Not in the Heart (22 page)

C
HAPTER
34

It was almost midnight when I pulled past Tompkins's building. It was a three-level brownstone and there were no lights on in the two bottom floors. The house was in a run-down area on a darkened street with not one spot to park. I drove down an alley and found Abby's car and another in a tight space behind the building. There was a metal fire escape hanging on to the side of the building for dear life, and a metal fence enclosed a ratty-looking lawn with a few patches of grass and an outbuilding that could have been used by the Unabomber. I know what it looked like. I was at Kaczynski's place soon after it was raided by the ATF. This looked like the perfect spot to dig a hole and toss a body and I wondered if Diana had ever seen the inside of this place. Maybe on the last day of her life?

I parked next to a fire hydrant in the alley. I had a view of the kitchen through an anemic palm tree. There weren't any window coverings and the lights were blazing inside. I rolled down my front windows to get some air movement and killed the engine. In the moonlight I noticed a rickety patio built only on the third floor, supported by several wooden beams that looked like long toothpicks—the kind of place where newspapers report deaths because of the structure. A wooden set of stairs wound down from there into the backyard.

I dialed Abby and got her voice mail again. I am not a fence climber, but in a pinch I knew I could. There was movement in the kitchen and I saw Tompkins's face, presumably over the sink, laughing and saying something. He moved away from the window, opened the door for a moment, then shut it.

There's a feeling you get when something is not quite right. I was covering a story once on a drug cartel in Mexico and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to sense an attack on civilians when a couple of big trucks roll in with armed men in the back. That's what I had right then, but it was more than a feeling. Something had changed in the backyard, a noise, a creaking of the stairs, the intake of air by some machine. I moved into the passenger seat and had my head near the open window when a black pit bull barreled against the fence, jaws dripping saliva, viciously barking like Old Yeller after the hydrophobia kicked in. I thought it would rip through the chain-link and jump straight into the car after my jugular vein, but the fence held the dog.

I moved back to the driver's side while he tried to scale the fence for a late-night snack. The patio door opened again and obediently, midsnarl, the dog turned, panting, slobbering, and moved back to the house. Silhouetted in the doorway was Tompkins. He yelled something. A flame appeared, and then he stood at the edge of the railing, a cigarette glowing orange. I stayed still. If I could see him, he could see me. The dog made several visits to his favorite spots in the yard.

My phone buzzed and lit brightly in my shirt pocket. I bent below the dash and pulled it out.

“Dad, you need to stop calling me,” Abby whispered.

“I'm in the alley outside. Come out now and I'll follow you home.”

“That's crazy. I'm finally alone with him. We were just talking about Conley. This is my chance, but you have to trust me.”

“Looks like his dog is headed inside—get out of there.”

“Dad, do you know what's downstairs? I found out they make movies.”

My heart sank. I could see how it all played out with Diana and how it might play out with my daughter. “Probably not
Citizen Kane 2
.”

“I don't want to know what they shoot down there,” she said.

“Abigail, leave the phone on and put it in your purse or something. Let me hear what he says.”

“It'll make noise,” she said. “He'll hear you.”

“I'll mute my side. Let me listen.”

I looked up as the door opened and a cigarette spiraled into the yard. The dog disappeared inside. I hit the Mute button.

“What was that all about?” Abby said.

The man said something I couldn't hear and Abby laughed. He moved into the room and said, “He'll bark at anything that moves. And somebody's parked in the alley. Probably a couple of high school kids.”

“You should bring them up to the second floor,” she said.

He snickered. “Hey, not a bad idea. You think pretty fast. But how do you know about the second floor?”

“One of the guys at the club. Thin mustache.”

“Larry. Yeah, Larry needs to keep his mouth shut. You sure I can't get you anything to drink?”

“I'm good,” she said. There was a grating sound like a chair being pulled across a wooden floor.

“Was Diana into that? You know, the second-floor stuff? Movies?”

“That's the second time you've brought her up. Why are you so interested in a dead girl?”

His choice of words sent a chill down my spine.

“I've been reading about Conley. Wondering what her life was like. Who she was. Her dreams.”

His voice was even closer. “I can think of a lot better things to talk about.”

Abby giggled and her voice became distant. Perhaps she stood when he got close.
Good girl. Stand up and run.

“Did she ever come over here? Make a video?”

Tompkins paused. Maybe he was drinking. Maybe he was trying to remember where his nearest gun was or the duct tape and rope he had hidden.

“Diana was a prude. A mama's girl. Stayed close to home. You've seen her picture. Not the face of a beauty queen. I told her we could make a movie called
Plain Jane
and she could show off her body. She wasn't that bad looking.”

