One Deadly Sin

by Annie Solomon

  She was photographed and fingerprinted. Unlike TV cops, these did the printing on a computer run by a technician who had to roll each finger just right over a photo plate. Evidently not an easy task, because they had to repeat the process eight out of ten times.

  “First day?” Edie said.

  But the jokes didn’t come easily. This was real. Not some backwoods lockup but a serious jail for serious offenders.

  They gave her a chance to use the phone, but she refused. Who could she call?

  Back in the holding cell area, a female officer armored with latex gloves checked Edie’s mouth and under her tongue to make sure she didn’t have anything hidden there. Then she put Edie in a room with a shower and a grimy toilet and instructed her to clean off with the antilice soap provided. Before they gave her clothes, the officer had her raise her arms and turn slowly to show she had nothing on but skin. She was given a laundry bag that contained soap, toothpaste and brush, a comb, and a washrag. A rough towel, a sheet, and a scratchy blanket were added to the pile. The officer gave her further instructions, and Edie heard them from a distance. Four hours a week of recreation, an hour a week of visitation, but only after she’d been there three days.

  Her hands were cuffed and she shuffled through a series of heavy green doors, all alike and all opened with the insect buzz and an electronic click that came from some central location. She trudged down the hallway, and into another concrete room, this one four times bigger than the tank. Twenty women were milling about. A television blared from one wall. Music from a radio was blasting from another speaker. Above all that din was the sound of talking.

  Once again, the metal door shut behind her. Echoey, metallic, final. She glanced above. A central surveillance hub overlooked them with four guards watching everything. She avoided their eyes and found a seat at one of the steel tables built into the floor. They were low to the ground, like in kindergarten, and the seats—round stool tops—were attached.

  The noise beat against her like a hard wave. In defense, she tried to conjure up the engulfing strains of Brahms, but her head couldn’t keep the music going. She stared out at the mob, seeing little. Her father had died rather than face this. For the first time, she understood.

  42

  Holt tried using his badge to see Edie before she was booked, but no one was interested in bending the rules for him, especially with Agent Lodge there. The jail was run by the county sheriff’s office, and news of his relationship to the prisoner had preceded him. His fellow officers managed to express their disapproval without actually voicing it, making him hang around the visitors’ area like everyone else and then putting him off the way they put everyone off. No visitors in the first seventy-two hours. Which left him imagining every stupid thing she could have done to get herself in more trouble. Refusing to sign the fingerprint form, refusing to give up her clothes for the county’s. Wising off, pushing back. Was she in solitary already?

  He hunted down the court clerk and tried to get Edie’s arraignment set for the next day, but the judge was on vacation until the beginning of next week, which pushed everything back. Edie wasn’t getting out of jail any time soon.

  Cursing, he bolted to his car. The rain had stopped; he needed to examine the accident scene, start searching for the black pickup Edie had said attacked them. His cell rang on the way. It was Miranda’s day camp. He was half an hour late for her pickup. Damn. How could he have forgotten?

  Rapidly, he apologized to the camp director, told her he had an emergency, and would have someone pick up Miranda as soon as possible.

  He called his mother on the fly, maneuvering the car out of the parking lot. No answer, either at home or on her cell. He tried his dad, but he couldn’t pick up Miranda either.

  “Busted a fan belt,” his father said. “Stuck in Berding waiting for your mother to come get me.”

  Berding was about twenty miles south, on the road to Nashville. Same road Lucy and Edie had been on. A little farther and he would have seen the accident. “What are you doing there?”

  James groaned. “Had this crazy notion of buying your mother that new washing machine she’s been hectoring me about. Looks like I’ll be buying a new fan belt instead.”

  “Okay. But tell Ma to turn on her cell. What’s the point of having it if she never turns it on?”

  Instead of going to the accident scene, Holt raced to the day camp at the county YMCA. On the way, he called Sam.

  “Lodge there?” he said before she could even say hello.

  “No,” Sam replied.

  “Good. I’ve got a favor to ask. Do a phone search of all the garages in the county. You’re looking for a full-size black pickup with front-end damage. Anything you find, tell them to hold off on the repairs until I get there. And I’d appreciate your forgetting to mention it to our colleague from the state.”

  She sighed. “You’re supposed to be off the case.”

  “The Black Angel murder case. This is attempted vehicular homicide.”

  “Look, I’m… I’m sorry about the way things turned out.”

  “Yeah, you should be.”

  She was silent, and he buried his anger. He needed her. “Look, stow the apologies, and do this for me instead. I’ll take the heat if Lodge finds out.”

  “I can take my own heat,” she bristled.

  “That mean you’ll do it?”

  She paused, and Holt cursed at her silently.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out,” she said at last. “Doesn’t mean I think your gal pal is innocent,” she added quickly.

  “Doesn’t have to.”

  They agreed to disagree, and disconnected. He pulled into the parking lot at the Y. Miranda was waiting for him under the portico over the entrance, the camp director at her side.

  The minute Miranda saw his car, she ran out and climbed in.

  “Where were you?” she demanded.

  He waved to the camp director and took off. “Sorry, baby girl. Sometimes things happen.”

