Raveled (30 page)

Chapter
43

Allison… present

The second half of Jasper’s letter read as follows:

A
s soon as Bobby left the barn, I walked over to Smitty with the two pieces of rope we had. I figured if we tied them together and got Shelby swinging just right, she might be able to catch it. I really wanted her out of there before Bobby got back. Of course, odds were he’d go home and sleep it off and Smitty would pass out, and I’d be left to clean up the mess. That was the warped, symbiotic relationship we shared.

Fortunately,
Smitty had developed some rodeo skills at his uncle’s farm in Virginia and was adept at roping calves. I brought him the ropes and told him we were reeling that girl in now. He begrudgingly tied the ropes together and made a lasso at the end. He started swinging it over his head in that lazy way he did most things.

“You think you c
an reach her?” I asked.

He
rolled his eyes at me, complained about the bump on his head and the pain in his elbow, and then found himself quite amusing when he said, “Time to rassle me up a fine piece of meat.” I just hoped Shelby couldn’t hear. The music below was annoying as hell, but at least it drowned out the nasty stuff Smitty was spouting.

I yelled to Shelby to
rock back and forth. We’d given up on her jerking the swing closer to the center of the barn because the rafter above kept creaking ominously. At first, she couldn’t get much momentum going because she was sobering up and getting scared of her own altitude. It didn’t help that her shirt was still off and her bra was only covering half her assets, but she finally got moving.

Smitty seemed to be getting
the timing down better, but after four near-misses and a few tosses compromised by the pain in his arm, he threw down the rope and said, “Let’s get outta here. No one’s gonna miss this whiny chick. Someone’ll find her in the morning.”

I
could see Shelby’s spirits diminish. Her small body looked tired. She gazed at Smitty and me without much hope while periodically checking the barn doors in dread of Bobby’s return.

I
gave them both a minute to cool off, then forced the rope back into Smitty’s hands, convincing him to try again. I believe there was a promise of free pot if he succeeded. After three more attempts during which Smitty cursed liberally, Shelby actually caught the rope. The situation seemed ideal, but Shelby immediately protested and pointed at Smitty. “Hold on! I ain’t coming close to him without my shirt buttoned up.”

T
he next part of this letter is going to be hard to read, and I apologize for not having had the courage to confess its contents immediately. The truth is, I went to the courthouse the day Mr. Fennimore’s verdict came in. I arrived at dawn to be sure I could get a seat, with every intention of standing up and telling my story before the judge and jury. And yes, I should have done it earlier, but I was under tremendous pressure not to say a word. Smitty’s enthusiasm for my silence will become obvious, and Smitty’s parents harangued me non-stop to think about their son’s future and remain mum. Meanwhile, all of Lavitte seemed determined to turn Bobby into some sort of martyr. I knew if I spoke negatively of their “fallen hero,” they’d skin me alive. I was considered smart but never tough. I knew I couldn’t endure Mayor Kettrick’s wrath. That man made “cruel and scary” tremble in its boots and, most of all, I feared he would make life more miserable for my mother.

I do not offer the aforementioned
by way of excuse, and again, my apologies to the affected parties. Back to the chronological order of events.

Shelby,
determined to protect her dignity, attempted to button her shirt. I do not know how she arrived in her shirtless condition, but from the discarded beer cans on the loft, I imagine Bobby encouraged copious consumption of alcohol.

Shelby
slipped the lasso over her head while she pulled her top onto her arms and fastened it. I shouted at her to remove the rope from her neck and hook it around her arm so we could pull her in quickly, but she refused to return to the loft in a compromised condition given Smitty’s liberal leering.

I’m not sure what happened next, but
there was a snap. No, it wasn’t the beam that secured the swing. It was a bone or tendon popping in Smitty’s elbow or shoulder. He doubled over and swore aloud as he jerked his arm in towards his side. The movement yanked Shelby from the swing. With both of her hands occupied, she had nothing to hold on to and negligible time to react. I still see it in slow motion every night when I close my eyes.

