Cross Justice

Chapter 94

The courtroom erupted. My cousin put his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Judge Varney looked bewildered as he gaveled the court silent. Stefan picked up his head and looked at his mother and then Patty Converse. For the first time in days, I saw hope in Patty’s face.

“Ms. Lawrence,” the judge said. “You understand you have admitted to committing perjury under oath?”

She nodded, sobbed. “Am I going to jail?”

Varney said nothing. A second went by, and then another.

Naomi said, “Not if you tell the court the truth.”

The judge looked annoyed at Naomi, then glanced out into the audience before saying, “Yes, the truth will help.”

Naomi got a Kleenex and handed it to Sharon Lawrence, waited for her to regain her composure.

“Why did you lie?” Naomi asked.

Shoulders hunched forward, she replied, “It was like you said. We, my mom and me, we don’t have much. Finn said he’d make sure we had enough if I accused Coach Tate of raping me.”

“The late Finn Davis?” Naomi asked.

“Yes.”

“Adopted son of your uncle Marvin Bell?”

“Yes.”

“Knew it,” Pinkie whispered behind me.

“How much did Finn Davis offer you and your mother to cry rape?”

Sharon Lawrence glanced at her mother. Ann Lawrence stared at her hands on her lap as if they were deep, dark holes.

“Six thousand dollars a month for the rest of my mom’s life,” Sharon Lawrence choked. “Don’t you see? It saved her. That’s why I did it.”

Ann Lawrence burst into tears and hid her face in her hands.

“Why did Finn Davis want you to accuse Coach Tate of rape?”

Sharon Lawrence said, “I don’t know. He said he wanted to make sure Coach Tate was punished for what he’d done.”

“Did Finn Davis provide the semen that went in your panties?”

“Yes,” she said, looking disgusted. “I don’t know how he got it.”

“One last question,” Naomi said. “Did Finn Davis ask you to plant drugs in the athletic bag of Jannie Cross?”

“Objection; relevance,” Strong said.

Varney again looked caught between a rock and a hard place and finally said, “Sustained.”

“He did ask,” Sharon said anyway. “Finn. He promised me two thousand a month if I put the drugs in her bag. Are we going to jail? Me and Mom?”

This last question was aimed at Judge Varney, who said, “That’s a matter for another time and place, young lady. You’re dismissed for the time being.”

If it was possible, Sharon Lawrence looked even smaller and weaker when she got up and left the witness stand. She didn’t look at Stefan or any of us, just slid in next to her mother, who held her tight, whispered, “It’s all right. We’re going to be all right.”

“Judge,” Naomi said. “Based on Ms. Lawrence’s recanting of her testimony and the overwhelming physical evidence, the defense moves that the rape charges against my client be dropped.”

Varney licked his lips, said, “Ms. Strong?”

The district attorney hesitated, and then said, “The state does not object.”

“So ordered,” Varney said.

Naomi went over and put her hand on Stefan’s shoulder, said, “The defense asks that Detective Frost retake the stand.”

Varney looked at his watch and then nodded.

Frost looked rattled when he took his seat.

Naomi took up more documents, said, “The defense wishes to enter the next exhibit, a second series of FBI tests based on evidence found at the murder scene.”

Again Strong voiced no objection, just took her copy of the test, as if fearing its contents.

Frost took his copy as Naomi said, “This is a drug test done on semen samples taken off Rashawn Turnbull’s body, correct, Detective?”

Frost scanned the document, said, “It is.”

“This would be the same semen sample that the state’s DNA testing identified as belonging to my client?”

“Uh, correct.”

“Please read pages four and five,” Naomi said.

Frost flipped the pages and read, and it was like watching a balloon with a slow leak wilt and collapse.

Naomi said, “Detective Frost, can you read aloud the results of the test on my client’s semen gathered off Rashawn Turnbull’s body?”

Frost chewed the inside of his lip. He said in a defeated voice, “‘Negative for drugs and alcohol.’”

“‘Negative for drugs and alcohol,’” she repeated to the jury. “The prosecution says my client drank to excess, did copious quantities of drugs, and went into a berserk rage on the night of Rashawn’s rape and murder. But the FBI says Stefan Tate was stone-cold sober when that semen was produced.”

Chapter 95

Bree slid into the seat in the courtroom I’d been saving for her. Her eyes were shining when she whispered, “I’ve got something. Something big.”

