Sleep Toward Heaven (17 page)

Deborah put her hands on her hips. “You know it is,” she said. Deborah was round and small, and there was something strange about the way she acted around Franny, something in her tone. She treated Franny like a wayward teenager.

The morning was filled with flu shots and a woman whose eye had been punched almost out of the socket. “That fucking bitch,” said the woman, who was skinny with pigtails. Franny tended to the wound, and did not say a word. “She fucking jumped me,” said the woman. “In the fucking shower. Bullshit.” Franny did not respond.

The wedding was planned for visiting hours. Veronica would have to be handcuffed throughout. She and her new husband would not be granted conjugal visits.

At four, Deborah came into the clinic. “Are you coming, Franny?” she said.

“No, I’m too busy, thanks.”

“There aren’t so many good things here,” said Deborah. She looked as if she wanted to say more, but Franny had bent her head to write notes. “Laceration above and below brow,” she wrote. Finally, Deborah left.

Franny decided to make a pot of coffee. She dumped the morning’s coffee in the sink, and got a new filter from the cupboard. Who would marry a woman on Death Row? she wondered. A sixty-year-old woman who had killed seven husbands before? Franny could imagine presenting the case before her psych class in med school. Her classmates would furrow their brows, ask questions in bewildered voices: Did the man believe Veronica was innocent? Didn’t he know she’d never be free? Did he have a death wish, do you think?

When her mug was full, Franny took a sip, and then put it down. She just had to see the ceremony. Franny walked quickly down the hallway to the visiting room.

“Going to the chapel and she’s gonna get maaaaried…” sang a voice. Franny hurried along, her head down. She hated the way the inmates yelled coarsely, insultingly, incessantly. At the window to the visiting room, she stopped.

The room was filled. There were people on both sides of the glass wall that separated the guests from the prisoners. Guards surrounded Veronica, some smiling, some watching passively. Visitors and staff stood on the other side of the glass. Some of them looked a bit like Veronica—daughters, maybe, sons. Some cradled babies in their arms, and there were children—children!—in frilly dresses and pressed pants. Franny shook her head.

In the front of the room, the chaplain, a mousy woman named Moira, read from her Bible. Moira held a telephone mouthpiece, so that Jimmy, on the other side of the glass, could hear. Veronica wore a long, white gown. (She had ordered the dress from a discount bridal catalog, Karen had divulged. Veronica’s gray hair was covered with a sheet, trailing behind her to the floor. She was made up like a showgirl: bright lipstick and rouge.

The husband had to be twenty years younger than Veronica. He was bone-thin with dark hair and a dark complexion. He stood proudly, holding the receiver to his ear. Through the glass, he gazed at Veronica.

Franny squeezed into the visiting room. The door closed with a bang, and everyone turned around. Franny stared into her coffee. The chaplain looked up, but then resumed reading into the mouthpiece. Jimmy began his vows, speaking quietly and forcefully. Franny could not help feeling a shiver when he said, so seriously, “until death do us part.”

As Jimmy spoke, Franny looked at Veronica’s face. It was clear, shining, and something inside Franny melted. She forgot the circumstances, just for that flickering moment, and she saw two people in love.

After the ceremony, the guards led Veronica away, and her new husband watched her go. He was hugged by his relatives, and a baby started crying. There were no pictures, no flowers, no music. When everyone had left, Franny went to pick up a gum wrapper on the floor.

“Franny, how are you doing?” Franny stood quickly, and turned around. Deborah was in the middle of the room. “I mean, really,” said Deborah.

“I’m fine,” said Franny, but she suddenly felt tired. “It’s just so sad,” she said. Deborah came forward, put her hand on Franny’s arm.

“Jack told me you kept it all inside,” said Deborah, and then she stopped.

“What?” said Franny. “Did you say Jack?”

“I didn’t…” said Deborah.

“He told you about me?” said Franny, incredulous. But as she looked at Deborah, it fell into place. “You and Uncle Jack,” she said. “Of course.”

Deborah did not answer, but did not look away. Finally, she said, “I didn’t know how to tell you. I guess I was afraid you’d be hurt, or something.”

“No,” said Franny, “I’m glad.” They stood in the room, the remnants of the wedding around them, and Franny said, “I drank your Tab.”

Deborah smiled. “It’s fine,” she said.

