A Judgment of Whispers (16 page)

Twenty-Four

Mary Crow looked around
the small bedroom that served as Jack Wilkins's office and smiled. In the course of her career she'd visited a number of retired detectives. Every one of them had a bedroom or a den devoted to their glory days—pictures that traced their ascent from trim young patrol officers to paunchier plainclothesmen. Jack Wilkins was no different. His room was decorated with a number of photographs and commendations in one corner, including a shadowbox frame that displayed a gold star of a badge, seemingly from the days of Wild Bill Hickok.

“That's an interesting memento,” she commented as Wilkins brought two mugs of coffee from the kitchen. He carried them on a tray, with paper towels for napkins and a little plate of Oreo cookies.

“That was my granddad's.” He put the tray on the desk. “He was the sheriff of Fargo, North Dakota.”

Mary turned to the tall, lanky Wilkins. “Fargo, like in the movie?”

“Yeah. He predated the movie by nearly a century, but he was just as Swedish. Just as no-nonsense.”

“So if your family's from North Dakota, how did you wind up so far south?”

“Joined the army, got stationed at Fort Bragg. Liked the fact that North Carolina had four seasons instead of North Dakota's two.”

“When did you start working on the Pisgah County force?”

“1989. I worked up to detective in Fayetteville, then came here as a lateral hire.”

The year after Mama was killed
, thought Mary. He wouldn't have been on that case at all. She looked again at the framed star, bright against a black velvet background. “Well, I'm sure you've made your grandfather proud.”

“I've tried.” Jack stared at the badge for a moment, then turned to Mary. “So what do you want to know about Teresa Ewing?”

“Everything,” she replied. “Except what's in the paper.”

He laughed. “Defense lawyers usually thrive on the crap in the paper.”

She looked at him, serious. “Before I came here, I was a prosecutor in Atlanta. They used to call me Killer Crow. I won every capital case they assigned me.”

Jack frowned. “Then how did you wind up working the dark side of law?”

“I came back here for a prosecutor's job that mysteriously vanished the moment I walked into George Turpin's office. I'd spent a lot of money moving up here, so I figured I'd better practice some kind of law.”

“And you started defending criminals just to aggravate Turpin?”

She laughed. “Mostly I do wills, house closings, property disputes. Since I can't prosecute killers, I occasionally defend people I think are wrongly accused. Some are women, some are Cherokee. Almost always, they are poor.”

“Sounds like you've got some skin in the game.”

“My mother was Cherokee. And the victim of a homicide,” she said flatly. “So yeah, I guess I do have some history there.”

At that point Jack must have decided she was okay. He opened his files and spread them out, making little piles of paper across his desk, on his sofa, and finally on the floor. As the dog lay sleeping in the kitchen, they went through each pile, studying the crime scene photos, reading transcripts of the suspect interviews, going over the coroner's report. The sight of Sheriff Stump Logan's scrawl on some of the pages made Mary recoil inside, but she tried to put her hatred of Logan aside and regard his observations as those of just another law officer doing his job.

“There's an awful lot of confusion in this case,” Mary said as they read through the reports. “The coroner first said she'd been dead for three weeks. Then he said she'd died just hours before they found her under the tree. Then he reversed himself again.”

“I think the coroner was high on formaldehyde,” said Jack. “He resigned his office about six months after his last report. But he was only part of the crazy stuff swirling around this case. We had calls from Arizona, Florida. One man said he'd seen Teresa on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That was hard on her parents. All that hope, then nothing.”

“But when was she killed, exactly?”

“Ultimately, they decided she died the day she went missing.” Jack frowned. “You ever hear of a Cherokee guy named Two Toes McCoy?”

She laughed. “He was notorious when I was a girl. I haven't heard anything about him lately.”

“Then old age and his parole officer must have slowed him down some. Back in '89, when Two Toes wasn't in jail, he did odd jobs in Teresa's neighborhood. Yard work mostly—pulling up poison ivy, grubbing out ditches. All the kids knew him—if he was sober and in the right mood, he would tell them stories about that old tree.”

