Hometown Favorite: A Novel (34 page)

John Hathaway refused to appear with the district attorney, the
police chief, and their entourage at the press conference. It was
not his style, especially when he believed there was a rush to
judgment. Before the press conference had begun, Hathaway
went several rounds with the DA, disputing his haste to call
this an open-and-shut case.

"There is still the boyfriend;" he argued, though he had to
admit the evidence was weak.

Tyler's name had come up when Rosella provided Hathaway
with all the names of close family and friends. Hathaway called
in an LA detective to track him down. The detective found him
looking haggard and drawn in the control room at a recording
studio, evaluating the latest cut from a local hip-hop artist.
He had been in the studio 24/7, he said, and had not seen or
heard any news from the outside world. When the detective
apologized for having to pass on such distressing news, he
noted Tyler's distraught reaction at hearing of the death of
his girlfriend, along with the fact that the dates on the plane
ticket checked out-he had yet to use the return portion of the
ticket and probably would not, given the terrible circumstances.
Through his tears, Tyler said, "Why return to Houston now?
Why even live?" The corroboration from multiple associates who swore Tyler had been a workaholic for the last several
days worked in his favor to persuade the LA detective that
Tyler had a convincing alibi.

The police chief, a former partner of Hathaway's, was sympathetic to John, but sided with the DA. It was an election year.
The DA was running for the U.S. Senate, the police chief for
mayor of Houston. The national focus this case had sparked
would continue to hold the country's attention and keep them
in the spotlight for a long time. The free media hype was too
tempting, and Hathaway lost the argument to delay a public
declaration of the results in the preliminary investigation and
the state's judicial intentions.

All the evidence pointed to Dewayne Jobe as the killer-he
had certainly been tried by the public, the majority of Americans believing him guilty and worthy of the death penalty,
which was sweet news for the DA. But Hathaway had a gut
feeling on this one. It felt too hygienic, too sanitized for a crime
of spontaneous passion, and his gut reaction had kept him
going back to the scene and to the lab, searching for clues,
looking for the missed fingerprint, any carelessness a murderer might leave behind. Yes, Rosella had told him Tyler had
been in their home many times over the last few months so,
of course, there would be physical evidence of his presence,
evidence that would be hard to attach a date and time to, but
still there was his gut feeling.

Hathaway's final plea was that he had not yet submitted a
full report, they were still recovering and analyzing records
from the computer, but the DA countered with the tide of
public opinion being all that mattered and he should hurry
up with his report.

"I won't have another O.J. travesty on my watch;' the DA
said, which ended the conversation, and Hathaway left for his favorite watering hole. If he was going to watch a press
conference, he might as well do it with his drink of choice in
his hand.

The bar patrons reflected national opinion ... the judicial
system could not try and execute Dewayne Jobe fast enough.
Prior to the press conference, the network interviewed the
owner of the Stars, and he did agree that based on the startling revelations so far by the press and the statements leaked
from the DA's office, the circumstances did not look good for
his star player. Yet his steadfast position was, unless and until
they proved the man guilty, he would remain innocent. This
statement brought a chorus of boos and profane comments
from the horde.

The DA outlined the working theory that would make his job
a cakewalk, citing the alleged improper relationship between
Dewayne and Sabrina as the catalyst setting all the circumstances in motion. Sabrina's note to her aunt was at the top of
the list as evidence of Dewayne's guilt.

"They had even recently been seen in public," the DA exclaimed, barely concealing his confidence of the open-and-shut
quality of this case.

The undeniable evidence of purchased one-way plane
tickets and passports substantiated the DA's conclusions. In
addition, the girl's fingerprints on the computer's keyboard
and the depletion of funds from private accounts were added
support to the hypothesis. The unfortunate deaths of the child
and nephew were accidents of an apparent struggle between
Sabrina and Dewayne, which ended in the death of the young
woman, and once he realized that the horror of the aftermath
he had created was all too real, he tried to commit suicide.
Yes, the state was confident that with all the documented
evidence, they could expedite this case swiftly, no, the state had no other suspects, and yes, Mr. Jobe remained on a suicide watch.

In a final tragic twist to the story, the reporter turned to the
camera at the end of the press conference and announced that
Dewayne Jobe's mother had died of a heart attack in her home,
apparently the result of hearing the news that her son was the
primary suspect in the multiple homicides of his own family.

Just as the reporter was signing off, Hathaway got a call on
his cell phone from the lab informing him Sabrina had not been
pregnant at all. The test must have been ... what? What must
it have been? Hathaway wondered. Rosella had told him she
was not pregnant, but had she thought she was and taken the
test? He had not thought to ask her that question. Then had
Sabrina thought she was pregnant and confronted the father
with inaccurate information? Whoever had taken the test with
its ensuing result, look at what madness this false positive may
have wrought. When Hathaway considered all the possibilities
swirling in his head about the old and new circumstances of
this case, he killed his drink, tapped his empty glass on the
Formica top, and ordered a bottle.