  “What kind of things?”

  He glanced over at her blonde head, the beautifully fragile features she’d inherited from her mother, and wished more than anything that those things would stay clear of her. But they wouldn’t. They never do. “Oh, just… things.”

  She pouted. “I don’t like those things.”

  He sighed. Welcome to the world, Miss M. “Me neither.” He ruffled her head, thought about Edie. “Me neither.”

  Holt managed to get Edie’s arraignment bumped up a few days, but she was still inside longer than she should have been. He counted down the minutes until her seventy-two hours were up and was at the jail first thing.

  Corley County had installed a new visitors’ system the year before. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, figured whatever was good for the jail was okay by him. But when he was brought to a video monitor and told to sit there until Edie showed up on it, he fumed. He wanted to see her in person, even if she was behind glass. Now they were separated by yards of building—hallways, cells, offices—she on her own stool somewhere else staring at a video picture of him. How could he trust that she was all right if he couldn’t see for himself?

  She wore what all the prisoners wore, shapeless neon orange jail clothes. The V-neck shirt hung on her slender frame like a big sister’s. The oversized pants dragged. Inside the baggy clothes she looked listless and defeated, which scared him more than anything.

  He tapped the screen and nodded toward her phone on the other side so she’d pick it up. “You okay?” he said when she did.

  “Oh, sure.”

  Well, at least her sarcastic streak was still intact.

  “Look, I’m here and working on this. Don’t forget that.”

  “And Agent Lodge? What’s he doing?”

  He eyed her carefully. “Don’t you give up on me, Edie Swann.”

  She shot him a tight smile. “Moi?”

  He leaned in, wanting to get closer. But he only went out of frame and had to adju
st back. Talking to her this way felt cold and distant, which was how it was supposed to feel. Institutional. Indifferent. Jail wasn’t supposed to be fun, he knew that, but this was Edie. His Edie.

  “I’m working on the truck. Sure you don’t remember the make or model?”

  She shook her head. “Too much rain. But definitely a full-sized black pickup.”

  “Okay, that’s what we’re looking for. Now, listen. I’m not going to let you rot in here, you got that? You’ll be arraigned in a few days. Just a few more days, Edie, you can do that. And then you’ll get bail and you’ll be out.”

  She laughed. Short and definitely not sweet. “Swanfords have a history of getting a raw deal in this burg. What makes you think it’ll be any different with me?”

  “You’re not guilty.”

  “Was he?”

  Holt opened his mouth to say so, then closed it again. Everyone had proclaimed Charles Swanford’s guilt. Then again, plenty of people wouldn’t hesitate to proclaim Edie’s. For the first time, Holt wondered. If everyone could be wrong about Edie couldn’t they have been equally wrong about her father?

  “I don’t know,” he said carefully.

  “Maybe it’s time we found out,” Edie said.

  A buzzer rang, signaling an end to their time. Unnaturally obedient, she stood, then shuffled out with the rest of the prisoners.

  43

  Amy Lyle heard about Edie’s arrest the way most people heard about things in Redbud. Sherry Adams, a nurse at the county hospital, told her husband who worked at the hardware and had a piece of chess pie every afternoon at Claire’s—where Emmalyn Brainerd was having coffee with her book group and overheard him talking about the ruckus at the hospital. She called Amy on her way home.

  “About time someone did something about that woman,” Emmalyn said.

  “Thank you for calling,” was all Amy said. She put down the phone and stared at the snowy piles fallen around her. She was on the floor in the middle of her husband’s office. Surrounded by papers that went back two decades and more. Fred had been quite a packrat. Amy had been ready to box it all up and get rid of it, but she found herself riffling through everything to find whatever she could around June and July of 1989.

  Mostly there were files of cost projections, profit and loss statements, budgets, quarterly reports from the plant. But there were also minutes from city council and Chamber of Commerce meetings and programs from long-ago Rotary assemblies.

  And endless legal pads with notes and lots of side doodles. In the midst of it all words like conspire, cover, and prosecute popped up, traced over and over in heavy blue ink, individual letters turned into Martian flowers and monster gargoyles. Once, Charles Swanford’s name appeared, underlined three times.

  What did any of it mean? Fred was gone and Amy couldn’t ask him. She pictured Edie Swann’s fierce face, those dark eyes, the hair that never seemed to end. She’d had so much taken from her. Had Fred done the taking? Was the will his way of paying the girl back?

  With a soft groan, Amy rose from the floor. Stepped over the piles of what had once been her husband’s life, and went to find her phone.

  A week after she was arrested, Edie was arraigned. Officers cuffed and chained her and a couple of other inmates, brought them out of the secure area into a hallway where they shuffled to the courtroom in their ugly, stiff jail clothes in a parade of humiliating orange. The minute she stepped into the corridor, her ears had to adjust to the quiet. Already the racket at the jail sounded more normal than the normal hush of life outside.

  Holt was in the courtroom when she walked through the door. He gave her an encouraging smile, but it barely made a dent in the blur around her. She wasn’t normally vain, but the thought of him seeing her dressed like a prisoner—up close and in person without benefit of a TV screen—sent deep currents of shame through her.

