"So you found a secret partner right here in Starksville who could manufacture meth for you. In fact, a partner who could provide you with an almost unlimited supply and never get caught. Right?"
A secret partner? I thought.
"I called it," Bree whispered, lowering her iPhone and pumping her fist.
"Called what?" I said.
Before she could answer, Drummond said, "Is that correct, Marvin?"
"Yes. I had a partner."
Judge Varney had broken out in a sweat and looked agitated, and I feared he was about to keel over again from kidney-stone pain.
Drummond said, "You and your partner, you didn"t like Stefan Tate sneaking around, looking into things by the tracks, did you?"
"No."
"You and your partner decided that Stefan Tate had to go."
Marvin Bell moved his hands, winced, said, "I agreed Tate had to go. But I had no idea what he had in mind. No idea that he"d do all that to the boy."
"You know for a fact your partner killed Rashawn Turnbull?"
Bell looked out into the spectators and seemed to be speaking directly to Cece Turnbull. "I know for a fact he killed Rashawn and framed Tate. He told me so himself afterward."
"What did your partner say?" Drummond said. "Word for word."
Bell swallowed and replied, "He said he"d gotten rid of two problems at the same time, Stefan Tate and his black b.a.s.t.a.r.d grandson."
CHAPTER 98.
FOR TWO SECONDS, the silence in that courtroom was so deep and complete you could have heard a mouse in the walls. I was tired, wrung out. It took me a full two seconds to figure out the killer, and then I twisted around, looking for Harold Caine.
Rashawn"s grandfather. Owner of a fertilizer company. Chemist, no doubt. Racist? Grandfather?
Caine"s expression seemed electrified by the charge. His body had gone rigid. His lips were peeled back. And he was clinging so hard to the bench in front of him that I thought his fingers might snap like Bell"s.
Caine"s wife stared at him like he was something unthinkable and cowered from his side.
Caine noticed, turned his head to her, said, "It"s not true, Virginia. He"s-"
"It is true!" Cece Turnbull screeched.
Caine"s daughter had twisted around and was looking past Ann and Sharon Lawrence to face her father two rows back. "You always hated Rashawn! You always hated that a n.i.g.g.e.r f.u.c.ked your lily-white Southern daughter and left you with a living, breathing tarnish on the Caine family name!"
"No, that"s not true!"
Cece went over the back of her bench then, stepped up next to Ann Lawrence, and launched herself at her father. She crashed into him, slapping and scratching at his face.
"You treated my boy worse than dirt his entire life!" she screamed. "And you stole my Lizzie. Rashawn had as much of your precious blood as my Lizzie, and you cut it out of him with a pruning saw!"
Bree jumped up and went to Cece, who"d broken down sobbing as she feebly tried to continue her a.s.sault on her father. Bree pulled Cece off and held her while Caine slumped there, chest heaving, blood oozing from those scratches, looking around like a cornered animal at all the people in the courtroom watching him.
"None of it"s true," Caine told them in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "None of it!"
"It"s all true!" Bell shouted from the witness stand. "You sick f.u.c.k. You deserve to burn in h.e.l.l for what you did."
The courtroom doors were flung open again. Two men and a woman, all wearing business suits, came in carrying pistols and badges.
The woman said, "My name is Carol Wolfe, FBI special agent in charge of the Winston-Salem office. Put the gun down, Sergeant Drummond."
Drummond kept the shotgun to the back of Bell"s head, said, "I"m not quite done yet, Agent Wolfe. Mr. Bell here has one more thing to get off his chest."
CHAPTER 99.
MARVIN BELL SEEMED genuinely puzzled, said, "I told you everything."
"Not all of it," Drummond said. "You said you"ve never murdered anyone in your life."
"That"s a fact," Bell said.
"Never smothered anyone-a woman, maybe?" Drummond said. "Thirty-five years ago?"
"No."
"You were her drug dealer," the sergeant insisted. "She was dying of cancer, and no one was paying you for the heroin her husband was using to ease her pain."
Bell shook his head.
"You got her husband d.a.m.n-near-overdose high on smack," Drummond said. "And then you smothered her with a pillow while he watched, so numb he couldn"t stop you."
Drummond was breathing hard. He said, "Then, for almost a year, you made him work for you, and finally, when he was no use to you anymore, you tied that man to your car with a rope just like the one around your neck here, and you dragged that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d through the streets, called him a wife killer, a mother killer.
"You alerted the police, said he"d murdered his wife, and gave him to the young men who were already in your pocket. Officer Randy Sherman and Deputy Nathan Bean. You paid them to make it look like he tried to escape. Judge Varney, a young a.s.sistant district attorney at the time, was there too. They pushed that man to the railing, and he didn"t understand why they went back to the cruisers and then turned and pulled their guns. Then they shot him, and he fell off the bridge and into the gorge. Isn"t that the way it happened, Marvin?"
Drummond had dropped the hammer and was holding the shotgun against Bell"s head so hard his hands were shaking.
"Yes, yes," Bell whined. "That"s what happened."
Judge Varney pounded with his gavel. "That is not true!"
Police Chief Sherman was on his feet, about to protest, but the FBI agent said, "Chief, you"re under arrest. And you too, Judge Varney."
I don"t remember getting to my feet, only that I was, suddenly, and staring across the courtroom at Drummond as if down a vast tunnel of time.