Rosella was isolated from herself. She felt an infinite distance
from God, an infinite distance from light and all goodness, an
infinite distance from any traces of human consciousness. She
was a raw wound of complete loneliness. It was impossible to
speak, impossible to pray, impossible almost to move or think,
impossible to summon a memory. The loss was so palpable
that to force a memory to the surface of her conscious, any
memory of any of these people who were once her family, was
a task beyond her capabilities. Were it not for her parents who
had come the second they heard the news, Rosella would have been incapacitated. The limo had picked up Franklin and Joella
on the tarmac outside a private hangar of the jet service they
used to get to Houston and whisked them away to where their
daughter was in hiding. In the past few days, she had been able
to reach a point of lucidness only to make two decisions: she
would bury the children in Los Angeles, and she would see
her husband before she departed.

The officer came to the door of the holding area and indicated to Rosella that it was time to see Dewayne. Her parents
warned her against such a move, but she refused to heed their
advice. It made no sense to face him at this point, but face
him she would, just to prove to herself that she was capable
of standing opposite an evil she had never dreamed would
demolish her life. The officer led her down a hall and took
her into another square chamber where another uniformed
officer sat at a desk.

When she entered the room with her escort, the officer at the
desk pushed a button, triggering the automatic lock on the door
that would lead her to Dewayne. She hesitated, the tiny level of
confidence to face her husband now draining out of her. The
officer at the desk reinforced her doubt by informing her she
did not have to go through with this, but Rosella's momentary
vacillation passed and she signaled she would continue. The
first officer pulled open the door, instructed her to take a seat
at the third booth, and said that her husband would be coming any minute. When her time was up, he would return to get
her. If she wanted to leave sooner than the allotted time, she
need only wave in his direction. She sat in the chair and took
the phone in her hand.

The first thing Rosella noticed was that Dewayne seemed to
have shrunk in size. The shackles on his arms and legs reduced
this erect human tower of strength and superiority into a docile, shuffling creature, one who lived on the streets and slept in
shelters. Her last image of him was in another weakened state,
supine on a hospital bed, weeping into the oxygen mask as she
beat him with her fists. His face and neck still bore the marks
of her assault. His uniformed guide secured him in his chair
by connecting his manacles to a lock beneath the table of his
booth. These once long arms, the wingspan of a condor, which
had caught impossible passes and had wrapped their length
in a warm embrace around the inviting body of his wife, were
appendages of the deformed.

The officer lifted the phone from its receptacle and placed
it into Dewayne's hand.

They breathed into their phones and stared into each other's
swollen eyes. What personal and moral injustice had brought
them to this place? What had either of them done to deserve
the insanity visited upon them? What reasonable explanation
would either of them have to offer that might hold a clue to what
had happened? Could they speak any solace to each other? For
a time, looking at each other through the opaque glass shield
and listening to the raspy breaths of struggling life through the
earpiece of the receiver seemed to be the only choice. Dewayne
did not appear desperate to declare his innocence.

Rosella did not feel the wrath of days before. Her heart was
shut inside a barren, caged booth with no image or memory
to provide an ameliorating buffer that might soothe the open
wounds. She glanced over at the officer who had escorted her,
and when he thought she might summon him, she held up
her hand to stop him. This simple distraction loosened her
tongue: her parents had come to take her back to Los Angeles where she intended to bury their son, unable to bear the
thought of leaving him in Houston with his murderous father, and they would return the bodies of her niece and nephew to
their mother.

"Rosella, I am innocent," Dewayne said, but she would not
allow him to interrupt her, to divert her with false claims.

"Your mother is dead," Rosella said. She let the news travel
the length of the telephone cord and register in Dewayne's brain,
and when he asked how and why, she gave him the information with a dulled sense of pleasure that this news would make
him suffer. Why shouldn't he suffer? His suffering would never
measure up to the ocean of her desolation. Add the death of
your mother to the list of your murders, she thought, and Dewayne bowed his head, sobbing in anguish. She told him Jake
Hopper had made all the funeral arrangements, but there was
no compassion in the telling.

"I am innocent" He choked out the words as he wept, tears
dripping off his chin and spotting his orange jumpsuit. "God
is with me"

"Like he was with my baby," Rosella blurted, unable to restrain her fury. "Like he was with Sabrina and Bruce. Like he
was with your mama. Well, it's good he's with you, because
there's no one left in this family he can be with"

"Don't say that, Rosella, please don't," he said. "I need you
to pray for me"

She slammed down her phone. She could not bear to have
the receiver pressed against her ear and hear the sound of his
voice any longer. She laid her hands flat on the table and bowed
her head. Was this a pious gesture? Was she going to respect
his request? Would she, in fact, pray for the murderer of her
family? The sparkle of her wedding rings caught her attention,
and she resolved at that precise moment she would shed no
more tears for her husband. She would spend all remaining
grief on her blood family.