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A Judgment of Whispers: A Novel of Suspense © 2015 by Sallie Bissell.
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First e-book edition © 2015
E-book ISBN: 9780738744919
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Editing by Nicole Nugent
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bissell, Sallie.
A judgment of whispers: a novel of suspense/Sallie Bissell.—First edition.
pages; cm.—(A Mary Crow novel; #7)
ISBN 978-0-7387-4361-5
1. Crow, Mary (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women lawyers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.I772916J83 2015
813’.54—dc23
2015018563
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to:
Jim and Dorcus McBrayer, who introduced me to Rugby, Tennessee. Your hospitality is amazing!
Robbie Anna Hare—superb agent, fellow granny, friend, and champion.
My colleagues at Midnight Ink—Terri Bischoff, Nicole Nugent, and Beth Hanson. I so appreciate your enthusiasm and hard work.
Finally, to those whose lives have been touched by autism—I salute your courage and admire your heart.
Prologue
It came into his bedroom unbidden, through the screen of his open window. At first he rolled over and pulled the covers to his ears, thinking it was a dream. But then it came again—a sound, a smell, a shadow that flitted across the field of moonlight that puddled on his sheets. It was all of those and none of those. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
He reached—a habit of fifty-two years—for his wife. But Jan’s side of the bed was empty, her sheets cool. Minnesota, he remembered. Jan is in Minnesota now. I’m in charge of the cat and the chickens.
He turned his back to the window, deciding that whatever he’d felt had been just the strangeness of Jan not sleeping beside him. Then it came again—unidentifiable, inadmissible in a court of law, but there nonetheless. For some reason, he thought of his daughter Lisa, rehearsing her role as the second witch in a college production of Macbeth: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
He sat up, studied his thumbs. They seemed all right. A breeze fluttered the sheer curtains, making them puff out like ghosts. He got up and went to the window. The half moon was low, about to sink behind a thick bank of clouds. In the dimness he could see his garden, the two rows of corn standing like sentinels guarding the squash and tomatoes. Faraway he heard a menacing growl of thunder.
“Just a storm,” he whispered. “Nothing to worry about.”
And yet he knew it was more than rain. It was a sense of something returning. He could smell it, thick as the ozone wafting in from the south. As lightning sparked and turned the cloud bank a sick shade of yellow, he realized what it was. Something wicked did this way come.
It scared him so badly that he threw on his robe and went into the kitchen. He turned on the lights and put on a pot of coffee, the cat brushing against his legs, mewing for its breakfast. Though he usually considered the furniture-clawing Ivan a pain in the ass, at that moment he was glad to have his company. He was something warm, something alive.
“You want chicken or tuna?” he asked, peering at the cans of cat food Jan had left in the pantry.
Ivan did not indicate a preference, just kept yowling. He opened a can of tuna and scraped it into his bowl. The cat took one bite then stalked off into the den, its rigid tail an exclamation point of disdain.
“Must have guessed wrong,” he said. He considered opening another can, perhaps the chicken, but decided against it. He’d grown up on a farm, where cats lived in barns, fending for themselves. He couldn’t imagine any of them turning down a can of anything.
He poured a cup of coffee. This early the morning news would be nothing but a rehash of the night before, so he went into the little bedroom Jan had turned into his study. Mostly he just kept his junk—the golf clubs he used weekly, a treadmill he never used at all. In the corner stood a desk that sported his old nameplate—Jack Wilkins, Detective, Pisgah County Sheriff’s Department.
He sat down, turned on the light, and looked at the array of mementos piled on the desk. A couple of citations for valor, a news photo of him comforting a child whose mother had survived a bad wreck, and his gold detective badge leaning against the lamp. “Those were the days,” he whispered.
Mostly, he’d done okay. Though he’d taken two bullets (one in the upper arm, no big deal; the other in his calf, which pained him to this day), he’d cleared thirty years’ worth of cases and slept untroubled by the people he’d sent to prison. There was only one case that still haunted him—that would, he guessed, haunt him until the day he died. Teresa Ewing—a little ten-year-old girl who’d gone out to deliver a casserole to a neighbor and never returned. Or never returned alive, at least. Had the memory of Teresa Ewing awakened him? Had something to do with that case come back?
He hesitated before he unlocked his bottom drawer. The case had become an issue between him and Jan. He, along with everybody else in Pisgah County, had grown obsessed with it. Teresa Ewing had taken up residence in the back of his mind, and he often found himself thinking about the dead girl when he should have been thinking of his alive and very pretty wife. Jan had finally given him an ultimatum: that case or her. He had, wisely, chosen her, but he had never thrown his case files away. Sometimes when Jan was out shopping or having lunch with friends, he would sneak in here and touch the locked drawer, as if it held some memento of a wildly extravagant affair. Today, though, it seemed like more than just visiting an old obsession. Today something felt changed.
