Daughter of Ashes

THIRTY-ONE

‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’

Judge Leon M. Bazile, Caroline County (Va.) Commonwealth v. Richard Perry Loving and

Mildred Dolores Jeter, 1958-1966

It was a perfect day for a hospital visit. A line of squalls had moved eastward across the Chesapeake Bay bringing rain and high winds, dropping the temperature by twenty degrees.

After breakfast I strolled around the yard, picking up broken branches and stacking them on top of the woodpile. Then I exchanged my wet tennis shoes for a pair of dry dockers, climbed into my car and headed north, feeling just about as gloomy as the weather.

Before we left his office, Jack informed me that Clifton Ames had been transferred from the burns unit at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to the regional medical facility near Snow Hill. I parked in the multi-story parking garage just off Front Street and checked in at the hospital’s information desk, where I received a laminated clip-on visitors badge and was directed to the nursing station on the second floor. The duty nurse first pointed out the alcohol handwash dispenser and, only after I’d disinfected my hands, the directions to the patient.

Clifton Ames’s room, I soon discovered, was on the right-hand side at the end of a long corridor. A sign on the door read, ‘Only one visitor at a time. Thank you.’ Ames’s door stood ajar, and I was about to push my way in when I heard voices. Either Ames was busy with his caregivers or he already had a visitor, so I parked myself in an upholstered chair someone had thoughtfully placed just outside the door to wait my turn.

The voices were hushed at first. Then one began to stand out. Sitting quietly, I tuned in.

‘Is this what you were looking for?’ A man’s voice, low and intense.

There was a mumbled response, then, a little louder, ‘These aren’t the originals, of course.’

This time I recognized the voice: Cap Hazlett.

I sat up straight and, acting casual, leaned closer to the door. Using my fingertips, I pushed it open a few inches more.

‘You were right, you know,’ Cap Hazlett growled. ‘The evidence was all there in the courthouse basement. Was, I said, was.’

‘I thought we were friends,’ Cliff whined.

‘Friends!’ Cap snorted. ‘What a joke. I should have been suspicious when you met me at the airport all those years ago. You hardly knew me, yet I fell for all your flag waving and patriotic bullshit about wanting to help a returning vet.’

As I strained my ears to hear Cliff’s reply, a nurse’s aide rumbled by pushing a cart loaded with medications in clear plastic cups. She was joined by another aide who wanted to discuss whether Doctor Freidman had increased the dose of ‘Vicodin for the gallbladder in two-thirteen.’

I wanted to shush them, but gritted my teeth instead. After they moved on, I heard Clifton Ames say, ‘My father, not me.’

‘Oh, your father bought the property at auction through Liberty Land Development, that’s for sure,’ Cap agreed. ‘But that’s not all that was shady about those sales, was it?’

‘I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Was this what you were looking for in the courthouse basement, Ames?’

Cap was obviously holding something up. I longed to see what it was, but didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, so I stayed put, hands folded in my lap, staring demurely at a watercolor print of the wild ponies of Chincoteague hanging on the opposite wall.

‘This was one of hundreds that never got mailed. See here?’ He paused, then continued as if explaining something to a stubborn third-grader. ‘Uncancelled stamp.’

The delinquent tax notices.

‘That has nothing to do with me,’ Ames rasped.

‘Oh, no? How about this, then? Recognize it?’

If Ames replied, it was in a voice so quiet that I couldn’t hear him.

‘Your daddy got you that summer job, I’ll bet. How long before he started asking you to do favors for him?’

‘Just because I worked for the tax assessment office one summer, Hazlett, doesn’t mean I had anything to do with the tax notices.’

‘This time card says differently. You worked there exactly then, as a file clerk. What else would a file clerk be doing if it wasn’t folding, licking and stamping? And I’m betting,’ Cap continued in a slow, measured voice, ‘that if we analyzed the DNA on the flaps of those envelopes, your genome would be all over them.’

‘That proves nothing.’ Ames had rallied, his voice stronger.

‘It proves you stole my mother’s farm.’

‘I told you. My father did.’

Cap clicked his tongue. ‘Like father like son. You did the dirty work for your father and now Tad is doing it for you, is that right?’

‘You’re crazy, Hazlett. I’m calling the nurse.’

