Winding Stair (9781101559239) (27 page)

“Show it to him,” Judge Parker said.

The paper Evans handed me had a familiar look to it but I could not at that moment place it. It was rectangular, thick, and of high quality, with a distinctive tooth. It had been folded twice. As I spread it at the front of Parker's desk, I could see a pencil scrawl and a rough sketch:

My mind still on the Chubee case, I had no notion what this message meant.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Found in one of the cells of the women's jail,” Judge Parker said. “The room we've had that Negro boy in.”

“Emmitt? You found this in his room?” I asked. My first thought was how the boy must have reacted to such a thing. That morning on the Hatchet Hill road, when Schiller asked him to identify the men responsible for Mrs. Eagle John's death, he'd said, “They cut my guts out.” And the danger to Jennie Thrasher struck me. If someone wanted the boy silenced, surely she must be no less endangered.

“That boy told me he could read,” Evans was saying, still pacing the small room from wall to wall. “But even if he couldn't read, the picture is enough to convey the meaning.”

“The boy's gone, Eben,” Judge Parker said. “And Mr. Evans tells me that without him your Eagle John case won't get an indictment from the grand jury.”

“My God,” I said, staring at the penciled skull. “My God.”

Parker slammed his hand against the desktop and I jumped visibly.

“I want to know what's happening here,” he shouted. “In a federal jail. Intimidating a grand jury witness. Somebody carrying off a boy in protective custody right under our noses.”

“If somebody carried him off, Judge, I doubt they'd have left any note,” Evans said, pushing his pince-nez up onto the bridge of his nose. “There'd be no reason for the threat if they physically took him. I suspect he ran off on his own accord, Your Honor.”

“But when—” I started, and Evans cut me off.

“This morning. Zelda Mores found his room empty. She'd come to see the church people about the baptizing. When she went back up, he was gone.”

“The what?”

“The church people,” Evans said irritably. “They're baptizing today.”

“Now and again,” Judge Parker said, “churches send their ministers down here to baptize any prisoners who want it. Today, it's the Baptists.” He said it with some distaste, being a staunch Methodist. “And Miss Thrasher had indicated she wanted to be baptized. The whole party's down at the river now.”

“Jennie Thrasher is off down at the river—” But Evans interrupted me again. Both seemed to have little concern for her situation. The boy's disappearance was all that occupied their thinking.

“Some of the deputies have been looking for him all morning,” he said. “They finally decided he was gone and told us about it just now. And gave us this.” He pointed to the note, still lying open on Judge Parker's desk.

“Who found it?” I asked.

“Zelda Mores. Just before she took the Thrasher girl down to the river,” Judge Parker said.

“We've had no chance to talk with Zelda,” Evans said. “All we know is what the deputies told us she said. She planned to take that boy with her down to the river, along with the girl. But when she went for him, he was gone. After that, she didn't want to leave Jennie Thrasher.”

“Well, I'm glad
Zelda's
aware there might be some danger to the girl,” I said, and Evans glared at me over the top of his pince-nez.

“Eben, you've got four men in jail that are supposed to be the ones involved in these Winding Stair crimes. Now we've got this note. Is there any doubt in your mind about those men? Do you think there's someone else out there you've missed?”

Judge Parker's question surprised me. Everyone knew the personal interest he took in his cases. But I wasn't sure a judge was supposed to be this involved, especially even before a grand jury sat on the case. But he'd asked and I answered as surely as I could.

“With the evidence we've got and the testimony of that boy, I think any jury would agree we've got them. All of them.”

“Yes, and that's just the point.” He waved his hand at the note again. “That thing right there probably scared him out of testifying another word.”

“If you've got them all, the note means they have friends out there,” Judge Parker said. “And very close by. I want them, whoever they are.”

“Sir,” I said, feeling all this talk was wasting valuable time when Jennie Thrasher might be in danger. “I'm going down to the river and talk with Zelda Mores.”

“That's one reason we called you in here,” Evans said. “With Schiller still in Choctaw Nation, you're closer to this case than anyone else around.”

“And, Eben,” Judge Parker said, moving around his desk and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Use your own judgment about talking to that girl. Her room is at one end of the corridor up in the women's jail. The boy's was at the other, but she may have seen something. On the other hand, we don't want to frighten her. We don't want to upset her about this thing and frighten her off.”

I recalled the afternoon Jennie had slipped away and come to my hotel room, but I knew that wasn't what Parker meant. He was afraid she might balk at testifying or have a loss of memory if she thought friends of the gang were trying to silence witnesses.

“Go on and see Zelda,” he said. “But use your own judgment.”

That was something, anyway, but my mind was too busy with other things to be congratulating myself on the judge's show of confidence. The bailiff was hurrying down the hall, and I knew Smoker Chubee's jury was ready to come in. The crowd still milled about in the main corridor as I slipped out the rear entrance and started for the west gate of the compound. Within a few steps, sweat was streaming off my face. I crossed the railroad and came to the high west bank of the river. I saw the group at once at the water's edge, and there were a good many townspeople standing along the high ground, watching.

The church people were wearing white choir vestments, in a compact bunch near the pilings for the new railroad bridge still under construction, looking like a flock of snow geese. They were singing something I didn't recognize. At the water's edge were three men with leg-irons and handcuffs, and close beside them two deputies with Winchesters. It was an incongruous scene, this religious ceremony attended by the firepower of Parker's court.