“Hold on,” I whispered back. “Naomi’s about to destroy the state’s case.”

My niece said, “Detective Frost? You agree that’s what the test indicates?”

“Apparently so,” the detective said, looking like he’d gone too many rounds with a heavyweight contender.

“That’s strange,” Naomi said, strolling over to the jury. “Because the blood sample you took from my client the morning after he allegedly killed Rashawn Turnbull showed he had a blood alcohol level of point zero six five, indicating he’d probably been very drunk the night before. Correct?”

Frost took a big breath, said, “Yes.”

“But we now know that’s contrary to the FBI’s results,” Naomi said, hands on the jury box. “Which means that the semen on Rashawn’s body and in Sharon Lawrence’s panties came from my client, but not on the nights in question. Which means someone, probably Finn Davis, somehow got to one of my client’s condoms after he had had intercourse with his fiancée.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Patty Converse’s face had gone red, but she was nodding in agreement.

“Objection, Judge!” Strong cried. “The defense attorney is drawing conclusions out of thin air.”

“These conclusions are not drawn out of thin air!” Naomi insisted. “These are scientific facts, Ms. Strong. Flip to page nine of the FBI’s report, third paragraph, reference to a third distinct DNA source in Ms. Lawrence’s panties. Initial test indicates the DNA is female and unrelated to Ms. Lawrence. Vaginal secretions of another woman, suggesting, again, a used condom was stolen after use to plant evidence in order to frame my client for a crime he clearly did not commit.”

Both the judge and the district attorney were digging through the document, looking for the reference.

Naomi gave them twenty seconds and then said, “These are facts that cannot be spun. All the evidence found at the murder scene has to be considered tainted. The vodka bottle, Mr. Tate’s school ID, the meth sample, and the semen must be thrown out.”

Strong said, “Judge, the vodka, the meth, and the ID are solid.”

“No, they are not,” Naomi said. “The placement of those three pieces of evidence is illogical at best, especially since they were left by a so-called berserk killer. My client’s semen was clearly planted. So were the vodka, the meth, and the ID.”

My niece turned to face the bench. “In short, Judge Varney, the state no longer has a viable case against my client. I move for mistrial and release of Stefan Tate from custody immediately.”

The courtroom exploded.

Stefan rocked back in his chair, looking toward the heavens and hugging himself. Aunt Hattie started cheering and clapping. Pinkie, Nana Mama, and I joined her.

Judge Varney looked panicked when he whacked his gavel and called for order in his courtroom.

Bree tapped my elbow and held her iPhone in front of me, showing me riderless boxcars going through one of the railroad crossings south of Starksville. Then she showed me a picture of the same containers going through the crossing on the main Starksville road. Two riders were aboard.

“What—” I began.

Delilah Strong cried, “Judge, there remains other compelling evidence that links Mr. Tate to this murder.”

Naomi said, “Judge, it’s clear now that someone else killed Rashawn Turnbull and framed my client for the crime.”

“The defense offers no evidence of that at all,” Strong said. “Who does she think killed that boy?”

“That’s really not our concern,” Naomi said. “But we have a theory.”

“Alex, you have to see this,” Bree said, shoving the iPhone in front of me again. I glanced at the screen, saw a satellite view of train tracks by an industrial complex. I held up my index finger and then looked back to Naomi.

My niece glanced at me, and I nodded.

She said, “Judge, we have evidence that the meth planted in Mr. Tate’s basement is tied to a drug ring using the trains that pass through Starksville to distribute methamphetamine and other drugs up and down the East Coast. My client had growing suspicions about the freight trains, and we believe the drug traffickers killed Rashawn and framed my client for the murder to keep him from digging further.”

“This is ridiculous,” Strong said. “The defense has introduced no evidence of any such drug ring. Judge, you can’t—”

The rear doors to the courtroom were flung open with a bang.

Strong, Naomi, Judge Varney, the bailiff, the clerk, and many of the jurors gaped in disbelief and fear.

I twisted around in my seat to see what they were gawking at and got the shock of my life.

Palm Beach County’s Detective Sergeant Peter Drummond looked like he was out for blood as he pressed the muzzle of a sawed-off pump-action Remington twelve-gauge to the side of Marvin Bell’s head.

