Laura had examined every photo the night before, and now while Will had her on a conference call with Gainesville she described roughly a dozen items while paging through the little album to make sure she didn’t forget one. There was Kirsten showing off a wristwatch in front of a Christmas tree. I glanced over. “I bet it’s a Swatch; they were popular in the nineties. But there were lots of styles, so describe it in detail. Maybe that will help. And look for pierced earrings.” Both Kirsten and Sara had them, but they weren’t unusual, just studs. Still, they went on the list.
“What about these jeans?” Laura asked, spotting something she had not in her first go-round. “They have an odd triple snap thing.”
I said, “I remember those. They’re Cavariccis. Maybe the snaps survived. Chances are they were in their pajamas but still.”
In a photo of the three kids standing in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World, Sara was wearing a trinket on a black string. Laura looked closely at it but couldn’t make it out. “A bumblebee?” she asked. “Look for a bee,” she said more loudly so Will and Aggrawal could hear.
“What about shoes?” Will asked over the speaker. “We know an expert who can identify shoes by the tread.”
“We don’t have any shoe tread to compare it to.” Laura tried not to yell with impatience and pretty much succeeded.
“No shoes,” Aggrawal said.
It was a ghoulish scavenger hunt—I pictured Aggrawal fishing through the sludge with tweezers—and Laura and I felt certain that if we won, Marcus Creighton would get to live. At least while the remains were examined thoroughly.
Gainesville understood the importance and was working for us. Will called when we were still a half hour’s drive from the prison to let Laura know that several items had been found. A wristwatch was in there, but it was so mangled it would take some time to analyze what the brand was.
And then the anthropologist described a corroded pewter figure of Dumbo the elephant, ears outstretched in flight.
I knew that image, and I knew what Laura would have mistaken it for. “That’s the bumblebee Sara is wearing,” I said. “Tell Will they should keep looking, and send them our photo for analysis to confirm Dumbo, but I’ll bet we’ve got a match. Those are the Creighton kids.”
* * *
We were ushered into a smaller room than the one we were in last time, in a different building. This was the building where executions took place, and Marcus Creighton had been moved to the death watch cell. Wally, the guard he’d known for so long, who had been his friend on the inside, was not his guard here. If Wally had been there, he would certainly have seen the news and told Marcus about the bodies being found. The guard who took us to the meeting room looked like even if he knew about the bodies, he didn’t care. No names were exchanged. Too little time was left for politeness, but Creighton didn’t seem to recognize this.
Marcus greeted Laura, and, with a screw-you-and-the-prison-rules glance at me, she put her arms around him and drew him close. He was passive through it, his arms barely lifting in response, but over her shoulder I saw his chin lifted and his mouth opened as if he was receiving a sacrament. I wondered how many years had passed since he was last touched.
Even this gesture didn’t tip him off that something about our visit was not good. He sat back in his chair a little dazed from the human contact. Then he pulled himself together once more and said with a wink, “Hello there, Brigid Quinn. I still don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want you to die.” I winked back.
“There must be good news,” Marcus said, searching our faces for a sign of more. “You got the stay.” He rubbed his hands together, making the cuffs jingle, unable to suppress his hope.
Then Laura first told him about finding the bodies of the children, succinctly and without showing any of the emotion I warned her about. Caring more for him than herself.
At first all he did was blink. Then he rubbed his hand over his unshaven face. When he didn’t speak, Laura told him more about the burial scene, on the shore of an island that had been undeveloped at the time of the murders. That’s how she spoke of it, murders. Trying to break through his denial. Each word she spoke carefully and slowly, but as she spoke she took his hand, a hand so unresponsive it could have belonged to a corpse.
Not responding, not looking at either of us, Marcus moved his jaw from side to side, grinding his teeth.
“Marcus,” Laura said, “do you understand what I just told you?”
He managed to rub his stubbled face again, and for a moment it seemed that was all he could manage.
Then, “It’s not them,” he said, finally.
“We think it’s them, Marcus,” Laura said.
“Think? You think. What proof do you have?” he said. His voice was soft and weak, but there he was, rising to the surface again. I had seen him do this the last time, sinking and rising and sinking again as despair and hope tossed him about in their wake.
Laura gestured to me to confirm what she said, but I shook my head.
“How do you know it’s not them, Marcus?” I asked. Even now I had some small hope that he would confess and I could let him go to a justified death. “Do you know where they are?”
His voice grew stronger but not angry. He said, speaking slowly and patiently as if I was a half-wit, “I told you, no. That’s why Alison Samuels is looking for them. Because I don’t know where they are. I keep telling you I don’t know where they are. You don’t listen.”
Laura took the photo album, open to the photograph of the children posed in a line in front of Cinderella’s Castle, and slid it in front of him, saying, “Tell us about this picture, Marcus.”
He was only too happy to talk about something other than dead bodies. “I took them to Disney World for the twins’ eighth birthday.”
“How long was that before they … before this?” Laura asked.
“Their birthday is March tenth. We always joke that it’s appropriate the twins were born under the Pisces sign. It was a great trip, a whole week. We did it all, Epcot, SeaWorld, stayed at the Polynesian resort.” Marcus’s smile faded. “I think it was an apology for screwing up their lives. It cost me a bundle that I didn’t have, but now I’m grateful I did it.”
