Authors: Lisa Lutz
We met at a Denny’s on Carolina Street. Craig Phelps was now sixty and, as far as I could tell, sober. Although based on his complexion, it might have taken him a few years to dry out. I ordered pancakes with a whipped cream face because I thought it would keep things light. It’s hard to feel threatened by someone eating a happy face.
“I’m afraid I’ve brought you here under false pretenses,” I said over my first bottomless cup of coffee.
“Oh yeah?” Craig replied.
“But really, it’s not that bad. I’m going to pay for your breakfast and give you fifty bucks after we have a short chat. No harm can come of that, right?”
And so Craig and I chatted. I reminded him of the Merriweather case and did my best to jog his memory about the officer who interviewed him. The interview, he recalled, was short; the officer, based on his description alone, was Harkey.
Then I asked Craig what he saw that night. He said he saw a white male exit through Ms. Collins’s back door sometime before dawn. Craig admitted to having been drunk at the time, but he was always drunk back then and it rarely incapacitated him. He stood by his original statement. He saw a white male, approximately twenty-five years of age, run off after exiting Elsie Collins’s home. According to the report, the date of the interview was five days after Elsie was murdered. I asked Craig if it was possible that he was remembering a white male exit her home on a different night. But he said no. The following day was etched in his memory because the murder caused such a stir in the whole neighborhood.
I asked him if he knew Demetrius Merriweather.
“Not very well,” Craig replied, “but I’m pretty sure he stole my hubcaps once.”
• • •
I drove to Maggie’s office after my meeting with Phelps. Same as my last visit, she was feasting on saltines and ginger ale and she had the general look of queasiness about her.
“How long are you going to pretend not to notice?” Maggie asked.
“As long as you’d like me to,” I replied.
“Who knows?”
“I think just me and Fred.”
“Fred?”
“Nothing slips past that kid. But, unlike Rae, he can be dealt with.”
“You didn’t threaten him, did you?”
“No. I wouldn’t threaten Fred. I reasoned with him. He’s reasonable. Listen, your secret is safe for a little while, but it would be wise for you to break the news on your own, if you know what I mean.”
“We just want to wait a few more weeks.”
“Congratulations. I’m really happy for you.”
“You don’t think it’s too soon?” Maggie asked.
“Of course not.”
“Will your mother?”
“My mother will be beside herself with joy. I have to say, however, I don’t know how you’re keeping this from Rae.”
“Between gardening and the Schmidt case, her attention is otherwise occupied.”
“Isn’t Schmidt free yet?”
“All the legal work is done; we’re just waiting for the court to make a decision on his release. Rae’s convinced he’s getting out. She spends most of her time here writing Schmidt letters about what has changed on the outside since his incarceration. I think she’s currently working on a slang glossary and text-message spelling guide for him.”
“How productive,” I commented dryly.
“I assume you want to discuss the Merriweather case?” Maggie asked.
“How could you tell?”
“It’s written all over your shirt.”
And then we discussed Merriweather. I detailed my recent interviews and pointed out that the ten-year-old witness merely saw Merriweather exit Collins’s home with a television set. I also told her that he described what Merriweather was wearing and showed her the photograph of Merriweather at the crime scene, wearing that same jacket, the following day. Then I mentioned my interview with Craig Phelps—a drunk, but a functioning drunk, who saw a white guy leaving Collins’s home later that night. The witness and the possible subject had been summarily dismissed. Wasn’t this enough evidence to reopen the investigation?
The short answer: no. The long answer is that if the evidence was available at the time of the trial, it is not sufficient for an appeal. You need new evidence. And since all of the hard evidence in Merriweather’s case had gone conveniently missing, we couldn’t rely on DNA, which is the primary liberator of the wrongfully convicted. It makes you wonder how many people will remain behind bars who truly are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted.
“Doesn’t ignoring a witness’s testimony qualify as police misconduct?”
“You don’t have enough here,” Maggie said. “And if I file an appeal now before we have something more substantial to go on, I can ruin Merriweather’s chances for the future.”
