Harry Putnam’s gut instinct as a trial lawyer was to probe into Parker’s last comment a little, but he resisted the temptation and decided to approach it from a broader perspective.
“Before we get into the particulars, Dr. Parker, is there anything you think you should share with us at this point that might be problematic concerning your evaluation of Joshua Fellows’ blood sample?”
“Problematic in what way?” Parker asked.
Harry Putnam was jiggling his ballpoint pen in his fingers rapidly.
“Problematic in the sense that you believe it might undermine the validity of your conclusion that Joshua Fellows’ blood contained ethylene glycol,” Putnam explained, studying Parker carefully. “Or that might impact your credibility as a witness.”
Dr. Parker removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from his nose, then calmly cleaned the lenses with the fabric of his lab coat.
Putting his glasses back on, he answered.
“I see nothing problematic, Mr. Putnam. Nothing at all.”
29
AT ST. STEPHEN THE MARTYR CATHOLIC CHURCH in downtown Delphi, Father Godfrey, now seventy-four, slowly plodded through his daily rituals and routines.
Early-morning prayer and homily. The leading of morning mass. Three days a week, one of the young assistants would drive him to the hospital for visitation.
On that day, though, there was no hospital visitation scheduled. But his mind was still preoccupied by the thought of one particular confession at the hospital.
The priest had taken confessions from dying men and women during the war in Vietnam. Desperate soldiers, their backs arched in indescribable agony, faces contorted, uttering their last words in hopes of absolution. And he had taken hundreds of deathbed confessions in peacetime as well. At the scene of car accidents. From the elderly, thin and languishing, in their beds.
Almost all of those confessions were attempts to tie up the loose ends of lives that had been unloosened by the impending reality of death.
But the confession of Henry Pencup had been different. Pencup had been a staid, reserved banker. Calm, respectful, and businesslike. He had quietly attended mass with his wife and had given generously to the church and its various charities. Occasionally he’d volunteered to help with the food drive and the soup kitchen.
But when the bank president had called for Father Godfrey from his bed in the Delphi hospital, it had not turned out to be an attempt to tie up the loose ends of his life.
To the contrary, what Pencup had told Father Godfrey held the threat of unraveling the social and political fabric of Delphi—and a good deal of the Atlanta establishment as well.
After the confession and sacraments, Father Godfrey had closed the curtain. Then there had been the awful sound from the heart monitor, the screaming tone that indicated total cardiac arrest. The nurse in the room had rushed to the bed and called for assistance.
That was the last that Father Godfrey had seen of Henry Pencup until his funeral.
But Pencup’s last words to the priest had also unraveled something else. As a result, he had been left with a legal, ethical, and spiritual mess.
Pondering all this, Father Godfrey thought back to his young fishing days on the chain of lakes that fed into Eden Lake. Once in a while, the fishing line would become tangled in the reel. Any effort to pull it apart would only result in a more complicated, more impossible tangle. He used to call it a “bird’s nest.”
That was it. Henry Pencup had left a bird’s nest of tangled threads in the old priest’s wrinkled hands.
Whatever the resolution, Father Godfrey was not prepared to figure it out today. Instead, he would go out to his vegetable garden, a small patch of land behind the church. He would tend his tomatoes and check on his carrots. He would spend the afternoon seeing whether his small wire fence had kept out the rabbits that had worked mischief against his beloved vegetables.
30
SPIKE WAS SITTING BEHIND the steering wheel of the rental car parked on the shoulder of the highway. Stretched out before him across the dashboard was a highway map for South Dakota. He peered at the spider web of minor county highways and then glanced up at the sign some fifty feet down the highway.
“I think I’ve found it,” he said out loud. And then he motioned to Crystal Banes, who was outside of the car, pacing on the shoulder of the road, and trying to get a better signal on her cell phone.
Banes ignored his gestures and turned away as she began connecting with her producer back in Atlanta.
After a few minutes, Banes got back in the rental car, folding up her cell phone. She threw a fatigued look at Spike.
“Excuse me,” she snapped. “I’ve got a TV show that has to keep surviving. I’ve got other stories besides tracking down Mary Sue Fellows. So please don’t interrupt me when I’m on the phone again, okay?”
“It’s only that I found it. I thought you wanted to know.”
“Found what?”
“The Sioux Indian reservation that we were looking for. I found our location. The reservation is only about twenty miles from here.”
“Well, good for you, Spike,” Banes said in a deliberate monotone. “So let’s get there. Let’s find out where this Fellows woman is. Let’s get her on tape, and then let’s call the cops.”
“The cops?” Spike asked incredulously.
“Sure—what’s the problem?”
“I thought you were after the story.”
“Sure I’m after the story. I’m after two stories. First we get Mary Sue Fellows with a shock-of-a-lifetime look on her face as we click on the lights and get her on tape. Then we get the second story—we’re right there when they arrest her, slap the cuffs on her, and grab her little boy away. That might be an even better visual than the first part.”
“You never said anything about turning her over to the cops.”
“Well, that’s show business.” Banes motioned for Spike to hurry up and start the car and head toward the reservation.