“
Undli Adaya,”
said Mary. “The tree that saved the tribe.”

“Yeah. Well, Two Toes had worked for Norah Ferguson that afternoon, cleaning out her gutters. I floated the theory that maybe Two Toes had abducted the child. Hid her on reservation land. Kept her, killed her, then brought her back.”

“Did he have an alibi?”

“Oh all his friends swore he was with them. You know how that goes.”

Mary shrugged. “Anybody else look good?”

“Arthur Hayes, a sophomore at Western, who's since died. Lived in a basement apartment at 912 Salola. The campus cops had busted him twice for peeping outside the girls' dorm, plus he had a couple of indecent exposure charges.”

“He sounds at least as good as Two Toes,” said Mary.

“He did. Plus he had a car and could easily have hidden a little body for a month. ”

“So what took him out of the running?”

“Nothing, really. Claimed he was studying at the library. We could neither confirm nor deny that. Nobody had security cameras back then.”

“So if you had two viable adult suspects, why did you guys come down so hard on these kids?”

“Honestly?”

She nodded.

“The newspaper ran with the kid angle. Somebody said they were playing strip poker, games that were getting way out of hand.”

“Was that true?” asked Mary.

He handed her one pile of interviews. “Not the day she died. All the kids said the boys asked the girls to play that last afternoon. Shannon Cooper and Janie Griffin refused immediately and went home, apparently in a huff. Everyone said that Teresa lingered behind and talked to the boys some more.”

“So she played strip poker?”

“No. The boys said Teresa went home. They stayed there looking at the deck of marked cards until Two Toes showed up and ran them off.”

“And my client confirmed this as well?”

“Mostly your client said, ‘I want to go home' over and over. We never got any good information out of Collier.”

“But how does he figure in the whole case?” she asked.

“We liked him because he was older—fifteen, as opposed to ten or twelve. A young buck where the others were still boys.”

“What do you mean?”

“I observed them take the DNA samples. Zack Collier had a man-sized penis and pubic hair. None of the others were that well developed.”

“But Teresa hadn't been raped.”

“That's not to say somebody didn't
try
to rape her.”

“And maybe got frustrated because they couldn't and smashed her head in?” Mary thought of all those holes Zack had put in the living room wall.

“Possibly,” Jack replied. “Or maybe she screamed, and so they hit her to make her be quiet. Collier had some kind of super-sensitive hearing.”

“Okay,” said Mary. “But any of the boys have done that. Ten- and twelve-year-olds can have erections.”

“True.” Wilkins walked over to the stack of papers that described the suspects. “But not many twelve-year-olds can lug seventy-eight pounds of dead weight and hide it someplace.”

“What from I've seen of Zack, he would have needed help too. He's not exactly a logical thinker.”

“But don't forget he weighed a hundred sixty-two pounds,” said Jack. “And he had parents who protected him. His father went on French leave a couple of years after this girl's death.”

Mary frowned. It was again hard to hear that the cops suspected Grace Collier of abetting her son in murder, but she knew that's what good cops did—looked at a crime from every possible angle.

“I wish I could see this scene, you know, like it was back then,” she finally said, looking at all the piles of paper spread out before them.

“Then let's go up there,” said Jack. “I've got to go to the post office anyway. Follow me and I'll show you exactly how things were on Salola Street that day.”

Twenty-Five

Adam was pushing the
big wheelbarrow out of the shed when his phone rang. Before he answered, he checked the number. A local area code, but not his parents. Wondering if Butch or Devin were cooking something up, he accepted the call. A breathless voice greeted him.

“Adam? This is Grace—Grace Collier.”

“Hi, Grace,” he answered. surprised. “What's up?”

