She said, 'Hey.'
Cole's eyes flashed to Jeffrey, then back to Lena. 'Hey.'
She reached into her back pocket, took out her notebook and slapped it on the table. 'I'm Detective Lena Adams. This is Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. Could you give us your full name?'
'Cletus Lester Connolly, ma'am.' There was a pen and a few pieces of paper in front of him alongside a well-worn Bible. Connolly straightened the papers as Jeffrey leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was at least sixty-five if he was a day, but Connolly was still a fastidious man, his white T-shirt crisp and clean, sharp creases ironed into his jeans. His time in the fields had kept his body trim, his chest well-developed, his biceps bulging from his sleeves. Wiry white hair jutted up all over his body, sticking out from the collar of his T-shirt, sprouting from his ears, carpeting his arms. He was pretty much covered in it on every place but for his bald head.
Lena asked, 'Why do they call you Cole?'
'That was my father's name,' he explained, his eyes wandering back to Jeffrey. 'Got tired of being beat up for being named Cletus. Lester's not much better, so I took my daddy's name when I was fifteen.'
Jeffrey thought that at the very least this explained why the man hadn't come up on any computer checks. There was no doubt that he had been in the system for a while, though. He had that alertness about him that came from being in prison. He was always on guard, always looking for his escape.
'What happened to your hand?' Lena asked, and Jeffrey noticed that there was a thin, one-inch cut on the back of Connolly's right index finger. It wasn't anything significant – certainly not a fingernail scratch or defensive wound. It looked more like the kind of injury that happened when you were working with your hands and stopped paying attention for a split second.
'Working in the fields,' Connolly admitted, looking at the cut. 'Guess I should put a Band-Aid on it.'
Lena asked, 'How long were you in the service?'
He seemed surprised, but she indicated the tattoo on his arm. Jeffrey recognized it as a military insignia, but he wasn't sure which branch. He also recognized the crude tattoo below it as of the prison variety. At some point, Connolly had pricked his skin with a needle, using the ink from a ballpoint pen to stain the words 'Jesus Saves' indelibly into his flesh.
'I was in twelve years before they kicked me out,' Connolly answered. Then, as if he knew where this was going, he added, 'They told me I could either go into treatment or get booted.' He smacked his palms together, a plane leaving the ground. 'Dishonorable discharge.'
'That must've been hard.'
'Sure was,' he agreed, placing his hand on the Bible. Jeffrey doubted this meant the man was going to tell the truth, but it painted a pretty picture. Cole obviously knew how to answer a question without giving away too much. He was a textbook study in evasion, maintaining eye contact, keeping his shoulders back and adding in a non sequitur to the equation. 'But not as hard as living life on the outside.'
Lena gave him a little rope. 'How's that?'
He kept his hand on the Bible as he explained, 'I got banged up for boosting a car when I was seventeen. Judge told me I could go into the army or go to jail. I went right from my mama's tit to Uncle Sam's, excuse the language.' He had a sparkle in his eye as he said this. It took a few minutes for a man to let down his guard with Lena, then he started to treat her as one of the boys. Right before their eyes, Cole Connolly had turned into a helpful old man, eager to answer their questions – at least the ones he deemed safe.
Connolly continued, 'I didn't know how to fend for myself in the real world. Once I got out, I met up with some buddies who thought it'd be easy to rip off the local convenience store.'
Jeffrey wished he had a dollar for every man on death row who had gotten his start robbing convenience stores.
'One of 'em ratted us out before we got there – cut a deal for a reduction on a drug charge. I was cuffed before I even walked through the front door.' Connolly laughed, a sparkle in his eyes. If he regretted being ratted out, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of bitterness left in him. 'Prison was great, just like being in the army. Three squares a day, people telling me when to eat, when to sleep, when to take a crap. Got so when parole came around, I didn't want to leave it.'
'You served your full term?'
'That's right,' he said, his chest puffing out. 'Ticked off the judge with my attitude. Had me quite a temper once I was inside and the guards didn't like that, either.'
'I don't imagine they did.'