He unlocked the drawer and took out the tattered, coffee-stained file. For an instant he hesitated, like a sober alcoholic weig
hing the cost of just one drink, then he started turning the pages, reading the reports, looking at pictures of himself when his stomach was flat and his hair was the color of sand instead of snow. And the girl … the little girl.
Two hours later he closed the file. Though the thunder growled more loudly, he hurried to put on his clothes. He needed light, human voices, the bustle of normalcy. He got in his car and drove to the Waffle House, an early morning stop for tourists and truckers and retirees like himself. Today the place was mostly empty, the weather, he guessed, keeping everyone in their own kitchens. His favorites were at their duty stations—Mike scrambling eggs on the grill, Linda shouting orders like a drill sergeant. They knew he’d been a cop; both called him Chief, though officially he’d never risen higher than Detective.
“Don’t tell me you’re playing golf today, Chief.” Linda frowned. Outside, the yellow sky had turned a sickly ochre.
“No, just woke up early and couldn’t sleep.” Couldn’t sleep or wouldn’t sleep? How did that old song go?
“Aw.” She was already pouring him a cup of coffee. “Mrs. Chief out of town?”
“Minnesota with the grandkids.” He smiled at her perceptiveness. “How’d you guess?”
“You got that hubby-at-loose-ends look about you. You want your regular?”
Usually he came for a breakfast hamburger before he played nine holes at the municipal course. Today, though, was different. “No, I think I’ll have eggs. Over easy, with sausage.”
Linda raised a penciled-on eyebrow. “No hamburger? Chief, are you hungover? Mike’s got some hair of the dog, if that’ll help.”
He laughed; he hadn’t had a drink in years. “No, I’m okay. Just in the mood for eggs.”
“I’ll fix you the special and charge you for the regular,” she whispered as she put a spoon and napkin down beside his cup. “You’ll get a free waffle.”
He sipped his coffee. He was admiring Mike’s ability to fry bacon, cook waffles, and scramble eggs all at the same time when he felt someone put an arm around his shoulder. He looked up as Irving Stubbs slid onto the seat beside him.
“No golf today, eh, Jack?” Irving was his next-door neighbor, and, like him, retired. Unlike him, Irving had been an accountant and a member of the chamber of commerce.
“Not unless we play in swim trunks.” Jack looked over his shoulder. Cars were now traveling with their lights on, as if it were midnight instead of 8 a.m.
“I hate days like today,” Irving grumbled as Linda poured him a cup of coffee. “You wake up early, then you look outside and realize you got nowhere to go.”
“Can’t you go back to sleep?” asked Jack.
“My eyes open at 6:17 regardless. Been that way since the day I turned seventy.”
Linda put Jack’s order, along with his free waffle, down in front of him. Stubbs ordered hash browns and eggs.
“You boys cheer up,” she told them. “This might blow over by noon.”
Jack made a little sandwich—sausage on a piece of toast, covered by an egg, finished off with a splash of Tabasco. As he ate, Irving grew chatty, asking if he and Jan had vacation plans, were they going to the Rotary Club picnic, had they seen the new play in Flat Rock. Jack answered in monosyllables, his thoughts returning to Teresa Ewing’s sad, thick file. Finally he wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“You were here in 1989, weren’t you?”
“We moved here in ’86,” Irving replied. “Why?”
“Oh, just woke up thinking about some old cases I’d worked on. You remember Teresa Ewing?”
“That little girl who was killed over on Salola Street? I was talking about that poor little thing not a week ago.”
“I remember her.” Linda paused as she refilled their coffee cups. “I worked at the Donut Den then. We went on double shifts to keep the volunteers in crullers. I bet we passed out five thousand donuts.” She gave Jack an odd look. “You work that case, Chief?”
He nodded.
She put the coffee pot down and leaned close. “So, who do you think did it?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
“Remember how one psychic said she was in water? And then another one said two men had taken her to Winslow, Arizona?”
“We got a lot of false leads.”
Linda went on. “After all the psychics crapped out, everybody decided that big retarded boy killed her.”
“It was a tough case.”
Mike looked over his shoulder, eavesdropping from the grill. “They got any new leads?”
Jack emptied his coffee. “Not that I know of. It’s still a real cold case.”
“And somebody got away with murder,” said Irving.
Jack stood up and left enough money to cover his breakfast and Linda’s usual two-dollar tip. He said good-bye to Irving and headed for the door, back out into a morning that looked like midnight, his left thumb suddenly twitching like mad.
