Ring of Truth (18 page)

She visibly shivers. “Like Raymond Raintree.”

“Exactly.” She is referring to a killer in my book
The Little Mermaid.
“Or a bizarre method of murder that the killer uses, or the way he ensnares his victims. Sometimes it's amazing coincidences that make it interesting.”

“Or,” she interjects, “the shock of finding out the killer is a well-known minister.”

“Yes. Let's talk about that, shall we?”

As preparation for this dual-purpose interview, I messengered over to her home the first third of
Anything to Be Together
with a request that she read it with a critical eye. This is the real test, to see if she has the guts to confront me about my own work. I also want to gauge her instinct for “story.” If she doesn't have a feeling for that, she won't be a good researcher; without it, she'll bring me irrelevant facts instead of meaty, pertinent ones.

“Oh, yes! I could barely put it down to come over here. But you don't want praise, right?”

“Right.”

She swallows, visibly working up her nerve. “Well, then, I have one criticism, and a question.”

“Good. Shoot.”

“I think you hurry too fast over what happened to that girl in Lauderdale Pines.”

“Allison Tobias? Really? That's funny, my editor says I devoted too
many
pages to her.”

“Oops. Sorry.”

“No, no. You think I need more?”

“Yeah,” she says apologetically. I wait to see if she'll hold her ground against the opinion of a New York editor. “This may sound awful, but I felt like what's missing is what really happened to her.”

“Raped and murdered,” I remind her, dryly.

“Well, yeah,” she retorts with a sarcasm that amuses and pleases me. “But you just
tell
us that and skip over the gory details. How'd he actually get
to
her to do it? And where did he do it? Down in the basement where he lived, or up in her apartment? Did he kill her the same way he killed his mother, or—”

“I see what you mean.”

“You're not mad I told you?”

“Of course not. But do you want to know the embarrassing truth? I don't remember all the gory details. That case is peripheral to my story, and I really only used it to establish the irony of how Stevie and Bob ended up in adjoining cells on death row.”

“That was amazing!”

“Oh, and I was also trying to make the Bahia cops look good, because they had to work hard to overcome their anger and bias.” I think for moment. “But I must have some of that stuff in my files somewhere, and if I don't, that would be a great place for you to start your research.”

Her face lights up. “Are you hiring me?”

“Only if you call me Marie.”

Her grin is happy and huge. “I'll try.”

I start to get up, but she says, “That was my criticism, about not having enough about Allison's murder. I've got a question, too.”

I ease back down in the chair.

“Whatever happened to the note?” she asks me.

“What note?” It's so many weeks since I wrote that Tobias chapter, I can barely remember the names of her parents, much less the details of the story.

“The note her mother left on the door.”

“What about it?”

Deb's face flushes, but she perseveres. “It's just that you never mention it again and I think it would be a poignant detail if they had found it beside her telephone, or something. Like she was going to call home, but never got the chance.”

I have to think about it to recapture it:
When Allison didn't call home as she was supposed to, Mr. Tobias drove his wife over there and she left a note on the door for their daughter. Then, when Allie and her friends showed up, one of the girls tore down the note and handed it to her.

“I don't know what happened to it, Deb. I don't recall seeing it on the inventory list from either Stevie's apartment or Allison's, and I doubt it was evidence in the trial. But you're right, it could make a nice little touch if we could find out.” I don't know that it really would, but it might, and I want to encourage this initiative she's showing.

“I'll research it for you,” she offers eagerly.

I give her a grin and a hand to shake. “You just do that, Deb.”

Before she leaves, I load her down with a copy of the rest of my manuscript, with instructions to be tough on it as she reads it, and also my file on the Tobias homicide. “If I have anything about the note, it will be in here.”

Deborah hugs the pile of paper to her thin chest and vows, “I'll guard this with my life.”

“Please don't,” I joke. “No research is worth dying for.”

Finally, at the door, she makes a comment about Steven Orbach's execution coming up in eight days. “Can you imagine, knowing that, counting down the days?” She shivers in the waning sunlight. “It almost makes me feel sorry for him. Almost.” As I watch her wobble away on her ugly shoes, I am struck by the fact that I have hired a very intelligent, sensitive, and nice young woman.