“What do I need?”
“If you could prove that the arresting officer had a history of manipulating witnesses or found evidence of other kinds of corruption, that
might
help us.”
“So I need to get another police officer to talk, right?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
I sat in Maggie’s office, dwelling on the sheer impossibility of this endeavor. Before I met Demetrius, I could have lived with the idea that there was nothing I could do to help him. But now, the concept that Merriweather might never be freed was so hideous that I refused to even contemplate that possibility. Once I got his hopes up, it seemed unconscionable to quit before he was free. But I had to wonder if I would be spending the rest of his days fighting an impossible battle.
“Isabel, are you all right?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing,” I said. To be more precise, what I was thinking about was that I was out of ideas. However, I quickly wiped that idea out of my head. I just needed more time to think.
Before I left Maggie’s office, I had to get to the bottom of one other matter.
“Why is David making Rae plant perennials in your backyard?”
“He’s not making her,” Maggie replied. “She offered.”
“Excuse me?”
“We thought she had just sort of taken to the gardening thing.”
“Didn’t you think that was suspicious?”
“Sure. But people change.”
“No, they don’t,” I replied as I made my quick departure.
F
rom the car, I phoned David. He was conveniently at home.
F
ive minutes later, I pulled into his driveway and knocked on his door.
“Something very strange is going on,” I said.
“Isn’t it always?” David replied.
“By the way, congratulations.
Please
tell Mom and Dad before they figure it out on their own.”
“How’d you find out?”
“I’m a detective,” I replied. “Is there going to be a wedding? And, if so, please tell Maggie not to torture me with one of those crazy bridesmaid’s dresses.”
“She’s not that kind of torturer.”
“I didn’t think so. But you never know.”
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” David asked.
“Can you please show me where Rae has been ‘gardening’?” I said, using finger quotes.
“Sure,” David replied, eyeing me with the appropriate germ of suspicion.
I followed my brother through the back door and down the short steps to the small yard, which consists mostly of weeds, a patch of grass, and an old cypress tree. Along the side of the wooden fence that divides it from the neighboring property, I saw a long patch of dirt that was unsettled but dry.
“Aren’t you supposed to water this?”
“Rae told me to leave it alone. She’d take care of it. She said overwatering perennials is the kiss of death.”
I don’t have a green thumb, but I can tell you that not watering a plant is also the kiss of death.
“Where’s your shovel?” I asked.
David opened the door to a small tool shed and pulled out a shovel. I took it from him and immediately began digging into the unsettled dirt.
“Isabel. You’re ruining my perennials.”
“You can’t be this stupid,” I replied as I continued digging.
Within sixty seconds the shovel hit something hard. I got down on my hands and knees and brushed away the dirt, revealing a large paper bag. I pulled the bag out of the ground and opened it. Inside were three doorknobs and a sink handle. I continued digging, this time being more careful, since I knew I might hit a glass light fixture or two. Suffice it to say, within an hour’s time, I’d unearthed the entire collection of missing Spellman hardware.
After we collected the items in a box and washed up, David and I sat in his living room, drinking bourbon (he let me have the good stuff) and mulling over possible explanations for his doorknob garden. I already had the answer, but I wanted to see whether David could figure it out on his own.
“If Mom and Dad knew that someone—and when I say ‘someone’ I mean one of their children—was stealing hardware from their house, why wouldn’t they try to get to the bottom of it?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders, playing oblivious.
“Did they ever accuse you of anything?” David asked.
“They accuse me of things all the time. But no, not of this.”
“That means they knew it was Rae.”
“Yes, I’d have to agree,” I replied.
1
“Because Rae knows something that they don’t want us to know,” David replied.
“That sounds about right.”
“Do you have any ideas?” David asked.
“I’m still working out the details,” I replied.
2
“Care to share?”
“Not yet.”
Y
ou might have noticed that I spared you etiquette lessons one through one hundred and fifty-six. Since I wish I’d been spared those, I assumed you would feel the same way. Besides, these lessons spanned two decades. However, this particular etiquette lesson is accompanied by further details of the tale I’m telling you, so I provide it for you here.
