Then the laughter of those closest to the goalpost stopped, and was replaced with murmurs. And then a scream. Branigan recognized Maylene Ayers and Janie Rose Carlton running to Mackenzie. Suddenly, there was bedlam: shrieks and cries and feet running. The camera swung wildly over the crowd, then stopped on a girl with a megaphone.
“Pledges, freeze!” screamed Catherine Reisman. In the silence that followed, her icy voice commanded obedience. “Ladies, go back to the house immediately to meet with President Thurman. This is a mandatory meeting. Go now!”
Pulling the megaphone from her mouth, Catherine Reisman grabbed another woman. “Emma, stay with me,” came her voice, thready without the amplification, but still discernible. “Pledges Carlton and Ayers, you stay too. Everybody else, back to the house.” The camera was swinging crazily but Branigan was pretty sure she saw Emma Ratcliffe, Janie Rose Carlton and Maylene Ayers crouched on the ground. She could no longer see Mackenzie. There were another twenty seconds of swirling bodies and quiet crying.
Then the camera made one last swing, past Catherine’s shoulder, at the departing girls. A flash of white blurred at the back of the crowd, then disappeared.
“Go back!” Branigan commanded. Detective Scovoy rewound the video. The flash of white appeared again. “Now stop.”
The figure with arms out urging girls off the football field was blurry, but the white hair was unmistakable.
Sylvia Eckhart.
Detective Scovoy was the first to spring into action. “Branigan! Jody! Give me those girls’ names. And their sorority.”
Branigan hastily scribbled Gamma Delta Phi and the names Marianne Thurman, Catherine Reisman and Emma Ratcliffe on a notepad. Scovoy tore the page off and threw open the door to the conference room.
“Phillips! Myron! Mayfield! Head over to the Gamma Delta Phi house and pick up these three. If they don’t come voluntarily, stay in that house until I return with a warrant. Do not let them out of your sight. Do not let them near their cell phones or computers. Everybody move!”
Branigan, Jody and Malachi stood by silently, not wanting to make Scovoy sorry he’d given them a front-row seat to the unfolding drama. As the detective headed out of the door, Jody spoke up.
“Are you bringing them back here?”
“No. LEC. We’ll put them face to face with Sylvia Eckhart and let them know Mackenzie Broadus is on her way. We’ll see who cracks first.” He left the room.
Branigan, Jody and Malachi sank into office chairs, silently reeling at what they’d seen. Branigan shook her head in disbelief.
Finally she spoke. “How did they keep that many girls quiet about that pledge stunt? Is the stupid sorority that important to them?”
“Same way the Robies stayed quiet about beating up that homeless guy,” Jody offered.
“Ralph diden know what he was dealin’ with,” added Malachi. “He’s lucky he in jail, or those girls woulda got him too.”
“I think you’re right,” said Branigan. “Just like they got Janie Rose and Maylene.”
Malachi’s response was so low the reporters had to lean in to hear. “They musta been ’fraid those two weren’t gon’ stay quiet no more. So they kilt ’em.”
Chapter Twenty-one
In the end, it was Catherine Reisman, the one least able to speak clearly, who cracked first. She agreed to testify against her sisters.
Marianne Thurman held out until Mackenzie Broadus arrived from Columbia, accompanied by her parents and brother Tony. Detective Jim Rogerson wheeled Mackenzie into the interview room where Marianne sat, a can of Diet Coke clasped in two hands. She might as well drink the real thing, Branigan thought. Her figure isn’t going to matter where she’s going.
Branigan hung back from the two-way window in an adjoining room, afraid of catching an officer’s eye and being asked to leave. But the Grambling police were too transfixed by the trio of creamy-complexioned and murderous college girls to pay attention to the familiar reporter.
Through the window, Branigan could see Mackenzie’s hands trembling in her lap, but her chin was steady. Her father kept a firm hand on one shoulder, and her mother and brother pulled chairs close to her side.
Inside the crowded interview room, Detective Scovoy opened a notebook.