'Had my fair share of those,' he indicated Jeffrey's bruised eye, probably more to let him know he was aware that the other man was in the room.
'You fight a lot inside?'
'About as much as you'd expect,' he admitted. He was watching Lena carefully, sizing her up. Jeffrey knew she was aware of this, just like he knew that Cole Connolly was going to be a very difficult interview.
'So,' she said, 'you found Jesus inside? Funny how he hangs around prisons like that.'
Connolly visibly struggled with her words, his fists clenching, his upper body tightening into a solid brick wall. Her tone had been just right, and Jeffrey got a fleeting glimpse of the man from the field, the man who didn't tolerate weakness.
Lena pressed a little more gently. 'Jail gives a man a lot of time to think about himself.'
Connolly gave a tight nod, coiled like a snake ready to strike. For her part, Lena was still casually laid back in the chair, her arm hanging over the back. Jeffrey saw under the table that she had moved her other hand closer to her weapon, and he knew that she had sensed the danger as well as he had.
She kept her tone light, though, trying some of Connolly's own rhetoric. 'Being in prison is a trying time for a man. It can either make you strong or make you weak.'
'True enough.'
'Some men succumb to it. There's a lot of drugs inside.'
'Yes, ma'am. Easier to get 'em there than it is on the outside.'
'Lots of time to sit around getting stoned.'
His jaw was still tight. Jeffrey wondered if she had pushed him too far, but knew better than to interfere.
'I did my share of drugs.' Connolly spoke in a clipped tone. 'I've never denied it. Evil things. They get inside you, make you do things you shouldn't. You have to be strong to fight it.' He looked up at Lena, his passion replacing his anger as quickly as oil displaces water. 'I was a weak man, but I saw the light. I prayed to the Lord for salvation and He reached down and held out His hand.' He held up his own hand as if in illustration. 'I took it and I said, "Yes, Lord. Help me rise up. Help me be born again."'
'That's quite a transformation,' she pointed out. 'What made you decide to change your ways?'
'My last year there, Thomas started making the rounds. He is the Lord's conduit. Working through him, the Lord showed me a better way.'
Lena clarified, 'This is Lev's father?'
'He was part of the prison outreach program,' Connolly explained. 'Us old cons, we liked to keep things quiet. You go to church, you attend the Bible meetings, you're less likely to find yourself in a position where your temper might be sparked by some young gun looking to make a name for himself.' He laughed at the situation, returning to the genial old man he had been before his outburst. 'Never thought I'd end up being one of those Bible-toters myself. There are folks who are either for Jesus or against him, and I took against him. The wages of my sin would have surely been a horrible, lonely death.'
'But then you met Thomas Ward?'
'He's been sick lately, had a stroke, but then he was like a lion, God bless him. Thomas saved my soul. Gave me a place to go to when I got out of prison.'
'Gave you three squares a day?' Lena suggested, referring to Connolly's earlier statement about the military and then prison taking care of him.
'Ha!' the old man laughed, slapping his hand on the table, amused at the connection. The papers had ruffled and he smoothed them back down, making the edges neat. 'I guess that's as good a way of
putting it as any. I'm still an old soldier at heart, but now I'm a soldier for the Lord.'
Lena asked, 'You notice anything suspicious around the farm lately?'
'Not really.'
'No one acting strange?'
'I don't mean to be flip,' he cautioned, 'but you gotta think about the sort of people we've got in and out of that place. They're all a little strange. They wouldn't be there if they weren't.'
'Point taken,' she allowed. 'I mean to say, any of them acting suspicious? Like they might be involved in something bad?'
'They've all been in something bad, and some of them are still in it at the farm.'
'Meaning?'
'They're sitting in a shelter up in Atlanta feeling all sorry for themselves, looking for a change of scenery, thinking that'll be the final thing that makes them change.'
'But it's not?'
'For some of them it is,' Connolly admitted, 'but for a lot more of them, they get down here and realize that the thing that got them into the drugs and the alcohol and the bad ways is the thing that keeps them there.' He didn't wait for Lena to prompt him. 'Weakness, young lady. Weakness of soul, weakness of spirit. We do what we can to help them, but they first have to be strong enough to help themselves.'
