voice. Mostly he just listened. He had a way of getting you to do the right thing, without ever telling you what it was.”
“Do you remember him having any visitors? Family or anyone?”
“No, no I don’t. I guess I just figured he didn’t have any family left. I didn’t know about his daughter.”
Charley looked down at the remaining spaghetti on his plate and played his fork around it. “Now you know, somebody who might be able to tell you something more is Sue Ellen. Seems to me like she spent a lot of time around Isaac. I know she was real upset when he died.”
“Were you around then?”
“When he died? No, I wasn’t. They were moving us around a lot about that time, and I think I was at some sort of training when it happened. I hadn’t seen much of Isaac for at least a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.”
“Were you surprised when he killed himself?”
“Well, I was and I wasn’t. Any time somebody dies it’s a surprise, and Isaac never struck me as the type. But like I said, one thing I’ve learned here is you just never know what somebody will do. And I can’t say I ever saw him depressed, but there always was something sad about him. You ever meet somebody like that? It’s like they’ve seen something or done something that no matter how hard they laugh or how big their smile is, the sad in their eyes won’t go away. I just thought that’s the way he was.”
We sat without speaking for a while, me sipping my soda and Charley finishing his spaghetti. He suddenly rose, putting his napkin over his mouth and chewing vigorously so he could speak without choking or spitting food.
“Sue Ellen!” he called, and beckoned a petite young woman to join us with her food.
She exchanged blushes with Charley as she sat next to him. Once she had her tray down she turned her shy gaze on me, tucking her short dark hair behind her ears.
“Sue Ellen, this is Sydney.” Charley went on to explain why I was there. As he did, Sue Ellen’s face grew expressionless. She locked her eyes on her salad, cutting an unripe cherry tomato with surgical precision.
“So I thought maybe you could tell her about Isaac,” Charley concluded. Sue Ellen still didn’t meet my eyes, but she glanced at Charley. Her mouth hung open, as if she were about to speak but couldn’t remember how.
“Charley! Goddammit, boy, do I have to stand over you all the time? You know we’re short. Quit jawing and get back to your post.” It was the officer who’d made fun of Charley in the convenience store.
Charley rose without a word and left, tray in hand. I watched him leave, then turned back to face Sue Ellen. Her lips were colorless, and her voice came through them at a whisper.
“I have to go too.”
She stumbled getting up and left her tray on the table. Then she exited the cafeteria, opposite the direction Charley had gone. I followed her on a hunch. As I suspected, she’d gone to the ladies’ restroom. I went through a lounge area with vinyl furniture and a mirror, through another door and into the “business part” of the arrangement. Sue Ellen was leaning over one of the two sinks, looking sick. She didn’t even seem to realize I’d entered.
“Sue Ellen?” When she turned to look at me I saw that the blood had left the rest of her face too. “Are you all right?”
She didn’t answer so I went to the neighboring sink and wet a couple of paper towels in cold water. Then I took Sue Ellen by the arm, led her back out to the lounge and set her on a vinyl chair. The cushion squeaked in response to her meager weight. I folded the cold paper towels and pressed one to her forehead. Her brown eyes were dilated and seemed too large for her thin face. She had the look of someone who’d been gradually wasting away.
“Here,” I said, handing her another towel. “Put this on the back of your neck.”
She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Better?” I asked. She nodded.
“I’m sorry. Something I ate this morning must have disagreed with me. Thank you.”
“No problem. I have to admit, the sight of the food in there was almost enough to make me sick too.” She tried to smile. We sat for another minute before Sue Ellen looked at me.
“Thanks again, but I really do have to go.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
She didn’t answer, but got up, smoothing her hair and the front of her cargo-type uniform pants.
“Look, Charley was wrong. I don’t know anything. I knew who Isaac was, but I don’t talk much to the inmates, or anybody else.”
She stopped, facing the door with her hand ready to pull it open.
“I feel bad for Noel, I really do, but I can’t help you.”
I waited long enough to ensure I wouldn’t run into Sue Ellen in the hallway. I didn’t want to push her. Not yet. She would talk to me in time, just as I knew she had talked to Isaac.
I hadn’t told anyone at the prison that Isaac’s daughter was named Noel.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Before heading down to the PD’s office in Hainey, I stopped by the Handi-way for a snack and another quick chat with Annie.
“Well, hello,” she said as I came through the door. “You’ve spent so much time around here lately, the rumor is you’re moving in.”
“Must be all that southern hospitality at WFC keeping me here.”
Annie snorted. “That’ll be the day. You can bet you got most of them boys jumping out of their shorts over there, they’re so wound up.”
“Really? Anyone in particular?”