A few paces to one side was Jennie Thrasher. They had given her a vestment, too, and she stood in the sunlight, her golden hair shining down her back, a bright, thin little figure against the background of the muddy Arkansas. Beside her was Zelda Mores, and the sight of that bulky form with her pistol-heavy purse gave me a sense of relief. Facing the bank and waist-deep in water were the minister and two young assistants, all with Moses beards. When the singing ended and the minister began to shout the opening words of his sermon, I moved closer and caught Zelda Mores's eye. She came back up the bank to me at once. Jennie Thrasher's back was toward me and I could not see her face.

“Mr. Pay,” she said, puffing as she came closer, the sweat running in rivulets through her thin mustache.

“We haven't found that boy,” I said harshly, ready to blame her for what had happened. “You should have brought that note to somebody right off, and you should have kept Jennie in her room.”

Zelda stiffened and glared at me, and at first she had trouble speaking, her mouth opening and closing like a river catfish's. When it came, it was a wrathful flood.

“I can't watch two people at once. That girl down there's my main concern. And she wanted this baptizin' and I wasn't goin' to deny it to her. It's about time she done something to save her soul. And that damned boy. Always wanderin' around in the compound and he's everybody's pet and them other deputies is supposed to watch him. When I found that note, I told them deputies and they started lookin'. There wasn't one thing Evans or His Honor could do about it then. There was already in court.”

“All right, you did what you could,” I said, irritated that what she said was reasonable. “But about that note. Where did you find it?”

“On the boy's bunk.”

“Who's been in those rooms since yesterday?”

“Nobody,” she said, still furious. “Just the old colored cleaning lady, comes in each morning.”

“Then maybe you can tell me how the note got in there.”

“I can. I thought about it. Last night when Emmitt was out in the compound, before supper, somebody give him a sack of popcorn. They're always doin' that. Givin' him things. That note was in the sack. It couldn't be any other way.”

“If he brought it up from the compound, somebody could have slipped it into a pocket.”

“He ain't got no pockets,” she said. “He wears them slick homemade britches and a flannel shirt, no pockets in nothin'. He come back up to eat supper and he hadn't touched that popcorn yet. The sack was full, and he spilled some on the bunk and I told him he'd have to clean that up after he ate his supper. Then after supper, I could hear that sack rattlin' when he started eatin' it. The popcorn. He never left the room after supper.”

“Were you up there all night?”

“Every night. I sleep there, in the anteroom to the women's jail. This mornin' I took him his breakfast and the curtain was drawed across the door. Them women's cells got curtains so they can have some privacy for certain business. After that, I went down to talk with them church people, and when I come back up he was gone and I found that note on his bunk and the popcorn half et from last night. It was on the floor by his bunk.”

A sack of popcorn! Someone had come into that compound, somebody who knew Emmitt was often there and that people were in the habit of giving him things to eat.

“And, Mr. Pay,” she said, seeming to anticipate my next question. “Ain't nobody saw who give him the popcorn. I ast all them deputies and anybody else who might have been around. It could have been anybody. With court in session, there's always a mob there.”

At the river, they had begun to baptize the prisoners. Each of them waded into the water awkwardly, dragging his leg-irons through the mud, holding his manacled wrists before him. Each in turn was ducked beneath the surface and came up sputtering and spitting. The two young assistants with Moses beards led Jennie Thrasher out. By the time she reached the minister, the water was up to her breasts. He placed one hand at the small of her back and the other he cupped over her mouth and nose, and with a few shouted words he pushed her backward into the water. He seemed to hold her under for a long time. She came up gasping, the water streaming from her hair and face. As she waded back to the bank, the two young men still at her arms, the wet vestment clung tightly to her body.

“I've got to talk to her,” I said.

“Mr. Pay, she's told me she don't want to talk to you or even see you,” she said. There was no longer any indignation in her voice. She seemed close to pleading. “We don't want to go scarin' her with this note business, Mr. Pay. That girl's had enough to go through. And besides, if you done that, she might get a seizure of forgetfulness and Evans would raise Cain about that.”

It was true, of course. And it infuriated me. As I turned away abruptly and started up the bank, I knew the anger was not because of the note or of losing a witness nor even because of possible danger to Jennie. It was because this girl had said she didn't want to see me. And I wanted very much to see her, to tell her stories again of the city, to go back to National Cemetery and tease about cutting initials into elm trees, to sit together above the Poteau and eat meat loaf sandwiches from the Rogers Avenue shops. She had come to me once and I had put her off. With all other girls I had known, there would have been a second and a third and perhaps even a fourth chance. But it began to dawn on me now that Jennie Thrasher offered only once and my opportunity had passed.

“Zelda, you watch over that girl,” I called back.

“You can bet on that, Mr. Pay,” she said.

I struggled to the top of the sand-and-limestone river embankment, passing through the lines of people watching. Behind me at the water's edge I could hear the singing once more.

It was a dismal afternoon. The picture of Jennie Thrasher coming out of the river with the vestment plastered tight against her breasts would not leave my mind. Intruding on that was the thought of the boy, lying all night in his hot cell, awake and thinking about that death's-head note. I found Joe Mountain, still grinning in his absurd yellow-and-brown-plaid suit, and we joined the search for Emmitt. “They cut my guts out,” he'd said. I knew if we did find him, we'd likely never get another word out of him. I could understand that, and certainly the boy knew the kinds of people we were dealing with better than I did.