“They don’t look here like they thought their lives were screwed up,” I said, in a stop-that-nonsense voice.
Something didn’t seem right about the chronology, though. The photo album was a Father’s Day present, and by that date they were all dead. It made the album feel ghostly. I asked.
Creighton said, “Sara was so cute. She remembered making this for me the year before and would add pictures as we took them. She added these a few weeks before she disappeared.”
I asked, “What about their mother? Was she with you?”
“She didn’t want to go.” He sounded very sad at that, as if it had happened yesterday.
Laura, who was sitting close enough to Marcus to reach the photo, pointed to Sara. “It’s hard to see, but we know Sara is wearing something around her neck. Do you recognize it?”
Marcus nodded at Laura’s question but didn’t answer it. “Have you talked to Alison Samuels?”
“Not lately, no,” Laura said with a frown.
“So she doesn’t know what you’re telling me.”
“I think she might, Marcus. It was on the news.”
“You must tell Alison Samuels to keep looking, that they haven’t found my children. Will you do that for me? Please? I don’t know if she’ll come to see me again, so you have to get to her.”
Laura put her hand over her mouth involuntarily as if she could not bear to be the person who would force him to acknowledge the truth. But then she forced the hand away, took a breath, and said softly, “Marcus, just for now, could we talk about Sara’s necklace? Do you recognize it?”
I watched Creighton’s eyes come back into focus and appear to recognize Laura. “I don’t have to recognize it. I remember everything about it. Each of th
e kids, Kirsten included, got to pick out a souvenir. We saw this little Dumbo character made from pewter in one of the gift shops, and Sara asked me about it. I promised her we’d rent the movie and watch it when we got home. We did, and I remember she rubbed the little Dumbo and asked if you could make a wish on it. Sometimes when I look at this picture I wish I had asked her what she wanted to wish for. But I never did. I played along, told her any wish would be granted as long as she kept Dumbo close to her. She said she’d never take it off,” he said. “You know how little girls are, so over the top with their emotions. Never, ever, take it off! I can hear her saying that. But of course kids, they don’t know what never ever means.”
Marcus Creighton stopped talking, finally, and stared at the reluctant truth in Laura’s eyes. He made the connections. He said, “Oh my God, she never took it off.”
Twenty-four
Leaving Marcus felt like leaving someone alone for the first time after their children’s funeral. Laura told me she wanted to stay with him a while longer. Alone, she said, with a defiant lift of her chin that would tolerate no opposition. I felt the frustration of a mother who’s certain a boy will break her daughter’s heart and can’t do a damn thing to stop it. But then I figured Laura couldn’t hurt any worse than she did already, and any of these visits might be her last chance to say what was on her mind. In her heart. I told her I’d meet her in the parking lot in half an hour. An hour, she said.
Rather than just sit, I drove the car east into Sebastian and made a quick dash into one of those tourist shops that sell beach supplies, orange-flavored fudge, and refrigerator magnets shaped like dolphins and flip-flops. I bought a sun hat.
A few minutes later I was parked in front of Shayna Murry’s yard. Her studio-slash-house was right on U.S. 1, the main road, so people driving by would see it. If there were any doubts that I had the right place, I was reassured by a small wooden sign, worn to the same dull finish as the house, with the fading words MURRY CREATIONS painted on it.
The house itself was a one-story boxy thing with a metal roof, but it sat on enough property to make a small urban park. There was a stand of old oak trees behind it, and nothing for a goodly distance to the north and south. The wooden siding on the house at one time might have been painted a vivid iris; it still looked that way under the eaves, but the weather had turned most of it to bleached denim. Old Florida rusticity in spades.
What made Murry’s house more distinctive than others of its ilk was that all the windows were covered with cheap plywood. When I put on my hat (and sunglasses, too, why take a chance?) got out of the car, and approached to look around the yard, I saw the wood was warped and the nails used to fasten it to the house were rusted.
Just in case I managed to make it inside, I walked the whole perimeter of the house to see if there was a back door. It’s good to know your exit options. Nothing back there except for a small unboarded window and the dense stand of trees that began about fifteen feet out from the back wall.
Had Shayna boarded herself in during some hurricane years before and never bothered to remove the boards? Or was there another reason for the self-imposed barricade? Escape from public scrutiny? Depression? Fear? Those boards gave me more food for thought regarding Shayna Murry’s current state of mind than anything I’d heard or read so far.
Rounding the front of the house, I noticed a rusted bicycle turned into a planter leaning up against the wall. Not terribly creative, that planter. I went up the steps onto the once-white front porch and knocked on the door.
No answer. But when I stood close I could hear what sounded like a hot air balloon being filled. Awful tight space for a hot air balloon. I knocked again; still no answer.
I tried the handle on the door, a quaint metal lever that might have been part of this building from the start. You needed a key to lock it. Unlocked. I had a feeling this was a part of the world where that was not uncommon. Besides, Officer, the sign out front promised something like a gallery inside, so I felt justified opening the door and walking in.