“If there is they wouldn’t tell me. From what I’ve seen, if you work at that prison long enough, you start to figure everyone you meet is either a criminal or about to accuse you of being one. Which one you think they take you for?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Probably a little of both.” I told her that I’d spoke with Charley and Sue Ellen.
“That Charley’s just a doll. He used to have a thing for Sue Ellen. They’d come in here twice a day, along with everybody else, seeing which one could outblush the other. But I haven’t seen Sue Ellen around here at all in the last few months. Maybe Deacon’s teasing got the best of her.”
“Deacon… is that the guy that was in here the other day giving Charley a hard time? In his mid 40s, maybe 5-foot-10 and running about 230. Brown hair and m
oustache just starting to go gray?”
Annie folded her arms over her chest and looked at me. “What are you, a cop?”
Any anonymity I might have was already long gone, so I told her.
“Shit, girl, no wonder they’re paranoid. Probably think it’s about some kind of lawsuit.”
I assured her it wasn’t.
“Well, it makes no difference to me. I got a nephew that landed in jail for a little bit of nothing, and if something happened to him or they didn’t treat him right, you better believe I’d go after them.”
“About that guy…”
“Oh, yeah, that’s Deacon all right. He’s meaner than hell, but like most bullies it’s all talk. There’s a few like him over there—always is in those kinds of places—but I’ve never heard of them getting up to anything serious.”
Mike wasn’t in his cubicle when I got to the PD’s office. I thought maybe he’d gone to lunch, but the guy in the adjacent section said he was in Richard’s office. Richard’s secretary was nowhere to be seen, but his door was ajar and I could hear voices from inside. Raised voices.
“That’s crazy, Richard. Why would I do that?” Mike’s voice was raised, but he sounded more perplexed than angry.
With my usual tact, I knocked once on the door and pushed on through. Mike didn’t look angry either, but Richard was agitated. His face and neck were flushed, and his mouth shone with saliva. He looked at me, licked his bottom lip distractedly, then held it with his front teeth. His eyes flashed with pain, and he released his lip and his pent-up breath simultaneously.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Neither spoke. Richard’s eyes darted back and forth between Mike and me, but Mike just shrugged and gestured for Richard to go on. Richard put his hands on his desk, palms down, and took another deep breath before speaking.
“Someone, a man, called my house late last night. My wife answered the phone.”
Richard breathed deeply again and sat down. “She was told to be careful of you, Sydney, if she valued our marriage.”
I tried to be nonchalant. “Sounds awfully catty for a man.”
“He said he saw us kissing outside your motel room, and from what he saw, the next time it wouldn’t stop there.”
“You did kiss me.”
It was Mike’s turn to flush. “On the cheek,” I clarified. “So much for chivalry.”
“Mine or his?” Richard asked, and started to smile. “My wife actually took it much better than I did. I may be an attorney, but she’s the one in our family who always thinks logically. She said it was highly unlikely that any man who called our house at midnight and refused to identify himself had anyone’s welfare in mind but his own.”
I casually took a seat, but I wasn’t ready to let Richard off the hook yet. “And you thought the anonymous caller was Mike?” My voice was a carefully calculated mix of incredulity and disgust. Richard flushed in embarrassment.
“Well, not really. I know it doesn’t make sense, but my wife just told me about the call, and I wasn’t thinking clearly, and Mike was the only person I could think of who knew I was taking you to dinner.”
“It wasn’t Mike.”
“Well, I know that now, but—“
Richard was still defensive, so it took a few seconds for the implications of my certainty to sink in, but they did.
“Who was it?”
I finally listened to Mrs. Bibbystock’s voice whispering in my ear. “I don’t know, but he was driving a pick-up. Someone must have followed us from the restaurant. A pick-up entered the parking lot behind us. I can’t tell you the make or color. It blinded me when I was trying to unlock my door. Then the same headlights left right after you.”
I let my words sink in before going on. “You’ve got a tail. Who have you pissed off lately?”
“Besides you and Mike? Who else have I spoken to? I’m sure the list is endless. But it’s an odd sort of call, isn’t it? It wasn’t a threat. If it was harassment it was very subtle. It sounds more like a colleague with a twisted sense of humor than a former client with a grudge.”
“Still,” Mike said, “it’s worth having a patrol car swing by your house periodically. I’ll make a call.”
I left with Mike. After he made arrangements for Richard, I told him what had really brought me there—not the latest installment of office melodrama, but an address for Claire Johnson.
“You try the phone book?” he asked.
Of course I hadn’t, but I was saved from humiliation when he failed to find a listing for Miss Johnson there. We moved on to the computer, where he pulled up the latest version of Autofind. I told him we had used an older version years ago at the public defender’s office.
