Gone to Ground

by Brandilyn Collins

  Mike. He was probably calling to check on me during a break. Make sure I wasn't out running around.

  I hurried to the kitchen and snatched up the phone. "Hello?" I couldn't keep from panting.

  "Tully, you hear what happened?" It was Mercy.

  My insides stilled. In a flash I pictured a postman in Bay Springs pulling my envelope from the mailbox, the Amaryllis police magically aware of where it had come from—

  "The police took Stevie Ruckland down to the station." Mercy's voice sounded tight, excited. "They think they have him this time, Tully. He's the Closet Killer."

  Chapter 16

  Deena

  I paced in the small lobby of the Amaryllis Police Station, cell phone to my ear. Inside the interrogation room Chief Cotter and John were ganged up on Stevie. I'd shouted to my brother to refuse to come down to the station, but Chief Cotter had him too scared to listen. Even as they hustled him out to a squad car, I ran alongside. "You can keep quiet, Stevie! You can demand a lawyer!"

  He just walked along like a lamb led to slaughter.

  I'd jumped in my car to follow them to the station.

  Now that the chief and John had Stevie alone in a room, who knew what he'd say. Despite my demands, they wouldn't let me stay with him. "He's a grown man, Deena." John jabbed the air with his forefinger. "I'm tellin you one more time to back off, or I'm puttin you in cuffs too."

  I had one last look at my brother, slumped and forlorn at the room's small rectangular wood table, before John closed the door in my face.

  Come on, Trent, pick up! Where was his nose for news when I needed it? Half the town had to know about Stevie by now.

  The line clicked in my ear. "Hi, Deena."

  "Trent! They've brought Stevie to the station for questioning."

  "What?"

  "They're talkin to him right now, and who knows what on earth he's sayin."

  "Why'd they come after him in the first place?"

  I hesitated. "Somebody said they saw him runnin home Tuesday night after work all agitated. And the police think they found somethin at his house."

  "What'd they find?"

  Twelve-thirty, the witness had said. They were off by a good half hour. Twelve-thirty gave Stevie all the more time to kill Erika. But how could I tell the cops I'd seen him at midnight?

  "You got to do somethin, Trent. They practically barged into his house without a warrant. You know Stevie couldn't figure how to tell em no."

  I reached the front of the station and pivoted, pacin away from the door. What was goin on in that room? I wanted to rush inside and punch out the police. Punch out my brother. Why hadn't he listened to me?

  Stevie had killed Erika, hadn't he. And the others. He really was a murderer, and I didn't know what to do.

  "Deena. What did they find?"

  It came back to me then—the words Chief Cotter had thrown at Stevie the last time he was a suspect. "You mad, Steven?" the chief had pressed. "You carryin a boilin rage around inside you?" That was the chief's theory. The Closet Killer carried hidden rage—and murder was the way he let it out.

  I slid to a halt and leaned against the wall. My brain would hardly think straight. Stevie did carry hidden rage. And how could I keep the bloody uniform secret now? Chief Cotter would splash the news all over town. "A dirty uniform. They claim it's got blood on it. And Stevie won't say what it is." I wasn't about to give away anything the police didn't know.

  "Give me five minutes, and I'll be right there."

  "Where are you?"

  "At my sister's house, workin on today's story. See you in a minute."

  I hung up and closed my eyes. My chin fell to my chest. This was a nightmare. If that uniform had Erika's blood on it, Stevie was doomed. So was I. They'd find out he'd come to my house. That I knew about it and covered it up.

  The world started to swim. I staggered to a chair and sank into it. Somehow I managed to call the salon and tell Patsy to cancel my appointments for the afternoon.

  "I heard they took Stevie in." Her tone sounded guarded, as if this time she just might believe he was guilty.

  Was that how Amaryllis would respond? Somebody needed to pay for these murders—might as well as be Steven Ruckland?

  "It's a mistake. Again. They'll clear it up."

  "Yeah, I'm sure—"

  I punched off the line. Set down the phone and dropped my head in my hands. A voice drifted from the interrogation room. Couldn't tell whose.