There was silence for ten or fifteen minutes. Then Banes broke the quiet.
“Don’t get all soppy on me, Spike. I thought you were a tough, no-nonsense cameraman.”
“So what happens after the cops grab her?” Spike asked.
“Well, she goes to jail. And the little kid goes to a foster home.”
“And then what?”
“Spike, I don’t know. She battles it out in court along with her lawyer—if he ever gets out of jail. And then there’s an appeal, and then maybe we’ve got some more stories out of it.”
“I’ve been reading the file,” Spike remarked. “This mother has no history of child abuse. No criminal arrests. Her friends and family say she’s a practically perfect mother. And then one day, an anonymous tip is called in. Nothing said about who the anonymous person is. But somebody says she’s been poisoning this little kid. With brake fluid. So why that?”
“Why what?” Banes asked with a raised eyebrow, surprised by her cameraman’s stringing so many thoughts together.
“Why brake fluid? Of all the things you’re going to poison your kid with—why that? Doesn’t that strike you as kind of strange?”
“Yeah. Poisoning your own kid strikes me as very strange, very bizarre, very sick.”
“No, I mean the use of brake fluid,” Spike continued. “If you’re going to poison your own child—how about bleach, how about drain cleaner, how about even antifreeze? Besides, she’s a nurse. She’s got to know some chemicals that would do the job on her kid. If that’s what she really wanted to do. Just seems strange to me—brake fluid. It’s just really weird. Hard to believe.”
“Spike, remember the news stories of the last decade—well, you’re pretty young, so let’s say the last five or six years? How many headlines with ‘perfect little mothers’ who say their children were kidnapped or murdered by some neighbor. And then you find out that these perfect little mothers were monsters and they killed their own children. C’mon, it happens all the time. Why not
Mary Sue Fellows?”
“Because this is different.”
“How?”
“Because as far as we know the little kid is alive and well. The mom has been taking good care of him. Remember how it all started. The boy is sick. That could be from a bunch of different things. And the police sweep down on the farm, she runs away out of fear. And her real story never comes out.”
“Well, considering that Will Chambers is in jail,” Banes said, “maybe you ought to be Mary Sue’s attorney.”
“What’s going to happen to Mary Sue Fellows and that little kid—I mean, long-term?” Spike asked.
“Alright, I’ll give you the straight scoop,” Banes answered. “I’ve consulted with an attorney friend of mine in Atlanta. He handles a lot of these really bloody custody battles. You know what he told me?”
Spike just shook his head as he continued driving down the highway.
“He told me that once the kid is pulled out of the house and put in foster care, and they’ve fed him into the system, it’s pretty difficult to pull him back out again. It’s a little bit like reversing gravity sometimes. That’s the bottom line.”
The TV host and her cameraman fell silent for a while as they surveyed the long stretch of South Dakota highway ahead. The landscape was full of brown hills, with a handful of farmhouses and ranches scattered here and there.
“Keep your eye out for the next store. We’ll stop and start asking if they know where this Tommy White Arrow’s ranch is. We have to be getting pretty close. The first sign of civilization, the first little gas station or store, you pull in,” Banes said. “Besides, I need to pick up some deodorant and some more toothpaste.”
Sixteen miles down the highway there was a small grocery store with a sign on top that said “THE TRADING POST.” A gas station was located on the other side of the store—with the pay phone that was often used by Mary Sue Fellows.
In the parking lot of the Trading Post there was only one vehicle right now—a Suburban. The Suburban belonged to Tommy White Arrow.
The vehicle was parked next to the Trading Post that day because Tommy had driven Katherine, Mary Sue, and Joshua to the store to pick up a few odds and ends. Tommy was busy trading jokes with the store clerk, an older man who wore sunglasses because of eye problems. Katherine was working down her grocery list, picking up canned goods in her small shopping basket. Down the aisle where the women’s deodorant was kept, Mary Sue and Joshua were kneeling down. That was also where the coloring books and crayons were located.
For mother and son, the day had a calmness that came only with the routine and the mundane. Mary Sue had reluctantly adapted to her life at Tommy’s ranch. Although she had longed to return home to her husband, she was tolerating her new, temporary life in South Dakota.
The Trading Post had become part of her new routine. She and Katherine had visited once a week.
Right then, she was not thinking about the case against her in Georgia, or even about Joe sitting in jail. She was looking at a coloring book and some cheap crayons—and wondering when she would find out the results of the blood test taken by Dr. Kendoll.
She was still squatting in the aisle with her little boy when the rental car occupied by Spike and Crystal Banes pulled into the parking lot, directly under the sign that read “THE TRADING POST.”
31
BEFORE GUARD THOMPSON placed Will Chambers in the back seat of his squad car, behind the metal screen that separated him from the front seat, he locked his wrists in handcuffs and his ankles in manacles.
As the two drove to the overflow pen, Thompson glanced occasionally in his rearview mirror, studying Will.
On each occasion, Will locked eyes with him in the mirror.
There was a small part of Will that entertained a curiosity about Thompson’s culpability. Was he only following orders in transferring Will to the auxiliary jail? And if so, who gave the order and why?
