A Twist of the Knife

by Becky Masterman

  He was like this the whole time we were there, in and out of himself, fighting to appear to be a man who was not on death row, and sometimes succeeding. I pictured those concentration camp prisoners who ran around the compound trying to show that they were healthy enough to be worth keeping alive. There was something noble, something courageous in this, and I admired him in the same way Laura did. Then I gave myself a mental shake, because sympathy wasn’t my reason for being here.

  Marcus must have been thinking while I was, because he spoke in a continuation of his last remark. “It’s not the dying so much as the waiting for it. Did Wally tell you they’re going to move me into another cell this afternoon? It’s called a death watch cell. They watch me to make sure I don’t kill myself before they do.”

  Laura’s energy seemed to swell then, to give hers to him as if they were two cells of the same organism and the conveyance of her life force to his was actually possible. I knew this Laura well, a woman who could not countenance failure of any kind. She leaned toward him until their heads were closer than I would have liked, and said, “Marcus, the reason I drove up here today is to show you how convinced I am that this isn’t hopeless. You just keep hanging on, because there are a number of us working on your behalf. I swear I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you hear me? I swear this, Marcus.”

  Creighton laughed, this time more of an echo of a sound that came from the back of his throat as from the back of a cave. Yet he seemed to be the calm one, making cocktail-party small talk, while Laura became more agitated as he went on. “One of the things I’ve learned is that the gazelle doesn’t spend its life in fear of the lion. The fear just kicks in when the chase starts. But humans, humans live in terror of what’s going to happen.”

  “Marcus,” Laura said.

  “Dogs are the same way,” he said. Like a teacher, he lifted his index finger to punctuate the most important points of his lecture. “They get all anxious and trembly when a storm comes, but they don’t worry about the storm that’s coming tomorrow.”

  “Marcus,” Laura said.

  “We’ve never had a dog. The kids have always wanted a dog, but I’ve got this asthma.”

  “Marcus,” Laura said.

  Creighton got that look a person gets when someone they’re talking to isn’t understanding, and they want to be understood more than anything. He started working his jaw side to side. He opened the little book to show that it was actually a photo album, and as he paged through it, lingered here and there to touch one of the photos, I saw another man emerge, one who forgot to pretend that a meeting on death row was not uncommon, who forgot we were there for a different reason, even forgot where and when he was.

  “See, this is the one they want. It’s a standard poodle. It’s not the actual dog, it’s a picture of one, see? Sara put it in this album along with the other pictures when she gave it to me for Father’s Day. They say I should at least go to a breeder and just test it to see if it’s true that poodles don’t have fur, they have hair like us.”

  When he stopped talking, his jaw started up again, that little grinding motion that showed how hard he was fighting for control. He had let his hand come to rest on the page facing the one with the poodle. “Here, look—”

  “Marcus, we can’t—”

  Giving up on Laura, Creighton asked if I’d mind if he sat closer to me. When I said that was okay, he got up from his chair and sat down in the one at my end of the table.

  “See, here’s one of me with Devon,” he said. “He likes model cars, and when I sat down to help him, I found out I did, too. It’s as if he inherited a trait I didn’t know I had. This is Sara, see, she’s draped around my neck like a cat. She always does that. She wants to be sure she gets her share of my attention.” He flipped two more pages. “This is from our trip to the Grand Canyon. See Kirsten standing there with her foot out and that sullen look kids put on? And see, she doesn’t know I’m goofing off behind her, pretending like I’m going to fall over the edge. But she’s a good kid, a responsible kid. Very reliable.”

  “Marcus,” Laura said.

  “Laura?” Creighton said, and looked fondly over at her as if he had just arrived in the room and was surprised and pleased to see her.

  “Mr. Creighton,” I said, “do you want me to help you? Do you want to stay alive? Because an honest answer to that question will determine what happens next.”

  Creighton focused on me. He shook his head the same way he had before, as if he was shaking the crazy out of it, to get a grip on being normal enough to be allowed to live. He took off his glasses again and pinched them between the folds of his shirt to clean them, something a sane person does. “Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said. “But what can I tell you? What can I say? I didn’t do it? Would you believe me?” He put his glasses back on and raised his cuffed hands off the table in some gesture of supplication with a smile at the folly of it all. “Give me the magic words that will convince you.”

  “It’s not us you need to convince. Or at least not Laura. Can I ask you some questions?”

  “Anything,” he said. “And I’ll answer them honestly because that’s all I’ve got.”

  “You obviously loved your children. Did you love your wife?”

  Creighton didn’t seem surprised. “I hated her. She was a drunk. She kept threatening to divorce me, but I didn’t want to share custody of the kids. Didn’t want to be one of those dads. And I didn’t want them to have to live alone with her. She blamed the drinking on me, but I knew it wouldn’t stop if I was out of the picture.” He laced his fingers and leaned across the table in my direction. “Do you want more honesty than that? Well, I imagined her dying in much the way that she actually did. When I found her body, there was a moment when I had the thought This is luck. Then the children were missing and I thought I was being punished for being glad she died.”

  “Why didn’t you try to get better defense?”