One
At first Saunooke thought the dog was going to bite him—it growled at him from under the big rhododendron that spread across Mrs. Whitsett’s yard. But Saunooke knelt down and whistled softly, avoiding direct eye contact, his hand open and unthreatening. Then the dog bounded from beneath the bush gratefully, as if he’d found an old friend. He came to Saunooke, tail wagging, trying to lick his face. Why he’d gotten a vicious dog call on him at eight in the morning, Saunooke couldn’t say, except for the fact the animal had no tags on its dingy red collar and the people of Elk Mountain Estates liked their property free of strays. That coons and bears and wild turkeys had roamed here for centuries made no difference; the upscale home owners were voters and taxpayers who wanted their neighborhood kept safe. Raccoons carried rabies. Turkeys shit on their driveways. Bears turned over garbage cans and destroyed expensive bird feeders.
“Come on, buddy. Let’s go for a ride.” Saunooke opened the door of his cruiser. The dog looked at him questioningly, then hopped in. He was male, long-legged, of indeterminate breed—dirt-colored with a white chest, floppy hound ears, fifteen pounds too thin. Saunooke guessed he’d once belonged to someone; he had no fear of people and jumped in the car as if he’d ridden in them all his life. A runaway, thought Saunooke. Or maybe just dumped. When people ran out of money, pets became expendable. Animal Control would at least fill his belly before they put him down.
Saunooke radioed dispatch to tell them he was on the way to the pound. Boots Gahagen’s cackle came through the static. “10-4, Saunooke. Don’t let your prisoner get the drop on you.”
He signed off and turned his cruiser around, stung by the derision in Gahagen’s laugh. Two years ago he’d been Sheriff Jerry Cochran’s fair-haired boy, brought up from the Highway Patrol, seemingly on the fast track to detective. Then he’d blown his part in the Fiddlesticks case—taken Joe Slade’s word about his brother’s whereabouts on the night a girl was murdered. His blunder had almost cost attorney Mary Crow her life. Certainly it had cast him out of the inner circle of Pisgah County detectives and back into the chilly darkness of Pisgah County patrol.
“Guess I’m the dog catcher now,” he said to his passenger, who looked at him with sad, old man eyes. Saunooke sighed. He needed a break—a good case to work his way back into Cochran’s good graces. Otherwise, he’d be catching dogs and writing traffic tickets for the rest of his life.
He kept his radio on but drove to the Sonic drive-in, where waitresses delivered your food on roller skates. He ordered an egg sandwich and coffee, then added an extra sandwich to his order. “May as well make your last ride a good one,” he told the dog, who still watched him with sad eyes. A few minutes later, a waitress named Sandra rolled up to his cruiser.
“Hey, Rob.” She smiled, then saw his passenger in the backseat. “Aw, what a cute dog. What’s his name?”
“Rover.”
“When did you start working with the Cani
ne Squad?”
For an instant he was tempted to tell her he now worked narcotics and this was a drug-sniffing hound. But he was a bad liar and the dog looked more like he’d been on drugs rather than sniffing them out.
“I haven’t,” admitted Saunooke. “He’s a stray. I’m taking him to the pound.”
“Aw.” Sandra stuck out her lower lip. “But he looks so sweet. Here, give him this.” She handed him an order of bacon destined for some other customer. “I’d take him home with me, but my landlord would have a fit.”
“You’re still nice to give him the bacon,” said Saunooke. He watched her as she rolled back to the kitchen, wondering what it was like to strap on roller skates the first thing in the morning. He ate then, feeding the dog little bites of egg and bacon through the mesh of the cage. They’d almost finished when the radio squawked again.
“Saunooke? What’s your 10-20?”
“Soco Road,” he replied vaguely, not wanting admit he was at the Sonic Drive-In, feeding bacon to a stray dog.
“You been to the pound yet?”
He winced. “Not yet.”
“Okay. I need you to stop off at the Lone Oak Acres construction site. I got a call about somebody up there trying to hot wire a bulldozer.”
“10-4.” Saunooke started his engine. “On my way.”
Lone Oak Acres was a newer development than Elk Mountain Estates. Pricey green houses were scheduled to be built along winding Salola Drive, with bike paths to the university, walking paths to town, and a shared green space for a playground and community vegetable gardens. Most of the old ’50s ranch houses had been leveled, their lots now just mounds of red Carolina clay. But four families remained, today having a yard sale, junk piled high on card tables. Saunooke drove past the shoppers trudging from house to house and turned towards the construction site, where a number of bright yellow bulldozers and backhoes surrounded the huge old oak tree his people called Undli Adaya. His heart gave a funny jump. Twenty-five years ago, this was where little Teresa Ewing had disappeared. The whole county had gone nuts searching for her, then a month later, a jogger found her body between the roots of that big tree. Though the police had half a dozen suspects, they weren’t able to pin the murder on any of them. Saunooke, who’d been in diapers when the girl died, had studied the case at the police academy. It remained unsolved, and every Halloween dispatch would get calls from people wildly claiming to have seen a pretty little girl in a green jacket standing wraith-like beneath the tree, until she vanished before their astounded eyes.
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