"Who are you, Sergeant?" I said, realizing that Nana Mama was standing up beside me. "How do you know all these things?"
Tears streamed down Drummond"s expressionless face as he withdrew the shotgun barrel from Bell"s head and looked toward me and my grandmother.
"I know these things, Alex," he choked out, "because in another lifetime, my name was Jason Cross."
CHAPTER 100.
NANA MAMA GASPED, reached for her heart, and toppled against me. Her frail ninety-pound body almost bowled me off my own liquid feet. I had to take my eyes off Drummond to regain my balance and hold her up.
"Is it true?" my grandmother whispered into my chest, as if she couldn"t bear to look Drummond"s way.
"That"s impossible," Bell said, craning his neck to look at Drummond. "Jason Cross took a bullet, went into the gorge. He never came out."
"Yes, he did," said Pinkie, who"d also gotten to his feet. "My uncle Clifford found him down on the river that night. Nursed him back to health."
"Is Clifford here in Starksville?" Drummond called to Pinkie. "I would sure like to see the second best friend I"ve ever had. Maybe take him to Bourbon Street like we always talked about."
"Oh my G.o.d." My aunt Hattie gasped.
"It"s a miracle," my aunt Connie cried.
I looked down at Nana Mama, saw my grandmother dissolving through sheets of tears.
"It"s him," I whispered. "I don"t know how, but it"s him."
When I looked up, Drummond had left Bell in the witness stand, handed the shotgun to Detective Frost, and was coming toward us with tears streaming down his blank face and his arms cast open.
"You don"t know how much I missed the both of you," he said. "You have no idea of the loneliness without you."
I slid into my father"s arms and he slid into his mother"s as if they were the most natural and familiar acts possible.
We bowed our heads into one another, suddenly apart from everyone else in that courtroom, like a miniature universe unto ourselves. I don"t think any of us managed to utter an intelligible word in those first few moments of reunion. But I know we were communicating deeply in a whole other language, like people embraced by holy spirits and speaking in tongues of fire.
CHAPTER 101.
TWO WEEKS AND two days after we"d arrived in Starksville, on a warm, clear Sat.u.r.day afternoon, we had ourselves a proper reunion in Aunt Hattie"s backyard. Everybody who mattered to me in life was there.
Damon had flown into Winston-Salem the day before to meet his grandfather, which had been as emotional and satisfying as every other moment of my dad"s return to my life. Naomi"s mother, Cilla, and my brother Charlie had come in the day before that.
At first, Charlie had not believed Nana Mama and me when we"d called him with the news. Then he"d gotten angry and said he wasn"t interested in meeting someone who"d cut out on us thirty-five years before. But Cilla and Naomi had insisted, and when Charlie laid eyes on our dad, all had been forgiven. The only thing that would have made it better was having my late brothers Blake and Aaron there too, and we all shed tears over those tragedies.
My best friend, John Sampson, and his wife, Billie, had come in that morning. Sampson and my dad had hit it off immediately, and when Drummond wasn"t sitting by my uncle Cliff, he and John were trading cop stories and laughing.
Stefan Tate was there with his fiancee, Patty Converse, the two of them looking as in love as any couple I"d ever seen. Special Agent Wolfe was there as well.
Evidently, the FBI had been looking at Starksville with suspicions of judicial and police misconduct long before my father called Wolfe and told her to come listen to the shocking testimony about to come out in the courtroom of Erasmus P. Varney.
I went over to Agent Wolfe, said, "What do you think my dad"s chances are?"
Wolfe said, "Well, he"s not going back to his job with the Palm Beach County Sheriff"s Office. They"ve been pretty clear on that, but I don"t think he"ll end up being prosecuted for taking Bell hostage and marching him into court."
"You don"t think?" I asked. "Pretty extreme move."
"It was," she said. "But we arrested the police chief and the presiding judge in Stark County, and the sheriff"s been murdered. And Guy Pedelini regained consciousness and spilled everything on all of them. The DA"s office is even under investigation. Basically, there"s no one left in Starksville to go after your dad, and I don"t know what federal statute would apply."
"So he walks free into a new life," I said.
"He walks free into an old life," Bree said, coming up beside me.
"And Marvin Bell and Harold Caine go down for so many things," Wolfe said. "If they"re not given the death penalty, which I think is the appropriate punishment, they"ll at least never see the outside of a prison."
I thought about Harold Caine, his callous, cruel indifference. We"d gotten more of the story from Cece.
After Rashawn"s birth, her parents had all but disowned her. Then Cece got pregnant by a white boyfriend she picked up while Rashawn"s father was doing time. Her parents found out, and they also found out that Cece was on drugs while she was with child.
The Caines used the rigged courts of Starksville against Cece and had the baby girl, Lizzie, taken from her mother"s arms within minutes of birth. The courts awarded Lizzie"s grandparents full custody, and they had greatly limited Cece"s involvement in her daughter"s life.
Harold Caine had evidently spent years bitter and humiliated about his mixed-race grandson while at the same time doting on his lily-white granddaughter and running a meth business from secret underground labs beneath his fertilizer factory.
The most terrible thing about it all was that the frenzied nature of the wounds Rashawn had suffered before death clearly indicated that Caine had enjoyed killing his grandson. He"d enjoyed murdering his own flesh and blood. When it came right down to it, that poor, innocent boy had been tortured and slain for the color of his skin.