Chapter 96

“Nobody moves or this man dies!” Detective Sergeant Drummond roared, and he jerked at the rope he had tied around Bell’s neck and hands, which were horribly swollen and bruised. Several of Bell’s fingers pointed in directions they shouldn’t.

Spectators began to cry, panic, and push back toward the walls. Nana Mama squealed in fear beside me, and I held up an arm to shield her. Bree started for her backup pistol, but I said, “Don’t. I know this guy.”

Drummond shouted, “Unload your gun there, Bailiff, and put it on the floor. You. In the witness box. Same.”

Frost and the bailiff did as they were told.

Drummond scanned the room for threats, said, “You too, Chief Sherman, and you, Detective Carmichael. Primary weapons and backups on the floor.”

Sherman and Carmichael seemed shocked that the madman knew their names, but they did as they were told. Then Drummond marched Bell deeper into the courtroom. Marvin Bell looked more lost than frightened, shuffling forward, staring at his hands and quivering in pain.

As they got close, I stood up, said, “Sergeant, what are you doing?”

Drummond turned his scarred, expressionless face past Bree and toward me, said, “Something I should have done a long time ago.”

“C’mon, Drummond. You don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t understand, Dr. Cross. I have to do this.”

The sergeant pushed and dragged Bell into the well of the court. He glanced at Strong and Naomi, said, “Take a seat, Counselors.”

Then he motioned for Frost to get down, said, “This man wants to testify.”

The detective hesitated, but then climbed from the witness stand. Drummond said, “Sit there on the floor by the jury box.”

Frost did as he was told. The sergeant maneuvered Marvin Bell into the chair and got behind him, keeping the gun at his head and dropping the rope so it dangled off the back of the chair.

“Sergeant, whoever you are,” Judge Varney began, “and whatever problem you might have with Mr. Bell, this is not the way to address the—”

“With all due respect, Judge,” Drummond said, “we are no longer in a court of law. This is truth-seeking where the ends justify the means.”

Beside me, Bree typed on her phone and then held it up. I realized she was filming him. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Patty Converse and Pinkie Parks had gone wide-eyed.

What do we do? Pinkie mouthed.

“Not a thing,” I whispered, and looked at my aunts, who were sitting forward in their chairs and raptly watching Drummond.

The sergeant peered around the courtroom as if he owned it, then focused on the jury box, said, “Wouldn’t you just like to know what happened for once? No BS. The whole thing out in the open for you to judge?”

Despite their collective fear, several jury members nodded.

“I would too,” Nana Mama whispered. “You know him, Alex?”

“Met him in Florida,” I whispered. “He’s a cop.”

“What happened to his face?”

“First Gulf War.”

I knew the source of the scarring, but what had happened to Drummond in the few days since I’d seen him? Why in God’s name would he do something this rash? Destroy his career and reputation? His life?

I’d talked to Drummond about Marvin Bell and how frustrated I was at not being able to link him to the web of secrets we’d been uncovering in Starksville. And the sergeant had asked me about Bell several times. He’d done it on the phone that very morning. Drummond had obviously been close by when he called me. And Bell had never left the area. The sergeant had been holding him hostage somewhere, torturing him into a confession.

But why?

“We’ll start at the beginning, Marvin, way, way back, more than thirty-five years,” Drummond said. “You sold drugs in Starksville then, built a nice little business out of it, didn’t you?”

“No,” Marvin Bell said, sounding bewildered. “I—”

From out of nowhere, Drummond pulled out a small ball-peen hammer. He snapped it forward with power, speed, and accuracy. The round head of the hammer smashed into Bell’s swollen left hand, and he howled in agony.

“Try again, Marvin,” Drummond said, waving the hammer in Bell’s peripheral vision. “You sold drugs. You built a gang.”

“Yes,” Marvin Bell whimpered. “I sold drugs. I built a gang.”

“Here in Starksville?”

“Yes.”

“Name of that gang?”

“The Company.”

There it is, I thought. Bell started the Company. He’s Grandfather.

Drummond said, “You had a ruthless business model, Marvin. Got people addicted on freebies until they were like your slaves. You had people killed. You killed people yourself.”

“I never killed anyone,” Marvin Bell said, crying. “I keep telling you that and you don’t believe me.”

Chapter 97

“I don’t believe you,” Drummond said, wagging the hammer. “But we’ll come back to that. You admit you made a lot of money dealing drugs?”