  “I thought I could convince the detective on the case that they shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. They should have been looking for the kids. They did an Amber Alert immediately but called it off when Shayna blew my alibi. Couldn’t they see how crazy I was? I was going nuts and no one was doing anything. I begged them. I even told them maybe Kathleen’s death really was an accident, and the crime was that the kids had been abducted on their way to the community center. Nobody listened. Have you any children?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe you can’t understand the horror of that time, knowing that with each minute my children could be closer to death, and the very people sworn to protect them were doing nothing. Nothing. Then I was in the system, I’d been assigned a public defender, and that was that.” Creighton looked as if the agony was now, that moment when he tried to make someone believe him and no one did. His breathing got labored again, and he took another hit off the inhaler.

  “You don’t have to keep talking if it’s hard,” Laura said.

  Creighton put up a hand to show he was okay.

  I thought it would help to change the subject for now. “What about Shayna Murry?”

  Even so long after last seeing her—and that was when she was on the stand betraying him—his eyes still softened. “I was in love with her. And I’m certain she loved me, too. She was coached. I’ve spent all these years wondering why she lied about my being there that night.” He smiled at me, his breathing controlled. “How am I doing so far? Are the words magical enough?” He waggled his fingers in a sleight-of-hand way, making his shackles jingle.

  “So far, you’re convincing,” I said. “Why do you think your children are alive?”

  He took as deep a breath as he was able. “I didn’t in the early years. I stopped hoping. I told myself they were probably dead, and I spent some years mourning. Then Ms. Samuels suggested they weren’t. She said anything could have happened. That they could have been shipped to Thailand. Especially the twins, she said. Exotic sex.” He pressed his midsection against the edge of the t
able as if it could press out the pain. “I think at first she wanted to hurt me by saying this, to trick me into saying I’d buried them somewhere. But while it was awful, it was hopeful, too. I wanted to live again. Find them. If I seem a little … off … it’s because there’s not much else to do here, besides the reading, than think. Sometimes the thoughts make me crazy, but I can’t stop them.”

  “Mr. Creighton,” I said, “what will you do if Laura and Will get you a stay of execution? What will you do if you’re exonerated? If you’re let out of prison after all this time?”

  “Find my children,” he said, without having to stop and think. “Help Alison Samuels find my children.” He clutched his hands on top of the table and gazed at me in all sanity, as if his words were all there was between him and despair.

  Laura reached across the table to touch the hands, then, glancing at me, drew back.

  “We need to go, Marcus,” Laura said. “We have a lot of work to do for you.”

  Whether or not he was paying attention, she explained how the paperwork was all done in anticipation of getting the two pieces of evidence. How Will Hench would use what he had to get a stay of execution within the next five days, then file an appeal based on perjury and flawed forensics with the next higher court. She would continue to be the investigator for him. She promised again that he wasn’t going to die in five days. And promised again.

  Creighton, for one, at least pretended his confidence in Laura’s assurances, and didn’t ask any more questions about the case. Instead, he pushed the photograph album in her direction, but kept his fingers on it as if he couldn’t decide whether to really give it up. “Would you take care of this?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want it to get lost. In case.”

  Hesitating a bit more, he finally decided to pull his hand back, and stared at it as Laura sighed, put the album into her briefcase, got up from the table, and announced her intention of leaving into the intercom. She tried to say good-bye, but professional though she was, her voice broke on the “bye,” swinging it up to a higher pitch.

  And my reaction as I sat there watching him? On death row for murdering his family. No matter what kinds of evidence to the contrary Laura and Will said they had, I had arrived at this meeting convinced of his guilt. I was leaving with a mixture of instinct that he didn’t do it and a fervent hope that he did.

  That feeling of hope? The reason I hoped he was guilty was because only that, and nothing less, would justify what society had done to this man. The alternative was unthinkable to me: an innocent man, waiting for death, while tortured by the obsession that his children were out there somewhere. And if they were still alive, no one but him caring that they were being hurt.

  Ten

  Laura was quiet, running her finger lightly over the cover of the little album that Creighton had passed to her. I turned the ignition and put the air on to cool the car down, but didn’t drive off immediately.

  “Is he always that way?” I asked.

  “He’s been lovely, really. Appreciative, and … and engaged … and more positive than I could ever be in his circumstances. It’s just the news today about the execution actually being scheduled that threw him.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “You think he’s dissembling.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking.”

  “What gets me is, why so certain the children are alive? So certain. But that business with him talking like it’s sixteen years ago.”

  Laura said, “It’s years of wanting something so bad he’s convinced himself,” but then her face clouded. “For all I know they still could be alive. I don’t know.”

  She opened the album and started to page through it. I looked, too, having been too far away at the other end of the table to see it well.

  The album was the kind with clear plastic sleeves, one per page, each holding a five-by-seven photo. The cover had been decorated with multicolored sequins, glued on to spell “Happy Father’s Day.” At least originally. After all those years, most of the sequins had fallen off, with “H pp ath ’s Da” remaining, the rest of the letters filled in with spots of white glue where the sequins had been.

