A Judgment of Whispers (10 page)

Mary watched the man who'd saved the day, now laughing with Zack. “He's one of the old neighborhood kids, isn't he?”

Grace nodded. “His parents sent him away after they found Teresa. I don't think he's set foot in this county since. I was flabbergasted when he walked in.”

“Zack seems pretty glad to see him.”

“Zack adored Adam. Devin and Butch could be mean to him, but never Adam.”

“Well, like you said, thank God for Adam,” said Mary.

Grace pulled her car keys from her purse. “I'd better get Zack home. I can't thank you enough for this, Mary. If you hadn't been here, I know Whaley would have put Zack in jail.”

“I was glad to help, Grace. I'll call you when they get the results of this test.”

“How long do you think it will it take?”

“It's hard to say. Newer, more solvable cases take precedence.”

Grace gave a little shudder. “That's what I was afraid of.”

“I know it's hard to wait,” said Mary. “Unfortunately, that's just the way the system works.”

“It's not the system I'm afraid of,” Grace replied. “It's all the
people out there who still think Zack killed that little girl.”

Thirteen

Adam Shaw watched as
Grace Collier's battered SUV drove pulled out of the parking lot, Zack waving wildly from the passenger seat. “Bye, Adam!” he yelled so loudly that a couple of people turned to look. “I'll call you!”

“Okay,” Adam called softly, saluting Zack with one hand.

So that's Zack
, he thought as the Dodge disappeared in traffic.
Fifty pounds heavier, but not a day older inside his head. What must that be like
? he wondered. To have your mother drive you everywhere, to still get caught up in cartoons. It was bizarre, yet there was an innocence about Zack that touched him. As ardently as his mother had hugged him, Zack's embrace had somehow been more freely given. The big boy/man had been truly glad to see him.

“Wow,” Adam whispered. “All these years, and for him, nothing's changed.”

After that, he headed back inside, looking for Detective Whaley. He found him, still in the lab, trying to staunch his bloody nose with a wad of cotton.

“What do you want?” asked Whaley, his voice both muffled and nasal.

“I figure you guys are going to want a statement, so I'd like to give it now. I'm helping my folks move and may not be in town much longer.”

Whaley looked at him as if he were joking, but then decided he must be serious. Adam followed him to an interview room and sat down to yet again tell what happened that afternoon, to the best of his recollection. They'd played, then Devin brought out a deck of marked cards that he'd stolen from his brother. They'd tried to get the girls to play Bottom Up, but they'd gotten mad and gone home. Soon everybody went home.

“This doesn't shed any new light on things,” Whaley grumbled when he'd finished.

“I have no new light to shed, detective.”

“Okay.” Whaley shrugged. “We'll be in touch if we need to talk again.”

After that, Adam left, threading his way through the crowded Justice Center parking lot. He'd parked at the end of one row, where a man was leaning against his mother's Toyota, writing something on a long pad.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You can't give me a ticket! I'm here on police business!”

The guy looked up but kept on writing. Adam ran toward his car, angry. As he neared the guy, he saw that he wasn't a cop at all—just some dude wearing blue trousers and a light blue shirt. Still, he had his foot planted on the back bumper of his rental, making notes about something.

“What's the problem?” Adam asked the man. He looked to be in his late twenties, with sandy hair and glasses.

“No problem.” He looked up from his writing. “Are you Adam Shaw?”

“I am.”

“Then you're the guy I've been waiting for.”

“Waiting for? Why?”

He pulled an ID from his shirt pocket. “John Cooksey,
Hartsville Herald
.”

Adam stepped back, feeling like an idiot. He should have seen this coming. The
Hartsville Herald
was always hungry for news about Teresa Ewing.

“I've got nothing to say.”

“Really? Don't you want to give your side of the story? You're the only one who ran way.”

“No comment.” He brushed past the guy, key fob in hand.

“You sure? You might come off as less of a coward if you, like, said something.”

He unlocked the car, angry but also mindful of his father's sternest maxim.
Say nothing. Not to anyone. Not the cops, not the press, not to anybody.
Ever.
He got in the car and lowered the window. “Here's my comment,” he said.

The guy moved closer, ready to write. “What?”