  The station's door opened. I straightened up to see Officer Chris Dedmon walk in, his black face sheened with sweat. Chris was in his late thirties, a father of four, and a deacon at the Baptist church. I'd gone to school with his younger sister, Rowanda. "Deena." He nodded my direction. "You all right?"

  I shook my head.

  "I hear they got your brother in there."

  "News travels fast."

  "Well." He indicated the radio clipped to his uniform. "I have my connections."

  "He didn't do this, Chris." I had to keep sayin that. For my own sanity.

  "People aren't always what we think."

  I shot him a look to kill. "That's it, then? Guilty until proven innocent?"

  He rubbed the side of his short-cropped head. "Didn't say that at all. I just said people aren't always what we think."

  Of course he was right. How many times had I seen a story on the news about a man no one would have expected bein some serial killer? A family man, a husband and father. That BTK killer in Wichita had even been active in his church, like Chris Dedmon. "Right. That would make you the perfect candidate."

  He shook his head and sighed. For the first time I noticed the bags around his eyes. And his face looked worn. Come to think of it, John had looked awful tired too. If the Amaryllis police force was lackin in sleep, it could only be due to the pressure of findin the Closet Killer. And that pressure made it all the more likely they'd pin the murders on the easiest suspect.

  The station phone rang. Chris answered it. Dully I listened to his end of the conversation. Apparently the caller had heard rumors about arrest and wanted confirmation. "Sorry, ma'am, I can't talk about that right now. Rest assured as soon as we have news to tell the town, we will."

  Hope glimmered in his voice.

  My stomach turned over.

  As Chris hung up, Ted Arnoldson came in the door. Terrific. In my eyes Ted rated not much higher than my ex. The man was full of himself, walkin with a swagger and puttin on airs. Judgin by his off-duty designer clothes and the sports car he drove, Ted had to be up to his eyeballs in debt. Police officers don't make that much money. But Ted always had to appear better than everybody else. Why in the world did I ever have a crush on that man?

  Ted gave me a curt nod. "Deena."

  I stalked out of the station to wait for Trent outside.

  After two excruciatin minutes he pulled up to the curb across the street. He ran over, wavin to somebody up the road. I turned to see Theodore Stets outside the drugstore, peerin at me. "They take Stevie in?" Theodore called.

  Forget half the town. All of Amaryllis knew by now. I looked away, my throat locked tight.

  Trent took my elbow and pulled me close to the police station, out of the sun. "Tell me what you know."

  I regarded him, suddenly half-sorry I'd called. Was this Trent, the man in love with me, askin? Or Trent the reporter?

  "I told you what I know."

  Trent gave me a keen look. Fine, let him wonder.

  He shook his head. "He'll need an attorney."

  "He hasn't got any money for one, you know that. And neither do I."

  "Then he'll be assigned a public defender. But sounds like a lot of damage is already done. The attorney will have to work backwards. I mean, you have to wonder—is Stevie even capable
of understanding his Miranda rights? If a lawyer could get everything he says in there thrown out—that would be major."

  Wait, this was all too fast. Trent was talkin how to mount a defense, and I was still hopin I could just take Stevie home.

  "Maybe my brother won't say anything. You know how he is when he's cornered—he just shuts down. The more scared he is, the more he refuses to talk."

  Or he'd lie. And if the police caught him tellin lies . . .

  The door to the station opened. I jerked my head up to see Chief Cotter step out, holdin Stevie by the arm. John was close behind. My brother's wrists were cuffed, and his face looked like a steel mask.

  "Where you goin? What'r you doin?" I jumped around Trent to stand in their path.

  "Deena, move aside." Chief Cotter's crisp tone warned he was out of patience.

  "But—"

  The chief pulled to a halt and shot me a look like a laser beam. "We've arrested your brother for the murder of Erika Hollinger. He's on his way to the county jail." He pushed me aside and escorted Stevie to his police car. John opened the back door, Chief Cotter pressed Stevie's head down, and they forced him in.