Cap laughed. ‘Go ahead. Do it. I’ll even hand you the call button. Here, take it. I’m sure everyone will be fascinated when I turn this information over to the Washington Post. I can see the headlines now: “Chicken Magnate Steals Land from Eastern Shore Blacks.”’ Cap laughed again, but there was not an ounce of humor in it. ‘What becomes of the Ames political dynasty then, huh?’

‘What do you want, Hazlett?’ Ames asked quietly a few seconds later.

‘I want you to tell me why you murdered my sister.’

After what I took to be a stunned silence, Ames said, ‘Your sister drowned. They said it was suicide.’

‘Cut the crap, Ames. You knew Nancy well enough to know that she would never have taken her own life.’

‘I didn’t know…’ Ames began, then yelped. ‘OK, OK! But I didn’t know she was your sister until, until…’

‘Until what, you lying bastard? Until you married her? Is this why you ordered Tad to run Rusty off the road?’

I imagined Cap waving Rusty’s photograph of the newspaper notice under Clifton Ames’s nose.

‘I really loved Nancy, Cap. You have to believe me.’

‘You just wanted to get into her pants, didn’t you? But if I know my sister, she held out for marriage. Didn’t she? Didn’t she?’

Ames screamed, ‘Yes, I mean, no! I wanted to marry Nancy, but then, the baby…’ The sentence ended in a whimper.

‘What about the baby?’

‘I just needed time to get my dad around to it. We were really young, and he had, you know, expectations.’

‘And then what? You found out that Nancy was a nee-grow?’ Cap drawled.

‘You think I didn’t know that? I loved your sister! It didn’t matter to me that she was half black.’

‘But it mattered to your father,’ Cap said, his voice steely.

‘I thought he’d come around, especially once he saw the baby. I sent her money, visited as often as I could. Nancy and I were making plans, and then…’

‘The baby died.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And Nancy came unglued.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you thought you were off the hook.’

‘I, I…’ Ames stammered.

‘You stupid asshole. In what state would your marriage to my sister have been legal once they found out she was black?’

‘I told you! I loved your sister. She was the most beautiful, talented…’

‘Is that why you killed her?’ Cap snapped.

If Ames replied to this bald accusation, I didn’t hear it because a nurse wandered by just then. She paused and cocked an eyebrow at me. I smiled, pointed a thumb at the sign, silently praying that she wasn’t on her way to Ames’s room to take his blood pressure or hand him a bedpan. But she simply smiled and walked on.

‘The Chinese at Camp Number Three knew how to get information out of prisoners,’ Cap was saying matter-of-factly when I tuned in again. ‘Forty-three percent of the POWs died up there. Did you know that?’

I thought I heard a groan.

‘Tell me how you killed her!’ Cap bellowed so loudly that I was surprised when no one on the hospital staff came running.

‘Stop it! Stop!’ Ames wailed.

‘Tell me, you lying coward!’

Ames cried out again, keening, like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. I shot to my feet and straight-armed my way through the door.

Cap stood at the foot of Ames’s hospital bed. His cheeks glistened with tears.

Ames lay on his bed in a tangle of sheets. The IV feed had been torn from his arm; the tubing dangled uselessly from the bag, dripping sodium lactate solution onto the floor. ‘I didn’t kill Nancy, you’ve gotta believe me!’ Ames blubbered. ‘My father did! He offered her ten thousand dollars to go away, but Nancy turned him down!’

‘Cap?’ I said quietly. ‘Cap, it’s Hannah. You can let go of Cliff’s legs now.’

Cap turned his head and took me in without the slightest hint of recognition.

‘Cap? Let go of his legs.’

‘He’s not in Geneva,’ Cap muttered as I carefully unwrapped his fingers, one hand at a time, from their vise grip on Clifton Ames’s loosely-bandaged calves.

Once free of the pressure, Ames moaned with relief.

‘Cap! Cap!’ I took my friend by the upper arms and began to shake him. ‘You’re having a flashback!’

Cap raised his hands, palms out, as if shielding his eyes from a bright light. His eyelids fluttered.

‘Cap! It’s OK. It’s Hannah Ives.’

Meanwhile, Clifton Ames had found the remote and was frantically stabbing at buttons. The television mounted high on the wall turned on long enough for Doctor Oz to offer hints on how to reboot our immune system, then faded to black. The reading light over the metal headboard sprang to life. I held Cap’s arms in a death grip and was urging him backwards into the visitor’s chair in the corner of the room when the duty nurse barged in.