Lena said, 'We were told that some petty cash was stolen.'
'That'd be several months back,' he confirmed. 'We never caught who did it.'
'Any suspects?'
'Around two hundred,' he laughed, and Jeffrey assumed that working with a bunch of alcoholics and junkies didn't exactly foster a lot of trust in the workplace.
Lena asked, 'No one more interested in Abby than they should be?'
'She was a real pretty girl,' he said. 'Lots of the boys looked at her, but I made it clear she was off-limits.'
'Anyone in particular you had to tell this to?'
'Not that I can recall.' Jail habits were hard to break, and Connolly had the con's inability to give a yes or no answer.
Lena asked, 'You didn't notice her hanging around anybody? Maybe spending time with someone she shouldn't?'
He shook his head. 'Believe you me, I have been racking my brain since this happened, trying to think of anybody who might mean that sweet little girl some harm. I can't think of nobody, and this is going back some years.'
'She drove a lot by herself,' Lena recalled.
'I taught her to drive Mary's old Buick when she was fifteen years old.'
'You were close?'
'Abigail was like my own granddaughter.' He blinked to clear his tears. 'You get to be my age, you think nothing can shock you. Lots of your friends start getting sick. Threw me for a loop when Thomas had his stroke last year. I was the one what found him. I can tell you it came as a hard reckoning seeing that man humbled.' He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Jeffrey could see Lena nodding, like she understood.
Connolly continued, 'But, Thomas was an old man. You can't expect it to happen, but you can't be surprised, either. Abby was just a good little girl, missy. Just a good little girl. Had her whole life ahead of her. Ain't nobody deserves to die that way, but her especially.'
'From what we've gathered, she was a remarkable young woman.'
'That's the truth,' he agreed. 'She was an angel. Pure and sweet as the driven snow. I would've laid down my life for her.'
'Do you know a young man named Chip Donner?'
Again, Connolly seemed to think about it. 'I don't recall. We get a lot in and out. Some of them stay a week, some a day. The lucky ones stay a lifetime.' He scratched his chin. 'That last name sounds familiar, though I don't know why.'
'How about Patty O'Ryan?'
'Nope.'
'I guess you know Rebecca Bennett.'
'Becca?' he asked. 'Of course I do.'
'She's been missing since last night.'
Connolly nodded; obviously this wasn't news. 'She's a strong-headed one, that child. Runs off, gives her mama a scare, comes back and it's all love and happiness.'
'We know she's run away before.'
'At least she had the decency to leave word this time.'
'Do you know where she might have gone?'
He shrugged. 'Usually camps in the woods. I used to take the kids out when I was younger. Show 'em how to get by using the tools God gave us. Teaches them a respect for His kindness.'
'Is there any particular spot you used to take them?'
He nodded as she spoke, anticipating the question. 'I was out there first thing this morning. Campsite hasn't been used in years. I've got no idea where that girl might've gone off to.' He added, 'Wish I did – I'd take a switch to her bottom for doing this to her mother right now.'
Marla knocked on the door, opening it at the same time. 'Sorry to bother you, Chief,' she said, handing Jeffrey a folded piece of paper.
Jeffrey took it as Lena asked Connolly, 'How long have you been with the church?'
'Going on twenty-one years,' he answered. 'I was there when Thomas inherited the land from his father. Looked like a wilderness to me, but Moses started out with a wilderness, too.'
Jeffrey kept studying the man, trying to see if there was a tell to his act. Most people had a bad habit that came out when they were lying. Some people scratched their noses, some fidgeted. Connolly was completely still, eyes straight ahead. He was either a born liar or an honest man. Jeffrey wasn't about to lay down bets on either.