Marvin Bell looked from his hands to the hammer, and nodded sullenly.

“You laundered that money in legitimate businesses all around Starksville,” Drummond went on.

Looking as if his world was ending, Bell said, “Yeah.”

“But even after you’d bought the legit businesses, you didn’t stay away from the drug trade, did you?”

Bell set his jaw as if he were going to argue, but then he shook his head.

“Course not,” the sergeant said. “Moving coke and heroin and meth was just too lucrative. The money was almost too easy if you were smart about it. So one day you noticed the freight trains going back and forth all day and all night through Starksville, and thought, Why not use them? Why not expand? Am I summarizing your personal history correctly?”

Bell tried to move his hands and gasped before nodding.

“Yes,” Drummond said. “You built a distribution network that stretches from Montreal to Miami?”

Again, Bell said, “Yes.”

“And with all that money, you bought yourself an estate up on Pleasant Lake, a gorgeous beachfront place down on Hilton Head, and a condo in Aspen. Trips all over the world. Art collector. Isn’t that right?”

He nodded.

“Got your adopted son, Finn Davis, involved too.”

Bell swallowed, said, “Finn’s part of it.”

“Finn kill his ex-wife?” Drummond asked. “Sydney Fox?”

I heard a creak behind me as Pinkie sat forward.

Marvin Bell looked around the room as if desperate for someone to rescue him. Drummond lashed out again with the hammer, hit Bell’s right hand. Bell let out a scream that shook everyone in the room except Drummond, who seemed calm, clinical.

“Answer the question, Marvin,” the sergeant said. “Did Finn Davis shoot Sydney Fox?”

“Yes.” Bell moaned.

“Fucking knew it,” Pinkie said, and he smacked his fist in his palm. “That sonofabitch.”

“Why did he kill her?” Drummond asked.

“’Cause he hated her, and she needed killing.”

“Why did Sydney Fox need killing?”

“Having been married to Finn, she suspected too much,” Bell said. “And she was talking to Tate, who was poking around the train tracks. It was all no good, so he killed her.”

Drummond asked, “Did Sydney Fox know about your supplier?”

Marvin Bell groaned and shifted in his chair, said, “No.”

“Your distribution system got so big you were having trouble getting supply, especially methamphetamine, correct?” Drummond flipped the hammer in the air and caught it.

Marvin Bell flinched, said, “Yes.”

“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 bastard 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 nigger fucked 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 assault 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 hoarse whisper. “None of it!”

“It’s all true!” Bell shouted from the witness stand. “You sick fuck. You deserve to burn in hell 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 damn-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 bastard 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 assistant 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 God.” 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 Saturday 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 fiancée, 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.

I’d heard too many variations of that story over the years — young black boy killed for his race — but this one was the worst. The cruelest. The most heinous. The most sadistic. The least understandable.

Like Cece Turnbull, I would never get over Rashawn’s death.

Caine had lawyered up and wasn’t talking. Marvin Bell was talking to prosecutors who were going after Caine for murder, kidnapping, and depraved indifference within the course of a race-based incident. I hoped that whatever the jury decided about Caine, they’d make him suffer.

I spotted a middle-aged woman wearing a Domino’s hat coming around the corner carrying two pizzas. Wolfe, Bree, and I immediately went on alert. Varney, Bell, and Sherman had continued to turn over evidence against Caine, and they’d all stated that he had hired a female assassin known as the lace maker to kill members of my family and make it look like accidents.

She’d missed getting Bree and me with the broken brake line. Now that Caine was behind bars, there was no reason to think the lace maker was still around. But you never knew.

“Can I take those off your hands?” I asked the woman.

“Please,” she said as she smiled and handed them to me. “I’m a little late, so it’ll be five dollars off.”

“Who ordered them?” Bree asked.

“Connie Lou.”

“Oh, Edith, there you are,” my aunt said, hustling over with the cash.

They hugged, and Bree and I relaxed.

Then I saw something that warmed my heart. Cece Turnbull came into the backyard with a beautiful little girl who was the spitting image of her mother, and Cece looked clean and sober and thrilled to be with her daughter.

Bree went into the house for something to drink. I got in line for food. With my plate loaded with fried rabbit, coleslaw, broccoli salad, and little roasted red potatoes, I spotted Pinkie talking to Bree and started over.