“Get the fuck out of my face, asswipe.”

The reporter looked surprised. Hurt, even. “Seriously? That's it?”

“You got it.”

“Okay, Shaw. Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Adam put the car in reverse and backed up so fast that Cooksey had to jump to keep from getting run over. He tore out of the parking lot angry, wondering if everybody did think he was a coward. Maybe it was time to go visit his old pals and find out. Turning left, he headed back toward town. All he had to do was cross his back yard to see Butch Russell, but Devin McConnell was a little different. He remembered his mother saying that Devin had taken over his dad's used car lot. He drove past their old school, farther past a new crop of fast-food places, then he saw it—Tote-A-Note Used Cars. The same manic-looking leprechaun was perched on the roof, the same shamrock-green balloons bobbed in the air. Adam had to smile. Once they were watching TV on Saturday morning, and Big Jim McConnell had come on in a car commercial, wearing a little green hat and pummeling car price tags with a huge plastic shillelagh. Mortified, Devin had immediately re-named his father's business Tote-A-Turd, and called his father the biggest shit of all.

He turned in, parking in an empty space marked
Customers Only
. Toyota Corollas, Subaru Foresters, a couple of old Saturns were lined up in front of small office, where other cars were parked behind a tall chain-link fence. Though the cars out front were clean, he could tell by the rusty wheels and clouded headlights that their best miles were behind them. They reminded him of dogs at the pound, tails wagging hopefully at everyone who passed their cage.
Pick me!
he imagined the Saturn saying.
I'm loyal. Reliable. I've got another hundred thousand miles if you'll just keep my oil changed!

As he got out of his car, a fresh pang of guilt struck him. He'd
had a good life, a privileged life. He would never be stuck in Harts
ville, selling junkers from a building with a dwarf on top. He hesitated a moment, wondering if Dev might punch him if he went inside. Certainly he had reason to. Then he thought,
so what?
If taking a punch would clear the slate, then he would walk out with a black eye. After all this time, it seemed a small price to pay. And besides, they could hardly call him a coward if he took a hit like that.

He took a deep breath and headed for the office. He pushed open the door and stepped inside a dark, paneled interior that smelled of cigarettes and disinfectant. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that the same desk took up the same space, except that instead of Big Jim McConnell, Devin McConnell was sitting there, poring over some kind of notebook with a white-haired guy. The two were nursing liters of Foster's Lager, and Devin looked as Adam had imagined him—bulked up with muscle, ink-black hair falling onto his forehead, one green eye wandering while its partner stayed straight.

“I'm sorry, buddy.” Devin stood up, swallowing a burp as he shifted into salesman mode. “I didn't hear you drive up. What can I help you with?”

“Dev?” He took a step forward. “It's me. Adam—Adam Shaw.”

For a moment, Dev looked at him as if he didn't remember who he was. Then, as his errant eye briefly converged with his good one, the corners of his mouth drew down. “Well, I'll be damned. Chicken Little Shit has returned.”

The white-haired man looked up over his shoulder. This time Adam was the one who stared. It was Butch Russell. His red hair had gone white and a tonsure of pink scalp was beginning on the top of his head. His boyhood chubbiness had become an adult-sized paunch and the inside of his forearm was tattooed with an array of religious symbols—an ankh, a cross, a Star of David.

Butch squinted at him. “I saw you at your house yesterday.”

“I'm helping my folks move. And giving a DNA sample.”

“You do that at the police station, Adam,” said Devin. “Not here.”

He looked at them and realized that they hated him too much to even bother with a punch. Better that he just say what he had to say and leave. “Look, I don't know what you've heard, or what my parents have put out there. But leaving wasn't my call. I woke up one morning and got in the car to go to school. Instead, my father drove me to the airport. ‘You're getting a new life,' he told me. ‘Don't fuck it up.'”

He paused, and took another deep breath. “So I just wanted to come by and say—I don't know—say I'm sorry, I guess. I know you hate me and I don't blame you. But I did want you to know that I would have stayed if they'd let me.”

Both men looked at him with hard faces. There was no more he could say, no greater apology he could make. He turned to go. He was halfway to the door when Devin spoke.