“Oh, well this is amazing! They’ve done so much to improve it since then.” Mike’s eyes sparkled behind his glasses. “It’s much more accurate, and it draws on more sources of information. What’s your birthday?”
I tried to speak normally, but my throat had gone dry. I wondered if my report would look suspicious, like one of those “a-ha” moments on TV shows around minute 38 where suddenly the hero and audience realize nothing is as it seems.
“No self-respecting woman would tell you that.”
Mike had no interest in repartee. He shrugged. “Whatever. You’re not going to believe how much information they have on you in here. It’s pretty scary, really.”
“Let’s just skip the demo. You can show me how to use it while you look up Miss Johnson.”
I had her birthdate from the old police report, so Mike had pulled her up before he was done complaining that I was no fun. There was no question that we had the right person when one of her previous addresses matched up to her address in the report. She had no work address listed, so I’d see if I could catch her at home that afternoon. Mike printed out directions for me.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up in front of a brick duplex on a residential block. I’d say it had seen better days, but “better days” had avoided this neighborhood entirely. Spaces that were once front gardens were almost universally under concrete now, like broad sidewalks, often oil-stained from their conversion to parking. Some of the parking looked long-term. A rusty old Impala sagged on flat tires two doors down. I’ve been around enough really bad neighborhoods that I couldn’t say I felt unsafe, but I did feel unwelcome. I also couldn’t say how much of that feeling came from the residents and how much was a projection of my own white middle-class guilt.
One half of the duplex I’d parked in front of was an exception to the predominate drab deadness. Ferns hung from macramé planters, and petunias brightened window boxes. The ground in front was sealed with concrete, but it did host a birdbath filled with colorful rocks and surrounded by salvaged containers of every sort. Some had living plants, others were filled with plastic pinwheel flowers that sat motionless in the heavy air. A flock of pink flamingoes congregated at a crack in the concrete. Tacky, but colorful.
That was not where Miss Johnson lived.
My destination was the other half of the duplex, dull as the rest of the block with burglar bars and heavy curtains on the windows. A woman answered the door almost immediately. I’d parked on the street rather than her concrete yard, and she’d had plenty of time to observe my approach.
“Claire Johnson?” I asked.
“Yes. What do you want?”
“My name is Sydney Brennan.” I handed her a card. “I’m an investigator and I was wondering if I could speak to you about some people who used to be your neighbors.”
“Ohh. This’ll be about that no-good little Damian down the street. It’s about time somebody did something about him. Playing that loud music all the time and his drawers down below his privates, there’s no question what he’s up to.”
She let me through the door, then shut and locked it behind me as she rattled on about Damian. She indicated a seat on a sofa and sat in the neighboring armchair. The large flowers that patterned the furniture had
faded beyond recognition, but each piece was bedecked by a bright solid-colored afghan folded into a triangle.
“Little punk drug dealer, that’s what he is.”
Now that I’d gotten in the door it seem like a good time to let Damian off the hook. “Miss Johnson, I’m not here about Damian.”
“Must be one of his cousins then. Lord, I don’t even begin to know how many children they got over there.”
“No, ma’am. This is actually about some of your old neighbors, from a long time ago. Over on Patience Street. The Thomases. Do you remember them?”
I had her birth date, so I knew before meeting her that Claire Johnson was 51. Otherwise I might not have been able to guess her age beyond a 10 or 15-year range. The darkness of her skin and within her home masked most signs of aging in her face, but she wore the garment of an older woman, a shapeless thing that hung from her ample chest and fell in folds to her knees. When I said the name Thomas, she somehow looked both older and younger simultaneously. She was momentarily animated, perhaps possessed by the memory of inhabiting her 25-year-old body. Then she sighed deeply, and while the memory of youth remained in her eyes, her posture began to sag and her cheeks seemed to slide off their bones.
She nodded, and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I remember them.”
She leaned back in her chair, smoothing the folds of her housedress and picking at a speck of fuzz. “Isaac and Vanda. I used to babysit their little girl Noel. Of course, I guess you knew that already, didn’t you?” I nodded. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you remember about them? Were you there when they moved in?”
“Yes, I was. Let me see. They’d only been there a couple years when—well, you know. I was living back home with my momma when they moved next door. I had me a little bit of trouble about a boy, but that’s neither here nor there.” She grinned a bit as she alluded to her notorious past.
“Looking back, it’s sad. They seemed so happy then, like they had a whole new life ahead of them. Noel was such a sweet little thing. A little odd, always with her nose stuck in a book, but a good kid. Never a bit of trouble. Sure didn’t take after her momma on that count.”
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