Will was certain this had nothing to do with Harry Putnam. Although Putnam was an aggressive prosecutor, perhaps even a street fighter, it was doubtful he would send a fellow lawyer into harm’s way. This was confirmed as Will recalled Putnam’s neutral position at the court hearing regarding Will’s incarceration. And Harriet Bender, though her tactics were disproportionately vicious, lacked the authority to effect the transfer of an inmate.
That left Judge Mason as a viable suspect. There was one strong factor, though, that might eliminate him as responsible. A judge’s order to the county jail could be easily traced. The judge would have to know—particularly in light of Will’s final comments to the bench as he was being escorted out by the bailiff—that any additional or unreasonable punishment by him would be evidence of bias and prejudice. That evidence might suffice to remove him from the case and tarnish his reputation.
Working through the various scenarios, Will was left with two final options.
The first was that his transfer to the overflow pen was simply a matter of administrative convenience. Perhaps the county jail had received an influx of several new prisoners and simply ran out of bed space, and Will was the “lucky” winner. On the other hand, why not move existing prisoners to the overflow pen? That would seem to be an easier expedient and involve less paperwork.
The final option was beginning to look the most logical—that someone had pressured the chief jailer to make the transfer happen. If that was the case, then Will must have made some heavy-duty enemies in Delphi.
And that would necessarily involve his representation of Mary Sue Fellows. But how could a woman like Mary Sue Fellows make mortal enemies in Delphi? As Will finally completed his mental gymnastics, he realized that it was all an artful diversion. Beneath his curiosity about the transfer and the implications for the case, he was suffering from a growing sense of dread.
The information that Ivan had shared with him about the overflow pen was coming from a man with experience. Ivan had spent most of his life on the margins of society. In and out of jails, befriending those whose lives were spent in and out of jails, he was not the kind of man who would exaggerate the dangers.
Will was certain about one thing—this place to which he was being transferred was likely to be dark, and unspeakably violent.
That was when a thought struck him with such blinding intensity that he had to smile. He was smiling so broadly that when guard Thompson glanced at him in the rearview mirror, he took a second look.
Does God really protect us? Will thought to himself. As soon as he silently asked himself the question, he answered it. Of course he does. Then another thought: Does he always protect us in the way we want, when we want it?
And then he remembered something that Len Redgrove had once said to him.
“God’s love for and protection of us are always consistent with his will for us—and his will for us is always consistent with what is best, not only for us, but also for a fallen world that he is always trying to rescue.”
Those words had sounded so abstractly and logically true—and so consistently true with what Will had discovered in the pages of the Bible and in his own recent spiritual pilgrimage. But now it was something else entirely. Now, he was having to live it out in the middle of ugly and chaotic reality.
For Will, it was time to find out what he truly believed.
The squad car pulled into an industrial lane populated with dumpsters and dilapidated warehouses.
At the end of the lane there was a tall brick warehouse with cemented-up windows, four stories high and circled by double rows of barbed wire. The building was lit by several yellow overhead neon lights on metal poles. Guard Thompson parked the car, walked to the call box at the gate, and announced himself. The gate retracted. He parked the car within the barbed-wire fence and led Will to the single sheet-metal door which bore several chalk- and pen-marked obscenities that had been incompletely erased.
There was a clang on the other side as a bolt was withdrawn, and the four-inch-thick door cranked open. A tall figure in a deputy’s un
iform stood in the shadows on the other side.
“Here’s the paperwork,” Thompson said, handing a clipboard with several documents to the man in the doorway. The other man took it without comment. Thompson then gave him a small set of keys for the handcuffs and manacles, and as he passed by Will on his way out the door, he whispered, “Good luck,” and then disappeared into his squad car and quickly drove away.
Will began to pray silently. I don’t belong to this place, Lord, I belong to you. I trust you, and I know that you are in charge. He walked through the doorway, and the man stepped out of the shadow and into the light. He was big, with his hair shaved almost all the way down to the skull. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. On the bridge of his nose there was taped a large piece of gauze with a faint spot of blood in the middle.
Will noticed that he was not wearing a nametag or a badge.
The attorney was led into a small vestibule with a desk and a compact TV, which was playing rock music videos. There was a small metal chair in the middle.
The guard with no name shoved Will down onto the chair and handcuffed him to it.
“Don’t move,” he said in a guttural command.
Then the guard ambled over to the desk and sat down, directing his attention to the music videos playing on the TV, which were followed by more music videos.
And followed by yet more music videos.
The common elements were raw—they all contained young men with ripped clothes, sunglasses, tattoos, and little pointy chin beards screaming into the camera from an assortment of bizarre angles.
Time dragged along at an excruciating pace.
There was a large, industrial-looking clock on the wall. Will had been sitting in the chair for two hours, listening to this miserable carnival of noise, banging, and screeching. During that time, the guard had polished off several candy bars and two bottles of Mellow Yellow.
The room was hot, and Will was soaked in sweat. But the guard enjoyed a small fan, pointed directly at him, on his desk. Will’s throat had become parched, and his back ached from his position on the metal chair.
Custody of the State Page 15