“You know what my parents made me do?”

Adam turned, shook his head.

“They put me in house arrest. Until I turned seventeen, I only went to school and church. No baseball. No car. No girls. Nothing but my shitty brothers and mass at St. Boniface.”

“What happened when you were seventeen?” asked Adam.

“I ran the fuck away. Forged some signatures, joined the army.”

“Wow,” Adam said, impressed.

Devin rubbed the back of his neck. “I fought in the Gulf War. Got married, got divorced. Then my dad died and left me this lot. I guess he felt bad about treating me like a damn criminal for all those years.”

“Do your brothers still live here?” Adam's memory of Dev's house was of many children, squirming around the floor, ubiquitous as dust bunnies.

“Hell, no,” he said. “They took so much heat for being related to me that they all moved to Florida. Took my mother with them, thank God.”

Adam ventured a few steps closer, turned to Butch. “How about you?”

He checked his watch, which covered the lower half of his ankh tattoo. “Until forty-seven minutes ago, I was a security guard at the college. My boss called me in this morning. I thought it was my annual review. Instead, he told me they were letting me go.”

“That sucks,” said Adam. “Did they give you a reason?”

“Said it didn't look good to have a murder suspect working campus security.” Butch held up the newspaper. “We all made the front page.
Case reopened, killer never caught, all suspects to give new DNA.
”

“I saw a reporter at the police station this morning,” said Adam. “I told him no comment. Then I almost ran over him.”

“Too bad you missed.” Dev slowly crushed a beer can. “You know, it's always the same for us. We think it's over, people have finally forgotten. Then every couple of years, it all comes back, like a case of the clap. Cars take root on this lot, Butch loses another job, and for what? Nothing! I've got two little girls—one's in the seventh grade, same as we were back then. What's she going to think when nobody will hang out with her because they think her daddy's a murderer?”

Adam had no children—had no interest in children. He turned to Butch. “You have kids?”

“No,” said Butch. “You?”

Adam shook his head. “Never been married. Never had kids.”

“Too busy living the good life, huh?” Dev's tone was bitter.

Adam remained silent. He could not deny it. He was living a good life, or at least a much better life than these guys. He felt sorry for them, but he wouldn't for one second trade his life for either of theirs.

“So who all was down there this morning?” asked Butch.

“Whale-Ass. Zack and his mother and their attorney.”

Dev sat up straighter. “Zack's got an attorney?”

“A woman,” Adam replied. “Whaley started ragging Zack. He freaked out and pushed her right into Whaley's face. Gave him a nosebleed.”

Butch giggled. “I bet Whaley went nuts.”

“He went for his Taser but didn't pull it,” said Adam. “I think having that lawyer there scared him. She must be good.”

“What was Zack like?” asked Devin.

Adam frowned. “Don't you ever see him?”

“Not if I can help it,” Devin replied.

“He's a head taller, fifty pounds heavier. Otherwise, he's still about twelve.”

“God, he must be a monster,” Butch said. “Did he have his Barbie dolls with him?”

“Not that I saw.” Suddenly Adam felt protective of Zack. He'd been genuinely happy to see him—the Teresa Ewing mess had not altered his affection.

Dev cracked open another beer. “So what did the cops do this time? Draw your blood? Pluck out your pubic hair?”

“Just a cheek swab,” said Adam. “No big deal.” He looked at them. “Aren't you guys going down there too?”

“I've got cars to sell,” said Dev. “I can't take a break from my job like you can.”

“And I gotta start looking for a new job,” said Butch.

“Guys, it looks better if you just go and do it. If they have to serve a subpoena, it makes you look guiltier.”

Dev's gaze narrowed. “And Mr. Fancy Photographer couldn't look guilty, could he?”

Adam realized then that there was no bridging the gap between them. Their resentment was too deep, their bitterness too ingrained. “Whatever,” he said, taking a step toward the door. “I'd better get going. Nice talking to you.”

Butch started to offer his hand, but then dropped it awkwardly to his side. “See you around,” he finally muttered.

“Come back any time, Chicken Little Shit,” Dev called, rearing back in his chair. “You get tired of the jet set, Butch and I and the ghost of Teresa will be right here, waiting.”