Connolly continued the story of the birth of Holy Grown. 'We had about twenty folks with us at the time. Of course, Thomas's children were pretty young then, not much help, especially Paul. He was always the lazy one. Wanted to sit back while everybody else did the work so he could reap the rewards. Just like a lawyer.' Lena nodded. 'We started out with a hundred acres of soy. Never used any chemicals or pesticides. People thought we were crazy, but now this organic thing's all the rage. Our time has really come. I just wish Thomas was able to recognize it. He was our Moses, literally our Moses. He led us out of slavery –slavery to drugs, to alcohol, to the wanton ways. He was our savior.'
Lena cut off the sermon. 'He's still not well?'
Connolly turned more solemn. 'The Lord will take care of him.'
Jeffrey opened Maria's note, glancing at it, then doing a double take. He suppressed a curse, asking Connolly, 'Is there anything else you can add?'
He seemed surprised by Jeffrey's abruptness. 'Not that I can think of.'
Jeffrey didn't need to motion Lena. She stood, and Connolly followed her. Jeffrey told him, 'I'd like to follow up with you tomorrow if that's possible. Say in the morning?'
Connolly looked trapped for a second, but recovered. 'Not a problem,' he said, his smile so forced Jeffrey thought his teeth might break. 'Abby's service is tomorrow. Maybe after that?'
'We should be talking to Lev first thing in the morning,' Jeffrey told him, hoping this information would get back to Lev Ward. 'Why don't you come in with him?'
'We'll see,' Connolly said, not committing to anything.
Jeffrey opened the door. 'I appreciate you coming in and bringing everybody.'
Connolly was still confused, and seemed more than a little nervous about the note in Jeffrey's hand, as if he very much wanted to know what it said. Jeffrey couldn't tell if this was habitual thinking from his criminal days or just natural curiosity.
Jeffrey said, 'You can go ahead and take back everybody else. I'm sure there's work to do. We don't want to waste any more of your time.'
'No problem,' Connolly repeated, jutting out his hand. 'Let me know if there's anything else you need.'
'Appreciate it,' Jeffrey said, feeling the bones in his hand crunch as Connolly shook it. 'I'll see you in the morning with Lev.'
Connolly got the threat behind his words. He had dropped the helpful old man act. 'Right.'
Lena started to follow him out, but Jeffrey held her back. He showed her the note Maria had given him, making sure Connolly couldn't see the secretary's neat, grade-school-teacher's cursive: 'Call from 25 Cromwell Road. Landlady repo
rts "suspicious smell."'
They had found Chip Donner.
Twenty-five Cromwell Road was a nice home for a well-to-do family living back in the thirties. Over the years, the large front parlors had been divided into rooms, the upper floors sectioned up for renters who didn't mind sharing the one bathroom in the house. There were not many places an ex-con could go to when he got out of prison. If he was on parole, he had a finite amount of time to establish residency and get a job in order to keep his parole officer from throwing him back inside. The fifty bucks the state gave him on the way out the door didn't stretch that far, and houses like the one on Cromwell catered to this particular need.
If anything, Jeffrey figured this case was opening up his olfactory sense to all different kinds of new experiences. The Cromwell house smelled like sweat and fried chicken, with a disturbing undertone of rotting meat courtesy of the room at the top of the stairs.
The landlady greeted him at the door with a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. She was a large woman with ample folds of skin hanging down from her arms. Jeffrey tried not to watch them sway back and forth as she talked.
'We never had no trouble from him at all,' she assured Jeffrey as she led him into the house. Deep green carpet on the floor had once been a nice shag but was now flattened down from years of wear and what looked like motor oil. The walls probably hadn't been painted since Nixon was in the White House and there were black scuff marks on every baseboard and corner. The woodwork had been stunning at one time, but several coats of paint obscured the carvings on the molding. Incongruously, a beautiful cut-glass chandelier that was probably original to the house hung in the entranceway.
'Did you hear anything last night?' Jeffrey asked, trying to breathe through his mouth without looking like a panting dog.
'Not a peep,' she said, then added, 'Except for the TV Mr Harris keeps on next door to Chip.' She indicated the stairs. 'He's gone deaf over the last few years, but he's been here longer than any of them. I always tell new boys if they can't take the noise, then find somewhere else.'
A Grant County Collection: Indelible, Faithless and Skin Privilege Page 61