The night was dark, only a shadowed rim of moon in a black, starless
sky.
A low-lying fog hovered just
above
the
highway,
the headlights of the GT piercing it, the beams followed hard by the racing pony behind them.
My mind roamed
freely.
Anna,
love,
happiness, the attempt on Lance Phillips, the deaths of Danny
Jacobs
and the girl at
Potter
Farm, the cold-case cards, Susan,
Chris,
Matson, the body propped on the prison fence, Atlanta, always Atlanta, Mom contemplating taking her own life––all shuffling around
randomly,
then,
suddenly,
raining down on the green-top table like a deck that got
away
from the dealer.
I had lost many battles to the noonday demon of depression, but never the
war.
Never,
not even at my lowest, wanted to kill myself. It
hadn’t
ever even really crossed my mind, at least not in any kind of serious
way.
Eventually I reached highway 98 and turned east, heading down the coast.
For
a while I tried to figure out the significance of the cards left
by
the killer, but eventually gave it up and let my mind wander again.
Arbitrary bits bouncing around my brain.
Atlanta.
Wayne
Williams.
LaMarcus. Martin.
Jordan.
Stone Mountain. The Stone Cold Killer.
PCI.
Molly.
Nicole.
Tom
Daniels. Laura Mathers.
Justin Menge.
From a now obscure religion class––Confucius teaches there are three
ways
to learn wisdom: observation, which is noblest; imitation, which is easiest; and experience, which is bitterest.
Paul Tillich’s
God
above
God, what I would call God beyond God. The remembered pleasure of first reading Hemingway and Shakespeare and Graham Greene.
When lights from the city could only be seen in my
rearview,
I turned off the music and rolled down the windows to listen to the music of the night.
The wind whipped in and out and around the
car.
Gulf to my right, slash pine forest to
my
left, empty road ahead.
Waves
rolling in and out. Rubber tires on damp asphalt.
Alone.
I found it interesting that at every empty convenience store I passed, the solitary clerks were outside—standing or sitting, smoking or not—all staring off into the distance of the lonely night.
Was
that which drove them out of the overly lit stores into the dark nights the same thing driving me down the fog-covered highway?
When I reached Port St.
Joe,
I rode by Cheryl
Jacobs’s
house on Monument
Avenue.
Not sure why
exactly.
Was
this where I was unconsciously headed all along?
Her house was a small, square red brick
box
of a dwelling on a large grass lot absent any landscaping.
To
my surprise, no cars filled her
driveway
or lined her front yard, and through the huge bay window front, I could see she was alone, pacing around, a glass of wine in her hand.
I parked next to the curb in front of her house, pulled out my phone, and tapped in her
number.
“It’s
John
Jordan. Are you okay?”
“
No.”
“You
really
shouldn’t
be alone right
now.”
“
How’d
you know I’m
—
Where are you?”
“Out front.”
“What’re you doin’ here?”
“I’m not
sure.”
“Come
in.”
T
he little light
above
her front door came on.
I got out of the car and walked up to find her standing in the now open
doorway.
She was younger than I expected, and
pretty,
but she looked as if she had packed a lot of living in her short life.
Merrill always said,
it’s
not the age, but the mileage.
As was usually the case, he was right.
“I
can’t
believe
you’re
here,”
she said.
“Me either. I was out
driving.
Wound
up here. When I saw you were alone, I called.”
“I’m glad you did. Come
in.”
I followed her into the small, simply decorated house. It was quiet—too quiet, and perfectly still.
Standing on old but clean carpet, we were surrounded by pictures of Danny hanging from the thin, blond
paneling—Danny’s
various yearbook pictures, Danny in his football uniform, Danny and date leaving for the prom, Danny and his mother, portraits and snapshots of a life lived largely together.
Through an opening
above
a bar
top,
I could see her kitchen was empty—no
boxes
of fried chicken and biscuits, no trays of sandwiches, no Tupperware containers of baked goods, no aluminum pie plates with half-eaten apple and pecan and peach pies in them—nothing a grieving house in the South should
have.
“Why are you alone?”
“There are
people,”
she said. “They
would
come.”
I started to say something, then decided to wait.
Beyond a hint of hardness etched on her face, her eyes shone kind and intelligent, and, of course, sad. So very sad.
“I got pregnant at sixteen,” she said. “Kid with a kid.
Paid
a hell of a price around here for that. Little slut. Single mom. But I got through it.
Went
to college.
Eventually both Danny and I were accepted. But when he got in trouble, it started all
over
again, and I just
couldn’t
. . . Everyone acted like he
was
dead when he went to prison . . .
That’s
when he died for them. No need to tell them
now.
I’m alone in this tonight because I’ve been alone in this since he went to prison.
Nobody’s
here because I
didn’t
tell
anybody.”
“I’m
sorry.”
The house smelled of loneliness—not bad, just empty—as if one person
weren’t
enough to stir the air around or make enough odors for the environment to notice.
She
shrugged.