Franny looked at the scuffed floor, covered in muddy footprints of all sizes. There was so much mud. The room was a mess, littered with wrappers and rice that guests had thrown on Jimmy. Even Uncle Jack had shared his life. There were a hundred breaths filling the room, pressing in on Franny. Inside her, there was nothing.

Let’s be honest. There were nights when Franny got drunk. She sat in her old room at Uncle Jack’s house and drank until things seemed loose and even funny. Usually, it was the cheap wine from the Spurs Gas Mart, but sometimes it was beer or whiskey. She got drunk. And then she called people and hung up. She called college friends, she called Nat’s mother, she called her old number in New York to hear the answering machine. (Nat had changed the message, of course, and now it said, It’s Nat. You know what to do.) Once, she called Christopher, the Houston newscaster she had met at the Motor Inn Lounge.

She would listen to the ringing phones, hear the pause after people had waked and picked up, but before they remembered where they were, or what to say. She listened to the hesitant “Hello?” The second, puzzled, “Hel-lo?” and the various curses: “Asshole!” “Hello? Hello? Fucker!” Nat’s mother hung up after the second hello. When Franny ran out of familiar numbers, she would just dial, to see what happened. Nothing much happened.

She watched ants. There were ants in her room, and they climbed up the wall. The amazing thing, she thought, was that the ants followed each other’s trails. It was as if they knew where the previous ants had been. Perhaps they left an invisible scent? They climbed up the wall by Franny’s bed, and then into one of the crevices. Franny tried not to leave food out, but she forgot, and the ants came, and Franny watched them.

At the request of Tiffany’s lawyer, Franny had taken a blood sample from Tiffany for DNA testing. Tiffany had been pale and quiet when Franny had inserted the needle. Franny sent the blood to Dallas to be analyzed at the same lab where the skin underneath the twins’ fingernails was being tested. Some of the nurses in the Medical Center had opinions about Tiffany’s innocence, but Franny stayed clear of their discussions. While Franny was drawing Tiffany’s blood, Tiffany bit her lip. When it was over, she said “Thank you” in a voice as sweet as candy.

On Wednesday evening, Franny went to the Gatestown Public Library, and looked up old newspaper stories about Tiffany. The old men no longer stared when Franny came inside, simply nodded.

According to the papers, Tiffany had been brought up as a Dallas socialite. There was a picture of her as the Homecoming Queen at her prep school, Ravenwood. She was standing in front of a football player, his thick arms around her hips. Her smile was wide and joyless.

There was no evidence of abuse, although one childhood friend (now the wife of an oil executive in Midland, Texas) claimed Tiffany had said she’d learned everything there was to learn about sex from her father, an Exxon landman. In the pictures, Tiffany’s father was tan and arrogant-looking. His wife, Tiffany’s mother, was thin as a whisper. Her name was Sissy.

Tiffany went on to become a cheerleader at the University of Texas, and surprised everyone when she married a computer designer, Dan Brooks. Dan was short and wore glasses. He founded Brooks Solutions, and sold his output management software for millions. The couple lived in a sprawling mansion on the outskirts of Houston (their house looked like a Tuscan villa), and had twin girls, Joanna and Josie. In the backyard there was a large pond.

Dan, who became a freelance software consultant, traveled often, leaving his family alone in their giant house.

A neighbor, a dog groomer named Doris, claimed that Tiffany suffered from depression, and on one occasion locked her two daughters in the yard. “They ran around naked as jaybirds, and who knows where Miss Cheerleader was,” said Doris. Tiffany, according to Doris, “took a lot of naps.”

But many other neighbors called Tiffany “an ideal mother,” “a real sweetheart,” and “someone who does the baking cookies thing.” She seemed to be well-liked at the twins’ nursery school, where she volunteered as a Reading Buddy. “She was a hottie,” confided one local teen.

At a ballet recital, according to Madame Clouchet, a Houston teacher, Tiffany arrived in a leotard and tutu that matched her four-year-old daughters’. This, said Madame Clouchet, “was a bit, how you say, bizarre.”

On September twenty-fourth, 1991, Tiffany and Dan hired a babysitter, Laura Volman, and went to dinner at Goode’s Seafood. Dan ordered the mesquite catfish and two Shiner beers, Tiffany a side salad with lite vinaigrette and a glass of white zinfandel. Their waitress, Shirley Smith, says they “were real nice, whatever, you know, it was busy.” Dan paid in cash.