  As they drove away I stood rooted to a sidewalk that dipped and rolled, and threatened to swallow me whole.

  http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2010-Feature-Writing

  2010 Pulitzer Prize

  Feature Writing

  The Jackson Bugle

  Gone to Ground

  What happens to a small, quiet Southern town when evil invades in the form of a serial killer?

  By: Trent Williams

  October 29, 2010

  (Excerpt)

  Adam Cotter came to Amaryllis as chief of police a decade ago, upon retiring from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation after 25 years. The MBI is a branch of the state's Highway Patrol and a not unusual gateway through which small-town Mississippi can acquire experienced chiefs of police. Amaryllis was thrilled to welcome Adam Cotter, who hailed from the area. Before Cotter's arrival, his son, John, was already an established officer on the town's five-man force, and thereby protected via the escape clause in the state's nepotism law. Adam Cotter could not have hired his own son, but since that son preceded his arrival to the force, they can now work together hand-in-hand. Or fist-in-fist, as some in the town claim. The three other officers, Orin Wade, Ted Arnoldson, and Chris Dedmon, together total 29 years of serving as Amaryllis's finest. Wade and Dedmon are African-American, the two-to-three ratio a little under the town's demographics, which run almost an even fifty-fifty between whites and blacks.

  Since the Closet Killings began, opinion on the effectiveness of the town's police has also split down the middle, although not along racial lines. Some Amaryllis citizens will tell you their law enforcement is doing all it can to solve a string of murders with little to no evidence. Others will point to the chief's ego as the main stumbling block to finding a suspect. Their view is based on one indisputable fact: the chief has refused to ask for outside help from the Mississippi State Police, who have more equipment, manpower, and training.

  Here, too, the historical tenacity and separateness of Amaryllis plays a part. In the past the town's citizens wouldn't have wanted the rest of the world "barging in and telling us what to do," as one business owner put it. Chief Cotter, along with his close friend Austin Bradmeyer, owner of Bradmeyer Plastics and mayor for fifteen years, have enjoyed free rein to run the town as they see fit. But the desire for separation has begun to slip. Talk to people on Main Street today, and you're likely to hear folks question why national media hasn't paid more attention to the serial killings in their tiny town. "You can turn on a cable news channel and watch 'em run video of some fight on a school bus," said Curtis Paltrow, owner of the town's only gas station. "But they're not interested in five people dead?"

  As for Chief Cotter's investigation, talk to anyone in law enforcement, and in their honest moments they'll admit egos abound in the field. Each jurisdiction has their own way of doing things. One doesn't want the other "butting in." Chief Cotter points to his own years of investigative experience and the paucity of evidence in the Closet Killings, and says, "What do you expect the State Police to do that we haven't done? We've collected every piece of evidence there is—and that hasn't been much. We've canvassed every street numerous times. We have the files; we know the details. They don't. Plus, the State Police don't know our people, our town. They aren't equipped to handle this case as well as we are."

  And some whisper, "They couldn't handle it any worse."

  Chapter 17

  Cherrie Mae

  The Scotts' phone rang as I stood on my stool to dust the top a their bookcase in the front room. Two more minutes, and I'd be done with another work week, thank the good Lord. A tangy smell cut the air. Laverlle Scott did love her Lemon Pledge.

  It would be another half hour before Laverlle got home from her job at the bank. And Tony Scott would be busy for hours at his work in Bay Springs. The Scotts was one a my three black families in town. Ever week I let myself into their house with my own key. My check always waited for me in the big bowl on the counter, on top a the bananas.

  The phone rang a second and third time before the answer machine come on. I heard Tony's voice greet the caller, then a long beep.

  "Oh, Laverlle, I forgot you ain't home yet." The wispy voice of Laverlle's mother, Trixie, come from the machine. "I wondered if you heard bout Stevie Ruckland bein arrested for Erika's murder."

  I dropped my dust rag.

  "This time I hear the police say they got some good evidence. They'll probly end up chargin him with all the murders."

  My tired feet hopped me off the stool and into the kitchen.