I expected to see more items like the bike inside. The room I walked into seemed to take up most of the building. And it was filled with what an artist might find meaningful but what I, at first glance, could only see as crap.
Shayna Murry was standing in one corner of the dim room, lit up by sparks surrounding a yellow-to-blue flame. She was dressed in a flame-retardant apron and cap, with gloves and dark goggles. So intent was she, and so loud the blowtorch she held against some hulking piece of rusted metal, she didn’t hear me enter. She didn’t even hear me when I spoke her name.
I used the time to look around more carefully and saw, amidst the strips of aluminum siding, and metal objects that looked like their stop previous to this had been in a junkyard or on the side of the road, and even some dead palm fronds, some real art. Hanging on the walls were shields that somehow blended ancient Rome with early twentieth-century art nouveau, and an abstract piece that would have been an intricate brooch if it hadn’t been three feet in diameter.
The only light came from naked bulbs attached to a ceiling fan set on high. With the windows boarded, and the heat from the blowtorch, and the June temperature, and not even a window unit for air-conditioning, it was no wonder her face was running with sweat when she finally turned off the butane or propane or whatever dangerous gas she had in that thing. It made a loud pop that made me jump.
She turned to me and screamed.
“Soooorrry!” I said, raising my hand and waggling the tips of my fingers to show I was a harmless sort. “That noise scared me.”
“It’s just backfire. Not dangerous. How long have you been standing there?” Shayna asked, no longer terrified but still unnerved that she hadn’t been enough on guard. I myself would be a little less on guard when she put down the blowtorch.
“Just a few minutes,” I assured her. I gestured around the room, dropping the silly-woman shtick. “This is real art, not some dilettante artsy craftsy shit. This is intelligent.”
At that, Shayna stripped off her goggles and gloves. She was apparently used to the heat in the place, because she left on her apron. She glanced at the door as if trying to gauge whether I could block her dashing out.
“Who are you?” she asked when she saw the unlikelihood of either her escaping or me disappearing. “I mean really. And don’t bullshit me because I recognize you now even with the hat and glasses. You were at the café the other day. You might guess I’m visual that way, being an artist and all.”
I stripped off my hat and glasses in turn. I said, “Did you hear they found the Creighton children? It was on the news.”
She finally let go of the blowtorch, but that was because it slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor. Even shocked as she was, she had the sense to turn off the gas and the oxygen tanks. Clearly this had taken her by surprise. Was it because she knew they were dead or, like Marcus, thought they were still alive?
“Are they sure?” she asked.
“There will be some confirmation testing, but yeah, it’s certain.”
Shayna looked like she was starting to ask a question, then closed her lips, and when they reopened it was to ask another. “And you’re telling me this, why?”
I knew I could get more information from her if she thought I was on her side. “Because I’ve done some investigating since I last saw you, and I think Marcus Creighton did it. A woman I’ve been dealing with on the case, Laura Coleman—have you met her?”
“She camped out on my doorstep a few times, but I wouldn’t talk to her.”
“Her. She’s pretty obsessed about this case, and I’m trying to prepare her for his death, and what I want is to find better proof of his guilt. Something that will convince her without a remaining doubt.”
Shayna appeared to be buying my story. I wiped a trickle of sweat that tickled my cheek. “And look, could we step outside to talk? It’s only ninety-five degrees out there.”
Shayna took off her apron, and we
went outside to the front porch. There were no chairs out there, so we sat side by side on the top step. The offshore breeze on my face from the ocean that was only a quarter mile away made me aware of how much I’d been sweating. I wiped my palm on my jeans and offered it. Didn’t help; it was a damp handshake on both sides.
“My name is Brigid Quinn,” I said. “What did you have against Marcus?”
“Why would you say that?”
“I read your testimony.”
Shayna shook her head, the kind of gesture that indicates distaste rather than disagreement. “I was so young. So confused. The fact is, you know when they talk about being swept off your feet? I get it. It’s never happened to me before or since. I met him at a time when if I bought gas to get to the grocery store I wouldn’t have enough money to buy food when I got there. Then I meet this guy who stole my electric bill out of the mailbox so he could pay it himself. But it wasn’t even the money. Sure, he was rich and I was poor, but there were the little notes he would leave on my pillow, and the tulips … he knew I liked yellow tulips better than roses. He listened to me, and remembered little things. He was so charming, so handsome. Have you…”
I nodded. “He still is. Fifteen years on death row tells, but he’s still got it.”
“And I was the one everyone said made him do it. It was like they blamed me.”
“Is that why the boarded-up windows?”
Shayna’s face wrenched, and then she got it back under control. “What about the children? Tell me more about the bodies. Do you know how they died?”
“We will. When the police first questioned you that night about whether he’d been to see you, you didn’t know why they were asking?”
“No.” Even now there was a mix of anger and despair in her voice. “I just answered honestly, and it broke my heart when I found out. I know I didn’t sound like I still loved Marcus in court, but the prosecutor said it would be better if we slanted it that way, that he was a total creep who had taken advantage of me. He said it wouldn’t be a lie because in a way it was true.”
A Twist of the Knife Page 15