With Love from the Inside (9 page)

BOOK: With Love from the Inside
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SOPHIE

The drive to Brookfield took longer than Sophie anticipated. So long, in fact, she prayed she would make it to the attorney's office before they closed for the evening. Sophie checked the time on the dashboard of her car. Four-forty-five.
Please, Mr. Taylor, be in your office.
She couldn't stand spending any more time than necessary in her hometown.

Her car rounded the last long, winding curve before entering Brookfield—population 1,451. The green
Welcome to Brookfield
sign hadn't changed since she left eleven years ago.
Hasn't anyone had a baby in this town
or died of old age?
She knew of at least four people who no longer could be counted as residents in the census. Didn't the Bradshaw family account for anything?

She drove past the sign and bitterly entered her past.
I will not let this place get to me, I will not let this place get to me.
She chanted her tune of immunity as she tried to remember where his office was located. Downtown (or maybe uptown in a place this small) by the courthouse and across from the 40th Street Café. Another five minutes, one flashing stoplight, and two right turns, and she should be there.

About the time Sophie started to exhale, she heard sirens. She checked her rearview mirror, supposing it would be too much to ask if the black-and-white police car riding her bumper was after someone else.
Great, a town with one police officer and he happens to clock me.

She flicked on her right turn signal and pulled her SUV over into the gravel parking lot in front of the IGA grocery store. The faded gray-and-white vertical-striped siding still looked exactly the same as it had a decade ago. The lightbulb in the oversize red
A
still flickered, still not fully illuminated—begging for someone, for anyone, to recognize it needed attention.

The policeman followed close behind her, keeping his sirens on even after both cars came to a complete stop.
All right, already,
Sophie thought to herself.
Can't believe the speed limit is still twenty-five miles per hour through this part of town. Zero traffic and you still have to drive slow as hell.

A cop in his early sixties emerged from the police car. His thick black belt, armed with a holster, handcuffs, and a billy club, underlined his draping belly. “Ma'am, good evening. Are you in a hurry to get someplace?”

“I'm sorry,” Sophie said, deciding to play ignorant, hoping her speedometer was as dishonest as she was. “Was I going too fast?”

“I have you clocked at forty-nine miles per hour. By my calculations, that is twenty-four miles over the speed limit.” His overenunciated words took the southern draw to a new level.

“Oh no!” Sophie said, trying to decide if ignorance or an apology would get her on her way faster. “I'm so sorry,” she decided. “I'm not feeling well. I guess I'm a little distracted.”

“Can I see your license and registration, please?” His voice sounded vaguely familiar. Sophie pulled her license out of the slot in her billfold and then reached over and retrieved her registration from the console between her front seats. She handed them both to the officer.

“Well, Mrs. Logan,” the officer said, looking at her driver's license, then back at her, “what brings you in such a hurry to the lovely town of Brookfield?”

“In town on family business,” Sophie told him. “I used to live here.”

The officer looked at her license once again, and then looked back at Sophie, studying her ring finger and her face before he spoke. “What's your maiden name?”

Sophie pressed her lips together and contemplated the possible implications of engaging him in a high-speed chase.

The officer asked her again. “Ma'am, your maiden name?”

Flashes of O.J. and the white-Bronco debacle sped through her mind. “Bradshaw. My name used to be Sophie Bradshaw.”

He once again studied the picture on her license and then looked back at her, squinting. “Are you Grace Bradshaw's daughter?”

They both put the pieces of their last interaction together at about the same time. He'd been one of the officers outside her brother's hospital room.
Grace Bradshaw, you are under arrest for the murder of your infant son, William Joseph Bradshaw.

He looked at her with the same pitiable look he had on the day he'd witnessed her sobbing in her father's arms.
Don't take my mommy. Leave my mommy alone.

The officer handed Sophie back her license and registration, as if this act of goodwill might somehow make up for the pain he inflicted all those years ago.

“Hope you feel better, Mrs. Logan. I'll let you go with a warning this time. Slow down and drive safe.”

—

“M
AY
I
HELP YOU
?”

“I need to see Ben Taylor,” Sophie said to the woman pulling her key from the arched knotty-walnut front door. A bronze fleur-de-lis door knocker hung beside a scratched gold-plated sign that read
The Law Offices of Benjamin R. Taylor
. “Is he here?”

“Our office is closed for the day, Ms. Colby. You should've checked
your calendar.” Her hair didn't move as she bobbled her head. “Your appointment was yesterday.”