“Did she make deliveries for you?” Abby said.

“No. I asked a few times, even tried to hold her freelance over her—you know, ‘you want off Tuesday afternoon, deliver a package,' that kind of thing. She would have been perfect, too. Clean-cut. No priors.”

His words were beginning to slur. It sounded like he was rubbing his face as he spoke.

“So she did have some kind of freelance work,” Abby said. “Making money on the side.”

“Yeah, every couple of weeks she'd ask for time off, a stretch of three or four hours during a shift. She'd usually give me enough notice, but there at the end she'd get a phone call and rush out. I accused her of turning tricks at a local hotel and she just laughed. Even thought of following her a couple of times. I'm not excusing what the guy did, but if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and you meet some unsavories, I say that's on you. Know what I mean?”

Abby didn't respond.

“I still don't get why you're so interested in her,” he said.

“She was close to my age. Just a life snuffed out. That kind of thing haunts me, you know? I mean, what did she do to deserve getting killed?”

“Life and death, little girl. It's part of the plan. You can't escape it. You just have to live. Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die.”

Oh, give me a break. If you're going to quote Tennyson, at least get it right. “Do
and
die,” you numskull.
I hate men who use poetry to woo young women to their deaths.

“It was a real shocker for all of us,” Tompkins continued. “Picture in the paper. News trucks out front.”

“What was she like?”

He sighed. “Shy, sort of. Kept to herself. And quirky. Always carried around a notebook. When it was slow at the salon, she'd sit in the chair and write. Probably her way of coping. We all have our ways, you know.”

There was an uncomfortable silence; then Abby laughed nervously. “No thanks,” she said, moving farther from the phone. “Do you think this Conley guy really did it?”

Tompkins cursed. “You kidding me? The body was buried outside his shack. They found the murder weapon inside. You're not one of those anti–death penalty people, are you? Wait, don't answer that. You're a college student.” He laughed; then came a snorting sound.

“I just want to know more about it.”

“That Conley guy was constantly out on the street, bumming money for a drink, getting into it with people. He was like clockwork. About the same time every day he'd be out there, getting angry if he didn't have his daily bottle, like a spoiled kid. I called the cops a few times and they'd run him off to some shelter but then he'd show up the next day.”

“Didn't you testify at the trial?”

Careful, Abby.

“How'd you know that?”

“I saw it in an old article online.”

“You probably have read more than I remember. I'm done talking about it. The guy should fry. The needle is too easy. He deserves the death penalty, if not for that girl, then probably for something else they didn't catch him doing.”

Something creaked. Maybe his chair. His voice was farther away now, matching Abby's distance.

“Look, it's getting late,” he said softly, seductively. “No sense you driving all the way back to your place. Just stay here tonight. I've got an extra room.”

“I don't think so.”

“I make a mean Denver omelet. We'll get up early and watch the sun come up. Or we don't even have to sleep.”

He said something else I couldn't make out and Abby's voice rose. “Stop it!”

My blood, already boiling, surged with adrenaline and I grabbed the phone and opened my door, turning off the speaker and holding it to my ear. If I unmuted the phone, I could stop the guy fast—letting him know he was being watched. But that would give Abby away.

I ran to the fire escape, panting and straining to hear what Tompkins said. A sprinkler kicked on behind me and began its swishing back and forth, spreading water into the alley. The dog barked inside and Tompkins yelled at it.

“No, I'm sorry,” Abby said. “It's just that I had this bad experience when I was in school. A guy took me to his apartment and said the same thing. ‘Just stay here tonight.'”

“What happened?” he said.

The creep actually sounded like he cared.

“He gave me something to drink. Next morning I woke up not remembering anything, still in the guy's apartment.”

“I hate weasels like that. I say if you can't get a girl with your charm, you should never resort to chemicals.”

What chivalry.

“I'm sorry that happened to you. But don't judge all guys because of one bad one.”

“I don't. It's just that sometimes the feeling comes back and I don't handle it well.”

“Completely understandable.” Tompkins had moved back toward the phone.

“I'd better go. See you at the shop?”

He sighed like he had just lost a million-dollar bet. “I won't be there until late tomorrow. But I might stop by to see you. You want to go out for a drink afterward?”

“I'll think about it. And sorry for the overreaction.”

Don't apologize, Abby.

I hurried back to my car and watched as she walked to hers and pulled away. She picked up the phone and said, “Did you hear that, Dad?”

“Yeah. How much of that college story was true and how much did you make up?”

“Not telling. But did you hear him say that Conley deserved to die even if he didn't kill Diana?”

“Yeah. He almost seemed to blame Diana for getting killed. And what about that notebook stuff?”

“Has to be a diary. Did you see anything like that in her room?”