“Doesn’t
matter. What if it did?”
I smiled and nodded, and thought how many times I had said those same
words.
“We’re
all alone
anyway.
I mean,
really. Aren’t
we?”
“
We
are.”
“Still, I’m glad
you’re
here.”
“
Me
too.”
“I still
can’t
believe—”
She wobbled as her knees began to buckle and I stepped toward
her.
“Hug
me.”
I did.
Standing in the middle of her dim, sparsely decorated living room, I wrapped her in my
arms
and held her tight.
At first, small tremors ran through her, then she began to shake, then came the sobs, the deep anguished cries, and through it all I just held
her.
At a certain point, her knees buckled and she collapsed, pulling me down with
her,
but I never let
go.
On the floor, I pulled her even closer to me, felt her tears and snot on my face and shirt. All I could do was hold
her,
so I did.
There is no sound more desolate, more disquieting than that of a mother mourning the loss of her child. A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.
After a very long time, her sobs turned to gasps, then to sniffles.
Then, as if suddenly and inconsolably embarrassed, she
shrugged
me off, pushed herself
up,
tried to stand, fell again, this time on top of me.
“Sorry,”
she said.
“For
. . . everything. I’m a
mess.
I just . .
.”
“You
have
nothing to be
sorry
about.”
“Will you help me up?” she said.
“Of course,” I said. And then I did.
“Tell
me he
didn’t
kill
himself,”
she said when
we
were standing again.
“I
don’t
think he did.” She
hugged
me.
“Oh thank God for that. I know it sounds so
silly.
Doesn’t
change anything, does it, but it means so
much
to me that he
wasn’t
so tortured, so desperate, so alone that he took his own
life.”
“It’s
not silly at
all.”
She wobbled again, and I helped her
over
to the couch and eased her down onto it.
Laying her head back, she closed her eyes and began to breathe like she were falling asleep.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
Opening her eyes drowsily and squinting up at me, she shook her head.
In another moment, she was out hard, snoring and still half crying in her sleep. Scrounging around her small, sad house, I found a pillow and placed it under her head, and a blanket and draped it
over
her.
I then went into the kitchen to make her something to eat and drink.
As I rummaged around her kitchen, I saw a pack of cards in a catchall
drawer.
They were
above
a pad full of solitaire scores, which made me sad for Cheryl.
The kitchen was small, its appliances dated, its linoleum worn, the varnish of its thin, homemade cabinets fading.
I began to think about the significance of the king of hearts again.
Withdrawing the cards from the
drawer,
I spread them out on the countertop and looked through them. When I came to the king of hearts it hit me immediately.
I should’ve seen it earlier. It was so simple, so obvious. I
wasn’t
sure why I
hadn’t.
Unlike the cold-case
decks,
which featured a missing person instead of the king, this deck had the actual king
—
the suicide
king.
The king of hearts is also referred to as the suicide king because
he’s
sometimes pictured holding a knife to the back of his neck or actually stabbed into his head.
Originally,
the king had an
axe,
but
over
the years, the head of the
axe
was dropped from the picture. What remains looks like a sword—looks like the king is either holding the sword behind or stabbing himself in the head.
With limited resources inside, the killer
would
have
to use whatever he could find. The cold-case king of hearts had to stand in for the suicide
king.
The message was simple.
You
think these are suicides, but
they’re
not. They’re murders. I’m smarter than you. I’m the suicide
king.
“What’re you doin’?”
I turned around to see Cheryl standing in the
doorway,
wearing a thick, light pink terrycloth robe.
“Getting you something to eat and drink.”
“
And
playing solitaire?”
I laughed. “Trying to
work
something out. The king of hearts
have
any significance to Danny or to you?”
She shook her head and
shrugged.
“Not that I know
of.
Why?”
“No reason. Just a random, idle thought. Can
you
eat?”
“A
little.
Maybe.”
“Have a seat.”
“Thank
you.”
“Sure.”
“No. For
being here.
For
. .
.”
She looked at me and our eyes locked. I nodded. “My
pleasure.”
I thought she might start crying again, but she
didn’t.
I stayed with her for another hour or
so,
then drove
home.
C
rawling into the warm bed with Anna felt like something I had meant to be doing my entire life.
She roused and we began to
kiss.
“Thank
you,”
I said.
“For?”
“The use of that amazing
machine,”
I said.
“Anytime.”
“It was an incredible ride. Just what I needed. As I was riding back I got to thinking . . . it cost more than
my
home.”
“Our
home,”
she said.
“That’s
sweet.
We’ll
find a better place to call our own soon.”
“I like it
here,”
she said.
“You’re
perfect,”
I said, and I meant it. “Whose perfume are you wearing?” she asked. “Cheryl
Jacobs,”
I said.
“Who?”
I told
her.
“I just got out of a marriage with a man who cheated on
me,”
she said.
Oh shit. How stupid could I be? I
didn’t
even think about that. I
wasn’t
usually this thoughtless and
unaware.