“I'm so sorry to call you, but I've got an emergency. Zack's caregiver called, frantic. She says Zack found some dead animals in our front yard and he's having a bad meltdown. I can't leave my class right now—I was wondering if you could possibly go by Bell's Pharmacy and pick up a prescription for him? I know this is a huge favor to ask, and I'll be happy to pay you.”

“No need to pay me, Grace,” replied Adam, liking the way her name felt in his mouth. “I'm glad to help. Is Bell's Pharmacy still on Keener Avenue?”

“Yes. Downtown.”

“I'm on my way,” he said, rolling the wheelbarrow up against the shed.

“Bless you, Adam.” Her voice cracked. “I can't thank you enough.”

He told his parents he was going out and drove over to pick up Zack's prescription. “Holy shit,” he said, reading the label on the bottle. “This stuff would knock out an elephant.”
But maybe that's okay,
he decided.
Maybe if Zack passes out, I can find my old tapes. When he wakes up he'll never miss a dozen out of the hundred he's got in that box.

Half an hour later, he pulled up at Zack's house, parking beside a yellow Volkswagen that sported a faded Obama sticker on the rear bumper. He went to the back door, just as he'd done the night before. He was lifting his hand to knock when a young, dark-haired woman cracked it open.

“Are you Adam?” she whispered. He could only see a sliver of her face, a smear of pink lipstick at the corner of her mouth.

Nodding, he held up the little sack from the pharmacy. “I've got Zack's medicine.”

“Thank God.” She unchained the door and opened it wide. “Come in. He's in the living room.”

Adam stepped past her. “What's this with dead animals?”

“They're all over the front yard. Zack found them when he went to fill the bird feeders.” She rubbed her arms. “Then he just went nuts.”

“I'll go talk to him,” said Adam. “I've known him a long time.”

He went into the living room. It looked as if a small tornado had vented its fury within the walls. End tables were overturned and paintings hung crooked on the wall. Zack paced in front of the window, mumbling to himself in a constant, low tone. He kept shaking his head, as if trying to erase the memory of the dead animals. His heavy footsteps thudded as he stomped up and down the room. Adam stared, slack-jawed. He'd never seen him like this before.

“Hey, buddy,” he called softly. “What's going on?”

Zack turned. His eyes were flat black orbs. Tears streamed down his face. “They're dead! They're all dead!”

“Who's dead?” Adam asked, keeping his distance from this hulk of a man. Zack was a half a head taller and probably had seventy pounds on him.

“The animals.”

“What animals?”

Zack pointed to the window. “Out there!”

Adam grew curious. “Can I go have a look?”

Zack did not reply. He just gave a long sniff and continued his pacing.

Adam crossed the room, stepping over a shattered lamp and one of Grace's oil paintings, torn from its frame. He let himself out the front door and scanned the yard, looking for the animals Zack was talking about. At first he saw nothing but Grace's flowers, a riot of purples and yellows. Then, as he stepped off the porch and walked toward the bird feeder, he found them. Positioned like the numerals on a clock, were a dozen little carcasses. Squirrels, mostly, with a couple of rabbits and some mangled thing that might have once been an opossum. All were laid on their backs, their fur stained red with blood. Though the opossum thing looked like roadkill, all the rest had bullet holes, either in their chests or their heads. No wonder Zack had gone crazy. This was sick. Butch and Devin came immediately to mind.

He heard the door open behind him. He turned to see Zack coming down the porch steps, hiccupping with sobs.

“See?” he said, triumphant. “I told you so.”

“I know, buddy,” said Adam. “Somebody did a real bad thing here.”

“But why?” asked Zack, his forty-two-year-old chin quivering. “The squirrels didn't do anything wrong.”

“I know. Some people are sick jerks.” Again, Adam thought of Devin and the rifle leaning in the corner of his office. He'd said he wanted Zack to take the fall. Maybe this was part of his plan—scare Zack bad enough to confess to anything. He stepped in front of the animals, trying to hide them from Zack's view. “I brought some medicine for you. How about you go take it and I'll bury these little guys.”