But now it's time to go fishing.

“Reminds me too much of Vietnam,” Bennie breathes into my left ear, from behind me. “Let me go in front of you, Marie.” He's
got a very small flashlight, which he has dimmed down to a minimum and even that low light he's shielding with his hand, so that only a bit of path is illuminated in front of him. It's indistinguishable from the moonlight filtering through the tree branches above us. He looks back and I see his teeth flash white in a grin. “You scared of snakes?”

I shake my head, proving a person doesn't have to speak to lie. These guys—George Pullen and Bennie Gonzales—are delighted with this private commission, this break from guarding pampered homeowners, this chance to use old skills to make a little cash on the side. We haven't heard from George since we left him here, which means that nothing has happened; the bag's still in the tower, nobody has come to snatch it. Nothing may happen at all, though we're all prepared to spend a night waiting to see if it does. To the guys, this is a game. To me, it's a long shot. If it pays off, I'll have a hell of an epilogue for my book.

“What'll you do if she shows up?” Bennie asked me this afternoon.

“Nothing,” I confessed. “I'm not a cop, and you guys aren't detectives. I just want to watch. And, George, if I'm not there and you're the only one who sees her, don't stop her. I don't even want her to know that we've seen her. If we see her take the bag, I'll know she's guilty. Nobody really knows that for sure, Bennie. That's all I want, I just want to know.”

Now he and I are sneaking up to the shadowed edge of the seawall where the real detective once sat with the crime technician to tell her the story of Allison Tobias. George said to meet him here at the time we said we'd be back.

But George isn't here now.

I check my watch, and Bennie checks his, too. We're right on time.

After one minute turns into five and nothing moves except leaves and small unseen creatures in the foliage, Bennie leans over to me and whispers, “I'm going to look for him. Don't go away.”

I don't even say, “Be careful,” because what is there to be careful of? It's merely dark. It only looks spooky here, but it isn't, really. And George is off in the woods taking a leak, no doubt. I wait, feeling like Nikki waiting for Jenny to emerge, only not so scared. After a little while, though, like her, I want to call out to my friends to locate them in the shadows. I want to shout, “Bennie? George?” But I don't, and the longer I don't— the longer I stand there by myself—the more spooked I get, until I'm actually scared. Where
are
they?

Then, like Nikki, I finally hear a cry.

It's a heartbroken cry that is shattering to hear. I plunge out of the shadows, racing to find the source of it. I would do anything to stop the sorrow and pain in that terrible cry. I stumble around the nearest corner of the mansion, frantically following the sound until it winds down and all I am left with is a trail of imagined echoes that pulls me onto the ruined patio. There by the fountain, on the far side of the broken statue, Bennie is holding George in his arms and rocking him. George Pullen is dead, the canvas bag is gone, and I am responsible for this foolish, senseless, terrible loss.

Susanna
11

The weekend is a bad dream capped by the fact that when I sleep I have nightmares visited by killers I have known. These nightmares are like fever-dreams in which bodies entwine, strange mixes of people from my books come and go, floating in and out, wielding knives and gun, saying insinuating, cruel things to me and to each other. None of it makes any sense, and that can surely be said for real life as well, in which the waking hours are a hell of tears, explanations, police reports, and loneliness. Franklin wants to help, wants to be with me, but he has the kids and I understand that he can't leave them. I don't want him to. I want to wallow in sadness and guilt. There's nothing I can do for Bennie. He has flown to Tampa to stay with his grown children until our medical examiner releases George's body for the funeral and burial. The autopsy will reveal the obvious, that while he was bending down to do something simple like tie his shoe, he was struck from the rear by a piece of the broken statuary from the fountain on the patio.

I'm not convinced she meant to kill him, though I doubt she cares.

When I'm awake, and alone, I can't get scenes from my own book about them out of my head. It's as if my mind has tossed all of it up in the air in the hope that when the words fall back
down again they will make sense. But nothing about these people makes sense, and if I'm honest, I'll admit it never has.

It doesn't make sense that they could fight so hard against the death penalty, and yet be killers, themselves. Unusually vicious ones, at that. It seems so incredibly perverted. Once, when I interviewed Bob Wing in the prison where Florida stores all of its death-row inmates, I asked him why he'd picked Steven Orbach for his latest crusade. This was after his own guilty verdict and sentencing.