Shelby had been complaining about getting sweaty and with the unexpected tug on her neck, she lost her balance and slipped
right off the seat. Her arms flailed out to grab the rope but her body was already tipped back, the swing out of reach by mere inches. Her hands grasped futilely at thin air for a paralyzed instant. I remember her loud, almost breathless gasp of surprise. Her right leg hooked the tractor seat for a hopeful second but to no avail. In the next horrifying moment, she remained suspended in the air, her fate postponed, her eyes locked onto mine—pleading—before tumbling away into nothingness.

Of all the good instincts I
followed in my life—saving my mother from choking, calling 9-1-1 when my father hit his head—I suffered the biggest failure of my life that night. I lunged at Smitty who didn’t seem to realize what he’d done. I seized the rope, still in his hands, hoping the two of us could keep Shelby from crashing to the floor.

I
should have done just the opposite.

The rope caught hard
and fast in a seam between two pieces of floor board, wedging itself in and providing the dreaded fulcrum that would lead to her assured death. I’ll never forget the sudden jerk on the rope as Shelby reached the end of its slack, a wrenching force ten times more powerful than the mere child at its end.

We
hanged that poor girl. She died at the end of that rope, her neck snapped from the impact. At least I hope that’s what happened. For thirty interminable seconds, we kept her suspended, unsure if we should pull her up or let her drop to the floor. We screamed at each other above the screeching music, two compromised minds arguing over the life or death of another. We finally decided to let her fall in case she was still breathing. The secondary impact fractured her leg and arm. God strike me dead if she was still alive, struggling for air during those thirty seconds.

So you see,
I’m confessing to Shelby Anderson’s murder, and I’m doing it by default for Smitty. He never was one to do the right thing by impulse. I concede, however, that he did possess the smarts and wherewithal to set fire to the Hesters’ barn the next day. Bobby and I used to joke that Smitty could never be a streaker because his ass was always covered. I apologize for making light; I am only trying to convey impressions.

From the moment
Shelby’s body hit the floor, I entered some form of shock. The odd brain power I possessed—at least according to school administrators—did not serve me well that night. I’ve blacked out most of the details, such as what Smitty and I said to each other while we climbed down the ladders, assuming we said anything at all. I remember throwing up in the corner and I recall the soft, yielding white of Shelby’s skin when I checked her pulse. I held her wrist for a long time, convinced its internal meter was merely stalled, not stopped. Smitty pulled me away.

The suddenness of transition from life to death
—the fragility astounds.

My
only concrete memory is the dichotomy of the beauty of Shelby’s face, like an angel in repose, against the disjointed fashion in which her body had landed. From then on, a blank.

Smitty
must have held it together. I suppose we negotiated over calling the police or hiding the body or leaving it for Bobby to deal with. I don’t remember.

Smitty eventually noticed Bobby
’s prolonged absence and ventured to Artie’s Autos to see if he could find him. One of us must have turned off the music because the impenetrable silence of those minutes as I sat alone with Shelby’s body nearly crushed me. Upon Smitty’s return, he asked if I really thought that covering her body in layers of hay would hide her. I didn’t remember covering her but I mumbled something about keeping her warm.

After that,
I only remember one short portion of our walk to Licking Dog Creek. I held Shelby’s legs and Smitty her shoulders. He needed to stop and rest so we laid her gently on the ground. In that minute, even with the startling lack of moonlight, I saw Shelby’s soul leave her body. Like a wisp of smoke populated only by a pair of green eyes. They sought mine, as they had before her descent, and conveyed a message of peace.

I
t happened, that last part, it truly happened. If not for that moment, I’d have killed myself several times over.

I have no memory of lifting her again or of putting her body in the creek
, but we must have. Smitty never would clarify things for me. He refused to speak of the events ever again. With one exception.

Two
months later, he showed up at my house and asked if he’d imagined it or if I had taken a picture of him and Bobby when I reached the high loft. I knew why he was asking; he was hardly seeking memorabilia. He wanted the evidence. Everything else had worked out neat as a pin for non-streaker Smitty. Mr. Fennimore had been arrested for Bobby’s murder and nobody had ever realized that Bobby had been tied up with rope from his own car. Shelby’s body had been found two weeks later and Mr. Fennimore stood accused because Smitty and I must have left that piece of rope around her waist.