“Miss Thurman, Mackenzie Broadus has identified Catherine Reisman as the pledge chairman who forced her to perform gymnastics during a Gamma Delta Phi hazing incident on February 9 of last year. She has also identified Emma Ratcliffe as the rush chairman, and you as sorority president. Since we also have video evidence of the hazing, that much is not in question. What Miss Broadus is here to help us with is what happened subsequently.”
Marianne’s eyes came up to meet Mackenzie’s. They flicked to Mackenzie’s family and then to Detective Rogerson. Branigan saw her hands tighten until the top of the half-empty soda can crumpled.
Without waiting for a prompt, Mackenzie spoke up. “After I fell, Catherine and Emma told Maylene and Janie Rose they couldn’t call 911. They made them take me to the old Grambling General.” Branigan knew that was the dingy public hospital that provided most of the area’s indigent care. “The doctors at Grambling General seemed glad to helicopter me to Columbia.” Mackenzie’s voice quavered, but she spoke clearly.
“Marianne was the one who threatened me,” she continued. “While I was in the hospital in Columbia, she and Emma and Catherine came to my room. Marianne said that Janie Rose and Maylene were not talking and that I wasn’t either. If I did, my mom might have a traffic accident that would put us in matching wheelchairs.”
Branigan heard a stirring from the officers on her side of the glass. Marianne looked stunned.
“Miss Thurman, is that true?” Detective Scovoy asked.
She swallowed, then nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Mackenzie continued. “So I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything for months and months. I thought it was over. Then that reporter from The Grambling Rambler came to Columbia and told me that Janie Rose and Maylene were dead. I was sure Marianne, Catherine and Emma had done it, even though there’d been a man arrested for beating Maylene. I didn’t know whether Janie Rose and Maylene had actually talked, or if those three simply decided they didn’t want any loose ends. I was desperate for them to know I was sticking to the story we’d concocted for my family. So I told it to the reporter.”
“Then what happened?” Scovoy asked.
“I thought everything had settled down again. But then three days ago, Anna Hester called me.”
Branigan’s head jerked up.
“She said she had discovered a video of my accident and knew it was a hazing. She wanted to know why I’d lied to The Rambler. She said the real story gave a strong motive to the Gamma Delts to kill Janie Rose and Maylene, and she was writing that story for The Swan Song.
“I was scared to death and refused to comment. I couldn’t sleep the last few nights. Then Detective Rogerson showed up. He said all three of them had been arrested and charged with murder.”
She looked up at Detective Rogerson and her father, and drew in a tremulous breath. “I think I’ll be able to sleep again now.”
Detective Scovoy shoved a notepad and pen in Marianne’s direction. “I don’t think we’ll need it, but here’s your chance to make your confession. Might help you at your trial.”
Emma Ratcliffe was silent until Catherine produced Janie Rose Carlton’s journal, which the trio had taken from Janie Rose’s suitcase on the side of US 441. The journal detailed how Jones Rinehart had made a casual remark to Janie Rose about Ralph’s videotapes of the Robies and others. She asked if he had ever taped a Gamma Delta Phi function. When Jones innocently relayed the question to Marianne, the trio visited Janie Rose in Athens. Janie Rose chronicled their death threat – a threat, Branigan realized, that had triggered the anxiety Charlie had witnessed before the wreck.
>
Branigan and Jody pieced together an abbreviated online story late Thursday evening, and a full-blown story for Friday’s print edition of The Rambler. That afternoon, Branigan picked up Malachi at the county library and drove to the Delaney house, where Liam, Liz and Charlie waited. Liz put out cheese and crackers and soft drinks, and ordered Branigan: “Spill. We read the story, but we still can’t connect the dots of how you guys got there.”
Branigan took a deep breath. “It didn’t click for me until Charlie told us about that dream of seeing Mrs Claus and the elves in green hats. I began to think her subconscious was trying to tell her what she’d seen, either through the hearse window or after the wreck. Clearly she’d seen Sylvia Eckhart. When I found out the Gamma Delta Phi colors were green and white, I figured those would have been the colors of their stocking hats in the Christmas concert. So I wondered if Charlie saw one of those hats through the hearse window.”