“You didn’t eat all the rabbit, did you, Dad?” Jannie asked from a lawn chair between Damon and Ali.

“God, it’s really good,” Damon said. “There better be seconds.”

“I want some more too,” Ali said. “But Pinkie said he’d cook the bass I caught yesterday up at the lake.”

“I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten,” I said. “But I’ll remind him.”

Jannie said, “Coach Greene and Coach Fall said they were going to try to come by later.”

“Looking forward to seeing them,” I said. “But I want you to keep your options open, young lady. Okay?”

“Yeah, for real, Jannie,” Damon said. “If you have Duke already at your door, you know there’s going to be a whole lot more.”

Jannie nodded, and then sobered. “Sharon and her mom going to jail?”

“They’re turning evidence against Marvin Bell, but even if they convince a jury that he forced them into lying about the rape, planting Stefan’s DNA, and putting the drugs in your bag, I still think they’re both looking at convictions and sentences.”

“I don’t want it to, like, completely ruin their lives,” Jannie said.

“Neither do I,” I said. “Have fun.”

“Always,” Ali said.

I grinned. “You do, don’t you?”

“Like Jim Shockey. Life’s an adventure.”

Feeling like my youngest had an understanding of life far beyond his years, I walked over to Pinkie and Bree.

“Gimme some rabbit so I don’t have to stand in line,” Bree said, looking hungrily at my plate.

“Not a chance,” I said.

“What?” she said, miffed. “After how hard and ingeniously I worked on behalf of your cousin?”

“Okay,” I said. “Take the thigh there.”

Bree snatched it off the plate.

“What about me?” Pinkie said.

“You’re able-bodied enough to work on oil rigs,” I said. “Get in line.”

My cousin laughed and went off toward the food.

Bree took two bites of the rabbit and looked like she was in heaven. “I had it figured out, you know. About Caine. Well, everything except Rashawn.”

“I believe you.”

I did. That satellite photo she’d shown me in court was of Caine Industries, which sat by the tracks between the Starksville Road and the crossing three miles to the south. Bree had figured out from the trail-cam photographs that the riders were boarding between those two crossings.

She’d called up Google Earth, saw the rail-line spur that ran out of Caine’s business, and thought, What a great cover for a meth-manufacturing op.

Bree said, “If your dad hadn’t gone Rambo, I would have pinned Caine to the wall.”

“Yes, you would have,” I said. “And for that, I think you’ve earned some downtime in Jamaica.”

Bree perked up. “Really?”

“Why not?”

“Just us?”

“Why not?”

“When?”

“Soon as you want.”

“God, I love the way you think sometimes,” she said, and she kissed me.

“Get a room, you two,” Nana Mama cracked as she eased into a lawn chair near us.

“We were talking about doing just that,” I said.

“TMI, as Jannie says,” my grandmother said, and she waved us off.

“You happy you came back to Starksville, Nana?” Bree asked.

“I’d be some kind of ungrateful wretch if I wasn’t,” Nana Mama said. “This is like the story of the prodigal son, only I’m living it. Honestly, Bree, I could die right now and it would be perfectly fine by me.”

“Not by me,” I said.

“And not by me either,” my father said, coming up behind her, bending down, and kissing her on the cheek.

Nana Mama usually made a fuss over public displays of affection, but she put her hand on her son’s cheek and closed her eyes, and I had a flash of her when she must have been very young and holding her newborn child in her arms.

My dad’s cell phone buzzed. He stood up, dug it out, and read a text. He looked at me, and then at my grandmother.

“I’m afraid I haven’t told you all of it,” he said. “How I came to be Peter Drummond and all.”

That was true. He’d been very evasive about that part of his life.

“You going to tell us?” Nana Mama said.

“In a minute,” he said. “First, there’s someone I want you all to meet.”

Chapter 102

My father came back holding hands with Reverend Alicia Maya, who looked absolutely radiant in the last full rays of sunshine.

“Alex,” my dad said, “Mom. I’d like to introduce you to my best friend, the woman whose love saved me. My wife, Alicia.”

For the umpteenth time in the last two weeks I got tears in my eyes.

“I’m so sorry I had to lie to you that day in the cemetery,” Reverend Maya said, coming to me and holding my hands. “But your dad thought that things would be better for you if you just went on believing he was dead. He considered his chance to see you a gift from God, and he said that was enough for him. But after you’d left Florida, he realized it wasn’t enough. He wanted to know you, to be a part of your life. To do that, he had to come back and face Bell and destroy the life he’d made for himself.”