I knocked on Henry Stone’s door around six or seven
P.M.
He answered as I expected him to.
“I need a favor,” I said. “A huge favor.”
Henry backed away from the door, silently agreeing to my entry.
“Of course you do. Why else would you drop by?”
“I drop by all the time for Rae extractions.”
“It’s been a while. Have you noticed?” Henry said.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed, but it was true.
“She’s taking the bus now. Hasn’t asked anyone for a ride in two weeks.”
“That Fred is a miracle worker.”
I followed Henry into his kitchen, where he was doing something that resembled cooking. I’m not all that familiar with the activity, so I could only speculate.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Henry asked, picking up a large knife.
“What are you making?” I asked.
Henry put down the knife, turned to me, and provided a solid expression of basic annoyance. “Excuse me?” Henry said. The way he furrowed his brow in disbelief was very distracting and amusing and so I didn’t reply. “When someone invites you over for dinner,” Henry said, “you don’t ask what they’re making unless you are on a severely restricted diet. You especially don’t ask when you’ve already mentioned that you need a favor. Where did you learn your manners?” he asked.
“Take it up with my mother,” I replied. “I’m doing my best.”
A long silence followed while I waited to see whether my previous comment smoothed things over. It didn’t. So I had to do some more smoothing.
In my perky voice, which I don’t pull out all that often, I said, “I’d love to stay for dinner. Can I help with anything?”
Henry nodded his head in the direction of the cutting board.
“Can you dice that onion for me?”
“Yes,” I said, without any further back talk.
While Henry prepared the marinade for the tofu,
1
I followed my orders. I could see Henry checking on me out of the corner of his eye as if he thought I was capable of destroying the entire meal through my one assignment.
“Where’d you learn to chop an onion like that?” Henry eventually asked, impressed.
“On television. Where I learn
everything
.”
Over a less-bland-than-expected meal, I finally got around to asking for my favor. It was big, so I didn’t know how Henry would handle it.
“Lieutenant Fishman refuses to return my calls. If he had good things to say about Harkey, he would have called me back just to get rid of me. I’ve left at least eight messages. He won’t talk to me because I’m not a cop. Do you think he’d talk to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Henry replied, although he refused to make eye contact.
Cops stick together because when they’re on the job, trust is essential. But sometimes that means a good cop will keep quiet about a bad cop to avoid breaking a link in that network. Without evidence of Harkey’s mishandling of the case, there wasn’t much I could do for Demetrius.
And so I launched into a Merriweather speech, not unlike Rae’s previous Schmidt diatribe.
“Let me tell you about Demetrius Merriweather …”
By the time dinner and my Merriweather lecture were over, I’m fairly certain that Henry was moved by his story. I even did the dishes to seal the deal, even though I suspected Henry would rewash them later.
Before I departed, I said this: “I know you think this is still about Harkey, but it isn’t. It wouldn’t matter what dirty cop sent Merriweather to prison. I’d still want to help get him out. We have to do something.”
Henry nodded his head, but he said no more. He’d been quiet that night. Something was in the air, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
O
n her one day off a week, Mrs. Enright drives her car to a parking lot and leaves it there overnight. To gain insight into her meager personal life, I had to resort to old-fashioned surveillance.
Saturday afternoon, Enright left the Winslow residence, drove three miles to a parking garage off of Van Ness, and then strolled a few blocks down to O’Farrell Street and entered a multiplex theater, where she remained most of the afternoon, on one ticket’s purchase. I know this because I watched the movies with her, in disguise. Mrs. Enright, shockingly, is partial to comedies. In fact, her sharp, stinging laugh distinguished itself from the mass of other guffaws. The pleasure she received from the mediocre escape made the mediocrity of it seem less so. How could a film be so terrible if it could transform a person within minutes? I studied Mrs. Enright as she exited the first theater and made her way to the concession counter. It appeared as if her body was inhabited by someone else. Her features remained the same, but the way they were arranged was utterly changed.