by Kip Gayden
When he could form more words in his mind, he said, “Have they taken her away yet?”
“The paddy wagon just now rolled up,” Jent said. “Some detective or other is in there with her now.”
“All right. If you can get a message to Anna, tell her that I’m on my way. I’ll post her bail and we’ll get the best attorney in the state to represent her.”
“You’re going to back her in this?” Jent said.
“As God is my witness,” Walter said, his voice cracking with emotion, “I will move heaven and earth to help Anna. She is my wife, and the mother of my children.”
He hung up and reached for the list of telephone numbers he’d written out earlier in the day. The first number on the list was for Bobby, who was waiting at Anna’s parents’ house. Within the hour, Walter hoped, all of them would be converging on the police station in Nashville.
DETECTIVE SIDEBOTTOM burst through the door of Jackson’s Barbershop and the first thing he saw was a man in a barber’s apron, holding a pistol and standing over the body of a man on the floor who looked to be busy bleeding to death. Sidebottom covered the barber with his service revolver. “Put down the gun!”
The man looked at Sidebottom with wide eyes, and very deliberately pointed the pistol at himself, then took hold of the barrel. He held out the gun, grip first, toward the detective. “Here you go, officer. I’m not the one you want. It’s her,” he said, pointing toward a petite blonde woman in a stylish dress and overcoat, sitting quietly between a barber and a man in a railroad uniform.
“I’ll get it, Detective,” someone said. Sidebottom looked at the speaker and realized it was a patrolman he knew, a fellow named McGarver. “I was downtown,” McGarver said, “and I saw a bunch of people boiling out of the barbershop, onto the sidewalk. I came in and found her with the gun still in her hand. Witnesses said she tried to walk out after shooting the victim, as calm as you please.”
One of the barbers nodded vigorously. “She shot him, and I jumped in front of her, holding up my hands, and said, ‘Lady, what’s the matter with you?’ She said, ‘My husband is Dr. Walter Dotson. This man ruined my marriage and my life, and I’ve done what I came to do. You can send word to my husband.’”
“Yeah, and then Charlie made a noise on the floor there behind them,” another barber said. “She turned around and said, ‘I don’t believe he’s dead yet.’ She was fixing to shoot him again when this fellow—” he nodded toward the railroad employee—“grabbed her from behind and took the gun.”
One of the men asked her what was wrong with her, and Sidebottom listened as she calmly repeated her story: “I am Anna Dotson from Gallatin, Tennessee. My husband is Dr. Walter Dotson. This man here destroyed my marriage and my life, and I’ve done what I came here to do . . .”
Sidebottom observed Anna for a few moments, sitting there as cool as a cucumber. He asked her what she had to say for herself.
“Is that thing dead yet?” she replied, looking over at the man on the floor.
Witnesses told Sidebottom that four shots had been fired. He examined the victim, who was still alive, but barely. “Where’s that blasted ambulance?” he said. McGarver assured him it was on its way. The detective thumbed open the breech of the weapon used in the assault, and found three unspent cartridges still in the cylinder. The Smith and Wesson revolver had a five-round cylinder, so that meant only two shots had been fired from this pistol. But the witnesses said they heard four shots. Sidebottom filed this inconsistency away for future reference.
The ambulance screeched to a halt outside the barbershop and the attendants came in and hurriedly gathered the bleeding victim onto a gurney. As they were leaving, Sidebottom gave them explicit instructions: when removing the victim’s clothing, they were to make certain there were no concealed weapons, especially a pistol, as that might explain why the witnesses heard four rounds when, as far as Sidebottom could see, only two were fired. Sidebottom watched them hurry out the door, judging that by the victim’s appearance and the amount of blood on the floor, this assault was likely to turn into a murder case.
Anna asked him again, “Is it dead?”