Zack shook his head. “I want to help.”

“Take your pills first,” he said, trying to speak with Grace's tone of authority. “Then you can help.”

Zack stared at him darkly for a moment, but then said, “Okay.”

Adam waited until Zack went inside to take his medicine, then he walked over to the garbage. There he found two pairs of work gloves and a shovel. He grabbed some newspapers from their recycle bin and returned to the front yard. Zack was waiting for him.

“Take your pills?” asked Adam.

He nodded. “Clara gave me two.”

“Good.” Adam handed Zack the newspaper. “Let's wrap these guys up. Then we'll dig a little grave for them in the back.”

“Can we have a funeral?” the big boy-man asked.

“Sure,” Adam said, wondering if Zack had gone totally off the rails. “If that's what you want.”

Somehow, Grace managed to start her next class. She set up an uncomplicated scene of peaches spilling from a fruit crate on a blue checked tablecloth. Her older students could have fun with the old-fashioned label on the crate and the folds in the material. But even the rookie painters would see the vivid relationship between the orange of the peaches and the blue of the fabric. It wasn't the tableau she'd planned, but neither had she expected Zack to find a bunch of dead animals in their front yard.

Again she worked her way around her students, trying to concentrate on her teaching. Just when she thought she might scream from the not knowing, her phone vibrated with a new message.
Everything's okay,
wrote Clara
.
Zack and Adam are having a funeral.
The notion of a funeral shocked her, then she remembered how distressed Zack got over the smallest animal's passing. A funeral might help him deal with this, she decided. Adam had probably suggested it.

Silently, she offered a prayer of thanks for Adam Shaw. He'd saved the day yet again, maybe even saved her job in the process. As far as she was concerned, whatever duty he felt he'd shirked when Teresa died, he'd made up for many times over.

Keeping an eye out for Alice Richards, she taught her class, correcting drawings and offering suggestions on color and composition. When the students began to clean their brushes, she felt a weight lift.
Now
, she thought as they packed up their supplies,
if I can just get out of here with my job and my sanity.

When the last student left, she gathered up her things and turned off the lights. She half expected Alice to be waiting for her in the hall, termination papers in hand, but she saw only students, ambling to and from classes, hooked up to their smartphones. As she walked toward the faculty parking lot, she passed two girls who pointed and started whispering, but she ignored them. Stares and whispers did not bother her; she'd gotten used to them years ago.

A half hour later, she rolled up in her own driveway. To her surprise, Clara's yellow Bug was gone, replaced by Adam's white Toyota. A new panic gripped her. Where was Clara? Had she quit? That would just be the horribly perfect end to a wretchedly imperfect day.

She pulled into the garage and hurried into the kitchen. The house was silent. She went down the hall to Zack's bedroom. The door stood open; she peeked inside and saw a tangle of sheets, but no Zack. Returning to the kitchen, she glanced in the living room. Someone had made an attempt to straighten up the wreck Zack had made—the furniture was mostly in place and only a couple of paintings were beyond re-hanging on the wall. But everything was just so silent. Zack liked things quiet, but not tomb-quiet like this. She wondered if they were even there. Had they all gone somewhere in Clara's car?

Running to the den, she searched the last room in the house. There, she found the reason for the strange silence. Zack lay asleep on the couch, his mouth gaping open. Adam sat at the television, headphones on, watching an old videotape.

“Hey!” she said softly, switching the overhead light on and off. “I'm home!”

Zack didn't move, but Adam leaped to his feet, startled and looking somehow guilty.

“I'm sorry,” said Grace. “I didn't mean to scare you!”

“It's okay.” He gave a nervous laugh, his face pale. “I didn't hear you come in.” Quickly, he turned off the VCR. “Zack fell asleep, so I decided to watch some tapes.” He looked at the box overflowing with old cassettes. “I'm trying to catalog them for him.”