  Prosecution called her a drifter with no ties to the community and asked for her to be remanded back to jail. But the judge set bail at a million dollars, which might as well have been no bail at all, as Edie had no way to raise that kind of money. She could have used the bequest from Fred Lyle, but her arrest put that in jeopardy.

  It was all over in less time than it took to get her there. She was returned to her cell, and once more, the clamor of the concrete room vibrated against her skin. This time the postmodern symphony of disjointed noise was welcoming, comforting.

  But a few hours later, just as she was settling in, they called her out again. Someone had paid her bail. She refused, not wanting Holt’s savings for Miranda’s future squandered on her. But the guard was insistent, so Edie left with her, guilt stalking her as they ambled down the hallway.

  They returned the clothes she’d come in with, and she put them on. Her watch, rings, keys, wallet, all her personal effects were returned as well, and she signed a form saying so. She stumbled out of the prison and into the music of normal life.

  As she’d expected, Holt was waiting for her, tall and strong in the sun. But there was someone beside him, someone she never thought she’d see again—a petite woman with fading blond hair. Amy Lyle.

  44

  Edie stopped short. She looked from Fred Lyle’s widow to Holt, hurt tightening inside her. How could he have brought her? She walked past the two of them, but Holt stopped her.

  “Edie, this is—”

  “She knows who I am,” Amy said crisply.

  “Come to gloat?” Edie said.

  “Actually, I’ve come to take you home.”

  Edie gaped at her.

  Two corrections officers strolled by and gazed at them curiously. Holt took her by the arm. “Let’s not talk here.” He ushered her to his car, Amy Lyle in tow.

  By the time they got there, Edie had control of herself again. “Wait a minute. Wait!” She untangled herself from Holt’s grip and confronted Amy. “What did you say?”

  Amy straightened her shoulders. “I think you heard me just fine.”

  “Why would I go anywhere with you?”

  The other woman smiled. Almost as if she was enjoying this. “First of all, where else will you go? Your friend Lucy is—”

  A warning shake of the head from Holt stopped her, but not before Edie saw it.

  “What? What happened to Lucy?”

  “We can talk about that later,” Holt said.

  Fear ran up Edie’s spine. “Now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amy murmured to Holt. “I thought she knew.”

  “Knew what?” Edie cried, refusing to believe what she instinctively sensed was coming.

  Holt moved, but it was Amy who put an arm around her. “She passed away yesterday,” she said gently, and clasped Edie to her breast, a hot, tight hold that was as strange as it was meant to be comforting. This woman’s body that Edie had never hugged before. This woman Edie barely knew. Holding her, saying awful, life-changing words. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” It was only then that the sounds made sense, the reality sank in.

  Lucy. Dead. Oh, God.

  The sun was high today, but Edie clearly remembered the rain, the huge black monster attacking from behind. Lucy’s scream. Her bloodied, crushed body.

  No, it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

  “Let’s get you home.” Amy rubbed Edie’s back, and Edie pulled away. Sank against the side of Holt’s SUV.

  “I don’t understand,” Edie said. Her body felt bloodless, dry and cracked as if all the fluid inside her had been siphoned off.

  “Her chest wall was crushed,” Holt said, “and they couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

  A tear leaked out and she quickly scrubbed it away. She set her jaw. “Funeral?”

  “Her son’s taking her back to Atlanta for that.”

  Not even a chance to say good-bye. To beg forgiveness.

  “It’s not your fault,” Holt said, reading her mind.

  She didn’t argue with him. She knew what she knew and felt that burden like a hundred-pound weight. The load threatened to crus
h her, so she straightened, shouldering it. Turned to Amy with suspicion. “Why do you want to take me home?”

  “She paid your bail,” Holt said.

  Amy tsked. “You weren’t supposed to tell her that.” Amy took one of Edie’s hands and squeezed it. “Why don’t we go home. You can take a shower. I’ll make us all some coffee. And then we can have a nice, long talk. And if you decide you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to.”

  Edie looked at Holt. He nodded. Opened the back door. Amy got in. And Edie, grief-stricken and confused, slid in beside her.

  The shower felt wonderful. Private and hot and lots of fresh-smelling shampoo. The towel was fluffy, and when Edie dried off, she found her favorite pair of jeans and her most comfortable black tank waiting for her on the bed in the Lyle guest room.

  Tears welled up when she saw the clothes. She held them up to her nose and inhaled the fragrance of cotton freshly washed in Tide or Cheer or anything other than institutional detergent. Her own things close to her skin, she found her way to the kitchen, where Amy was fussing with a coffeepot, and Holt was trying not to look too uncomfortable surrounded by all the yellow roses on the walls, the towels, and the countertop. He dwarfed the wrought-iron ice-cream-parlor chairs with their yellow seats that went with the round table in the breakfast nook, and the dainty teacup in front of him looked like a toy in his big hands. Her heart stopped at the fullness of his masculinity against the fussy room.

  “Better?” Amy said to Edie. She carried a tray with more cups, the pot, and a plate of cookies to the table. Poured Edie a cup and set it in front of her.

  “Much,” Edie said. “Thanks.”