‘How can I help you, Mister Ames?’

Clifton’s eyes locked on mine for several long seconds, then flicked back to the nurse. ‘I, ah, I’d like some more water, please. The ice in my pitcher seems to have melted.’

‘Certainly,’ she chirped.

‘When you get a minute,’ I smiled toothily. ‘You might want to check Cliff’s bandages. He must thrash around a lot in his sleep.’

‘Be right back,’ the nurse caroled as she headed for the door carrying Cliff’s Styrofoam pitcher. ‘Only one visitor at a time,’ she reminded us as she passed by, then angled her head back and whispered, ‘But this time, I’ll make an exception.’

After she left, Cliff lay flat on his back, eyes closed, lips sucked in to form a firm, hard line. After some serious prodding, I persuaded Cap to accompany me up to the hospital cafeteria where I sat him down at a table, then bought us each a cup of coffee. Cap took a careful sip, then set the cup, clattering and sloshing hot liquid over the rim, into his saucer. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said.

‘You were having a flashback,’ I said. ‘To when you were a POW in Korea, I think.’

‘No food, no water, no shelter… that wasn’t the worst of it. Heated bamboo spears, lighted cigarettes, bottle openers twisted into open wounds…’ Cap shuddered, setting his cup to rattling again. His dark eyes bored into mine. ‘“We have ways of making you talk.”’

Words seemed woefully inadequate. I reached across the table and covered his hand with my own, squeezing hard and holding it there until the shaking stopped.

‘His father murdered Nancy!’ Cap hung his head. ‘What am I going to do now?’

The late Clifton Ames, Senior lay moldering in the local cemetery, way beyond the long arm of the law. He may well have murdered Nancy Hazlett, but that didn’t get Junior off the hook for Rusty’s accident or the murder of Kendall Barfield. Although he hadn’t exactly confessed to it, he hadn’t denied Cap’s bald accusation either.

But in Cap’s present state, there was no use discussing that with him now.

‘You’re going to go home,’ I told him firmly. ‘And tomorrow morning, first thing, you’re going to call your GP and get an appointment. Tell him what just happened. Talk it over. Do what he recommends.’

Cap nodded. ‘I hear you.’

‘Do you want me to drive?’ I asked.

Cap shoved his half-finished coffee aside. ‘No. Thank you, Hannah. I’ll be fine.’

‘You sure?’ I was reluctant to leave him on his own.

‘Positive.’ He gave me a hug. ‘I can see you’re worried, so I’ll text you when I get home. How’s that?’

‘Call me instead,’ I told him. ‘I want to hear your voice.’

I walked Cap out of the cafeteria, rode down to the lobby with him on the elevator, and accompanied him to the parking lot. Only after he’d climbed into his car and driven away did I locate my cell phone and check in with Paul. He had driven over that afternoon and was waiting for me at Our Song.

I told Paul what had happened in Clifton Ames’s hospital room. ‘Cap was completely out of it, Paul. He kept saying, “He’s not in Geneva.” Geneva?’

‘The communist Chinese were barbarians,’ Paul explained. ‘During the Korean War every rule set out by the Geneva Convention was broken. I imagine his captors kept reminding Cap and the other prisoners of that.’

Even though I was standing in the sun, I shivered. ‘“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,”’ I quoted.

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you drive over to Cap’s house, Paul? Make sure he gets in OK?’

‘You want me to sit with him for a while?’

‘Yes, thank you, sweetheart. I’d do it myself but I need to phone Sheriff Hubbard. Then I’m going back to check on Cliff Ames. There’s something I need to ask him.’

Five minutes later, I slipped back into the room where Ames lay on his bed, sheets in order, pillow fluffed, IV tubes properly reinstalled. Standing directly next to the bed, I said, ‘Tell me one thing, Mr Ames. What was your daughter’s name?’

Ames considered me with rheumy eyes. He blinked slowly. Then he rolled away, burrowed his cheek into his pillow and faced the wall.

‘Surely it doesn’t matter now,’ I said, addressing his back. ‘Please, tell me. What did Nancy name your baby?’

His shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell, but Clifton Ames never replied.