The detective glanced at her and began to suspect the sanity of a woman who could preserve such a calm demeanor under such circumstances. She was either in emotional extremity, a very good actress, or the most cold-blooded criminal he had witnessed in many years. Given her appearance and where she was from, the last possibility seemed far-fetched.
Sidebottom handcuffed her and escorted her to the paddy wagon. Sirens blaring, they drove to the station house. It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon when Sidebottom escorted her in. The steel handcuffs clasping her wrists in front of her were in jarring contrast to the rest of her appearance. If she was upset by her circumstances, she surely didn’t let it show. She stood quietly and patiently as Sidebottom gave her name to the booking officer, went obediently with him to the holding cell and sat down inside.
PAUL CHRISTIAN HAD EASED UP behind the detective and listened carefully as Sidebottom gave his description of the events to the booking officer, but after a while he decided to drift back over toward the holding cell, where Anna Dotson was. She was sitting by the steel-barred door, her hands in her lap now free of the handcuffs, and she seemed to be trying to overhear as much as she could of what was being said by Sidebottom and the other officer.
By degrees, the reporter moved closer, watching her without her knowledge. She was a pretty woman, by any measure; her blue eyes, fair skin, and attractive figure could inspire just about any crime of passion on the books. Christian found a chair and moved it over close to her. After a while, she noticed him sitting there.
“Who are you? Are you a policeman?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m a news reporter. May I ask why you’re here?” Sometimes the simple approach worked best, Christian knew.
“I think I’ve killed someone,” she said.
“Why do you think that?”
She looked at him, and it was as if a dam burst inside her. She started telling him things about her husband, her children, the ladies’ social circle in Gallatin, Tennessee . . .
Christian was grabbing for his notebook and pen and trying to catch up with her when he noticed Sidebottom looking at him. He winced inside; the detective looked angry. But Anna Dotson was spilling her story, and Christian wasn’t about to leave her side unless somebody physically dragged him away. Within a few seconds, he knew he had the makings of a sensational headline—four or five sensational headlines, in fact. As he scribbled madly, he was trying different ones out in his head: “Gallatin Socialite Shoots Paramour in Front of Witnesses,” “Violence in Downtown Barbershop Leaves One Dead,” “Doctor’s Wife Goes on Rampage” . . . There were so many angles to this thing it was all the eager reporter could do to just keep up.
He began to notice that Sidebottom was keeping the other officers away while Mrs. Dotson was speaking to him; apparently, the detective decided that the flow of information coming from her shouldn’t be interrupted. A little later, Sidebottom even came over and offered her a glass of water. She drank it, and as she handed it back to him, he said, “Would you like to tell me what happened?”
She looked away and wouldn’t answer. Giving Christian a surreptitious wink, Sidebottom moved away, and in a few seconds, Anna Dotson resumed spilling her insides, like a sinner at a confessional. He didn’t even have to ask her questions; it was as if she’d had this story penned up inside her for so long, and now it had to come out—but for no ears but his, it would seem.
At one point, there was another commotion up by the booking desk. “He’s gone,” Christian heard an officer say. A few minutes later, Sidebottom came back out and the reporter heard him tell the booking officer to change the charge from assault to murder.
When Christian had filled every blank sheet in his notebook and begun writing on the backs of his paper, Anna ran out of things to tell him. Christian felt wrung out; it was like grab
bing hold of an electric wire and not being able to let go. Sidebottom stepped into the room and looked at him, then motioned with his head for the reporter to step outside.
“What have you got?” he said as soon as Christian came out.
“I . . . can’t tell you,” Christian said. “The, ah, confession was given to me in confidence.”
Sidebottom’s eyebrows went up at the word “confession,” but he wasn’t satisfied. “What’s the matter, Paul? Cat got your tongue?”
Christian was a little intimidated by him; Sidebottom was famous around Nashville for his ability to solve cases no one else could. Not to mention that he had done some bare-knuckles boxing in his youth, by all reports. Still, Christian held his ground.
“I really can’t tell you, detective.”