“I'm not Ms. Colby,” Sophie said. “I need to see Mr. Taylor.”

The woman dropped the keys in her embroidered clutch before finally glancing in Sophie's direction. “Oh! Sorry about that. I just assumed. Just to let you know, Mr. Taylor is too busy to handle any more child-custody cases or bad marriages that are contemplating divorce.” She sized up Sophie to see if she might fit into either one of those categories.

Sophie sized her up, too, thinking she had a lot of confidence for a woman whose bouffant and pale blue dress screamed Alice from
The Brady Bunch
.

“I'm not here for that,” Sophie replied, wiping underneath her eyes with the tips of her fingers. She didn't need another person in this town feeling sorry for her, but this was her own fault. She should've checked her reflection after a long day of driving. Black smudge marks now transferred themselves to the tips of her right hand as she dabbed at her smudged makeup. “I received a letter in the mail. He asked to see me.”

The woman grabbed the scrolled handrail and moved rather quickly down the stairs. “Be here around one p.m. tomorrow and I'll see if I can squeeze you in.”

—

S
OPHIE SAT IN HER CAR
for such a long time that people leaving the café began to look inside to make sure she was still breathing. Should she wait until tomorrow afternoon and hope she could see Ben Taylor? Or should she drive back home and hope Thomas was asleep and didn't ask her any questions?

Her cell phone rang before she could decide.

“Hello.”

“Hey, baby, checking on you to see if you made it to Charlotte okay.”
For a moment Sophie struggled to remember the last lie she'd told Thomas. Charlotte—oh, yes, meeting with chefs for the fund-raiser.

“I did make it here fine. Problem is”—she paused again, trying to fabricate a dilemma—“I didn't get to meet with everyone I wanted to.”

“That's a problem,” Thomas said. He sounded distracted but interested. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe stay tonight. Long way to come if I don't get the information I need.” Half-truths were becoming her specialty.

“Are you still there?” she asked after he didn't respond.

“Sorry, still here. Have a lot going on. Why don't you spend the night? I'm going to be at my office for a while.”

“I think I will,” Sophie replied, thankful for the easy interaction. “What's going on with you?”

“I'm going over some notes from the hospital. You remember the little girl who died?”

“Of course I remember. You sound concerned. Anything going on?”

“An attorney's office called requesting my records. You know that can't be good. I'm going over things, trying to figure out what possibly could've gone wrong.” She heard him shuffle some pages as he talked.

She could picture him, the Sherlock Holmes of the surgery department, sitting behind his polished dark cherry desk, the drawers detailed with elegant filigree. One hand running through his hair, the other scanning every single lab value and vital sign in the child's record. Journals stacked in front of him, one on top of the other, in alphabetical order and color-coded by procedure. Framed diplomas, lining the wall behind him, declaring his multiple accolades.
Summa Cum Laude. Chief Resident with Highest Honors. Distinguished Fellow in Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery.
Thomas did not miss details.

“I'm sure you did everything right. You're a great doctor.”

“I don't think I made a mistake, but Carter and my dad said to protect
myself and protect the practice. Don't want to do anything to jeopardize my run for chief of surgery.”

He said “chief of surgery” sarcastically, making Sophie think his family wanted it way more than Thomas did.

“A lawsuit,” Thomas continued in a more reverent voice, “involving a child almost never comes out in the doctor's favor, whether they did something wrong or not.”

“In other words—avoid a scandal?”

“Avoid a scandal,” Thomas repeated—empathically, but once again sarcastically. “You know my family—wouldn't want to tarnish the family name. To quote my dad: ‘Sometimes it is better to make things go away than to let the whole world see your indignity.'” Sophie felt that comment right between the eyes.

On the edge of Thomas's desk, posing behind a fragile piece of glass, sat two newlyweds. A seemingly happy couple, impeccably dressed, donning paper-white smiles. “You two have the world at your fingertips,” the photographer told them when they viewed their prints.

“I'm looking at our picture,” Thomas said, after Sophie had been silent for a little too long. “We might need to get it reframed. There's a tiny crack in the glass.”

GRACE

Six minutes ago, Walter Mayberry died. I know the exact time of his death because Officer Jones turned on the TV in the dayroom and let those of us who wanted to watch the media coverage do so. No one did. Carmen clicked her overgrown nails on the metal table, complaining to Jada that the lack of vitamins in her “meal plan” was making her cuticles split. Roni riffled through an old
Sports Illustrated
and grunted ever so dramatically, as though the bite-fight between Holyfield and Tyson just happened.