After returning home, Dan drove the babysitter to her house. “He gave me twenty bucks. They always paid well, because they were rich,” said Laura. Laura had played Barbie with the twins, and then turned on the television. “I was supposed to, like, read to them, but ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ was on,” said Laura.

Dan had gone to bed upstairs. He left Tiffany and the twins watching a Disney movie in the TV room downstairs. He thinks the movie had an elephant in it.

At three-twenty a.m. on September twenty-fifth, Tiffany called 9-1-1 in hysterics. The conversation was reported in a Houston Chronicle article:

9-1-1, how can I help you?

Hello? Hello?

Ma’am, how can I help you?

My babies! My babies! They’re gone, my babies!

Ma’am, can you give me your name?

They’re gone! Help, oh my God…

Please calm down, ma’am.

Calm down? Calm down? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Please give me your name.

Tiffany Brooks. Oak Spring Road. Tiffany Brooks, oh my God…

Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?

No, no, they’re gone! Somebody kidnapped my babies! I don’t know…

What happened?

I was asleep. I fell asleep, I woke up, there was a man, and now they’re gone! Someone came in my house…my babies, help me!

Ma’am, what is your exact address?

I found a knife…I’m hurt. I picked it up. Oh no, I ruined the fingerprints! Oh, God, help me!

According to Tiffany, she had fallen asleep in front of the television with the twins. The next thing she remembers is Josie calling her. She heard Josie saying, “Mommy!” She recounted the next few minutes in her court transcript:

I heard Josie call me and I woke up. There was blood on my shirt. It is very blurry, I can barely remember what happened next. I called for Josie and Joanna. They did not answer me. They were not in the room. I heard footsteps in the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen. I saw the back of someone, a man. He ran out the door. He dropped a knife. I picked up the knife. I ran outside. There was nobody, no car. I screamed. I called 9-1-1.

Dan, according to his court transcript, woke when he heard Tiffany’s screams:

I heard her screaming. She was screaming, “Oh my God.” I got out of bed and ran downstairs. Tiffany was in the kitchen, and she was stabbed, she was bleeding and screaming. The back door was open. I ran outside, but I couldn’t see anything. The twins were gone.

The ambulance arrived and took Tiffany to the emergency room. She had been stabbed in her chest and neck. The doctors concluded that the wounds were from a knife. The police ordered roadblocks and searched the neighborhood for Josie and Joanna. It was the next morning when, searching the grounds of the Brooks’ home, a police officer found a small sock in the mud at the side of the pond. When the pond was searched, the bodies of Josie and Joanna were found. They both wore sleeping suits, which had been filled with rocks.

As the investigation wore on, Tiffany began to emerge as a suspect. Her stab wounds could have been self-inflicted, doctors determined, although one wound, on her right forearm, would have been very difficult for her to have caused. Also, Tiffany’s behavior was deemed strange by psychologists—the mention of picking up the knife and the ruined fingerprints in her 9-1-1 call. Her story of a strange man running out the back door yielded no leads. A window screen had been slashed, but the dust on the windowsill beneath it had not been disturbed. No prints were found in the house and on the knife other than Tiffany’s. Tiffany and her husband maintained their innocence.

“Why would I kill my babies?” Tiffany said to a reporter, crying. No answer to that question was ever found.

A jury convicted Tiffany Brooks of drowning her two daughters. She was sentenced to death.

Tiffany and Dan had been fighting to get the DNA under their daughters’ fingernails examined for years when the approval finally came through. Whoever’s skin was under the girls’ nails was undoubtedly the person the girls had struggled with while being drowned. Only faint scratches were found on Tiffany, but much of her skin had been torn from the stabbing.

On Friday, the call came from Dallas. They had received the results of Tiffany’s blood test, and compared it with the DNA in the tissue samples. Franny assured the lab that the sample had been Tiffany’s blood, and they told her the results: the DNA samples were the same.

Yoga with Yolanda! Franny decided to go. She thought it was time for a little stress relief. Even after her running shoes had arrived from New York, she had barely used them. It was just too hot for exercise, and Franny felt sluggish and heavy.

On Wednesday night, she put on sweatpants and a T-shirt and walked to St. David’s Catholic Church. It was on the corner of Main and Sixth, a brick building with high windows and a large, brass bell. By the time she arrived, she was about ten minutes late, and couldn’t find the basement entrance. A woman came out the front door and folded her arms over her chest.