Oregon Hill (13 page)

Somewhere, I have a picture of Peggy and Awesome Dude standing next to a tent at some concert down on Brown’s Island. She’s wearing age-inappropriate pigtails and a baseball cap. He has on some kind of skullcap and a Springsteen T-shirt. Even then, he didn’t have all his teeth.

These days, Peggy sees him more than I do. I kind of lost touch all those years covering the legislature. The state capitol has never been one of Awesome’s hangouts.

He moves closer to me than I would have liked and says, just above a whisper, “I seen something.”

He’s never been one for small talk, or at least small talk that made any sense and might be a sane segue into a conversation.

Seen what, I ask him, and he replies, squinting up at me, “I seen her. That girl.”

He’s looking over his shoulder every few seconds, like the guy at the office party who wants to bitch about his job but wants to make sure his boss isn’t within earshot.

I know Awesome has a tendency to be everywhere. I also know that he is at best a questionable witness. Once, years ago, he saw a man get himself shot dead over by the homeless shelter on Grace. On the stand, Awesome testified that the shooter was black, then white, and that his hair was either blond, brown or red.

Still, I’ll listen to just about anybody. It is a skill I’ve tried with middling success to impart to younger reporters. Let the ears work, I tell them.

Just as he really starts to get going, though, just before I suggest that I buy him—and me—a beer, I see him look beyond me suddenly. I turn around, and a cop car is stopped at the next light, waiting for it to turn.

Before I can stop him, Awesome Dude has ducked down an alleyway, scurrying into the shadows. I could have caught up with him, but I’m thinking, what the hell. Chances of an Awe-some Dude tip being worth a short sprint are minimal.

By the time I get back to the Prestwould, the rumor mill is working overtime. A clutch of senior citizens is standing in the lobby, and by their diffident greetings, I know they must be talking about Custalow. I wonder if Marcia will let him go, and then I won’t even have that little bit of rent coming in to help out. I’m sure Abe is not a thief, but I’ve been sure of so many fallacies in my life. I put my microscopic doubts into that dark corner of my mind where I quarantine things like the idea of my mother having sex with Awesome Dude, and I lock the door.

Only Clara Westbrook comes over to chat.

“Are you going to the memorial tonight?” she asks me, and I tell her I will if I can get off work for a couple of hours.

“What a terrible thing,” she says. “That poor girl. I feel so awful for her father—for her parents.”

Neither Marie nor Philippe Ducharme will be attending the memorial, and to my knowledge the father hasn’t set foot in Richmond since his daughter disappeared, if ever.

I mention this to Clara, and as I look at her, I see that she’s a little misty-eyed.

“I’m sure they just can’t bring themselves to come,” she says. “I wouldn’t blame them if they never wanted to see this damn place again.”

I make it over to court for Martin Fell’s preliminary hearing. Kate is there, of course, and she’s advised Fell to plead not guilty, which he does in a barely audible voice. There is no bail, and he’s taken back to his cell. The charge, as everyone knew it would be, is first-degree murder. A few cops, including David Shiflett, are in attendance, and I see a couple of them shake their heads when they hear the plea.

Afterward, I ask Kate if she’ll have a cup of coffee with me.

“Do you think he did it?” I ask her, knowing she’ll dodge that one, but asking it anyhow.

“I think he deserves a fair trial,” she says, texting someone while we chat. Always the multi-tasker.

“How about you?” she asks, pinning me with those eyes. Her pupils are always kind of dilated, despite the fact that she doesn’t smoke dope anymore, and it makes them look black. It’s kind of like looking into the eyes of a shark before it attacks. Must work well in court.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“No, jerk. I mean, do you think he did it?”

“I don’t know. If I was sure he did it, I don’t guess I’d be down here today. The mother was pretty convincing, but I guess mothers always want to believe the best.”

“But that thing about the mustard . . .”

We both nod. It isn’t the kind of detail murderers and their mothers usually rehearse ahead of time so they’re on the same page.

“What about the missing tape?” I ask her, then assure her that this is just background.

Before she can speak, her cell phone starts playing the Can-Can. She looks at it and decides the caller isn’t worthy of an immediate response, and I think of the times I’ve listened to her phone ring and then been told to leave a message. Well, ex-husbands shouldn’t expect to be on the A-list. She puts the phone on vibrate and answers me.

“I don’t know. Their official line is that the tape ran out and they didn’t put another one in right away. I don’t think anybody up the line is covering up. They just want to nail this thing, and they’re pretty sure they’ve got the hammer.

“But Marty does still swear that he just nodded his head to get a private cell. That doesn’t make him a genius, but nobody suspects him of being one. I got someone I know to check his records. The kid—the man—is so many points below a C average that he could pull A’s until hell froze over and not graduate. He hasn’t taken a real course in four years.”