The story came out from the two of them as the day ebbed toward twilight, and everybody at the party stopped to listen.

Reverend Maya found my father just the way she’d told me, weak, homeless, and limping into her church one day. She’d allowed him to sleep there. She’d provided him with counseling and helped him battle his addictions.

“Through Alicia, I found God and have been sober for thirty-four years,” my father said. “I was guilty of abandoning you boys, and you, Mom, but I was terrified of what might happen to me and to all of you if I ever returned to Starksville.”

Reverend Maya said, “He confessed it all to me one night about a year after he started living in the church. He told me about seeing Marvin Bell kill your mom, about being arrested and shot, surviving the gorge, recovering with the help of his beloved Clifford. I told him I believed that God would forgive him.”

“Is that when you fell in love with him?” Nana Mama asked.

“No, love came later, after the war, when I realized how close I’d come to losing him.”

The night my father met Alicia Maya, he had fake papers that identified him as Paul Brown. But shortly after he confessed to the reverend his true identity, a tragic miracle occurred.

A nineteen-year-old named Peter Drummond came into the Reverend Maya’s church seeking counsel, just as my father had a year before. Drummond told her that he was an orphan and had been out of foster care in Kansas City for less than a year. He’d been homeless, and so, on a whim, he’d enlisted in the Marine Corps.

“He said he’d made a mistake,” Reverend Maya said. “That he never should have enlisted and that he knew he was incapable of handling the pressures of war, especially of killing other men.”

She paused, and my father put his hand on his second wife’s shoulder, said, “You couldn’t have known.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Turns out he was in far deeper psychological and spiritual pain than I’d sensed. I told him to pray about it and trust that God would show him the right...” She choked up.

My father said, “Drummond went out in back of the church and shot himself in the face with a shotgun.”

“Jesus,” Pinkie said.

“We were the only ones who heard the shot,” Reverend Maya said. “I was hysterical when your father and I found him.”

“She told me to call the police, and I didn’t dare because I was scared,” my father said. “Then I started going through his pockets. And there was his ID and his enlistment papers that said he had to be at Camp Lejeune in two days.”

“You switched papers,” Ali said.

“Very good, young man,” my father said. “Alicia wanted no part of it at first, but I showed her that, for me, it could be a total rebirth and a chance to do something hard and good for the first time in my life.”

“No one questioned the papers?” Bree asked.

“Both ID photographs weren’t the best, and he’d shot himself in the face,” Reverend Maya said. “The police in Pahokee never questioned that the dead man was Paul Brown.”

“And the Marines were glad to have me,” my father said. “I made corporal and went to Kuwait during the Gulf War. I was part of a crew that was supposed to seize and protect the oil wells that the Iraqis set on fire as they retreated. One blew, and I was too close.”

Reverend Maya said she and my father had kept in contact, writing letters back and forth before the explosion.

She said, “When I saw him lying there at the VA hospital, I don’t know, I just knew that I loved him and couldn’t live without him ever again.”

“I felt the same way,” my dad said. “You don’t know what it did to my heart when she came in to see me.”

“And then you became a cop,” I said.

“I’d been a criminal,” he replied. “I figured I’d be good at catching them.”

“He’s good at it,” Reverend Maya said. “But when he found out that you’d gone into the same field, Alex, he was beside himself with pride. He’s followed your career every step of the way.”

“And you bump into each other in Belle Glade, Florida,” Nana Mama said.

“What are the odds of that happening?” Jannie asked.

“Astronomical,” Reverend Maya said. “That’s why I believe we were guided by a divine hand.”

“You believe that?” Nana Mama asked.

“I do,” she said.

“I do,” my father said.

“I do too,” I said.

“How else do you explain it?” Nana Mama said, and she smiled.

We all fell into a reflective quiet that had me wondering about the mystery that had been my life and how perfectly complete I felt at that moment.

“I’d like to make a toast,” my dad said. “So everyone get a glass.”

By the time we’d all gotten glasses and gathered together again, fireflies were flashing in the pines.

My dad raised his ginger ale and said, “To our extended family and all our friends, living, dead, and now living again: May God bless the Crosses.”

“Amen,” Nana Mama said, and we all echoed her. “Amen.”