My guess is that some of Shelby’s hair
remained on Bobby’s clothing and a few strands transferred to Mr. Fennimore inside that garage. No one ever associated Bobby with Shelby, though.

To answer
Smitty’s camera question, I revealed to him a half-truth. I confessed to finding a camera and taking some pictures with it, but claimed to have left it on the loft. He naturally assumed it had burned in the fire. He never considered that it was ten feet away in the top of my closet, and that you, dear reader, would now be in possession of it.

As for Bobby,
I don’t know what happened to him once he entered Artie’s Autos. I comforted myself for a time thinking that if Mr. Fennimore were to suffer the death penalty for Bobby’s murder, it might be feasible to let him take the blame for Shelby Anderson. Even my dear mother begged my silence. She couldn’t bear the thought of her only son in the clutches of Mayor Robert Kettrick. Despite the opposition, I had decided to tell the truth the morning of the verdict, but when Mr. Fennimore hanged himself, I lost my opportunity and sold my soul. Through a team of lawyers, the Kettricks began paying my mother’s medical expenses. They obtained for her the best possible care, even providing a state-of-the-art hospital bed. They offered to move us to an apartment in town but we declined, preferring the familiarity of our established home. They helped us with our bills and eventually provided an anonymous third party bank account for my college tuition. All to keep me quiet about Bobby’s role in Shelby’s death.

N
othing compromises a man’s soul more than its sale. One day, I fear, I shall pay with my sanity.

I
understand my inaction has destroyed the lives of innocent people, namely the Anderson and Fennimore families. I regret my weakness of character and hope that this letter will bring some peace to them. The enclosed camera should help prove my version of events.

~
Jasper Shifflett

Chapter
44

Allison… present

My thoughts battled for priority. The fight grew so frenzied, they all lost. I stared inanely at the Shifflett of Jasper’s signature, noting how the
f
’s dipped so perfectly, balancing the
t
’s. Gradually, my body melted into the mattress, fragmented into a thousand conflicting impulses. I couldn’t have moved if the room had spontaneously combusted, not an unheard of possibility with the hydrochloric acid on the bedside table.

Ideas
formed begrudgingly, haltingly, like a pyramid built by weary slaves. Had Shelby Anderson been murdered or was she the victim of a terrible accident? She died, literally, at Smitty’s hand, but Jasper had grabbed the rope, too. Did Smitty harbor evil intent when he jerked the rope? Could his slight shot of elbow pain have been that debilitating? Might he have tugged the rope on purpose, angry at Shelby for not showing him the goods? If he’d given in to just one iota of his sexual frustration, it might have spelled doom for Shelby and a lifetime of guilt for Smitty.

Which was worse
—the cover-up or the crime? Smitty and Jasper had consigned Shelby’s parents to a hellish limbo over the fate of their daughter. For two weeks, they had seen the posters go up. They’d watched the desperate pleas from Mr. and Mrs. Anderson on television and in the town square. They’d driven by, maybe even volunteered for, the citizen-brigade searches sweeping through field and forest. They’d seen policemen storming foreclosed homes and poking sticks into overgrown shrubs surrounding three-wheeled cars on cinder blocks. Most of it stood as a haze in my mind, but I did recall all too clearly the cloud of suspicion hanging over my father in regard to Shelby’s disappearance. After all, if he’d been too delirious to remember shooting a boy in cold blood, why wouldn’t that same mental state have led him to kidnap and kill a young girl, perhaps one he’d tied up somewhere earlier in the day? It was a destitute two weeks for all involved.

It
certainly didn’t help matters when Smitty’s dad, of all people, came forward after the discovery of Shelby’s body to say he’d seen my dad walking back from the direction of Licking Dog Creek. And now, to realize that Mr. Smith must have known the truth all along—that his own son had tied the noose that strangled Shelby. Abel Smith had sacrificed my dad right along with everyone else.

M
y brother’s years on the road hadn’t been futile at all. He was absolutely right about human nature.

Now what? I held it all in my hands
. My father’s partial exoneration. Jasper’s confession. Smitty’s undoing. Bobby’s fall from grace. Neat as a pin on 8.5” x 11” sheets of faded paper… in the words of a psychiatric patient.

I needed those pictures.