“Well, Paul, my boy, we’ll see about that. You’d best have a careful talk with your editor. You may have just scribbled yourself into a place as the state’s primary witness in the first capital murder trial of a woman in the history of this state. You’re about to become almost as famous as Mrs. Dotson in there. You might even help us put a rope around her pretty little neck.”
Christian took a deep breath. He knew Sidebottom was right, but he still couldn’t say anything—not yet. He nodded. “I’ll talk to my editor.”
Sidebottom walked away, and Christian ran to find the closest telephone.
29
Anna stared out the window of Walter’s car, watching the still-bare trees crawl slowly past. Walter had posted her bond at the police station, and since they released her to him he had not left her side. She couldn’t remember a time since the early days of their marriage when he had been so solicitous.
“Anna, we’re going to find a way to get through this together. I promise you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Walter,” she said. “I don’t want to live. I made Jephthah’s vow, and now God can take me as punishment for my sin.”
“Don’t talk like that, Anna. You did what you did out of loyalty to our family. Charlie Cobb seduced you, and now he has paid for it. You did what I should have done.”
“No, Walter. I was the one who did wrong. I’m the one who has to pay for it.”
“Don’t say that. We’re going to get you out of this, I swear it.”
Anna never even looked at him. She just stared at the trees, wondering why nobody had told them it was spring.
They got home well after dark. Walter helped her out of the car and into the house. Anna told him she was tired and just wanted to rest. He nodded and helped her up the stairs, cupping her elbow as if it were a piece of fine china. He told her he was going back downstairs to see off Bobby and her father, who had also driven to the police station, in support of Walter. A little while later, Walter brought Mabel and Scott to her to say goodbye; Bobby was taking them to stay with his and Anna’s parents for a few days, until some of the furor died down. Anna kissed them and held them long in her arms. “Be sweet children for Grandmother and Granddaddy, all right?” she said. They both nodded.
When Walter went downstairs with the children, Anna got up and locked her bedroom door. Standing in front of the full-length mirror in her armoire, she began removing her clothing. She unbuttoned her dress and let it fall in a crumpled pile at her feet. She stepped out of her shoes, then her petticoats. She peeled her camisole up over her head. Last, beneath everything else, right next to her skin, was the French nightgown. She had worn it to Nashville today, like a sacramental garment, special to the purpose that had called her. She studied the neat bullet holes that perforated its front. She pulled the nightgown up and over her head, wondering what Charlie would have thought if he could have seen her wearing it this way, with the bullet holes as small, concise symbols of the rage their affair had engendered. Would he have even cared? she wondered. Or would he have just been eager to get at what was underneath?
She crumpled the nightgown in her fist; the fine, semitransparent silk compacted into a single handful. What a very slight thing it was! And to think how much trouble it had started.
Anna walked over to her fireplace and dropped the nightgown among the smoldering coals there. It popped and sizzled and flared yellow, and then it was gone, its last traces vanishing up the flue in a few wisps of smoke.
Next, she padded to her armoire and retrieved the Argosy magazines she had kept, the ones with Charlie’s notes in them. She sat cross-legged and naked on the floor in front of her fireplace, turning each page as carefully as if it were a centuries-old manuscript. As she came to a page with his writing on it, she read it slowly, lingering over the shapes of his letters. She tore each page precisely along the fold and dropped it atop the coals, watching it catch flame, curl, blacken, and disintegrate into red-edged fragments.
When she was finished with the magazines, she went into the bathroom and found Walter’s shaving razor. Anna carried it back to her bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. She held the razor in her right hand and stretched out her left arm, looking for the place in her wrist where her veins stretched bluish against her pale skin.
From somewhere far away she heard a sound—someone calling her name? It didn’t matter. Anna touched the edge of Walter’s blade to her wrist and began to press.
There was a crash and a splintering and Walter came through her bedroom door. “Anna! Don’t!” He rushed to the bed and grabbed her right wrist, wrenching it away from her arm.