“And it came out in my dream as elves in green hats,” said Charlie. “Weird. But go back to the beginning. It started with that pledge hazing, right?”
“Right. It turns out that Sylvia Eckhart was a Gamma Delta Phi at the University of Michigan. But that’s not the kind of thing she’d have bothered to tell the faculty or administration. She’d actually even been a chapter adviser to the sorority at Rutherford Lee when she first got here. So when she became Honor Chair, she tried to look out for them. I think it was mostly minor stuff until Marianne and Catherine and Emma took over.
“That hazing last February was chilling. According to Ralph Batson’s video, Catherine pretty much drove Mackenzie to that accident, but no one else stepped forward to stop her. Marianne Thurman took all the girls back to the house and managed to shut the conversation down. That’s the most amazing part of this whole thing to me – that so many people knew something and kept it quiet. It’s mind-boggling.”
Liam and Malachi looked at each other. “That couldn’t happen on the street, could it?” Liam asked.
Malachi shook his head. “Don’ nothin’ stay quiet out there.”
“Did the sorority have that strong a hold on its members?” asked Liz.
“Possibly. But Marianne told them they’d be implicated too,” Branigan said. “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but they were scared enough to bury the story. Then Marianne, Catherine and Emma kept their same leadership positions a second year to ensure that everything stayed quiet.
“The problem came,” she continued, “with Janie Rose and Maylene. They’d been friends of Mackenzie and they couldn’t live with the guilt of her being paralyzed. Janie Rose had an emotional breakdown, then left school. Apparently, Maylene started asking questions. Marianne, Catherine and Emma shut her down by threatening her family. She was afraid to lead them to Gainesville, so she moved in with some of the homeless people she’d met during her mission projects.
“I think she intended to stay only a couple of days, but then she fell in with Ralph and discovered his video of the hazing. She couldn’t decide what to do about it, and I imagine her crack smoking didn’t help. Ralph fell for her – as much as Ralph could fall for anyone – and he stopped his blackmailing schemes. But then he reverted to type and began hitting her.”
“So what changed?” Charlie asked. “It sounds like the Gamma Delts were home free.”
“They were. Until Jones Rinehart mentioned to Janie Rose about Ralph’s video of the Robie attack on a homeless man, which triggered the Gamma Delt panic attack and road trip to Athens. That’s why Janie Rose was already anxious when she and Charlie headed home for Christmas.”
Liz interrupted. “I thought I remembered you talking about Janie Rose being threatened by a man when she lived in the Gamma Delt house the year before.”
“An associate of Janie Rose’s father did stop by. But apparently he was looking for his niece and Janie Rose pointed him to her dorm. Emma Ratcliffe made it into something else to throw me off.”
Charlie pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and put it over her shoulders. “They were so afraid Janie Rose was going to talk they were willing to kill both of us?” Liam put his arm around her.
“Yes. They took the hearse key from the Kappa Epsilon house. They told Sylvia Eckhart they were going to Athens to find Janie Rose’s diary, but she was nervous enough to follow them. They left before dawn and laid low in Athens until they saw Janie Rose leave her apartment. They went in looking for her diary and didn’t find it, so figured she’d taken it home with her.
“They waited until Charlie and Janie Rose left the UGA campus after their exams. They ran them off the road, then took Janie Rose’s diary from her suitcase. I’m pretty sure that Dr Eckhart was horrified, but she had covered up the hazing incident and was in too deep to back out. She’s been living in fear of those three for a year.”
Liam turned to Malachi. “So Ralph didn’t kill Maylene after all?”
“No,” he said. “Them girls did it with the crowbar she wuz carryin’.”
“That’s the scary part,” Branigan said. “Maylene recognized the hearse that was abandoned in the woods. When I told her about Charlie and Janie Rose’s wreck, she went to the hospital to find out from Charlie if the Gamma Delts were behind it.
“But remember the nurse said she came back later that night? Or at least a slim girl with long brown hair was back? It wasn’t Maylene. It was Catherine. I’m afraid to think what might have happened if Liz hadn’t been in Charlie’s room.”