“Not that I recall. Maybe she had it hidden.”

“Or maybe the police have it. I'll head over to her mother's house before work tomorrow.”

“You're going back to work for him?”

“Dad, there's more here we haven't uncovered. And I think we're close.”

I looked in the rearview to see if anyone was following us. Something in my gut said she was right, we were close. Something in my gut said we were too close.

Abby's voice rose over the road noise. “Dad, thanks for being there. Even if you didn't trust me.”

The words washed over me like a baptism. Like she was giving me another chance. Like the mistakes of the past were just that—in the past.

“I've got your back, little girl.”

C
HAPTER
35

12 DAYS BEFORE EXECUTION

I awoke with sunlight stirring dust and the sound of percolating coffee in the kitchen. At this point in the book process, I usually beat the sun by an hour and have the coffee going myself, but the late night kept me on the air mattress too long. I found Abby in her bathrobe with her wet hair up in a towel, hovering over the toaster like a lion choosing which wildebeest to pick from the herd.

“You're up early,” I said, testing the relational waters. She had gone straight to her room and we had not spoken after the drive home.

“Going to Mrs. Wright's house.”

“You want me to tag along? I have a relationship with that little dog of hers.”

“From the sounds of your first meeting it's probably better if I try this alone.”

I nodded, though she was focused with laser-like attention on just the right amount of butter for her bagel. Then she turned and pointed the knife at me as some dripped on the floor.

“I was thinking you might get in touch with the lead detective you talked with and see if they have any record of a diary.”

“I left a message at his office when we got home last night. Plus the other detective, Sawyer.”

“Great minds think alike,” she said, then went back to buttering.

“I've checked the trial transcript, all the evidence presented, and I couldn't find any reference to a diary.”

Abby pressed the knife to the crusty surface of the bagel and pulled it across until the butter was a memory. “If she left the salon for good that evening, she probably had it with her, don't you think? She would have had it in her purse and whoever killed her would have tossed it. That is, if she carried it with her all the time.”

“We could ask Conley.”

“Not funny, Dad.”

I poured a cup of her coffee and she scolded me for taking it too soon. The Starbucks bag was nearly empty and the aroma was too heavenly to wait. “We don't know she was headed home that night. I think we have to find out about this freelance gig she had and where it might have taken her.”

“I think Tompkins knows a lot more than he's telling. I think he knows exactly what freelance gig she had and it was for him. If we look at his stash of tapes, we might see Diana's face—”

“Abby, there's no way you're going back to his place again.”

She pointed to the calendar. “Time's running out to find the truth.”

Like the tides along the shoreline, constantly lapping, pulling at the sand and shells, I felt like we were being drawn into something bigger. Or maybe we were being drawn together. Maybe that was the whole point of telling this story. The continent of Abby and the continent of me drifting toward each other, jagged cliffs and fault lines finally within sight, but still far away.

She took an angry bite of her bagel and spoke around it. “You think I want to spend more time with this creep?”

“No, it's admirable what you've already done. Sometimes when you want to get the whole story, you have to go to bad places. You did that and it paid off, but you have to stop.”

She looked up at me. “Is that what happened to you? At the execution of that guy?”

I looked at my reflection in the ripple of coffee. “That's not a good topic.”

“What happened? Why did it hit you so hard?”

Frozen in time, the memories began to thaw and rise. Memories I did not want to keep but that had stayed seared into my mind by the emotion and chaos. Sounds. Smells. Faces. Darkened rooms finally illumined like some circus sideshow.

“If you could have been there, if you had met this guy, maybe I could get you to understand.”

“I saw his picture,” Abby said. “I wrote a paper about it for an English class.”

“Hope you got a good grade.”

“My prof said it was the best she'd read in years. She said it was moving.”

“If you moved her with the paper, you probably know enough.”

“No, I want to hear it from you. I heard it from Mom, what she remembers, how you struggled. What you were like afterward. But I want to hear it from you.”

I took in a shallow breath as if crawling through a narrow passage of time. “That was the lowest point of my career. My life. His name was Ronnie James Lawson. He was seventeen when he committed the crime. There was an older guy involved who influenced him—told him to pull the trigger. He got the plea deal. Ronnie got the death penalty. It was a terrible crime. The fellow who found the girl's body a few days after the murder quit the job not long afterward. He just couldn't take it.”

“The defense said Ronnie had mental problems.”

“Low IQ. Borderline mentally retarded. I did an interview with him a few days before the execution and he wasn't very articulate. The family said he had a degenerative brain disease but the state didn't buy the medical evidence. If there was ever anyone who deserved clemency, it was this guy, but the governor felt he should side with the jury.”