“Why Orbach, of all people, Dr. Wing?”

The preacher gave me a long, steady look, as if to gauge my capacity for tolerating whatever it was he was going to say. It was so weird to realize that the very man of whom we were speaking was just down a long hallway and through a couple of bolted doors. When Bob Wing returned to his own cell, after talking to me, he would pass Stevie Orbach's cell. Like Wing, Orbach would have on the blue pants that all inmates wear and the orange T-shirt that denotes death row.

“I'm going to have to quote Scripture at you,” Wing said, with a disarming smile, as if warning me of something I might not enjoy. Up close, even in his penitentiary garb, the man had a lot of charm; everything I'd heard in that regard and about his physical appearance was true. In fact, he was nearly irresistible. When he smiled, it was damned hard not to smile back instinctively. When he leaned in any direction, I felt my body respond by following in his direction; when he leaned toward me, I felt the closeness like a pull between magnets. Amazing. And he did, indeed, have a rugged handsomeness, a compelling voice, and, to top it all off, a surprisingly self-deprecating sense of humor. “Can you stand it?”

“I'll try to bear up,” I assured him, with a smile.

“Well, don't say I didn't warn you.” He blew out a breath. “I get my marching orders from First Corinthians, twelve and thirteen.” Wing raised his eyebrows, as if to ask me if I knew it.

I smiled slightly, and shook my head to tell him no.

“Well, that's where Paul says we are all imbued with the same Spirit, whether we're Jew or Gentile, slave or freeman. Then he compares the Church to a human body, saying every cell has an important part to play in the whole, and the whole must take care of its parts.”

As before, he checked to see if I was following this.

“I'm still with you.”

“Great,” he said, with a nice smile. “Now here's the part that electrifies me—” He stopped, realized what he had just said, and actually began to laugh. “Oh, Lord, I'm sorry, what an awful pun.” But he kept laughing, as if he couldn't help it. He was like somebody who hadn't laughed for a long, long time and once they finally got started, they just can't stop. As for me, I was so startled—and his macabre amusement was so infectious—that I ended up laughing with him, and feeling damned strange doing it.

“It's the strain,” he managed to say, but still couldn't stop chuckling. “Not sleeping.” He went off into another gale of laughter until he was weeping with it, wiping his eyes, and groaning that his stomach hurt from laughing. I'd never before had the experience of sharing a good laugh with a murderer.

Finally, in the silence of simmered-down hysteria, I suggested, “Beats crying?”

He heaved a big, spent sigh. “Not necessarily.”

I decided he should know; I'd take his word on that.

“Where was I,” he asked, “before I commenced to make a complete fool of myself?”

I checked my notes. “You were somewhere in the New Testament. First Corinthians, I believe. Chapters twelve and thirteen.”

“Oh, right. Thanks. Okay, so the part that . . . gets . . . to me is where Paul says the following.” He then proceeded to quote slowly from memory:
“. . . Our indecorous parts get a special care and attention which does not need to be paid to our more decorous parts. Yes, God has tempered the body together, with a special dignity for the inferior parts, so that there may be no disunion in the body, but that the various members should have a common concern for one another. Thus, if one member suffers, all the members share its suffering; if one member is honored, all the members share its honor.”

After that mouthful, he looked at me rather like Franklin sometimes does, appraisingly. I felt like a Bible student expected to provide instant exegesis. Never one to be afraid to ask a stupid question, I said, “And that says to you . . . what, exactly?” He laughed a little at my candor, and then leaned toward me and began to talk in an intimate, passionate manner, as if it was vitally important for him to make me understand. “It says to me that when Allison Tobias suffered, we all suffered. Not in a physical way, as she did, but as a society, it hurt us, it pulled us down. And it says to me that the more we love our fellow members of society—our Allisons, for instance—the more painful it is for the rest of us when any one of us gets hurt. But it also says to me that if Steven gets put to death, we will all pull the switch. Now I realize that's just fine with a lot of people, but it's not fine with me. And the reason it's not fine with me is that Corinthians says that God wants us to pay the most attention to the least among us. Ms. Lightfoot, who do you consider to be the least among us?”