Charlie shivered involuntarily, and her dad hugged her closer. “So then Jones Rinehart wasn’t trying to hurt me in the hospital?”
“I don’t think so. He was just being his obnoxious self.”
“I feel kind of silly.”
“Don’t,” Branigan said. “Your mind was telling you that you were in danger. You couldn’t have known where it was coming from.”
“And he been known to hurt people,” Malachi added.
Liz broke in. “We are so grateful to you two for warning us that Charlie was in danger,” she said. “But go back to Maylene for a minute. What was she doing way out at the bus station?”
“Anna Hester had been digging around,” Branigan explained. “The story outing Maylene as being homeless in Grambling was going to be in The Swan Song the next morning. Maylene knew the Gamma Delts would know where to find her. Plus, it’d be only a matter of time before the story got back to the Ayers family in Gainesville. So she was going home. But Anna mentioned the story to Emma Ratcliffe, not realizing the implications at that point.”
“Thas the worst part of all this,” Malachi said. “Miz Branigan and Pastor Liam done fin’ly talked Miz Maylene into leavin’ th’ street, and she tho’t she had ’til that Saturday back in December. But them girls found out and tho’t she ready to talk about that girl falling off the goalpost. I don’t think she woulda. She just wanted to go home.”
Liam gave Branigan a sad smile. “And the fact that Ralph was a known abuser made him an easy target to take the fall,” he said.
Branigan pointed to Malachi. “It was Malachi – and Ralph – who led us to the video that broke the story. And then Malachi managed to get it. Even the police don’t want to know how.”
Malachi ducked his head to hide a grin. “Had to do with ‘pebbles’.”
“So how did you figure that out, Mr Malachi?” Charlie asked.
“Elise in Tent City tol’ me Miz Maylene dug up tha’ phone. When it diden turn up on her body, I figgered the killer had it. But then Miz Branigan started talkin’ ’bout mebbe Miz Maylene gave it to that college reporter.”
“Wait a minute,” said Liam. “Maylene died in December. If Anna Hester had the video at that point, why did she hang on to it for so long?”
Branigan took up the story. “According to the little bit the police have been able to get from Anna, she didn’t realize at first what she had. Maylene hadn’t confided anyth
ing, just shoved the phone at her. She thought Maylene was directing her to Ralph’s voicemails and text messages.
“It was only on Sunday that Sylvia Eckhart told Anna – and the Gamma Delts – about Ralph videoing sororities, having no idea Anna had his phone. Dr Eckhart was trying to find out what was on those tapes. That’s when Anna put it all together and looked at the video function on his phone.
“After Anna saw the hazing video – and recognized Dr Eckhart on it – she returned to get a comment from her. But Anna didn’t know that Dr Eckhart had helped cover up the murders. Dr Eckhart was trying to run interference and protect Anna from Marianne, Catherine and Emma. But it was too late.”
Malachi added: “Those girls tried to get to Miz Anna on Sunday night, but Miz Branigan showed up in her office. We thought Miz Janie Rose’s daddy might be up there, but he warn’t. He just walkin’ all round the school, half crazy with grief.”
“That was the night I saw Anna with two phones,” Branigan said, “and figured she might have Ralph’s video. I actually heard someone in the room next to hers. Turns out it was Catherine and Emma. We took Anna with us then. Too bad we couldn’t help her later.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Liam said. “What I don’t understand is why she wasn’t more scared of those girls, especially after she saw the video?”
“Good question,” Branigan answered. “I don’t know if she was so blinded by the thought of an exclusive that would beat The Rambler, or if she thought she was invincible or what. But apparently they never threatened her. They went straight for the kill.”
“What, exactly, happened yesterday?” Liam asked.
“All we know is that Anna was in the newspaper office finishing her story before handing it in to her editor. Sylvia Eckhart got there in time to see Marianne and Emma leaving with Anna’s laptop. They’d grabbed her purse too, but saw it was full of Malachi’s crazy substitutions and left it.” Branigan shook her head. “Dr Eckhart looked out of the open window and realized what they’d done. She was too broken up to even try to run. That’s when I found her in the hallway.”
The Cover Story Page 26