  "And tonight they's—"

  I snatched up the phone. "Trixie? This is Cherrie Mae. What you sayin?"

  "Cherrie Mae? Oh, you cleanin house there?"

  I'd only cleaned the Scotts' house at this same time for ten years now. I pushed down my impatience. "Stevie's been arrested?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Don't know entirely. They took somethin from his house. Tonight they's a town meetin. Chief Cotter set it. Rumors are goin everwhere, and the station phone been ringin off the hook. He figured might as well tell everbody at once what happened. People so scared. They want somethin done."

  This was awful. The police jumped the gun on me. "What time's the meetin?"

  "Seven o'clock. At the elementary school."

  Seven. My achy body would fuss me up and down for draggin it out on a Friday night. But that's just what I was gon do. "What else you know, Trixie?"

  "Oh, I heard all kinda things. One person say they found his fingerprints inside Erika's house. Another tol me they had shoe prints. Somebody else say they had his hair, too, stuck in Erika's fingers. I don't know what's right from rumor."

  Hair? The Jackson lab couldn't a run DNA tests for hair yet—that took time. Even I knew that much.

  I rubbed my forehead. "I'll be at the meetin. You?"

  "Wouldn't miss it for the world. I cain't wait to clap for the chief findin this awful killer."

  "You don't know he's guilty yet."

  "If they arrested him, I do. They wouldn't arrest him without good reason."

  My mind flashed the picture a Erika's ring in Mayor B's file. "You don't know that either, Trixie. They's so much pressure on those men to make an arrest."

  "That just got em workin harder. Now it done paid off."

  "That just got em too anxious to 'solve' the case—right or wrong. Like Samuel Butler said, 'Justice, while she winks at crimes, stumbles on innocence sometimes.'"

  She made a disgusted sound. "Whose side you on, Cherrie Mae?"

  "I hope you right, Trixie. I really do. But let's wait and see what the police say. Worst thing we
all could do is relax when that killer's still out there."

  "Well, that's true." She sounded like a balloon with the air let out.

  "I'll write Laverlle a note and tell her your message, since I cut it off."

  "All right then. See you in a few hours."

  I put the phone in its cradle and leaned against the counter. Why did this have to happen today? As if my shoulders didn't have enough to bear, savin the town. Now I had to save an innocent man from death row too. Because it would take a mighty lot a evidence to convince me Stevie Ruckland was the Closet Killer. Poor man hardly had enough sense to come in out the rain. Mayor B done gave him a janitorial job when no one else would hire him. Couldn't prove it, but I bet sister Deena had been behind that. I could picture her cuttin Eva B's hair and talkin how Stevie needed a job—

  A new thought hit me. I sank into a kitchen chair. What if Mayor B made Stevie do some dirty work to throw the police off track?

  Without that job at Bradmeyer Plastics Stevie couldn't keep his trailer. I knew that boy was proud a livin on his own. What if Mayor B said he'd fire Stevie unless he went to Erika's house? Once inside Stevie'd surely leave his fingerprints. Mayor B could a come along later, wearin gloves, and killed Erika.

  But how could the mayor trust Stevie to keep quiet bout bein told to go over there, specially with the police leanin on him? And why would Erika open her door to Stevie Ruckland in the first place? As for the mayor sendin him over there after Erika was already dead—well, that was just too crazy to imagine. Stevie'd surely come unglued at a sight like that.

  I sighed and tipped my face to heaven. "Ben, you see Jesus round up there, tell Him I could use His help."

  My joints hurt. I pushed to my feet while I still could and went back to the front room to finish my work. Before packin up my step stool and supplies, I wrote Laverlle the note.

  At home on a Friday night I usually eat while watchin the news, then settle in to read a few hours. Not tonight. From the minute I hit my door I fretted and stewed, barely able to choke down some leftover barbecue chicken and green beans. Puttin my throbbin feet up in my chair didn't help neither. I tried to close my eyes and rest while I could. But my mind kept cookin up pictures a Stevie in jail, scared to death. While I sat here, knowin a key piece a information that I couldn't tell nobody bout yet cause I had no proof.