  Laura opened the album. The first photo showed two babies, one blissfully sucking on his toe. Maybe he had just discovered his foot. As she continued to turn the pages, I saw a rough chronological progression, two bigger babies in a top-of-the-line double stroller, with an older but still-small child reaching up to the bar to push them. The three children, two on tricycles and one on a two-wheeler, in a row facing the camera. A group photo at the beach, all five of the Creightons building a sand castle. Mom in happier times. A fishing trip, the younger children in those orange life preservers, the little boy holding a fish that wasn’t much bigger than the feathery lure in its mouth. Maybe Lake Orange.

  The pictures were pretty much the same as would be found in any well-to-do family’s collection. But here is what was different about this album, now that I was able to take a closer look:

  There was fifteen years of body oil from a man’s fingers on the clear plastic covering each photograph. The way you could tell was that, over the years, the oil attracted the grime of the prison and left spots of rough, raised dirt stuck to the pages. Of course, that would only happen if the book had been handled hundreds, thousands of times. Other, less dense spots showed on top of the faces. There some of the grime had been rubbed away.

  He had touched their faces repeatedly.

  All the pages were that way, spotted with the dirt of the prison years.

  I put the car in drive and headed away from the prison. “Did Creighton ever show you this photograph album?”

  “Never. Even though he used to talk to me about them, for purposes of my getting him exonerated, he always said to keep the family out of it. He said he didn’t want people to see his emotion and think it was an act. He was always very firm about not including anything about the children in his appeals. It made me respect him.”

  And more than respect him? I wondered. Laura let her fingertips settle onto the same spots on a photograph where his fingers must have touched. It looked like it was the closest she could allow herself to come to touching the man himself. She said, “Brigid, does a man who keeps this in his cell, looks at the pictures as much as he must have looked at them over the years, who talks about his children as if they were still alive, who gives the album into my keeping in order to keep it safe after his death—is that a man who killed his children?”

  No. No. Or only if he was insane with guilt. But not even that, because, while he might have been standard death-row crazy, I didn’t sense anyone could pin a psychiatric label on him. No.

  I said, “I have to tell you, it troubled me when you made that promise to save him.”

  “But what do you think? Do you still think he’s guilty?”

  “I wish to God he was.”

  “You’re not answering,” Laura said. “Say you don’t think he did it. Say it flat out.”

  “All my instincts say he’s not guilty, but that doesn’t mean you’ll win the case. Laura, I have to know that you fully realize, even if we get the evidence you’re looking for, if the Law wants someone dead, it’s pretty hard to stop it no matter what the evidence. I want you to say that flat out.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But you have to understand I’m going to fight like hell.”

  I turned to look at her as she said that, and watched her mouth get thin and straight with judgment, and I hated that. So I said, and this was pretty much the truth, same as what I had said before, “I tell you, Coleman, I trusted you once before and you were right. Maybe this time you’re wrong. But right now I can say I think it’s a good thing, what you’re doing.”

  We were coming to I-95, and as I pulled onto the ramp there was thunder, and lightning, and then a deluge that felt like being followed by a waterfall. I slowed a bit and glanced at my watch. Yep, in Florida in June you can almost set your watch by the afternoon
storm.

  “Should we pull off the road?” Laura asked.

  She was clearly not a Floridian like I was. “No. Two miles from here it will stop. That loan shark Creighton borrowed from. Do you have a name?”

  “Manuel Gutierrez,” Laura said, gripping her knees and watching the road for me.

  “No shit? I know Manny Gutierrez. I wonder if he’s still alive.”

  No response, just the stare through the rain.

  “Then tell me about Madame Defarge,” I said to distract her so she wouldn’t worry about me getting us killed.

  “Will keeps calling her that, and I haven’t had time to google it.”

  “Madame Defarge is a Dickens character. She knits a stitch for every aristocrat who gets guillotined during the French Revolution.”

  “So it just means that Alison Samuels is bloodthirsty.”

  “Doh, why didn’t I think of saying it that way. Tell me about her. Why did she give Creighton that photograph?”

  “She’s the spokesperson for the Haven, that group that helps with retrieving missing and exploited children. She tells how she ran away from abusive parents, got involved in prostitution for a while, but got out of the game when she was nineteen, pulled herself up and got a graduate degree in sociology, working some bona fide job nights while she did it. She’s been with the Haven for three years, came up the ranks fast, made a name for herself. Last year when she was going over some old cases, she got interested in finding out where the Creighton children are buried, or whether they even died that night. She has this idea that Marcus had given them to someone and they’ve been working the sex trade because Marcus saw them as baggage that would keep him from getting Shayna Murry. Only he didn’t have the balls to kill them. Something like that. Crazy.”

  “But why the obsession with the Creightons? There’s lots of other cases of missing children and runaways.”

  “None in Florida where three children disappear overnight and their bodies are never found. They’re seen one day and then gone. Apparently she has aged photographs of Devon, Sara, and Kirsten and compares them to photographs she finds online. She shoves them in his face and makes horrible suggestions about what became of them, and he continues to let her in. She’s feeding his obsession that they’re alive, and he wants her to find them.”