“Where's Clara?” asked Grace.

“I told her she could go home,” Adam said. “She was pretty upset.”

“Did she say she'd be coming back tomorrow?” Grace imagined the girl calling DSS, asking her supervisor for another case.
Please ma'am, I'd like a client who hasn't been accused of murder and doesn't try to tear the house apart.

He nodded. “She said she would.”

“Thank God.” Grace slumped against the door, knees wobbly with relief. “I don't know what I'd do if she quit.” She looked at Zack, sprawled on the couch, now beginning to snore. His meds, thank God, were working.

“He had a pretty rough day too,” Adam reminded her.

“I guess we all have.” She turned her gaze from Zack to Adam. “Would like a drink? God knows you've earned it.”

He gave his funny, one shoulder shrug. “I've got time for one.”

They went into the kitchen, and Adam opened one of his beers from the night before while Grace uncorked a bottle of Cabernet. She found a can of cashew nuts in the cupboard and poured them into a bowl. As they sat at the kitchen table, she broached the subject she hadn't even wanted to think about. “Tell me about the animals.”

He pulled out his cell phone, pushed it across the table. “Have a look.”

She looked at the picture he'd taken. A circle of little creatures, arranged around the bird feeder like the monoliths of Stonehenge. Sacrificed to some god she couldn't imagine. As she handed his phone back, her eyes welled up.

“Zack and I buried them in the back yard,” said Adam. “He wanted to have a funeral.”

“Zack wanted to have a funeral?”

He nodded. “He recited something. It sounded like Cherokee.”

“The Twenty-third Psalm,” said Grace. “My mother taught him that before she died. It's the only Bible verse he knows.” Sighing, she rubbed the nape of her neck. “I think we may be in for a bad stretch here.”

“How so?”

“You've been here what—two days? Already we've had a bullying detective, a pushy reporter, a sneaky photographer, and now some creep dumping dead animals in the front yard.”

He took a swallow of beer. “Bully, Pushy, Sneaky, and Creepy. Sounds like four of seven evil dwarves.”

“I imagine we'll have more than seven before it's all over. As long as little Teresa keeps selling papers, Zack and I are fair game for every nutcase in the county.”

“And the police don't help?”

“I call them, but we aren't exactly high priority.”

He frowned at his beer, then said, “Do you have a smartphone?”

She nodded. “Two months ago I got the latest model from Cupertino. It makes calls and takes great pictures. That's about as far as I've gotten with it.”

“Let me see it. I might be able to rig something up for you.”

She handed him her phone, told him her password. As she sipped her wine, she watched his slender fingers fly over the touchscreen, with an expertise that would always elude her. She was old-school, growing up with rotary phones and black-and-white TV sets that only showed three channels.

“You call Mary Crow a lot?” he asked.

“I have lately.”

“And Bell's Pharmacy?”

“Them too. Why? How do you know?”

“I'm looking through your recent calls.”

He continued his clicking while she poured herself another glass of wine. When she'd drained half of that, he gave her phone back. “Punch that little button there,” he told her.

She did. All the numbers she called regularly appeared—Clara, the drugstore, Mary Crow, and the Pisgah County Police. “What did you do?” she cried.

“I made you a favorite list,” he explained. “So you can call these people faster.”

“Cool!” she cried. “I never knew you could do that. Thanks!”

He drained his beer. “I guess I'd better get going and see what my parents have added to my to-do list.”

“Listen, I can't thank you enough for all your help,” Grace said. “If it hadn't been for you, I would probably have lost my job.”

“No thanks necessary,” he said. “Do you teach again tomorrow?”

“No, not till Friday.”

“Then I might go see Devin McConnell. I've got an idea he may have had something to do with these animals.”

“Oh leave him alone, Adam. He's a scary guy. He and Butch both.”

“Devin doesn't bother me,” he said, his tone bitter. “Neither does Butch. A thousand things scare me more than those two guys.”