“Leave me alone, Walter! Let me end it! I made a vow!”
He fell on her, pinning her beneath his weight, clamping her right wrist in a tight grip, then prying the razor from her fingers and throwing it across the room.
“Let me die, Walter,” Anna said between sobs. “I want to die. I’m too sinful to live, and now I’m a killer. Let me die.”
“No, my Anna. I can’t let you do this. You’ve already taken one burden that should have been mine. Don’t take your own life, too. Think of your children. Live for them.”
She stopped struggling. After a few moments, Walter slowly raised himself off of her. Watching her carefully, he went to her armoire and found one of her cotton flannel nightgowns. He brought it to her and helped her put it on and then, his arm around her waist, led her to his bedroom and put her in his bed.
“Sleep now, Anna. Gather strength. In the morning, we’ll think about what we need to do next.”
He sat in his reading chair, near the foot of the bed, and watched her. Anna closed her eyes and became still.
Walter’s evocation of the children had found its mark. She wasn’t sure what benefit it would be to Mabel and Scott to have a mother such as she, but Anna decided to put aside the idea of ending her own life.
But she still had to face a trial for murder. She could very well be the first woman in Tennessee history to be hanged. Though the thought of the rope around her neck made her shudder, Anna didn’t think she was afraid to die. A judge and executioner could just as easily aid the culmination of her vow as Walter’s razor, she reasoned. If God chose to take her that way, she would not protest.
Walter barely slept that night; each time Anna shifted on the bed, he was instantly alert, ready to intercept her if she tried again to do herself harm. The long, silent watches crept by, and he had only his tired, bruised mind to keep him company.
Walter thought about everything that had happened, going all the way back to the night Anna had tried to interest him in intimacy as he sat in his chair, downstairs in the parlor. Though he could scarcely fathom it, he had lately come to the conclusion that the despicable Charlie Cobb understood something about his wife that he had completely missed. Walter had always known Anna was passionate, stubborn, and inclined toward impatience, but until these last fateful days he hadn’t fully grasped the implications of those attributes.
Walter remembered the influenza epidemic, all those years ago in Lafayette. Anna’s stubbornness, her determination to stay with him and help in tending the patients, had flown in the face of her parents’ anger and even the ho
spital administrator’s better judgment. For that matter, the very fact that they were able to court at all during that winter season was because of Anna’s immoveable resolve to have her own way where Walter was concerned.
Why, then, hadn’t he been able to understand her need for his touch? When they had lost the baby, something had gone out of Walter. The thought of another pregnancy, of placing her at risk—not to mention the possibility of losing another baby—turned him, somehow. And then, when Anna would ask him about it, he’d give some offhand, dismissive answer. “I’m a doctor, Anna . . . I know best.” She was longing for his affections, and he was too proud, or too afraid, to permit himself to be vulnerable to her.
Well, he was paying for it, wasn’t he? Not only did the whole of Sumner and Davidson Counties—and maybe beyond even that—know that his wife had been involved with a calculating, opportunistic rascal like Charlie Cobb, Walter was sure that at least some of them suspected the reason. He could just imagine the talk at Person’s, when he wasn’t there: Couldn’t keep her at home . . . Didn’t take care of her needs, if you take my meaning . . . He was ashamed, and he wished he could blame it all on Anna, but in his heart of hearts he knew that if he had only paid a bit more attention to her, been slightly more considerate, this whole wretched business might have been avoided.
Walter thought about the women’s suffrage movement, about Elizabeth Jennings standing in front of the Board of Aldermen and an angry crowd of onlookers, demanding to be heard. Maybe the notion of women demonstrating and marching in the streets was indecent, like some people said. Maybe the idea of equal rights for women really did violate God’s created order, as some seemed to believe. But, Walter wondered, if the majority of men were as inattentive and uninterested in their wives’ ideas and thoughts as he had been, what choice did the suffragettes have, really?