“And they didn't use drugs back then to do the execution.”

“No, it was the chair. Electrocution. He said his last words, they put the hood over him . . .”

The hood and Ronnie's tapping finger came back to me. There are things you don't tell your daughter about death. There are things you don't want to remember. There are things you can't forget. Just when you think you're over them, they knock at your door or stand by the foot of your bed waiting for you to awaken.

“And you were the media reporter?” she said.

“Unfortunately, yes. I was chosen from the pool. I remember sitting there before they pulled the curtain back, wondering if this was really going to happen. Would they lead this twenty-five-year-old guy in and just kill him? And they did. They brought him in, sat him down, strapped him in as tight as they could, and asked if he had any last words.”

“Do you remember what he said?”

I'll be able to recite it word for word until the day I die.

“Just something about asking forgiveness and being forgiven by God and going to a better place. He mentioned his family and thanked us for being there with him. He was tapping his finger on the arm of the chair. It was about the only part of his body he could move. And then the warden nodded to another man and he put the hood over his head, hit the button, and the lights dimmed. They stopped the electricity for a minute, then hit the button again.”

“And that was it?”

“The doctor checked for a pulse, pronounced him dead, and they wheeled him out on a gurney. It was like clockwork. Moving a sack of potatoes.”

There was only one bite taken out of the bagel. Abby looked at me with sad eyes as if I were the one who had been executed. “I would worry if that didn't affect you.”

“That's what a lot of people told me.”

There was a silence between us. I would have dropped the whole thing, but something inside felt better talking about it instead of bottling.

“Ronnie's face haunted me for a long time. That hood. The way his body moved when the electricity hit him. I didn't really have an opinion on the death penalty before that. I figured you had to be guilty of something to get to that point. And there was no question Ronnie was guilty. He deserved to be kept from society. But he didn't deserve what he got. And the same thing is going to happen with Conley. And with others.”

“Does that bring it back, when you see an execution scheduled?”

I nodded. “I've seen death on the battlefield. I've crossed the yellow tape at crime scenes. I've seen bodies in trees after floods and tsunamis. Dying is part of life. I get that. But there was something different about that day. About taking a man's life.”

“You went to a counselor afterward?”

“Not right away. I just lived with it. Gave it the old college try. And that story paved the way to the network. Even that bothered me. I was using Ronnie's death for my own purposes. I had a hard time sleeping. And not just for a few weeks or months but years.”

“Depression?”

“That and panic attacks. The whole routine. It felt like the world was closing in. I'd get short of breath; my heart would race. Your mom knew I was hurting but I didn't have the courage to get help until it got so bad I couldn't function. I was about to go on the air one day, subbing for one of the anchors, and when the camera light flashed, I saw Ronnie's face, the hood. That was the longest half hour of my life.”

“When did you get over it?”

“I'm not sure I have. I cope with it better now and don't have the flashbacks, but walking into that prison to see Conley the first time set off a lot of bells. And now Oleta wants me to be there. I promised I would. I just don't know if I can.”

Abby put her plate on the table and sat, hooking one foot around the chair leg. Her toenails were red. I remembered painting them when she was little, cotton balls between her toes, playing spa in one of my more lucid, engaged moments as a dad.

“If we can prove who really did this, you won't have to go there.”

“He confessed.”

“He did that for Aiden.”

“Yeah, what about Aiden? What happens to him if we prove Conley innocent?”

She looked at me with moist eyes. “I don't know. Maybe instead of seeing the hood or Conley on an operating table, Aiden's face is the one you see the rest of your life.”

“I don't like either possibility,” I said.

Abby left alone, and instead of surfing the Internet, I got my news the old-fashioned way: I retrieved the newspaper from a neighbor's driveway. I would return it later.

The front-page story carried Terrelle's confession, complete with a picture of his jailhouse scrawl on lined notebook paper. Reading between the lines, I could feel his desperation to save both my son and his dignity.

I hereby confess to the murder of Diana Wright and I also will not ask for any more extensions or appeals. I am hoping this will convince the authorities that the transplant I wish to provide will go through.

I wondered what Diana's mother would think of his confession. It was clear from the story that the governor and his friends in the legislature saw this as a win-win situation and wholeheartedly embraced the confession. From a couple of statements made by anonymous sources, it seemed that the wheels of justice had been duly oiled.

“I see no reason why we won't move forward swiftly now,” the source said. “With this confession, there is no need for any further appeals. The medical community has given us the green light, so we'll need to interface with them to make this procedure humane and orderly.”

It sounded like Reginald to me. Or some other behind-the-scenes bureaucrat. It also made the execution and heart transplant, as Terrelle had said, sound like a tonsillectomy.