I nod my head and resist the urge to talk. I’m sure Kate Ellis can sweat information out with the best of them, but who the hell do you think taught her, back when I was wringing something resembling the truth from half-drunk state senators and she was trying to get out of law school? Wait for it, I told her, more than once. Wait for it. There’s always something else.

“There is one more thing,” she says, finally, “but if I tell you, you can’t go out and get this on your own, or let somebody else do it. Hell, the cops probably will leak it soon enough anyhow.”

I think about that one. You never agree not to publish what you don’t know yet, because you might stumble across it on your own, and then you’re stuck. I knew too many guys covering the capitol who knew everything and couldn’t report shit.

But I take a chance and tell her it’s in the vault.

“OK. Here it is. He was arrested once, down in Mecklenburg County. It was after his freshman year at VCU. The girl claimed he tried to rape her. She dropped the charges later, but you know how that goes. How many times did he do some crap like that and nobody pressed charges?”

Or, I think, he was just a horny but inexperienced dumbass who didn’t know that no meant no. It happens. But I know as well as Kate that this information soon will be public knowledge, and the phrase “was once accused of attempted rape” will be part of Martin Fell’s story line, even if it did happen thirteen years ago.

When she glances at her watch a second time, I know it’s time to go.

“Remember,” she says, “this is on the QT.”

I pull an imaginary zipper across my mouth. I make a move to kiss her cheek, but she doesn’t turn, and we have a real kiss, although when I, by instinct, try to insert my tongue, she backs away.

“C’mon, Willie,” she says, suppressing a smile. “That’s not right.”

Well, it felt right.

I’m usually off Mondays, but I agreed to work for Chuck Apple, who usually has night cops on Sundays and Mondays.

I try to persuade Jackson to get someone to cover for me for a couple of hours so I can go to the memorial. He reminds me that Wheelie’s assigned Baer to cover it. He’s already filed the arraignment story. I tell him that I’m just curious, just want to be there. I lie and tell him that my daughter wanted me to meet her there, that she’s kind of creeped out by what’s happened, being a young woman alone. Andi’s not afraid of half the things she should be afraid of, and Martin Fell, languishing in solitary down at the city jail, probably doesn’t cross her mind. Still, I lay it on thick, and Jackson buys it.

“Your ass better be back here by nine thirty,” he warns.

They’re having the memorial indoors, at the basketball gym, right on campus, and it’s already one-third full when I get there. They are expecting somewhere between 5,000 and 7,500 people, although how you predict the crowd for a murdered girl’s memorial is beyond me.

They continue to stream in, and I’m somewhat amazed that this girl, who couldn’t have known that many people in her short few weeks on campus, could bring out this many kids. Many have white, lit candles, and I look around for the nearest fire exit. Not all of them are taking it seriously, but a lot are. I wonder if, for some of them, it’s the first time they’ve given a passing thought to the depressing fact that they won’t live forever, and that bad things happen to good people all the time.

I’d half-forgotten how cheap life can be, after all those years covering the legislature, whose crimes were mostly misdemeanors. Coming back on night cops, I got a refresher course. Most of the murders were African-Americans, and most of the victims didn’t seem to have much of what you’d call a strong male influence in their lives.

I’ve gone to three or four funerals for victims of cases I’ve covered in the last year. I usually go on my own time, because I’m a sap. The mothers seem to take on all the grief, comforted by friends who probably have lost someone, too. They often are so overcome that you wonder how they can go on living. It makes the white funerals I’ve been to seem like board meetings.

This is something else, though.

Most of these kids couldn’t have known Isabel Ducharme, and the longer I sit there, through blandishments and nonecumenical, white-bread songs accompanied by guitars and a drummer, the more I think that this is mostly about them. It’s some kind of statement about how precious each and every one of their lives is, worthy of bringing the world to a halt to recognize the monstrosity of youth snatched away.

At some later date, it might occur to them that the little black girl who died sitting in her living room, struck down by a pinhead with an Uzi who sprayed the neighborhood because he thought somebody that lived there had dissed him, might deserve to have her death publicly mourned as well.

I estimate the crowd at a little over 4,000, although Baer, who like most journalists sucks at numbers, will call it 6,000 in the paper. The only people of note who are missing are the girl’s mother and father.

As I look around, trying to see if Andi is there, I spot Clara Westbrook in the section on the other side of the basketball floor. She’s sitting beside another woman who looks, from my vantage point, to be about Clara’s age—somewhere over eighty. Clara seems to be comforting her.

I think I’ll try to find them after it’s over, but just then a minister who never met Isabel Ducharme stands and leads us in prayer. I close my eyes, more out of respect than belief, and when I open them again—four long minutes later—I see that Clara and the other woman are leaving, walking up the long flight of steps to street level. Clara, who doesn’t have great pins herself, seems to be supporting her friend.

CHAPTER EIGHT