At first I didn't want to watch, either. I worried you were watching, and I didn't want you to see what was about to happen. What was about to happen to me. But then curiosity, mixed with a good bit of anxiety, set in and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

This is the first execution in South Carolina in many years. I guess that's why there's so much media attention, so much debate. The TV cameras panned the crowd. One man was holding a sign that read “Forget Injections, Use a Pickax.” Drops of painted red blood trailed from the last word. Others were standing in a circle, holding candles—praying his life would be spared, I guess.

I didn't know Walter, but Officer Jones did. She had worked in the men's unit before transferring to the women's section of the prison. I'd heard about Walter, though—the Graveside Strangler. What terrible things he did to those innocent girls.

The TV station flashed their pictures throughout the coverage. I tried not to look, but I couldn't help myself. School photos, I'm sure. One girl had braids tied with tiny black-and-white bows. She had a gap between her top two teeth. The other had long, wavy auburn hair, parted on the side and clipped with a gold barrette. She wore a forest-green cardigan.

Then a picture of thirty-four-year-old Walter Mayberry popped up on the screen. His face was dominated by cumbersome black, thick-rimmed glasses, the kind that covered your eyebrows and ended at the bottom of your nose—probably prison-issued, or all he could afford. Underneath the lenses, his gray eyes looked lost.

Walter told Officer Jones he wasn't sure when the urges first started. His uncontrollable impulses to harm young girls who happened to be standing on their tiptoes, putting change into the vending machine while waiting at his dad's garage.

He hated himself afterward, but the urges wouldn't leave, no matter how hard he fought. His despicable acts played over and over in his mind; sometimes the thoughts excited him, but mainly they tortured him. His only relief came after he came to death row. His court-appointed psychiatrist fought to get him treatment.

Officer Jones said it was a new drug approved to treat paraphiliacs, or people who can't control their sexual urges. After he received weekly injections for a couple months, his high levels of testosterone went down and his obsessive thoughts moved away. His tumultuous mind turned calm and peaceful.

I kept seeing the images of those girls in my mind. What horror their parents must be going through. They deserved justice, and I prayed they received peace.

The other part of me felt sorry for him. He was a victim, too. In no way did that make him innocent or make his crimes less horrendous. It did, though, help me to understand him better.
He had to live with a monster every day, and it resided inside his head.

The television flickered on and off, but stayed on. The reporters were talking about how he'd spent his last day. The fried eggs he ate for breakfast and the grilled cheese he didn't eat for lunch. His final meal, by choice, happened to be the same thing the rest of the inmates ate for dinner: beef stew with diced potatoes and carrots, cornbread, and an eight-ounce glass of watered-down sweet tea.

It was nights (or early mornings) like these that make me look around in a panic. How did I end up in here? I wasn't mentally ill. I hadn't harmed anyone. I had two parents who were crazy about me. When I walked into the room, my mom's and dad's faces lit up. I hope you saw the pleasure on my face when I looked at you.

Somewhere there's a picture of me holding you right after you were born. It used to be framed on the table beside my bed. You had just opened your eyes and were giving me the once-over. I wasn't sure if you were going to smile or cry, but then you reached up and wrapped your fingers around my finger as if to say, “Hey, you're okay.” It was in that moment I knew I was meant to be your mom.

The row was unusually quiet tonight. Carmen was humming our Sunday-morning chapel song Ms. Liz had taught her when she first was incarcerated here:
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See, on the portals, He's waiting and watching. Calling, O sinner, come home.
The rest of the row, like me, was probably praying tonight our dreams would be peaceful. I prayed you slept in perfect peace.

A few people remained, now kneeling in a circle with their candles lit. Would these same people be here to protest against me?

A long black hearse pulled out of the prison yard, followed by two police cars. Inside was the body of Walter Mayberry on the way to be
buried in the prison cemetery, hidden down a gravel road behind a large covering of magnolia trees. According to the news, none of his family or his victims' families attended his execution.

I returned to my room to write all of this to Sophie, and then I turned on my radio. I needed to listen to some music before I fell asleep. The station was full of static, and before I could turn if off I heard a man in a somber voice say, “The next scheduled execution in the state of South Carolina will take place on February fifteenth. Grace Bradshaw, you might remember, is the woman who murdered her infant son by repeatedly putting windshield-wiper fluid into his bottle.”

BOOK: With Love from the Inside
5.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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